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ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Which policy could they name? And which are the three?
the_Culture_is_great
2d ago
Maybe a bit pedantic, but your examples are also common idioms. The "invasive species" thing isn't, so I wanted why I felt it had such a strong negative implication.
But also if the comment implied that every black person in group of whites is a "wolf in sheep's clothing" I'd have the same issue. Those are both also very negative idioms to apply to people.
I think the "ghetto boy, invasive species" bits change the message from "be careful with adoption because you might get a bad seed" (the individual you might adopt could be bad and there's nothing you can do) to "don't adopt a black kid, they're all bad, and they're ruining everything".
Goodguy
2d ago
There is a woman sitting in the Federal Correctional Institution, Tallahassee right now who could clear up so many of these mysteries. If only she could be convinced to speak, and could be trusted to tell the truth. Alas...
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2d ago
Goodguy
2d ago
Socrates was a smart guy by all accounts, but I don't think that his kinds of methods were the basis of all intelligent thought. It is telling that in many of the Socratic dialogues, Socrates' opponents are essentially straw-men, written by Plato to serve as a foil for Socrates. Surely Socrates' actual real-life debates were not like this. How much do we know about how Socrates actually spoke and debated?
The Greeks also gave us several other methods for intelligent thought that are very different from Socrates'.
One such is the mathematical method of proof.
Another is the Aristotelian essay. Aristotle used a very different kind of rhetorical approach than the Socrates of Plato's works.
So did Thucydides, whose arguments in the History of the Peloponnesian War are very different from Socrates' style.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I think that Trump's involvement is the more peripheral "lot of smoke, no fire" kind of thing. The Democrats wouldn't release it because it would have just been brushed off as such and made it look like they were grasping at straws, just like the various prosecutions. If there was nothing they could prosecute, it would just be another smear that everyone forgot about in a week.
I don't know if they planned it this way, but it was good ammunition to have in the event that Trump won the election. Now that the pressure to release it is coming from his base, and he at least alluded to releasing it, but he has cold feet for some reason, it makes matters worse. It's like with his tax returns; it's unlikely that they would reveal any criminal activity, but there's something personally embarrassing that he doesn't want revealed. Now that he's been intransigent despite the pressure, anything that is in there that's unfavorable is going to have a much bigger impact.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2d ago
No actually we've managed to avoid fixating on quote tallies 'til now despite having votes viewable after 24 hours since back on reddit iirc. We just don't fixate on vote tallies.
I'm not going to disagree that black people as a group share common adaptations for warm climates, that's obviously true, and not the morally wrong part of the metaphor.
the fact that there are some nice invasive species doesn't change the fact that the typical attitude towards them in general is still very, very negative.
And finally any implication that subgroups of people are different species i.e. not human is also morally wrong, especially just dropped into an unrelated conversation (the original comment made no mention of race).
Listening
2d ago
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2d ago
they feed into a sense that the people who are writing the comments are like athletes in the middle of an arena, fighting it out to the cheers of the audience
But we literally are doing that.
Not exactly something that inspires intelligent thought
It is the basis of all intelligent thought:
"- Is Socratic irony an expression of revolt? of plebeian ressentiment? As the member of an oppressed group, did Socrates take pleasure in the ferocity with which he could thrust his syllogistic knife? Did he avenge himself on the nobles he fascinated? - As a dialectician, you have a merciless tool in your hands; dialectics lets you act like a tyrant; you humiliate the people you defeat. The dialectician puts the onus on his opponent to show that he is not an idiot: the dialectician infuriates people and makes them feel helpless at the same time. The dialectician undermines his opponent's intellect. - What? Is dialectics just a form of revenge for Socrates?"
"I have shown how Socrates could be repulsive: which makes it even more important to explain the fact that he fascinated. - That he discovered a new type of agon, that he was its first fencing master in the noble circles of Athens - this is one thing. He fascinated by appealing to the agonistic drive of the Greeks, - he introduced a variation into the wrestling matches between young men and youths. Socrates was a great erotic too."
the_Culture_is_great
2d ago
Black people are not a seperate species.
Sure make an argument about "we should stop subsidizing black people" (I especially agree with "don't subsidize people based on race specifically"). But don't do it in a dehumanizing way by calling them a seperate species.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
2d ago
Add the following code to your custom CSS: button.m-0{display:none;}
Goodguy
2d ago
Not sure if you would consider this anti-MAGA, but it's certainly anti-Trump: https://www.themotte.org/post/2240/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/345537?context=8#context
This one is me criticizing Trump's tariffs: https://www.themotte.org/post/1812/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/315024?context=8#context
Me being concerned about Trump's authoritarian impulses: https://www.themotte.org/post/1681/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/298689?context=8#context
Me criticizing Trump's desire to increase the military budget: https://www.themotte.org/post/1827/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/316103?context=8#context
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
As always, the historically aware people have better perspective. Cotton gin is an interesting example. Deeply ironic: making the labor much easier for processing cotton increased the demand for labor for the cotton itself. It still took 30 years for the US slave population to double, and 40 years to double again, and the entrenchment of slavery took 70, all spurred by the technological invention, but the social and economic changes took decades to come to a head with actual war. Most every other important invention in history, even when adopted rapidly, usually takes decades to percolate and fully influence the economy and social fabric of a country.
The "population bomb" people being so obviously wrong is also a great example why the new "population stagnation" people are also probably going to be obviously wrong. "Doom" happens slowly.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
I am routinely rang up at my local Chinese restaurant by middle-schoolers, who a few years ago were visible hanging out in the back while their dad worked.
Perhaps they just don't work on the books?
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
2d ago
Is there a way I can use that somehow? I'm a professional programmer, but I don't do a bunch of stuff in CSS...
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
2d ago
For one thing, they feed into a sense that the people who are writing the comments are like athletes in the middle of an arena, fighting it out to the cheers of the audience.
This is a pretty good analogy.
I write contra-MAGA opinions on here all the time, and they get upvoted more often than they get downvoted.
Care to share an example or two of this? My experience has been stuff like this conversation, where I said I doubted that Biden was pocketing bribes.
I've had contra-MAGA posts that go slightly positive if they're very high effort, but the difference between me posting that and say, posting an antifeminist piece is that the contra-MAGA post will be like +50 | -45, while the antifeminist piece will be +50 | -2 or something.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
If there's one thing we learned about the Democratic establishment in 2024, its that they love themselves more than they hate Trump. Very possible that those in charge decided that the hit to Trump wasn't worth the risk to themselves or their friends from bringing additional scrutiny upon the Epstein story.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
There is a problem here, and the problem is you.
The problem, specifically, is that you post a lot of these kinds of sneering borderline kinda-making-a-point-but-mostly-just-sneering comments, and increasingly people are getting frustrated and angry and snapping at you, and then we have to mod those people (because you are not allowed to attack someone) and it's starting to look very much like this is your game.
Sometimes we ban someone not because any one post was terrible but because their overall effect on the community is so negative that there seems little value in allowing them to keep throwing shit. We don't like to do it; it's very subjective. We can't read your mind. Maybe you really are sincere about everything you say, you believe you are making good, valid points, and your manner of expressing yourself is just so off-putting and against the grain here that it drives people crazy. But we've warned you enough, and you keep doing exactly the same thing, that I suspect you know what you're doing and you're doing it on purpose.
So I'm telling you now: stop it. Or I will propose to the rest of the mods that you should be banned under our catch-all egregiously obnoxious category.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
The metaphor is wrong because in the typical understanding, the actions we should take against "invasive species" should be extreme, up to and including eradicating them from the "invaded" area.
The metaphor is specifically telling you not to put yourself in a position where you would have to take extreme measures to remove the invasive species. Have you ever read an account of an adoption gone wrong? In the worst cases, it sounds like the stuff that makes family annihilations seem understandable. And just to get ahead of the obvious criticism, the worst such story I've ever come across involved adopting a pair of Eastern European girls, who proved to be violently uncontrollable wrecking balls on the lives of their adoptive parents.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
2d ago
Some are evidently hardwired to care more than others.
Sure. I would have been right there with you thinking it was silly to care about downvotes if they didn't soft-censor your post like they do on Reddit. But then at least a portion of my views started diverging from the dominant thought paradigm on this forum, and the downvotes for well-researched posts started feeling pretty obnoxious.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Honestly I don't think domestic life is going to be too awful. The real shock for the US is going to be the precipitous decline in US foreign policy influence. At some point this century, Americans are going to wake up to some kind of rude and jarring awakening to how (relative to the past) impotent the influence has become.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
2d ago
I find it impossible to believe that if there were some hint of damning evidence about Trump in Epstein's files that it wouldn't have gotten leaked during either of the last two elections. There is just no conceivable value that the Dem establishment would have held high enough to cause them to refrain.
Much more believable that the juicy parts of the relevant hard drives and data were "accidentally" thrown into an incinerator in 2019.
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