domain:parrhesia.co
anti_dan
2d ago
Harris isn't blameless, but she surely has less blame than the surrounding figures, particularly those that actually made Biden's presidency so unpopular like his Chief of Staff and Secretaries of various departments. She is a classic case of a schoolteacher level intelligence person being elevated far beyond her competence (in this circumstance due to race and willingness to sleep with older men). But she doesnt even know that. Her whole worldview is predicated on her being incapable of learning that.
AAND on top of that all she was the VP, which is typically a useless and powerless position.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2d ago
"don't adopt a black kid, they're all bad, and they're ruining everything".
No, the actual claim is, “The specific black kids who are up for adoption/fostering in America are, to an extremely large extent, likely to be a huge problem.” They are not a randomly-selected cross-section of the overall black population. There is a reason why they are up for adoption, and it is nearly always a terrible reflection on the parents.
If you accept any sort of hereditarian explanation of human behavior, then it should matter to you that the kid you’re considering for adoption is very very very likely to be the child of A) a drug addict), B) an incarcerated person, or C) a teenage unwed mother. (Or the very common D) all of the above.) The same traits that led such a person to such a lowly state are likely to manifest at least to some extent in the child as well. Even if you don’t accept any hereditarian claims, you still have to worry about things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, childhood malnutrition, and even neglect/abuse leading to stunted cognitive/physical development, etc. Again, these things are not guaranteed to make the child a ticking time bomb, but the likelihood is far from zero.
These things are at least partially true of non-black children up for adoption or in the foster system as well, but to a markedly lesser extent. The likelihood of these problems just is higher when it comes to adopting a black child. That could change at some point down the road, and certainly there are numerous exceptions and success stories even today, but that doesn’t mean it’s immoral or misguided to take these things into account.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2d ago
Buddy. Pal. Lemme level with you here. I gotta be brutally honest, because you did ask for an explanation of why you get downvoted so much.
You have, from what I've observed in your posts, a staggering inability to ever acknowledge when the person you're talking to has ever made a valid point.
Now obviously no one in an internet debate ever actually admits they were straight up wrong. But there's a difference between "yeah ok, that's true but your position is still bullshit because of XYZ" and "ah, no, erm, you see, you've simply misunderstood the situation as it were, it's actually not like that at all, I don't know what you're talking about..."
You seem to be particularly fond of the latter. And it's one of the fastest ways to really turn people off from listening to anything you have to say.
I told you that the way you phrased your post will read as insulting to many people here. I'm quite confident that this is a fact. There are many ways you could respond to this. You could say "well fuck 'em I don't care", you could say "it shouldn't be an insult if it's true", there are lots of things you could say in your defense that aren't just total capitulation and admission of guilt. But instead you chose "nope, that never happened, don't know what you're talking about". Which is essentially the most obnoxious type of response possible.
Again, the lion's share of your downvotes come from the simple fact that your views are anti-consensus, but your particular style of argument certainly doesn't help things.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
That's sort of exactly my criticism of race and racism, it just doesn't serve the purpose. We should either talk about discrimination on the individual level, or talk about stereotypes on the group level (and not limit it to poor pattern-matching, open it up to more than just genetic ancestry - let's talk culture and more, directly). Racism is a bad word because it can be applied to either case! Race by itself means genetic ancestry, and quite obviously genetic ancestry is not the biggest thing that matters when talking group-wide trends, fair or unfair alike (plus as I pointed out the ancestry gets fuzzy edges way too easily in modern life, especially melting pot countries like the US). I'm not even trying to start a HBD debate or anything. I agree on the trivially true bit and maybe even a bit more FWIW. But if you think pre-industrial humans believed in HBD or something like it, you'd be wrong on at least two levels.
PokerPirate
2d ago
I wish our best and brightest were competing to make video games. They're all at FAANG serving ads and optimizing our attention.
anti_dan
2d ago
Biden was not uniformly coherent in 2020. He did accomplish stepping up in a few select debates and appearances, probably as a result of extremely planned napping schedules and drug dosing. It was obvious to anyone who wasn't on his side or influenced by mainstream media that he was already severely impaired. The tale of 2024 is that his impairment became so ridiculous that it was not possible to conceal.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
IIRC they both said she wanted more green energy stuff generally (power generation, that is), which I counted. My mom also said... "something about housing? I don't really know and can't remember" which I didn't count because it was too vague. She was right though, that was one I named, the first-time homebuyer credit. I also could name the expanded child and childcare tax credit, and her vague gestures at tightening the borer. After thinking about it a little longer, I think I was able to remember some plan to negotiate Medicare drug prices, but Trump also had some similar-sounding version of the same plan, so I wasn't sure if that counted - or if the border tightening counted either, since she was basically forced into it.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
I replied that your reasoning is a defacto state of eventually arbitrarily banning anyone who goes against the dominant ideology of this forum unless they adhere to a much stricter ruleset.
Thank you for adding another nickel to my pile.
You will continue to get downvoted as long as you're not in line with the consensus.
I'm glad we can agree this is what's happening. I wish this was universal knowledge here.
MAGA (a concrete group of people
Is MAGA really that concrete of a group? I always understood it to be fairly amorphous -- I doubt many people would unironically identify with such a label on this forum, yet I know plenty of people here are effectively in it by the points they argue.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
I said "first of all" but so far responses have been fixating on this point rather than the broader point that modern racism doesn't back-extrapolate to history very well at all. That's presentism. Modern racism has at best very imperfect analogies historically (at the very least, pre-industrial ones). I just want to register my annoyance that I'm being argued with on a point that's not germane to the topic I was trying to refute.
What you say is true! Any categorization algorithm, which usually involves some kind of "cutoff" that is chosen, is inherently subject to a confusion matrix with its accompanying tradeoffs. Right? You have false positives, true positives, false negatives, true negatives. To continue that analogy, in the modern world, the tradeoffs are actually kind of large. Total model "accuracy" hits unacceptably low numbers, in my opinion, because of how many blurred borderline cases there are, resulting in miscategorizations of various types. So I guess what I was trying to say is that people have currently 'latched on' to race because of its salience in the political conversation, but it's a poor tool for the job. So sure, race as a categorization algorithm "works" to some extent, and so in that sense it's "real", but we shouldn't be in the habit of substituting models of reality for actual reality. That's the sense by which I call it "not real" - it works (kinda sorta) but it isn't a true depiction of reality. A lot of people especially on this forum go around pretending that race is a Big Deal, and are the equivalent of the gender essentialists (which I actually kind of am) but for race (which I am definitely not). But gender is like, obviously and self-evidently a Big Deal, and race is... well, it just isn't. Not by itself!
This is why I always try and insist that we should have different conversations for issues of race (broad category that, critically intersects with a lot of more-potent things like culture, social status, economics, etc that we might as well discuss more directly!) than we do for issues of discrimination (where we debate and talk about ethics and how they intersect with practical reality and probability) because otherwise everyone always ends up at cross-purposes.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2d ago
right now they depend on GPS systems for accuracy
Pretty sure they're using GLONASS, the Russian version of GPS.
At the end of the day war is mostly about mass. If there's broad technological and political parity (not a colonial stomp or a guerilla war), then it's about numbers. How can a European NATO of over 600 million lose to a Russia of 140 million? What level of unpreparedness and inexperience can counter 4:1 in numbers? And they have the defender's advantage too.
If Russia can quickly make lots of cheap jet drones, so can Europe. Anything Russia can do, Europe can replicate. The asymmetry is this: just as Russia can hammer Ukraine down in attritional fighting after early reverses, so can Europe to Russia.
Only if there's a political failure, if the whole edifice just implodes as the Turks nope out, the Serbs and Hungarians decide it's not their war, if Britain and France won't really use nukes to defend Polish or German territory... then Europe loses. But so long as they're united they can fight on to victory, if only by drowning Russia in men. The US need not even show up IMO.
Let the Gerans fly, let the Oreshniks blow up Patriot batteries, let the T-90Ms thrust into the Baltics, let the Russians run wild for 6 months. They've got a huge front to man from Finland to the Caucasus. They'll be hemmed in at sea. They'll still be facing vast reserves of wealth and manpower, a foe with time on his side and talent to spare. At the end of a long attritional war they'll have to fall back on their strategic nuclear forces to broker a peace.
I don't buy that they'd risk a war with NATO unless China suplexes the US in Asia, at which point we all have much bigger concerns.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2d ago
So, to be clear, the reason people get downvoted is because they express views that go against the majority opinion. The downvote button is a disagree button. You will continue to get downvoted as long as you're not in line with the consensus. Sorry.
That being said, I think the reason @Goodguy's third comment there didn't get downvoted is because he framed the issue as being more about Trump (an individual) and Trumpism (an abstract ideology), rather than MAGA (a concrete group of people, as you seem to be using the term). In the short comment I'm replying to, you said that MAGA "likes authoritarianism" and "goes with the flow". You can't hide your contempt for the majority of people who are reading your comment. That's obviously not going to endear them to you.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
The hypergamy crunch is just around the corner. We're already at a point socially where there are three women to two men among new college graduates. This clearly cannot last.
Why can’t it last? Sure, over timescales some groups will have more children than others, but liberalism is a powerful identity package that has a lot of ability to convert people from conservative backgrounds.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
2d ago
Yes. I wrote four paragraphs to explain my reasons.
I replied that your reasoning is a defacto state of eventually arbitrarily banning anyone who goes against the dominant ideology of this forum unless they adhere to a much stricter ruleset.
Someone with right-leaning views makes a borderline bad post --> nobody gets upset, so it scoots by just fine.
Someone with left-leaning views makes a borderline bad post --> right leaning posters are upset, snap back and get warned themselves --> left-leaning poster is seen as a troublemaker and is eventually banned for nebulous reasons.
We're gonna have to see if Trump actually goes through with the lawsuit and what happens over it, but given WSJ and Murdoch decided to go through with the article knowing his plans (they even state in the article that's the comments they got when reaching out to the admin) I'm expecting they might be storing more in the barrel still and baiting.
As a North Carolinian, I saw a similar story play out with Mark Robinson where he claims it's fake, starts a lawsuit and then quietly dropped it after things were no longer relevant. Especially funny cause he kept using the username in question too.
Still whether or not this particular letter is real is mostly a distraction from the Case of the Missing Epstein Files we kept getting promised only to end up not existing and things like the altered video. Probably why this is the first time JD Vance suddenly has some thoughts to share, of course none about the Epstein situation, it's so sad how we just don't talk about it anymore in favor of random drama of the day.
Anyway funniest conclusion will be a real letter but not by Trump or associates, but by Epstein and associates faking it and putting people's signatures on things for some weird fantasy.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
Is there a reason you're modding a post made by one of the few consistently left-leaning posters
Yes. I wrote four paragraphs to explain my reasons.
although you said up above that you weren't equipped to handle that one so OK I guess, as long as it eventually gets handled.
I didn't say I wasn't equipped to handle it, I said I chose not to. That doesn't mean it's going to "get handled" as you would like.
crushedoranges
2d ago
Mhm.
I apologize. From now on, I'll just won't engage. Sorry, I'm being an ass.
Gaashk
2d ago
You are mostly talking about Big 5 trait agreeableness. There's a good Jordan Peterson lecture about it from before he became politicized. It's convenient for a person's managers, husband (if they're into that), and infants. It's more of a mixed bag for the people possessing it, as you mentioned.
These are almost universally positive traits unless you happen to enjoy arguments and rambunctious trouble-making and think such a person would be boring.
Two highly agreeable people together can be quite annoying. They don't get high quality feedback about each other's preferences, and end up playing guessing games about what the other person wants. They have a bad time raising older children. I can't remember it well enough to find it, but there was a Less Wrong post about how it is actually an onerous imposition to one's host to flaccidly say that whatever they want to do is great, they're totally happy with anything, because this makes more work for the host -- maybe they don't like making a bunch of decisions.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
I place about a 20% probability on a default and/or civil war in the next 20 years, but Christ is King so who cares?
My mother and I were driving on the highway last night and talking about how the world seems to be going crazy, and half of young people aren’t even vaguely interested in family formation, and no one seems connected to any one any more.
And then the rain cleared and we saw a double rainbow, and she quoted from Genesis: “I have set my bow in the sky.” She continued, “We were just talking about how the world feels crazy, but God’s in control.”
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
I think domestic life will be bad, in the sense that people will grow more atomized, disconnected, and lonely, while housing and health costs will continue to absorb more and more of people’s wealth, and the division between the haves and the have-nots grows even more intense.
I think both the left and the right realize this is our destiny, it just depends on how you frame it which side starts cheering and which side starts going, “well, actually…”
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
2d ago
Is there a reason you're modding a post made by one of the few consistently left-leaning posters, while not modding posts like this? Arguably this post and this post are borderline too. If the issue with this post is that it's making a generalization of a group in a somewhat mean way, then there'd be plenty of posts the mods ought to come down on even in just the past few days. There's also WhiningCoil's post comparing nonwhites to "virulent invasive species" that's been sitting for over 24h without mod action, although you said up above that you weren't equipped to handle that one so OK I guess, as long as it eventually gets handled.
If the issue is that other people are getting triggered and snapping at him, they should be the ones to pay the price alone. Otherwise it's just an informal rule of "anyone who goes against the dominant ideology on this forum (i.e. leftists) gets banned eventually when people get mad at them". The 3 borderline posts I linked don't have this problem because they're going with the dominant ideology.
My personal opinion is that none of these should be warned/banned, except for maybe WhiningCoil's that's a little too egregious.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Bad comparisons. Religions, for example, have hierarchies of categorization. The modern Western understanding of race does not. Religions, to continue the example, have literal self-imposed structures inherent to their organization (OK, to be fair, at least most do). No inherent bright delineations exist when it comes to ethnicity. One reason I prefer the term "ethnicity" to "race" is that it's more localized/specific - partly due to connotation, but not entirely. Languages... eh, kinda, but still mostly no? Although it's true that languages intermix on a broad scale, and drift as the rule instead of the exception, the mechanism through which languages change and drift is by definition on a group level. Two individuals speaking different languages don't really create their own language. However, every human no matter their race or heritage can interbreed. Their children exist, and ruin the categories.
but there's been no mass political movement to try and convince the public that these things "don't really exist"
There isn't a mass political movement to paint race is something that doesn't exist, though? I'm one of the few people saying it, and I'm a strong minority in that sense (no pun intended). It's sort of like the gender-queer debate. "Liberals" (for lack of a better term) can't decide whether gender roles exist, but are bad, or whether gender is a construct, and thus doesn't matter. This indecision leads to a weak foundation. When it comes to race, they are trying to have it both ways, and this also means there's a weak foundation. This contradiction is true even for supposed "academics" in the liberal arts! Insofar as "woke" counts a mass political movement, woke never consistently claimed that race didn't exist, and still doesn't.
My whole comment is pointing out that "race" as currently understood in the West is ahistorical and has accumulated a bunch of recent baggage. The commenter above directly claimed that racism is the default state of humanity, and that's wrong. You quite obviously can't have racism without a conception of race. If the commenter above had said something more general, like "humans always discriminate against outgroups and foreigners" then we might have more of a real conversation based on truth, but they didn't, and I'm calling that out.
SSCReader
2d ago
The difference is with kids is that someone has to raise them. We don't eradicate them like we do knotweed or whatever. For the good of the kid and society efforts must be made to get them to adulthood. A group home is unlikely to do as good a job as a family with resources. It may well be horrible and difficult for that family, but it must be done by someone. Which is why we don't force people to adopt or foster generally. It's going to be tough in a lot of ways.
It's supererogatory work, so it's not very helpful to talk about these kids as invasive species. In addition the whole rant about nature vs nurture is flawed. by the time a kid is an infant in need of adoption from a poor area like a ghetto, almost always nature has been confounded by maternal alcohol or drug use, maternal or infant malnutrition, you have lead exposure in pipes, a high stress environment for the mother, quite probable early birth and low birth weight. Likely lack of doctor's care and feeding post-birth. Possible neglect and abuse post-birth. Because if they had those things or were looked after properly, they are unlikely to be put up for adoption in the first place. May not make their behavior as they age any better for the parents of course. But it isn't possible to declare it nature and therefore the behavior of an invasive species.
It seems obvious to me that even assuming WhiningCoil's claim is "true," in the sense that young black men commit more crime, and this is inherent to their biology, and we have countless studies to prove it, it is still perfectly valid to strongly object to describing them as an invasive species. To do so is a blatantly dehumanising use of language that I believe could easily prime those who engage in it to see such a group as less than human, and therefore to be dealt with in the manner you would deal with non-human pests. This isn't complicated, it would be clear to everyone if he were describing Jews in a manner that compared them to vermin. So it is with blacks or any other ethnic group.
To be clear, I'm not accusing him of personally wanting to genocide or start a race war against blacks or anything, nor is this about being squeamish and finding the language offensive. But I think when you normalise referring to groups in such blatantly dehumanising and contemptuous terms, there is a clear risk of it contributing to a culture that views violence against them as legitimate.
There is nothing about acknowledging HBD or even arguing for explicitly racist policy that requires you to engage in this sort of thing, and the only thing it accomplishes is to potentially egg on the next mass shooter and to turn the public against you because whatever points you may or may not have, they can clearly see that your position is rooted in seething hatred and malice.
More options
Context Copy link