domain:alethios.substack.com
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
4hr ago
I think it will be very hard to starve Hamas to death without starving everyone else to death, too, unless you "ethnically cleanse" the populace by moving them into camps where you can ensure they are all fed safely.
You can't do that either; Hamas will be in the camps.
Totalitarianit
4hr ago
It's coherent but you are invoking a moral truth, whereas I am discussing realpolitik. Can you enforce what you believe in? I think not. Will Israel's "morally bankrupt" actions have consequences down the road? Potentially, yes.
Will you convince an entity who believes that their existence is under threat that they are morally wrong if they feel they are protecting themselves? Maybe later, but not in the moment. What can that moral correctness without leverage really accomplish in the moment?
quiet_NaN
4hr ago
Hamas, as the governing body (such as it is), is the one obligated to provide for their own people's food. This whole thing is predicated on the idea that feeding Gaza is the job of literally anyone else on the planet except the actual people who are responsible for doing so.
I would say that it is not Israel's responsibility to feed the civilian population in Hamas-controlled territories. However, they are obliged to let in humanitarian aid. From my understanding, Israel's refusal to let the trucks in is why Gaza is starving, not because the international community is unwilling to buy food for Gaza.
If Hamas were to burn food as it enters Gaza, then you would be correct to say that Hamas is starving Gaza (but my model of them says they would not actually do that).
Likewise, while you can blame the Soviets for much starvation, you can not blame them for the starvation during the siege of Leningrad. That blood is on the hands of the Nazis who decided not to let any food in.
oats_son
4hr ago
The more I think about it, the more it is clear to me that there is no great way to handle this crisis. Israel can't just march in and put a flag in the center and say "war's over, pick a leader". The USA tried that in Afghanistan, and it worked for a while, but the old regime was just waiting for their chance. If a regime doesn't care about its populace at all, what can you even do to it to draw it out and kill it? It's like natural selection created the most toxic paradigm possible. I think it will be very hard to starve Hamas to death without starving everyone else to death, too, unless you "ethnically cleanse" the populace by moving them into camps where you can ensure they are all fed safely.
ABigGuy4U
4hr ago
Even without Hezbollah, it was very close to major disaster. The Hamas units were not supposed to be stopping to pillage the kibbutz on the Gaza border, they were supposed to be going from army post to army post and wiping them out all the way to the Palestinian Territories. Which if they had maintained their offensive time tables they very well could have, since the IDF units in the area were terribly unprepared and badly disciplined. Fortunately local police units were much more vigilant and trained for this scenario, and they did a good job slowing down the Hamas special forces units that actually were pushing forward. There was one road intersection that the IDF and police narrowly managed to hold on to, if they hadn’t the only line for reinforcements to get into most Southwestern Israel would have been cut.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5hr ago
And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.
phailyoor
5hr ago
Nope: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/314947321
I believe Asahi yanked all of their licenses to local breweries and switched it all to Peroni. I can't say 100% though but at the very least all US and EU and UK is Peroni.
Throwaway05
5hr ago
I've heard some people in gaming think meta refers to "most effective tactics available." Maybe that?
JustAGuy0
Neo-Butlerian Jihad advocate
5hr ago
if that had happened, they probably would've triggered 'Grim Beeper' (nice name) early, and it would've turned Hezbollah's army into a mob with guns
still would've been bad for Israel, but I suspect not bad enough that they'd lose.
Do those human rights exist if neither side chooses to enforce them?
Well, if you aren't a nihilist, yes. The morally correct course of action remains the morally correct course of action even if nobody implements it. Under most western ethical philosophy, the right thing is under no cosmic obligation to be easily achievable for people who are also trying to secure geopolitical goals. Sometimes doing the right thing for the needy means you risk your own comfort and safety, and that's just the way it is.
We instinctively understand this where individual life-or-death situations are involved, eg running into a burning building. But somehow when we're talking about whole populations, both sides of the conversation pretend that a case that XYZ is the right thing to do also needs to prove it's the advantageous thing to do. No. It's perfectly coherent to say "The right thing to do is to prevent children from starving. It might in fact result in losing the war, but it's the right thing to do anyway. A victory that can only be won by starving children to death through inaction would be morally bankrupt and is not worth pursuing."
wsgy
5hr ago
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5 miles
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2 miles
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1/2 mile, corn, but it was in the news that they're getting bought by a housing developer
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5 miles
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1/2 mile
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I think like 50 miles. The regional airport flies direct to all the big international hubs though (10 miles)
gafpromise
5hr ago
Thanks for this, you may have inspired me to make the purchase. I haven't revisited Lewis in a long time. Whatever people think of his arguments, I think his popularity is due to how well he's able to explain things to laypeople, to lead them along a journey, setting out his arguments one step at a time. It's very easy to follow and very accessible. I'm not aware of many high-quality modern authors who can write with that same accessibility AND intellectual rigor.
Of course some of his writings are less dated than others. Stuff like The Abolition of Man and even That Hideous Strength are eerie when they are describing social and intellectual trends that we still see today, although set in a very different time and place.
Every time C.S. Lewis comes up I have to recommend Till We Have Faces. It's not one of his better known ones, apparently, but I think it's one of his fiction works that really doesn't seem dated to me at all. It has a lot to say on the nature of love and possessiveness and what kinds of gods are worthy of worship.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5hr ago
For large browsers I think the US wins again, with moose.
Not for the bison? They're heavier, but less gangly.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5hr ago
We allow, even encourage, some very long comments, and I think it'd be helpful to have a way to fold the comment itself without hiding it's responses. Some sites have 'click to show more ' on long posts.
The CSS highlighting of new comments since last page load is fantastic, though.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
5hr ago
I do not believe that "Americans who think positively of Viet Cong" and "Americans who know Viet Cong's calling card was using innocent villagers as cover" are sets that overlap too much.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
5hr ago
I'm a liberal who's been here for a while but doesn't post very frequently. I wanted to argue about the core disagreement I think I have with the prevailing political views and values on this forum. Specifically, whether this disagreement is real or just against a strawman, and if it is real, what are the best reasons why the disagreement is not serious enough to justify conclusions like "despite all their craziness, I would rather the woke have power than people with TheMotte-like views".
I think the prevailing views and values here are anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic. To make more precise how I'm using these terms
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Individualism means people should be judged based on their own personal qualities and actions instead of based on groups that people assign them membership to. Since the groups someone belongs to often give you information about their personal qualities, this needs to be made more precise as a conditional independence statement: conditional on someone's personal qualities and choices, judgements about them, their obligations, what they deserve, etc. should be independent of the groups they belong to.
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Meritocracy means that positions of influence and power should be given to those best able to wield them in service of society's goals. While you can get into a lot of arguments about what society's goals should be in corner cases, for most practical decisions---who should become a doctor/lawyer, who should get research funding, who should run a company---this rounds off to two soft consideration: competence, that when someone wants to do something related to their position, they actually can, and personal virtue, that people don't use their position in ways that help themselves at the the expense of others.
The first point of argument is whether these definitions are reasonable and deserve the good connotations that "meritocracy" and "individualism" have. Therefore we should discuss what the point of these terms is and why they're considered good things:
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Individualism is important for motivation---if people know that they're life outcomes are dependent only on them and their choices, then they have the strongest possible motivation for improving themselves as much as possible. Secondly, most people are happiest when they have a sense of agency and control over their lives. Individualism maximizes this control.
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Meritocracy is important to make society as effective as possible in achieving its goals---this is the standard "if a surgeon is operating on you, you want to surgeon to be as competent as possible" argument.
Note that neither of these justifications are about "fairness" or anything like that (even though they line up with a many widely-held intuitions about fairness); they're both just very powerful instruments for achieving whatever terminal values society actually has at the bottom.
Now as for why I think this place does not follow these values, it might be most productive to focus on a very specific example instead of a billion arguments about racism, skilled immigration etc. A few weeks ago, J.D. Vance made a statement that citizenship in the US should be based on ancestry instead of individual choices and beliefs:
If you follow that logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you. But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists. Even those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. And I happen to think that it’s absurd, and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this, to saying, you don’t belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025. I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.
I am under the impression that most posters here who care about American politics would 99% endorse this statement, even though it's pretty strongly violating meritocracy and individualism---judging people based on what their ancestors were regardless of their own qualities and competencies. Now, in the quote the the alternative is judging based on if "you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025" for rhetorical punch, but the way it's framed, he likely would also be against the alternative of e.g, "whether you agree with 1995 tolerance and colorblindness"---otherwise the entire frame of the argument wouldn't be against deciding belonging based on personal choices.
So now the specific questions:
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Does this place actually overwhelmingly support JD Vance's statement?
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Is this statement actually anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic as defined above?
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Are the above interpretations of meritocracy and individualism reasonable and consistent with anti-individualism and anti-meritocracy being very bad things or are they just word games?
Totalitarianit
5hr ago
Do those human rights exist if neither side chooses to enforce them?
Hamas has relied on the concept of human rights to win the ideological part of this war. They don't believe in it, but they know we do, so they weaponize it. Western liberals demand Israel enforce this idea of human rights because they are the more capable and, supposedly, moral side. Liberals invoke human rights when it comes to Israel, all while Hamas intentionally holds their own people hostage in order to create a moral dilemma and pit Western countries against Israel. The Stockholm syndrome cannot be denied.
Imagine for a moment if Hamas and Palestinians knew these human rights would no longer be upheld by other countries. Would the majority of Palestinians continue to support Hamas? Maybe they would, and maybe they would rather starve to death or get blown up than cede ground to Israelis. My instincts tell me that a majority wouldn't continue to support them, but then again I'm a Westerner and can't really put myself in that situation. What seems obvious to me though is that the cost-benefit analysis for Hamas continuing their strategy appears much more feasible when you have 3rd parties supplying aid and moral support.
I acknowledge that what is happening to Palestinians is horrible. I don't wish it on any human. However, third party empathy is Hamas' greatest weapon. Israel knows this but Westerners don't, and I do not expect Israel to cave to outside pressure. What this means (and what it has resulted in thus far) is an even more prolonged ordeal, where more Palestinians die and Hamas gains more support from other countries. Maybe this will result in Israel's demise at some point. It's a brilliant strategy by Hamas, but it will come at a great cost because Israel will not succumb to the empathy games directed at the world's liberals. They believe that might equals right and nobody has been able to prove otherwise.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Potshots at civilians picking up groceries is a war crime.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Hamas probably does not have track of all the hostages.
There are no American hostages being held by Hamas:
https://www.ajc.org/news/meet-the-two-american-hostages-still-held-by-hamas
There appears to be two American citizens who were fighting in the Israeli military who were killed on October 7th.
yunyun333
5hr ago
it is impossible to prevent civilians from starving because Hamas takes all the food.
Pretty much no one was starving to death before Israel implemented more stringent aid restrictions this March.
anon_
5hr ago
International humanitarian law recognizes that starvation is no longer a valid weapon of war.
Indeed, which is why Hamas should stop starving the populace of Gaza.
Hamas, as the governing body (such as it is), is the one obligated to provide for their own people's food. This whole thing is predicated on the idea that feeding Gaza is the job of literally anyone else on the planet except the actual people who are responsible for doing so.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
6hr ago
I understand what you're saying, I don't really see it as a different category of problem. Germans and Poles and Russians and Ukrainians have all experienced living in places for centuries only to find that the government of that place suddenly no longer considered them citizens. So did Russian aristocracy, Cambodian bourgeoisie, East African indians, hell millions of Americans have arguments around this.
This seems like another special pleading case where the Holocaust is considered particularly exceptional and gives the designated descendants of the victims a gold card to break norms that everyone else is expected to observe.
Either way the argument that the Holocaust justifies paranoia doesn't really absolve anyone of anything. If I'm dating a girl and she refuses to commit because "she's been hurt before," I'm not obligated to tolerate it and consider her a loyal girlfriend despite her disloyal behavior. Commitment is commitment, and mixed loyalty is mixed loyalty, even if it is justified paranoia rather than pure avarice.
There is no exception to the requirement to let humanitarian aid through if your enemy uses it to gain a financial advantage.
Also, I doubt that the average Gazan has a lot of savings which they could pay Hamas by now, and Hamas certainly has other ways to extract any resources from the Gazan population. For example, they might require a donation to be exempt from human shield duty. Also, flooding Gaza with food (to the degree that NGOs are able to provide it) would likely collapse the food prices in Gaza and cut out that stream of resources for Hamas.
Realistically, most of the funding of Hamas probably comes from Iran anyhow.
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