domain:parrhesia.co
ThenElection
4d ago
Offering a data point of myself:
Does this place actually overwhelmingly support JD Vance's statement?
I would reject it, though I'm not sure I represent the typical Mottezan's viewpoint. Then again, I question whether the typical Mottezan is even a meaningful category.
Is this statement actually anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic as defined above?
Yes.
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?
Word games, but "meritocracy" and "individualism" are just pointers to confused concepts that are themselves products of a long series of word games.
2rafa
4d ago
Agree. I also like the idea of general posting cap, let Hlynka have 5 posts a month for example.
oats_son
4d ago
Is it so difficult to believe that under conditions of starvation people might organize even outside existing power structures to try and secure food?
Not unbelievable at all, no. This is the nature of guerilla warfare, though. With no uniforms and a scattered organizational structure, maybe no one can tell. I would think we could trust Israeli intelligence to indicate that Hamas is still operational, since they seemed to quell concerns about Iran after the strikes, but maybe the Israelis don't listen to their intelligence when deciding what to do.
There is no gene that makes Palestinians hate Israelis, but I don't see any off-ramp in Palestinian animosity towards Israelis. Most people in Palestine support Hamas and support what they do/did. A relatively hands-off approach to Gaza with serious checkpoints and the occasional bloody and awful incident at the hands of the Israelis didn't make Palestinians hate Israel any less. I think it's unrealistic to expect Israelis to lift all restrictions and also have a perfect track record, not that they're that guiltless.
So I mean, if you don't want rocket attacks every day and terrorists next door plotting attacks on you, what do you do? I dunno. I guess my idea right now would be to do a complete sweep of the entire area, take every cache and every loose weapon, and heavily restrict incoming supplies, since the West Bank appears to be successfully disarmed and helpless. But I don't think Israel is doing that, if the "arming gangs" thing that coffee_enjoyer posted is to be believed. It happened in Syria, so I could believe it.
NewCharlesInCharge
4d ago
Most Americans seem to have broadly positive views of the Viet Cong, whose calling card was using innocent villagers as cover.
"The Vietname war was a mistake" is a common sentiment among Americans, but "the VC were good guys" is not.
Quantumfreakonomics
4d ago
there is no evidence of Hamas ever taking aid.
Okay, where is Hamas getting its food then? Do they have a giant stockpile that they have been surviving off of since October 2023? Have they invented the world’s most efficient solar-powered hydroponics system? Does every Hamas militant spend 23 hours a day in a cryostasis chamber? How are any of them still alive if they aren’t surviving off of food aid?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
4d ago
The "firehose" view makes getting an overview of all the active discussions easy. But reading everything seems unnecessary.
NYTReader
4d ago
citizenship in the US should be based on ancestry instead of individual choices and beliefs
Is that what he said? From the same speech:
I believe, and my own story is a testament to that, that yes, immigration can enrich the United States of America. My lovely wife is the daughter of immigrants to this country, and I am certainly better off, and I believe our whole country is better off for it. But we should expect everyone in our country, whether their ancestors were here before the Revolutionary War, or whether they arrived on our shores just a few short months ago, to feel a sense of gratitude. And we should be skeptical of anyone who lacks it, especially if they purport to lead this great country.
I actually think he's saying the exact opposite of what you claim: the ADL (they wouldn't be my first example, but whatever) are the one's who brand people unAmerican if they don't comport to the ADL's definition of who an American is. Based on the bolded sentence, it seems like he wants to hold everyone to the same standard, not give preferential treatment.
I think you're hyper-focused on this sentence
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.
but charitably, one thing that Vance may mean is that branding others as unAmerican for the beliefs they hold is itself unAmerican. And yes, I think he also means that people with deep ancestral roots in this country – people whose ancestors died fighting for this country – have a special right to call themselves American. That's...reasonable. It's a standard used by people in literally every country in the world. It's natural to feel a connection to a nation if you can trace your ancestry back hundreds of years. Vance is implicitly signaling to the audience that they shouldn't be ashamed of these feelings, but he's also saying immigrants are welcome to the American project if they "feel a sense of gratitude" towards the country. I get that's too far for the left, but I don't think it's unreasonable, and I think a great many immigrants share Vance's sentiment.
Look, I'm more on your side here. I'm a bit nervous about some of the ideas of the Online Right, Dissident Right, whatever you want to call them. But Trump and Vance are not the Dissident Right; not even close, at least not in any meaningful way. Vance's wife and children are Indian. That matters. I believe Vance sees his wife and children as American as he sees himself and therefore he has no intention of pursuing policies that disenfranchise or otherwise hurt non-white (that is what you're hinting at, despite never using the word "white") American citizens.
Jiro
4d ago
Flooding Gaza with food would lead to Hamas taking it all, selling it to Gazans, and destroying that part that they can't sell.
It's not as if having excess food means that the food goes to people who need it. Hamas is just as capable of taking excess food as they are of taking necessary food.
YoungAchamian
4d ago
extent the woke has penetrated fantasy
Every extent. It's really dominant. What's made worse is that a new set of "fantasy" fans are really insistent that their magical dragon school romance with 86 interspecies love triangles is actually really fantasy!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
I suppose I am less confident that even if Hamas turned over all the hostages we would return to anything like a pre-10/7 status quo.
How do you know Hamas is gone? Dunno, but assumedly, someone is carrying out all those attacks on those food trucks.
Is it so difficult to believe that under conditions of starvation people might organize even outside existing power structures to try and secure food?
I brought up the Taliban because I think it's a similar issue here: you can occupy Palestine for decades, but the second you leave, maybe something bad springs up in your wake because the populace is fundamentally opposed to you. A hairy situation.
What does "fundamentally" mean here? Is there a gene Palestinians have that makes them hate Israelis?
Citizenship is in fact based on ancestry and/or birth location. That is true across the globe. Most countries additionally lack birthright citizenship and require an ancestral justification for citizenship. Vance is stating the most common legal norm regarding this. So I would not portray it as a particularly Vancian/Mottish view.
As a separate matter there are immigrants who apply for citizenship. I suppose some ideological test is valid for them. Not being former SS officers or terrorists or anti-capitalist revolutionaries, etc. But not an ideological test checking for 2025 progressive values. There's no "trans lives matter" loyalty statements in the paperwork or interviews.
Broadly speaking: Vance is correct in this quote.
DiscourseMagnus
4d ago
Ethics aside, it makes sense as part of a carrot-and-stick approach to making Hamas go away, although it would be a lot more workable if there was an escape hatch available for people to leave Gaza and move anywhere else in the region. Theoretically, a bad enough famine would depopulate the entirety of Gaza and eliminate Hamas that way, but this would be very bad for Israel's international standing compared to a scenario where Gaza is depopulated in a less deadly way.
Nice write up.
2 fairly off topic points.
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I listened to the audio version a while back, I did so through the Libby app on my phone (you enter your library card info into the app and it lets you check out digital books and audiobooks), each library's selection is different, but I bet the audiobook version of Mere Christianity is a pretty common offering across most libraries.
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I'm highly confident that Scott has read a fair amount of Lewis -
"The best analogy I can think of is C.S. Lewis. Lewis was a believer in the Old Religion, which at this point has been reduced to cliche. What could be less interesting than hearing that Jesus loves you, or being harangued about sin, or getting promised Heaven, or threatened with Hell? But for some reason, when Lewis writes, the cliches suddenly work. Jesus’ love becomes a palpable force. Sin becomes so revolting you want to take a shower just for having ever engaged in it. When Lewis writes about Heaven you can hear harp music; when he writes about Hell you can smell brimstone."
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/26/book-review-twelve-rules-for-life/
I think that shout out was what motivated me to listen to it.
Well, about donations, a deontologist might very well say "the correct choice for me today is to donate to the starving kids; if Hamas steal some of my donations tomorrow, that is their own evil act, exercising their own free will, they could have chosen to do otherwise and I do not bear the blame if they choose evil, however likely that is". So might a utilitarian who thinks about the very big picture, and thinks maintaining a global norm of "if any children are starving anywhere on the planet, the developed world will intervene; we Do Not Do famine anymore, we have outgrown it as a species, end-of-story" has better outcomes in the very long run than examining each particular famine and determining if there could be unintended harms from intervention - just as most utilitarians agree that in practice you have a moral duty to abide by any law of the land banning murder, instead of calculating the moral cost-benefits of killing someone for the greater good all by your lonesome, because the outcomes from everybody taking it upon themselves to decide who lives and who dies are inevitably a blood-soaked hellscape.
(Similarly, America might choose to stay out of the war for virtue-ethics reasons - "it sullies the soul to ally oneself with a side that would starve children to achieve their ends, even if the other guys are also horrible barbarians" - or maintaining-global-norms reasons - "banning war crimes in a genuinely effective way that disincentivizes committing them can only be achieved if we hold to precommitments about withholding aid to people who commit them, even if those people were historically our friends and we don't want the people they're currently fighting to win".)
YoungAchamian
4d ago
I read everything and never comment. It's way easier.
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
He’s talking about the recent incidents that have been occurring in the West Bank.
oats_son
4d ago
The hostages are a goal that they probably would accept as a "mission accomplished", but you ask some good questions here. Like I said in sarker's reply to this same post, starvation doesn't work unless they are somehow managing to feed everyone except Hamas, no small feat.
How do you know Hamas is gone? Dunno, but assumedly, someone is carrying out all those attacks on those food trucks. I brought up the Taliban because I think it's a similar issue here: you can occupy Palestine for decades, but the second you leave, maybe something bad springs up in your wake because the populace is fundamentally opposed to you. A hairy situation.
Shrike
4d ago
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.
I don't really think this is the correct way to look at this question. If you are selecting for proficiency at being an American you are overwhelmingly going to be choosing Americans. Being good at e.g. surgery doesn't really tell you if someone will be good at being an American.
I think this is true even if you're holding to a creedal understanding of Americanness (e.g. a random American is MUCH more likely to register vehement and enthusiastic agreement with widespread firearms ownership or an expansive definition of free speech than someone from almost anywhere else on Earth.)
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
4d ago
Unless it is Israel's intention to starve everyone in Gaza to death how does their current strategy deal with Hamas? It is not even clear to me that would be sufficient to end the threat of Hamas, as an organization, to Israel. Is literally ever member of Hamas in Gaza? No one to pick up the torch if everyone in Gaza were gone?
oats_son
4d ago
Are you seriously suggesting that Israel is purposely targeting babies to starve? I thought it was a figure of speech to dramatize the ones suffering the most from general failure to distribute food in enough quantities.
In the case of it being a figure of speech, starvation has long been a legitimate tool to bring armies to their knees. The problem there is that Hamas is not an army and likely has a large stockpile that will outlast the entire population of Gaza, unless Israel can figure out how to feed the civilian populace and not feed Hamas, somehow. Since facts are lacking and there is an information war happening, I don't know if that's what they're trying to do. I usually doubt it when people are trying to convince me that Israel is actually just full of moral monsters who like being evil. That's not even true when it comes to amoral more-evil-than-good regimes like most colonial powers in the early 20th century or modern day China. I don't know that the populace is united enough to implement genocidal tactics, either.
But that's not really what interests me. If you think starvation is a bad tactic for dealing with Hamas, that's totally fine, and I think I probably agree with you. I just wonder what tactics would be good for dealing with Hamas. What should Israel do?
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
4d ago
But how is starving babies supposed to deal with Hamas?
oats_son
4d ago
As I said in another comment, this is a really hairy situation to have the functional equivalent of the Taliban in your backyard, and every option for dealing with it looks ugly. The United States could not stamp out the Taliban. Of course, starvation is an awful thing, but what do you think should be done about Hamas? Or should anything be done about them? Should Israel stop worrying and learn to live with Hamas?
If you put any value at all into individualism and meritocracy, then there are very few groups you should rank as less deserving of power than "the woke." Even if you find The Motte undeserving, you're still betraying those values.
Strongly disagreed, they are almost entirely counter-efforts to what many people would consider "fairness" for the last 30-50 years.
It's disagreeing about what the creed of America is. The people who fought in the Revolution and the Civil War (charitably, one could think the North; being a Borderer, Vance undoubtedly had ancestors on both sides) stand for one set of creedal ideas of America.
Progressive liberalism, to the extent one can call it liberalism without choking on their words, rejects everything that came before and represents another- IMO murky, and to the extent defined at all completely unworkable for a multicultural society- set of creedal ideas.
5-10% anti-meritocratic at most. Liberalism isn't a suicide pact, don't have a mind so open your brain falls out, yada yada. Rephrased, "we want useful, competent people- so long as they don't hate Civilization."
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