domain:drmanhattan16.substack.com
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
10hr ago
From 'persecution fantasies' to 'well they should have better opsec' is a hell of a redirect.
zoink
10hr ago
Alright, which specific people would you arrest.
J6 investigation was the largest investigation in DOJ history, I expect quite a bit from the warranted 10x larger investigation into BLM riots.
anti_dan
10hr ago
Which matters more, act or conviction?
The problem with these charities that get you into Ivies, is there is typically no "there" there. Rarely are these charities engaged in picking up litter, digging needed ditches, shoveling snow, or some other endeavor an unskilled 15 year old could plausibly producing productive labor. Instead there are dozens of make-work charities that exist for the purpose of bolstering college applications.
Pongalh
10hr ago
What sucks is when the hot fashionable women are the ones saying these things and the frumpy ones are not, and even defend men.
Given men's nature, it's hard to know which way to cut.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
10hr ago
You can watch the video on Wikipedia for yourself. He was driving into the crowd at speed well before he was surrounded. Also you're, uhh, not allowed to kill people who happen to be part of a crowd because different people who are part of the same crowd surrounded your car. It is in fact extremely key to Rittenhouse's case that the people he shot were people attacking him.
Pongalh
10hr ago
Wasn't long ago that conservatives were lambasting the notion of stochastic terrorism. Do they buy it now?
quiet_NaN
10hr ago
Kirk was going on record that Biden might deserve death for his actions. He made that statement knowing that the general narrative of MAGA is that the justice system is corrupt and protects the DC swamp. To a base to which Trump had already (jokingly?) implied in 2016 that the '2nd amendment people' might want to interfere with the appointment of SC justices through assassination. A base which has plenty of people with the firearms training to pull of assassinations.
Of course, if he had connected the dots, a la "Biden deserves death, but our corrupt justice system will never convict him. Someone should just shoot him", that would have been 10x worse.
I don't think that Kirk was intentionally trying to incite stochastic terrorism, he was simply spinning his MAGA lies (e.g. about Biden being especially treasonous) for political gain, and not giving a damn if that would increase the relative risk of Biden getting gunned down or not.
zoink
10hr ago
Exactly.
I am not virulently against the norm of shooting people and incarcerations in a situation like the Jan 6 riot. I am against what I perceive to be a massive double standard. For many on the left it’s super clear that Kyle Rittenhouse is a mass murderer, that all these police shootings are racist, and that it’s lives over property. But shooting Ashli Babbitt crawling through a window is a good shoot.
Norms need to be consistent, or they aren’t norms: Ashli Babbitt saw the left violently rioting, looting, committing arson, and occupying government buildings for months without getting shot. If we’re gonna play the game this way, fine, as long as everyone knows the rule: it’s legitimate to shoot you - even if you’re protesting - when you start breaking stuff that’s not yours or try to go places you’re not supposed to go. If you think Kyle Rittenhouse should have been convicted I don't care about your J6 opinion.
All these quotes seem unequivocably fair and true to me.
His Tuesday remarks made it sound like the white supremacists and neo-Nazis were a small minority of people who just happened to be at the protest and not the organizing force behind it.
I think probably true, yes. There really aren't enough neo-Nazis to meet popular demand. Nor enough white supremacists unless you use the Left's very expansive definitions.
He says the left is just as bad, if not worse.
I think definitely true. Antifa is both far more organised and unbelievably violent. They are also much more expert in turning powder-keg protests into violent riots.
And then he goes on to put Confederate generals in the same league as the founding fathers, just so you know whose side he's really on.
Almost certainly the side of people worried about the Left's eagerness to knock down statues of everyone who doesn't meet their approval, including those of the Founding Fathers who were slave owners. Certainly Churchill in the UK was not spared.
As far as I'm concerned Trump clearly condemned the actual bad guys and then commented about the broader situation in terms that were far more balanced than the rabid press. He never said that the man who was killed deserved to die, he never said that 'being a neo-Nazi is good, actually'. In contrast, the left never says, 'fine people on both sides', they say, 'okay, some of our people are violent rioters but most of them are peaceful protesters, and by the way anyone who gets in the way is a bigot who deserves what they get'.
If the left could reliably meet Trump's standard I would be much more satisfied.
Democrats are getting it wrong, mostly. It's not about policy or marketing (though the idea that they just need to hire more pro-Democratic TikTok influencers to shill for them reveals a deep and amusing disconnect). It's about the casual contempt they show for men.
For instance, AOC today, saying Miller is a short troll:
[while knitting a shirt] Stephen Miller is a clown! I’ve never seen that guy in real life, but he looks like he’s, like, 4′ 10″... Like, laugh at them! Laugh at them... insecure masculinity. This is what this is about... One of the best way to dismantle a movement of insecure men is by making fun of them... I'm not here to make fun of anyone's anything, but the way people overcompensate...
So, it's not quite that she's insulting him, which is fine. Trump does similar stuff all the time, although in a funnier way. The difference is the double standard. Say what you will about him, but Trump is equal opportunity: he'll nastily insult anyone he doesn't like. There are no sacred cows. But you will never see AOC calling a woman an obese smelly pig, or implying that a female opponent holds her positions because she needs a good dicking down. And, even if she did, Democratic and liberal antibodies would attack her in retaliation: awhile back when one Democrat called MTG a butch lesbian, there was a lot of pushback for transphobia.
It's not any one individual event, but a pervasive attitude that men and masculinity are worthy of contempt, while everyone else needs to be protected from being triggered. If you're trying to appeal to men, probably encouraging a norm of a free-for-all is better than one of an HR lady who polices everyone, but the worst of all places to be--and this is where Democrats find themselves--is saying that every identity needs to be protected, except for men, who are always fair game to identity-based attacks.
Lizzardspawn
10hr ago
but online media has no proven way of effectively showing the OTHERS whom they have compassion for.
The social media is very effective in showing the others they have compassion for, which is why people are drifting away from them - the tent cities and open drug markets, the all male boats docking at the shores of Europe, the torrent of people through the border, the sheer foreignness of London, the pride parades, the MtF trans that look creepy at best, the scars from top surgery, the women that brag about having an abortion, the cohort of trans children in Hollywood.
The same way Syrskyi is the best performing general in the war on the Russians' side, the suicidal empathy of the left is the best ad for repubicans. At least our crazies are crazy in mostly comprehensible way (except abortion)
quiet_NaN
10hr ago
I was making an analogy to the online left celebrating Kirk's murder (which was not committed by someone I would call a Democratic politician), not Jones statements about shooting some speaker.
roystgnr
10hr ago
Those are pretty good. Really good for being off the top of your head. I could argue about the other two, but Medicare For All at least would be a perfect fit for that sense of self-righteousness in a grand cause thwarted by betrayal. It distills left-pleasing anti-capitalism down to its most popular core in the same way anti-illegal-immigration does for right-pleasing anti-immigration. It might have even worked well a decade ago, and it'd be hard to mount any principled opposition to it today. Trump has really undermined the free marketeer wing of the Republicans, and I don't think I've heard from the fiscal-prudence wing of either party since the Great Recession.
quiet_NaN
10hr ago
For what it is worth, I can not recall any prominent Democrat calling for Trump to be executed for his role in J6.
Were the sentences for the J6 crowd harsh, especially compared to the sentences for the BLM riots? Sure, they totally threw the book at them for clear political reasons.
But unlike a Biden treason trial ending in a death verdict which Kirk was fantasizing about, they were still recognizable as a legal system working, somehow. Not well (the US legal system generally does not work well), and not as impartial as one might hope, perhaps, but not a kangaroo court.
FlailingAce
10hr ago
Oh, so it's only 2-16% of half the country? So, like, 6-52 million people? Yeah that's no biggie.
Of course it's not all about the numbers. It's also about seeing people you personally know posting that they would want you dead if they knew how you voted. I don't think people in blue bubbles realize that there is no coming back from this.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
10hr ago
No, we cannot officially throw out the principle of charity.
anti_dan
10hr ago
Somehow this post feels nearly maximally uncharitable to both parties and young men. Have Democrats become too conformist to be cool? I suppose. Are Republicans a party with an excess of unconstrained young male energy? I suppose. Do young men need an outlet for their energy? Yes.
But its not like the Democrats stumbled into being "lame" (your word). It was part of a calculated electoral strategy that prioritized other things, and necessarily excluded male interests, particularly those of noncriminal working males. That left the GOP with an opening that they seized on and since libertarianism has always been unpopular with voters since the franchise was expanded beyond a few landowning men in New England, discarding that in favor of a little paternalism that sounds more masculine was a winning message.
Rov_Scam
10hr ago
Alright, which specific people would you arrest. I'm serious. The crucial mistake of the J6 protestors is that they were all incredibly stupid. The BLM rioters at least had the sense to operate primarily at night, conceal their identities, and choose locations that weren't guaranteed to be under God-level surveillance. Not that it mattered since they took videos of themselves and posted them to social media. The reason there weren't as many arrests during 2020 as you think there should have been is because Priority #1 is ending the riot, not investigating and making arrests for individual crimes. The same priorities prevailed on January 6, with very few people being arrested at the scene and the vast majority being identified and arrested later. Unless the evidence exists that allows you to identify criminals, you can't arrest them. You act as though there are tens of thousands of people out there who the police know committed crimes but who aren't being arrested for political reasons.
I will grant that a lot of people who were arrested for more minor crimes like failure to disperse had the charges dropped without incident. However, you have to consider the context of what was going on in 2020: The courts were operating under severe restrictions due to COVID. The normal criminal dockets were backed up; it wasn't feasible to prosecute hundreds of people on charges that would result in small fines when they were already having trouble moving felonies through. But the people who caused damage and were caught generally were prosecuted.
TwiceHuman
10hr ago
I don't think anyone would do more for a stranger than a close friend. But these people might have beliefs like "I generally don't like humans, animals are much better" or "If only we could all become cyborgs so that we could get rid of our human imperfections" or "Humans are a plague on the planet, I'm ashamed for being human myself".
Thoughts like this correlate with the dislike of nationalism, because of the belief that egoism is bad at any scale (speaking positively about the self, or ones own group is perceived as being immoral because it implies that other groups are inferior). These people also feel inferior, which is why they feel great pity for other groups that they perceive as inferior. These people want an ideal world, and think that if we aren't living in one, it must be because somebody is mean (and not because life is hard), so another trait in leftism is naivety (the exact same kind which is found in communism!).
Of course, prioritizing friends over non-friends is the same sort of bias as nationalism, and even considering leftism superior to right-wing beliefs is not different from thinking that one culture or race is superior to another. Leftists always speak about how bad white people are, even white leftists, but somehow they feel superior for noticing that they're not superior. This feels similar to when people compete in who can be the most humble, and other virtue signaling. It feels illogical, but that's likely because the goal isn't logic consistency, but things like:
1: Calming ones conscience. 2: Feeling good about oneself. 3: Defending against criticism from other people. 4: It allows for people of mediocre and uneventful lives to feel like they're fighting for something important.
Leftism can also be compared to some aspects of Christianity, especially the strongly feminine parts. Even more interestingly, the subversion of Christianity can be compared with the subversive nature of leftism, as described by Yuri Bezmenov.
DiscourseMagnus
11hr ago
Isn't the reporting that he said it in a phone call, and not by text?
KMC
11hr ago
I'll grant you that. The vulgarity and norm breaking were appealing not in themselves but because they were demonstrations of commitment. Commitment to what? Well, something I'm interested in, let's leave it at that.
I like my politicians to bite bullets. It's the only way to actually demonstrate conviction.
KMC
11hr ago
The commentators are the result of consuming the kinds of content that the admins and moderators allow.
DiscourseMagnus
11hr ago
It was that unequivocally condemning a white supremacist who committed murder should be the easiest thing a president does.
I mean, I'm not a Charlottesville expert, but isn't this a completely fabricated narrative that the courts made stick to signal that they hate white supremacists? My recollection is that the fatality there was only slightly less justifiable than the incident with Rittenhouse; a bunch of counterprotesters surrounded a white supremacist's car and threatened him to signal the strength of their political convictions, and eventually he panicked, tried to drive away, and struck and killed one of them. This seems less like a case of going out to murder one's political opponents and more like a demonstration of why blocking cars is not a nonviolent form of protest.
It would seem that this weekend, there was a fire at the house of one Diane Goodstein, a judge who Trump does not like. Reddit being Reddit, they immediately assumed the fire was arson and accused the right wing of violence; the linked story made the front page of Reddit. However, the investigation so far shows no evidence of arson: “At this time, there is no evidence to indicate the fire was intentionally set. SLED agents have preliminarily found there is no evidence to support a pre-fire explosion.
Point being, the radical left (i.e. Reddit) will say lie after lie after lie how how Charlie Kirk’s killer couldn’t have possibly done it because of his left-wing beliefs, even though the evidence overwhelmingly points that way, then they will turn around and accuse the right of right wing violence without any real evidence to back up their claims.
The truth matters. Objective fact matters. I have decried it when the radical right was telling lies, and will decry it as long as the radical left tells themselves lies.
More options
Context Copy link