domain:sotonye.substack.com
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
7hr ago
some small Democratic Virginian politician
Point of nitpicking. I would consider a small time politician to be, maybe, one member of the state legislator, or mayor of a small or medium sized town. Attorney General of the entire state is starting to get up into a large Democratic Virginian politician. State AGs often make nationwide news due to the policies they pursue unilaterally. I have to hear about Ken Paxton, AG of Texas, all the damned time.
benmmurphy
7hr ago
this is similar to what o'keefe was doing with his 'stings'. basically getting left aligned people to confide to him or his operatives like a friend.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7hr ago
This post seems aimed at a constituency that I’m not sure exists, those that believe fascists are everywhere but are opposed to any political violence.
This probably isn't that uncommon a view among his immediate friend group, which I assume to be wildly progressive but relatively pacifist compared to most progs. Niceness and Civilization progressives, as it were and however misguided they may otherwise be.
Totalitarianit
7hr ago
Yeah, I see the predicament and agree it is a major problem for young males. To answer your "how?" question, I honestly don't know for the general population of young males, and it is a fair point. It currently serves as a natural filter to weed out those prone to edgy remarks and the occasional anti-social behavior (that is actually pro-social in context), but if the filter is applied to almost everything a young male does digitally, then the weeding out isn't just limited to bad weeds.
07mk
7hr ago
Yeah, I think the issue with this sort of complaint is that there's nothing horrifyingly racist that Democrats can say in private group chats that would be more horrifyingly racist than what come out of Democrats' mouths in public. Democrats openly saying horrifyingly racist things is just "baked in" to people's expectations of them, such that similar private group chats just wouldn't be scandalous; . And, indeed, a somewhat similar-but-mirrored analog happened in the past month with some small Democratic Virginian politician, with basically no hubbub, in large part because Democrats openly and unironically espousing such hateful and pro-violence rhetoric has just been normalized.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
7hr ago
To be clear, is support of Hitler acceptable from politicians and staffers or is it not?
I think you are confusing someone saying "I support Hitler" in a private, friendly conversation with actually supporting Hitler. Of course everyone who supports Hitler would say they support him, but not everyone who says they support him actually supports him. That is part of the point @cjet79 is getting at, I think.
For example, I have cracked jokes in the presence of friends to the effect of "slavery was great, we need to go back to that". But I do not actually want slavery to be practiced, it is just an edgy joke. One I would probably get turbo canceled for if I were a public figure, no doubt, but still just a joke.
I get the sense that with these Republican messages, you're taking them completely at face value (because they are your outgroup and it's just human nature to believe bad things about your outgroup). But you can't just assume that at the start, and then ask pointed "wait so supporting Hitler is ok?" questions. First we need to come to an agreement whether these dudes actually support Hitler, or if they were making edgy jokes. Only then can we have a well-founded discussion about "is that ok for them to do".
Corvos
7hr ago
Yeah, this is why I never got into crosswords either. I think it's like blank poetry or leetcode - in theory there's a big space of possible puzzles, but in practice they're written to conform to very specific formats. Let me know if you find any crossword that isn't like that.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
7hr ago
Limiting my screen time is a somewhat futile endeavor since I work on a computer, but I do my best to limit phone time. To that end, I recently ordered a bunch of NYT crossword books for something to do with downtime when I don't want to read whatever novel I'm working on.
I've been reminded how much crosswords can drive me crazy. Incomprehensible themes and horrible perversions of the English language are pervasive. I don't mind extreme trivia or obscure words or having to learn the clues and words that seem to appear in every third puzzle, but puzzle authors trying to be cute or clever is annoying.
zeke5123a
7hr ago
You keep repeating this but seem oblivious to the fact that the statement appears sarcastic.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
7hr ago
Naturally.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
7hr ago
My suggestion for the punchline would be
B: Great, then we'll have a Great Leap Forward!
which would then be characterized as "support for genocide".
pigeonburger
7hr ago
It's funny because Politico would have a stronger article if they did not fixate on this obvious joke mentioning Hitler, some of the edgelord racist stuff would have the potential to shock prudish normies or at least create enough of a problem for the right that it would have to address as if the public and the private are not different spheres of communication, but the Hitler quote Politico (and magicalkittycat) highlight as if it was the worst of it is so obviously said in jest that it's easier to dismiss the rest.
haroldbkny
7hr ago
find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats
How do you mean this? 1. As a Chinese robber fallacy thing, like surely there are some racist Democrats out there. Or that 2. Democrats are doing their soft racism thing of belittling minority groups? Or that 3. Democrats in private are just as racist as Republicans are in private. Or 4. Democrats say racist jokes in private, but don't mean them? Because to be honest, as someone very much adjacent to and in those Democrat group chats. I don't think 3 is likely, and 4 is far less likely then it used to be 15 years ago. There is too much self policing, infighting, virtue signaling, effectively causing leftists to get brownie points for calling each other out on such things all the time.
Thoroughlygruntled
7hr ago
Not just in the 90s-00s. This is absolutely bog standard group chat stuff that you'll see everywhere across the political spectrum to this day, with some variation in the specific memes used. I've been in group chats where the chair of a local DSA chapter exclusively used stars of David and watermelon emojis to react to messages, and where we regularly joke about how we won't hesitate to shoot the other in the street come the revolution. I've been in group chats where lefty academics in good standing call Donald Trump a faggot before joking about sharpening their guillotines. And I have yet to meet a conservative who can be half as cruel about someone's physical appearance as a catty gay man who assumes he's in friendly company.
Wherever young people (particularly young men) speak to each other privately, this is more-or-less what the conversations look like. I would expect a treasure trove of leaked democrat activist messages to appear very similar in a lot of ways.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
7hr ago
…would you actually believe him if he said ‘yes’?
any number of players can play this game.
It seems rather obvious to me that for a very large number of people on the right or their sympathizers, the bottom has absolutely fallen out in terms of their regards to how they are perceived by their self-declared enemies.
On a personal note, I certainly don’t care. I’m interested because I’m intellectually inclined to want to really understand and discuss why things are the way they are, I enjoy it and it gives me pleasure and I think it makes the world a better place.
But I don’t care about leftists, at all. Certainly not about their perception of me and the right. I have no concern for their wellbeing, even just as people, and any pangs of sympathies I might have had for them are gone. I don’t actively want them to suffer, at least for no reason, but for most of the people who celebrated Kirk’s death I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
I did not feel this way ten years ago when I was more of a garden variety paleo-libertarian, I didn’t even feel this way five years ago after I had become a really strident right winger. Not even close.
As far as I’m concerned, open war is upon us whether we will it or not. The way the culture war has proceeded simply cements that notion.
birb_cromble
7hr ago
Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats?
Were you not here last week, where we discussed how Virginia politician Jay Jones was outed as wanting to see a political rival's wife wailing in despair as her child bleeds to death in her arms?
daguerrean
7hr ago
Yea, anyone that has been on 4chan or Discord knows that young conservatives are most likely full Deus Vult if they are engaged enough to care about politics, and this stuff is truthfully pretty run of the mill.
That said, this is bad, I have no problem saying this is bad. However, I think it is a sort of LARPing for 99.9% of these people, the same way Eat the Rich/Punch a Nazi is LARPing for the majority. But in the Kirk discussions we already hashed out the reasons this is bad. I think there is a crisis of earnestness, people are absolutely allergic to being serious which creates this sort of “Haha just joking….unless?” aspect which rightly scares people. In part I blame Trump for the degradation of seriousness as a virtue in American politics, but perhaps he was more a effect than a cause.
Now a bit regarding Nazism specifically. The left has so abused the term Nazi/fascist, similar to abuse of Antisemite or Communist/Socialist, that at some point you can’t be surprised when people start to think Nazism isn’t so bad, and start to wear the badge in defiance. In a weird way it becomes analogous to blacks reclaiming the word “nigger”
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7hr ago
What is the difference between a person who says they love Hitler and a person like me who doesn't say it?
What is the difference between a person who says they love terrorism and a person like me who doesn't say it?
A degree from Cambridge? A job at Harvard? The presidency? Man, loving terrorists must be good for your career... as long as they're left-wing terrorists, of course.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7hr ago
More like "being against bad jokes in groupchats."
Anyone been fired recently for calling white people goblins? No? Yawn.
pigeonburger
7hr ago
"I love Hitler" seems about as literal Nazi as possible. If that is not "proof of Bad Nazi" to you, what is?
Did you read the context?
AD: He did say “My delegates I bring will vote for the most right wing person”
PG: Great. I love Hitler
Do you think that last line, if this was written with acting cues as in script, would be:
PG *with stars in his eyes at the thought of a Fourth Reich* : Great. I love Hitler!
or
PG *deadpan* : Great. I love Hitler.
or
PG *sarcastically* : Great. I love Hitler
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
7hr ago
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7hr ago
hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?
New flair day, thank you.
This seems to come from the libertarian view that "government is [a monopoly on] violence"
Do people consider Max Weber to be a libertarian? But yes I'm coming at it from the libertarian traditions. Hence the tag...
That said, while I think the libertarians have a mostly-self-coherent ethical view (which is more than many can say), I think some level of civilization is worth the trade off in terms of absolute freedoms.
In "defense" of my less radical brethren, the vast majority of libertarians agree. Ancaps are - or were - over represented in parts of the internet. There are far more minarchists and those are greatly eclipsed by just self-described libertarians who make all sorts of tradeoffs.
I am happy for my female friends, for they are enriched: they have heard the most horrible things I have ever said out loud.
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