domain:moultano.wordpress.com
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
15hr ago
The classic example of people saying nice things about Nazi Germany is the autobahn, right? I think historians still feel free to compliment that.
My understanding is that at least some historians are arguing that the autobahn was started as a project before the Nazi takeover and they just completed an existing good idea.
But really, I think the thing that people secretly feel the Nazis did good with was the drip (as the kids call it), and the aesthetics. Triumph of the Will was one of the most cinematographically influential films ever made. Even when I was in school we watched that film in order to understand how compelling Nazi propaganda was, when I took a class on single-party states.
Star Wars took a lot of influence from Nazi aesthetics when depicting the empire (obviously -- stormtroopers!), and it's a meme in the Star Wars fandom that the empire's aesthetics are way better than the rebellion. I think in a lot of way that's people sublimating the psychological appeal of authoritarian aesthetics into a fictional format, where they can engage in memes that reference the appeal without actually calling for authoritarianism, which was obviously horrific to a great many people.
Communism also has great aesthetics, though limited by... the economic problems of socialism in the USSR. I think that's a feature of authoritarianism; control over cultural output means that culture can be oriented towards state goals, and all the psychological tricks of manipulation, persuasion, and appeal become essential to cement the regime's power. No one will ever create an election billboard more chilling than Mussolini. And look at this mosaic of Kim Il Sung: it shows nice composition, and the color is so cheerful and compelling. And the Great Hall of the People in Beijing just looks cool.
I think that kind of intense symbolism only becomes possible in religion, monarchy, and authoritarianism. Systems of power where the appeal is totalizing.
Just food for thought.
phailyoor
15hr ago
What's in a name fundamentally? I can certainly talk about the football player named George Floyd as much as I want without "saying his name." So there's certainly more to it than just saying the words that match up to someone's name.
To say someone's name, it requires saying the words that match up with that person's name, as well as context that disambiguates the reference to a particular person. I would also argue that using a derogatory nickname for someone doesn't count, even if that nickname contains the words that match that person's name. The reason being is that those words aren't enough to refer to that person, and the denunciation itself makes it possible to understand what person is being talked about.
It's important that it's a derogatory denunciation, rather than an objective fact, as saying the words in someone's name, along with objective but negative facts about that person, can still carry an implied acknowledgement of that person.
So it's in fact important to use the derogatory phrasing, even over saying "[word], who died from fentanyl ..." because that's simply staging an objective fact, not necessarily denouncing.
Society has certainly decided that bleeping out the fuck word makes the work less obscene. See all those songs that are bleeped out.
I also didn't say the word that you may expect in that censor bar in my head when I typed it out. I just meta-determined that placing those censor bars would be a way to refer to that phrase without saying it directly.
Dean
Flairless
15hr ago
'There is now way Trump will get away with [latest thing] this time!'
Not going to lie, mate, you are kind of all over the place on this. You say that this suit 'just put things into overdrive,' but your conclusion is really just jamming a lot of different concept that could be these [things].
In paragraph one, it was the survival (preferably end) of Trump's political career. In paragraph two it... could just as well apply to a thing you characterize as would have been a non-scandal if only Trump waited a weekend? Or maybe the Murdoch trap. You kind of veer from one into the other. By paragraph three, it's the terrible prospects of a disposition of a guy who (repeatedly) had (multiple) hostile prosecutions and investigations leak unflattering things for decades. Come paragraph four, it's how bad the optics will be for a guy who won his first presidential election after an audiotape of 'grab them by the pussy,' followed by a technically-not-treason conspiracy, and, well, way too many bad optics to list.
So when you throw in things like this-
But Trump is impulsive, and wasn't going to wait until Monday to file, wasn't going to give himself a chance to cool down. Get it out Friday. Now he has opened himself up to a world of hurt that he couldn't imagine beforehand.
Dude. Dude.
This is a guy who has been variously accused of rape, infidelity, insurrection, and racism in various courts for the better part of a decade. He was the target of a historically unprecedented fraud prosecution in which the largest fraud fine in New York history was leveled against him despite the victim testifying on his behalf. So many novel legal theories have been used against him that entire aspects of constitutional law have been developed to manage it. There have been multiple government conspiracies that we know about that aimed to hurt him in court.
I am going to go on a slight limb here and suggest that maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump has a better idea of the world of hurt that comes with court cases than you do.
WhiningCoil
15hr ago
I mean, as I said
Depends on your diagnosis of the problem. If you believe, as I increasingly do, that most of our societal ills with corruption and collapse of state capacity revolve around the mass importation of high time preference demographics incapable at a genetic level of pursuing generational projects, deporting them is not only a solution, but the only solution. Because with that anchor tied to your feet, no state project, be it reinvigorating capitalism, monopoly busting or state run grocery stores can possibly succeed. If the labor market is flooded with lazy scammers who shameless loot the till, it's not going to matter if the grocery store is a coop, state run, unionized or anything.
I can nearly promise you, with that much state money being dumped into the project and with that little food on shelves, there is a "community organizer" driving around in a brand new BMW involved somewhere.
That's where I am as well.
Maybe I'm too cynical here, but to me the WSJ story doesn't seem to add anything that we didn't know before. Trump and Epstein were friends, and Trump says creepy things about young women and sex. We knew that! "Trump engages in sexual misconduct" just isn't a story that I can see going anywhere - Trump supporters have already rationalised that away, and people who would oppose him over it already oppose him.
Unless there is genuinely rock-solid proof of child sex abuse - and I would be shocked if there is - then this just doesn't change anything. Trump is a pervert in the way we already knew he was a pervert. The needle does not move.
OliveTapenade
15hr ago
What is your understanding of 'intelligence'?
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
16hr ago
If the Iranians can't use certain turns of phrase I consider it a weakness born out of irrationality. If they think it's a trick to make them say it they might be correct; more the fools them that they are open to any harm from taking the trick on the chest.
I will never ever say "███████ l█v█s m█tt█r"
Bleeping it out doesn't make you say it any less than bleeping out one letter from the word "fuck" makes it any less obscene.
DiscourseMagnus
16hr ago
I think the MAGA base genuinely cares about
I have a pretty hard time believing anyone with any real power cares about
No contradiction spotted.
OliveTapenade
16hr ago
The classic example of people saying nice things about Nazi Germany is the autobahn, right? I think historians still feel free to compliment that.
I suppose I think the consensus around Nazi Germany has moved in the direction that they did make some right calls and pick some low-hanging fruit, but also that a lot of their strengths were either inherited (e.g. the military system) or illusory and exaggerated (e.g. taking credit for the German economic revival). Nazism as a system wasn't uniquely brilliant.
The way TOS frames it is as something like a deal with the devil. You get efficiency, power, a rapid rise to power, social solidarity, etc., and all you have to do is be evil. That's not what was going on with Hitler's Germany.
Alabasata
16hr ago
The actually poor whites and blacks won’t eat rice and beans.
The fuck I didn't. Brown rice, black beans, celery, and salt went a long way on $15k/year.
FoundViaTwitter
16hr ago
Even now my instinctive reaction is to agree with BurdensomeCount's sentiment, but whenever I ruminate for more than a few seconds about Floyd, I lose all sympathy regardless of whether Chauvin was the proximate cause of his death. Not just because Floyd wasn't a good person; that's not even the main reason. It's everything that followed: his public deification, the ensuing riots, the show trial. All of it so completely disproportional to the death itself and disconnected from the reality of crime in America.
It was my red pill moment and the start of my disillusionment with liberalism.
WandererintheWilderness
16hr ago
But you did say his name. You typed "Floyd", right there in your message, clear as a bell. If you had some objection to typing out the full "George Floyd", well, I think that's pretty silly, but no one's asking you to do that; you could just have removed "Fentanyl" and said "Floyd's crime wave".
phailyoor
16hr ago
Ferguson Effect
Good idea I can say that, as it's a way to refer to the event without saying his name. But I feel like it's less understandable for the average reader, who probably forgot where Ferguson is but remembers the name.
zeke5123a
16hr ago
I think he did. Anyone who points a gun at a pregnant women while robbing their house deserves to hang
Though I may use certain tortured phrasing, in order to avoid the enemy's newspeak, my posting is not substantially boo outgroup.
In another example, I will never ever say "███████ l█v█s m█tt█r", even to denounce the movement or group, because simply by saying it the enemy has won a victory over you.
Consider the hypothetical. Suppose Israel named a military unit "Allah is not real and muhammad was a big dum dum." Now would an Iranian newspaper be able to simply report "The Israeli military unit 'Allah is not real and muhammad was a big dum dum' is committing genocide"? I think not. It's a trick meant to put those words in your mouth and I will not play along.
phailyoor
16hr ago
I in fact have always referred to the enemy as the enemy, for at least 5+ years of posting here, even on the reddit. Though I have since nuked most old comments.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
16hr ago
I've heard cholo in films, and it's possible the term has crept into Alabama more in the last few decades due to Mexican influx (lots of new restaurants) but I'd never heard it growing up. Regional differences I imagine. The only people who used nigger were blacks themselves or, if white , the countriest of the country if young, or just longtime residents if old. But I'm gen x born in 1968, giving an indication I imagine of my own parents' era.
phailyoor
16hr ago
They're not the same though. Even though the color may be something trivial to change at the factory, it's still a different product. The customer is willing to pay more for it in fact.
Though in reality women's shaving products are usually not literally the same thing. They often include a rubber cushion which is less common on men's shaving products.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
17hr ago
It would be difficult to do that given that the questions were published this week and the answers weren't published until ~today.
Interesting comment...
From my perspective, America has outperformed its economic peers in Europe and Asia over the last forty years despite this supposed "anchor". It's not that I'm completely allergic to your argument, but I do think more evidence is required before, um, deporting everyone you think is genetically incapable of "pursuing generational projects".
I will admit to a bias here. I live in Northern Virginia in a HCOL area where I'm surrounded by immigrants. I grew up here and stayed to raise my family. My eldest is going to enter the same public high school I went to. The children of the first generation immigrants I went to school with now have their own families and, like me, have stayed in the same county to raise their children. They're indistinguishable from my family in the ways that matter to me. The neighborhoods are immaculate and the people are friendly, like they were when I was a kid. The generational project seems to be working pretty well from my perspective! You may have had much more negative experiences with immigrants.
As I said in my first post, I found this forum in a roundabout kind of way through via Alexander Turok's Twitter account. I see he's banned now lol. But now that I'm here, I'm curious to know if your perspective is the prevailing opinion here. That would be fine, of course! I need some ideological diversity in my media diet.
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