author:gattsuru soros
gattsuru
1yr ago
I'd be more equivocal about agreeing with this. There are certainly a lot of liberal institutions dedicated to deplatforming conservatives, but I don't think they have as much power as you seem to, nor do I think it's a grand Soros-like conspiracy aided and abetted by President Biden and whoever else you think is part of this "enemy action."
First, I'll point to Too Many People Dare Call It Conspiracy: it's not a particularly strong claim to start with, and it's even weaker when I'm saying a lot of this is publicly coordinated or recognizing that it may well have been independently developed in parallel across the country.
((Also, I've literally mentioned Soros once in the entire existence of this site, and only in a quote of another poster here, and only to say it's not a great joke.))
What level of power do you think I'm claiming this broader movement has, that isn't present or supported by evidence? I gave a list of concrete facts; if you want me to show the links demonstrating them, I can.
What was Scott's post about seeing evidence of ancient Atlantean highways at the bottom of the ocean, and how if you are dedicated to finding a pattern, you will find it?
Don't remember that one. Contra fideism was about pyramids, and so were Pyramid and Garden. Building Intuitions on non-Empirical Arguments was about the Sphinx. And none of them seem particularly on-point.
But I've asked, repeatedly, for people to try to find counterexamples. Ymeskhout especially for gun-related enforcement specifically, but ChrisPrattAlphaRptr and others on the broader problem. I've repeatedly asked you. I've looked myself! I've even noted, in this thread, some times I've genuinely been wrong!
And yet the model remains the best prediction I've gotten. The closest I've gotten in terms of serious engagement has been Ymeskhout, and that was to find out that the more serious statistical analysis may not exist or even be possible to gather data for.
I realize that this is not an entirely satisfactory answer ("I could rebut you if I cared enough to spend the time on it") but I hope it explains why I can nod along to almost all of your examples and still not be convinced by your core argument. What would convince me of your core argument? I am not sure, but probably some sort of tipping point, some sort of event (or series of events) beyond the pale of normal politics and culture war.
... at the risk of echoing what Dangerous-Salt-7543, this seems like the sort of description where either you'll have gotten used to the new "beyond the pale" (December 2020! Did you have 'riots invading Congress' or 'movement to pull a major party candidate from the ballot wins at a state supreme court' on your card back then?).
Or, well... setting the standard you won't declare so high that "Obviously if I'm wrong, you'll never be able to collect, but anyway."
Maybe if you lay out why you think we have already reached a tipping point, why you think there is no possibility of the pendulum swinging the other way, or even moderating, I'll be persuaded, but not by examples 1 through 50 of Wokes Gone Wild.
Bluntly, "Wokes Gone Wild" is neither a fair nor complete description of the claims I've made: the point of my posts are always more than just some rando on the outgroup trying something.
We're in this thread because Trace thinks that "Republicans are rapidly losing the capacity to run public institutions at all levels other than electoral, and this trend cannot realistically reverse within a generation." I disagree with him on the cause(s) (and that 2rafa actually engaged with that matter), and there are even some hypothetical ways I can see this trend reversing.
I think there's quite a possibility of the pendulum swinging the other way! But I didn't join the ratsphere because '10% chance of avoiding a horrifying result (possibly for a /different/ Red Tribe-flavoured horrifying result), I sure love my high-stakes gambling!' What I'm worried about is that I'm not seeing any evidence of or cause of de-escalation for either side.
Positions held by large portions of the Republican electorate (and even a not-trivial number of progressives!) are, as matters of law and regulation, potential sources of serious liability for employers, even if discussed off-campus and after-hours. Courts and executive branches have routinely defied the clear text and obvious intent of the law to get their way and/or fuck over their political enemies; lower courts and state-wide politicians and the sitting President of the United States have taken to simply thumbing their nose at the Supreme Court. Federal investigators simply ignore due process protections for serious actions and happily bring down the hammer on even sympathetic cases for the Red Tribe, while lobbing softballs at life-threatening violations from the Blue and simply ignoring 'lesser' ones. Major Red Tribe political organizations have state attorney generals who campaign on destroying them and then tried it in court.
I can even provide Blue Tribe versions of (some of) these claims. People have, for you. But in addition to a lot of them being weaker, they don't really solve the 'we're no longer trying to persuade each other, or even prevent the other side from winning, but prevent the opposing side from playing the game' problem.
Do you need more categorical claims, or do I need explain why these feed back into themselves?
gattsuru
2yr ago
Of course not, I'm just a mindless Pelosi-bot regurgitating whatever normie talking-points the NYT and George Soros tell me to.
I get that this is intended as a self-deprecating joke, but it's the sort of joking-not-joking that reads like it's also yes.jpg.
The spirit of '76 is practically synonymous with civil war/violent revolution/boogie boys in some parts.
That's a bit of a weird contrast with the other examples, but ok.
So, if I'm understanding correctly, you're upset at the drive-by about 'libertarians slinking away' from Musk when 90% of the post was about conservatives? Okay. For all my very limited criticism of libertarians, I think they do have a fairly grand vision for the future.
No. My objections are that:
-
There are a number of Grand Positive Visions on the general 'right', with the libertarian ones being the most-generally-known and most-generally-critiqued. (And the Big Head Press comics are particularly goofy about it: the setting features sapient dolphins and apes partly for the gonzo effect, and partly because of course libertarians would recognize sapience, right?)
-
There's a lot of Grand Positive Visions from specifically social- or Trumpist conservatives, for better ( some of the saner socons even if I disagree with their policy goals, some of the economic conservatives) or worse (MAGA isn't just an acronym, David French, the obnoxious Common Good Conservativism). As I point out in one of the lines just after that aside, that "Even on the specific matter of the gender culture wars, it's not like the positive vision from social conservatives is something that requires a microscope to find, as much as I disagree with it."
-
If your critique is that these Grand Positive Visions aren't presented often in the Culture War Thread, it's probably worth considering if that's a result of the limitations of the medium.
-
Even within those limits of the medium, I don't think extrapolating from posters responding to a top-level comment clearly trying to evoke sympathy for their political enemies under norms they've never avowed is going to be a particularly good place to go hunting for examples of grand positive vision...
-
And I think that an emphasis you've selected -- "vibe you get" from "conservatives here", selected from the posts you read -- leaves far too many degrees of freedom. Not because I think WhiningCoil specifically spends a lot of wordcount on positive vision (even if you could steelman one), but because "They're supporting the downtrodden in society and giving them a chance to improve their lives. Contrary to the conflict theorists, it's neither arbitrary nor intended to make 'disfavored groups' suffer." becomes so wide you could drive a truck through it, in the same way that someone here on the right trying to turn the various 'waiting/hoping for cis white guys to die off' memes into some utter damnation of the progressive movement is missing a lot of what's happening.
No, I'm just being extremely clear because I don't want to fuck around and guess at what level of precision you want to use today.
And that's why I separately discussed the figurative meaning (complete with SSC link!) first. Which you didn't engage with.
And then, on the other hand : "No, I do not think the standard has to be literally apocalypticaly high." (Is that literally-literally? Because I'm highlighting merely "Obviously if I'm wrong, you'll never be able to collect," which doesn't require an apocalypse in either the Promethea sense nor the nuclear war one.)
And fair, there's a sliver between this figurative face-stomping and the apocalypse, or even sufficiently aggressive online censorship that you or I'd never show up under these nyms again. Not the same sliver as that which merely excludes “laws I don’t like get passed”, for some reason. Yet if I point to the Tale of Defense Distributed, again, would the current situation be a further update to you? Or would it merely be one in a "list of (actual legal cases)".
If you're not going to engage with it, while trying to draw lines around what level of injustice is sufficient? Yes! But less flippantly, I'm using it as an example because it's your own words, and I don't want to be accused of weakmanning you, and I want to contrast the positions you've stated in the past with the ones we're trying to discuss now, to see if this is a change or a difference in focus or a misinterpretation on my end.
... I would very much appreciate an example of me ignoring a precise claim from you, or for that matter a precise claim from you in this context.
No, I think the bigger problem is that you're ducking to flippancy when I keep requesting specific examples, either of your position or your disagreement with mine. There's a good many interpretations of "Wokes Gone Wild" that includes the EEOC and federal courts -- but in turn they make it increasingly hard to come up with examples you'd care about that could exist before such time that they wouldn't matter.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeee, good thing I've not talked at length about this matter in the past, including in this thread.
Do I really need to point to and litigate the Alabama Association of Realtor case history, and if I did would that mean anything more than a point on a list of actual legal cases? Gustafson? Would it say anything, or would we just need to talk about how some political opponent described something poorly in the last two hundred years and fifty years (uh, I'd hope that's figurative? Or are we back to literal-Civil-War fitting that sliver between figurative face-stomping and literal apocalypse?)
And if I point to things that have been categorically different like the growth of social media or the administration state, would they mean anything?
Fine, if you're sick of it, I'm not exactly having a good time, either. Have a nice rest of your holidays, and enjoy your new year.
More options
Context Copy link