domain:epistle.us
anon_
10m ago
I think it's both situational and tactical. Lawsuits are very expensive and you can waste 8 years only to have them thrown out because you didn't pick the right vehicle. At the same time, in a situation where one has a benefit in leverage and relative effort, it is beneficial to flood the field. I don't see a one-size-fits-all piece of advice.
Also I think the 2A is doing rather well. There will always be some gap left when imposing federal dictat on recalcitrant States (same when it was abortion from the left), but most of the US has shall-issue CCW.
atelier
Jimmys: unrustled
22m ago
This is where the mods really shine. Stiff like letting all non LR weapons fire in melee or having lots of great choices for speedy mechs that can boatany small lasers and core anything they can get behind (with EWAR to survive to do it again).
Mantergeistmann
27m ago
Yeah, that's why I'm wondering if the shift will eventually lead to, "Well, Yuengling is anti-union, which we now like, but still pro-Trump, which is bad."
AvocadoPanic
46m ago
I’m sitting in my office at Pierce & Pierce, the glass walls reflecting the sterile glow of Manhattan’s skyline, and I can’t help but think about Kanye West’s latest track, “Heil Hitler (Hooligan Version).” The lyrics are raw, unpolished, almost juvenile in their repetition—“I still can’t see my children, niggers see my twitter but they don’t see how I be feeling, so I became a nazi yay bitch I’m the villain, nigger heil Hitler, they don’t understand the things I say on twitter nigger heil Hitler…” It’s crude, yes, but there’s something… deliberate about it. I adjust my Hermès tie—red, with subtle navy accents, a perfect complement to my charcoal Armani suit—and I consider the narrative being spun here. Some might call this a tantrum, a mentally ill black man identifying with Hitler in some rebellious fever dream, but that’s too simplistic. No, this is political. This is Kanye leaning into the role of the Nazi villain, a role the left, the globalists, the rootless cosmopolitans, and the neoconservatives have already cast him in, whether he likes it or not. Let’s break this down. I sip my San Pellegrino, the bubbles sharp against my tongue, and I think about Kanye’s trajectory. He’s been a lightning rod for years—his 2022 X post, where he declared he “loves Hitler” and identified as a Nazi, wasn’t a one-off. It was a gauntlet thrown down. The man’s been frozen out, his assets seized, his partnerships with Adidas and others severed like a bad merger. The American Jewish Committee’s Ted Deutch called it “blatant antisemitism,” and The Spectator’s Johnathan Sacerdoti dismissed the lyrics as a “crude litany” of Nazi slogans. But what do they expect? Kanye’s not playing their game. He’s not apologizing, not backtracking, not begging for forgiveness at some gala at the Waldorf Astoria, wearing a borrowed Brioni tuxedo while sipping Veuve Clicquot. No, he’s doubling down. And why shouldn’t he? The left, with their sanctimonious word-policing, the globalists with their borderless, homogenized agendas, the neocons with their endless wars—they’ve already labeled him a Nazi. They did it the moment he stepped out of line, the moment he supported Trump in 2020, the moment he started talking about “Zionist schools” and “financial engineering” on Tucker Carlson’s show. They don’t care about nuance. They don’t care about his custody battles or his bipolar disorder, which he’s admitted to, by the way—31 million followers on social media, and they still reduce him to a caricature. So what does he do? He gives them what they want. He becomes the villain they’ve scripted for him. “So I became a nazi yay bitch I’m the villain.” It’s almost… poetic. I flip through my Rolodex, looking for my tailor’s number—I need to schedule a fitting for a new Zegna overcoat—and I consider the political angle here. This isn’t just lashing out, some primal scream into the void. Kanye’s smarter than that. He’s always been a provocateur, a performance artist masquerading as a rapper. Look at the album this track is tied to—“Cuck,” with its Ku Klux Klan-inspired art, tracks like “Gas Chambers” and “Hitler Ye and Jesus.” He’s not shying away from the imagery, the symbolism, the history. He’s weaponizing it. The left and their allies have created a world where dissent is met with excommunication, where any deviation from the script gets you branded with the scarlet letter of “Nazi.” Kanye knows this. He’s seen the neo-Nazi Goyim Defense League banners in Los Angeles, proclaiming “Kanye is right about the Jews” over highways, giving Nazi salutes while the Anti-Defamation League scrambles to condemn them. He’s seen the protests, the outrage, the think pieces. So he leans in. “Nigger heil Hitler, they don’t understand the things I say on twitter, all my niggas nazis.” He’s not framing the Nazis as villains here—not really. He’s framing himself as the villain, yes, but it’s a middle finger to the system that’s already judged him. If they’re going to call him a Nazi no matter what he says, he might as well own it, amplify it, make it so loud they can’t ignore it. It’s a power move, a reclamation of the narrative, even if it’s drenched in swastika-like doodles and militaristic visuals of men in animal skins, as the music video reportedly shows. I glance at my Patek Philippe watch—1:47 PM, I have a lunch reservation at Le Bernardin in 13 minutes—and I think about the broader context. The WWII taboo is fading, sure, but this isn’t about that. This isn’t some cultural shift where we’re all suddenly okay with Nazi iconography because the history feels distant. No, this is Kanye recognizing the hypocrisy of his critics. The left, the globalists, the neocons—they thrive on control, on dictating the terms of discourse. They’ve built a machine that crushes dissent, that paints anyone who questions their dogma as a monster. Kanye’s not identifying with Hitler because he’s mentally ill or because he’s rebelling against some abstract taboo. He’s doing it because he’s been backed into a corner. They’ve called him a Nazi for years—since his “Jewish bitch” lyrics, since his Burzum-inspired album art, since his rants about Zionist schools. So he’s saying, fine. You want a Nazi? I’ll give you a Nazi. “Nigger heil Hitler.” It’s a mirror held up to his detractors, a grotesque reflection of their own tactics. He’s not the villain because he wants to be. He’s the villain because they’ve made him one. And in that sense, this track, this video, this entire album—it’s political. It’s a statement. It’s Kanye West taking the label they’ve forced on him and turning it into a weapon. I grab my coat—cashmere, Tom Ford, impeccable—and head for the elevator. I can’t be late for lunch. Eric Ripert’s sea urchin dish is a revelation, and I need to be seated before the Wall Street crowd floods the place. But as I step into the lobby, I can’t shake the thought: Kanye’s not wrong to play their game. He’s just better at it than they are.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
46m ago
For what it's worth, there's restaurants (and people even!) in Asia and Africa named after Adolf Hitler on the same "here's a Great Man of History with an iconic aesthetic" logic.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
53m ago
I always wondered what was actually more effective, to ruthlessly attack even the most minor of transgressions or to keep around the potential of a killing blow.
Seems to me that the logistics of maintaining power require constant use and practice. But that goes both ways. Power will learn to contain what it is confronted with.
In France we are fond of violent riots, but that means any French regime has riot police, vastly limiting the utility of direct action as a political tactic.
But then again I see the US's 2a growing ever more theoretical a right to contest the government militarily precisely because that's not a button you want to press often.
TheBailey
soapy mop
56m ago
The DMV would likely just grant your request request which would moot the case
I find it extremely unlikely that the DMV would waive policy only for special ol' me, just because I threatened to take them to court over their illegal behavior. Are you saying that, or that they'd predictably chicken out on their half of the case only after the lawsuit is actually underway? In either case, such action seems like it'd just be begging the ACLU to throw together a form letter to get them to repeat it on cue.
TheBailey
soapy mop
1hr ago
The point is, this particular flavor of “sill[iness]” is not just enshrined in law as a right, but enacting it completely, and without any discretionary approval from the gov't, is also (as far as I can tell, pending any assault on my actual motte in the OP/C,) enshrined in law.
If the law is to be changed (regardless of the reason), it should be changed through the legislature, not illegally by some administrative employee too big for his britches.
TheBailey
soapy mop
1hr ago
You're claiming that the law as it stands leaves too much opportunity for fraud, we should just abolish the common law name change doctrine, and the DMV is actually kinda doing the right thing here by (illegally) refusing CL name changes and we don't even know how much crime they're prevented by doing so?
If this specimen could just rock up to the local tax office and go "Hi, my name which I am commonly known by is Susie Susan, new licence I can use as legal ID please", you think she'd avoid doing that?
The picture you paint is a strawman. I simply argue that Alabama could—and in fact should, even if it takes a lawsuit to effect them getting off their ass about it—adopt a process like the one the U.S. passport office has adopted for validating & legitimating common law name changes. It's possible to create a paper trail without sticking the little thumbtack of “this is a discretionary license, you fucking peasant” in there, and that this thumbtack has been stuck in by executive fiat, rather than due process is my complaint.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
As soon as you start talking about the practicalities of "what happens if a Blue-controlled Federal government decides it is no longer willing to tolerate armed Reds?" everyone agrees that what would stop them wouldn't be the armed Reds shooting back, it would be the lack of sufficient Blue-aligned goons able and willing to enforce the order against trivial opposition.
"Everyone" does not agree with this; I certainly don't. We've just finished two wars featuring the US military operating against insurgents. One was a pyrrhic victory at best, the other was a flat loss. Both were in countries significantly smaller, significantly poorer, and significantly less well-armed than the US. The assessments that generate the consensus you're referring to are based on the idea of pitched battle between AR15s on one side and Abrams tanks and f35s on the other, but it is ignorance to the point of madness to imagine that this is how the situation would work in practice. This failure to understand the nature of asymmetrical conflict was risible ten years ago, when we only had two decades of examples from our two most recent wars to draw from. Given the developments since, it approaches a very black form of comedy. We're literally watching the formation of deep-seated assassination culture in our society right now. The government can't consistently enforce straw purchase laws when the criminals submit a signed confession to federal law enforcement. And these aren't even the worst problems with such a scenario, or even in the top ten!
Blues and the Blue-adjacent have the insane belief that they could plausibly impose their will on Reds and get it to stick. Reds and the red-adjacent have the insane belief that violent conflict with the blues would be short and sharp, and then life would go back to normal. Both of these beliefs are insanely destructive if acted on. Neither side has anything near a proper understanding of just how fragile our Belle Epoch really is: It will pop like a fucking soap bubble, and it will never, ever come back. Please, I am begging you, update your priors!
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Which is why I have no objection to that version.
You can be a bit snide, you can complain about melodrama, you can accuse someone of playing the snowflake. Do enough of those at once, and it becomes more important to bring the receipts.
This is not political commentary it's lashing out. He's still framing the nazis as villains.
A fair take, and entirely plausible given that it’s Kanye we’re talking about.
But, I think there is an alternative possible interpretation. Identifying with the villain doesn’t necessarily, in our modern age, indicate that the speaker thinks they are wrong or even the evil guy. It is entirely possible that Kanye both understands Hitler as the pre-assigned villain of the modern religion, and not only identifies with him but in some fashion views him as having done good things, or been on the right path, or something like that.
It’s sort of like how Joshua is viewed as a Biblical hero by Christians and Jews, but did quite a lot of total genocide in Canaan, of the sort that makes him very much a proto-Hitler if assessed by the dominant morality of our age. Villain to some, but an indicator to others that the dominant morality is actually wrong about quite a lot of things.
Kanye could be viewing Hitler in something like the same sort of framing.
Edit: I just realized Taylor released a song a while back about being the villain. I think there is an incipient cultural trend of “Maybe I’m the bad guy, but I’m right and I’m going to embrace it” occurring. Which is the first step on the road to the villain eventually being reinterpreted as the hero.
stolen_brawnze
I am the way Sia says "batteries" in that one song.
2hr ago
Cool, I'm happy for Catholics that the pope is committed to being pope-like, but anyone unfamiliar with the faith could be forgiven for only being able to take away a fully generic message of "We in the church should do our best to be decent people" from his address.
The whole purpose of the church is to show us what that means and how to do it, which of course comes with perilous controversies because we have many other philosophies trying to do the same and coming to different conclusions.
I get it, this is his first address, and the pope is severely constrained by millennia of history that he can't really riff on. But that's what I meant by it of course meaning nothing.
Corvos
2hr ago
Also Japan has ジンギスカン料理 (Gengis Khan food) which is basically various forms of grilled lamb.
Dean
Flairless
3hr ago
...not a 'constant update' thing, but if you ever want to do a deep dive / generally-untapped government policy resource, have you ever looked up stuff from legislative research services?
Some (generally larger/richer) countries keep a dedicated organization to do basic policy research for the legislative body. In Britain, this is the House of Commons Library, while in the US it is the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service.
These sort of organizations are surprisingly good / useful when trying to read up on a policy issue. They are relatively non-partisan for the level they work at- they are working for both/all parties in general- and they tend to excel at characterizing existing laws / regulations of governments. This is because they have to take a lot of legal dynamics and convey it into forms that the target audience- legislators with minimal expertise- may understand.
Sometimes it can be interesting to take the current culture war issue of the day, and just look up what was last written about it months or years ago, before it became [current thing in culture war / propaganda].
Obviously you are limited to your language, but it can be interesting to see how parliamentary research services from around the world approach common policy issues.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Unions are shifting to be more right leaning- they supported Trump in the last election.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3hr ago
The restaurant thing is.
https://www.gengiskhanbbq.com/
As far as I know if you want Hitler restaurants you have to go to Asia. Evidently a Stalin-themed Middle Eastern cafe didn't go over too well in Moscow, so this is one situation where the Reds don't have a great advantage over the Heilers.
AvocadoPanic
3hr ago
Mantergeistmann
3hr ago
yuengling
Yuengling is, in some circles, more disliked by craft beer snobs than even Bud/Coors/Miller, due to the pro-Trump/anti-union stance of the owner. Should unions ever shift to be more right-leaning, I'll be watching the discourse with great interest.
anti_dan
3hr ago
Will it be “post-modern corrosion” or will it be time? Genghis Khan Is believed to (1) have caused the deaths of enough people to slightly alter climate, and (2) have been the most-prolific rapist of which we are aware. And, currently, there are a couple of restaurant chains named after him here in America.
I am not aware of any of these three things being true.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
3hr ago
Kanye West is like a Holocaust-denying parrot. Imagine it, a parrot squawking "six million didn't die, the Holocaust is a lie!" Funny for a few days, but then you're left with a Holocaust-denying parrot squawking and crapping all over its cage. The parrot can't vote. It can’t work for DOGE. It can’t argue cases before a judge. I get it, it's funny, I'm a 4chan troll too. But I'm also interested in actually exercising power. Fuentes, who I'm not sure if he was behind Ye's ideological evolution or was just there to cheer it on, seems to be recognizing the Right's strategy of relentlessly and exclusively appealing to low human capital is not gonna go anywhere good:
https://x.com/FuentesUpdates/status/1908187813117411525
I wonder if we're seeing the first signs of postmodern corrosion eating away at the last grand unifying narrative of our age: WW2 mythos, with Adolf Hitler at its center not as mere historical figure, but as the archetypal villain and the secular devil.
One figure replacing him as the secular devil is Jeffery Epstein.
I sometimes read from the new comments tab, since reading from the roundup page means I miss interesting comments nested a few posts down. For the same reason, I didn’t realise it was a necro.
For better or worse I’ve got bored of most of my old time-wasting pages but it does mean that I tend to refresh the Motte when I get that ‘tab-out’ itch. If you can suggest alternatives I’m open :)
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
The actual lyrics of the song are 'I still can't see my children, niggers see my twitter but they don't see how I be feeling, so I became a nazi yay bitch I'm the villain, nigger heil Hitler, they don't understand the things I say on twitter nigger heil Hitler nigger heil Hitler they don't understand the things I say on twitter all my niggers nazis nigger heil Hitler'. This is not political commentary it's lashing out. He's still framing the nazis as villains.
I agree that the WWII taboo is fading. I don't think a mentally ill black man identifying with Hitler in an act of rebellion is the sign thereof.
I mean, after you sued and wasted months on it they would grant it, which would moot your case. I don't think anyone (again, angsty teenagers notwithstanding) thinking that filing a form letter and then possibly wasting a day at the DMV then waiting months for a resolution in the courts is preferable to filing a name change for $50 to get an official stamp on it.
More options
Context Copy link