domain:freddiedeboer.substack.com
Outlaw83
12hr ago
Normal parties don't renominate corrupt, criminal losers who tried a coup.
Like, the Right had this same argument about Brett Kavanaugh - "see, you'll try to take out any Republican nominee with lies and false allegations.'
Except it didn't happen with Neil Gorsuch, who had much the same background and views. Sure, people attacked his judicial views, but in the way both sides do. There were no allegations of him being a rapist or even some lesser crime, because he hadn't possibly done criminal things.
Don't nominate the corrupt former New York real estate guy who tried to overturn an election and you'll be all clear. Yes, we'll say mean things about him if you nominate say, Greg Abbott, but for what I know, he's done no crimes. He's allied with somebody even conservative Republicans think has done cirmes (Ken Paxton), but Abbott himself is just a right-winger.
epohon
20hr ago
The people who all share the same name by a coincidence, and that name is 😷✊🏿🇺🇦🇵🇸
Outlaw83
12hr ago
The part about Boebert is what your described is an underlying reason why we're seeing such shifts in college educated suburbs outside of the other more obvious factors.
Like, I'm sure there have been a lot of right-wing representatives in the past who actually worried about constituent needs - one example off hand is Thad Cochoran of Mississippi didn't need a single black vote to win easily in the state, but nonetheless, he was well known for having good constuent services, even in overwhelmingly black areas of the state, and not surprisingly, while he didn't do fantastic in the black belt regions, he did much better than Trent Lott did who was the other Senator at the time, even pre-Strom Thurmond praise.
Hell, Brian Kemp has passed a fairly strict abortion ban, passed trans laws close to Florida, passed a strict voter ID law, passed the usual tax cuts, and done a lot of stuff I don't like as a left-wing social democrat, but he has a 65% approval rating in Georgia because he said, "nah, Biden won, you weirdos," then he and his Secretary of State easily curbstomped a primary challenge.
The problem for the modern hard-right/far-right/dissident right, whatever people want to call themselves is that there's zero appeal unless you're either a partisan Republican or you're obsessed with the the Culture War issues of the day, but if you're even a somewhat serious person, they all seem like weirdos. Again, I know some won't like this, but look up how AOC questions people in Congressional panels versus Freedom Caucus types. You don't have to like her questions, or agree with her premises even, but she's well prepared and has follow up questions.
Obviously, not every member of the Squad is like that, but the median member of the Progressive Caucus is more serious about actually doing the work of legislating as opposed to trying to get a hit on Fox News or Newsmax than the median member of the Freedom Caucus, and in the long run, swing voters given the choice of having to use certain genders they don't get and some more immigrants speaking Spanish but actually getting stuff done versus chaos, abortion bans, and weird obsessions with issues they've never heard about, they'll back the woke side, even if they heavily disagree.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
12hr ago
Not to prevent a threat to the agency but to prevent a threat to American security and territorial integrity.
I did consider that but wanted to give the Irish the benefit of the doubt. I can only assume their education system is significantly more challenged than I thought.
The odds of a deranged person along the lines of Wilkes a booth or Oswald or any of the other people who’ve killed American president, much higher, although today security for Presidents is vastly higher and could probably foil most threats.
The probability of a successive assassination scheme gets even lower if you get rid of one that actually superficially ‘succeeded’ in being actualized by one individual who was ‘a deranged person’, given that there’s probably a moderately high chance that Oswald didn’t even shoot at Kennedy, nonetheless kill him.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10hr ago
Living in one of the rare other countries where soccer isn't the main sport, there really seems to be a something ostentatious about the way anti-soccer Americans go out of their way to talk unprompted about just how much they don't care about soccer and how un-American it is etc. that you don't really find here.
I suppose it's a culture war thing but even then, a self-aware person would at least consider that it really is then the culture war that's at fault, moreso than the game itself.
theincompetencetheorist
14hr ago
The whole point I'm trying to make is that the given that it is very public protest against the Israeli-Palestinian situation and Israel getting the second place in the popular vote. So if that vote is political then calls on cracking pro-Palestine protests would have been bigger than it is now. People are sitting at home and basically "fuck your virtue signaling" to the protestors and voting Israel. I see that as an apolitical act. One of the reasons we have a culture war is that we allow people to make everything political.
johnfabian
4hr ago
He's really fat. Easily obese.
ace
4hr ago
I admit I had not heard of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki before.
Two U.S. officials said the intended target of the Oct. 14 airstrike was Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian who was a senior operative in Yemen’s al-Qaeda affiliate.
One administration official described the younger Awlaki as a bystander, in the wrong place at the wrong time. “The U.S. government did not know that Mr. Awlaki’s son was there” before the order to launch the missile was given, the official said.
Is that actually the best example you can come up with? I think it proves my point.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
6hr ago
No, I think if someone was acting according to your intent it would be more akin to beating a kid to the point of hospitalisation to 'toughen him up'. American cultural resilience is not anti-fragile.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
9hr ago
This sounds like a very unhappy and mentally unhealthy way to negotiate life with half the human race, believing unironically that they all hate and want to castrate you. If you are being serious and literal. (Which I doubt.)
epohon
9hr ago
With apologies to @Capital_Room (not really) I'm reposting his hypothetical:
Let us consider a hypothetical character named John. Here is what John has to say about some of his coworkers:
Alice at work keeps stealing my parking space; obviously, she wants to murder me so she can have it all to herself.
Bob bumped into me in the hall yesterday; obviously, he’s a threat to my life, since he clearly shows a willingness to inflict violence upon me.
I suggested to Carol that we use a red background on the webpage, but she used a blue one instead. I can only conclude that she wants to kill me so that I stop showing up her lousy ideas with my better ones.
Dave made a comment about the smell of fish in the break-room after I reheated my lunch in the microwave. Obviously he hates my culinary choices, because he hates me, and intends to assassinate me.
Emma in management announced the new work schedule, and the set up for Monday afternoons conflicts with one of my hobbies outside work. She obviously created that whole schedule specifically to attack me personally, because she’s plotting to destroy me.
Frank called me a “paranoid nutjob.” He’s clearly out to get me and wants me dead.
Greta says I’m constantly exaggerating how much people don’t like me to play on people’s sympathy. She’s obviously plotting my death.
Henry made a comment about how I frequently accuse everyone of wanting to kill me, which only goes to prove how much he wants to kill me.
(Cartoonish, yes, but it’s a deliberate excess for purpose of illustration.)
What’s the best explanation for why John is Like This?
John is paranoid — maybe a classmate tried to stab him on the playground as a kid, and now he views everything through the lens of that trauma, or something.
John is cynically engaging in hyperbole to win over others into taking his side — he found out that exaggerating how much hostility he encounters engendered greater sympathy, and he just kept ramping it up in intensity.
John frequently contemplates killing anyone he disagrees with or dislikes — he’s engaging in “typical-minding,” believing that everyone else shares his own murderous hate.
Disregarding that this is a metaphor for the Jews or whatever, it's how I model people. What is the best explanation?
laxam
10hr ago
This wisdom is why the South is currently the most patriotic part of the country instead of a hotbed of political terrorism and separatist ideology.
Thanks for the explanation. It doesn't sound a whole lot more rational than straight-up Jew-hatred, but I appreciate your thoroughness in writing out the history of this mode of thought.
hanikrummihundursvin
12hr ago
That could all be true at the same time as every philosemite and zionist vote for Israel 20 times. Since there are very obviously a lot of philosemites and zionists clawing for every straw they can to bundle up in support of Israel in any manner they can. They are not tired of politics.
On top of that, Croatia won the popular vote with a not so gay song. If people were really tired of all the politics then they wouldn't vote for Israel, a country embroiled in a whole lot of politics. In fact, they wouldn't watch a whole lot of Eurovision to begin with. But if they did, they would probably vote for Croatia.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
13hr ago
Could American social progressivism be (in part) an intelligence operation to create “defense-in-depth” against America’s weak points, akin to the cybersecurity or military strategy?
In cybersecurity, valuable assets are hyper-protected with multiple layers of security, so that if any layer fails the others may still hold. The idea being that the assets are so important to defend and attacks could come at any time (and with novel stratagem), so it is reasonable to over-defend it in many different ways. In the military usage, layers of physical defense are established so that one may retreat into another defense upon an assault, ensuring reduced losses and longer periods of defending. Another somewhat ancillary idea is “fencing the Torah” in Judaism. It is so important not to violate a Torah prohibition that “fences” are established to make even the chance violation impossible. Eg, the the rule to not even pick up a tool lest you accidentally use it which would violate the sabbath prohibition.
America’s weak point is clearly potential civic disunity which could result in balkanization along racial, religious, or cultural lines. In order to hyper-defend from that risk, you implement a social operation involving defense-in-depth where the majority constituents must necessarily deny their own identity and engage in ritual ”sacrifices” upon the altar of plurality (from Trayvon to George Floyd). This explains even the whitification of Asians: once they become significant enough to possibly lead to Balkan problems, you enforce the same depotentiation. Notably, it is not enough of a social defense to merely pledge allegiance to plurality, as that hardly changes someone’s psychology. You must actually make it a social ideal so that it is promoted and normalized especially among the young potential rebels, and that is in fact what we see — those most at risk for any potential rebellion are coerced into a Kaczynskian “system’s neatest trick” procedure where their very rebellion helps to solidify state security. Why allow “Antifa” their own zone in Portland? Because when they are doing that they are doing nothing serious. Along the same lines, see how valuable transgenders have been as a layer of defense: millions of conservatives hours are spent arguing against something that has a surprising level of state support, and millions of progressive hours are spent defending something that is historically and intuitively off-putting. Those are hours that are not spent on something actually valuable; transgender stuff is simply the most outer layer of defense against a possible Balkan threat, and if conservatives win there’s nothing valuable lost from a state security perspective.
As outlandish as it seems, I think this is possible. It would be par for the course for how intel agencies behaved historically — well before they had enormous databases of information and AI to help them decide state hyper-protection. We could imagine the team of hundreds of some thousands employed toward this objective at some intel agency: “how do we protect against the most cataclysmic threat for America?” They look at the cost and benefit with history in mind, with WWII’s staggering death toll and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in mind.
theincompetencetheorist
15hr ago
That is the point. It wasn't the queer theme or the politics that matter it is if people enjoy the show or act, my comment is in response that the "usual suspects" are "organizing a ballot stuffing". Well the usual suspects should have also been stuffing with UK votes. Ukraine winning because they are being invaded is an exception.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
16hr ago
Everyone claiming that "feminists want to castrate all men" cite the same small handful of mentally ill fringe figures, e.g., Valerie Solano, Andrea Dworkin, etc.
The number of women who actually, unironically want to "cull men and castrate them" is probably considerably less than the number of men who actually, unironically take KulakRevolt's or Dread Jim's ideas about lobotomizing/turning women into sex slaves seriously.
Boarchariot
16hr ago
You should make one if you want people to read it. They might not, but they certainly can't if it doesn’t exist. You probably shouldn’t go into it with the expectation that it will be popular, but if you’re going to write things anyway, why not?
Jiro
17hr ago
Define powerful. Not going to instantly get fired for supporting Trump? Sure. Having influence, though? That's much harder.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
7m ago
The answer is very simple: casual dating is a specialized activity, like triathlon running or flying helicopters. You can't expect everyone to run triathlons, and you can't expect everyone to date casually.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
17m ago
How hard is it to put a neural network-based targeting system onto a small UAV? Yes, yes, Watchbird by Sheckley and all that, but the radio link with the drone operator is the weakest point of modern UAVs.
philosoraptor
24m ago
America’s weak point is clearly potential civic disunity which could result in balkanization along racial, religious, or cultural lines. In order to hyper-defend from that risk, you implement a social operation involving defense-in-depth where the majority constituents must necessarily deny their own identity and engage in ritual ”sacrifices” upon the altar of plurality (from Trayvon to George Floyd). This explains even the whitification of Asians: once they become significant enough to possibly lead to Balkan problems, you enforce the same depotentiation. Notably, it is not enough of a social defense to merely pledge allegiance to plurality, as that hardly changes someone’s psychology. You must actually make it a social ideal so that it is promoted and normalized especially among the young potential rebels, and that is in fact what we see — those most at risk for any potential rebellion are coerced into a Kaczynskian “system’s neatest trick” procedure where their very rebellion helps to solidify state security.
This seems more likely to create problems of civic disunity than to serve as a defence against them, at least as currently implemented.
Again, because Biden, Pence, and other politicians when informed immediately returned some documents. The problem isn't having the documents. It's an expectation that in a world where there are 9 trillion documents, some classifield ones will get moved, not out of malice or illegal acts.
If Trump had done what Biden, Pence, and others did, there would be no case.
But, when you refuse to work with the agency tasked to get these records, show said records to other people and talk about how they're classifield, and more, yeah, that's worse.
It's the difference between accidentally forgetting you put a candy bar in your pocket and running out with a shopping cart full of electronics.
More options
Context Copy link