domain:kvetch.substack.com
sun_the_second
4d ago
You can treat them as if they'd made an overly spicy joke, and they'll wear it as a mark of pride. Or you can put them through the wringer so they'll think better next time. I don't think the second option is more laughable.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1d ago
Jesus Christ dude. You know that bureaucrats are why we don't all live in mud huts and rape each other right? Have a little gratitude. You're posting this on an internet forum that only exists because generations of bureaucrats kept society together for a few thousand years.
shakenvac
3d ago
State criminal courts don't do constitutional debates. He broke NY law. Whether that law is unconstitutional (probably yes) is outside the remit of that court.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
PR doesn't end with just public facing statements. For example, if an organization is established to help the poor but all the workers openly hate poor people, that's a PR issue since news organizations or even just the poor people themselves would eventually realize how much the organization loathed them.
And again, Trump's loathing of illegal immigrants has never been a secret by any means.
sun_the_second
4d ago
Calling a specific subsection of women unrapeable is a pretty clear implication that you consider other subsections acceptable to rape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule#Proving_the_existence_of_the_rule
It's not rocket science. Sure, it would't hold up in a decent court, but "acktchyually I said I wouldn't even rape her, why are you upset" isn't fooling anyone.
To_Mandalay
5d ago
Counterpoint: Say something about someone's mom who is from a traditionalist culture and if you survive the reaction you should reevaluate women not being valued. Mothers and matriarchal figures are highly respected.
Of course women have value in traditional societies. More than livestock. But less than men.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
17hr ago
Lol now TheMotte is getting into trump assassination territory....Should I stop coming here and start watching fox news?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
If Biden wanted to cut down on illegal immigration, he could do it now, without any additional Congressional authority.
I addressed this in the post. To summarize, yes, he could fix it now, to at least some degree. Reimplementing the Remain in Mexico would help. The problem with all of these fixes though is that they're bandaids on bullet holes that don't address fundamental issues like this bill would have.
The Obama administration began counting repeated deportations of the same immigrant as multiple deportations. This was well-known at the time and confounds a simple analysis. Moreover, you neglect to discuss DACA.
His hawkishness was specifically a reference to this chart. Yes, Obama was also more willing to give amnesty than Republicans ever were.
The "shithole countries" remark was not something Trump said in public as part of a "PR" strategy. It was something allegedly said in a closed meeting. Are you saying that Trump is responsible for rumors about him?
Multiple people referenced the exact same remark shortly after the meeting was over, so I think it's safe to assume he really said it. If you want to keep contesting that specific statement, just choose any of his other ones. His hostile rhetoric towards immigrants wasn't exactly a secret.
So what? You were arguing just a few paragraphs ago that these policies don't matter! Trump's policies didn't do anything, because Obama was better, but then Biden undoes Trump's policies, which makes everything worse!
The overarching point on Trump was that his policies were bombastic and good at catching headlines, but that they didn't do much in practice. Comparing the number of illegal immigrant border encounters during Trump's term and Obama's second term is quite similar. Biden was worse than both of them because he tried to go back to Obama's policies, but by then the asylum loophole was well known.
I can grant that in a theoretical alternate universe where Trump didn't do anything on the border, immigration could have surged far worse than it did due to exogenous factors and immigrants catching on to the loophole faster, so Trump's actions might have stopped a surge that would have happened. It's tough to know for sure, but it's plausible.
The reason he did this was as obvious as it was cynical: he didn’t want Biden to have a “win” on the issue.
This is reading Trump's mind.
Multiple senators such as Tillis said this was the reason. Trump himself motioned at the idea on Truth Social when he said he didn't want to "absolve" the Democrats on the issue.
it really makes me question your ability to digest evidence
I just think you're not very astute.
Can it the personal attacks. I enjoy debating people who disagree with me because I think it makes my arguments stronger, but I've had problems in the past with you reverting to personal attacks.
To_Mandalay
5d ago
To claim that modern society has devalued motherhood and femininity, or made them low status, is completely backwards. Motherhood and femininity in general have been devalued for as long as patriarchy has existed, so pretty much the whole of human history. I can't think of any human cultures, let alone any of the big-name European and near-eastern ones that the modern west is descended from, which have not considered the female sphere and female pursuits to be intrinsically lesser than that of men.* The "oh, women aren't inferior to men, they just have different strengths/they're made for different roles" line you hear from conservatives nowadays (what Christians call 'complementarianism') is itself an anti-modernist rearguard action. For the great majority of the history of western civilization, philosophers, theologians, and intellectuals, whether Pagan, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or atheist, have been happy to state that actually, women are just strictly inferior to men. It's the reason you occasionally get figures like Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great who are praised for being essentially men in women's bodies, but you never get men praised for being essentially women in men's bodies.
What happened in more resent centuries isn't that motherhood and womanhood were devalued. Motherhood and womanhood were devalued way back in the primordial past, and only recently have women been allowed to escape such devalued roles at scale.
You can't make motherhood 'prestigious' because motherhood has never been prestigious. Closest thing would just be banning women from doing actually prestigious things.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
20hr ago
I knew someone was going to say that. It ain't you're money, you pay that to live here. Don't like it? There are other options.
Seems pretty simple to me. Don't want the feds in your school. Don't accept fed money!
Isn't it kind of crazy to accept taxpayer money and expect to make your own rules?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
22hr ago
You really seem to want to catch me with supposed double-binds and contradictions instead of actually addressing important points.
If the contradictions are true, then fair enough. Like earlier when you mentioned "hey you say Trump's restrictions didn't do much, but then say that illegal immigration exploded when Biden removed them". I could certainly see why someone would think that was a bit weird so a clarification was justified, and even with that clarification I probably wasn't giving Trump enough credit to what might have happened if he didn't do his EO's.
But this is just a nothingburger. I feel like I'm reading the following: "first you said 'immigration', then fell back to 'illegal immigration'. Aha! A concession! Then you said Trump had bad PR because of saying stuff like 'shithole countries', but he didn't say that in a televised address, meaning it wasn't public, yet PR has the word 'public' in it. A contradiction!"
To the object-level claim here, if Trump says something inflammatory to a group who all then promptly leak it to the press, then yes, that's a PR problem. The two options Trump has are either 1) get his leaky ship in order, or 2) think it but don't say it, or at least say it in ways that aren't so clearly controversial. Every time you hear the media complaining about "dogwhistling", it's just Republicans doing this. But Trump never seem to get the memo, which is why he keeps shooting himself and the cause of immigration restrictions in the foot.
curious_straight_ca
1d ago
This again? If Biden wanted to cut down on illegal immigration, he could do it now, without any additional Congressional authority
... Okay? Ben's not arguing Biden is blameless here, just that Trump is blameworthy. Yes, Biden and the Dems aren't doing this out of sincere care for immigration, they're trading a better chance at getting elected for a concession to the public's policy priorities. Trump should, by the values of his own voters, take the deal and reduce his chance of winning because this would hugely reduce illegal immigration.
SSCReader
3d ago
They were what? Note some of the non-Catholic Churches burned down were on reservations/native land as well. So how much increased risk Catholic churches have over churches in general still isn't clear.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
Sure, the additional restrictions you mentioned do exist, but remember the priors here. The Border Emergency Authority is a draconian measures meant to be used sparingly for emergencies, not a "you must meet these criteria to even start deporting illegals" that Trump, Gaetz, and others painted it as. You could strip out the entire Border Emergency Authority and it would still be quite a conservative bill, adding funds for normal enforcement and closing the asylum loophole among other beneficial things. The biggest issue with the BEA is that it sunsets after 3 years so it's only really meant to be used for the current surge, but opponents of the bill keep neglecting to mention that since it screws with their narrative that the BEA is a permanent bad thing.
Despite those restrictions, under the current numbers Biden would be required to use the authority. This would have been a win-win for those who want enforcement. Either he uses the authority and gets illegal immigration under control, which would be good, or he wriggles out of using it, providing fodder for Republicans to say we need an even more draconian measure to stop illegal immigration.
2rafa
3d ago
Tradcaths are extremely overrepresented on the far right which does on occasion advocate for political violence. Seems very cringe for the GOP to spend years being completely fine with the FBI spending billions infiltrating random mosques and then get upset when they target extremist tradcaths who openly advocate for violent revolution online. Obviously it isn’t any substantial percentage of tradcaths, but the same is true for Muslim extremists.
you-get-an-upvote
Hyperbole is bad
4d ago
I'm unsure whether these women just haven't googled the most basic facts of the career they'll spend their next 4-6 years pursuing, or whether they're semi-deliberately deluding themselves. My guess is the latter.
Being evenhanded with "both genders that fall into this trap are negatively impacted" is fine. When you claim that women are the ones who predominantly actually fall into the trap, you are making an inflammatory claim made without evidence.
To_Mandalay
4d ago
Mary is a goddess, it's not really comparable.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
17hr ago
It does! Since this is still an awesome place to live. But if you really hate it you can leave.
As I have pointed out you have 7 degrees of freedom in my state and also can murder your unborn child, so move here if you are feeling oppressed by the USA. Other states offer other less free options.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
19hr ago
It has failed? It the wealthiest and most successful society in the world that may usher in an age of untold prosperity for all eternity? What?
I think you and I might be living in fundamentally different worlds. Mine is going wild with possibility and right now I can travel anywhere in the world and have an amazing time. What does yours look like?
2rafa
1d ago
Biden can deport 15 million people today? The law mitigates some percentage of the legal challenges by pro-migrant groups that would be inevitable (and will be) in any executive-led effort.
quiet_NaN
3d ago
It is bad taste for any group whose primary purpose is not a dating pool to systematically rate the hotness of that pool, no matter the gender.
These lists tend to become common knowledge, and some people will end up on the bottom part of the list or being rated an average of 1.3 out of ten (but people -- especially people going through puberty -- might also be uncomfortable being rated really high). If the victim had actually asked to be rated, this would be different, but in all likelihood, they do not prefer an supposedly objective (it's a number! numbers don't lie!) rating of their hotness to become common knowledge.
The outcome of these lists is not so different from writing "X is an ugly pig" on the blackboard. As that is bullying, I would classify creating such lists as at least likely to lead to bullying.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
19hr ago
So who does?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
22hr ago
Well there's nothing for me to really argue against here, just "I'm right and you're wrong", an ad-hominem, then "landslide for Trump in 2024!"
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Well there are other words in the amendment. Words like 'bear arms', the meaning of which is pretty clearly up for debate even if you come down on the side of a broad interpretation.
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