domain:imgur.com
2D3D
3hr ago
In the hunting examples I'm thinking about the guy who got shot by dick cheney but still found it worthwhile to go to those retreats after the incident.
Botond173
3hr ago
- How is prostitution being normalized evidence of inequality? Do you see it as proof that womankind's lot is uniquely bad?
- What does this issue have to do with equality in the first place exactly?
Folamh3
3hr ago
Thanks, I should have said "none of the groups targeted by the communist regime and specifically listed in the OP".
Harlequin5942
4hr ago
none of the groups targeted by the communist regime meet this description
Not all, but some, including large numbers of Red Army soldiers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_transfer_in_the_Soviet_Union
Never underestimate the capacity of communist regimes to target a wide range of people.
Great post. I have a couple of quibbles:
-
Describing the approach the communist leaders adopted towards their enemies as "identity politics". As I and many others use the term, "identity politics" refers to politics based on immutable identity characteristics (race, sex, caste, ethnicity etc.). It appears that (with the possible exception of the aristocracy, depending on how hereditary privileges worked at the time), none of the groups targeted by the communist regime meet this description: kulaks can sell their land and immediately become non-kulaks, industrialists can sell their factories. By contrast, even non-practising Jews were targeted for extermination by the Nazis; nothing a Tutsi does can make him any less of a Tutsi.
-
Describing the Reign of Terror as a "pogrom". I've only ever seen this term used to describe a systemic mass killing of Jews. I understand that you're using it figuratively, but it seems ripe for misinterpretation.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
4hr ago
The settlers are far right religious extremist so I don’t really see much surprising in the video at all. They’re a small portion of the country, but a fairly large part of the Likud Party base. Personally, I think most of the Gaza overkill wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the settlers. They’ve been fairly open about wanting to settle in Gaza, in fact I’ll have to find the interview again but one of the settler leaders was a woman who works in real estate, and obviously stands to make a lot of money once Gaza is open for settlement. Bibi doesn’t go after them because they’re his base.
ApplesauceIrishCream
4hr ago
TIL that carbonite comes in strawberry flavor.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
4hr ago
Day traders being retarded again? As I recall the statistics showing, something like 95-99% of them lose money in the long term.
I consider parting fools from their money to be a service to humanity because that way they are less able to shit up the rest of society with it (e.g. imagine if we didn't just hand every impressionable 17 year old tens of thousands in student loans upon asking; the higher education system would be in a lot better shape today because the incentives wouldn't be so misaligned).
NullHypothesis
5hr ago
I don't know if there are any metrics but from what I can tell most conversations and activities happen on the weekend (The number of comments seems to routinely double after Friday from my casual observation). Probably because people have jobs and family and stuff. What a surprise, people with interesting and intelligent takes have real world responsibilities... the Motte isn't a place you can make a living off so, of course, you're not going to have people here full-time to discuss all topics that could be discussed. If you aren't going to engage in the comments you could just wait for the monthly quality posts and save yourself the time and just read those instead. You're going to have more lively conversations on X because of the simple fact of X having a much much larger userbase, to the point where people can make a living just talking about political stuff. It also has a lot of low-take, crap opinions on there.
Personally, I do think there is some merit to having some low-level fruit for discussion, which is why I made a post about the recent viral man versus bear question. In the grand scheme of things this viral question has almost no real-world consequences compared to say half the items on your list but why did that post generate a good amount of discussion and a lot of these you just posted about hasn't (yet)? Because I made a post about the topic. I also took some effort to put a spin to it, did a little bit of research, gave my opinion, posed a question, and gave multiple angles of possible discussion points, and it got a decent amount of conversations going. The more information you give on the topic, the more chance there is something in it that someone might be interested in to respond to.
In general, the posts I've seen get the most responses have one of these things going for them:
- There is an opinion/fact that someone disagrees with so they post to argue against it - essentially a controversial opinion. These are the ones that routinely get the deepest conversations because it's an argument/debate. It's also the most difficult to engage in with long term.
- There is something in the post that triggers a related topic with a similar line of thinking or a different way to analyze that particular topic
- There is a new perspective that is so profound to a reader that they feel obliged to respond to it.
- There is a question for people to respond to.
Also there are some guidelines about culture war posts:
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
I don't think it takes that much work - just post a link to the article with the topic you want to discuss, quote a few relevant lines, then give your opinion and ask a question. If you want a particular type of discussion/insight put in more effort so there is something for people to respond to. What particular about these topics do you want to hear people's take on? High-level discussion requires some effort, otherwise, how would the responses be any different than the average comment on the news site, Reddit, YouTube, X, or any other discussion platform with low-level reactionary comments?
Jiro
5hr ago
With regard to the so-called ethnic campaigns I think it's necessary to point out that the ethnic minorities who were targeted (in a loose sense) in the purges all had ethnic homelands of their own which bordered the USSR and were either hostile states, former wartime adversaries like Poland or Finland, or colonized by a hostile state, such as Korea under Japanese rule.
It's very hard, without large scale immigration (either of you versus the equivalent of the native Americans, or of the minorities), to be in a situation where your country's ethnic minorities are not one of those.
Also, by this standard, the internment of Japanese-Americans in the US wouldn't count as anti-ethnic because the US was at war with Japan.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
5hr ago
It is unthinkable to me that any adult with full cognitive faculties could think these people were the good guys chosen by God.
Why? God is ineffable. If he picks some nation as his chosen and lets them get away with treating their neighbors as waste, who are you to say that you are right and God is wrong. He reportedly fucked with the Egyptians, alternating between sending additional plagues and hardening the heart of their pharaoh so that he wouldn't just give up and let the Jews go. Now he's hardening the resolve of the Palestinians, so they don't stop dreaming about their state from the sea to the river, and the Israeli Jews can have an excuse to grind them into dust.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5hr ago
None of what you've written here makes a particularly insightful point except to suggest "Here are things I believe are crazy, how about it?" And the not-veiled implication that only idiots would disagree with you--which hardly invites discussion. There are a great number of older threads worth reading on this site without shit-stirring for the sake of it.
Jiro
5hr ago
A. Woke implies an agenda of defending the oppressed, mass murdering tyrant also implies an agenda of defending the oppressed. In this case, there is very little to link wokes to tyrants -- if we observe that Nazis frequently wear uniforms, and postmen frequently wear uniforms that tells us very little if there is any unexpected overlap between Nazis and postmen
To be fair, "defending the oppressed" inspires and excuses actions. Uniforms do not.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
6hr ago
Holodomor was recognized as a genocide by the European Parliament with 507 votes for (and 12 votes against). Even a plurality of the far-left group GUE/NGL voted for it.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
6hr ago
Sir, You Are Being Hunted might float your boat.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6hr ago
How about King Charles's mildly satanic painting?
I don't know why you'd make yourself look like you're bathed in blood or wreathed in unholy flame. Rand Al Thor can pull it off but he is the Dragon Reborn, greatest hero of two ages. When King Charles takes a cursed sa'angreal sword from an ancient fortress and faces down the forces of darkness, then he can appropriate fantasy hero aesthetics for official portraits.
I've argued in the past that there is a certain malign or subversive element in some elite art, consider people like Cleon Peterson or the Pope's rather unusual looking sculpture. Apparently that has all this special Christian symbolism - I would've thought that a cross would be more appropriate but what do I know?
There's also this (somewhat nsfw?) painting of a child getting throatfucked which somebody vandalized, much to the displeasure of Macron: https://x.com/Censor__This/status/1658938149844791300/photo/1
I could add in the CIA plot to spread abstract and modern art, though it's only relevant in the broader sense that art is political and related to politics. I don't have much of a thesis aside from 'a lot of modern art is quite disturbing and indicative of cultural trends towards shock value and dubious tolerance'. There's a time and a place for everything and sometimes that place is sites like bestgore, liveleaks or the artistic equivalent of AO3 rather than art galleries, in my mind.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6hr ago
It's not like there isn't room to criticize past societies, but I don't get the whole equality angle. Even feminists don't want equality.
Goodguy
6hr ago
I don't know if you would get arrested as opposed to just fined, but there are countries with laws against denying certain Soviet atrocities.
Generally speaking, I don't know how likely one would actually be to face legal penalties, but I think that there are many places in the former Warsaw Pact where claiming in public that Soviet atrocities were exaggerated could lead to physical violence coming from ordinary citizens.
Outlaw83
6hr ago
No, it's because almost every woman who of even moderate attractiveness has dealt with weirdness from a decent amount of men, from a pretty young age, and it turns out, they don't like it very much.
This isn't a political, ideological, or social thing, as seen by the almost regular stories of pastors and priests doing things people claim people preforming at DQSH do, and by the same token, the stories of creepy men in various liberal-coded spheres.
Outlaw83
6hr ago
"Both single men and single women lived under the surveillance and control of their social circle to a degree."
Yet, somehow, prostitutes continued to be healthily employed in every major and probably minor European city even during the most buttoned up times. Which proves the feminists point - there was never actually true equality, even in repression.
Outlaw83
6hr ago
As a leftie, there was no way to get Medicare for All from Pelosi, because not only does M4A not have the 218 votes you need in the House, it'd die on the Senate. All that would result of such a vote is a bunch of terrible primary challenges that would fail, because the median Democrat, while preferring Medicare for All, it's not a support it or else issue. Stuff like abortion, gay rights, thinking Trump is bad, those are actually support or else issues to the Democratic base of African-American women, suburban Mom's and so on.
Plus, in the long run, Biden did far more of what lefties expected economically. Unfortunately, some of the dumber ones are now upset about that full employment and higher wages means higher prices for Chipotle or Doordash.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6hr ago
It's like we have become allergic to actual news or something.
Sort of. There's a few reasons for it:
- Seen it all before.
- The intro to the thread explicitly discourages "look at what these people did" posts
- After nearly a decade of commenting on this sort of stuff, I don't think there's a lot more to be said about any of it.
Different people want vastly different things out of TheMotte.
A few times over the years I've seen people share their lists of their all time favorite Motteposters. Some names are expected, other names make me go "...wait, what? That guy? Why?". Sometimes people will list someone who I find to be totally uninteresting and whose posts I skip over as a matter of course, because they write about topics that aren't relevant to me. This doesn't mean that I or them have bad taste. It just means we have different interests and we want different things out of TheMotte.
For my part, I'm not particularly interested in a play-by-play of current events, unless the event is particularly earth-shattering, or the post has a novel theoretical take. I don't really care that Canada introduced new hate speech laws for example, but if you have a new argument I've never heard before for why hate speech laws are actually a good thing, then that could be a post worth reading.
As usual, you are the forum. If people aren't writing the kinds of posts you want to read, then you should write more of the kinds of posts that you want to read.
EDIT: Why do you think the response to your post about abortion was abysmal? I think the response was pretty good. It generated a decent amount of engagement for a top level post and it prompted some interesting replies from @RandomRanger and @self_made_human about transhumanism, so, job well done, mission accomplished.
More options
Context Copy link