Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[Sinekein]

@Sinekein

I don't think the point is that change is always bad. It's that extremely fast or dramatic change is very disruptive and it grinds a lot of people up in its gears as it's happening. The fact that such things changing from a cosmological perspective are inevitable doesn't mean that humans should just surrender all of our still considerable power to slow down or mitigate change when it's good to do so.

Indeed, but is that change happening that fast? Society has evolved incredibly quickly for the last 250 years. We are not currently experiencing some kind of incredible situation. In the last 250 years, we got (at least in Western countries) a huge increase in literacy, life expectancy has roughly doubled and child mortality became an exception, the wilderness has been on a constant decline that also can be observed "on a grandmother's lifetime" - a teacher I had back in Uni made a study on how much natural diversity had been lowered throughout the years in Disney movies, starting with Snow White or Bambi, because people got progressively disconnected from it...

So saying that "right now" is an exception in how fast society is changing is just bollocks. Maybe the U.S. are an exception. 60 years ago black people barely had any rights in the U.S, and gay people could be thrown to jail with nary anyone raising an eyebrow.

And I'm sorry but I can't agree that women's rights and opportunities to live equally as diverse or ambitious lives as men is something that should be slowed down or mitigateded. Whenever there is a fight against some kind of ostracization, you get people living on the "good side of the fence" throwing calls of extremism to those who want an improvement, even though in practice the balance almost never fully shifts to the other side - and while some extremists do exist, they tend to be looked with contempt by a huge majority of those that should share their struggles. That's why I cringe so much hearing about "black supremacists" or "gay propagandists" as if there was a huge risk of white people suddenly becoming a weak minority, or straight people being attacked for not embracing same-sex relationships.

Now there are things in which humans should use their considerable power to slow down change, like climate change, but on the contrary, the same conservatives who love to talk about the "good ol' days" of society seem to suddenly turn deaf when it would be good to do so. Suddenly, "society" or "the world" doesn't matter, only "my little lazy, cosy life" does.

[Vol]

We also went from men who were domestically useless, to men who actually know how to cook, clean, wash dishes, and take care of living places or kids.

Also, having a career is less of "a grand aspiration" than "an active improvement over the boring, mortifying life of a housewife".

Men, and nature, loathe a void.

Well, we can compare deathbed reflections from women who were homemakers versus those who pursued wealth, and see how they felt about their choices in the end. Deal? I promise not to use number of offspring in attendance as a rhetorical dagger.

In your great-great-great-grandmother's lifetime or something, you went from a "melting pot" of nearly entirely Native Americans with a huge religious diversity to a nation where Native Americans are a minority that is barely socially relevant and where only one religion crushes all others when it comes to influence and power.

That just happens.

So you agree with me? American Indians were destroyed, now they linger in reservations, sometimes blighted, when they once had the entire continent covered in their tribes and beliefs. If I were one, I would call that a very bad outcome. They would have been better served to violently reject the colonizers with everything they could.

I'd argue that what we're currently facing isn't secular humanism. Secular humanism is rational and still fits safely within the traditional liberal position of arguing on the basis of reason and empirical evidence and letting the best interpretations win. Modern militant leftism of the "woke" variety is much more like a religious impulse, which is why it's so impervious to calls to reason. It rejects reasoning and objectivity themselves as part of the blasphemies and sacrileges it is trying to purge from society. The only appropriate response to such attempts at argument from its position is "Get behind me, Satan!"

I disagree, but without getting into a yuge side spiel on what secular humanism is or is not, we can agree that "This" is a mutation. And it has been a rapid one. But it is very much religious, I will agree. No God or set scriptures, but it's the same impulses.

I'm somewhat dubious that we had no say in it whatsoever. But even so, how else is a consensus supposed to emerge out of a moral morass of disagreement? At some point something has to be crushed because the very technology that created the unprecedented changes in the first place will allow little pockets of discontent to not only continue to exist and fester but to wield outsize influence and disruptive potential far beyond their actual appeal or strength.

Small-scale balkanization or conquest. Two groups disagree on a point, they split up, or one group forces their will on the other. Then over time, this repeats up to the population level, with the likely result being different peoples from different regions have different beliefs and there's an equilibrium of sorts, that ebbs and flows with time. When the command to be ethical comes from the very top, you immediately fracture, hence why you see people who don't hate Jews choose to stand with Nazis because they like their guns and don't like abortions. We can all pretend that symbolically denouncing the worst of us means anything, but if it comes down to it, I would think gun owners would welcome a far right extremist in their trench if it comes down to mass confiscations, same as limousine liberals would embrace Maoist Third Worlders if it meant keeping abortions. The only nuance can exist in relatively isolated areas, because they cannot be punished by the power being used to impress the New Faith on us. The power being wielded is too blunt and encompassing. If I can lose my job, kids, and online presence for noting how weirdly over-represented black male/white female pairings are in commercials, to whom can you look to for agreement if support or apathy are the conditioned responses? Under the old moral leaders, you could move. If your found anti-miscegenation to be intolerable, you could move to the cities, they could not touch you there, because the Constitutional foundation we shared made it legal and thus there were places with different beliefs that would not be stamped out. Today, that courtesy is not extended, unless you wish to live off the grid.

It was not necessary for Americans to have a consensus so long as we had that general common foundation. We split over industrial states imposing their views that chattel slavery is bad on the states who still were economically dependent on it. The Confederacy lost, the slaves were freed, and we all agree it's bad to treat humans as property. Directly, anyway, in abstract, little fascists love that shit. Yes, someone will need to be crushed, but history is not always kind to the big, dominant group in that regard. Especially when there's no standing army to fight or territory to take.

If the problem is that crushing is intrinsically unseemly and that the only recourse is to aggressively protect the marketplace of ideas that might allow an actual organic consensus to emerge (a sentiment I largely share), how is the McWhorter stance on cosplay not an example of something like this? Something that looks at two sides with purist positions and attempts to find a solution someplace in the muddy middle? That tries to wield stigma in a way that's actually half-assedly worthwhile and *not* just about blindly crushing everything that steps a single toe past propriety?

In any event, artificially preventing anybody from getting the upper hand in the norm setting department is certainly not a way to develop a consensus. The only set of standards that would enshrine is pure nihilism.

No, crushing is natural and inevitable. It can be unseemly, such as the Wiemar degeneracy, and then the National Socialists crushing that in turn, and now this self-hating streak the west has, but the acceptance of the inevitable is not accepting it now or in any form.

[Sinekein]

Men, and nature, loathe a void.

Well, we can compare deathbed reflections from women who were homemakers versus those who pursued wealth, and see how they felt about their choices in the end. Deal? I promise not to use number of offspring in attendance as a rhetorical dagger.

That's not a rhetorical dagger, that's the normal consequence of improving your social status: you get fewer kids. That has been observed in basically every civilization ever. And also on about every animal species ever: if you spend more (because you can afford it) to take care of your kids, then you get fewer of them. That's called the r/K selection theory.

Also, there are fewer things more biased than deathbed reflections on that matter, since most of those would have to be obtained by a religious figure of some sort, and all monotheistic religions place a huge emphasis on how cool and dandy and fulfilling it is for women to have lots of kids, and how bad and wrong it is for them not to have been walking ovaries.

There are tons of way to live happy lives with only one or two kids, successful careers, and fulfilling personal development outside of the house. You should go and talk to women, if they tried it, they probably adopted it - but of course, they need not to live in a society that is too backwards to give them that chance.

So you agree with me? American Indians were destroyed, now they linger in reservations, sometimes blighted, when they once had the entire continent covered in their tribes and beliefs. If I were one, I would call that a very bad outcome. They would have been better served to violently reject the colonizers with everything they could.

First, I mean that white americans had it coming from a historical perspective.

Second, if white people are so afraid to be replaced, then they shouldn't treat the hypothetical would-be replacers as dirt and give them a reason to seek retribution if they ever become a majority. Because, as mentioned above, if you treat people like dirt and stop them from climbing the social ladder, they will remain extremely fertile, and their part in the total population will keep increasing at a very fast rate.

Third, unlike WASPs, migrant populations are way, way more diverse than the initial colonists. The WASPs have it better than everyone else, but there is no common goal between african-americans, hispanics, east asians, indians and arabs to specifically remove white people from the U.S., that's just racist paranoia. Those who exterminated the Indians followed a common goal, which cannot be said from a mix of Central Americans, Africans, Near-Eastern and Far Eastern people, who have different cultures, religions and beliefs.

Although I must say that the GOP and Trump are doing a fine job "Otherizing" anyone with a skin dark enough to make the standard whitey afraid for his life as if somehow catholic mexicans, muslim syrians and buddhist Chineses have a secret pact to kill all of them.

[Raga]

More evidence that open-ended trade agreements that liberalize the movement of stuff between developed countries and developing countries are a terrible idea for developed countries (and usually also for developing countries that don't have the global clout of China since it opens their workers up to rampant exploitation by foreign firms and environmental degradation).

The article didn't really put it this way, but it's the unavoidable subtext.

[Vol]

That's not a rhetorical dagger, that's the normal consequence of improving your social status: you get fewer kids. That has been observed in basically every civilization ever. And also on about every animal species ever: if you spend more (because you can afford it) to take care of your kids, then you get fewer of them.

What value is there is improving your social status if that status dies with you? Life has been spent chasing something intangible, subjective, and quickly forgotten, huzzah. It may be a natural result of multiple different variables, as well as a need for external validation from irrelevant people, but it's not to be lauded because of that.

Also, there are fewer things more biased than deathbed reflections on that matter, since most of those would have to be obtained by a religious figure of some sort, and all monotheistic religions place a huge emphasis on how cool and dandy and fulfilling it is for women to have lots of kids, and how bad and wrong it is for them not to have been walking ovaries.

Those mono and polytheistic sorts, the successful ones, have made lasting civilizations that stand tall to today. While our secular whatever-you-want-to-call-it is very young, and already it's showing it cannot be sustained. It's a fundamentally self-destructive belief that is a passing luxury.

There are tons of way to live happy lives with only one or two kids, successful careers, and fulfilling personal development outside of the house. You should go and talk to women, if they tried it, they probably adopted it - but of course, they need not to live in a society that is too backwards to give them that chance.

I agree, and then when everyone does it, the population contracts. Which would be fine, except the luxuries of the first world were based on the theory that population would always go up. Some more asceticism for the spoiled masses will be good tho.

First, I mean that white americans had it coming from a historical perspective.

Second, if white people are so afraid to be replaced, then they shouldn't treat the hypothetical would-be replacers as dirt and give them a reason to seek retribution if they ever become a majority. Because, as mentioned above, if you treat people like dirt and stop them from climbing the social ladder, they will remain extremely fertile, and their part in the total population will keep increasing at a very fast rate.

Whites are no better or worse than any others when it comes to conquest. We've done it better than anyone else, true, but it's surely not innate, right?

I mean. That's what about half of white people are trying to do. The other half are slowly being tugged towards ethnic nationalism. That's the problem.

[Sinekein]

What value is there is improving your social status if that status dies with you? Life has been spent chasing something intangible, subjective, and quickly forgotten, huzzah. It may be a natural result of multiple different variables, as well as a need for external validation from irrelevant people, but it's not to be lauded because of that.

Aside from the obvious fact that we live in a digital world where it is rather easy to create something that will survive you, however significant, happiness for its own sake is very much a goal that makes a life meaningful. It is extremely reactionary to consider that siring heirs is the only thing that gives meaning to a life. It can, but it should not be the only criterion of success. There are several aspects of life where humanity has outgrown its basic animal instincts, so we are not bound to spreading our DNA anymore.

Plus I have seen enough graveyards with forgotten tombstones two or three generations after a death, because the descendents did not get heirs themselves, or because they move away, or because they just did not care. Among those tombs, some people probably lived satisfying lives, and some gave their heart out to raise a family - for a similar result a couple decades later.

Those mono and polytheistic sorts, the successful ones, have made lasting civilizations that stand tall to today. While our secular whatever-you-want-to-call-it is very young, and already it's showing it cannot be sustained. It's a fundamentally self-destructive belief that is a passing luxury.

France has been secular for either one or two centuries depending on whether you consider 1789 or 1905 (the year the separation of Church and State was written in the Constitution). It does not seem to be on a faster way to hell than other countries, and its secularism is definitely something healthy and that can be sustained. Its issues are linked to many things, but not the lack of religion. And it is also true for several other European countries (and Canada, New Zealand or Australia I assume).

Sure, the French civ has existed for longer than that, but it has absolutely survived a removal of religious power, and in the 19th century it actually thrived.

Most successful civilizations embraced a religion, but it was more often than not an accessory to their success, which could be found in either military power, trade efficiency, entrepreneurial acumen, engineering talent, etc. If England became a worldwide Empire, it's not because Henry VIII decided to split from papal influence, it's because they were fucking great at building ships, which is a task in which religion plays zero part. France has been influential because Frenchmen have often been great, efficient farmers. Again, God was not actually the one growing the crops.

I agree, and then when everyone does it, the population contracts. Which would be fine, except the luxuries of the first world were based on the theory that population would always go up. Some more asceticism for the spoiled masses will be good tho.

Well yeah, infinite growth is a dumb concept, and thankfully (but not quickly enough) it is currently being slowly exposed as a fraud. I do agree that asceticism as a whole would do most rich countries a ton of good, but you don't make "asceticism" rhyme with enticing political slogans, sadly (some Green parties in Europe are starting to use variations, but they are pretty different from the US Greens).

Whites are no better or worse than any others when it comes to conquest. We've done it better than anyone else, true, but it's surely not innate, right?

I mean. That's what about half of white people are trying to do. The other half are slowly being tugged towards ethnic nationalism. That's the problem.

White people have dominated the era of global powers so far, so they profited from the added influence of modern techniques to conquer more, but they have not been strictly "better" than other ethnicities. Pound for pound I doubt the Mongolians will be beaten anytime soon (thankfully). So it's not innate, and as history shows, dominant civilizations come and go. It's natural too, because success brings wealth, and wealth brings reduced birth rates, which usually ends up bringing demographical decline.

Now, you can either try to incite your people to have more kids because it is your "ethnic mission" or something, or you can consider that what matters is not the future of your ethnicity, but the future of your kids or close ones, and to push for a society where they'll be the happiest.

Honestly, I doubt most kids, no matter their color, enjoy high racial tensions in a society. Some will profit from it, but they probably won't be in the majority.

So white people are not strictly worse than others, it's just that resorting to racism to keep a dominant position is a very bad long-term prospect (and not a very good short-term one either).

Now we might be on the verge of a shift of power towards Eastern Asian countries, and I doubt they will be any better morally than European ones if the Chinese government is any indication.

[Alienmorph]

Welp, Salvini and the extreme right won another regional election, and the already brittle government the left and the 5 Star populists managed to cobble togheter seems more fragile than ever. Looks like we're almost unavoidablely heading towards another few years of fake nationalist bullcrap.

Can't emphasize this enough, stay the fuck away from my contry. Especially if you're black, lgbt or wanted to head down here with someone of those types.

"Bel Paese" my ass.

[Vol]

Nate Silver, of all people, makes a point that Trump being in charge while Baghdadi is a good thing for the country. Immediately dog-piled by leftists for heresy. It's not rare to see the moderates get lambasted for going against the orthodoxy, but it's nice on occasion. Killing terrorist leader good->NO ORANGE MAN BAD! Also fun to see that it's now woke to support permanent garrisons in the Middle East. We must achieve total social justice for disenfranchised groups of all stripes, and also keep a military presence in Syria to help form a Kurdish ethnostate!

@Alien: B-but, I like the pizza-pasta and-a the espresso!

So is Italy at the stage where social services and the law are breaking down or not?

[Alienmorph]

So is Italy at the stage where social services and the law are breaking down or not?

No, but we're chock-full of stupid and/or violent people, that will give the control of the country to an alliance of extreme-right-leaning parties at the first chance. And a collection of left-leaning parties that is worse than useless. Just a few years and we'll be doing worse than Greece did at its lowest point, I'm almost certain.

[Mobius_118]

Nate Silver, of all people, makes a point that Trump being in charge while Baghdadi is a good thing for the country. Immediately dog-piled by leftists for heresy. It's not rare to see the moderates get lambasted for going against the orthodoxy, but it's nice on occasion. Killing terrorist leader good->NO ORANGE MAN BAD! Also fun to see that it's now woke to support permanent garrisons in the Middle East. We must achieve total social justice for disenfranchised groups of all stripes, and also keep a military presence in Syria to help form a Kurdish ethnostate!

@Alien: B-but, I like the pizza-pasta and-a the espresso!

So is Italy at the stage where social services and the law are breaking down or not?

It has more to do with that fuckwaffle's tweet about President Obama being in charge when Bin Laden was killed, and shitbag not giving President Obama credit, meanwhile dumbfuck is taking credit for the Baghdadi raid than the raid itself. Oh, and that fake "war room" photo compared to President Obama's actual war room photo? That little bitch is compensating hard for his inadequacies compared to President Obama.

Speaking of said raid, Baghdadi has been "killed" before. Until a body has been found and PID'd, it's the same shit before.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

Every single media talking point by rote.

Impressive Mobius.

[Raga]

Well, one rare moment of bipartisan agreement anyway. This dog is a good boy.

[Mobius_118]

Every single media talking point by rote.

Impressive Mobius.

Ok. It's only reality. It's what actually happened.

Nothing new here. You're still a bitch.

[TTTX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGijp9jGdUU

[Vol]

So the House passed the resolution to affirm the rules of their "impeachment inquiry."

Does nothing important, since the House majority is already doing whatever they want vis-a-vis committees and selective leaks. Also the third-hand whistleblower is now known. CIA spook, Democrat partisan, thrown out of the WH for leaking already. The gall is impressive, in a way. The GOP would never have the balls to perform such a play, even if it's theater. Though now the GOP can submit subpoenas! But only if Schiff lets them.

@Mob: There hasn't been a president worthy of taking credit for military operations, beyond authorizing them, in a long time. But such is the nature of power that credit flows uphill.

I caught part of a press conference with a general after, he claimed they DNA tested the remains from the blast tunnel, and it was him. Plus 2 of his kids, not 3.

[Raga]

Is the guy even technically a "whistleblower?" I thought he reported things through some kind of official channel that's there to give people an in-house way to deal with stuff they might otherwise take to the press.

[Vol]

I don't know the legal definition, but in the common sense, I'd say no. Third hand information is ridiculous to make a claim with.

"A guy told me his boss sells drugs out of the backroom, can you get a search warrant for that?"

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/30/77478861 ... court-says

Something to keep in mind when wishing absolute power to the State. If a guy steals $50 worth of shit from Walmart and holes up on your property with a gun, the cops can and will play like pretend soldiers, and you don't see a penny if they make your home uninhabitable.

[Sinekein]

What, a problem with U.S. Police using excessive force? I am shocked. I think there is a joke to be made about the fact that for once it happens to a white guy (although he's still alive to tell the tale).

Also, the quality of the whistleblower is sort of a moot point now since the POTUS made the same claims that supposedly happened in that call on National TV (and his third-rate information looks still more reliable than everything about either Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden which are basically considered as the absolute truth by Trumpists).

[Raga]

I don't know the legal definition, but in the common sense, I'd say no. Third hand information is ridiculous to make a claim with.

No, I mean that my understanding was that he didn't leak anything. He reported something up the chain of command within the government. If that's the case, even if he did it for partisan reasons, it's a pretty strong argument for keeping his identity a secret. I always thought a "whistleblower" was somebody who broke the rules to reveal information like Edward Snowden. If this guy followed the rules to reveal something he thought was a problem, then he did what he was supposed to do, even if his information is bad. If his cover is blown even when he follows the rules, there is 0 reason for people to use official channels and not to take things straight out to the hack tabloid of their choice.

However, I admit I haven't followed the probe super closely and I didn't follow the Mueller probe super closely day to day because it's such a slow laborious process. And because, even if the investigations are partisan in nature, Trump has done so much ridiculous stuff that there is essentially no logical or ethical grounds on which to forbid investigations of him. I'm content to pay attention to major developments and whatever the end result is.

[Raga]

What, a problem with U.S. Police using excessive force? I am shocked. I think there is a joke to be made about the fact that for once it happens to a white guy (although he's still alive to tell the tale).

TLDR Police in the US have major problems and everybody knows it. It's one reason sentencing and policing reform are actually one of the few bipartisan sentiments around these days.

It actually happens to white people all the time too. It just doesn't make the news, or rather nobody takes to protesting over it. There were two people killed in Houston recently because a no-knock SWAT drug raid showed up at the complete wrong house. There was also a homeless woman shot in Dallas because a cop shot at her dog which wasn't even doing anything threatening and hit her instead. Or that dude who lost his Land Rover still hasn't gotten it back even after the Supreme Court ordered it to be returned.

The police in general in the US are militarized and have severe cultural problems. Black people just feel the brunt of it because they usually feel the brunt of everything. But the idea that the police explicitly target them and that they act normally with everybody else because "white privilege" or whatever is over-spoken.

*Edit* I've even had them treat me weirdly and as a small white chick I should especially be getting bonus points in ostensible benefit of the doubt or whatever.

1. One time me and my sister were driving up to NE Texas to my dad's for Christmas. I had just moved back to Houston from LA and was driving so my sister was giving me instructions on the best route to take. She told me to get over a couple of lanes because I needed to make a right turn. So I turned my blinker on and did so. There was a guy in a truck with his head buried in a cell phone not paying attention and he almost ran into the back end of me when I got over. As it turns out, this dude was a cop wearing his uniform but off his shift so he was driving his civilian vehicle. We got stopped at the light at the intersection and this dude proceeded to get out of his truck, physically walk up to our windows, and start yelling and screaming at us through the glass that "It's called a blinker for a fucking reason and you are lucky I'm off duty." I did have my blinker on. My sister confirmed it. He just didn't fucking see me because he was buried in his cell phone while driving, but he wanted to blame it on me anyway.

2. One time before I moved to LA for school, I was putting stuff too big to haul across the country into a storage unit my mom had in my small hometown. This town has a population of like 2400 and maybe four cops. I was working & living at a small city in Louisiana about an hour away so the only time I had to bring stuff was after work when it was already dark. Somebody, I guess, thought I was stealing stuff since I was in and out of this storage unit and called the police. They showed up and I proved I had a padlock with key and a sensible story and they left and drove away. Later, as I was driving back to Louisiana, I noticed a weird car behind me clearly following me with its lights off. As this is a weird, creepy fucking thing for anybody to do, I immediately became very concerned and was constantly watching them in the rear-view mirror. As such, I drifted slightly over the line to the right and then corrected. The car then immediately turned its lights, complete with red and blues, and pulled me over for "swerving." They then demanded to run my license. And, of course, found nothing, and let me go. So basically, these wannabe Dirty Harry cops spent like 2 hours "casing" me because they had it in their head I was some kind of criminal because I was loading furniture in a store room at like 10 pm and when that failed reverted to overt intimidation to try to force me to do something that gave them the means to search me or detain me or who even knows what the fuck.

[Sinekein]

The police in general in the US are militarized and have severe cultural problems.

In my mind it clearly has something to do with gun culture in the U.S.

Policemen can be equally as violent in France really, there are regular reports of police brutality, with the same kind of bias towards black (or more often North African) people - although Yellow Jackets demonstrators also felt it last year, and they were mostly blue collar Caucasians, in the same vein as what you wrote about white people in the U.S. (except here it made the headlines).

But there still is something of a taboo when it comes to using "real" guns - not those who throw various kinds of theoretically non-lethal projectiles. Apparently in 2017 policemen in the entirety of France used their weapons 485 times, and that was a 50% increase from 2016. That's the number for all policement, over the entire country. 2017 was the first time there was more than one gun use every day by policemen in France.

Which makes sense because except for a small number of hardline criminals involved in drug trafficking, most of the people they try to arrest don't have guns themselves.

[Vol]

Well, as per usual, Raga presents the point in far greater detail and with sources. But yes, American police are depressingly eager to execute civilians at any perceived threat to themselves. Combination of factors, including have to police urban blight, dealing with people who'd rather die than be caught, usually in the drug trade, and exceptionally generous pay/benefits, plus the natural corruption of power.

I'd disarm them, honestly. Only get to carry a service weapon when there's a real and present risk of being murdered on your beat. And even then, I'd not trade a single innocent civilian's life for all of theirs combined. But the reality is, as agents of the state, they're just about immune to anything but a preponderance of wrongdoing, which even if you have, does not guarantee they won't keep their jobs or their cushy pensions.

[Raga]

In my mind it clearly has something to do with gun culture in the U.S.

I'd argue it's principally a result of two things. One, is the 1033 program which lets police buy and deploy various kinds of military grade hardware. If I remember right part of the logic behind this was because back in the 90s there was this bank robbery in California somewhere where some guys had bullet proof vests and semi auto assault rifles and the police were laughably outgunned by them. However, they ended up taking them out by taking more or less a hunting rifle which would be legal even in most of Europe and climbing a building across the street and sniping the guys in the head. So the logic behind this program has always been flawed. 99.999% of crimes don't involve hardware such as those bank robbers had and even the ones that do can be solved by mundane equipment with the right deployment and tactics. The times when it truly is "we need military grade hardware or people will die" are exceedingly rare. The very idea that the police needed to employ military siege tactics to roust a shoplifter (even a shoplifter with a gun) out of a house is ludicrous.

The other problem is that there's been notorious issues of corruption and culture issues pretty much as long as there have been police in the US. The assbackwardness of police in the South in the 1960s or the LAPD leading up the 1992 riots are infamous and happened even in times and regions with strict gun laws. This old school "good ole boyism" has never gone away though it has gotten somewhat better. However, there is a new problem in the way that police are trained in which it is drilled into their heads that they must "control" situations at all times. They must be 100% in control in all instances at all times whether it's a mundane traffic stop or an active shooter scene. In application this results in "you must dominate everyone in every encounter you have with them because if you let your guard down even 1 iota they might try to kill you." Of course, that inevitably leads to escalation over stupid offenses, unnecessary force, and general suspicion and unpleasantness in which many people assume that cops are all just domineering, arrogant assholes.

[Sinekein]

The second point is an issue with most figures of authority, we have the same out here roughly speaking, with the uniform making people feel like they are above the law, or that they are the law. Of course there is also the fact that they have been enabled by...well, basically every minister of Inner affairs ever (the job is nicknamed "France's first cop", and none of the successive ministers have ever tried to get away from that nickname) who will gleefully support all cop misbehavior. Probably because politicians are too afraid of the consequences of being vocally critical of the police (even on the left).

But the first one, to me, boils down to adapting to the threats you face. If you can easily buy a functioning semi-automatic weapon in the U.S. with little to no ID check, it makes sense for the police to be equipped to deal with them. In France, cops mostly have to face handguns or hunting rifles. Some drug traffickers have semi-auto weapons, but since those are illegal, they are very hard to come by and as such when a situation requires to face them, elite forces (GIGN, RAID...) are called. But it's not the job of Michel the average cop.

And since guns are not going away anytime soon, then the police is unlikely to relinquish its own weapons. Even the leftest of the Democrats knows how horrendous the headlines would be if cops started being gunned down by criminals better equipped than them, or were getting killed by the dozen because they have to follow a stricter protocol before opening fire.

[Grand Admiral Cheesecake]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSULDilYcqE

Not related to the current discussion but I found it interesting. There were a few results in this I wasn't quite expecting. Always nice to get a new view on things.

[Raga]

But the first one, to me, boils down to adapting to the threats you face. If you can easily buy a functioning semi-automatic weapon in the U.S. with little to no ID check, it makes sense for the police to be equipped to deal with them. In France, cops mostly have to face handguns or hunting rifles. Some drug traffickers have semi-auto weapons, but since those are illegal, they are very hard to come by and as such when a situation requires to face them, elite forces (GIGN, RAID...) are called. But it's not the job of Michel the average cop.

And since guns are not going away anytime soon, then the police is unlikely to relinquish its own weapons. Even the leftest of the Democrats knows how horrendous the headlines would be if cops started being gunned down by criminals better equipped than them, or were getting killed by the dozen because they have to follow a stricter protocol before opening fire.

I'm not really arguing that there is not such a perception of being outgunned that is fueling the para-militarization of the police. I'm saying that statistically speaking, the perception is false. When guns come up here too, it's overwhelmingly handguns. (If I recall the stat is something like violent crimes with handguns 7 or 8 times higher than crimes committed with all other gun types combined).

And then there is the problem that once you have the military grade equipment you want to use it. The armored personnel carrier that is really only useful once a generation after some natural disaster to stop looting or something starts getting deployed for every single mundane permitted protest. "To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" as the saying goes.

[Raga]

Slate Star Codex on New Atheism

I love this blog. It's consistently very thought provoking. Though he writes using about 50x more words than he needs to which you know is bad when I say so.

[Vol]

"...the decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate,"

For all the endless, hysterical shit flung at Trump, both openly and via the byzantine processes of our government, he still more or less seems to respect the process. I always took it to mean the GOP solidarity for him to remain immune to removal was conditional, since they tried to damn hard to get rid of him in the primaries. But he's also probably not a Jackson sort when it comes to action. Let it play out, knowing that for all the propaganda, he'll win, or at least not lose. Though with all the officials at all levels, in all branches, acting in bad faith that appears it should be illegal, or cause for removal, yet face nothing, maybe there's other reasons.

I believe I'd like that in a president for a little while. Piss and vinegar, fuck the courts and their endless nonsense, fuck Congress and their purses, we're doing to act in the best interest of my people, dammit. Of course, with the caveat that he's not part of the ruling class or susceptible to their wiles, I'd be content even if he's left-leaning.

[Sinekein]

I believe I'd like that in a president for a little while. Piss and vinegar, fuck the courts and their endless nonsense, fuck Congress and their purses, we're doing to act in the best interest of my people, dammit.

Trump renews threat to cut wildfire aid to California

That doesn't sound like "acting in the best interest of the people" (but it does sound like a giant fuck you to a political opponent).

[Raga]

The Happy, Healthy Capitalists of Switzerland

The man difference between this style of capitalism and ours seems to be that the Swiss actually ask the question if a given policy is good for people in Switzerland and not just if it's good for giant corporations.

[Sinekein]

Okay, a few points about Switzerland.

- they became rich because of their political neutrality and because they are Europe's bank. It is an absolutely unique situation for countries that are not microstates or loaded with oil. It is a shady tax haven, who got rich with this system, who especially profited from its "neutrality" during WWII, but was smart enough to invest the gains to ensure they wouldn't go bankrupt if that ended (which it still hasn't right now, even though if it is on the way of being fixed). Their lower tax rates also explain why many companies are Swiss in the first place.

- they are not part of the EU, so there are borders around the country (unlike the Scandinavian ones), meaning they have a much tighter control over who comes in and who goes out. As a result, they are diverse only if you look at them from an Europe-centric point of view (in that they have French, Italian, German, Austrian roots among other things) but non-European immigrants are a significantly smaller part of their population than any Scandinavian country.

- they are profiting from the system of border workers : people that live near Switzerland, that get richly paid for their jobs there, but who don't live in the country (meaning that Switzerland doesn't have to bother with things such as health services, unemployment wages, etc...). It was actively detrimental for several countries surrounding it because those countries usually have an unemployment wage system based on how much money was made in the previous job, which means that many border workers in France have a 6 month job in Switzerland, and then get an unpaid wage paid by France that is well above what most French people earn for an actual, full-time job of similar education requirements. Will probably get fixed soon in France (I have no idea what the situation is in Italy, Germany or Austria).

- since they are entirely neutral, they have no standing army, only conscripts. That saves a truckload of money every year. Imagine if the U.S. budget could put its military spending to nearly zero, and allocate it to education, health and infrastructure instead.

Switzerland is basically an example of wisely spending your huge wealth. Their democratic system is indeed extremely well-crafted and makes all citizens heavily invested in the political life. But it is such a singular country that trying to replicate its overall success elsewhere is doomed with failure. On a sidenote, Norway is roughly similar to Switzerland, except with natural resources instead of banking as a primary source of income.

[TheodoricFriede]

Trump renews threat to cut wildfire aid to California

That doesn't sound like "acting in the best interest of the people" (but it does sound like a giant fuck you to a political opponent).

Obama didnt let Houston, you know home of NASA, have one of the space shuttles because Texas was a political opponent.

If you think Donald Trump is the first president to screw over people he doesn't like, I have a bridge to sell you.

[Vol]

Trump renews threat to cut wildfire aid to California

That doesn't sound like "acting in the best interest of the people" (but it does sound like a giant fuck you to a political opponent).

Besides the usual sentiment of "Fuck Commifornia," on a more practical level, given how grossly mismanaged their woodlands and powerlines are, how does rewarding them with more federal aid in any way stop the problem? Though I doubt he'd actually stop the aid, given that apparently everyone who receives government money is legally entitled to it and the courts will demand you keep giving it to them if challenged, maybe a threat will give them pretense to actually deal with their fucking dry brush properly.

[Sinekein]

Obama didnt let Houston, you know home of NASA, have one of the space shuttles because Texas was a political opponent.

If you think Donald Trump is the first president to screw over people he doesn't like, I have a bridge to sell you.

Two wrongs do not one right make.

Besides the usual sentiment of "Fuck Commifornia," on a more practical level, given how grossly mismanaged their woodlands and powerlines are, how does rewarding them with more federal aid in any way stop the problem? Though I doubt he'd actually stop the aid, given that apparently everyone who receives government money is legally entitled to it and the courts will demand you keep giving it to them if challenged, maybe a threat will give them pretense to actually deal with their fucking dry brush properly.

It is harder to manage some of the largest and oldest forests in the world (California basically has all the record trees in the world - tallest, oldest, largest, etc...) when the weather is becoming drier and warmer at an alarming rate, since there is a direct correlation between those parameters and the risk of a fire starting.

Unless you ignore the existence of climate change, in which case, yes, "bad management".

[TheodoricFriede]

Two wrongs do not one right make.

No. They make the real world.

[Raga]

It is harder to manage some of the largest and oldest forests in the world (California basically has all the record trees in the world - tallest, oldest, largest, etc...) when the weather is becoming drier and warmer at an alarming rate, since there is a direct correlation between those parameters and the risk of a fire starting.

Unless you ignore the existence of climate change, in which case, yes, "bad management".

Climate change exacerbates it, but California's entire ecology is designed to run on fire. There are species of trees there that can't even germinate if there isn't fire. There are certain places where humans more or less have no business living unless they are hunter gatherers living in grass huts. We are dealing with this problem in Houston now too. Every single big rain, some x% of houses get flooded. One particularly bad neighborhood is called Braeswood. Braes Bayou floods. Always. Every time. Or Galveston Island. If there is more than like 10ish foot storm surge from a hurricane, Galveston Island will flood. Without doubt.

Some of the largest growing cities in the country are in the middle of the biggest desert in the country and they are inland deserts so they can't even turn to desalination. This is epically stupid.

Does it make sense to use tax money to keep rebuilding these places over and over and over? That's not a defense of Trump, but I do realistically think that at some point the aid money is going to have to be contingent on people moving somewhere else.

The California thing is especially tricky because all those people living up in the Ventura Hills or whatever are filthy, filthy rich. If you have the money to afford the bad decision of building a house on top of the Santa Monica Mountains in the dry, dry chaparral and won't let anybody do control burning to get rid of fuel buildup because the smoke hurts your allergies or whatever, it's not a strong case to give any kind of aid to help them resettle there.

[Sinekein]

Two wrongs do not one right make.

No. They make the real world.

Such an edgy thought.

The California thing is especially tricky because all those people living up in the Ventura Hills or whatever are filthy, filthy rich. If you have the money to afford the bad decision of building a house on top of the Santa Monica Mountains in the dry, dry chaparral and won't let anybody do control burning to get rid of fuel buildup because the smoke hurts your allergies or whatever, it's not a strong case to give any kind of aid to help them resettle there.

That is true but a point has been reached that even control fires are incredibly tricky to pull off due to how dry everything is. Year after year everything burns down where a couple decades or centuries ago those fires occurred naturally and died off naturally.

Also, it is a wee bit hard to hear Trump, who at this point is probably only rivalled by Bolsonaro as the most disastrous man on the planet for the environment, use ecology as a reason to cut funds while supporting fracking anywhere on the planet, cutting clean air or clean water bills, and withdrawing from international agreements to reduce carbon emission. And I can't help but thinking that had one of his golf resorts been near Santa Monica he wouldn't have been that prickly.

[TTTX]

Such an edgy thought.

Humans are flawed.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The real world isn't always nice, much like humans themselves, human history is filled such examples.

[Raga]

That is true but a point has been reached that even control fires are incredibly tricky to pull off due to how dry everything is.

True, plus we've got ourselves into a doublefuck of a situation where the fires are way, way worse because we've let fuel build up for 100 years
of no burning but we dare not burn for the very reason that the fires will be way, way worse. And now global warming is starting to take even the pretense of that choice away. Shits gonna burn whether people want it to or not.

The area I grew up in in Texas is heavily wooded, The Piney Woods. And it was something of a mindbomb for me having grown up in and around the woods all the time throughout my life that I had basically never been inside an actually healthy forest that looks the way it's supposed to look. No, it's not supposed to be completely snarled with underbrush and fallen logs and 2 feet thick of pine needles. That stuff is supposed to burn.

(This is an additional thought rather than contradiction).

[Raga]

Reading this:



It's really about centralizing authorities pushing for the standardization of everything and why this does and doesn't work at different times and why it's not always (or even mostly) done for reasons which are good for the underlying population. It's really about optimizing the population in various ways which are advantageous to the central authority.

The author made a sort of by the way statement which isn't really his central point that stuck with me. That the standardization a state imposes on its own population works as a kind of internal colonization, if you define "colonization" as optimizing a given population to enable maximally efficient resource extraction and various kinds of social engineering to further the ends of a central authority.

If you accept that on its face and also accept a somewhat overly simplified definition of the right vs the left then broadly speaking, the right are okay with colonization of other populations, and the left are okay with colonization of the domestic population.

*Edit* The book is also a useful place to look for people who don't understand the fundamental similarities between socialism and fascism. The similarities have pretty much nothing to do with economic theory and everything to do with how the state employs its administration and bureaucracy towards some ideological end or other.

[Vol]

You have to admire the chutzpah. Wonder how well that sort of ad would go over in other cities, targeted at a native minority population. This death-cult stuff is silly.

@Raga: Having read multiple books on the Maoist revolution, from the lay person to Mao himself, the similarities are stark. Only noticeable difference is the raw amount of power wielded, and that bullwarks been steadily eroded for many years. Once bureaucrats have the power to enforce their views, or the views of their boss, they will do so, totally, either for protection of themselves, or because they don't see themselves as a moral agent in the system.

[Sinekein]

When I was in Australia they ran ads to promote vasectomy on Father's Day.

*Edit* The book is also a useful place to look for people who don't understand the fundamental similarities between socialism and fascism. The similarities have pretty much nothing to do with economic theory and everything to do with how the state employs its administration and bureaucracy towards some ideological end or other.

Capitalism is pretty much the only ideology that does not require a strong hand of the state. Instead, it's the market that enforces it and ensures no other alternatives are seen as viable (because going against "the market" is always perceived as some variant of "bad for business"). Replace bureaucrats with traders and bankers and there also are similarities, except it is harder to pinpoint a single central power, but it is equally as ideological. They have similar attitudes or doing whatever the fuck they want, until a crisis comes at which point they start pleading that they (like communist bureaucrats) are what holds the system together, and they should be preserved if we want to avoid total chaos.

What's funny is that 30 years ago ended East Germany, one of the regimes where state surveillance was at its highest, but I'm pretty sure all former East German spies would have been in awe if told what Facebook or Google are achieving right now when it comes to invading everyone's privacy. Especially since, instead of having a state ordering spies to, well, spy on people against their wish, now we have private firms profiting from the personal data of millions of willing volunteers.

[Raga]

Sure, the logic holds for any massively powerful central authority. Historically, that just happens to have been a state more often than not. But there's no particular reason it can't be a giant corporation. From the point of view of Google or Facebook, it would also be great if users could be standardized in some way because than the extraction of whatever they want from us (money, data, or whatever) is infinitely simpler.

Some of this has to do with the relocation of complexity because somebody, somewhere always profits from being the one who understands a particular patch of complexity. In 1573, a local guide profits immensely from being the one who knows the unregulated, unplanned snarl of cow paths and deer trails through the forest. In 1975, the paths are all regulated so everybody can find them but only a traffic cop or a lawyer or some other such person is likely to know the complete snarl of all the umpteen traffic laws.

In the past, complexity resided at the local level in everything from idiosyncratic local dialects to the tangle of streets in medieval cities to local customs dictating usage of common goods and lands. If you are a local who grew up with this, you have no problem, but form the point of view of something outside wanting to extract taxes or conscripts or data or whatever, this complexity is impenetrable. So they want to iron out the wrinkles and relocate complexity at the level of the central authority.

Now the streets all intersect at nice, tidy right angles and everybody uses standard units of measure to mark out their nice, tidy lots of land. But they have no idea how tax law works, or what property laws are or aren't, and they have to rely on a trained expert for that.

Basically, beware the hubris and intent of anything that seeks to impose order and planning in a top down way and leaves no room for organic processes. Before you bulldoze the unruly forest and replace it with long, straight lines of monoculture trees that are easier to harvest, maybe at least take a breath to see what why the forest is the way it is.

[Raga]

One additional thought. Criticisms of fascism and/or socialism and comparisons between them on my part are not meant to be taken as some kind of defense of laissez-faire capitalism if anybody takes it that way. And moreover, unless people are literally advocating for the elimination of private property, the central ownership of all industry, and the central planning of all economic output and its distribution, then *everybody* is talking about capitalism. We are just arguing about how "pure" that capitalism should or should not be.

Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a capitalist. Bernie Sanders is a capitalist. That is if you really believe them when they say "basically I want Sweden."

It's like that argument where the Tea Party and progressive types take turns calling each other authoritarians or whatever when in reality everybody from Ted Cruz on up to Elizabeth Warren are liberals. If you believe in free elections, civil rights, and government derived from the body of the people than you are a liberal.

If you believe people should be allowed to own private property, generally dispose of it as they see fit within certain limitations, and engage in trade with one another for goods and services than you are a capitalist.

Arguments about how much regulation the exchange of goods should or shouldn't have or how much property should or shouldn't be taxed isn't sufficient to make the arguers something besides capitalists. Arguments over what the exact requirements to vote are, or what kinds of election system should be had, or what the exact rights protected by the government are or aren't isn't enough to make the arguers not liberals.

[Sinekein]

Well then when I write "capitalism", I mean "free market capitalism" where company taxes and regulations are at the lowest possible setting, where individual taxes are also extremely low and where there is little to no government help for those with fewer resources. The quintessential examples right now are the Tory Brexiters in the UK in my opinion (Trump's trade war with China makes him less suited for the role) like Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson.

[Mazder]

Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson.

Great now we're going to have to encase this thread in concrete and dump it into the Mariana Trench!
Those two are parasites, scum, poisonous plagues.
Hell, I'll say it.
They're cunts.
Straight up cunts.

[Raga]

Why 300000 Texans Want to Secede

Harebrained as always, but I'd argue you aren't doing Texan right if about 20% of you doesn't secretly wish it was its own country.

[Sinekein]

Is it even possible for a State senate to ultimately decide who won a gubernatorial election?

Because that seems crooked as hell, and if it indeed happens you can bet that the Dems will pull the exact same trick every time they can do that in the future.

[Raga]

Calling the other side's electoral results illegitimate is a fad that's been growing throughout the country in the last several years, whether it's because "the Russian bots swayed the election" or "voter suppression" or unspecified "irregularities" all of it is meant to cast a shadow over an official as only being where they are because they cheated. If you want to undermine your democracy, a first class relatively easy way to to do it is to convince enough of the population that the election counts can't be trusted. As far as I know, Donald Trump started this trend in earnest with his threats to not concede even if Hillary Clinton won the election, but both sides have been flirting with this ever sense. Stacy Abrams already did something similar to this in the gubernatorial election in Georgia.

I feel like something like this happened in North Carolina or Virginia too but I can't remember if it was a Democrat or Republican who did it.

[Vol]

Yes, I've noticed on the right, it's usually screenshots of some nobody on social media claiming they shredded GOP ballots, or chicanery of the like. With The Mueller turning out to be a 3 year blue balls bust, I've seen little on mystical Russian influences lately. They've more latched onto their owned demographics, surely the right is suppressing their voice. All of this makes a good case for heavily restricting voting rights back to what the founders allowed.

Seems more an inevitable result of evaporating common ground tho. How can you accept the results of an election where the peoples being put in office seem to be (ideological) abominations? Take my governor for example. How can I accept an election system where that man is my de jure ruler?

Even harder to get legal guns, kill more babies, more taxes, more welfare, college for illegals, more immigration, more money for causes that harm me socially/financially, shittier conditions. It is difficult to accept that as a product of a worthy electoral system, much less the scale-tipping that surely goes on, as much as people inevitably violate any sacred duty.

In that sense, it's only to my benefit to undermine the faith in voting. I have nothing to lose per se, beyond the risk of the NJ urban core voting even more solidly blue.