Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[Ragabul]

Not all, no. Native Americans, Australian aboriginals, Pygmies, Polynesians are among the people coming to mind whose society relied on something else than ransacking the planet. Even Northmen, for all the Viking imagery, were not too keen on populating countries themselves - they conquered but more often than not were more than happy to let the locals go as they please as their subjects.

So saying "Western Europeans were just better at it" is just straight up bullshit. They perfected an unnecessary art. You don't always have to expand, conquer and eliminate to thrive. The Japanese people would still be an amazing civilization to look at even without their 1850-1945 expansionism.

This needs to be broken down more to be useful. What exactly is entailed in the metric "ransacking the planet?" Is this different from what Europeans did in *kind* or *degree?* Afterall, anybody more inclined to ransack is probably going to have more luck with cannons and guns than flint spears. I don't know enough about Australian aboriginals or Pygmies to say anything useful about them but Native Americans did plenty of ransacking. The Comanches as one example were a classic horse warrior tribe. They behaved in highly similar ways to Mongols or Huns or various other warrior steppe tribes. They began as a small, insignificant tribe that hung out in the lee of the Rocky Mountains. Once they got horses, they claimed the entire Southern Great Plains, driving out other tribes and manged to keep both the Spanish and the Anglos of Texas at bay for nearly 300 years. They were such proficient warriors that it wasn't until the invention of revolvers that men with guns could outshoot them on horseback. The Iroquois League keep the tribes of the Old Northwest Territory in a state of suzerainty and a large part of their actions in the French and Indian War come down to them wanting to maintain their dominance and influence in that region. The Vikings were relentless slavedealers whether they settled in a particular spot or not.

The standard that gets used in all of this is janky and seldom practically useful. As best as I can tell what people are trying to go for is something like "imperialism/expansionism/societal assholery of the past that still has massive repercussions on people's quality of life today matters more than assholery that happened so long ago that nobody cares anymore or assholery that has very limited impacts in modern life." This is a more sensible and usable standard. But instead of this, the standard that pops up all too often is something like "Western culture was uniquely horrible and cruel and is a great plague on the world and should be swept away so all of these other wonderful cultures that never did or never would do anything like that can come and take its place."

The kindest interpretation I can give that is that it is woefully naive about human nature. A much more obnoxious but perfectly valid interpretation I could give it is that it's just "savages need to be civilized" repurposed for application between different groups.

[Vol]

Maybe, just maybe, trump supporters encouraged by the former president shouldn't have tried to kill Congress.

Just saying. Inciting an insurrection tends to cause the NG to stick around.

Quite to the contrary. Barring proof of a specific, imminent threat, that our spooks are not handling for whatever reason, a personal, long-term military garrison for civilian officials is completely antithetical to our republic's rejection of monarchy.

According to your perception, because you probably singularize various conservative behaviors and beliefs, while you aggregate many progressive behaviors and beliefs as some kind of monolith. It is more of a shift than a loss.

It's more that producing academic data on this would be beyond my humble abilities. But it's self-evident that as geographical isolation ends, through advents in transportation and communication, that there will be less regional beliefs and culture. And when a dominant belief system, in this case from the fusion of academia and city dwellers, rises to the top, it will apply pressure on everything else. Just like in evolution, just like in economics, just like in any complex system. Doubly so when the dominant belief is intolerant, then it becomes an act of good itself to stamp out alternative views, as we've seen in literally everything I enjoy.

Not all, no. Native Americans, Australian aboriginals, Pygmies, Polynesians are among the people coming to mind whose society relied on something else than ransacking the planet. Even Northmen, for all the Viking imagery, were not too keen on populating countries themselves - they conquered but more often than not were more than happy to let the locals go as they please as their subjects.

So saying "Western Europeans were just better at it" is just straight up bullshit. They perfected an unnecessary art. You don't always have to expand, conquer and eliminate to thrive. The Japanese people would still be an amazing civilization to look at even without their 1850-1945 expantionism.

The Native Americans and Japanese absolutely were ransacking and conquering, the others I cannot speak to. But given their lengthy geographical isolation, their internecine issues might not have been as vicious as ours were. But I firmly doubt they would not have strip mined and burnt down forests if they had the means and reasons to.

Again, not all societies throughout history have worked this way. There are many examples of tolerant rulers benefitting from letting people interact with each other. You had golden ages like this in Persia, in Moor Spain, in Norman Italy - so it's not like you need a specific religion or cultural background to manage it, it's mostly a question of individual mindsets.

And the inability to change and adapt to the evolution of society has been the cause of the fall of all powerful civilizations. And the most long-lasting ones tend not to be the most rigid either.

Selective tolerance. I was recommended, repeatedly, a book on this a few years ago by a friend. Whole back end of the book was "We let the Jews in, they made us a lot of money, then people started getting pissed off, we threw them out, repeat ad nauseum."

The longest lasting contiguous societies that come to mind are the Japanese, Chinese, and Romans.

The standard that gets used in all of this is janky and seldom practically useful. As best as I can tell what people are trying to go for is something like "imperialism/expansionism/societal assholery of the past that still has massive repercussions on people's quality of life today matters more than assholery that happened so long ago that nobody cares anymore or assholery that has very limited impacts in modern life." This is a more sensible and usable standard. But instead of this, the standard that pops up all too often is something like "Western culture was uniquely horrible and cruel and is a great plague on the world and should be swept away so all of these other wonderful cultures that never did or never would do anything like that can come and take its place."

The kindest interpretation I can give that is that it is woefully naive about human nature. A much more obnoxious but perfectly valid interpretation I could give it is that it's just "savages need to be civilized" repurposed for application between different groups.

It's backdoor essentialism. Just look at the bigoted nonsense being produced and taught in our country right now (Coca-Cola scandal as a recent one). Realpolitik, yes, there's also envy and greed involved, opportunism from foreign powers, but in terms of the theory binding this together, it's just essentialism without saying the words.

But also based in co-opting the philosophy that came about as a rejection of behaving as we once did, while also denying that it's an objectively superior philosophy to live by.

[Mobius_118]

Maybe, just maybe, trump supporters encouraged by the former president shouldn't have tried to kill Congress.

Just saying. Inciting an insurrection tends to cause the NG to stick around.

Quite to the contrary. Barring proof of a specific, imminent threat, that our spooks are not handling for whatever reason, a personal, long-term military garrison for civilian officials is completely antithetical to our republic's rejection of monarchy.

Huh, chanting "Hang Mike Pence", beating cops, and looking for lawmakers to kill as per their confessions isn't enough for you. Awesome.

And the dragnet keeps catching trump's "very fine people" with weapons in DC. These fucking terrorists are armed, the chatter I keep hearing is proposing more shit like what they attempted in Michigan and DC, and it's going to be interesting until they get weeded out.

So I don't see a problem with military forces protecting the government after a coup attempt.

[Ragabul]

A Modest Proposal For Republicans: Use The Word "Class"
Pivot from mindless populist rage to a thoughtful campaign to fight classism.

I think this is true. I've said before that the USA is not actually fighting between white people and non-white people right now. It's a fight *between* two groups of white people over what "white people" should mean.

[Ragabul]

It's backdoor essentialism. Just look at the bigoted nonsense being produced and taught in our country right now (Coca-Cola scandal as a recent one). Realpolitik, yes, there's also envy and greed involved, opportunism from foreign powers, but in terms of the theory binding this together, it's just essentialism without saying the words.

But also based in co-opting the philosophy that came about as a rejection of behaving as we once did, while also denying that it's an objectively superior philosophy to live by.

This is mostly true, but I think some of it is because theories tend to degenerate when they become something used by a mass movement and not just a thing some egghead somewhere is writing papers about. There are crazy, radical theory creators but if you go back to the origins of some of this stuff (say Kimberle Williams Crenshaw's original writings on intersectionality) there is a nuance there in many cases where people are asking valid questions and actually proposing novel ways of thinking about things.

One of the original essays Crenshaw wrote was about battered women's shelters and she was pointing out that if you pay 0 attention to women's immigrant status and all the intake papers are in English only and the woman can't get in if she doesn't fill out the form, you may end up with a situation where a woman who can't speak English just has to go back to some dude who beats her. In the same paper, she talked about how the classic image of the civil rights movement is the male prophetic leader like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and they are fighting against a stereotype of black men as brutes. Some black men are also rapists and wife-beaters and all out male chauvinists, but if black women bring this up, they are told they are contributing to stereotype of black men as brutes and so they need to shut up and deal with it for the overall good of the race. Meanwhile, white women are generally not told this because there is no historical stereotype of white man as brute they are supposedly contributing to.

These are actually useful observations about how overlapping identity categories *do* impact people's lives and that if you are pursuing non-controversial goals like "we should reduce rape and wife-beating" you have to consider stuff like this or whatever you are trying to do is not going to be as effective as it could be.

However, after 20-30 years of mass movement practice this idea has degenerated into "the more 'oppressed' categories you belong to, the more everybody else just has to shut up and listen to whatever you say." Black transwoman (even more bonus points for homeless, sex worker, or immigrant) is at the top of this grievance hierarchy, which is why BLM which is ostensibly about police violence against standard black dudes goes on and on and on about black transgender people in all of its official pronouncements even though black transpeople are probably like .005% of the population.

It's like how all of the nuance in the original arguments in Animal Farm gets reduced to "four legs good, two legs bad."

Most people in the mass movement have never engaged at a deeper level than "four legs good, two legs bad" and so they take that anemic bastardization as self evident truth of what the movement is about. So much so that the movement does mostly come to be about that. There are some really pernicious, savvy people (who tend to be highly educated upper class) who are well aware of the bastardization but will just use it to their advantage. These are the people who go around on Twitter yelling "four legs good, two legs bad" and when they are criticized use motte-and-bailey to retreat to some academic position from thirty years ago and say something like "actually all feminism is is wanting men and women to have equal civil rights."

*Edit* You see a similar type of thing with economic libertarianism. You start with guys like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman making the perfectly sensible argument that "the market is really, really complicated and we can't understand everything that makes it work and if you try to centrally plan everything, you will inevitably overlook something and probably make a big mess" and eventually that deteriorates into some doofus mayor in Texas telling people it's not the government's job to give them clean water and they need to bootstrap their way into protecting their family from blizzards.

[Ragabul]

I finished "The Kill Chain" book and I must say I found its argument pretty damn convincing with the caveat that I have profound ignorance on this topic so it could be I am just supremely susceptible to persuasion from anybody who even halfassedly sounds like they know what they are talking about. A few takeaways:

1. This book is accidentally the single best defense of continuous massive levels of immigration that I have ever encountered for a very simple reason. China has 1.4 billion people. If it decides (and it has decided) that it wants to train thousands and thousands of engineers or computer scientists to develop advanced military systems it has 1.4 billion people to choose amongst to find the brightest and most inclined toward that task. We only have 320 million. This is a strong argument for recruiting everybody and anybody who is smart enough and willing to do that work for us from both our native population and from whatever foreign country might have populations willing to immigrate.

2. The vaunted "military industrial complex" is not even half the boogieman it is made out to be and is actually rather small, pathetic, and relentlessly old-fashioned compared to any number of other ginormous capitalist boogieman sectors like finance or Big Tech that are currently gobbling up everything in sight and expanding into every corner of everything. This complex is apparently so closed up, stuck-in-the-mud, and status quo that Palantir and Space X had to sue the government to get the government to pay attention to systems those companies wanted to develop for them.

3. This book is also accidentally the best argument for the EU to develop into something like a true federation that I've seen. The book has an overall pessimistic viewpoint of the capacity of the US to maintain military superiority over China. The most that can realistically be hoped for is parity which acts as a deterrent to hot war. This also means that the US will become singularly unable to focus on pretty much any military foreign policy that isn't "maintain parity with China" because doing that will require every scrap of both hard and soft power we can muster. No more peacekeeping missions in random countries. No more screwing around with Iran even if it bombs someone. No more helping friendly militias kill jihadis. And so on. In this universe, a unified Europe with hard power to back up its soft power gets to decide which way the world tips. And for all the spats we have with Europe, I had much rather live in a world where Europe is the entity that gets to tip the balance than say Russia.

The rest of the book is basically a long argument for how we need to move away from a giant platform based system that is designed to project power into a "battle network" "internet of things" that is about defense and checking Chinese expansionism. I found this argument convincing.

[Sinekein]

I finished "The Kill Chain" book and I must say I found its argument pretty damn convincing with the caveat that I have profound ignorance on this topic so it could be I am just supremely susceptible to persuasion from anybody who even halfassedly sounds like they know what they are talking about. A few takeaways:

That sounded intriguing. I might give it a look if I happen upon it, although I wish it was translated since I'm not sure about reading complex geopolitics in a foreign language.

3. This book is also accidentally the best argument for the EU to develop into something like a true federation that I've seen. The book has an overall pessimistic viewpoint of the capacity of the US to maintain military superiority over China. The most that can realistically be hoped for is parity which acts as a deterrent to hot war. This also means that the US will become singularly unable to focus on pretty much any military foreign policy that isn't "maintain parity with China" because doing that will require every scrap of both hard and soft power we can muster. No more peacekeeping missions in random countries. No more screwing around with Iran even if it bombs someone. No more helping friendly militias kill jihadis. And so on. In this universe, a unified Europe with hard power to back up its soft power gets to decide which way the world tips. And for all the spats we have with Europe, I had much rather live in a world where Europe is the entity that gets to tip the balance than say Russia.

Amen.

This might actually be the one reason that might make me vote for Macron if he ends up against the far-right in the second round of the presidential elections in 2022. I am appalled by some of his actions, like the way he treated journalists that investigated his uber-shady former bodyguard, or some of his government members like those of the Interior or the Education, but he seems to sincerely believe in a more integrated Europe and is one of the few remaining political leaders that is unambiguously supportive of everything making the EU closer.

The main obstacle to that is probably German-France rivalry. France was the dominant power for decades when the EU started, but since 2000 it has shifted to the dominant economy, Germany. And for obscure historical reasons, "German influence" is something that tends to scare people off, which is why Merkel has been really careful about the development of European projects - that, and her country was one of the most successful one despite the various economical crises, so there was no need to shift the paradigm. Also, France remains the main military of the EU (especially since the UK left) so military integration would probably mean more French influence.

But Angie is retiring, so we'll see what happens. Time passes, making the words "German army" less terrifying over time, and also Germany is likely to quickly face some demographical challenges since it is one of the oldest and less fertile populations in Europe. I'm no Nostradamus, but at some point they might want to push more European integration to help fight some communities' influence, like the Turkish one - German Turks are hyper-nationalistic, which is singular because they have a level of education similar to liberal Turkish Turks who are strongly anti-Erdogan (he is supported by the popular, rural Turks).

[Ragabul]

It was more about military strategy than geopolitics. He explicitly explains that he leaves off stuff about economics and politics because it is outside his expertise and would make the book enormous and unfocused though he admits all of that is very important and will absolutely have to be part of how we deal with China.

on Europe:

One thing I've read that is a chief source of conflict along with generic old school German/French rivalry and general fear of German power is that Germany is really reluctant to help pay for poorer states with bad economies. From a financial perspective, it's very hard to make a monetary union work if there isn't a mechanism for transfers of wealth between members. In pre-Euro times, if France or Italy or wherever was in a financial bind, they at least had the option to devalue their currency. Constantly devaluing money is also not a true fix for overall problems with the economy but it at least gives you a tool for a current crisis. With everybody tied to the same currency, someplace like Greece just has to deal with whatever the Euro is at and that may have no real correspondence to economic situations on the ground in Greece. (Just like how the US dollar would hardly wobble if Alabama disappeared off the face of the Earth). The thing that makes it possible to live in Alabama with a strong dollar is that Alabama gets cash infusions from rich states. Rich states obviously do a huge amount of grousing about this, but then they immediately shut up and hold out their hands for federal hurricane relief money or Covid stimulus money or giant infrastructure project money or whatever.

Wasn't there some deal last year that was more or less the first time that the EU was committing to something like transfers of cash like this (not loans but just straight up transfers) for Covid relief reasons? And Hungary was slowing up the works because they were making receival of payments contingent on member states following certain EU rules or such? I read a few news articles about it and it sounded like the most federal thing finance wise I have personally heard of the EU doing.

[Sinekein]

It was more about military strategy than geopolitics. He explicitly explains that he leaves off stuff about economics and politics because it is outside his expertise and would make the book enormous and unfocused though he admits all of that is very important and will absolutely have to be part of how we deal with China.

Well, I'm not really more knowledgeable about military strategy, so the interest and the issue remain...

One thing I've read that is a chief source of conflict along with generic old school German/French rivalry and general fear of German power is that Germany is really reluctant to help pay for poorer states with bad economies. From a financial perspective, it's very hard to make a monetary union work if there isn't a mechanism for transfers of wealth between members. In pre-Euro times, if France or Italy or wherever was in a financial bind, they at least had the option to devalue their currency. Constantly devaluing money is also not a true fix for overall problems with the economy but it at least gives you a tool for a current crisis. With everybody tied to the same currency, someplace like Greece just has to deal with whatever the Euro is at and that may have no real correspondence to economic situations on the ground in Greece. (Just like how the US dollar would hardly wobble if Alabama disappeared off the face of the Earth). The thing that makes it possible to live in Alabama with a strong dollar is that Alabama gets cash infusions from rich states. Rich states obviously do a huge amount of grousing about this, but then they immediately shut up and hold out their hands for federal hurricane relief money or Covid stimulus money or giant infrastructure project money or whatever.

From what I get with my admittedly French perspective and all the caveats that go with it, this issue stems from Germany having faced a big economic crisis in the 90s, pre-Euro. And while it profited from being part of the EU, most sacrifices were made in Germany (I remember reading about worker unions agreeing to significant wage drops to avoid companies going bankrupt, I think Volkswagen was among them) by the Germans. So now, understandably, they feel like other countries have to deal with their issues themselves, and we can't being complacent.

One thing that I agree with is that countries like Greece have some internal issues that must be dealt with before help arrives. Two anecdotes I can think of: there was an island in Greece on which an unbelievable proportion of the population was blind - or at least, was getting public aid for blind people. The other is back from the time I went there as a teenager, and many, many houses (a majority actually) were "unfinished": usually, they had several floors, but the bottom one was just cinderblocks, sometimes with a ciment mixer right in the middle. Thing is, there was a tax you only started to pay once your house was finished - so many people just didn't finish it, and lived on the other floors - obviously, the house was "designed" to waste a floor. So part of the Greek problems were national and had to be dealt with.

However, there is this "we did it alone, so should you" mentality that I do not like. First, because the EU is a project that requires some compromises to work. Second, because the German economic growth came before the "financial era", where the world's economy was very different from Greece. Germany did not have powerful hedge funds betting on them not making it, like some did with Greece (and apparently with South Africa now...). So it's like someone who found a way to lose a ton of weight telling someone else "just do this, it worked for me, no excuses". Not all situations are equal. Also, obviously, the German crisis started before the Eurozone, so they could manipulate the mark. Greece does not have that option.

Germany is not alone, however. There is a group called the "frugals" - I think Denmark and the Netherlands are part of it - who frown similarly when it comes to aid without conditions.

Wasn't there some deal last year that was more or less the first time that the EU was committing to something like transfers of cash like this (not loans but just straight up transfers) for Covid relief reasons? And Hungary was slowing up the works because they were making receival of payments contingent on member states following certain EU rules or such? I read a few news articles about it and it sounded like the most federal thing finance wise I have personally heard of the EU doing.

That's the opposite actually: Hungary was slowing up the negotiations because they did not want to follow certain EU rules. Specifically, rules about press freedom, which Orban has consistently reduced over time, like the populist asshole he is. More accurately, if memory serves, it was pseudo-blackmail, where Hungary wanted rules on press freedom being withdrawn from parliamentary debates (so they would not be implemented) in exchange from them voting the relief bill.

And all such decisions have to be unanimous among 26 members to be taken, so if Hungary stalls, everyone has to wait. It's a political game at this point: Hungary is one of those countries that has benefited a lot from entering the EU, yet still elected a president that blames the EU for everything going wrong at home (and maybe it's causing problem, it's very possible, I'm not up to date with internal Hungarian politics). Also, Orban is a proto-dictator, and is basically right now checking what he can get away with without being punished. And since Poland is more or less backing him, it's hard to vote for sanctions - again, unanimity requirement.

However, Orban is not crazy and absolutely does not want to leave. First because Hungary benefits a lot from the common market, and second because, well, there is a certain Eastern neighbor that's harder to deal with when you're on your own, and there has been some bad blood in the past, too (same goes with Poland actually).

I am optimistic however, and I think Hungarian and Polish stalling might be a blessing down the line, because they point out a significant flaw in the inner workings of the Union. Hopefully, it will be used to design a way to circumvent those down the line, and the EU will be stronger for it.

[TTTX]

Germany is not alone, however. There is a group called the "frugals" - I think Denmark and the Netherlands are part of it - who frown similarly when it comes to aid without conditions.

if we are it's the first I have heard of it, then again we Danes don't hear that much about the EU, expect for big decisions and well we have to vote for stuff like changing our currency to the Euro (we keep voting no on that one and our politicians kinda hate us for it).

[Sinekein]

https://news.yahoo.com/eu-frugals-forma ... 22836.html

[Ragabul]

This is the best non-partisan take on what happened with the Texas power outages and what to realistically begin to do about I have thus far seen.

[Ragabul]

A better way to think about conspiracy theories

"Prefer simple theories to baroque ones
Consider two theories about Covid-19: the conceit that it was designed by the Gates Foundation for some sort of world-domination scheme, and the theory that it was accidentally released by a Chinese virology lab in Wuhan, a disaster that the Beijing government then sought to cover up. If you just follow the official media consensus, you’ll see both these theories labeled misinformation and conspiracy. But in fact the two are wildly different, and the latter is vastly more plausible than the former — so plausible that it might even be true.

What makes it plausible is that it doesn’t depend on some complex plot for a one-world government; it just depends on the human and bureaucratic capacity for error and the authoritarian tendency toward cover-up. And this points to an excellent rule for anyone who looks at an official narrative and thinks that something seems suspicious: In following your suspicions, never leap to a malignant conspiracy to explain something that can be explained by incompetence and self-protection first.

Avoid theories that seem tailored to fit a predetermined conclusion
After the November election, I spent a fair amount of time arguing with conservatives who were convinced that it had been stolen for Joe Biden, and after a while I noticed that I was often playing Whac-a-Mole: They would raise a fishy-seeming piece of evidence, I would show them something debunking it, and then they would just move on to a different piece of evidence that assumed a different kind of conspiracy — shifting from stuffed ballot boxes in urban districts to computer shenanigans in suburban districts, say — without losing an iota in their certainty.

That kind of shift doesn’t prove the new example false, but it should make you suspect that what’s happening is a search for facts to fit a predetermined narrative, rather than just the observation of a suspicious fact with an open mind about where it leads. If you’re reading someone who can’t seem to internalize the implications of having an argument proved wrong, or who constantly cites easily discredited examples, you’re not being discerning; you’ve either wandered into someone’s ideological fixation or you’re a mark for intentional fake news.

Take fringe theories more seriously when the mainstream narrative has holes
For example: If you tell me that the C.I.A. killed John F. Kennedy, I will be dismissive, because the boring official narrative of his assassination — hawkish president killed by a Marxist loner who previously tried to assassinate a right-wing general — fits the facts perfectly well on its own. But if you tell me that some mysterious foreign intelligence agency was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s strange career, I will be more open to your theories, because so much about Epstein’s dizzying ascent from prep school math teacher to procurer to the famous and the rich remains mystifying even now.

Likewise, every fringe theory about U.F.O.s — that they’re some kind of secret military supertechnology, that they’re really aliens, that they’re something stranger still — became a lot more plausible in the last couple of years, because the footage released by Pentagon sources created a mystery that no official or consensus narrative has adequately explained.

Just because you start to believe in one fringe theory, you don’t have to believe them all
This kind of slippage is clearly a feature of conspiratorial thinking: Joining an out-group that holds one specific outlandish opinion seems to encourage a sense that every out-group must be on to something, every outlandish opinion must be right. Thus the person who starts out believing that Epstein didn’t kill himself ends up going full QAnon. Or the person who decides that the Centers for Disease Control is wrong about their chronic illness ends up refusing chemotherapy for cancer.

But at the same time, there is no intellectually necessary reason why believing in one piece of secret knowledge, one specific conspiracy theory, should require a general belief in every fringe idea.

Here revealed religion offers a useful model. To be a devout Christian or a believing Jew or Muslim is to be a bit like a conspiracy theorist, in the sense that you believe that there is an invisible reality that secular knowledge can’t recognize and a set of decisive events in history that fall outside of nature’s laws.

But the great religions are also full of warnings against false prophets and fraudulent revelations. My own faith, Roman Catholicism, is both drenched in the supernatural and extremely scrupulous about the miracles and seers that it validates. And it allows its flock to be simply agnostic about a range of possibly supernatural claims and phenomena, to allow that they might be real, or might not, without making them the basis of your faith.

Some version of that careful agnosticism, that mixture of openness and caution, seems like a better spirit with which to approach the internet and all its rabbit holes than either a naïve credulity or a brittle confidence in mainstream media consensus. And I suspect that’s actually what a lot of polling on conspiracy theories traditionally captures: not a blazing certainty about what really happened on 9/11 or who killed Kennedy or how “they” faked the moon landing, but a kind of studied uncertainty about our strange world and its secrets.

What we should hope for, reasonably, is not a world where a “reality czar” steers everyone toward perfect consensus about the facts, but a world where a conspiracy-curious uncertainty persists as uncertainty, without hardening into the zeal that drove election truthers to storm the Capitol.

It’s that task that our would-be educators should be taking up: not a rigid defense of conventional wisdom, but the cultivation of a consensus supple enough to accommodate the doubter, instead of making people feel as if their only options are submission or revolt."

[Vol]

That kind of shift doesn’t prove the new example false, but it should make you suspect that what’s happening is a search for facts to fit a predetermined narrative, rather than just the observation of a suspicious fact with an open mind about where it leads. If you’re reading someone who can’t seem to internalize the implications of having an argument proved wrong, or who constantly cites easily discredited examples, you’re not being discerning; you’ve either wandered into someone’s ideological fixation or you’re a mark for intentional fake news.

Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot.

Just because you start to believe in one fringe theory, you don’t have to believe them all
This kind of slippage is clearly a feature of conspiratorial thinking: Joining an out-group that holds one specific outlandish opinion seems to encourage a sense that every out-group must be on to something, every outlandish opinion must be right. Thus the person who starts out believing that Epstein didn’t kill himself ends up going full QAnon. Or the person who decides that the Centers for Disease Control is wrong about their chronic illness ends up refusing chemotherapy for cancer.

More a consequence of the people/groups who aught be principled to a fault shitting it all away in front of our eyes. For some, that leaves a void in need of filling, and here comes Alex Jones with some new ideas. It's the fault of the NYTimes, and scum of the like, that crazy nonsense is easier to spread. They have the power to shape mass opinion with knowledge or Pravda, they hold responsibility if it becomes reasonable to reject what they say, even if true, because of it. Shifting culpability from liars with all the power and influence to stupid people with none, is, in a way, a conspiratorial action itself. It's leading to de facto Ministry of Truths being set up as we speak, in the guise of entrenching the known liars as the only sources of real knowledge. Whereas, if the goal was to have people trust as much of reality as can be conferred by mass messaging, this would all look very different.

Now buy my Super Testosteronicle 42069XXX pills, guaranteed to make you mald and lift 800 pounds and see through the false-faces of the you-know-what's!

What we should hope for, reasonably, is not a world where a “reality czar” steers everyone toward perfect consensus about the facts, but a world where a conspiracy-curious uncertainty persists as uncertainty, without hardening into the zeal that drove election truthers to storm the Capitol.

It’s that task that our would-be educators should be taking up: not a rigid defense of conventional wisdom, but the cultivation of a consensus supple enough to accommodate the doubter, instead of making people feel as if their only options are submission or revolt.[/i]"

Could've had the court hearings. Proved the ballots and machines were legit. Was always an option. Or anything, really, except calling people in doubt that they're crazy and stupid, while actively working against any of those measures. Makes crazy, stupid people suspect you might be hiding something, I'd think.

That said, I largely agree with what this guy's saying. He's up his own ass, granted, but he's correct about the broad strokes, and fucks up the details. I don't want a thousand incompatible beliefs about any given event, I'll settle for 3 with some nuance. But there's literally nothing left to trust if you're even halfway conscious. Writer is an opinion guy, so he's off the hook, but the Times and the rest of them are directly responsible for this mess of distrust and conspiracy.

A supple consensus would be nice. I don't see where it would come from, given there has been absolutely no philosophical give and take in years, but it's something to shoot for. Like equality instead of bigotry, and representational government instead of globohomo technocracy, now let me tell you about my podcast for the _real_ story of how Princess Di was secreted away to Russia to-

[Ragabul]

Is This the End of French Intellectual Life?

Since this was sort of getting discussed the other day, I found this article interesting.

I have to admit I'm not terribly sympathetic to the "it's the Anglo-Saxons/Americans fault" line of argument. Our own native species of leftism is the Protestant Social Gospel mixed with Jeffersonian style Enlightenment thinking. Pretty much all major social reformers up until the late 60s in the United States used this model. It was the language of the abolitionists; it was the language of the crusaders against Gilded Age excesses; it was the language of Martin Luther King and the most successful aspects of the Civil Rights Movement, and it was the language of first wave feminism.

Then a bunch of European stuff got imported starting in the 1930s and came to dominate the humanities starting in the 1960s.

Modern wokism is a combination of mostly European imports. The first is Critical Theory which derives from the Frankfurt school and is itself a combination of Marx (German) and Freud (Austrian). If you look at the names of the big shots in the Frankfurt school, you see a distinct variety of name: Horkheimer, Fromm, Marcuse, Adorno. Not a formal part of this school but intellectually adjacent and still a huge part of the shift of Marxism away from economic issues to cultural ones is Antonio Gramsci.

A second major component is all the deconstruction, postmodernist, post-structuralist type frameworks that came into vogue in the 1960s and were mostly about tearing down preexisting systems without bothering to stipulate what would be built to replace them. This list of names also has a distinct variety: Derrida, Foucault, Lukacs (Hungarian), Lyotard.

Another component is a long string of thought which is about reorienting political liberation to mean more or less "sexually doing what I want and to hell with physical/social constraints. I should get to will my inner image of myself into reality despite my biology or societal taboos." That starts with Rousseau, goes through the Romantics (which admittedly included a bunch of English writers like Shelley), reaches apotheosis in Nietzsche, and is central to second wave radical feminism (Simone de Beauvoir).

Critical race theory and queer theory are actually American homegrown but they derived out of this stuff which has massively European roots.

The arguably American contribution to this stuff was to hyper individualize it and turn it into performance arts and combine it with consumerism. Woke capitalism is absolutely American. But the rest is a just a bunch of mostly European birds coming home to roost. (This was not meant to be snide).

*Edit* It is also true that most of this stuff was probably never going to reach its logical culmination in a mostly ethnically homogeneous country where class issues were always a bigger deal. The USA has never been ethnically homogeneous so it was a prime candidate for this. Western Europe is rapidly ceasing to be ethnically homogeneous which is why ethnic categories are starting to appeal more than class ones.

[Ragabul]

It's the fault of the NYTimes, and scum of the like, that crazy nonsense is easier to spread. They have the power to shape mass opinion with knowledge or Pravda, they hold responsibility if it becomes reasonable to reject what they say, even if true, because of it. Shifting culpability from liars with all the power and influence to stupid people with none, is, in a way, a conspiratorial action itself. It's leading to de facto Ministry of Truths being set up as we speak, in the guise of entrenching the known liars as the only sources of real knowledge. Whereas, if the goal was to have people trust as much of reality as can be conferred by mass messaging, this would all look very different.

I don't disagree. I do also think that "conspiratorial thinking" is actually probably not any higher than it's ever been. It's just if you believe the Jews are poisoning the wells in 1955, your ability to *do* something about it is limited by your capacity to find other people who believe the Jews are poisoning the wells and are willing to act on that belief. And social constraints mostly prevent people from going out looking for fellow conspirators. The internet changes that in much the same way it changed pornography.

People weren't less susceptible to interest in pornography in 1969. Pornography was just much harder to get and depended on you being willing to walk in some place and pick it up and look a cashier in the face and buy it.

And as to the odiousness of the media, this is one reason I've moved more towards paying attention to *who* is writing something and less where they are writing it. The New York Times as an institution is not worth a damn. It does, however, despite itself, still manage to get individuals who are worth a damn to write for it from time to time. That is not to say that I won't read stuff by people with names I don't recognize but when I see a name that I know has produced a long string of non bullshit arguments in the past, I will pay more attention to it.

Substack has been great for this. Many of the more interesting writers have moved over there and are now using a newsletter subscription framework. The problem is I don't want to pay $150 every month to subscribe to the dozen or so most worthwhile writers over there.

Anyway, Ross Douthat is legit. He is probably not confrontational enough for most people on the right because his line of thought is more oriented towards how such a person can live in the current world and maintain mental robustness in it and not so much about becoming a revolutionary trying to fix everything. I may just find this sort of thought personally appealing because I've developed a deep sense of intellectual pessimism about the West in the last few years and I'm mostly interested in how I can personally "Live Not by Lies" to quote another dude I read who is in turn quoting the dude who wrote the Gulag Archipelago.

[Vol]

Got a spam email today (yesterday) claiming my online presence was in danger because of links to bad people and posts and such. Was from some shitty site that's been around in one form or another since 2001 that does duplicitous data mining nonsense. But it was an interesting message to consider as if it were real. Because it's really rather trivial for any of these giant tech companies to actually make a functional program to scan who you've ever spoken to, the gist of your conversations, places you've been, things you've purchased, and compose a report of your social acceptability. We're inching there, as people have to scrub their social media presence of everything but banal messages to get/keep their jobs sometimes, but the logical next step is pretty minute.

For the sake of brevity, might want to abstract it out to a number. Type a slur, lose a bunch of points. Retweet an appropriate hashtag, add some. It'd be like a video game, but real life, and high scores mean better job prospects and stuff! I wonder why no one's though of-

[Ragabul]

China already has that. It's just their Social Credit System.

[Vol]

I have to admit I'm not terribly sympathetic to the "it's the Anglo-Saxons/Americans fault" line of argument. Our own native species of leftism is the Protestant Social Gospel mixed with Jeffersonian style Enlightenment thinking. Pretty much all major social reformers up until the late 60s in the United States used this model. It was the language of the abolitionists; it was the language of the crusaders against Gilded Age excesses; it was the language of Martin Luther King and the most successful aspects of the Civil Rights Movement, and it was the language of first wave feminism.

On that note, I'm getting a sense that MLK won't be a deified figure of wisdom and peace, as he was portrayed when I was in school getting my yearly guilt lessons, going forward. Womanizer and a reverend is hard to reconcile with the zeitgeist, plus his actual message is completely irreconcilable with the current goals of the movement. Someone, at some point, is going to make a power play at his legacy's expense.

*Edit* It is also true that most of this stuff was probably never going to reach its logical culmination in a mostly ethnically homogeneous country where class issues were always a bigger deal. The USA has never been ethnically homogeneous so it was a prime candidate for this. Western Europe is rapidly ceasing to be ethnically homogeneous which is why ethnic categories are starting to appeal more than class ones.

True. If the WASPs had compromised their (nominal) principles to stamp out the threat, might've not festered and bloomed like it has. But the tolerance of intolerance leads to codified intolerance, as we're seeing. Hopefully there's a lesson learned from this in the future, and in Europe, before they hit the tipping point too.

The dark comedy of modern wokism is that despite being grounded in respectable intellectual beliefs and a long academic tradition, and then being coddled and disseminated through the educational system for decades, the mature form we see today is near void of intellectual rigor. Handful of axioms stripped of context or history, like some ancient priest rattling off the rules of their city-god you best follow or else you go into the pit.

Edit: Best soften that. I'm speaking of the most vocal people pushing for change or affecting it. I don't hold people who believe in some of the tenants, or lesser forms, but don't actively force change, to the same standard. I.e., I don't have scorn for people who think the concept of "gay rights" or "racial justice" are objective goods, because I don't expect 99% of people to think or do anything about it beyond social conventions, much less be able to articulate the difference between striving for equality, as we once were, and setting up punitive systems that will become codified discrimination later, as we are.

Anyway, Ross Douthat is legit. He is probably not confrontational enough for most people on the right because his line of thought is more oriented towards how such a person can live in the current world and maintain mental robustness in it and not so much about becoming a revolutionary trying to fix everything. I may just find this sort of thought personally appealing because I've developed a deep sense of intellectual pessimism about the West in the last few years and I'm mostly interested in how I can personally "Live Not by Lies" to quote another dude I read who is in turn quoting the dude who wrote the Gulag Archipelago.

Fair point. For obvious reasons, I prefer the writers who seem like they'd be first over the ramparts. I have no expectation that America, or the western world, will endure in the very pleasant state that's been so hard won, and so maliciously mismanaged, but there's hopefully enough past inertia to see me through my lifetime. And if I'm fortunate enough to ever have a family, theirs too. If not, well, maybe some of us will get a chance to die for something more meaningful than oil and globalism, to be romantic.

[Ragabul]

George Floyd Case: Jury Selection Begins In Derek Chauvin's Trial

I'm hoping they do in fact reconsider that 3rd degree murder charge. This has been a horror of mine for a while. They are going to have *hell* proving second degree murder and the results of this dude getting away Scott free would be ugly to say the least.

[Sinekein]

Is This the End of French Intellectual Life?

Title is there to add extra drama and make it more appealing to the clicker. A more balanced title would be that there is currently a rise in US-based identity politics in the French Intellectual Life. And the future is not looking very bright.

Last week we heard about two uni teachers being publicly and anonymously accused of islamophobia (putting posters on the walls, absolutely best way to get a healthy conversation). Today the main student union asked for them to be punished, while their colleagues are condemning the accusations. For the record, here are what both say:

Teachers: "Nous condamnons fortement et fermement ces actions dangereuses pour nos collègues, notre institut et notre démocratie. Des vies sont aujourd’hui en danger et c’est intolérable"

(We firmly and strongly condemn those actions that are dangerous for our colleagues, our university and our democracy. Lives are in danger today and it cannot be tolerated) - note: reference to Samuel Paty's assassination, who was accused of the same thing and was beheaded by an islamist lunatic last October (last week we learned that the kid who started the whole debate by making those accusations before his father repeated and amplified them on social media had admitted to lying, talk about a shaggy dog story).

Students: "Nous continuerons à demander des sanctions tant que ces deux professeurs ne se seront pas excusés. [Leurs écrits] ont été jugés par des personnes concernées - donc des personnes musulmanes ou affiliées à l'islam - comme islamophobes"

(We will keep asking for sanctions until those two teachers apologize. [Their writings] have been deemed islamophobic by some affected people - muslim or affiliated with Islam) - note: I hope some day they re-read what they said and realize how fucking horrifying it is. It's basically a Twitter debate translate in a university and a rather prestigious one at that.

Basically, identity politics seem to be mostly popular among the youth. Elder intellectuals absolutely don't subscribe, but they mathematically won't be there for as long. So I'm not really optimistic. If we can get bullshit such as these a mere four months after the horrific murder of a teacher, I don't see what can stop that identity madness to spread.

The one thing I'm relatively optimistic about is that I get the feeling "wokism" and its corollaries profited a lot from the Trump presidency because of how abhorrent an individual he is. It's much harder to be constantly indignant with a mellow leader like Biden - who is also for, erm, reasons, less likely to trigger some dark fears among white people (and turn them towards a Trump) than Obama was.

For example, liberals loved to see a liberal movie under Trump because it, well, "felt good" considering who was in charge. But under Biden I'm not sure there will be the same urge, and it's possible we will return to some more normalcy. Also, Biden does not exactly look like a dangerous leftist, so it's doubtful the woke aisle of his party is going to get free reign to do whatever they want. It's likely the most powerful and influential Dem for the next four years is going to be Joe Manchin, hardly someone who is big on the woke agenda.

(That and Trump looks like he's going to stick to the GOP like a tumor for the foreseeable future, denying them the chance of evolving past him - and possibly towards the kind of leadership that might once again rile up wokes).

----

Now interestingly enough, while riding today I listened to a sports podcast that was about The Fight - the 1971 Frazier vs Ali boxing heavyweight championship, and all the symbols associated with it - and how Ali and his rather, well, racist and segregationnist stances "won" against Frazier more peaceful view of integration.

The journalists mentioned how today Ali is summed up as "the man who refused to go to Vietnam", but that this opinion (which can be praised, no question) hides some less savory ones, such as his meeting with the KKK circa 1974 to discuss their common goal of not having to live together. And that Ali won the media game by framing Frazier as something of a traitor to his race, even though Frazier was the one who came from poverty and worked in cotton fields, not Ali, who was middle-class or small bourgeoisie.

It was very nice and thought-provoking, and it really called to mind that debate we are currently having in France (universalism/secularism vs communautarism). It also helps to explain Ali's place in US history as something of a symbol of the rise of identity politics to the detriment of a more "live-together" solution to racial problems.

[Ragabul]

I found an article that fleshes out my concerns with the George Floyd sentencing thing pretty well.

He's being charged with second degree unintentional murder:

"It's worth reviewing those definitions. With the second-degree unintentional murder charge, prosecutors will argue Chauvin "cause[d] the death of a human being, without intent to effect the death of any person, while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense." The problem will come in that final clause: Was Chauvin committing or attempting to commit a felony offense? The prosecutors say yes, he was committing assault.

But the Minneapolis Police Department specifically trained its officers to use neck restraints like the one Chauvin used on Floyd. At the time, neck restraints in which an officer would "[compress] one or both sides of a person's neck with an arm or leg" were permitted for 25 minutes, far longer than the nine minutes Chauvin pinned Floyd. Chauvin had been on the force for two decades and had repeatedly used this technique in past arrests. He wasn't fired or prosecuted for those prior uses because he was following MPD rules. And given those very rules, it's difficult to see how prosecutors will make the legal (not moral) case that Chauvin attempted felony assault and committed second-degree murder in the process. (MPD policy has since been updated to prohibit neck restraints and chokeholds.)"

So in other words, this seems like a shoe-in for a hung jury or a not guilty verdict.

Meanwhile:

"The third-degree murder charge is an easier fit. The task here is to show that Chauvin "without intent to effect the death of any person, cause[d] the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life." (The sticking point under consideration at the appeals court, incidentally, is the part about the act being "dangerous to others" — that is, was Chauvin's behavior dangerous only to Floyd or to multiple "others"? One judge said the apparent danger to Floyd alone made this charge inappropriate, but there's precedent to reverse that call.)"

This is also called "depraved heart murder" in some places with a basic definition that you didn't intend to kill per se but were showing reckless indifference to human life while engaging in an act very likely to result in loss of life. This one seems appropriate to me.

The author seems to think that even this is a stretch because the police department condoned chokeholds and thus the best that can be hoped for is manslaughter.

I think public sentiment may have shifted enough and the optics of this are so bad that you can in fact get the dude on 3rd degree murder. Also, nothing but a manslaughter conviction seems like something only slightly less likely to end with Minneapolis on fire than "not guilty."

[Sinekein]

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/11/us/d ... index.html

3rd degree back on the menu.

[Vol]

Even third degree will be hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt, but they have a far better chance of convincing a jury than second. Just like everyone was saying right after Floyd died. So hopefully they don't fuck this up and set off more riots, but also ensure justice is done.

Had a moderate chuckle seeing the dueling narratives on social media today (I use Twitter solely to follow artists). One story was a Big-character Poster criticism session against Tucker Carlson for some segment where he mocked Biden for some new policy allegedly weakening our military, such as the inhuman concept of a "pregnancy flight suit." The message was, of course, fuck Tucker, cancel cancel, go after his sponsors, women soldiers are strong and stuff. Pentagon even put out a statement personally criticizing an American citizen.

The other story was about violence against women being a big problem and people sharing their stories. I would agree it's a major problem that men need to solve, by firmly dealing with other men. But that's only a fair paradigm under patriarchy, or at least codified gender roles. In lieu of that, personal protection's up to the individual and only them. Or the government, as I assume these people were clamoring for.

Might live to see China's historically crappy military overtake us, as was mentioned a little while ago. Though I assume they've compromised our supply chains, intelligence, and leadership already.

[Ragabul]

The other story was about violence against women being a big problem and people sharing their stories. I would agree it's a major problem that men need to solve, by firmly dealing with other men. But that's only a fair paradigm under patriarchy, or at least codified gender roles. In lieu of that, personal protection's up to the individual and only them. Or the government, as I assume these people were clamoring for.

There's been some massive overstep in recent years in redefinition of violence to include things like "gross flirting I'm not into" and I certainly think that some aspects of gender roles are rooted in underlying biology so trying to force 50/50 parity in everything is a monstrous waste of time at best and in some cases borders on cruel. That being said if by "violence against women" you mean *actual* violence against women, I don't see why societal policing of that needs to be tied to traditional gender roles. Most any violent action directed at women would be equally appalling if it was directed at men or children. If that article you read framed it as "it's specifically men's job to do something about this" then your criticism is fair, but I see no issue in demanding that society in general use the powers it possesses to reduce sexual violence even if we've gone full queer and all semblance of gender roles are in shreds.

There's more to this than just "teach men not to rape." I would certainly not rely on that if I had a daughter. I would certainly give her the full work down on not drinking around people she doesn't know extremely well, not flirting if she doesn't mean it, not walking at night alone in shady places, and so on. That being said "teach men not to rape" seems like modern society 101 stuff.

Also, one of the chief problems with relying chiefly on men policing men in a traditional patriarchy is that a massive rule of traditional patriarchy is "hands off the other dude's women." If you must rely on "good" males to protect you from bad ones but all the ones who exercise the reigns of power over you are bad ones, how are you even supposed to notify the good ones? And on what basis do you have any kind of standing to challenge the bad ones anyway?

About gender and the military. From what I do know of it (which is admittedly not so much) much of the future of warfare is going to be unmanned or even autonomous machines which means that human activity will consist of a lot of people pushing buttons and planning. And for front line troops, I fully expect biological enhancement of various kinds will eventually be deployed because I see no reason China won't do this. In both those scenarios, underlying biology becomes increasingly irrelevant. If we don't go in this direction and instead double down on traditional "strong guys who can do lots of pushups who man giant platform," you probably will see that stuff increasingly blown to bits by smaller expendable autonomous machines that can be operated in swarms at a distant and quickly replaced when destroyed. Granted, adding some pregnant women to the strong dudes operating the platform would also do nothing to prevent it getting blown to bits.

If your criticism is that squabbling over stupid things like pregnancy flight suits just shows how unserious we are about competing with China and is excellent evidence of our decadence, I agree. But the pregnancy flight suits of themselves are not the issue. *Any* stupidity that distracts from the core focus would be an issue. It's the equivalent of fighting over what color the tiles in the bathroom should be while your house has a cracked foundation and a leaking roof.

[Sinekein]

There's been some massive overstep in recent years in redefinition of violence to include things like "gross flirting I'm not into" and I certainly think that some aspects of gender roles are rooted in underlying biology so trying to force 50/50 parity in everything is a monstrous waste of time at best and in some cases borders on cruel. That being said if by "violence against women" you mean *actual* violence against women, I don't see why societal policing of that needs to be tied to traditional gender roles. Most any violent action directed at women would be equally appalling if it was directed at men or children. If that article you read framed it as "it's specifically men's job to do something about this" then your criticism is fair, but I see no issue in demanding that society in general use the powers it possesses to reduce sexual violence even if we've gone full queer and all semblance of gender roles are in shreds.

Most sensible feminists I heard don't want to banish flirting altogether or turn it into a game of Russian roulette where you're equally likely to get a phone number or a lawsuit. That's just some dumb, fringe Twitter "debaters" - sidenote, I heard the big authoritarian news out of Russia this week was that Putin had decided to slow Twitter down and...well, that might be the one authoritarian thing I would support, closing Facebook and Twitter - I know, it's so they can control public speech, but still, I fail to see how our democracies would suffer from the disappearance of those public cancers.

Anyway, what I hear the most commonly is teaching guys some thing that "traditional patriarchy" did not and that is not unlawful:
- "No means no" to ban those who insist or pressure
- "Time and place for filrting", with some examples of "always wrong" such as in the street/public transportation, or in the workplace.

It really boils down to that. If kids are taught that - and that doesn't sound ultra-feminazi-ball-cutting IMO - then you'll only be left with what clearly is to be dealt with by the police. And it's also gender-neutral, because there are female sexual harassers too.

I get the feeling the "Meet Cute" cliché is ingrained in our psyché despite really not existing. I don't know of a single example of a couple that was created by a street encounter, on a bus, or by a catcall. There might be some "train couples", I dunno, but I assume those might be for people who routinely take the same public transportation and end up knowing the people who do the same. And I know of many workplace couples, but they started during the off-hours.

It won't solve the issue of rapists or domestic abusers, but at least we'll be done with the "boys being boys" grey area.

[Vol]

There's been some massive overstep in recent years in redefinition of violence to include things like "gross flirting I'm not into" and I certainly think that some aspects of gender roles are rooted in underlying biology so trying to force 50/50 parity in everything is a monstrous waste of time at best and in some cases borders on cruel. That being said if by "violence against women" you mean *actual* violence against women, I don't see why societal policing of that needs to be tied to traditional gender roles. Most any violent action directed at women would be equally appalling if it was directed at men or children. If that article you read framed it as "it's specifically men's job to do something about this" then your criticism is fair, but I see no issue in demanding that society in general use the powers it possesses to reduce sexual violence even if we've gone full queer and all semblance of gender roles are in shreds.

I've seen 'violence' extended to "any amount of criticism or mockery," but the hyperbolization of language in general is concerning. First noticed it, coincidentally, as my cohorts were going into college and learning about academic language and insisting <x> actually means <x + y>.

To clarify, I'm speaking of a larger sense than a fedora tipping, "I will save you muh ladee," when seeing a domestic spat or a Twitter troll. This new form of essentialism is framed in rejection of the traditional one, but the behavior still manifests. You can twist the concept of protecting the vulnerable to restraining the aggressors, and all you've done is shifted perception while engaging in the same, but less productive, behavior. Same as with shifting from a loose cultural Protestantism to Scientism, same behavior results regardless, but now comes with nihilistic hedonism. There's always a common behavior, and the least destructive manifestation is the one to encourage.

Philosophically, yes, the standard in which violence is applied against anyone should not take into consideration what they are, only what their role in the act is. Intrinsically, there is no possible way for me to treat violence against women and children equal to men. It is built into the foundation of my consciousness, be it natural morals or evolutionary psychology, to treat threats against them as more serious, abstracted out to the greater range of events we experience today. The outcome is to either reduce the size of your "tribe," and become more callous and emotionally withdrawn from society, or, to accept the new essentialism and try to deny your urges while fulfilling them. The vast majority of people will occupy space between these poles, but the trend is towards them, which is the problem. And while the latter is waxing in power, so they seem the "most right," it will never last, because it's a half-concept, you cannot square the circle. Hence certain stereotypes about the loudest "feminist allies."

And yes, if the premise of gender equality is congruent, then regardless of the fact that men are going to the most common and severely violent ones (Though in acts against children, it may be women due to access), there cannot be an onus on them to police each other or themselves, as it violates the premise. But how do you manifest that peaceful, society-wide messaging and enforcement _without_ targeting the greatest offenders specifically?

edit: Randomly came across a very pertinent discussion about this very topic to illustrate my point: https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/commen ... hat_women/

There's more to this than just "teach men not to rape." I would certainly not rely on that if I had a daughter. I would certainly give her the full work down on not drinking around people she doesn't know extremely well, not flirting if she doesn't mean it, not walking at night alone in shady places, and so on. That being said "teach men not to rape" seems like modern society 101 stuff.

This was a fun debate when it started cropping up in the 00's. I could not wrap my head around the theory that telling people to consider their personal safety to minimize chances of becoming a victim is equivalent to blaming them for any victimization that occurs. It is unfortunate that bad things happen (as opposed to what?), and I want to see the least amount of bad things within tolerance of a free society. We can both condemn malicious behavior _and_ not condone stupidly risky behavior.

Also, one of the chief problems with relying chiefly on men policing men in a traditional patriarchy is that a massive rule of traditional patriarchy is "hands off the other dude's women." If you must rely on "good" males to protect you from bad ones but all the ones who exercise the reigns of power over you are bad ones, how are you even supposed to notify the good ones? And on what basis do you have any kind of standing to challenge the bad ones anyway?

That's a good question. Ironically, I would advocate swift violence. Or communal policing. If Mr. Hotep is smacking his wife around, then in a strong community, you can have a posse form to beat the stupid from him, or put his wife somewhere safe. Failing to do so could lead to a murder, and everyone suffers for the loss of 2 members. But I don't actually know how it historically played out.

About gender and the military. From what I do know of it (which is admittedly not so much) much of the future of warfare is going to be unmanned or even autonomous machines which means that human activity will consist of a lot of people pushing buttons and planning.

We assume. And for many reasons I won't go into here, this is a horrible change. One I _will_ cite is that it will make atrocities infinitely easier to commit, as the thousands (dozens?) of innocent Middle Eastern people who've been drone-struck attest to.

If your criticism is that squabbling over stupid things like pregnancy flight suits just shows how unserious we are about competing with China and is excellent evidence of our decadence, I agree. But the pregnancy flight suits of themselves are not the issue. *Any* stupidity that distracts from the core focus would be an issue. It's the equivalent of fighting over what color the tiles in the bathroom should be while your house has a cracked foundation and a leaking roof.

Essentially. The practical need for them is not my issue. In any situation where a pregnant woman is needed in combat, the situation has become so dire that extinction of the people is assured. Clearly not the physical case with us, but we do it anyway. The symbolism speaks for itself.

Anyway, what I hear the most commonly is teaching guys some thing that "traditional patriarchy" did not and that is not unlawful:
- "No means no" to ban those who insist or pressure
- "Time and place for filrting", with some examples of "always wrong" such as in the street/public transportation, or in the workplace.

Funnily enough, I was working on a project the other day, and had my headphones on listening to random crap on YT. Saw a clip from those anime avatar girl streamers talking about how to get girls.

They said, in effect, "Be confident and persistent, but not a jerk or pushy. And only make an approach when she's not busy, unless she looks like she wants you to." That makes total sense to you and me, because we're grown men who've lived a bit and know how interpersonal relationships generally work. To a young man, presumably not a little Chad if he's watching that stream asking for advice, that is absolute nonsense.

Not even getting into how incredibly selectively true it is. You can't condense the complexity of courtship into concise phrases. As I grew out of the red pill/Manosphere stuff years ago, really started to see the entire area of male/female interaction, and all the theory and industry built up around it, as people fundamentally wanting to be with each other, but the social mechanisms having been fucked up. Life will, uh, always find a way, but it's not a surprise that groups like the incels are increasing in number and sentiment.

[Sinekein]

Funnily enough, I was working on a project the other day, and had my headphones on listening to random crap on YT. Saw a clip from those anime avatar girl streamers talking about how to get girls.

They said, in effect, "Be confident and persistent, but not a jerk or pushy. And only make an approach when she's not busy, unless she looks like she wants you to." That makes total sense to you and me, because we're grown men who've lived a bit and know how interpersonal relationships generally work. To a young man, presumably not a little Chad if he's watching that stream asking for advice, that is absolute nonsense.

I would personally put the "unless she looks like she wants you to" in the "caveat too vague to be useful", that might be more hurtful than anything. "Busy" can have different meanings, but I really like to tie it to the social situation. Of course it is going to be an oversimplification, but it tends to work.

You might look like you're "not busy" on public transportation, yet it's unlikely you're planning to use it to meet new people and have meaningful conversations. Depending on the time, you might be commuting to go to/go back from work, not the perfect time for your mind to be super open.

You might look like you're "busy" in a bar because you're talking to a friend, but usually, when you're in a pub, it's leisure time, and you might be okay with someone intruding on your conversation.

Not even getting into how incredibly selectively true it is. You can't condense the complexity of courtship into concise phrases. As I grew out of the red pill/Manosphere stuff years ago, really started to see the entire area of male/female interaction, and all the theory and industry built up around it, as people fundamentally wanting to be with each other, but the social mechanisms having been fucked up. Life will, uh, always find a way, but it's not a surprise that groups like the incels are increasing in number and sentiment.

Of course it is way more complicated than that, I won't deny it. But ensuring women can feel safe in public space is essential to get the healthiest possible social interactions, the kind that are favorable to flirting, romance or seduction.

Honestly, I can see the appeal of PUA - despite thinking they are rotten to the core. They are making one of the most complex and diverse fields of human society extremely simple, mathematical even - rating girls, giving quick tips on how long you should try and approach, etc. Their books are the equivalent of meteorological modelling: trying to fit extremely complex systems into a bunch of simple equations that can give you a rough idea of the outcome.

I do feel like, more than feminism being more influent, it's technology that has caused the rise of the incels, for two main reasons. First, because it allowed those (usually) isolated people to find their kin and feel like they belong. Second, because cellphones, internet and "social" media have done a number on real human interactions, and it's happening from a younger and younger age. And it's not a substitute from meeting face to face with a real human being, and learning about all the social cues of their behavior - even if it is extremely complicated and sometimes illogical.

To me, it's roughly the same reason, say, the most racist people live in the least diverse areas (note that it also works for entirely black/latino neighborhoods, because no one is immune to racism). When you interact with people different than you, you don't necessarily turn into an all-loving hippie, but at least you tend to distance yourself from some statements or clichés you might more easily believe as long as they are your only relationship with those "other people".

And between the lockdowns and technological progress, I doubt it's going to change anytime soon. While I was waiting for a medical appointment the other day, a mother was there with a kid in a stroller - couldn't be older than three or four. He was playing with her phone, and he started yelling and crying every time she tried to take it back, it was painful to watch (and yet, I fear, more and more common).

[Vol]

I would personally put the "unless she looks like she wants you to" in the "caveat too vague to be useful", that might be more hurtful than anything. "Busy" can have different meanings, but I really like to tie it to the social situation. Of course it is going to be an oversimplification, but it tends to work.

You might look like you're "not busy" on public transportation, yet it's unlikely you're planning to use it to meet new people and have meaningful conversations. Depending on the time, you might be commuting to go to/go back from work, not the perfect time for your mind to be super open.

You might look like you're "busy" in a bar because you're talking to a friend, but usually, when you're in a pub, it's leisure time, and you might be okay with someone intruding on your conversation.

Exactly. It's learned through experience, not a discrete list of rules. Which is also the problem, I suppose. Because it's so incredibly rare for men to be approached for this, especially average or below men, that there isn't a good hypothetical to demonstrate the imposition without resorting to ridiculous scenarios. But fundamentally, unless you want to resort solely to online dating or meeting people through friends, you're going to have to bother a stranger at some point.

Of course it is way more complicated than that, I won't deny it. But ensuring women can feel safe in public space is essential to get the healthiest possible social interactions, the kind that are favorable to flirting, romance or seduction.

Honestly, I can see the appeal of PUA - despite thinking they are rotten to the core. They are making one of the most complex and diverse fields of human society extremely simple, mathematical even - rating girls, giving quick tips on how long you should try and approach, etc. Their books are the equivalent of meteorological modelling: trying to fit extremely complex systems into a bunch of simple equations that can give you a rough idea of the outcome.

I do feel like, more than feminism being more influent, it's technology that has caused the rise of the incels, for two main reasons. First, because it allowed those (usually) isolated people to find their kin and feel like they belong. Second, because cellphones, internet and "social" media have done a number on real human interactions, and it's happening from a younger and younger age. And it's not a substitute from meeting face to face with a real human being, and learning about all the social cues of their behavior - even if it is extremely complicated and sometimes illogical.

To me, it's roughly the same reason, say, the most racist people live in the least diverse areas (note that it also works for entirely black/latino neighborhoods, because no one is immune to racism). When you interact with people different than you, you don't necessarily turn into an all-loving hippie, but at least you tend to distance yourself from some statements or clichés you might more easily believe as long as they are your only relationship with those "other people".

And between the lockdowns and technological progress, I doubt it's going to change anytime soon. While I was waiting for a medical appointment the other day, a mother was there with a kid in a stroller - couldn't be older than three or four. He was playing with her phone, and he started yelling and crying every time she tried to take it back, it was painful to watch (and yet, I fear, more and more common).

Is actually true though? For all that we assume about what our fellow humans _should_ desire and do, it doesn't seem like they're willing to cooperate. I don't imagine suburban neighborhoods are a great place to find a partner.

PUA shit actually works, kinda. It's a complicated, cynical way to dupe a chick into sex, and if applied often enough at a club, it'll work. That same amount of time and effort being put into oneself might have yielded similar, if not better, results, but who can say. If a guy wants to employ total deception to get his dick wet, then pity the girl who couldn't see through it. Because after the unsatisfying sex, there's nothing there to build a relationship on, so back to the meat market. It's such a complicated way of ensuring you only ever get 1 step on the way towards your goal.

It's multiple factors, as much as we all like to say it's the one we care about the most. The inevitable changes that've occurred do not do so with regard for how humans, and men in this case, function. It creates disharmony, but as a slow poison instead of an obvious failure. People will adapt, insomuch as they can, to this new arrangement, most people will succeed, but the margin of those who don't cannot be borne past a certain point. You cannot have a stable society and a large number of completely young men, unless you start putting soma in their Mountain Dew.

I've actually seen data to the opposite effect. The people who live in the most diverse neighborhoods have the poorest impression of other races, adjusted by economic status, while the most homogeneous are the most accepting. Which makes sense if you assume preexisting tribalism and resentment for the poor, ignorant idealism for the wealthy. Never seen a large scale, comprehensive study tho.

[Vol]

So the president of one of those drag queen story hour foundations, where the sex perverts that dress up like demons read storybooks to little kids? Turns out he was a pedophile. Totally unexpected.

Down at the border, massive surge of illegals and unaccompanied minors, because of fucking course they are when amnesty and free money is in the cards. Meanwhile, an amnesty bill passed the House.

Up in Canada, a father is being punished by the courts for refusing to assist them in the state-mandated sex change of his 14 year old daughter.

Still a personal garrison over in DC, despite that "imminent extremist attack" being literally nothing a few weeks back.

It's been decided that (white) people cannot publicly criticize China or they're white supremacists.

And Putin challenged Biden to a public, live discussion, because now's unironically a great time to shit on America and get rewarded for it.

Think tomorrow I'll avoid all news.

[Sinekein]

And yet, all of this accounts for 8 fewer deaths than one racist incel with a gun. In a single day of news.

Still a personal garrison over in DC, despite that "imminent extremist attack" being literally nothing a few weeks back.

Imagine airports on december 2001 saying: "Well guys, no plane attacks in three months, why are we even wasting time and money with those security measures anyway?"

[Vol]

Today's paper had a big article about how Asian activist groups are banding together with all the other racial groups to fight white supremacy, because of the rising number of hate crimes against Asians and specifically that murderer. Oddly, it didn't cite numbers, so much as use vague language, "significantly up," "rising," "surge," "terrifying increase," etc. Looking into those numbers, turns out white people are among the smallest concerns for racial attacks on Asians, barring that one guy who just murdered 8 people. Though last I heard, the police weren't sure if his motivation was racial.

I propose a compromise. We redeploy the DC garrison to guard rub n' tugs and have mandatory pro-Asian courses for the demographics most likely to be engaging in bigotry against them.

Problem: Solved.

[Ragabul]

But how do you manifest that peaceful, society-wide messaging and enforcement _without_ targeting the greatest offenders specifically?

This is one of those instances where a disparate outcome is not evidence of undue discrimination. The modern essentialist screed takes the presence of disparity of any kind as ipso facto racist/sexist/whateverist. But sometimes making people freer produces *more* disparity. I'll go to Jordan Peterson's favorite example of how the disparity between male/female engineers and female/male nurses is much greater in Sweden than in many other parts of the world even though Sweden is one of the most egalitarian places on earth. It's specifically because people in Sweden are freer to follow the path they want that they choose things that align with stereotypes (read with some aspect of their intrinsic nature) than in places where you have to make decisions based on things like "what makes me the most money regardless of what I *want* to do?"

An enforcement mechanism is going to end up targeting men more. The question is of course how do you do this without constantly hassling random men who are doing nothing in particular suspicious other than being male or engaging in stereotypical but permissible male behaviors? A very robust defense of due process seems like an obvious place to start.

That's a good question. Ironically, I would advocate swift violence. Or communal policing. If Mr. Hotep is smacking his wife around, then in a strong community, you can have a posse form to beat the stupid from him, or put his wife somewhere safe. Failing to do so could lead to a murder, and everyone suffers for the loss of 2 members. But I don't actually know how it historically played out.

I know of no society that had any kind of consistent means of addressing male violence towards women that didn't give women at least some agency. Some of the "swift violence" type traditions were especially egregious and often ended up with random men who did nothing wrong ending up at the hands' of a lynch mob because of some dubious suspicion. That is certainly how most black men who were killed by vigilantes in the South ended up lynched.

We assume. And for many reasons I won't go into here, this is a horrible change. One I _will_ cite is that it will make atrocities infinitely easier to commit, as the thousands (dozens?) of innocent Middle Eastern people who've been drone-struck attest to.

It's horrible when a powerful state is fighting a weak one. It's arguably better when two great powers are fighting because they both have the machines to protect their homeland and thus would be more likely to be beating the shit out of each other's machines over random Pacific islands. This sounds much better than a head to head traditional war with China.

[Ragabul]

I'm really suspicious about the sudden narrative of a random glut of crimes targeting Asians. Nobody seems to be able to provide an answer as to "why now" and "who is supposedly doing this?"

My suspicion is that the answer is something like:

Old Asian people make excellent targets of opportunity because they are more likely to be walking alone in dense, shady urban areas or places adjacent to dense, shady urban areas. Violent crime has risen notably in most major American cities over the last year due to some mix of coronavirus fatigue, police drawback, economic distress, and watery mainstream condemnation of rioting. Because of that there's been an overall uptick in the number of older Asian people subjected to things like muggings and armed robberies at their stores. Some x% of those inevitably go south and end up with someone shot or killed. The people committing the crimes are probably mostly not-white and also probably mostly not targeting Asians specifically because they are Asian. (At least not in some "I hate Asians" overt racist sense. They probably do attack them specifically because they are perceived as outsiders and thus fairer game than somebody in their in group).

None of that, of course, fits anybody's narrative so it gets subjected to such heavy slant and spin that it becomes very hard to ascertain exactly what's going on. Incel spa shooter guy could very well be a complete coincidence *or* could have piggbacked off all the sudden glut of media coverage insisting random racists are attacking Asians en masse now, much as school shooters and suicides piggyback off of news of school shootings and suicides.

[Ragabul]

Couple of relevant things:

This "letter to the editor" note written to and published on the blog of this guy I read who has really been going to town on anti-wokeness for a while now and wrote a bunch of posts on the pregnancy flight suits thing. It seems plausible and put some things into perspective, specifically on the pregnancy suits most likely being for people with desk duty:

"Been a big fan for years. Forgive me typing this out fast. But I think you’ve got it at least partly wrong on the military wokeness stuff. I agree with the wider problem, e.g. How to Be Antiracist in the Navy. But as an active-duty officer, I think most of the anger against Tucker Carlson is coming from normal military members who aren’t woke, but see him as demeaning the service of women in the military. Women have been in service now since the 70s, and have done a fine job. I serve alongside women every day. I think there might be a good abstract argument for an all-male military, but that ship sailed years and years ago; this isn’t a battle worth fighting right now. The women in combat thing is certainly a problem, but that image of Tucker and the “pregnant woman fighting our wars” is not talking about women fighting in combat. Pilots (who run our Air Force long after they stop actively flying) wear their silly “pajama suits” (what non-fliers call them) around the office every day. It annoys everyone else, but it is a pilot tradition. So it is perfectly reasonable that if we have women pilots, and they become women commanders who mostly have desk duty, that they can have access to maternity flight suits. We have had maternity combat uniforms for years. Probably since the 90s at least. But Tucker Carlson does not mention that, because it doesn’t help his boomer-inflaming cause. I know you like him, and I respect the fact that he gets stuff right sometimes, but I’m starting to think about you and Tucker Carlson in the way you think about the GOP and Donald Trump. Don’t tie yourself to this guy. He’s an asshole.
I know it is a bit unfair to impugn Carlson for his lack of service, but I hope you understand how female servicemembers who have put their life on the line on multiple deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever feel when they see this chicken-hawk in his thousand-dollar suit mocking their maternity flight suits. That makes people angry. Women have lost limbs and died to protect this country, Rod. And practically every female servicemember out there who has been in for a few years has had to miss a kid’s birthday, an anniversary with their husband, etc., while on deployment. I think that is where the anger against Tucker is coming from. It would have happened regardless of whether the military had a wider wokeness problem. Again, maybe women shouldn’t be in service at all – but if that is what you are worried about come out and say it. Don’t be mealy-mouthed about it.
Additionally, it sort of bothers me how you write off the whole military (not wanting your son to serve, etc.) because of some of these wokeness incidents. There are a lot of people serving quite honorably, who are just trying to do their job. Just two summers ago, not a single officer in the legal office at a major Air Force base where I worked knew what the term cisgender even meant. These were all recent law school grads. Obviously some of this stuff is getting forced down the military’s throat, but we get dumb corporate PR-style training all the time. Every year there is some silly new type of training on the (very real problem) of sexual harassment/assault. Our cyber training has featured a cartoon featuring the three little pigs for years. Most of the infantile stuff goes in one ear and out the other. So don’t write us all off. The wokeness stuff is a small part of a massive organization. I promise you it isn’t trickling down much to your average soldier/sailor/airman."

The Spin on Anti-Asian Hate

*Edit* Also on the anti-Asian violence: We Need to Put a Name to This Violence

That last one predates the white boy shooting and thus is closer to honest.

[Sinekein]

I'm really suspicious about the sudden narrative of a random glut of crimes targeting Asians. Nobody seems to be able to provide an answer as to "why now" and "who is supposedly doing this?"

My suspicion is that the answer is something like:

Old Asian people make excellent targets of opportunity because they are more likely to be walking alone in dense, shady urban areas or places adjacent to dense, shady urban areas. Violent crime has risen notably in most major American cities over the last year due to some mix of coronavirus fatigue, police drawback, economic distress, and watery mainstream condemnation of rioting. Because of that there's been an overall uptick in the number of older Asian people subjected to things like muggings and armed robberies at their stores. Some x% of those inevitably go south and end up with someone shot or killed. The people committing the crimes are probably mostly not-white and also probably mostly not targeting Asians specifically because they are Asian. (At least not in some "I hate Asians" overt racist sense. They probably do attack them specifically because they are perceived as outsiders and thus fairer game than somebody in their in group).

None of that, of course, fits anybody's narrative so it gets subjected to such heavy slant and spin that it becomes very hard to ascertain exactly what's going on. Incel spa shooter guy could very well be a complete coincidence *or* could have piggbacked off all the sudden glut of media coverage insisting random racists are attacking Asians en masse now, much as school shooters and suicides piggyback off of news of school shootings and suicides.

We had had questions raised on violence towards Asians in France to, although (thankfully) not to the extent of an octuple murder.

For me the main issue is that Asians don't fit the current racial narrative. They're not white, sure, but they are very successful on average, and being Asian is almost never an issue when trying to get into a school or landing a job.

Another is that, indeed, most of the anti-Asian violent crimes come from non-white people. So when you look at anti-Asian crimes, you're likely to highlight minorities committing them, and, again - narrative.

The issue with equating the word "racism" with the subtext "racism of white people against minorities" has this issue of making it hard to talk about inter-minorities racism. And Asians are equally as racist and victims of racism than other minorities, it's just that, being mostly successful, it's likely many of them never act on those feelings.

I would add that those ethnic boxes make it look like all Asian people are the same, while they very much are not - even splitting the many countries and cultures, like China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc..., that's forgetting that there are more than 1.5 billion people in China so it's not a stretch to assume than even saying "the Chinese community" is incredibly simplistic.

Same for other minorities, or for white people, obviously.

[Ragabul]

I have been doing some reading over the last year or so which has probably cemented for me the somewhat grim reality that school attainment is overwhelmingly more predictable based on genetics than on just about any other factor that's been tested. And since school attainment is a not-perfect but pretty good shorthand for "financial success" and "social mobility," it makes most of our arguments about education really inane.

I don't quite know what to do with this information. The only logically consistent non authoritarian answers seem to be Darwinian or flat out indefinite cash transfers to "stupid" people with an understanding that such transfers will never really end and that said stupid people will never cease being stupid.

*Edit*

The word stupid is doing a lot of work here. I might not should have used it. Think of it as provocative shorthand for "people who suck at school for various innate reasons." One can be stupid in that sense and still amazing in some other sense. I am really non-stupid at school and profoundly stupid with anything to do with spatial processing (that rotate this object in 3 dimensional space stuff). No, really, I think I scored like 85 or something on that aspect of intelligence in one of those dodgy online tests once. My niece is like bordering on a musical savant but can barely pass do-nothing classes like health (not because of lack of general intelligence but because she is on the autism spectrum and just can't make her brain work that way).

[Vol]

An enforcement mechanism is going to end up targeting men more. The question is of course how do you do this without constantly hassling random men who are doing nothing in particular suspicious other than being male or engaging in stereotypical but permissible male behaviors? A very robust defense of due process seems like an obvious place to start.

Along with a radical reevaluation of what permissible behavior aught be. What we hold as self-evidently true now is inextricably tainted by post-modern thought. For example, it might be better to raise the standard for what constitutes assault, battery, sexual harassment, etc., significantly. The hyper-sensitivity of what legally could be a serious crime compared against the wildly divergent personal standard creates this hypocritical tension that in turn makes, to some degree, intrinsic male behavior criminal.

I know of no society that had any kind of consistent means of addressing male violence towards women that didn't give women at least some agency. Some of the "swift violence" type traditions were especially egregious and often ended up with random men who did nothing wrong ending up at the hands' of a lynch mob because of some dubious suspicion. That is certainly how most black men who were killed by vigilantes in the South ended up lynched.

Wife-beaters don't appear to ever have a problem finding new partners though, and obviously their current victims will often stay well past the point of sanity. So the degree of agency allowed seems to more be a measure against isolated abusers, men who would be violent not part of a pattern of behavior, and only partially because of economic dependence. Though I have no figures on this, I'm sure the overall rate has gone down, due in no small part to less relationships and an overall trend towards gynophilia, it probably would be like many crimes, where a handful of people commit the bulk of it.

On the spectrum of "Eternally pregnant domestic princess" to "Strong independent womyn who need no man," in terms of agency, I'd peg the sweet spot closer to the former than the latter, because at least we know that produces functional societies. Then work incrementally from there, until at least that kind of violence is at a tolerably insignificant level.

Again, maybe women shouldn’t be in service at all – but if that is what you are worried about come out and say it. Don’t be mealy-mouthed about it.
Additionally, it sort of bothers me how you write off the whole military (not wanting your son to serve, etc.) because of some of these wokeness incidents.

That's going to have be where I plant my flag, really. Morally, logistically, symbolically, it bothers me on all levels. Also means I would be well outside the table of public discourse, so it goes. Well, excluded from being enlisted or officers, rather, not support. There's nothing about medical care or working on a computer or whatever that's a problem.

There's also the large political realignment occurring, in which the total, unconditional support of the military on the right is quickly eroding as the reality of who serves in it and what we're doing, catalyzed by the wokeness, progresses. It's not a bunch of strapping young boys signing up underage to go fight the Kaiser or the Nazis, or being drafted to go fight communism in the hell of Vietnam, with silverspooned, but well educated, officers leading them. The reality of who those men were isn't as important as the enduring perception, and this stupid new shit cracked the facade a bit.

For me the main issue is that Asians don't fit the current racial narrative. They're not white, sure, but they are very successful on average, and being Asian is almost never an issue when trying to get into a school or landing a job.

Over here, it can be as actively harmful as being white, actually. Because Asians perform so well scholastically, they get curved downward with us, to make room for less performing groups.

The issue with equating the word "racism" with the subtext "racism of white people against minorities" has this issue of making it hard to talk about inter-minorities racism. And Asians are equally as racist and victims of racism than other minorities, it's just that, being mostly successful, it's likely many of them never act on those feelings.

The academic redefinition of "racism" has tied their hands too. If they believe there's a "power" requirement for it to actually count, perceived or otherwise, then it becomes impossibly by definition to address the problem with the gravitas it should require. But the new definition cannot be discarded, as the term is part of the motte and bailey against "whiteness."

I don't quite know what to do with this information. The only logically consistent non authoritarian answers seem to be Darwinian or flat out indefinite cash transfers to "stupid" people with an understanding that such transfers will never really end and that said stupid people will never cease being stupid.

The Darwinian solution appears to be pulling us the other way. Smarter people, for a number of reasons, produce very few, if any, offspring. Nature appears to incline us towards a lower level of cognition than what momentum has carried us to.

Though I'd question the foundation of your assumptions that academic performance _should_ be so strongly correlated with future success. Because in a situation with schooling primarily for the people who're more inclined to benefit from it, and practical education for those who aren't, I strongly suspect the outcomes would converge more.

[Ragabul]

For example, it might be better to raise the standard for what constitutes assault, battery, sexual harassment, etc., significantly.

I actually think the current legal standards mostly work as they are. One muddled area that needs to get worked out legally still is sexual assault on college campuses because there is a bunch of weird grey area there at the moment that is working very poorly. The most innovative one that seems like a consensus of some sort is forming around that I mostly agree with is a redefinition of sexual harassment. This is maybe not a usable legal standard but the cultural more should be something like "do not make sexual advances toward anybody that you exercise employment power over." If you have the direct power to make their continued employment conditional on them giving you sexual favors, do not hit on them. At the very least, you have the responsibility to make it very clear that their refusal of your advance will not cost them their job and that you will not punish them in any way for it. Obviously there is some grey area in there like with any moral rule, but I think overall it's a good one and an actual improvement over old ones.

On the spectrum of "Eternally pregnant domestic princess" to "Strong independent womyn who need no man," in terms of agency, I'd peg the sweet spot closer to the former than the latter, because at least we know that produces functional societies. Then work incrementally from there, until at least that kind of violence is at a tolerably insignificant level.

It's, of course, not just about physical violence though. I'm just pointing out that cultures that give women the agency of chattel as a starting position tend to have lots of rape and generalized violence towards women. The culture of the old South was a mass rape culture. Most female slaves were probably raped at some point in their lives even if white women were not. Warrior tribes like the Comanches and the various steppe tribes tended to engage in mass rape. Ancient Romans and Greeks had generalized sexual access to any women (or children) slaves in their household and nobody considered this a problem.

You are correct that the major problem for modern society isn't actually this kind of violence towards women. It's the Yellow Wallpaper and the Feminine Mystique. The existential boogieman of the not-poor post Industrial Revolution female is not male violence. It's mental death. All of the things that women used to *do* went away long before the Ford factory got outsourced to Mexico. Where is the wool they are supposed to spin? Where is the water they are supposed to draw? Where is the vegetable garden they are supposed to keep? Where are the stupid soirees and dinner parties they are supposed to plan? The traditional female economic sphere was utterly swallowed up by automation and technology long ago and being female got reduced to "that half of the species that gets pregnant, lactates, and keeps toddlers from walking off cliffs."

*This* is the conundrum for "smart" women. And, yeah, such women are very confused in general. Because, yes, they mostly want children and motherhood and all that. But they also don't want the mind-death that is nothing but a life defined around 2 hours of casual chores a day and picking their kids up from school. Or maybe some do, but what you will get with this reality is not a bunch of masterful women who are great stewards and teachers of their kids potential but rather a whole lot of people reading Avon romances and watching soap operas all day. (Or in my nerd case during this phase of my life posting turian porn and playing video games). It's really not so different from the young male bum with potential who can't seem to do anything but sit around playing Call of Duty and drinking Pepsi all day. He is also staving off mind-death with soma.

I don't have a tidy answer to this. I do know that technology mostly means we can't go back and whatever we do will have to be creative.

That's going to have be where I plant my flag, really. Morally, logistically, symbolically, it bothers me on all levels. Also means I would be well outside the table of public discourse, so it goes. Well, excluded from being enlisted or officers, rather, not support. There's nothing about medical care or working on a computer or whatever that's a problem.

My position on this is basically consequentialist. And since this is something of a recent social experiment, it's not actually clear what will happen. Technology is also, of course, a wild card. This is certainly a great argument for not proceeding full steam ahead with mass experimentation until we know what it will do. I am in principle not opposed to an all male fighting force, and if women do fight, I think it's fair they should have to sign up for the draft.

The Darwinian solution appears to be pulling us the other way. Smarter people, for a number of reasons, produce very few, if any, offspring. Nature appears to incline us towards a lower level of cognition than what momentum has carried us to.

This assumes that the group that produces the most offspring will always win, which is actually not the case. (Though in principle I agree that low birthrates can and are producing real problems).

Though I'd question the foundation of your assumptions that academic performance _should_ be so strongly correlated with future success. Because in a situation with schooling primarily for the people who're more inclined to benefit from it, and practical education for those who aren't, I strongly suspect the outcomes would converge more.

On I don't think it *should* be. I'm just deeply pessimistic that basic economics will ever allow a situation in which flute playing is a stable income source for whatever percentage of people are naturally cut out to be flute players. You first need a culture that deeply values flute players for whatever reason and I can't think of anything that would force culture to value flute players (or any other silly analogue you want) that isn't authoritarian. For something basically anybody can physically do (digging ditches) but few people temperamentally want to do, I see no market incentive that wouldn't turn towards automation. And then that weird x% of people that are temperamentally suited to digging ditches and nothing else are really out of luck.

[Sinekein]

Along with a radical reevaluation of what permissible behavior aught be. What we hold as self-evidently true now is inextricably tainted by post-modern thought. For example, it might be better to raise the standard for what constitutes assault, battery, sexual harassment, etc., significantly. The hyper-sensitivity of what legally could be a serious crime compared against the wildly divergent personal standard creates this hypocritical tension that in turn makes, to some degree, intrinsic male behavior criminal.

There's no such thing as an "intrinsic male behavior" that could be considered criminal. Everything criminal requires at least an unconsented criminal contact.

Since ignoring consent is not "intrinsically male", then you can very well behave as your chromosomes tell you without ever entering the criminal area, as long as you understand that physical contact must be consensual, which is kind of obvious and easy to memorize.

The "It's becoming too hard to understand" claims are pure BS. The only difference is that now guys face consequences for intrusive crap they've pulled for centuries without giving a fuck about how it made women feel if they did not reciprocate the feelings.

Basically, now, men are forced to take into consideration that women also have free agency. That's it. That's the extent of the "unfairness" of it all.

Wife-beaters don't appear to ever have a problem finding new partners though, and obviously their current victims will often stay well past the point of sanity. So the degree of agency allowed seems to more be a measure against isolated abusers, men who would be violent not part of a pattern of behavior, and only partially because of economic dependence. Though I have no figures on this, I'm sure the overall rate has gone down, due in no small part to less relationships and an overall trend towards gynophilia, it probably would be like many crimes, where a handful of people commit the bulk of it.

More often than not, kids play a large part in the duration of abusive relationships.

And were they punished more severely than they currently are, it would be harder for domestic abusers to find new partners.

I'm fully in favor of some kind of bracelet that clearly identifies the worst domestic offenders. This way, there's no way they can turn on the charm to find a new prey without it knowing the reason they're looking for new company. We are having another horrifying case right now in France, a woman assassinated by his husband a month ago because she wanted a divorce and left their home.

On the spectrum of "Eternally pregnant domestic princess" to "Strong independent womyn who need no man," in terms of agency, I'd peg the sweet spot closer to the former than the latter, because at least we know that produces functional societies. Then work incrementally from there, until at least that kind of violence is at a tolerably insignificant level.

Since Earth is threatened way more by overpopulation than scarcity of human beings, I fail to see what eternal pregnancy has to do with functioning societies really. I would also strongly disagree than any past society can be considered "more functional" than what we have now - you'd need some super-colored glasses to think that 50's America is somehow better than now. At best, the requirement is economic opulence, it has little to do with women's rights.

That's going to have be where I plant my flag, really. Morally, logistically, symbolically, it bothers me on all levels. Also means I would be well outside the table of public discourse, so it goes. Well, excluded from being enlisted or officers, rather, not support. There's nothing about medical care or working on a computer or whatever that's a problem.

Looks to me like war is becoming less and less a matter of individual strength, no? I mean, how is a man better at piloting a drone from a center or a carrier thousand of kilometers away? Technology is becoming so important that actual physical parameters are losing importance, so I fail to see what real reasons there are to enforce gender bans. And since the US are supposed to be the peacekeepers of the world, I also fail to see how harmful it would be to have more women on the ground if a large part of the plan is to relate and behave humanly - better than would-be rapists or guys who enlisted just to down brown people IMO.

Symbolically, I will just laugh. Women have not waited for Twitter wars to be soldiers. Again, maybe it's because no war has been fought on US soil on a while, but where you have conflict, you have women with weapons. Like the Kurds who were holding the uber-misogyinists from ISIS until Trump backstabbed them and delivered them to Erdogan.

If your basic statement is "men won't manage to keep it in their pants", then you basically start from the idea that men will never be sufficiently evolved to restrain their sexual impulses. That's a couple of steps removed from saying that rape is in our nature.

[Ragabul]

How Trump Got Control of the Border

One of only two major things the Trump administration did right.

Politics don't actually upset me for the most part. I am unusually lucky that social drama and people rarely ever make me angry. (I get furious at machines and things though).

Immigration policy is one of the few things that makes me furious. The powers that be *will not* do anything about this and whenever somebody tries (with measures that are objectively not cruel but merely stern) they get treated like Nazis. I do not understand these stupid people. Do they give 50 dollars to every single beggar they meet in the street? Do they let homeless people set up encampments in their backyard? Or do they use common sense and discretion? Why not then for random people from Central America with sad stories (a huge percentage of whom are lying)?

Every virtue becomes a vice if it's not tempered with common sense. Compassion is absolutely no exception.

[Ragabul]

On Laws and Gods

A really good, meaty essay on the more or less universal occurrence of laws being based in metaphysics. This one is particularly interesting because it discusses this phenomenon in hunter gatherer societies and China and not just in the West.

[Ragabul]

I was reading about the James Byrd (the black dude drug 3 miles behind a truck to his death in 1998) murder after going down an internet rabbit hole and read this description of one of his murderers:

"Lawrence Russell Brewer (March 13, 1967 – September 21, 2011) was a white supremacist, who prior to Byrd's murder had served a prison sentence for drug possession and burglary. He was paroled in 1991. After violating his parole conditions in 1994, Brewer was returned to prison. According to his court testimony, he joined a white supremacist prison gang with King in order to safeguard himself from other inmates.[33] Brewer and King became friends in the Beto Unit prison.[7] A psychiatrist testified that Brewer did not appear repentant for his crimes. Brewer was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death.[34] Brewer, TDCJ#999327,[35] was on death row at the Polunsky Unit,[7] but he was executed in the Huntsville Unit on September 21, 2011.[36] The day before his execution, Brewer expressed no remorse for his crime, as he told KHOU 11 News in Houston: "As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets. No, I'd do it all over again, to tell you the truth."[37]

Before his execution, Brewer ordered a last meal that prompted the end of last meal requests in Texas. The meal included two chicken-fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions; a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger; a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños; a bowl of fried okra with ketchup; one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread; three fully loaded fajitas; a meat-lover's pizza; one pint of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream; a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts on top; and three root beers. When the meal was presented, he told officials that he was not hungry and as a result he did not eat any of it. The meal was discarded, prompting State Senator John Whitmire to ask Texas prison officials to end the 87-year-old tradition of giving last meals to condemned inmates. The prison agency's executive director responded by stating that the practice had been terminated effective immediately."[38]

Later and with no direct connection to that I was reading about the dude arrested for assaulting that Asian woman in New York and this was the description:

Elliot was arrested in 2000 for robbery and 2002 for murder, according to police. The Associated Press reported that Elliot was convicted of stabbing his mother to death in the Bronx when he was 19, and is on lifetime parole after being released from prison in 2019.

Am I going out on a limb here calling these dudes rabid dogs? I don't think so. And I mean that in a completely dry way. How they might have become rabid dogs doesn't change the fact that in social terms they are in fact rabid dogs.

But it raises a valid question. We have moved very far away from the "rabid dog" view of crime wherein some people are just horrible monsters who disproportionately sow misery and suffering in the world. But this makes me wonder what percentage of violent hate crimes are committed by people who might meet this "rabid dog" kind of definition of human being.

Past ways of talking about crime tended to treat all crime as committed by rabid dogs which is obviously wrong. But I think to some degree people might have stopped believing in rabid dogs. Like no hate speech law ever made is going to do *anything* about the rabid dog that is the guy that spends his last few moments alive trolling the guards before his execution for racist murder. The "restorative justice" advocate seems like they would be knocked on their ass by the thing that is Lawrence Russell Brewer. Their imagination does not seem big enough to contain a world in which he exists.

This is more just musing than argument.

[Vol]

Obviously there is some grey area in there like with any moral rule, but I think overall it's a good one and an actual improvement over old ones.

To try and verbalize an idea I'm still trying to coalesce, the idea that physical violence that does not permanently damage someone has inherent potential to result in legal proceedings has a cultural effect downwind that affects our perception of government and ourselves, men especially, in a negative way. The concept of total bodily autonomy being guaranteed by government, so long as you do not physically act first, results in perverse behavior and belief.

As for sexual harassment, power dynamic is a better direction to look in. Obviously, sex or you lose your job is unacceptable. However, if a secretary proposes sex to her boss in exchange for favors, or from her perception to ensure her position, while morally grey (depending on if they're otherwise tied down), should not be illegal. But there's not a clear way to unravel that if it becomes a legal issue, so to cut the knot would require hard limits on potential partners. Which itself is a dubious proposition. Especially for men, as relative status tends to be less of a factor, e.g., I've rarely heard another man seem to care about what his woman's job or income was, so long as she was doing something productive.

*This* is the conundrum for "smart" women. And, yeah, such women are very confused in general.

What do you think of Japanese model? Putting aside their own problems and perks, it seems a moderate step away from the hyper-individualistic "have it all" model, but not a leap towards cold but functional traditionalism. Social pressure to form families young, education for all, and no legal impediments to women who truly want to be a worker their entire life.

See, I can empathize with the idea of domestic doldrums, but my expectation as a boy was that I'd go into body-destroying manual labor, or, soulless office work, but I could have June Cleaver, 8 kids, a dog, and a white picket fence sort of life. Never some sort of mentally fulfilling experience, because those don't make any money.

The reality that not only could I not have that, but that soulless office work was beyond reach, makes it hard to condone the NEETs for refusing to play. Being a manchild on welfare is awfully tempting most days of my life. I'm not a "smart" man, but if I were offered a chance for a moderately unattractive woman to use me as a sperm bank while she works, and I stay home, cooking, cleaning, and raising the kids, I'd be a retard to turn it down. Being bored and unfulfilled was a luxury of our parents.

My position on this is basically consequentialist. And since this is something of a recent social experiment, it's not actually clear what will happen. Technology is also, of course, a wild card. This is certainly a great argument for not proceeding full steam ahead with mass experimentation until we know what it will do. I am in principle not opposed to an all male fighting force, and if women do fight, I think it's fair they should have to sign up for the draft.

Similar. A lot of my recent thoughts are going through the lens of the results. And it's all unsustainable. So much like feeding a starving man a five-course meal, then claiming innocence when his stomach ruptures, I'm having to reconsider some moral beliefs I thought were axiomatic.

But for the military specifically, if we're so well defended and armed that we're more concerned with women in the infantry and diversity and such, then clearly our military has grown beyond usefulness. I'd sooner hack it down to bone, cut the budget by half, and if they still have time for virtue signaling, cut it by half again.

This assumes that the group that produces the most offspring will always win, which is actually not the case. (Though in principle I agree that low birthrates can and are producing real problems).

Worked out pretty well for Moses, eventually.

My immediate concern is that the grotesque amount of immigration, along with the codification of resentment towards white people, is going to be a big problem as our physical numbers drop. My bigger concern is that there's no emergency brake to pull here. It's like a cultural performance art piece, where the people with education and resources ensure our higher minded beliefs and customs will go extinct, because fucking to make babies is an unbearable duty.

Again, lens of the results. If your ideas cannot be passed on, because your ways are not fruitful, then your ideas clearly were wrong. I suspect the hordes down on the southern border do not care much about our enlightened beliefs or history, but rather the wealth they can carve out.

[Vol]

On Laws and Gods

A really good, meaty essay on the more or less universal occurrence of laws being based in metaphysics. This one is particularly interesting because it discusses this phenomenon in hunter gatherer societies and China and not just in the West.

Took a long time to get to the point of, "Your gut feeling on the path of America is probably right," heh.

But yeah. The examinations of east Asian cultures, primitive and civilized, is what I've needed to do more of as I've read about theology and philosophy, as they're the only major alternative to the cumulative western traditions.

The apparently universal sense of order in nature, human corruption of it, fascinates me. It's a remarkable concept for what should be, by naturalist logic, nothing but complicated survival behavior. There's this inherent distinction we have between our actions, assumed free, and the perceived natural (psuedo-determinist) order, that we know we should respect, but not emulate, because we have different standards, grounded in these metaphysical beliefs.

There is no answer, of course. But it's oddly pleasing that it happens to everyone, everywhere, these common beats.

[Ragabul]

What do you think of Japanese model? Putting aside their own problems and perks, it seems a moderate step away from the hyper-individualistic "have it all" model, but not a leap towards cold but functional traditionalism. Social pressure to form families young, education for all, and no legal impediments to women who truly want to be a worker their entire life.

Japan does way better than then us at the society level with social solidarity and cohesion. But I don't know that they do any better at the family unit or individual level. They also have abysmally low birthrates and hordes of young sexless drones going listlessly through life. They do better with child poverty and out of wedlock birth which is something. I'd say it's a mixed bag. There's stuff we could probably learn from them but it's a not a clear cut case of something we should adopt across the board.

I'm not a "smart" man, but if I were offered a chance for a moderately unattractive woman to use me as a sperm bank while she works, and I stay home, cooking, cleaning, and raising the kids, I'd be a retard to turn it down. Being bored and unfulfilled was a luxury of our parents.

It was a luxury of a period of economic history that is now ending, probably permanently. This gets to the other side of the conundrum. People who grew up in the solid middle class probably feel like they owe their potential kids a similar experience, but they see no avenue to providing it. I certainly feel this way. I'm ambivalent about kids but I'm at a point where I'd probably be willing to have kids if I could afford them. But their life would not be like mine was. I could not deliver that to them. This is part of the cultural difference. Guy from Honduras is willing to have 4 kids on $12 an hour income. I think our standards are going to have to adjust and sheer necessity will force some of this to change eventually, but I don't see that replicating Honduras guy is a good way to go either.

My immediate concern is that the grotesque amount of immigration, along with the codification of resentment towards white people, is going to be a big problem as our physical numbers drop. My bigger concern is that there's no emergency brake to pull here. It's like a cultural performance art piece, where the people with education and resources ensure our higher minded beliefs and customs will go extinct, because fucking to make babies is an unbearable duty.

Again, lens of the results. If your ideas cannot be passed on, because your ways are not fruitful, then your ideas clearly were wrong. I suspect the hordes down on the southern border do not care much about our enlightened beliefs or history, but rather the wealth they can carve out.

I broadly share this sentiment with the caveat that "ways" don't just propagate through children. It has been the case up til now that Western culture has eaten from the inside out literally every other culture it's ever come into contact with. Some of this was coercive but a large percentage of it was because people choose to adopt it. China and Iran and North Korea know this which is why they erect massive barriers trying to keep it out. This has also played out with immigration. Every immigrant community that's ever come over here (other than some very insular, isolationist religious sects) has lost their children to the thing that is "America." This process is both good and bad because there's plenty of bad things in the culture as well as good, but I think it will take more than just one group having higher birthrates than another to wipe it out. We'll see how it goes. If anything I think it will finally collapse under it's own contradictions. I don't think there is a competing philosophical or cultural construct that can take it out.

*Edit* (Reminds me of the hippy poem "America" by Ginsberg or how every black expat writer ever like James Baldwin felt like they could never stop being American even when they set up in France)

[Sinekein]

As for sexual harassment, power dynamic is a better direction to look in. Obviously, sex or you lose your job is unacceptable. However, if a secretary proposes sex to her boss in exchange for favors, or from her perception to ensure her position, while morally grey (depending on if they're otherwise tied down), should not be illegal. But there's not a clear way to unravel that if it becomes a legal issue, so to cut the knot would require hard limits on potential partners. Which itself is a dubious proposition. Especially for men, as relative status tends to be less of a factor, e.g., I've rarely heard another man seem to care about what his woman's job or income was, so long as she was doing something productive.

There are a ton of guys who very much care that the missus earns less than they do. Because aside from brute force, the power dynamic tends to heavily favor those with the highest income.

However, it's not necessarily them being rotten to the core. If society feeds you for decades with tons of pictures of strong men being the main source of financial safety for their home, you end up being influenced, whether you like it or not.

The reality that not only could I not have that, but that soulless office work was beyond reach, makes it hard to condone the NEETs for refusing to play. Being a manchild on welfare is awfully tempting most days of my life. I'm not a "smart" man, but if I were offered a chance for a moderately unattractive woman to use me as a sperm bank while she works, and I stay home, cooking, cleaning, and raising the kids, I'd be a retard to turn it down. Being bored and unfulfilled was a luxury of our parents.

The point most reasonable feminists are doing is that women and men should have similar choices in the lives they lead. Men should get the "at-home" option, women should have the opportunity to feed the family, etc.

Again, not looking at the fringes here. I have never heard smart people blaming soccer moms for the life choices.

My immediate concern is that the grotesque amount of immigration, along with the codification of resentment towards white people, is going to be a big problem as our physical numbers drop. My bigger concern is that there's no emergency brake to pull here. It's like a cultural performance art piece, where the people with education and resources ensure our higher minded beliefs and customs will go extinct, because fucking to make babies is an unbearable duty.

Again, lens of the results. If your ideas cannot be passed on, because your ways are not fruitful, then your ideas clearly were wrong. I suspect the hordes down on the southern border do not care much about our enlightened beliefs or history, but rather the wealth they can carve out.

Don't think you should long-term worry about this. If the current social movements bear fruit and reduce inequalities - overall inequalities - between ethnicities, then the support of hardline anti-white will drop both among (current) minorities and self-despising white people. Of course you will forever find people to accuse caucasians of being responsible for a ton of things, even in a hypothetical egalitarian society - just like right now you have people who completely brush off inequalities.

Dominant ethnicities have come and gone over the centuries, and as far as I know none has been wiped out. When you get richer, you breed fewer kids. We are very far off the "white genocide" some are fearing.

As for the wealth part, well, there's little difference with the way our primogenitors treated various locations they went to. Again, history repeating, so I don't see why caucasians would specifically be more susceptible to disappearing.

Japan does way better than then us at the society level with social solidarity and cohesion. But I don't know that they do any better at the family unit or individual level. They also have abysmally low birthrates and hordes of young sexless drones going listlessly through life. They do better with child poverty and out of wedlock birth which is something. I'd say it's a mixed bag. There's stuff we could probably learn from them but it's a not a clear cut case of something we should adopt across the board.

Pretty much every person I know that went to Japan mentioned how xenophobic many Japanese people are. Not in an insulting, n-word way like we do in Western Europe, but in a "you're so much worse than I am" way. Part of their social cohesion might stem from that - staying strong with the other quality people. And that's also the reason they can still be so isolationist without it having much consequences in today's society.

But I don't think there is much sense in comparison. Geographically, Japan and the US are as alien to each other as two societies can be on Earth. If you consider that Mesopotamia is where human society was born, then one is the Westernmost, and the other the Easternmost. Not much overlap in the way they developed.

I broadly share this sentiment with the caveat that "ways" don't just propagate through children. It has been the case up til now that Western culture has eaten from the inside out literally every other culture it's ever come into contact with. Some of this was coercive but a large percentage of it was because people choose to adopt it. China and Iran and North Korea know this which is why they erect massive barriers trying to keep it out. This has also played out with immigration. Every immigrant community that's ever come over here (other than some very insular, isolationist religious sects) has lost their children to the thing that is "America." This process is both good and bad because there's plenty of bad things in the culture as well as good, but I think it will take more than just one group having higher birthrates than another to wipe it out. We'll see how it goes. If anything I think it will finally collapse under it's own contradictions. I don't think there is a competing philosophical or cultural construct that can take it out.

Immigrant communities lose their children to the culture they travel to as long as said culture provides them with positive life opportunities. Which has been the case in the US in recent time - sure, there have been economic crises, but overall it still has been the largest and richest country of the second half of the XXth century. Hardworking immigrants mostly succeeded, and as such their children could subscribe to the "American dream" ideal, because it did work for them, or it worked for someone close enough to them to be influential.

When opportunities disappear however, it's more likely those communities will prefer to keep their own ways instead. If indeed the US are in a bad situation, or if it worsens in the future, then you might see immigrant communities that fail to embrace US culture.

[Ragabul]

Ezra Klein interview with a conservative and a progressive who wrote separate books about why the Boomers supposedly stink as a generation It's also available as a podcast if people prefer that format but I can read it faster than I can listen.

This ended up being especially entertaining and useless as a conversation. You start with a conservative and progressive ostensibly coming to the same conclusion about something using different reasoning, but they hate each others' first principles so much that you end up with the progressive mostly defending the boomers and trying to explain how everything in the 1960s really didn't have anything to do with the boomers. And really nothing the boomers did was really "Boomery" until Ronald Reagan and all that nasty neoliberal stuff in the 1980s. (At the height of the silliness the progressive writer is insisting that the 1960s don't count because Malcolm X and Martin Luther King weren't boomers while studiously ignoring that Ronald Reagan was born in 1911).

I could right a longass wall of text about my own opinions on all this (TLDR the conservative is right that it was mostly a rotten cultural change that first manifested in the 1960s but she is wrong that it was chiefly the New Left that caused it or propagated it), but for now I'm sufficiently entertained to merely point out that the progressive is so gung ho to defend the cultural revolution that she is willing to undermine her own "Boomers stink" argument that she wrote a whole book about. It's really a bad look if she's trying to demonstrate it's mostly about economics. "It's mostly about economics but the cultural change is so important and massive I'm willing to retroactively pretend the people who pushed it through weren't really Boomers!"

[Vol]

It was a luxury of a period of economic history that is now ending, probably permanently. This gets to the other side of the conundrum. People who grew up in the solid middle class probably feel like they owe their potential kids a similar experience, but they see no avenue to providing it. I certainly feel this way. I'm ambivalent about kids but I'm at a point where I'd probably be willing to have kids if I could afford them. But their life would not be like mine was. I could not deliver that to them. This is part of the cultural difference. Guy from Honduras is willing to have 4 kids on $12 an hour income. I think our standards are going to have to adjust and sheer necessity will force some of this to change eventually, but I don't see that replicating Honduras guy is a good way to go either.

Oh, for sure. It'll come back around, the traditional setup, but we probably won't be alive to see it. There's no future for post-modernist thought, and egalitarianism is only being argued for by moderates who nobody listens to. I always have the impression that the people who started these social movements, or fought for them in any sense, truly thought they were doing a good deed, and had no idea how perverted it would become.

Our standards will change too. That'll be painful, as we can plainly see, politicians will destroy the future to try and keep the consequence of their incompetence delayed a little longer. It'll catch up tho, debt spending to infinity will last just as long as China will allow it, I suspect.

I'd love to have a yuge family, but that's as much a dream as a lot of things my parents achieved with reasonable effort, though I have the luxury of time. Trying to patch that hole in the sinking ship by bringing in Hondurans, or any foreigners who plainly do not share common culture, to buoy numbers is a good example of why our leaders are more actively malicious than natural trends could ever be. The 2 outcomes here are that the replacement population either integrates into the whole (and colors it overtime), and then falls prey to the same depressed behavior, thus requiring more immigration, or, they never do, outbreed the natives, and whatever they believe wins out. There is no situation where a socioeconomic system that consistently produces below replacement birth rates, but requires a high one, endures.

I broadly share this sentiment with the caveat that "ways" don't just propagate through children. It has been the case up til now that Western culture has eaten from the inside out literally every other culture it's ever come into contact with. Some of this was coercive but a large percentage of it was because people choose to adopt it. China and Iran and North Korea know this which is why they erect massive barriers trying to keep it out. This has also played out with immigration. Every immigrant community that's ever come over here (other than some very insular, isolationist religious sects) has lost their children to the thing that is "America." This process is both good and bad because there's plenty of bad things in the culture as well as good, but I think it will take more than just one group having higher birthrates than another to wipe it out. We'll see how it goes. If anything I think it will finally collapse under it's own contradictions. I don't think there is a competing philosophical or cultural construct that can take it out.

*Edit* (Reminds me of the hippy poem "America" by Ginsberg or how every black expat writer ever like James Baldwin felt like they could never stop being American even when they set up in France)

Not "just," no, but in the basic sense that humans are mortal, there must be a next generation for the ideas of the previous to ever continue, and those you make yourself are more likely to represent yours than anyone else. That's a presupposition of these self-destroying ideologies, that while they consistently produce behavior that results in no children, they're entitled to have access to any children that manage to be born in order to propagate. That's the open ideological root of the opposition to home schooling, in addition to the financial loss. Obviously there's no guarantees what you raise someone to believe will stick, but it improves the odds, and in this case, has allowed failed ideas to plague us for generations.

As for immigrants, as I said above. They either take on the culturally-suicidal traits, and thus eternal immigration continues, or they do not, and they countermand it. No one reasonably believes the hordes marching on Texas are enlightened, progressive thinkers, or that they have any deep interest in our history and philosophy. It's pure economics.

As for us honkies, hey, who's gonna stop it if it ever starts to go down? White identitarian groups and movements are by default the most evil things possible and filled with actual Nazis. "Grievances against white people and everything they've created and done," is now being taught in public schools and gradually explored in media. Those are worrying trends, as historically, those sorts of patterns seem to point to a common conclusion, though not proof of an incoming Haitian Revolutionary Genocide part 2.

What is "American" these days, on that note? I've been puzzling it over the last week. I keep coming back to rainbow flags on military bases, freaks as celebrities/politicians, and so on. But that's far too cynical, the news of the last week has really been a stream of blackpills. We still have some distinct cuisine, some beliefs, even if battered in recent years. Southern culture endures, our entertainment industry continues the churn. Not sure what would compose "American" compared to the answer I'd have given 2 decades ago.

[Vol]

There are a ton of guys who very much care that the missus earns less than they do. Because aside from brute force, the power dynamic tends to heavily favor those with the highest income.

That power dynamic has been functional for millennia, in all times and places. One of economic equality, or male inferiority, is relatively brand new, and has not demonstrated sustainability. So is there a definitive point where you would say women pursuing power/wealth has become maladaptive?

However, it's not necessarily them being rotten to the core. If society feeds you for decades with tons of pictures of strong men being the main source of financial safety for their home, you end up being influenced, whether you like it or not.

I'd go so far as to say the basic concept is rooted in consistent survival success, which society had always reflected. Obviously, it can become rotten, but I'm not seeing a particularly healthy outcome from people who practice modern conventions either. Mental health issues appears to be significantly higher in the subset of people who are least likely to engage in traditional gender roles. If that's at all possibly demonstrable, and not mostly attributable to differences in reporting/seeking help, then it becomes untenable to morally advocate _for_ it.

The point most reasonable feminists are doing is that women and men should have similar choices in the lives they lead. Men should get the "at-home" option, women should have the opportunity to feed the family, etc.

Again, not looking at the fringes here. I have never heard smart people blaming soccer moms for the life choices.

In theory, yes, the lack of environmental pressures and surplus of economic options should enable us to act more freely and not be compelled to early marriage/babymaking, and have more configurations for that time of life if it ever occurs. In practice, it appears there's a carrying capacity. In a cultural void, I doubt this would be an issue, as people would gravitate towards mean behavior, but there's active pressure for little girls to behave specifically contrary to how their successful ancestors did. It's all untested theory that doesn't appear to be producing positive results.