Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[TTTX]

I didn't learn a lot of danish or european history either and I live here.

I have learned more on my own and still do, then again history interest me, just wish school would teach kids more about it, it really gives prospective on a lot of things going on today.

[Vol]

I didn't mean for that to come off assholishly though it strikes me now that it could be interpreted that way.

Ah. I was ranting aloud, it was nothing against you guys, and you in particular. This thread is the near totality of high-brow discussion I have anymore, which I cherish, because it's one of the things keeping me from becoming a monster.

education history evolution the good book

This is no small part of the radicalization pipeline. To realize that you've been mislead, possibly maliciously, and what that does to your worldview, if you're a disaffected male can lead to some wild places. As you said, despite learning about the Holocaust every year, movies, books, optional trip to the Holocaust museum, etc., it was an island in a void. It just happened, portrayed as the most evil thing humans have ever done, out of the blue. Nothing on Hitler's philosophy, the history of Jews in Europe, the socio-economic resentment, Weimar. For us, it started with Kristallnacht and ended with the US troops liberating camps of walking corpses. Which left us with a very strong understanding that Nazis were bad, but no applied wisdom to avoid falling into the same situation should similar conditions flare up again. At least with the Communists, that was high school only, so we got a bare bones framework of starving peasants->Bolsheviks->Stalin->everyone dies->USSR falls. Which should be the point of learning history, dammit, to understand what happened, why, and what can be done going forward.

As I said, science and math were generally well taught in comparison. Intelligent design was a blurb in a textbook, "Many people have their own beliefs on the origin of reality and life, here's a few popular ones, but this course is only focused on evolution as a field of scientific study, and has nothing to say on anything else." That was what I adored about learning science, the humility, honesty, and rigor. In theory, less so application, and especially right now (50% LOL). Even had a reasonably accurate bit on abiogenesis, to the effect of, "We don't know, there are theories, some lab experiments have made minimal progress with amino acids and repurposing existing structures, but as of now it's unknown, only that it did happen."

Was it one of those "Plain, literal, English reading of the KJV" educations, or did they contextualize it? I'm coming from the other angle, where my mother is Unitarian, my dad is an atheist (flippant agnostic really), and so my upbringing was a handful of simplified biblical stories and then nothing but rote materialism from everywhere else. Which is probably why I didn't become an edgy atheist as a teen, there was no conflict between a vague, unstructured metaphysics, with no worship or study, and what I was being graded on in school or judged by my friends for saying.

My college education was good but I went to a very small liberal arts school with only about 800 students so they could not offer classes on whatever. They had only 2 instructors in the history department. One was an old man who specialized in history of the Progressive Era South and the other was an obligatory teacher of European history. This was actually really nice because in my last 2 years pretty much all my classes were these two and there were only like 10 students in the history program. And they were both really good professors. So I ended up sort of accidentally specializing in Southern history because that's what the department head knew. European history instructor was able to undo the utter lack of knowledge from high school. Since I went to school in Louisiana, one weird fallout from this is that for a while I knew Louisiana history really well but absolutely nothing about Texas. That's another hole I've been filling in slowly.

Grad school (UCLA) was mostly a waste of time to be honest (other than getting the piece of paper I was after). I took a few actually interesting and useful classes mostly on book history and historical methodology. For some reason, I had to take a programming class and statistics class to get into the program, which would be useful if I hadn't forgotten all of it. I also took a class on copyright law which ended up being accidentally really interesting and useful. Most of the actual school beyond those like 4 classes was pretty useless and I had to do internships to actually learn how to *do* the things I was nominally getting a degree in.

Sounds nice, assuming you get decent professors. My courses were pretty consistently 30+ kids in a room or auditoriums, which made any rapport impossible, and going to office hours was always weirdly antagonistic. As if I was stealing their time, which to be fair, I was. History and English courses were worse than high school, which I attributed to being general ed requirements for minds who didn't really need to be there. The only smaller classes were the 300 Comp Sci, and only sometimes, because the school would run very few slots for any given one per semester. But everyone in them, including the professor, were awkward weirdos, myself included, so there was no cozy mentoring of young minds, so much as a bunch of people trying not to make eye contact. Wish I'd stayed and finished it out, as it's only gotten significantly more expensive since then, and most of my credits no longer count if I transfer.

The gist being, and I assume you'll agree, we've spent an incredible amount of time and money, and society has invested an even greater amount, in these educations, to such lackluster effect. I've done nothing with mine, I would have been better served going to the office with my dad when I was a little boy and learning how to talk to people and stock shelves. The concept of a decent liberal arts education + healthy socializing + funnel to white collar world did not work. Therefore we must abolish all of it and revert to local schoolmarms. But more seriously, the homeschooling movement appears to be gaining ground, though I haven't seen hard numbers, I worry that the products of that crappy system are going to be only marginally better for their kids. I would hope they rally around the community, or church, and scrounge up some (correctly) educated people to handle the lessons they can't.

I didn't learn a lot of danish or european history either and I live here.

I have learned more on my own and still do, then again history interest me, just wish school would teach kids more about it, it really gives prospective on a lot of things going on today.

There's nothing new under the sun, and we're the same as we've always been. It would do us well to begin every history lesson with that.

[Ragabul]

Was it one of those "Plain, literal, English reading of the KJV" educations, or did they contextualize it? I'm coming from the other angle, where my mother is Unitarian, my dad is an atheist (flippant agnostic really), and so my upbringing was a handful of simplified biblical stories and then nothing but rote materialism from everywhere else. Which is probably why I didn't become an edgy atheist as a teen, there was no conflict between a vague, unstructured metaphysics, with no worship or study, and what I was being graded on in school or judged by my friends for saying.

Yes and no. CoC is very weird. It's a Restorationist sect (also called Christian primitivism) which some people classify as neither Protestant nor Catholic but a third thing. CoCs themselves refuse to classify themselves at all and insist they are not a denomination and are simply "the Church" synonymous with the first century church. They try to model themselves on the first century church and thus do not use anything the first century church did not have (while conveniently still following the Nicene Creed and ignoring all the things that got labeled heresies later like Gnosticism and pretending like this wasn't a thing). So no Augustine or Aquinas and so on. But they super extra really care about translation accuracy. They will use whatever version of the Bible is considered to be the most faithful translation of the original Greek and Hebrew texts. When I still actively went, this was the NIV version which was only published in 1973. Irony of ironies. First century church needs the latest, greatest, newest thing. If some more accurate version has come out since then, a lot of CoCs would switch to it. CoC is a kind of weird paradox which demands hyper attention to biblical scholarship and learning Hebrew and Greek from its preachers because of concerns about accuracy but also believes the Bible is the inerrant word of God. I was not taught the Bible should be taken *literally* but I was also not coached to take it allegorically or figuratively.

There are two things that help overcoming this tension. One is that CoCs are amillennialists meaning they do not believe in all the 1000 year reign, Rapture, Antichrist stuff. They ascribe to the "thief in the night" understanding of eschatology. The second is a belief that is actually considered a heresy in standard Christian orthodoxy, which is that the Old Testament is a totally nonbinding document. The Old Law was explicitly for Jews; it existed to show the history of preparation for Jesus' birth and to demonstrate that even when given an exceedingly thorough and literal set of laws, humans were fundamentally incapable of following them. Thus the need for Christ and salvation "by grace through faith." When I was younger, I always found it bizarre that supposed Christians kept putting copies of the Ten Commandments up on things because these were the Old Jewish law and thus were irrelevant for anything except historical context. Christian teaching was 100% derived in Jesus, his direct apostles, and Paul only.

This ends up working out accidentally perfectly because it allows you to completely dodge the two weirdest books in the Bible: Genesis and Revelations. The take on Revelations by CoCs is "this is written by a really upset guy who was receiving visions that the church would indeed be delivered out of the horrible persecution the Romans were inflicting on it at the time." The take on Genesis was neither to say it was literal or wasn't literal but to sort of mostly ignore it, occasionally draw moral lessons from it, and to point out that all this Covenant stuff was for Jews and now no longer necessary because the Messiah came.

Instead, CoCs decide to go off and die on another stupid hill which is obsessing in aching detail about *exactly* how the first century church behaved and trying to emulate it. One of the more inane example of this (which CoCs are notorious for) is insisting on no instruments in worship because there is no reference to playing instruments in the New Testament in worship but only in singing. This also accidentally ended up working out in some ways because it means there was no choir or praise team (praise teams have since started coming into vogue which I hate) so the entire congregation actually had to learn to freaking sing. It's a consistent feature of a lot of CoC churches that they have good congregational Accapella music. And if they don't people will usually complain about it unceasingly as a thing that needs to get fixed. It's one of the few things I deeply miss actually.

For shits and giggles, here is the one and only Christian band I was allowed to listen to because "Christian" music could not have instruments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUyQOMMj-Ic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJIbnzfvP3k

Regular music could have instruments. I ironically grew up listening to practically no Christian music while being really devout.

The singing thing ended up working out but there are other things that get quibbled over just as much that are not so charming. One big controversy was whether the Lord's Supper (which is what CoCs call Eucharist or Communion) should be drunk out of one shared cup or out of many cups. "One-cupper" is CoC slang for ultra orthodox churches even other CoCs find pedantic, which is saying something.

This is rambling but that is actually the best summation of the CoCs I can up with. They are *really* pedantic about accuracy and authenticity. At its best this makes them have high regard for precision, scholarship, and continuity. At its worst it makes them silly and cruel over stupid infractions that don't matter.

One other feature/bug is that there is no institutionalized hierarchy whatever in CoC churches. Every congregation is completely autonomous. So this means congregationss are free to be free of institutionalized craziness. It also means if a particular congregation goes deep bonkers (and some do), there is nobody to stop them and they will just self-destruct.

The gist being, and I assume you'll agree, we've spent an incredible amount of time and money, and society has invested an even greater amount, in these educations, to such lackluster effect. I've done nothing with mine, I would have been better served going to the office with my dad when I was a little boy and learning how to talk to people and stock shelves.

The practically useless degree I got from UCLA was not worth it from a knowledge perspective. It was worth it from a having a piece of paper perspective because that piece of paper is what finally allowed me to get out of $12-$15 an hour blue collar jobs which I could not escape largely because I had white trash written all over me. That and UCLA accidentally taught me to code switch to well-heeled suburbanite mannerisms, dress, and speech. Anybody who does not believe class is not a thing in USA is nuts. Economic classes matter less than social classes here. You can be a rich redneck with a boat and low social class or starving journalist working for respected magazine living in a shitty studio apartment who is high social status. This is one thing that plagues black people. They are permanently locked in "low class" social status even if they make a million dollars. They keep getting pulled over while driving their Rolls-Royce.

I've done nothing with mine, I would have been better served going to the office with my dad when I was a little boy and learning how to talk to people and stock shelves. The concept of a decent liberal arts education + healthy socializing + funnel to white collar world did not work. Therefore we must abolish all of it and revert to local schoolmarms. But more seriously, the homeschooling movement appears to be gaining ground, though I haven't seen hard numbers, I worry that the products of that crappy system are going to be only marginally better for their kids. I would hope they rally around the community, or church, and scrounge up some (correctly) educated people to handle the lessons they can't.

I've actually gotten borderline radicalized on the mostly uselessness of school other than as daycare and intervention for abused/neglected kids in the last year or so partially because of my niece and nephews experience in school and partially from some stuff I've been reading. But I'm lazy and some barbecue showed up for me to eat now so I'll leave off more WoTs. I may come back to this later and elaborate.

That being said my go to college advice for people is to get 1 year at their terrible local community college to get bullshit Econ 101/English Comp type stuff out of the way for cheap. Then find the smallest, cheapest mid-tier liberal arts college in flyover country they can find and go there. From personal experience and collected anecdotes, this seems to consistently be the cheapest way to get a good education. Good in the content department. Not necessarily useful. An English degree is useless no matter where you get it.

*Edit* Stealth edited in another video of actual CoC singing because I went down a nostalgia trip. This is in no way unrepresentative of singing at a random CoC church:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI9doSrYSa0

[Vol]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-admi ... eakingnews

This has to be the most retarded philosophy of governance humanity has ever devised. It cannot possibly be some grossly misguided moral guilt about the plight of the destitute seeking brighter shores, this is calculated malevolence.

Edit: Reply in full tomorrow, just a topical thought on Revelations. Haven't read it yet, long, long way off, but I get the gist. Strange, symbolic apocalyptic vision, signs to pave the way, Antichrist, wonders, etc., and every generation thinks they living in it, this is really the end, because x, y, z. Some having better claims than others, the fall of the western Romans, Black Death, WW1&2, so on. But reading an article on symbolism and "Is this reallllllly it this time?" made me wonder if the prior events people were sure heralded the end, if we assume Revelations is possibly true, weren't more like contractions, the birthing pains before the real thing. It would certainly fit the pattern of symbolic repetition in the Bible. So less kooks applying Vaseline to their prophetic lens to see what they want (though mostly that), and more a long running pattern before the big one. I'm not super interested in the apocalypse stuff, given the track record of those who are, but it's food for thought.

[Ragabul]

I've actually gotten borderline radicalized on the mostly uselessness of school other than as daycare and intervention for abused/neglected kids in the last year or so partially because of my niece and nephews experience in school and partially from some stuff I've been reading. But I'm lazy and some barbecue showed up for me to eat now so I'll leave off more WoTs. I may come back to this later and elaborate.

Decided to actually elaborate on this somewhat. TLDR: The kids schools are designed to accommodate are the kids for whom school is needed least and for whom a large percentage of school is mostly a waste of time. Meanwhile, the kids who do need some kind of larger intervention need interventions that schools mostly can't deliver anyway.

Basically, I have been reading some about genetics research in humans in the past year mostly because I figured out that studies of ancient genomes taken from ancient skeletons is super interesting. But this accidentally gets into genetic research in humans in general. One of the things that has been determined is that educational attainment is one of the more consistently heritable features of complex human behavior. This includes in really rigorous twin studies that do everything they can to control for environment. In other words, there really does appear to be a large genetic contribution to school success. For the stuff that isn't genetic but is either purely environmental or environment interacting with genetics in complex ways, most of this has thus far been unidentifiable. In other words, most environmental factors for "normal" people that deeply matter appear to be utterly random and idiosyncratic. (This kid who otherwise didn't care much about school went on a field trip to the natural history museum and discovered his deep passion for dinosaurs and became a paleontologist. This other kid did not go on a field trip and did middling in school and never amounted to much).

This is oversimplifying for clarity but the takeaway is that if your family is in some range of normal defined as you have enough money to satisfy basic needs, your parents are basically competent non-abusive parents who take care of you, and your life is not plagued by dramatic environmental disruptions, your success at school is mostly out of the hands of either your parents or the school itself. (At least as school is currently designed). Genetics + random, idiosyncratic environmental factors that nobody can control for will probably be the biggest components of success or lack of success. Obviously if you are abused, if you have inadequate nutrition, if your neighborhood is insanely violent and scary, and so on, this will have large, predictable environmental effects. Another pretty predictable source of people having trouble is if they are neurodivergent in some way (ADHD, autism, etc) through a mix of genetics (which contribute to having these) and environments that are poorly tailored to your particularities and keep you in a state of heightened stress and anxiety. One more predictable problem is if the kid does not speak the language instruction will be in. Obviously combinations of these make the kid even worse off. A kid who is autistic, doesn't speak English, and comes from a dirt poor family in a neighborhood riddled with gang violence is going to have an especially rough time.

The issue with this is that schools are almost entirely set up for "normal" kids from "normal" families who would normally do just fine so long as they get education in basic adult functioning (literacy, basic math, etc.) whether or not they went to formal school for 12+ years. These kids have the basic innate competence, social networks, and environmental stability to do just fine in life without robust, generalized education. Some areas also do pretty well by talented "normal" kids by funneling them into more rigorous specialized programs that peak their interest and put them in the direction of becoming scientists or doctors or some other thing that actually does require many years of intense training. *But* because these talented kids are more likely to have talented parents, they are also much more likely than average to receive rigorous environmental training at home regardless of what the school does. For both these varieties of kids, a huge percentage of school is utterly extraneous and does little to nothing to actually change their life outcomes and yet they and their parents dominate the schools.

For average "normal" family this is because the primary function of school is daycare. It's really not so much about education as about physically keeping the kid somewhere while the parents are at work. For more ambitious, talented families, a large part of the point of "rigorous" school is getting eleventy billion extracurriculars and impressive test scores to pad college admissions with. In other words, the people who are objectively least in need of 8 hours of intervention for 5 days a week for 12+ years are the people the entire system orients itself towards.

Meanwhile for the varieties of kids that do need some massive intervention, school is pretty consistently terrible at delivering what's needed. This is partially because school is overwhelmingly designed to accommodate "normal" kids but more because the types of intervention needed are straight up not things a school can deliver. There is nothing a school can do to make an IQ 80 kid cease being an IQ 80 kid. (Yes, I know IQ ruffles feathers. I'm using it here as shorthand to illustrate a point. Surely people having varying degrees of innate academic talent is not controversial). There is nothing a school can do to make the bad parts of Chicago not have hundreds of murders a year. There is nothing a school can do to make the parents of the ADHD kid make the environmental changes at home the kid desperately needs to succeed. And this is assuming that schools themselves accommodate neurodivergent kids well and they really, deeply, totally do not. I could write a whole separate giant WoT on this as it's the drama my sister's kids have experienced. One has ADHD. One has a somewhat rare presentation of autism called PDA which you cannot follow standard autism protocols for. Autism in general is very diverse and on some level demands personalized, idiosyncratic adjustments in environment for each individual. Schools are not equipped to deliver this. Schools do seem to do a pretty good job at teaching ESL (English as second language) classes and *some* schools do a pretty good job at spotting abuse and getting kids removed from terrible situations and thus markedly improving their life, in encouraging parents who otherwise never would have suspected their kids issues were because of neurodivergence to go get the kid tested, and to funnel talented, poor kids into more rigorous schooling that helps them succeed. But this is a complete, random crap shoot process mostly driven by luck that only improves things at the margins.

Where does that leave me after realizing all this? Really conflicted. If somebody came along with an "abolish public school and cut every parent a $14,100 a year check (the per capita amount we spend on education) to be spent on education" argument, I would seriously take a look at it. The single biggest problem with this is that school is daycare. It is a form of warehouse for humans and as deeply unpalatable as these are (jails, nursing homes, homeless shelters, asylums, and such are other forms of human warehouses) it's obvious no modern society can function well with none of these. It also wouldn't address the a lot of underlying problems. The IQ 80 kid is still going to be IQ 80. Chicago is still going to be a murder hole. Paychecks for child education + universal basic income or pure dog eat dog social Darwinism seem the only ways to consistently address this problem head on without denial. But both of those deeply dissatisfy people in various ways so we go on with our really expensive, mostly extraneous education system that we like to pretend is doing a whole bunch of things it isn't and fundamentally can't do.

[Ragabul]

What is it with campus newspapers and writing batshit crazy things since forever? It seems like every middling public intellectual ever at some point has to deal with some crazy-ass student editorial he wrote in 1997 in the official college paper surfacing where he claims that white people created the AIDs virus or that Jews control world banking or whatever. And I mean at completely boring colleges like Florida A&M and Texas Tech. I don't even remember my college having a newspaper but I'm sure it did. Makes me want to go dig it up and see what batshit crazy things were getting printed in it because nobody reads these or edits them apparently.

[Vol]

*primitive church bible translations educated priests*

Shogun had a relevant background plot that stuck with me. The Jesuits are the intellectuals behind the Portuguese/Spanish mission to Japan, the dominant European power at the time, and the Dutch/English are trying to break in. The Jesuits do good works, provide education, aid, the only translators available, but they also get involved in the trade, politicking, and they are opposed to the protagonist's goals and Protestantism, so they serve as as secondary antagonist. At one point, during a high level talk between the main Jesuit character and his superior, a filthy traveling friar bursts into their office and they all get into a shouting match about the delicate situation in Japan with the martyrdom in Nagasaki still fresh, and the law behind is still technically in effect. The Jesuits are trying to win daimyos over, and overturn the law, so they can spread to every corner and save as many souls as possible, while also enjoying a monopoly on trade and strong influence in politics. The friar, in essence, mocks them for failing to live like their Lord did, he spends his time wandering the lands in sackcloth and barefoot, tending to anyone who needs it, setting up small communities, just like the ancient church, and seeking no material wealth or power. In a prison scene, the English protagonist meets an elderly Spanish priest who believes much the same, and despite being old and feeble, the man does his best to save the souls of the fellow prisoners, all bound for death, in their hovel to his last breath, rather than try to use his influence to escape. That's about the end of that subplot, but I never did decide who had a better point, and I understood their reasoning very well.

The obsession on the Bible sort of plugs into this pattern I've noticed of sects wanting to revere anything but God directly. Something immediately adjacent. Catholics have Mary, Orthodox have icons, Protestants have the Bible, Christians overall have Jesus "fully man" but coequal with the Father, something we can _understand_ to not have to stare directly into that terrifying light. The OT Jews had YHWH as more like an ANE god, but supremely powerful, yet human-like. You could argue with him, "hide," talk to a guy who had a direct connection. That's how I read into the hardcore Bible worship, however literal or academically it's taken. If the premise is true, then it would behoove us to understand the texts we have as best as possible, but like that fictional friar and Jesuits, all the well reasoned, intellectual, noble intentions may not serve us as well as pairing it with the way the ancients who walked with God, or the ones they directly taught, acted.

OT and our foibles

I don't actually know how each denomination takes the OT's functional value today. Only ever heard of one guy who thinks all Christians should live fully like the ancient Jews, shellfish and mixed fabrics and all. How did they frame a group of Second Temple Jews, and possibly God incarnate, all referring to the OT without validating it?

Humans being incapable of following literal, specific laws, sometimes in the presence of YHWH directly, is entirely in-line with our character. I fully believe that if God personally manifested to every human alive, healed all our ailments, gave us the exact specific proof we needed to know he's real, and then a list of specific rules to follow and ways to worship, we'd revert to fucking up and screaming at the sky demanding more miracles within the week.

Genesis

That's a shame, Genesis is a beautiful collection. Even taken purely metaphorically, there's great wisdom that survived millennia where very little else has. What is paradise on earth? A garden of plenty, where nobody needs to toil or gets sick or dies, and hierarchy isn't necessary. What is man's duty to the earth? We're stewards, we must take what we need, but care for it wisely. Why do we do such evil things? We're creatures with knowledge of good and evil. We'll always strive for Babel, be it a giant ziggurat or globalism, and it'll always fail. In a "city" of people given over to their desires, can you find 10 good men? Even 1 would be extraordinary, behavior spreads like a virus. Probably a lot of overlap in messages with the surviving Eastern traditions, in the sense of time sifting out timeless pearls.

Communion cups

Funnily enough, I've heard it said that no one has ever gotten sick from sharing the single cup. Probably not 100% true, but in the same sense that the 8th day of life is the "best" day for circumcision (I'm very bitter) because of some biological factors, I suspect there's probably more truth to that than not, however people figured it out.

Code switching

Very true. I briefly dated a girl who spoke perfectly normal suburban English all the time, except when she was distracted, then the ghetto mannerisms would slip out. I found it very cute, but if she had presented that way normally, it would've been a completely different story. She went on to become a professor, and that ability to mute the manner of speech she was brought up with absolutely part of getting there. At the time, I would've said that trying to join in a "caste" you're not part of should demand you adopt their mannerisms, but then seeing what the "higher castes" have become repulses me so much that I'd rather see them forced to adapt to incomprehensible hood slang.

[Ragabul]

There are some miscellaneous state constitutional amendments up for consideration for voting today. Most of them are straightforward wastes of time or duh stuff. One is some convoluted thing involving bonds, property taxes, and infrastructure funding at the county level. Super frustrating. It's almost assuredly something that will matter for property tax increases and absolutely nobody writes about it so I'm having to more or less educated guess my way through it. They are all too busy writing 2000 word editorials about bathroom bills or how not allowing 24 hour voting centers is the return of Jim Crow or whatever stupidity instead.

*Edit*

Post two on that Afghanistan post-mortem series a smart blogger I read is doing.

[Ragabul]

Well, shit. If some weird new variant breaks out that's been incubating in deer, I guess you can blame me.

If I had to guess how it jumped into deer, it's these stupid, fucking deer breeding operations that breed deer for rich fuckers to go shoot animals eating out of troughs. That's the main way CWD seems to have originally spread around as well.

[Vol]

VA's looking called for Youngkin (GOP), which was about what the last minute polls showed. Those comments on government have sovereign right to demand your children's time and teach them what they want, in lieu of parents, didn't sit well with suburban moms, seems like. Trends are mostly a rightward shift of 2020's reported, along with lower Dem turnout. NJ governor is oddly tight right now, though I haven't seen a regional breakdown. Urban areas carry the state, so a few million votes can be ginned up if needed last minute.

@Raga: Has The Science admitted it was a lab leak yet? Getting ridiculous, what little news about the virus I let get through to me. Though it's almost entirely about vaccines and punishments right now.

[Ragabul]

Well, all is well because apparently the referendum on whether charitable organizations can host raffles at rodeos passed here. No, really this was a thing. It was almost refreshing in its ludicrous banality.

[Vol]

VA appears a lock for Youngkin. NJ is still not finished, but probably going to remain Murphy, because the outstanding vote seems to be in almost purely Democrat, with an overnight rest to figure out how many are needed no less. Heh.

Still, some interesting results in smaller races, what flipped, what didn't, demographic shifts. A Texas election in an area with 72% Hispanics went GOP for some reason.

[Ragabul]

If it was in the Rio Grande Valley, it's because the people down there are Tejano and can't be thought of in standard Hispanic terms. For one, they have been there for 300 years and don't have immigrant leanings. They also mostly work in oil and gas and care about that industry.

*Edit*

Looks like it was a State House race in the 118 district which is just south of San Antonio. That's getting into Tejano territory but also lots of "standard" Hispanic immigrant voters as well. I had not made much of this supposed slight Hispanic turn towards the GOP because it seemed entirely possible it was unique feature of Trump himself that was not replicable. And Tejanos turning away form Biden also isn't necessarily deeply indicative of much that is generalizable because as I already said, they are kind of their own thing. But maybe there is in fact something to this.

If true, I'm betting one nontrivial factor is stuff on policing. Saw data somewhere that I don't remember now but it was really telling. Basically 40ish years ago, there were about equal numbers of black and Hispanic police officers but Hispanics have quickly surged to actually have at or near at representative amounts of police in departments in most areas where they have a sizable population. This is true for the city I work for. The population is 30ish% Hispanic and so is the police force (if it's not higher which wouldn't surprise me). So all this stuff on gutting the police simply does not resonate with many of them the same way. (Though it also doesn't resonate with a lot of black people either. It tends to be a bougie white people thing).

Another factor is that the biggest (and escalating) divide between Dems and Repubs is educational and is roughly PMC versus blue collar so it's very probable that Hispanic voters who are blue collar and don't much feel like racial "others" as the Dems want them to are more activated by Dem condescension to people in their class and disregard for industries that employ lots of blue collar workers like oil and gas.

If nothing else, it does mean that Democrats are going to have a much harder time flipping Texas blue in the near future than they thought. Though I thought this already. Texas is *already* a minority majority state but as it turns out simplistic demographics is not destiny. Texas has consistently bucked a lot of the worse economic trends of other states where it has grown rapidly in economic terms and in population but also avoided as much problems with housing supply and prices largely due to having extremely open laws on building things. People move here for jobs and aren't much interested in things that screw up job prospects which leans them towards Republicans.

It also anecdotally seems to either draw people from other states who were already attracted to Texas on some weird cultural level or else somewhat (or entirely in one prominent case of a certain Californian I stole) convert the ones who get here. Texas is unique in the South as the only Southern state with a history besides "the racist Americans that always lose" because of the Texas Revolution and because its image of itself is a sort of hybrid of Western and Southern. That coupled with actual economic success and political power has made it more confident, aggressive, and defiant in something besides a mere performative way. Hate it or love it but that certainly makes it harder to erode the local aesthetic or flavor or whatever than some place like Georgia or Virginia. Obviously this is not true of everyone who comes here, but it seems to be sufficiently true that aggressive migration to Texas has thus far not really succeeded in diluting it very much.

*Addendum* Louisiana also has a very strong local flavor independent of just "the South" that I predict would be very tenacious and hard to uproot if there was a sudden influx into it. However, it is dirt poor so there is no such influx. It also has a Democrat governor who has won re-election by just being pro-life and non crazy on social issues if Democrats care to pay attention to a model that might actually work in these places. But they won't.

*Edit* One more stealth edit.

If it's the case that Virginia flipped largely because of CRT stuff and not just because of some generic thing like low Dem turnout and Biden losing his after-election glow, this is quite heartening. It would be the first major rebuke to woke elites form "normies" that wasn't purely performative. Of course, the Dem State legislature will go full in defending the woke in schools so it might be an ultimately fangless rebuke, but it's something at least.

[Vol]

Looking into some numbers, the old adage is true again, the only swing voters are white people. I hope that courtesy is extended to us in the twilight of the empire. White women in particular got their hackles up about the state having total sovereignty over what their kids learn. That's only de facto true, you're not supposed to say it out loud. So a hard reversal of their distaste for Trump. Then NJ was way closer than anyone expected, and but for the standard overnight pause + non-Election Day ballots, might've squeaked it. Still, that's probably gonna torpedo anything major until midterms, the rats have to scurry for their seats, and Manchin gains influence now. Though today I'm seeing a lot of doubling down on racism and class mockery, it's just venting, the reasonable Democrats will be consolidating around moderates to get through the next year.

Re: Texas - As Ann Coulter (I really do not care for her) was going off about on the radio today, it is very possible to peel or swap some of the Global Majority in any election. Trump did very well in that. But it's not enough to win, you need the huwhite swing vote far more. But I would suspect, as the colonization of parts of Texas proceeds, that _becoming_ the system will start to split the Hispanic vote in a way it hasn't for blacks. I hear Austin is turning into a, to borrow a term from Jimmy Dore, "shitlib" city, and that will absolutely spread and have impact on elections. And if companies start creating financial incentives to live in Texas, you're going to see why adding piss to a punchbowl adds up if you keep doing it.

The intellectualism is a sore point that should be lanced. Not in the sense of ownership, a revival of the brief redneck comedy fad. But the midwit meme sense, which hits the note so perfectly. Because my consistent experience with other people has demonstrated that a well-read midwit is about the highest intellectual authority a lot of us will personally know, depending on class. Reframing the stereotype of a cognitive gate between political positions as a tamed idiot observing an untamed idiot while a bunch of nerds have slapfights over pedantry is beautiful and true, 100%.

[Ragabul]

Austin has been a "shitlib" city most of my life in political terms. It has also started to become so in aesthetic terms in more recent years which is probably the transition she was talking about (the homeless colonies under every overpass variety). But this is not true of any other major city in Texas and Texas has 3 of the top ten biggest cities in the USA. They are blue voting but stubbornly retain very high working class elements. Even the white collar people here are mostly white collar in blue collar industries. So you may be a lawyer but you work for an oil and gas company. Or there is a massive medical industry here which produces tons of nurses and front line doctors which are higher class but still work with their hands types. Austin is the only "ideas" chattering class city in Texas driven by stuff like software engineering, political workers, press people, and so on. Most of the companies that transplant here are the "actually builds things you can hold" variety of company. The thought that like Google or some giant New York publishing house or Disney would move here is laughable. They would face mass revolt from their workers. Some Elon Musk robot factory though or somebody making wind turbines? Yeah, totally.

Dallas is probably the most white collar city in the stereotypical office worker sense. Austin the artsy chattering class city. Houston is solidly blue collar but has a lot of white collar workers associated with blue collar industries.

A silly illustration. There's a kind of low key resentment I see online from people from Chicago about Houston which looks due to supplant it as the 3rd largest city in the USA in the nearish future. The complaints are always aesthetic and have 0 to do with politics. (But it's ugly! The food is bad! There aren't enough bike lanes! Why would anyone ever live there?!) Well, yeah, it is a mostly working class, pro-business city with the vibes you would expect from that. (The bad food thing though is just nuts. It's a downright amazing food city, mostly because we have the equivalent of little old abuela from every country on Earth cooking whatever she learned in the old country all over).

Things will probably eventually change. They always do. But I think the imminence of the change is highly overstated.

I also think "well-read midwit" just describes 90% of everybody with a degree especially in chattering class fields. Actually deeply insightful intelligent people are rare and I've never seen anything that suggests having a degree is a good indicator that someone is such a person. I feel like I may be just smart enough to notice one of these and know to shut up, but maybe even that is simple arrogance. Put another way. Most people are *significantly* less intelligent than they think they are and this is especially true of people in the like 70-90 percentile intelligence range. A lot of truly brilliant people actually seem humble and charitable. Maybe because they have to develop saint-like patience from dealing with relative idiots all day.

[Vol]

Interesting. Never knew the type of industry was a bulwark over there. Though as I recall, despite "This time for sure!" Texas was only for Trump, and Cruz in the midterms, by a relatively narrow margin. Which begs the question not why they won, but from where does the massive Democrat support come from then? The idea of CA refugees flooding in and bringing gay luxury communism isn't quite true, as they seem to be generally conservative transplants who've had enough of having no representation.

I see American cities sort of like...whale falls. And the dwellers there now like the little crabs that come at the end to pick the last scraps. There's the bones of something beautiful there, that once was living, breathing, and majestic, and even the skeleton is worth admiring, but it isn't getting up and swimming again. Whenever I read about any major city, NYC being next door, it always reads that people are trying to keep the thing moving a little longer, hold it all together just a second more. Only just fending off one crisis before the next. Though I guess Texas cities, and some others, are still swimming around, so hopefully some wise minds make the places pretty in the meantime.

Someone with an average IQ could probably make it through a science PhD if they had sufficient motivation. The tell for genuine intelligence, to me, is not the screenwriting trope of dumping technical terms rapid-fire (House), but communicating plainly and extremely effectively across a range. The humility is humbling. Having my fellow dummy get up on a pedestal, because they accepted a set of suppositions coded as SMART, makes me dumber for it. We'd all probably be happier and healthier living like lazy good ole' boys (minus the meth).

[Ragabul]

Interesting. Never knew the type of industry was a bulwark over there. Though as I recall, despite "This time for sure!" Texas was only for Trump, and Cruz in the midterms, by a relatively narrow margin. Which begs the question not why they won, but from where does the massive Democrat support come from then?

Still think that an overall better representation of Repub voting in Texas is to to look at general state wide office voting. I think it bears mentioning that Cruz won the primary here because people were meh on Trump and Crux himself is massively seen as an irredeemably slimy weasel who mostly keeps winning because Beto O'Rourke was literally crazy enough to go around talking about revoking churchs' tax exemption and confiscating guns. Texas is fundamentally libertarian. But Greg Abbot won the last gubernatorial election handedly. Basically, market skeptical populism *and* socialist adjacent stuff can only take you so far here as things currently stand.

There' a reason the libertarian flag par excellence is from the battle of Gonzalez:

[Vol]

I was finishing up a weeklong job today, and on the radio morning show, they had a professor of bioethics come on to talk about why he believes the unvaccinated should all be barred from having jobs and using stores, and forced to get the shot or starve. It's a ludicrous idea, but it hung heavy. Are we that far gone? Is the debate on civic duty, personal health, science, so tainted that we're down to fascists and petulant reactionaries over a glorified flu shot? It hurt my heart to think about.

[Ragabul]

I'm glad Covid theater is mostly over here. I'm content to let my very small libertarian part take over my brain now. The farther back in the pandemic we go, the less tools we had and thus our best hope was in aggregate action. Self sacrifice and solidarity were thus called for. We have increasingly not been in that stage for a while now and with global vaccinations rates going up all the time and even kids now approved for vaccines (who mostly weren't in large danger anyway), we may officially be well and truly done with it. In other words, your level of fear of the virus or your stubborn refusal to get the vaccine is increasingly not my problem anymore. I got the vaccine. I'll get a booster when I can. I'm done with masks. The end. Whatever anybody else chooses to do is on them.


*Edit*

I said some time a few years ago that it felt like the woke stuff was cresting (and then George Floyd happened and it went into full on moral panic for a year or better). Ive now felt like it seems to be cresting and souring on people again for several months and the New York Editorial Board of all things released this statement today. Maybe the disgust will stick this time. I unfortunately think the performative, pointless, cosmetic stuff in the form of never-ending stupid diversity training from HR and Twitter meltdowns over whether or not roads should be named after dead white men from 200 years ago who surprisingly had antiquated views on race is here for the long haul.

[Vol]

Maybe it's the naïve, little boy in me I'll never get rid of, but I like to think that there exists some sane, peaceful, democratic path back to the America I grew up in. I earnestly believe the USA won't endure another century at this rate, and it will probably be horrible and bloody whatever happens, but I still like to think enough apple pie and Constitution classes can stuff us back into a coherent nation. When the vaccines rolled out a year ago, and everyone was scrambling to get appointments, priority to the sickly, it did feel like the sun was finally poking through the clouds. Then when the voluntarily part of the population capped out, hey, so be it, the rest will either have acquired immunity or be sifted through by the virus. But the measures only became more severe, and I have to ask myself, why not do forced vaccinations? What ethical consideration is left that we hold that last bit of autonomy in any esteem? And it hurts that last, little bit of childhood to think about.

There's a reason I'd rather the US balkanize than anything else. There is no good outcome when you create civilization-wide programs aimed at the degradation of any group of people, much less a current majority rapidly fading in numbers and power. There is no end-case where programs or social trends stop, and we all hold hands as equals again. The "woke" stuff will keep on going, find new fuel to burn, new ways to sustain careers and keep activists engaged. That's why the right being so firmly in the hands of ball-less pacifists leads to inevitable losses. I don't mean brownshirts clashing in the streets with communists, but the sense of standing ground on some arbitrary social wedge issue, gradually giving up ground, then celebrating when you dig a trench. Until it's overrun a decade later. They never sally, they never retake ground, and it's only the 6-3 SCOTUS that might even hand down some genuine, lasting victories that can't be easily erased. Ergo, balkanize. Texas might do fine.

[Ragabul]

Saw an interesting lefty pro-natalist argument today. If population remains below replacement birth rate, young people will become and remain a weak electoral minority with no power. Things will skew even more towards olds. Interesting argument.

[Vol]

The corollary to that is that old people are doing to die significantly more often at younger ages too. Takes a lot of young people to subsidize and care for 1 elderly person after all. On the generational scale, that should cause a pretty swing into power for those who do have larger families.

[Vol]

Having watched every day of the Rittenhouse trial (except the first), then scanning headlines about it, is such a distorting experience it may be the first actual piece of evidence of a multiverse.

[Ragabul]

Lefty blogger I read dismissing assertion CRT is not in schools. I keep harping on this because it's one of the few places I have seen NPR type news bald-faced lying and not just ideologically fudging.

[BBvideo=560,315]https://youtu.be/YiFCNJ6XeIE [/BBvideo]

[Ragabul]

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/qu ... uiz=group1

Yet another probably somewhat useless political typology test. It's very American centric unfortunately.

I got "ambivalent right" which seems about correct.

[Vol]

Got "Faith and Flag," which is not quite right, but in lieu of more nuance for the fringier views, close enough. Much like the other big political tests, it assume "Moderate American" as an actual midpoint rather than a consequence.

[Mazder]

So this is a LONG one in it's fullest so, be aware, lol.

Okay so I took the test last night before bed and got "Establishment Liberals". TO be fair I kinda blitzed it without thinking too hard so I will now do my customary second one with more thought.

I usually do two, one quick and one slow, to see how accurate I can be vs my spur of the moment.
In fact I'll post my reactions to each question in a spoilered tag, if anyone is interested in it.

► Show Spoiler

Question 1a: Big Government vs Small Government
Well, seeing as I like my government's services provided that the USA absolutely desperately needs I'd go for Big Government. With a smaller one the same trappings of "just let the market decide" is kinda bullshit when healthcare should be an unalienable right. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If I can't get insured my life is in danger, therefor I am not free/have no liberty in getting myself healthy, therefor I am not happy.
Plus, hey, with a government I can at least vote to kick the guy I don't like out. With a corporation that has muscled out all competition I can't do that so, Big Gov wins.
Question 1b: Services Expansion
Um, yeah, America needs to rapidly expand the services it provides as right now they're all kind of just barely there for the worst off to try and get companies to do it for them.
Healthcare not tied to jobs, unions not owned to the company they're already working for (seriously who allows that?!), actual minimum wage legislation that stops businesses who are already scumming the system and can't compete with an honest one abusing their employees, taxing the upper 1% more to subsidise care for all Americans.

Question 2: Openness to other nations/border control/multiculturalism
Well I think multiculturalism is good to a certain extent, but seeing as America is fuck-huge and can support a bit more I think that finding strength in our differences is a good way to go. Plus Freedom. Don't necessarily agree with the American Dream considering how fucked America is with it's "dream" being actually attainable, but I do think being more open is a strength, if only to get new ideas in and not become more like China.

Question 3: Experts
Abso-fucking-lutely an expert is better at making a decision on the subject they have studied and participated in for years.
Am I going to ask an Economist on what we should do on a woman's right to get an Abortion? No.
Am I going to ask a Priest/Rabbi on what the best way of teaching Physics in our schools are? No!
Am I going to ask a Sovereign Citizen Nutjob on our Laws? Noooope.

The caveat here is that laws aren't usually a single issue application. If you're asking about a policy that helps the public survive a pandemic with minimal deaths then you're going to have to weigh in with an economist at least once to see if it'd tank the economy in doing so.
But this question is kind of laid out that it's "anyone" and not "other learned officials". So I am still leaning on the "better" side of things.

Question 4: Trade vs Manufacturing
This question has too few answers available.
Trade is good. The USA is mostly self sufficient (I mean it's the size of a continent almost so, yeah) but there are things that CAN be gotten elsewhere.
Things being made in China and India cheaper offsets the burden of price for American consumers but harms the planet a lot more, or as much as if they were made locally, so the only real monetary change is convenience. Environmental factors can be used to make things better, like if the USA has laws to not pollute as much as China then having that manufacture happening at home means you can at least offset the environmental impact because you can control it, whereas you can't if you were having things made in China and India with their more lax pollution laws and shipped from there. But that only goes as far as if the establishment would actually enact those laws, as they'd hamper business anyway and if they want to do stuff like just open up coal mines and gas lines like Trump wanted to then that just ruins the environment and you're back at a loss again, for higher prices in the short term.
Plus the whole some wages being lowered thing, they were in Industries that should die off anyway to help the entire human race live anyway so, I dunno, it's a loss for the people but also a gain because it means less global warming.
It's kind of a double edged sword. I think there is a bit of a balance really. Some losses, some gains, but not really anything swaying either side.
So I'll say it's gained more from trade because all Americans get lower prices, compared to some select ones losing wages.

Question 5: Equal Rights
More can be done to make sure all Americans are equal, but I think it's more on the side of cultural rather than straight laws.
Maybe limiting something like generational wealth and lobbying so that only the rich can affect those who are elected and what laws actually pass?
Other than that it gets a little authoritarian-bait.
Like, affirmative action is okay but wouldn't businesses respond to benefits if they actually helped communities, and not just gentrification?

Question 6: Businesses and Profit
Do they make too much profit? Kinda, yeah.
I mean, Amazon, Tesla, Microsoft, etc. They make bank and then muscle everyone else out. Maybe if some more of that money went to it's employee's then more would stay and have better jobs and lives. Maybe if businesses like Amazon were willing to hire more employees at better pay there would be less reports of people needing to piss in bottles.
Property owners/housing market, maybe if they weren't allowed to just sit on their property then maybe people might have a place to live.
Maybe if there was affordable housing then there would be less homelessness.

I mean, if Smaug, the fictional Dragon living in a literal mountain full of gold, has his fortune calculated and is still only the 15th wealthiest American then things are a little fucked.

Question 7: Hearing another language
Yeah, not gonna lie, I do get a little suspicious of others speaking in another language in my own country.
Maybe it's because I despise the Brits abroad kind of stereotype where it's all "Oi Pedro, Dos Beeros Por Favoro!" but if I am going to another nation and living there than in public I'd speak that language. No, yeah, it's kind of hypocritical because I can't speak any other languages, but I am also not going anywhere else right now either, and if I did I'd make every attempt to speak as much of the language as I can, and I sympathise people trying as English is fuck-off levels of hard for a non-speaker.
Like, an accent, even a thick one, I can forgive as, hey, they're trying and doing good. But if I hear someone speaking in another language I can't help but go at least "are they talking about me?!"
And, yes, if it gets to Eastern European languages or Middle Eastern I tend to get that slightly bit even more suspicious.
So, yes, it does bother me somewhat.

Question 8: How do I feel towards Republicans and Democrats.
Hooooo boy. Time for spice. Gonna start at 100/max points and subtract first and add on gains, if any.
Well Republicans are usually a lot more ardently/openly religious so they're getting points off there. Plus they seem to hate women's rights to choose what happens to their own bodies, more points off. They opened up Trump and QAnon and anti-vax conspiracies more often than not so more points off there. They prefer wasting everyone's money with Medical Insurance rather than healthcare for all and they don't seem to like the idea of giving anyone not white equal opportunity in their areas. Oh and the Republican party is on the side that seems to think Climate Change isn't real.
So a lot of points off.
But they like guns and I like guns, so some points back.
So maybe 30-40/100, erring on the 30 side.

Democrats on the other hand.
Well they seem to keep losing the ability to actually do what they want, so some points off there. Plus they've totally given in to Republican demands and gotten 6 trillion down to 1 trillion for their rebuilding bill. Points of there.
They lose to damned always when it comes to actually combating crime in regards to guns and just go for blanket bans (and as we've seen in the UK that just moves the crime to other violent means). So points off there.
All their gun expertise is from movies, and inaccurate ones at that, so more points off.
They want to enact greener manufacture/greener policies but think nothing on China or India's pollution. Points off.
They are more fractured than the Republicans right now, but not violently so, so all their work is just down to a crawl.
They kind of ruined the Impeachment being the last line of defence, opening it up for shit-stains like Marjorie Green to say "impeach Joe Biden" every 5 seconds.

So they're at best at a 50.

Democrats mean well but they kinda shit the bed a lot sometimes and don't stick to their guns, lol.

Question 9: Americas standing in the world
It's one of the best, but not the best, and not many are 100% better.

Question 10a: People offended by what people say
I mean, outside of literal death threats and actual abuse, people need to have more thicker skins. No, everyone calling you an idiot and you happen to be trans isn't them all being transphobic, but if they were all saying anti-trans stuff AND calling you an idiot, then they are. The difference is slight but it's there.
Maybe it's because of Bantz but I see that people need to shrug some things off more.
Especially being offended on other people's behalf.

Question 10b: People saying offensive things
Free Speech means people are gonna say shit.
Terms of Service on shit like Twitter or Facebook limits it but out in public you have no legal right to stop it other than maaaaaybe breaching of the peace, but that's a tough sell in the USA.
Is it a problem people are following the law as they see fit? Kinda not really. Do i wish people wouldn't say offensive shit, yes.
Should we all denounce them when they do? Yes.

Question 11: Do candidates share my views
Seeing as half the time I don't know what my views are I can't say for certain if there are or there isn't.
Law of averages say there's gotta be one that shares SOME, but I wouldn't say most.
And they can't represent me well if I don't know it myself so i'll go second one.

Question 12: White benefits in society.
Yeah seeing as white peoples have been able to continue generational wealth and other peoples are still desperately trying to claw some for themselves and all the more black communities are the poorer ones, yeah white people still have some advantages to be sure.

Question 13: Trans Rights
They're human rights.
Are they good for society? I have no idea, I'm not a sociologist.
I do say that no-one should have their rights of identity squashed by anyone else for any reason.
Seeing as I am not a sociologist I'll go neutral.

Question 14: Prison sentences
Do people spend too much time in prison?
Depends on the crime TBH.
Like I am not for a murderer getting time off their sentence.
But people caught smoking pot? They shouldn't be there in the first place.
Another question with not enough nuance.
So, neutral again.

Question 15: State and religion
Keep them fucking light years apart from each other!

Question 16: Should there be another place as powerful as the USA?
Yeah, bring back the British Empire!
But seriously, if it was anywhere it'd be China and, fuck that, so, yeah, America #1!

And this time round I got Ambivalent Right.

TBH I think that it's the questions with lack of nuance where I put the best chance before.
I think if I erred to picking a side I fall into my previous result.

Well before posting let's go back and see what choosing a side gets me:

► Show Spoiler

Question 5
Okay so before I said " a little" more should be done, and last night I am certain I said "a lot"
so by clicking "a lot" I get how we do that (which I got last night so that confirms that)
So with the new options, rebuild from scratch or work within current systems.
Yeah the first one just isn't going to happen. Reforming the system works better as it's at least feasible. pretty sure I chose rebuild last night)

Question 7
I think last night I put "not much" or " not at all"
gonna go not much

Question 8
I did 60/40 split Democrat-Republican so let's recreate that.

Question 9
I said other countries are better than the USA last night, gonna stick to my choice of among the greatest.

Question 10: I originally put minor for both, then the second tie around I put a lot and a little respectively, but rethinking it i'll say it's a big problem both ways, because, honestly it kinda is, as being offended wouldn't happen if people weren't being offensive, right?/b]

[b][Question 11 I chose none share my views on the long think but last night I chose there is at least one, and thinking about it some more there has got to be at least one.

Question 13
I went and bumped it up to somewhat good, it means representation and the USA was kinda founded on that, lol

Question 14
Choosing a side on the side of pot smokers and choosing "too much time in prison" to see if that does anything, lol

The results of that one is Democratic Mainstays.

So there you have it, I have no idea what the fuck I even am, lol.

But I think that it's fair to say I am at least more on the left than right.

[Vol]

Not sure how you registered "Ambivalent Right" with that. What that test considers the center must be more left than we think. Though funnily enough, we had the exact same rating for the Republicans. But your answers really are pretty moderate left by our standards. Wouldn't call it Democrat core, but solidly voting more blue than red unless a principled Republican really spoke to you. The underlying theme I get out of those replies is a general belief that the institutions more or less work, and are more or less benevolent. Whatever their faults, they'll largely fill their function and do what's right. Which I completely understand. My fracture point is that "whatever their faults" isn't good enough for me. The faults must be materially, and philosophically, worked on, perpetually. There will always be corruption and waste, but we should always be trying to get rid of it.

Though my answers are less patriotic than they used to be, so I'm curious why I've "ranked" about as strongly in that regard. Pew should have done better. But you'd fit right in here, in any area not caustic with partisanship. Probably more so now, as people are going to desire the moderate stability.

[Ragabul]

The typology poll was correctish for me. These always fail on multiple levels of nuance. Several pitfalls for me is that I actually have liberalish answers to some questions but for conservative reasons. For instance, most immigration type questions are phrased something like "do you agree that America's openness to people is part of its identity?" and the answer to this is "yes" because we aren't an ethnostate. And yet, that gets taken as meaning "therefore you support large levels of immigration" which is not the case. Two others these simply cannot handle is being amenable to an expansion of the social safety net under certain conditions but skeptical of them as they currently are and believing that black people face structural issues that keep them relegated to lower class status but believing that one of the chief problems is that their culture has been degraded by said structural issues and that even if you fix the structural issues the cultural problems will not go away on their own. (And it's not just black people. For most people, generational poverty degrades culture. It is equally true of multi-generation poor whites). In as much as "Ambivalent Right" seems to mean "right-leaning weirdo that doesn't really fit anywhere else" it is more or less correct.

[Ragabul]

Ignore screwed up while trying to add some hyperlinks.

[Ragabul]

Apparently Beto is running for governor. He needs nothing short of a miracle and not because he's a Democrat. He has at least 700 extremely loony things he's said over the years that Abbott can play nonstop attack ads about (confiscating guns & stripping churches of tax exempt status being two of them). Maybe if Abbot gets primaried by somebody crazy but that also doesn't appear likely thus far.

Break out some classic Ann Richards type Democrat and they might could tempt me.

"Poor, George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-tyKWNwtMU

[Mazder]

Apparently Beto is running for governor. He needs nothing short of a miracle and not because he's a Democrat. He has at least 700 extremely loony things he's said over the years that Abbott can play nonstop attack ads about (confiscating guns & stripping churches of tax exempt status being two of them). Maybe if Abbot gets primaried by somebody crazy but that also doesn't appear likely thus far.

Break out some classic Ann Richards type Democrat and they might could tempt me.

"Poor, George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

*video snip*

Confiscating guns I agree is a loony thing to say as it's not going to happen in America.
But the removing tax exemption status of churches, hell the fuck yes, do that please.
Dumb to say that in Texas, obviously, but can we please get that actual practice of separation of church and state please?
Hell, those mega-churches alone might pay for all the needs NASA would have to fund the next space missions.

[Mobius_118]

I got Progressive Left. Shocking, I know.

[Vol]

The typology poll was correctish for me. These always fail on multiple levels of nuance. Several pitfalls for me is that I actually have liberalish answers to some questions but for conservative reasons. For instance, most immigration type questions are phrased something like "do you agree that America's openness to people is part of its identity?" and the answer to this is "yes" because we aren't an ethnostate. And yet, that gets taken as meaning "therefore you support large levels of immigration" which is not the case. Two others these simply cannot handle is being amenable to an expansion of the social safety net under certain conditions but skeptical of them as they currently are and believing that black people face structural issues that keep them relegated to lower class status but believing that one of the chief problems is that their culture has been degraded by said structural issues and that even if you fix the structural issues the cultural problems will not go away on their own. (And it's not just black people. For most people, generational poverty degrades culture. It is equally true of multi-generation poor whites). In as much as "Ambivalent Right" seems to mean "right-leaning weirdo that doesn't really fit anywhere else" it is more or less correct.

I wonder if the inability to capture nuance isn't more a sign of the failure of the philosophy of liberalism. My dad's an old fashioned racist, doesn't like black folk, doesn't want anything to do with them, but is willing to be friends with "one of the good ones." But if I really dug down, and phrased it correctly, he'd agreed black people have major structural disadvantages that _can't_ be solved by walling our people apart. So in reality, he'd probably be on board for something different and effective to undo centuries of harm, so long as it wasn't subsidizing people for existing. That is captured by no poll, ever. Same with immigration, if the people coming in were _actually_ starving and huddled, and willing to live like he thinks Americans should.

The usual answer is to assume the pollsters are biased, or stupid, or some variation. But I wonder now if these wedge issues, it's more an inflexibility, in the very flexible philosophy, that compels nominally congruent stances to never touch. And what's bending it out of shape is the petulance of the power holders, which itself is an intended feature of the system.

E.g., if someone put up a machine with a sign that says, "This machine electrocutes your dick," that it says that means it probably does, but no one should be surprised if it shocks other stuff too.

Or another way, by allowing so much freedom to think and associate, we end up bitterly partisan despite agreeing in different terms. The poll doesn't lack nuance, there cannot _be_ nuance to begin with, so there is no ability to lack. Probably phrasing this poorly.

I got Progressive Left. Shocking, I know.

Hey, for a lot of people, knowing themselves is pretty difficult.

[Ragabul]

Or another way, by allowing so much freedom to think and associate, we end up bitterly partisan despite agreeing in different terms. The poll doesn't lack nuance, there cannot _be_ nuance to begin with, so there is no ability to lack. Probably phrasing this poorly.

This is largely true of liberalism the philosophy. More book plug: Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen. This book is probably the straw that broke the camel's back of officially making me a right-winger.

Liberalism the actual organizing political system (or at least the one the USA has) is supposed to overcome this structurally by forcing people to negotiate and not allowing power to concentrate in any particular branch or interest group.

On the one hand, this works admirably as nobody has really managed to just get their way by fiat, but it ends up frustrating anybody that feels like checks and balances are an affront to their individual liberty or who believes that having an electoral majority at a particular point should mean all that majority's desires should come into being.

There has also been years of common law add on to all this in the form of judicial review and since at least Brown vs Board a history of intentionally working the court by third party interest groups to get outcomes they want. Another sort of rabbit hole I've gone down in recent months has been the cliché "lawyers ruin everything." This was something that came up even back in the 1830s in that Democracy in America book where Alexis de Tocqueville already observed that lawyers had a tremendous amount of power and respect in the USA and on some level were filling in a niche filled by landed aristocracy in Europe. He was not turned off by this and even seemed to think this was suitable or at least inevitable as they would cause tremendous amounts of trouble if they weren't given levels of influence "appropriate" to their educational and intellectual station.

The way the court was originally set up by the framers, only an actually aggrieved person can bring a suit. I assume the intent of this was to keep the court from being captured by any and everybody throwing suits at it merely because they found some law distasteful on purely theoretical or aesthetic grounds without being materially harmed by it. In reality, any pet issue you can name has an entire legal advocacy apparatus stuck to its ass designed to manufacture and shop for "aggrieved" persons so they can throw whatever suits they want at the court. I don't know how long this has been going on. At least since the NAACP which had a pretty explicit legal strategy such as this which culminated in Brown v Board. I've heard this apparatus of accumulated, curated court decisions referred to as a second constitution. (Another book: The Age of Entitlement by Cristopher Caldwell). Roe V Wade also fits in this category.

So on top of all this, there is what the actual constitution says and then there is what this "shadow "constitution says and it's a lot easier to get 5 out of 9 people to establish something by fiat than it is to amend the actual constitution. This incentivizes the most interested, least willing to negotiate people to go after the court. It's also why there are such existential battles over the court because everybody sees it as the "make my wish come true by fiat" portion of the government.

In as much as the US system has severe flaws, I don't think it's in the countermajoritarian features but more in this one. Congress are the people that should be making laws about integration or abortion or whatever and they have no choice but to negotiate to get anything done. I'm really open to some kind of major court reform but I don't know precisely what it should be.

One of the ones I like best is to have a lottery every year in which 9 appellate court judges are picked at random and those 9 judges are the Supreme Court justices for that year. I'm sure there are ten thousand ways this system could also be corrupted but it seems harder to corrupt with any consistency.

We also do just flat out vote for judges in Texas and it works. In as much as this would overtly turn the court into a circus, I'm instinctively hesitant about this. But then again, there is the argument that it's already obviously a circus but with a bunch of people fastidiously pretending it isn't.

@Mazder on churches

Doing so would also end up stripping tax exempt status from any non-profit like the Freedom from Religion Foundation or the various Humanist Societies (as otherwise the government would clearly be favoring a position on religion which is "no religion.") It would also strip tax exemption from religious charities like the Salvation Army and umpteen charity hospitals and such as well. It would be the ultimate expression of doing something because it's cosmetically satisfyingly and utterly ignoring all the material harm it causes.

[Mazder]

Doing so would also end up stripping tax exempt status from any non-profit like the Freedom from Religion Foundation or the various Humanist Societies (as otherwise the government would clearly be favoring a position on religion which is "no religion.") It would also strip tax exemption from religious charities like the Salvation Army and umpteen charity hospitals and such as well. It would be the ultimate expression of doing something because it's cosmetically satisfyingly and utterly ignoring all the material harm it causes.

I mean, the government kinda should have an anti-religion stance.
Separation of church and state kinda means they shouldn't be together at all.

If charities had to be unable/not allowed to peddle any religious belief/doctrine/mantra what so ever in order to do their charity work/keep tax exemption status then I'd be all for having tax exemption not stripped from churches. But if the exemption is only stripped if those Secular ones are also stripped then I think it's a decent price to pay to have the charities, churches/places of religion and Secular organisations all have their records actually on record.
No more anonymous donations to and fro, now they're listed and taxed. And when taxed that cash can be used for things like Universal Healthcare, social workers and affordable housing projects, easing the need for the charities in the first place.

But basically I want to keep the corrupt church donations system that breeds a bunch of televangelists and scum out of the system as possible and maybe find a way to make it so any church that does that shit is stripped of any ability to dodge.
And it's not just churches.
Mosques, Synagogues, Temples, Pagan earth mounds. Any place of organized religion should be under that much scrutiny.

Charity hospitals shouldn't even need to be a thing, said it many times, the USA needs Universal Healthcare. Country is screaming for it.
Hell, half of the problems in the country that concern the need for charity wouldn't be problems if the USA wasn't so seemingly afraid of social care and other stuff like that being funded by the state.

We also do just flat out vote for judges in Texas and it works. In as much as this would overtly turn the court into a circus, I'm instinctively hesitant about this. But then again, there is the argument that it's already obviously a circus but with a bunch of people fastidiously pretending it isn't.

Sadly that'd not work on a country basis as we'd just get it to the point of having general elections 2.
I do think it shouldn't be a lifetime appointment though.
I kinda like the idea of a rotating council/set of judges though. Kinda like how Switzerland does their government, but only for judges.
Maybe seeing as we have 50 states and each state has a Supreme Court (I assume) then the Chief Justice of each state is in the running and each election cycle the current Federal Supreme Court Justices are chosen from the 50 single Chiefs and can not serve twice? Thereby encouraging the states to rotate their own justices?
Or maybe they should have a determined gap between services, maybe 2 election cycles in between each time on the Federal Supreme Court?

[Sinekein]

@Mazder on churches

Doing so would also end up stripping tax exempt status from any non-profit like the Freedom from Religion Foundation or the various Humanist Societies (as otherwise the government would clearly be favoring a position on religion which is "no religion.") It would also strip tax exemption from religious charities like the Salvation Army and umpteen charity hospitals and such as well. It would be the ultimate expression of doing something because it's cosmetically satisfyingly and utterly ignoring all the material harm it causes.

That is almost a reductio ad hitlerum by way of law. It's not like there is no middle ground between letting Churches get away with tax evasion, and letting charities fend for themselves.

It is quite easy to create a special status for non-profits that are deemed to be useful to society. That is actually the exact wording we use in France: "utilité publique" - public usefulness. I'm pretty sure most of the atheist lawmakers wouldn't oppose the Salvation Army getting a tax exemption. But they would not allow the Church of My Ass or the Congregation Of The Priest Who Needs A New Yacht getting away with it because they most definitely aren't useful to everyone.

I mean, we are one of the most secular states in the world, and there are dozens if not hundreds of catholic charities which have that status.

So it can be both cosmetically satisfying and absolutely not harmful to actually positive organizations if done properly.

This is largely true of liberalism the philosophy. More book plug: Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen. This book is probably the straw that broke the camel's back of officially making me a right-winger.

Liberalism the actual organizing political system (or at least the one the USA has) is supposed to overcome this structurally by forcing people to negotiate and not allowing power to concentrate in any particular branch or interest group.

On the one hand, this works admirably as nobody has really managed to just get their way by fiat, but it ends up frustrating anybody that feels like checks and balances are an affront to their individual liberty or who believes that having an electoral majority at a particular point should mean all that majority's desires should come into being.

There is a leap in logic I don't quite get here. How is the US political liberalism left-wing exactly, or supposed to push people towards the right? We're talking about a system that hugely favors the countryside and the scarcely populated areas of the country when it comes to political influence due to the (utterly stupid) way the US Senate works, and in which there is an actual, official political way to block any law that has less than 60% approval in congress - not the majority, 60%. If anything, U.S. liberalism is skewed towards the current right-wing party (and McConnell has used it to a huge extent for the last 11 years, hasn't he?), so I really fail to see how rejecting this system should push people towards the right.

Unless your actual gripe with the system is the libertarians' "not my problem", but libertarians are not technically right-wing - even though the policies they support tend to align more often with the right than the left, it's more coincidental than philosophical, and linked to which libertarian issues are more prominent in the US.

Now, that the SCOTUS needs a reform is quite obvious, because lifelong mandates by definition belong to monarchies and dictatorships, not to democracies. But again, I am pretty certain it is fundamentally a nonpartisan issue. At the moment the SCOTUS leans (heavily) on the right, so left-wing voters are the most likely to complain about it, but if it gets a balance shift in the next few presidential mandates, GOP voters will be the one to be absolutely fuming about its organization.

What's baffling is that everything you seem to think about as a solution is pretty much exactly how the German political system works. And by many aspects it is a way more liberal country than the US.

I mean, just check how gay marriage was voted in Germany. Angela Merkel - conservative - put it on the Bundestag's agenda. She gave no "party orders" when it comes to the vote - basically, each MP should vote as s/he thinks. And she herself voted against. It passed. It lasted for all of two weeks I think (and Merkel got major political points as it blocked the left to use "We'll pass gay marriage" as a campaign slogan - plus since she herself voted against, the conservatives did not hold it against her, after all, she did her job as a Chancellor to put laws to the vote).

[Vol]

On the one hand, this works admirably as nobody has really managed to just get their way by fiat, but it ends up frustrating anybody that feels like checks and balances are an affront to their individual liberty or who believes that having an electoral majority at a particular point should mean all that majority's desires should come into being.

I think it's less in the sense that half the country thinks the other half is crazy, stupid, and/or evil, to lesser or greater extents, and more that the checks & balances have no ability to expel any (hypothetically) suicidally terrible ideas. "Voting is pointless, the parties are the same," is a copout for learning and civic duty, but also kind of true, in that any issue that reaches the national platforms, that there exists an authoritarian outcome for, is inevitable. We never get to have "more freedoms," they can only be restricted, and in a battle between defense and offense, the defense has no win condition. So checks & balances are a first and only line of defense, and having failed so blatantly in so many ways, what else _but_ a brief electoral majority could affect any fertile change?

This was something that came up even back in the 1830s in that Democracy in America book where Alexis de Tocqueville already observed that lawyers had a tremendous amount of power and respect in the USA and on some level were filling in a niche filled by landed aristocracy in Europe. He was not turned off by this and even seemed to think this was suitable or at least inevitable as they would cause tremendous amounts of trouble if they weren't given levels of influence "appropriate" to their educational and intellectual station.

That's a very interesting point he has there. I imagine if he'd lived to today, he might have a different opinion, as the gap between the lay person and understanding the law, and everything else, was much different. But it seems axiomatic that no matter how brutally hard we try, we cannot escape this meta-impulse to have nobility.

In Wild Swans, that was a ongoing source of suffering for the author's family. The Party officials, veterans of the war against Chiang kai-Shek, were true believers in the cause, and a relatively flat org chart. The author's father was, if I recall, a high enough rank bureaucrat (12 or so) to be in the "top" ranks, and thus special privileges for his good service during the war and after. What he actually got was not all that much better than what his wife (rank 20 or so) did, or the average person. A little more meat, oil, some minor luxuries, and he was very committed to the cause, refusing to bend on the Marxist principles he adored. Naturally, he was cast out during Mao's purge of the old guard, to bring in hungrier, less ideological officials, loyal only to him, and so goes the nobility. It stuck me with how even worked until skeletal, imprisoned and tortured, and never having done anything wrong, her father stuck to the idea of the revolution.

We also do just flat out vote for judges in Texas and it works. In as much as this would overtly turn the court into a circus, I'm instinctively hesitant about this. But then again, there is the argument that it's already obviously a circus but with a bunch of people fastidiously pretending it isn't.

I saw a Joker meme randomly the other day, and the text was, "It feels like we're all going through the motions until the violence starts." A circus, at least, has funny clowns.

If charities had to be unable/not allowed to peddle any religious belief/doctrine/mantra what so ever in order to do their charity work/keep tax exemption status then I'd be all for having tax exemption not stripped from churches. But if the exemption is only stripped if those Secular ones are also stripped then I think it's a decent price to pay to have the charities, churches/places of religion and Secular organisations all have their records actually on record.

Even if the consequence meant less charities? I would think a belief that charity is something you must do as part of a divine order to live by, or a ticket to a good afterlife, is a pretty strong motivator to actually volunteer/donate. I don't know what percentage they'd occupy, but the tax revenue/principle of telling them to pay up or shut up, when their mission goal is people explicitly failed by their government, it'd be hard to advocate for _less charity_.

But basically I want to keep the corrupt church donations system that breeds a bunch of televangelists and scum out of the system as possible and maybe find a way to make it so any church that does that shit is stripped of any ability to dodge.
And it's not just churches.
Mosques, Synagogues, Temples, Pagan earth mounds. Any place of organized religion should be under that much scrutiny.

Charity hospitals shouldn't even need to be a thing, said it many times, the USA needs Universal Healthcare. Country is screaming for it.
Hell, half of the problems in the country that concern the need for charity wouldn't be problems if the USA wasn't so seemingly afraid of social care and other stuff like that being funded by the state.

I agree, a more stringent standard to filter between hustling operations (Joel Osteen) and actual churches is reasonable. The problem being, if we did strip tax-exempt status, at least in America, what would immediately happen is all our houses of worship would need to be financially solvent all of a sudden. Which means either trying to make more money, which is your complaint to begin with, or shutting down. Which means mega-churches would de facto become the best model for actually sustaining a church. Which is not what anyone wants.

[Sinekein]

I agree, a more stringent standard to filter between hustling operations (Joel Osteen) and actual churches is reasonable. The problem being, if we did strip tax-exempt status, at least in America, what would immediately happen is all our houses of worship would need to be financially solvent all of a sudden. Which means either trying to make more money, which is your complaint to begin with, or shutting down. Which means mega-churches would de facto become the best model for actually sustaining a church. Which is not what anyone wants.

I hope there are at least a few Churches that are not ran by corrupt assholes and that would not go bankrupt if suddenly they had to pay taxes.

I don't think it's that costly to run a cult when you're not in it to scam the believers. You need a building, and you need several employees, but I seem to remember something something christians aren't supposed to look for personal wealth. Which means actual priests would probably be fine with modest donations from the believers - the way most cults do in the world - while con artists would have to either steal a ton of money, or find another way to satisfy their greed.

If it is a way to root out the scams, it might not be a bad thing in the end. As for Mega churches...isn't Utah a state already, or am I mistaken?

[Mazder]

Even if the consequence meant less charities? I would think a belief that charity is something you must do as part of a divine order to live by, or a ticket to a good afterlife, is a pretty strong motivator to actually volunteer/donate. I don't know what percentage they'd occupy, but the tax revenue/principle of telling them to pay up or shut up, when their mission goal is people explicitly failed by their government, it'd be hard to advocate for _less charity_.

If your charity only exists because of wanting to adopt people to the religion instead of just doing the material good as it may or may not state in said religion then it's just preying on the weak in society to bump the numbers of members.
Or indoctrination.
Either way, nah, I'd be okay with less charity being done if it meant less people being indoctrinated into religion.

Charity, for me, is as simple as "if your means has made you affluent then you share that extra material, funding, assistance. Not for supposed promises of a good afterlife that has no proof to exist, or the threat of a bad one if you do not, but simply because you are a person and you'd hate to be in the position they are in so you help them out of it, or help them so they are able to be standing on their own.

The main problem is the current system of how things are run in the USA means it hates a socialist view of "everyone chips in, anyone takes out".
Charities provide shelter, counselling, food, clothing, healthcare and even funding if and when they can.
Social housing and affordable housing for all, plus housing for the homeless provides the shelter.
Universal Healthcare provides the healthcare and social workers under the Universal healthcare would provide the counselling.
Food banks provide assistance to food.

The only things charities would need to take care of would be those that slip through the cracks, clothing and additional funding. Not seeing a need to be religious to fil that need.

I agree, a more stringent standard to filter between hustling operations (Joel Osteen) and actual churches is reasonable. The problem being, if we did strip tax-exempt status, at least in America, what would immediately happen is all our houses of worship would need to be financially solvent all of a sudden. Which means either trying to make more money, which is your complaint to begin with, or shutting down. Which means mega-churches would de facto become the best model for actually sustaining a church. Which is not what anyone wants.

I mean, a church is a place of worship. All you need is seats, a roof over your head, some lighting, maybe heating and a priest/preacher.
A warehouse can be a church at a fraction of the cost and you can gather donations from the community.
Everything else is aesthetics.
Plus, if one is truly religious then all you "need" is the holy book and your faith.
So, nah I'm not going to cry about lavish churches being shut down because they couldn't pay for their big building any more.

Bigger the church, the higher the tax.
That's how you put a beginning to stopping the Mega-Churches being default.
More members, more tax. Bigger buildings, bigger tax.

[Ragabul]

So it can be both cosmetically satisfying and absolutely not harmful to actually positive organizations if done properly.

I admit I was sort of condensing two different things together because it wasn't a position I was really interested in attacking in much detail. For clarity, Beto was specifically saying he would strip tax exempt status from any religious organization which opposed gay marriage. That would absolutely end up targeting the Salvation Army and Catholic hospitals and such. These don't discriminate in services (meaning they will offer services to people regardless of sexual orientation) but their doctrinal position is opposition to gay marriage.

The other position Mazder seemed to be advocating was a revocation of tax exemption for religious entities in general. And this would be patently unconstitutional unless Congress also stripped tax exemption from overtly irreligious institutions as well.

This is all hypothetical anyway because either thing is unconstitutional.

I'd be pretty okay with something that targeted prosperity preachers if it was possible to draw a line in a way that did not drag a bunch of merely dubious or distasteful to mainstream sensibilities but not actually fraudulent religious entities down in the dragnet. Joel Osteen going away isn't going to hurt much of anything.

There is a rule that technically exists that forbids religious entities from engaging in political activity. It is not enforced because it would scald everybody. If enforced, yes, that "church" that was filmed with people chanting Let's Go Brandon in the congregation would lose tax exemption, but so would every black church that did "souls to the polls" or whatever as well.

There is a leap in logic I don't quite get here. How is the US political liberalism left-wing exactly, or supposed to push people towards the right?

Eh? I'm not making a claim about the system being intrinsically right or left leaning. It *is* intrinsically countermajoritarian but whether the right or left has the majority or minority popular position shifts by the decade if not the year.

I'm not using "liberalism" here to refer to where people fall on the left-to-right political spectrum. I'm using it in the sense of its meaning in political philosophy. Every modern democracy has a liberal system (as opposed to other organizing principles such as communism, fascism, monarchy, or whatever). They can range from left to right on the spectrum. I'm not really arguing that the US system isn't some sort of a center right type liberal system. It pretty much is.

[Vol]

I'm not using "liberalism" here to refer to where people fall on the left-to-right political spectrum. I'm using it in the sense of its meaning in political philosophy. Every modern democracy has a liberal system (as opposed to other organizing principles such as communism, fascism, monarchy, or whatever). They can range from left to right on the spectrum. I'm not really arguing that the US system isn't some sort of a center right type liberal system. It pretty much is.

Or more simply, "In America, liberal and liberalism mean entirely different things."

[Ragabul]

Or more simply, "In America, liberal and liberalism mean entirely different things."

Sure, this. It means both "left on the political spectrum" and more or less "democracy/republic." I was using it in the second sense. Then to complicate things even more "the left" can mean both "anything left of center" and also specifically "actual socialists." For people on the left of the spectrum I tend to use "progressive" for the far but non radical left and "neoliberal" for the center left.

I think it's less in the sense that half the country thinks the other half is crazy, stupid, and/or evil, to lesser or greater extents, and more that the checks & balances have no ability to expel any (hypothetically) suicidally terrible ideas. "Voting is pointless, the parties are the same," is a copout for learning and civic duty, but also kind of true, in that any issue that reaches the national platforms, that there exists an authoritarian outcome for, is inevitable. We never get to have "more freedoms," they can only be restricted, and in a battle between defense and offense, the defense has no win condition. So checks & balances are a first and only line of defense, and having failed so blatantly in so many ways, what else _but_ a brief electoral majority could affect any fertile change?

This is pretty much the premise of that book Why Liberalism Failed. (Again, meaning liberalism the political philosophy and not just lefties. The book attacks both sides of the spectrum from a post-liberal right-wing point of view specifically the POV of Catholic integralism which is like Catholic sharia more or less. Catholic integralism is nuts but there are several actually really good writers/philosophers in the movement at the moment. Just as anarchism is nuts but I've read multiple good anarchist writers). It's failing because it won. There is a paradox built into it. If you don't allow elections, you aren't a democracy, but people may vote in things that make themselves less free. If you don't allow freedom of speech, you are authoritarian, but free speech can be used to tear the system down. Those are the dramatic paradoxes. There are more subtle ones that conservatives tend to be concerned about. If you liberate yourself from all ties that bind because they limit expression, you end up being nobody and nothing belonging nowhere.

[Sinekein]

If you don't allow elections, you aren't a democracy, but people may vote in things that make themselves less free. If you don't allow freedom of speech, you are authoritarian, but free speech can be used to tear the system down. Those are the dramatic paradoxes. There are more subtle ones that conservatives tend to be concerned about. If you liberate yourself from all ties that bind because they limit expression, you end up being nobody and nothing belonging nowhere.

There is a "only a Sith deals in absolutes" vibe there. Again, there is a middle ground between US freedom of speech where you can wave nazi flags in the street, and North Korea. There actually are an infinity of steps inbetween. There is a middle ground - usually called "a Parliament" - between the will of the people and the laws of the state. Even in Switzerland which is country #1 in the world when it comes to asking individual voters their opinion. Note: they do it way more than even the U.S., and the system looks way healthier. Granted, Switzerland is a pretty unique country, but it is also very religious and very conservative...but all major decisions (even weapon contracts!) are the will of the people. This actually encourages people to get more informed on many matters, since their vote counts.

And in countries that frown upon referendums (like France), it's not always unhealthy for a government to go against the will of the population. Case in point: the pandemic, where lockdown never was popular, but was pretty important to limit the number of deaths. Another example was the abolition of the death penalty in 1981, as at that point polls showed fewer than 50% of the population was in favor of it (and yet it was voted, thankfully).

I honestly think freedom of speech is way less important than access to information. One absolutely-not-liberal decision I wish governments could take would be a crackdown on social media as a whole and Facebook in particular, because those are gigantic stupidity factories coupled with echo chambers. People get fed opinions that never challenge their world vision day after day, and end up being thoroughly unable to tolerate anything that does not suit it. Burning them down would do the world a favor.

Now, it would also require some way to ensure political independence and plurality among journalists. The main problem there is is that it is costly to run a media, and media moguls tend not to exactly cover the entire political spectrum, especially when it comes to economic policies - billionaires are very unlikely to fund a socialist newspaper. The Overton window has dramatically shifted those last few years, since one guy decided to become the French Rupert Murdoch, giving the far-right free reign on his channels - but for some reason no one has done the same with the far-left.

For example, many at the far-right are foaming at the mouth because the main state-owned radio, France Inter, leans left - it is centre-left in its treatment of information, and they do hire several very left-leaning comedians who have a daily broadcast at 5PM. Those people also conveniently ignore that the other three "general" radios (RTL, RMC, Europe 1), which are privately owned, all lean quite clearly to the right (if not the far right for Europe 1, since it's owned by the aforementioned French Murdoch). Basically, France Inter is the only way you can listen to left-leaning opinions on the radio, and if it wasn't state-owned, this would disappear. Right-wing opinions, however, would be just fine without public sponsorship.

TV is a lost cause already: said Murdoch lite owns a channel, and it's the reason a guy called Zemmour is one of the frontrunners for the next election - he's basically our own Tucker Carlson, having a daily presence on his channel with no one to contradict him when he says stuff like "Pétain saved French Jews", that "all wandering minors are rapists, thieves and criminals", or that "he is nostalgic of the times where men were free to put their hands on women's butt in the street" (I kid you not). Good luck however finding a leftwing analyst anywhere in your picture box however. We do have an organization (the CSA) that ensures plurality of political opinions on radios and TV, but that only applies to actual politicians, not to analysts and journalists (sidenote: this forced said Zemmour to stop his daily broadcast because the CSA now considers him a politician, and he had so much free speech on TV his channel would have been forced to give as much time to other political opinions as they did his).

[Ragabul]

There's something about the talking heads format that the right seems to do better than the left at for some reason (with radio and cable TV). This is even somewhat apparent in how right-wing influencers tend to pop up on YouTube specifically rather than Twitter. The left tends to dominate the written word be it Twitter, books, newspapers, magazines and so on. I think this is some weird product of the last few decades because historically a lot of the bigwigs on the right tended to be like highbrow Victorian eggheads or theologians or whatever. The death of the right wing intelligentsia is itself a massive problem. Even going back 25 years ago conservative =/= stupid people but that's increasingly becoming more the case. Hate them or love them but there's a league of difference between someone like William F. Buckley and Roger Scruton compared to Donald Trump and Sarah Palin.

And I'm not claiming there is no middle road between the poles of liberalism and authoritarianism. In fact, there is no road *but* a middle road. Even the USA doesn't have perfect freedom of speech. My point is that that's the tension at the heart of democracy. There is no such thing as a democracy that does not have explicit tools that let people dismantle the democracy if they want to do so (even if doing so is hard. In the USA it's *really* hard which is why no one has done it in 250 years). It's the only system of government that will let you overthrow it procedurally with 0 need to resort to revolutionary violence. And inasmuch as democracy promises personal freedom and autonomy in a way that no other system of government even pretends to do, when people feel they don't have personal freedom but they have insufficient power to alter things procedurally through lack of popularity or because checks and balances stop them, they tend to conclude the government in front of them can't be a real democracy. It keeps going around in a circle like this.

Under democratic theory, revolutionary violence is perfectly permissible to *restore* democracy. This is 100% what all those people storming the capital on Jan 6 sincerely believed they were doing. Some far-right militia people aside, those people overwhelmingly thought they were channeling Concord and Lexington and not the invasion of Poland. They thought they were storming the Bastille.

This is why liberalism (the philosophy) needs to be grounded in unifying institutions and traditions. At the end of the day, I really believe that someone sincerely rooted in some lasting, irrational set of unifying traditions that gird and legitimate a democratic system is much less likely to try to tear that system down than somebody who merely regards it as a set of legal procedures. It's one reason 3 of the oldest more consistently democratic states (Britain, France, and the USA) all have such strong national flavors and opinions about how democracy should work. When you regard democracy as nothing but a set of legal procedures, there's much less stopping you from sweeping all that away if it's not giving you what you want. Likewise when the unifying myths start breaking down (but with a huge majority still believing in the legitimacy of democracy as a concept) both sides start yelling about how they are the *real* proponents of democracy and those other guys are authoritarians and thus crushing them with illiberal, even revolutionary force to *restore* democracy is legitimate and warranted.

So that Why Liberalism Failed book did not really succeed in turning me against liberalism (which was its aim). But it certainly convinced me (along with a bunch of other things I read at the time and since) that unifying traditions matter *a lot* and that sometimes even an irrational set of somewhat stupid traditions is better than factions warring over meaning or the position of cynical nihilist for whom nothing is sacred and everything can be altered. To quote more annoying C. S. Lewis:

No justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous…. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat,’ than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among card sharks.

Put another way. Liberalism (democracies/republics) is an explicitly revolutionary, proselytizing philosophy much as fascism and socialism are. We just like to pretend we aren't. A narrative that puts everybody on the same side in a given democracy is super important or that revolutionary energy tends to get turned against "enemies."

(Why do I suddenly have a desire to sing La Marseillaise or wave a Don't Tread on Me flag after writing this?)

There's also another side to this which that book goes into which is that democracies tend to deracinate people which causes all kinds of moral, spiritual, ethical, and social ills, but that's more using an explicitly right wing framework of analysis. In less right wing terms, it tends to make people focus on themselves and less on communities. It makes people selfish and short-sighted. (Muh guns. Muh car. Muh body. Muh sexual expression. Muh religion. Etc.) Europe is generally more communal than the USA but I think this is actually down to culture more than to the systems of government over there. In other words, it's *because* Europe already tended towards being more communal that they built more communal governments. Not the other way around. This helps keep European democracies from being as deracinating as American democracy is but all democracies deracinate to some degree or other.

It also probably helps that most countries in Western Europe have more of a set of non-political communal experiences to rally around in the form of a folklore, a language, a cuisine, a traditional national church, etc. In the USA, unity is forged on a set of national political myths. When those political myths start breaking down, what the hell exactly *does* a blue-collar redneck in East Texas have in common with a gender studies professor at Yale?

[Ragabul]

Facebook Sent Me Down a Centrist Rabbit Hole

Journalist makes a fake intentionally apolitical Facebook profile and comments and likes on only the blandest thing possible (Domino's Pizza, the Rolling Stones, beer, etc.). The algorithm doesn't take you down a weird radicalized rabbit hole but a rabbit hole of depressing, scammy, vapid schlock.

This sounds duh but it's just a good case study for how awful Facebook really is even stripped of political content.

[Sinekein]

Put another way. Liberalism (democracies/republics) is an explicitly revolutionary, proselytizing philosophy much as fascism and socialism are. We just like to pretend we aren't. A narrative that puts everybody on the same side in a given democracy is super important or that revolutionary energy tends to get turned against "enemies."

That I agree with. It's seen as the "default", where it really is not. I recently heard a small bit by a rhetorics teacher who spoke about centrists trying to convince people that they did not have an ideology, and how false that statement was.

It has been repeatedly shown with various Western foreign interventions in the last decades. For one Japan going from feudal to democratic, you get Afghanistans, Vietnams, many African countries like Libya today...and it's actually something China is currently facing heads-on.

It also probably helps that most countries in Western Europe have more of a set of non-political communal experiences to rally around in the form of a folklore, a language, a cuisine, a traditional national church, etc. In the USA, unity is forged on a set of national political myths. When those political myths start breaking down, what the hell exactly *does* a blue-collar redneck in East Texas have in common with a gender studies professor at Yale?

[/quote]

Honestly, I don't think a country like France is that different in that regard. But we have a way more centralized and interventionist government, for better or worse, which means that the same laws apply to everyone. In the US, it seems that on top of their vastly different personal histories, those two people can live under two very different sets of laws. I think it widens the gap, due to how your Parliament is elected.

[Ragabul]

Honestly, I don't think a country like France is that different in that regard. But we have a way more centralized and interventionist government, for better or worse, which means that the same laws apply to everyone. In the US, it seems that on top of their vastly different personal histories, those two people can live under two very different sets of laws. I think it widens the gap, due to how your Parliament is elected.

Specifically I'd say the US systems gets rigid when both sides have 49-51ish percent of the vote. A 51% majority is a *really* thin majority and it means 1 out of 2 people don't actually want you to be able to put your agenda into operation. On a whim, I looked up a list of popular votes percentages for presidents and overwhelmingly, the presidents people remember for "getting stuff done" had huge 10%+ popular vote mandates. This is one of the things that keep dogging both parties. Even the party with the supposed massive mandate to rule can only consistently keep bringing in 51ish% of the vote. This is not a defect of the electoral college not being the popular vote or similar. The Democrats completely control the government and it was agonizing for them to get that Infrastructure bill passed (and they only did that finally out of panic because they lost in Virginia).

Our governments are still coalitional like European governments are. It's just that here the coalitions get formed at the party creation stage and not during the election or once the government is formed. So the Democrats aren't really the Democrats. They are really like the Green Party, plus the Social Democrats, plus the left centrists, plus some actual socialists, and other weird ethnic components like socially conservative but economically liberal minority groups. The Republicans are really the social conservative party, and the free-market party, and the white working class party, and the nativist white identity party, and more. And pretty much nobody wants one of those coalitions in its pure form because they are riddled with internal contradictions and warring influence groups trying to yank the party in specific directions. Thus the complaint that "both parties are the same." You end up being like me and being unhappy with identity politics in general (white or non-white), unhappy with both laissez-faire and "money grows on trees" social spending, fairly social conservative but libertarian live and let live on sexual and religious differences and so on. You end up in an elaborate game of calculation trying to figure out which of these parties maybe barely matches what you want overall a bit better. This is the product of a first past the post electoral system. Some kind of ranked choice voting would seriously help probably and there's no particular reason I can think of you couldn't use ranked choice at the electoral college level too, especially if each state split its electoral votes to coincide with the popular vote in that state like Maine and Nebraska already do.

If you shook me out, I'm actually probably like a generic European Christian Democrat, but there is no such thing here because half of each of the components of this are contained in opposing parties.

[Sinekein]

From what I know about political systems, there is a major issue in the US political system that indeed leads to what you describe unless you have a party with a very large majority - which is less and less likely to happen in the future due to how polarized the country is.

On one hand, you vote for a president, as we do in France. Which means that you vote for a person, not for a set of ideas. Sure, that's also the case in Germany or in the UK, but the weight of the personality is much more important there. This can lead to voters rejecting a personality even though the ideas might actually suit them. I know I have this problem with at least one left-wing politician in France (Mélenchon), who has a ton of ideas I very much agree with, but who behaves like such a tiny despot within his party and in front of journalists that I absolutely never want to see him with more power. And, of course, you have the Trump case, who was utterly abhorrent for even some centrist voters due to his behavior, and made it particularly unlikely to find a large majority for action on any issue. Voting for people instead of parties/ideas make the whole process much more emotional instead of rational.

Now, on the other hand...you have a ton of checks during a presidential mandates that end up dramatically increasing the likelihood of a deadlock, like we saw under Obama when the Congress was red. Next year, Biden with lose the Senate and maybe the Chamber too, and nothing of note will happen between 2022 and 2024, until someone else replaces him. For comparison, in France, the National Assembly (= your Senate) is elected one month after the president, which means that so far, all elected presidents then got a clear majority. Our MPs' mandates last five years, like the presidents, which means that for five years, there is theoretically a clear majority in charge. So even if a president is deeply unpopular - happened to the two before Macron, which were Hollande and Sarkozy, neither of which got a second mandate - he can keep making decisions. Of course, if he plans to be reelected, he is likely to become much more moderate and careful with what he does so as not to anger people, leading to the same kind of late-mandate inertia you have in the US, which IMO is infuriating as it means that maybe a third of a five-year mandate is wasted by electoral considerations.

Note that, in France, there was a major change around 2000. Before that, MPs were elected for five years, but the president had a seven-years mandate, meaning that he was forced to face MP elections during his mandate. Three times in a row, they had to go through "cohabitations", basically president and government/PM being from opposite parties (meaning that the PM functionally ruled the country). It changed under Chirac who aligned both calendars (after being forced to the longest cohabitation in history since he tried to have the Assembly renewed after just two years in his mandate, which backfired as he lost the snap election).

Re-election considerations are even more of a problem in the US due to how often you have major national ones. Politicians are always campaigning instead of doing their job as elected officials, and are always voting with "I can't make anyone too mad because I might lose my seat in three years time" in mind - even more so in the era of internet where nothing ever really disappears. It really looks like a system in which the "checks and balances" have completely overwhelmed the actual ability to govern, and where neither party will dare to change things - it will be easy to use by the opposing one as a rallying cry, which means that the party most likely to benefit from it will be the one in the opposition when it is voted.

[Ragabul]

There are too many scams in higher education

Somewhat adjacent to that conversation about non-profits and tax exemption. It's far from just religious institutions that are doing shady non-profit stuff in the USA and a generalized crackdown on shady stuff would probably be beneficial but not one which selectively cracked down on things that annoy whatever party happens to be in power while ignoring shady dealings in sectors they favor. (Dems crack down on religions and ignore colleges, vice versa for Repubs, etc.)

*Edit*

Speech Vs Diversity, Diversity Vs Speech

Decent essay on the topic. In particular the second section has a decent, reasonably succinct description of the variety of things that go around under the category "woke." It particularly has one of the better, short explainers on critical theory (and indirectly why it stinks so much) that I've seen:

But when it comes to a direct assault on speech, inclusionists are wimps compared to the third strand of the diversity movement, critical theory. Like the first two diversity movement currents, critical theory’s roots stretch back historically, in this case to the 1920’s and the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt. Today we hear lots about Critical Race Theory, but it is only one strand of critical theory.

Critical theorists argue for a deeper, more skeptical analysis of the structures of inequality, dominance, and oppression. This includes all elements of society: laws, systems, and cultural practices. Nothing is sacred, including speech. More than any of the other four diversity currents, critical theorists refuse to bow to the idea of free expression as an assumed virtue.

Some mainstream intercultural and inclusionist organizations began to adapt, at least performatively. For example, the National Association for Multicultural Education launched an initiative to spotlight Critical Multicultural Educators. I serve on the advisory board of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies.

Critical theorists also took dead aim at the concept of “free” speech. Many view the defense of free speech as a regressive strategy to reinforce inequitable group power differentials. They champion greater legal restrictions and punishments for certain forms of expression.

I'm actually pretty onboard with what this guy is calling the intercultural diversity movement, opposed to inclusionist and managerial strains as being useless, and extra special doubleplus opposed to both the critical theory and therapeutic varieties because they are not just useless but actually harmful.