Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
No bio...
User ID: 297
The funny thing about rape is the west only made rape illegal in around 1865.
Rape was not legal in the West before slavery was abolished. Slaves just didn't count as "people" and so you were allowed to do many things to slaves that were crimes if done to non-slaves.
Rape was illegal long before 1865. The abolition of slavery did not (finally) criminalize rape; it just added former slaves to the category of people to whom legal protections (theoretically) apply.
I really dislike this disingenuous form of argumentation.
And your takeway from that is that when you meet a black, white or Asian person or Jew, the way you treat them should not be based on how they behave, how they present themselves, how they treat you, but purely based on their ethnicity, because you believe everyone else is doing that to you?
What would your end goal be, assuming we all adopt this approach?
A lot of people seem to have the idea that mods are bots and we are not supposed to express personal opinions, or respond to bitching at all except with a customer service voice. While we strive for civility, most accusations of being uncivil boil down to "You told someone who's being a jerk to stop being a jerk." When someone who's already been extended more grace than he deserves several times over is told he lacks self awareness, that is not incivility.
But half our bans are not bad.
All your bans were deserved.
Person who gets banned a lot thinks his bans are bad. Many such cases.
Of course everyone is a member of a group. Most people are not like you, acting as if their ethnic membership is their only relevant trait.
You were banned for being antagonistic and obnoxious, not because of the side you were arguing or for lack of citations.
The claim that you have been banned for what you are arguing might be something you genuinely believe (lots of people come in with a hot take, call people who disagree with them names, and then insist they were banned for their hot take and not for their name-calling), but it is not true.
Your lack of self awareness is unfortunate.
I agree that it would be a bitter pill to swallow. I don't blame the OP for being upset at this reality, if it is reality and if he has become convinced of it.
But I guess I just don't see the point of "Life is unfair!" posts. The Motte is mostly for discussing ideas and testing hypotheses. The OP doesn't really present anything to debate. Maybe he's hoping someone will talk him out of the HBD conclusion? (In this place, not likely.) Otherwise, a vent about existential angst is at best more appropriate for Wellness Wednesday or Small Scale Questions.
If you accept HBD but reject inidvidualism, you wind up where our enthusiastic ethnonationalists are. "Tribal and clannish" is just signaling you want war.
Every time you post, you repeat this lament. At this point, I am not sure you're not a troll.
But taking you at face value: what do you want? What are you asking here? What do you want people to say?
Either HBD is true or it's not. If it is true, then it doesn't matter whether it's "fair" in some cosmic sense. Of course it's not. No one is promised fairness. It's not fair some people are born into loving families in first world countries and other people are abandoned at birth in a slum. You are dealt the hand you're dealt. What other justice is there but "treat people as individuals"?
You can advocate for fair treatment. You can advocate for help to redress historical injustice. You can argue against the premise. But shaking your fist at reality because reality is unfair seems... really pointless.
We are not allowing AI-generated drive-bys from first time posters.
It seems like you keep circling around the same points you won't quite touch. Let me ask this:
What does "winning" mean for the US?
Because I don't think anyone ever claimed Iran could militarily defeat the US. And everyone knows that the US could, if it were willing to expend unlimited monies and go scorched earth, end the regime and even occupy the country. We could turn Iran into a parking lot. We could turn Iran into a colony. That we have the military power to do this has never been in doubt. What has been, and is, in doubt is whether we have the money and the political will to... do anything other than lob some missiles at them and declare "mission accomplished."
You say Iran does not "meaningfully" control the Strait of Hormuz. No, they don't. It's true, ships can sail through it and probably emerge unscathed. And yet, it's still considered dangerous, because Iran is still shooting at them, and strangely, commercial vessels are not comforted by being told "They'll probably miss you."
If we were "winning" the way you say we are, I would expect us to be in complete, undisputed, absolute control of the Straits. As in, zero Iranian missiles. No ships being threatened. None. Nada. Iran incapable of posing a threat to so much as a dingy, either because they literally no longer have the capacity to threaten, or know that firing one shot will bring consequences they are unwilling to bear.
That's not where we are. Why not? What have we accomplished? I want to know what my ROI is as an American taxpayer who's paying this bill. What have we won? Killing a lot of Iranians and making them spend a generation rebuilding does nothing for me as an American. I actually... don't care a lot about Israel, so Iran being less likely to attack Israel (note: less, not "will never happen again") is also not something I am invested in. Iran less likely to build nuclear weapons is some small benefit, but I remain unconvinced by your confident assurances that in 10 years Iran will not be building nuclear weapons. Iran not sponsoring terrorism anymore? Zero Islamic jihadist organizations being funded by Iran? That seems... very optimistic.
So tell me what we won. Kicking over a country like it's an anthill is a very expensive "victory" if you use a fleet of backhoes to do it and the ants are just going to keep stinging you.
Your ban was not for the topic you wanted to talk about.
You have banned me too much under the wildcard rule which really just means per your discretion you don't like my posts.
You have no idea how many people I'd be banning if I banned people because I don't like their posts.
I think it's impossible to become a true forum regular while also being one of the types of posters you mention
We have many forum regulars who are those types of posters.
And that huge ban would obviously not be given to a regular
We have given permabans to people who've been here for years.
Even themotte has to crack down on holocaust denial, HBD and other topics from time to time.
Sigh. You're baiting me, aren't you?
No, we've never "cracked down" on topics *. We've cracked down on obsessive single-issue posters and people turning their hobby horses into culture-warring and consensus-building. We've never forbidden Holocaust denial or HBD posting or even pedo-posting from the guys who want to abolish the age of consent.
- (Once, many years ago on the old subreddit, before my time, the mods put a temporary moratorium on HBD posting because it was close to turning into open calls for race war.)
It was the "((they))" that looked like Joo-posting. Multiple parentheses are an online "Jew" tag, and "Jews responsible for all the liberal degenerate things I hate" is not an uncommon mind virus here, but other than generic "Jews=Hollywood" I was struggling to see the connection.
But the point is ((they)) would think that’s so abhorrent what’s the point of the film
Is this supposed to mean Jews? If so, draw me a diagram, please. If not, what exactly do you mean by "they"?
Mild mod rebuke:
Who is "we"?
This is about as literal an example of consensus-building as I've seen. You just assume everyone here on the Motte is on your side here. You're posting, literally, about opposing sides in the Culture War and just taking it as a given that one side is "us."
And you're not wrong that defenders of either Woke 1 or Woke 2 (whatever that is) are pretty scarce here. If I had to pick a side, yes, I'm a disaffected anti-woke like (almost) everyone else.
Still. We may be skewing further and further in one direction, but the Motte itself is not intended to be a partisan platform and we will not be "claimed" and you will not assert that only one side is "us."
This rant comes up quite often, in literary spaces, on social media, and on reddit. On reddit, unsurprisingly, it is generally not received well (probably why your post was removed). The usual feminist response is "Boo hoo, fiction catered to men forever, now it's our turn" and/or "Boo hoo, we had to grow up reading about boys, why can't boys read about girls?"
Both of those arguments are of course very disingenuous, but you shouldn't really expect much better on reddit.
(I personally have given up trying to shop my Heinlein-inspired YA teens-in-space novel around.)
That said, I do think "Nothing to read for boys" is overstated. Even "Nothing published recently for boys" is not entirely true. But it's hard, man. You pretty much have to go looking for small, niche publishers or indies... and if your tastes don't happen to run towards Christian homeschoolers or right-wing nutjobs, the selection is even sparser.
Dude, any time someone says something that is (arguably) wrong, the options basically boil down to "You're mistaken" or "You're lying." But it is quite belligerent to follow "I think you're wrong about this" with "So did you misunderstand or are you a liar"? I find your argumentation in this thread very obnoxious because you're doubling down on "Well, either he's stupid and doesn't know what he's talking about or he's making the whole thing up." Neither of those framings are charitable or conducive to good discussion, and you do not seem to actually be interested in fostering good discussion, but rather, seeing how much you can needle people. I've told you once and I am now underlining it: stop this. I don't mean stop being pedantic about exactly what "fraud charge" means- by all means, be pedantic and argue whether that was an appropriate term to use. I mean stop using fangs over word choices and pedantic details.
"Fraud" can mean punitive damages for being deceptive, which is not technically "fraud" as a criminal charge but is something juries are allowed to take into account in a civil trial. You could have accused him of being imprecise rather than going to "You are making this up."
While I do not like MKC's snarky rebuttal, I have to agree that you seem to be doing a reverse-karen: "This poor guy got screwed because all the ladies were on Team Woman and too stupid or emotional to consider evidence." But the evidence is that this guy is dumb, irresponsible, and basically handed over his paycheck to his girlfriend to run his life, was terrible with money, the relationship imploded predictably (after they had two children!) and guess what, he's now responsible for the aftermath of that. We could quibble over the specific dollar amounts she should or should not be entitled to, but yeah, the case really was quibbling over how much he owed. Like, my dude, you have two kids with a woman you couldn't be bothered to marry to hook up with almost-free medical coverage? Yeah, that's gonna cost you. On deployment, you go out and drink like a sailor (because, duh) and ask her to pay for your bar tabs? Yeah, you're gonna owe her for that.
Agreed that fraud should not have entered the discussion, and it sounds like Chad's lawyer was terrible (are we surprised that Chad is as good at picking lawyers as he is at picking baby-mommas?), and I don't doubt the chicks were biased, but you have to be pretty much on Team Pump-And-Dump-The-Bitches-Deserve-It to think Chad should have escaped responsibility here.
or perhaps the story itself is fabricated
I (as a mod) do not appreciate the low-key insinuations that the OP is lying, and while I'd have let "your framing might be missing any more details in her favor" go (because yes, that is certainly possible), you have no reason to be accusing him of outright making up this entire story. Do people make up stories to post here? Yes, I'm sure they do, though less frequently than on reddit - I have certainly raised my eyebrows at a few implausible just-so stories posted here - but "maybe this is all made up" is a shitty thing to say just by way of disagreement with the thesis.
Jesus wept. Simple math, people. I like AI but stop using it because you are too lazy to break out a calculator and the sort of deductive reasoning you'd give an undergrad interviewing for his first internship.
Current spot price of gold is about $4,350/troy ounce.
An avoirdupois pound is 14.583 troy ounces, or $63,436.05. So $1B in gold would be about 15,764 lbs, or 7.88 tons.
There are cargo planes that can carry over 100 tons. So I don't know how you posed your question, but it is clearly not "physically impossible" for a cargo plan to carry billions of dollars.
(I don't know if the UAE has literal tons of gold on hand, or if that's how they'd transport cash. Supposing they have a vault full of US bank notes, each bill is about 1 gram so $1B in $USD100 bills would be 10M x 1 gram = 10 metric tons/9.8 tons. So whatever form the "cash" takes, yes, it's physically possible to carry billions in a cargo plane.)
Well, no argument here that MAGA messaging sucks. But you know the phenomenon of all those Bernie bros who turned Trumpers? I think it not unlikely a lot of burrito MAGAs will turn into DSAers.
The fact that you initiated this as you being angry that you think your father had it better than you is why people are debating that. You did a poor job of framing this about whether or not your party is appealing to its base.
Okay, fine, but that is also why people are voting for the DSA. Like you, their anger may be understandable but their reasoning is, as you put it, retarded. Maybe your base does need better messaging (the Dems certainly do) but it's not surprising you're getting tripped up by people pointing out that the things you claim are, uh, not necessarily true.
I'd prefer people engage with facts rather than demanding their anger and resentment be given a populist head-pat.
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I'd argue that rape "in the modern sense" has been illegal for centuries. As with abolition, the criminalization of marital rape simply expanded the category of people to whom legal protections against criminal assault applied. (Wives were in a sense considered property of their husbands- much as it used to be legal to beat your children.) You can still read people arguing that marriage implies permanent unconditional consent and therefore marital rape doesn't/shouldn't exist.
Which is why I find @RandomRanger's argument that Africans are not human beings like us unconvincing; low IQ people have problems modeling other people's minds, showing empathy, or thinking about consequences, but it's also downstream of culture. Many Muslim immigrants are not particularly low IQ, but it's their culture that tells them women are property and caring how a woman feels about being raped is like caring how a chicken feels about being eaten. The ancients likewise considered rape a property crime, not because they couldn't understand that women had feelings and didn't like being raped, but because that just wasn't part of their moral framework.
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