Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
4d ago
Over the last couple of hundred years, with the development of mass communication technology, the alignment of memes and genes has been breaking down. Today the most successful memes are those that transmit horizontally using technology, and so the selection pressures have shifted. The memes are becoming parasitic, because they no longer need their host to reproduce. In fact, the host spending time and resources trying to complete its life cycle is now directly opposed to the fitness of the memes, and so arresting development of its host in such a way that renders it literally or functionally infertile is now being selected for. These hosts then have nothing to live for except spreading the parasitic memes, and those memes then outproduce the older more symbiotic memes.
I've argued in the past that this could be a potential candidate for the Great Filter; that any civilization that develops radio — and thus could potentially be detected over interstellar distances — is quickly devoured by parasitic memes and collapses. Add that an industrial revolution is a once-per-planet event… (at best; another Great Filter candidate I like to propose is getting your planet's Carboniferous Period just right.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
As a further follow-up, here's Theo Wold on Twitter:
As somebody who worked in the White House and the DOJ on immigration issues during the first Trump admin, I am often asked how many total illegal aliens I think are in our country.
The actual answer to that question is we don’t know because we’ve never attempted to figure it out. Unlike most nations in Europe, we don’t tabulate illegal aliens— so the number of actual foreign nationals living in the U.S. is much higher than most people think.
What I can say is there were at least 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. going into the Biden admin and they allowed in anywhere between 25 to 35 million, whether across our borders or through the bastardization of our asylum laws. And those numbers exclude their children.
All in all, I would venture to guess that the actual number of illegal foreign nationals and their children is close to 1/4th of the U.S. population.
Have people looked into how necessary slavery was in historical civilizations?
I like walking people through the thought experiment/scenario "Okay, you're a moderately-sized village of stationary agriculturalists in the Neolithic, and young men from hunter-gatherer tribes keep wandering by to hunt your livestock and gather your crops, because they find your idea that a person can 'own' such things, and that plants and animals aren't just there for whoever can take them, laughable and absurd, and mock you for the labor you put into cultivating those things instead of relying on the bounty of nature like a real man." Then ask what, after you defeat any of these raiders in a battle to defend your stuff, do you do with your defeated foe? Point out the strategic reasons (as pointed out by the likes of Sun Tzu) why you can't just kill or cripple them all. But why you also cannot just let them go to keep trying again. And then pointing out that a Neolithic farming village lacks the surplus to feed and house an idle prisoner. Then ask who supervises the prisoner you've put to work? Why would the prisoner submit to this person? Wouldn't it make sense to have it be the same guy who defeated and captured him in the first place, then? But why would this person take such a job? What does he get out of it? Can you trade that role to someone else?… and so on, through careful Socratic dialogue.
I love the looks on their faces when they finally realize what solution they've "invented."
Edit: Plus, you might also find the writings of George Fitzhugh interesting. A socialist who was answering the "socialism is state-run slavery" argument with a "chad yes" long before libertarian-types were around to make it. Who condemned the racist character of Southern chattel slavery… on the grounds that white people should be enslaved too.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
44, and basically never thanks to medication interactions (serious drowsiness) — not that I was much of a drinker before I went on the meds. (Though, now that I do the math, that was like 20 years ago.)
I do use some in cooking, though (deglazing with wine, beer batter, beer in chili, sake in teriyaki marinade, etc…).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
You're better off trying to go Mormon, for a certain definition of "better".
Why? They're no more suited to tribe-on-tribe conflict than any other WEIRD whites. They are just as individualistic, just as genetically incapable of the level of tribal identification and collectivity necessary to survive the tribe-on-tribe conflicts of a mobile interconnected globe. They will never attain the "my tribe against other tribes" mentality of, say, the average Somali scammer, and thus they will fall prey to tribes like those of that scammer. They will try to wage ethnic battles as free individuals — and they will lose.
And they will die out.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
They're just as doomed as every other white subgroup, because it doesn't matter how many kids they have, they'll be picked off bit-by-bit by enemy tribes and rival cultures. Because you need a certain level of (and may Allah forgive me for uttering this word) asabiyyah to fight this sort of tribal war, and all of us whites are genetically incapable of attaining it — we will never be capable of thinking in the sort of "my tribe versus other tribes" thinking we see in, say, Somali scammers.
It's a big part of the "secret sauce" that made us so successful. But it also means we're a delicate, mutant hothouse flower that was only able to survive in the relative geographic isolation of premodern Europe. Under the conditions of modern global mobility and interconnectedness, we simply cannot survive.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
In reality, unconstitutional behavior only becomes a constitutional crisis if another branch of government is fighting you on it, and both sides are relatively evenly matched.
Exactly, and I don't see how that latter condition in particular ever arises.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Given that WEIRD white populations are clearly too inherently individualistic to survive the tribal conflicts of a globally-connected world (see Wilhem Ivorsson in conversation with Harry Robinson here), and thus our extinction (and that of the culture we produce) is totally inevitable, if a white Westerner wants to have some kind of descendants and positive legacy long-term, which non-WEIRD culture should they seek to marry and “assimilate” (actual assimilation being only ever a multigenerational phenomenon involving intermarriage) into?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Is the essential lens of American racial politics ultimately white versus non-white or black versus non-black?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Can anyone explain just what exactly a "constitutional crisis" is supposed to be, and how such a thing constitutes a crisis, as opposed to an easily-resolved dispute that changes little but clearing away illusions and making the status-quo more transparent?
First, as @OliveTapenade notes, the Census includes under "white" a lot of people who aren't. MENA, yes; but there's also a lot of "white" Hispanics who are actually mestizo.
Plus, the Census office themselves admit that they probably undercounted blacks and Hispanics while overcounting whites and Asians.
According to the Census numbers — if you believe any of them — there's about 191 million non-Hispanic whites, which, per the above, is almost certainly an overestimate.
But where the real issue lies is the denominator. They claim the total population is about 335 million — ≈321 citizens and legal residents, and ≈14 million illegal aliens.
But that last number is laughable; outright lies. Our new interim DHS secretary just admitted that about 20 million (at least) arrived under Biden alone. The actual number of illegals is at least 50 million, and probably closer to 100 million, for an actual population of 371-421 million. With that "191 million whites" figure (again, almost certain to actually be lower), that gives a percentage of 45-51%.
So, again, whites are almost certainly already a minority in the US.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
What part of "the "official figures" that claim otherwise are deliberate lies" was unclear?
The 2020 Census is a pack of lies, and the Census Office is a bunch of politically-motivated propagandists who cannot be trusted.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
America is still 60% white
No, America is already minority white, and the "official figures" that claim otherwise are deliberate lies.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
There is not a desire for everyone to be joined alike in tough, dignified labor to be followed by a communal dinner served out of a big iron pot.
Good thing that's not what what I said. A few may still try to sell their preferred outcome as providing this, but like you point out, they barely even try that anymore.
Again, envy is about hating those who have more than you. That's perfectly compatible with having other people who have less than you. Like you say, it's not hating hierarchy, its about hating everyone above you in that hierarchy.
I'm again reminded of my dad's old employer — who passed a few weeks ago. Liked to give all the usual lefty bits about "helping the poor"… while paying employees, contractors, and so on as little as he could get away with (along with plenty of other slightly scummy business practices); and would regularly endorse "taxing the rich more"… as a millionaire whose approach to his own taxes bordered on outright evasion (near the end, he actually got dinged by the IRS for a rather substantial amount of unpaid back taxes).
Because, you see, he wasn't rich. No, he was your ordinary middle class millionaire landlord. And "the rich" who need taxed more? Anyone who had more money than him, those greedy bastards.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
The current elite needs to either shape up or get replaced.
And how do you propose, exactly, to replace them, should they not "shape up"?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
What do they actually want?
For nobody to have anything more or better than they do. Like I've said before, it's envy — not just wanting what other people have (that's "covetousness"), but resenting them for having it. Much more toxic, because it's most easily satisfied by tearing others down.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Perhaps consider security work.
I have a mutual on Tumblr who works in that area, and from what she says about it, it's a lot more "standing around looking intimidating" and "dealing with Karens" than anything on that list of mine.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
In the American tradition (going back to the "Revolution") governments are found on both sides of the rebellion, and any rebellion that meaningfully threatened the status quo of the regime (I don't use the term in a pejorative sense, mind you) would almost certainly involve a split government and likely a split armed forces.
And it is precisely because of the unlikelihood of that split government that one will not see rebellions meaningfully threaten the status quo of the regime.
While a ground-up rebellion in the United States would not overthrow the government, it might gain concessions.
Highly doubtful. (This bit from Military Strategy Magazine comes to mind.) I think Yarvin is right that when you see the government make "concessions" to appease some violent group — always a leftward concession — this is just a Mutt-and-Jeff act where the violent group is just giving (Left) elites an excuse to sell to the public for doing something they already wanted to do anyway.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
If the United States hadn't withdrawn in a hurry from Afghanistan after 20 years of pouring military materiel into it, I might grant that argument.
But as it happens, a bunch of religious zealots with guns won their country back despite the economic and technology imbalance.
First of all, as I've explained many times before (all the way back to the subreddit), fighting off a foreign occupation is an entirely different thing than a domestic insurgency. Guerrilla warfare can sometimes work to accomplish the former, never the latter.
And I do not think that modern first-world politicians are assassination-proof.
No, but they're entirely replaceable. Because elected politicians are basically figureheads (see Congress, the Biden presidency, etc.). Kill them and nothing much changes. Because the actual government, where the actual power resides, is in the million-strong permanent bureaucracy. The "swamp." The "deep state." And how effective is assassinating a few faceless bureaucrat, when there's millions more just like them?
And civilian uprisings have successfully unseated heads of state in Nepal, Madagascar, Bangaladesh, and Sri Lanka.
First, I wouldn't class any of those as First World countries. And second, did unseating and replacing those heads of state actually replace the regimes as well, or did the same Deep State stay in place and keep on running things in pretty much the same way? (I'm genuinely asking, because I don't know.)
And I doubt any of them had anything comparable to the massive surveillance apparatus of the US Government. Or the might and — more importantly — sheer institutional loyalty of the US Armed Forces.
To quote Google's AI (since some people here appreciate this sort of thing) when asked if such a rebellion could succeed:
An armed rebellion against the U.S. government is highly unlikely to succeed due to the overwhelming technological, firepower, and logistical advantages of the U.S. military. While asymmetric warfare could pose challenges, federal forces—including the military and National Guard—can be mobilized under the Insurrection Act to suppress domestic uprisings.
Key factors influencing this analysis:
• Military Superiority: The U.S. government possesses advanced weaponry, including drones, tanks, and aircraft, which outmatch civilian equipment.
• Historical Precedents: Attempts at insurrection, such as the Civil War, have been successfully met by federal force.
• Challenges to Success: For a rebellion to succeed, it would likely require significant, massive defection within the U.S. military, which is not considered likely.
• Expert Consensus: Analysts suggest that while localized political violence is possible, a large-scale, organized, and successful overthrow of the U.S. government is highly unlikely.
While some argue that widespread civilian insurrection could mirror insurgency tactics used in foreign conflicts like Afghanistan, the overwhelming consensus is that a direct armed revolt against the U.S. government is futile.
Or, from the National Constitution Center:
Much has changed since 1791. The traditional militia fell into desuetude, and state-based militia organizations were eventually incorporated into the federal military structure. The nation’s military establishment has become enormously more powerful than eighteenth century armies. We still hear political rhetoric about federal tyranny, but most Americans do not fear the nation’s armed forces and virtually no one thinks that an armed populace could defeat those forces in battle. Furthermore, eighteenth century civilians routinely kept at home the very same weapons they would need if called to serve in the militia, while modern soldiers are equipped with weapons that differ significantly from those generally thought appropriate for civilian uses.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Quoth the Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution occurred near the peak of the "age of the gun," when the nature of warfare was most favorable to the masses versus states. That ended some time ago, and modern first-world governments are effectively rebellion-proof.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
it turns out you can just do things if there's the political will and organization to do it.
That's a very Laconic "if" there. I'd argue that there isn't the political will and organization needed, and that any attempt to build the organization would be crushed well before it could get off the ground.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
At some point it is valid to question whether the Constitution is still fulfilling the purposes it was created for as per the pre-amble.
And if the answer is that it isn't, what then? What does that matter, if there's nothing you can do about it?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Basically, in discussing my anxiety, politics came up. The specific things she said:
- That there's no such thing as left-wing political violence because "they're the side who all hate guns"
and (when I gave counterexamples):
- "Everyone knows Charlie Kirk was shot by a fellow Republican" and any reports to the contrary are "right-wing disinformation" from "internet conspiracy theorists."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Advice on how to "cool down" from a session with my therapist where she really pissed me off?
This is the sense I encounter a lot, but I don't understand how it constitutes a disaster, rather than simply clarifying that "the constitution-as-applied" is the actual (small-c) constitution, the actual way our government works and will continue to work, and that "the constitution-as-written" is entirely some old dead piece of paper with no power whatsoever.
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