Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5mo ago
What do you wish Trump et al could accomplish between 2024 and 2028? Is it mainly restricting low-skill immigration?
I'm a monarchist, awaiting an Augustus Caesar — while almost certain we'll never get one.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
deputizing red state national guards to restore federal authority?
That "red state national guards" aren't the sort to fire on fellow Americans?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
17d ago
To @100ProofTollBooth, @2rafa, and the others:
What, really, nobody can come up with anything other than some form of "join a religious group (for instrumental reasons, even if you don't believe) and hunker down" Benedict Option, where you just try to avoid being crushed utterly until… what, Judgement Day?
Say what you will about @FCfromSSC's usual over-optimistic canned response ("Just defy the Federal government, brah. They can't do anything to you if you don't accept their legitimacy; the bullets in that FBI agent's gun will bounce off you once you stop respecting Federal authority!"), it's at least a proposal for winning, as opposed to merely slowing the losses and trying to avoid total defeat (and poorly, at that).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
Easier said than done, particularly given that the other side is a lot more experienced at it.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
23d ago
But why should I bother to do any of this at all? What reason to lose weight at all? Why not eat myself to death, given that I want to die?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
24d ago
Kill yourself now. It never gets better, only worse; so save yourself decades of pointless misery. Be remembered as a bright spark lost too soon, rather than a pathetic loser who wasted his life and squandered his potential.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
do a mobile verification
Does that require having a smartphone?
It's no harder than using netflix really.
Well, given that I've never used them, or any other streaming service (particularly as my Internet isn't good enough to support them), this isn't exactly a helpful comparison.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
A materialist view can end up anywhere it pleases.
No it can't. You can't simply summon up any arbitrary set of values out of the facts of reality.
You don't need fancy logic to create values here.
You cannot create values. Values, to be values, must be real, must come from outside us.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
so do not worry about things like character development and the like.
In other words, don't worry if it's worth reading? But if it's not worth reading, wasn't it a waste of time to have written it?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2mo ago
Nor do they have unlimited ability to hold onto power if public opinion turns strongly against them.
I disagree. "Public opinion" means nothing, "democracy" is a sham, the masses are powerless nobodies, the elite holds all the power…
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5mo ago
So teach your children the ways of the Amish
I don't have any (it takes two to tango, after all).
I can't guarantee your descendants surviving, but if enough of us do it, some part of us may survive in those that do.
Again, I'm not sure anyone in "the West" — or East Asia, for that matter — survives the coming collapse; that is, if our species survives it at all. (And if so, for how long?)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
6mo ago
The flip landscape for men couldn't be more stark.
Yes, and? Men and women are different, so the "landscapes" will be different.
And the response is always "Well, if you didn't want to have kids, you shouldn't have had sex."
And what's wrong with responding to men that way?
the one thing conservatives and liberals seem able to agree on.
Along with pretty most any stable, settled society I've heard of. Maybe the reason so many people, across time and space, ideologies and political affiliations, all come to agree on this point is because they're converging upon reality?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10d ago
because at the end of the day he can always send law enforcement in to escort him out of the building if he gets ignored
What law enforcement? Why wouldn't they side with Smith?
Suppose Trump orders Smith fired, and the Justice Department says "no he's not" and ignores Trump. Trump tells the FBI to escort him out of the building… at which point the FBI says back, 'No, we're not doing that. You can't fire Smith; Smith is still employed no matter what you say, so we're not escorting him out. And if you try to send someone else to remove Smith, well, as far as we're concerned such a person will be trying to obstruct Smith in the course of his duties as a federal official, which is a serious federal crime, and we will arrest them on that very charge.' What then?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
17d ago
Consider that Hebrew is a reinvented language.
The Hasidim of Kiryas Joel speak Yiddish as their day-to-day language, not Hebrew. You should know that if you'd read up on them.
It’s so difficult yet virtually every small non-denominational Christian church is tax exempt?
Because for all of them, there's a history and structure already in place, going back to whichever group they schismed off of earlier. As others have pointed out, "religions" invented whole-cloth tend to be much harder to get past "tax scam" skepticism.
You just casuallly dismis all objections with "just try harder, bro." Along with the implication that one can have politically-useful divine revelations on cue as needed. It still boils down to "Just found a cult, bro. Not working? Just try harder, bro." And, of course, the usual denouncing anything other than unfettered optimism in your particular solution as "defeatism."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
17d ago
The reason why cannabis legalization worked
…is because the Left supported it and the Right opposed it. It doesn't work the other way around. Cthulhu always swims left.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
Read about the political influence of Kiryas Joel if you’d like
I have. I've even talked about it to others IRL as a model to emulate, whereby the universal response is that such a thing only works for Hasidic Jews; that there are unique elements there — ranging from their long history and separate language to their ability to suppress criticism by denouncing critics as antisemites — that cannot be emulated.
Every Protestant church has religious protections.
Every currently existing Protestant church. But, AIUI, you're talking about creating a new one. And, also AIUI, the IRS tends to default to treating all new religions as tax evasion schemes until proven otherwise.
Personally, I have had divine revelations in dreams and given an understanding of mystical meaning behind Biblical symbols and allegories.
And these just so happened to give you true belief in the specific doctrines of the denomination you found it most convenient for your political goals to join? If so, then lucky you, I suppose.
Yeah, civic nationalism has really been working hasn’t it?
And where did I endorse that? It's clear that isn't working, either. But I don't see 'just rebrand your secular political goals as a religion and start a cult, bro' as a viable project either.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
The only realistic move is to organize into a tight religious in-group, because: religion is the best way to train the young’s’ spiritual/mental immune system against political propaganda, religion is the best way to transmit cultural/philosophical concerns, and (most of all) America offers strong religious protections which would allow you to live sequestered away from normal life in America.
First, how does this accomplish political goals?
Second, you vastly overstate said religious protections. AIUI, getting religious tax exemptions is actually incredibly difficult, particularly for a "new" religion.
Third, isn't this just "instrumentalizing religion"? How is your conservative "new religion" anything but a LARP, with added tax evasion scheme?
Frankly, I'm getting tired of people proposing the (ridiculous) idea that the best way to achieve material political goals is to start a [expletive deleted] cult.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
18d ago
If I was a white gentile I’d probably become a tradcath.
First, how does this answer my question? What does this do, politically, for the right?
And second, isn't this instrumentalizing religion, joining a denomination for reasons other than genuine belief?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
21d ago
military reserves who in practice just steal the budget
Only until there's an actual conflict.
I'm reminded of this 2020 Los Angeles Times piece: "California once had mobile hospitals and a ventilator stockpile. But it dismantled them"
In 2006, citing the threat of avian flu, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the state would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a powerful set of medical weapons to deploy in the case of large-scale emergencies and natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and pandemics.
“In light of the pandemic flu risk, it is absolutely a critical investment,” he told a news conference. “I’m not willing to gamble with the people’s safety.”
The state, flush with tax revenue, soon sank more than $200 million into the mobile hospital program and a related Health Surge Capacity Initiative to stockpile medicines and medical gear for use in outbreaks of infectious disease, according to former emergency management officials and state budget records.
But the ambitious effort, which would have been vital as the state confronts the new coronavirus today, hit a wall: a brutal recession, a free fall in state revenues — and in 2011, the administration of a fiscally minded Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, who came into office facing a $26-billion deficit.
And so, that year, the state cut off the money to store and maintain the stockpile of supplies and the mobile hospitals. The hospitals were defunded before they’d ever been used.
Much of the medical equipment — including the ventilators, critical life-saving tools that are in short supply in the current pandemic — was given to local hospitals and health agencies, former health officials said. But the equipment was donated without any funding to maintain them. The respirators were allowed to expire without being replaced.
Together, these two programs would have positioned California to more rapidly respond as its COVID-19 cases exploded. The annual savings for eliminating both programs? No more than $5.8 million per year, according to state budget records, a tiny fraction of the 2011 budget, which totaled $129 billion.
Better to have and not need, than need and not have, after all.
And as for idle courtiers, they may have been individually of little use, but they generally came from accomplished families; thus, if nothing else, they represented a reserve of quality genes, in a way a modern welfare bum most certainly does not.
And, of course, today’s monarchies spend gobs on welfare
Which monarchies are you thinking of here? Are you counting the monarchies-in-name-only that are democracies plus a powerless figurehead? Or are you talking about Middle East petro-states distributing shares of oil revenues to the citizenry, much as we do here in Alaska via the Permanent Fund Dividend?
Neither Bhutan nor Eswatini seem to be particularly generous welfare states — and is there anyone in Monaco poor enough to need one?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
22d ago
It helps if you learn to appreciate unflavored tea.
Already got you there. Never been a coffee person, and have quite the selection of loose-leaf teas in my cabinet. (It helps to have a "tea and spice" shop half a mile away.)
But ultimately, there are some people out there whom I love, who love me, and as long as they're alive and in touch with me, I don't want to hurt them.
This is the same position my therapist takes. It works, somewhat, but there are I times where I seriously begin weighing the benefits of "being selfish," and at what point ending my suffering will outweigh any grief I may cause my family. (At the very least, once my Mom passes…)
Did you ever watch "The Wire"?
Nope.
In the meantime, I try to find little pleasures in life
Yeah, I don't really have those — not nearly enough to "fill the days."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
22d ago
I do think it’s a failure state to be aware of, though.
Sure.
But then, how do you suppose an American monarchist like me might go about becoming more politically active locally, particularly while keeping in mind and avoiding said failure state?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
23d ago
for example walking a couple of miles twice a week.
I don't own a car, and public transit here isn't great. I go for walks daily, either to get someplace or for exercise. Thus, I'm already doing at least this mutch.
And, again, why bother? "enjoy life a little more in general"? Life sucks. It's terrible, and the sooner it's over, the better.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
23d ago
Why do you want to continue to live at all?
That's part of the problem… I don't, really.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
24d ago
I don’t think it is is a bad thing and don’t really care whether we call it racism or not.
Except you're not in charge, the "race theorists" are, so what you think or care about doesn't matter, only what they think and care about.
What "capable"? LLMs are a meaningless parlor trick — of little significance, and not any kind of step towards "general intelligence." "The whole field of chatbots" is a pointless distraction.
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