crushedoranges
Can Marx explain the used panties market?
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User ID: 111
As a self-admitted partisan, Reddit is a pretty accurate source for what the liberals are currently believing and narrativizing about, ever since Twitter went down. Bluesky is too crazy, Threads is barren, Facebook is full of boomers, Instagram and Tiktok too noisy. Anything else is too small to be relevant.
Reddit is the largest online collection of Democrat partisans online: it's something they're proud of. It didn't use to be that way but it is now firmly enemy territory.
Intellectuals are more capable than the hoi polloi of elaborate self-deception. I suspect that at least some of us here are immersed in the New York Times reading, granola-eating, NOVA-commuting segment of the American population where things like seeing Kamela Harris as a viable candidate are in vogue.
I hate him for being a blue-tribe brahmin who believes in the progressive shibboleths: the left hates him for not being maximally accelerationist revolutionary Che Guevara. The magnitude of dislike is not equal.
When he goes 'trans issues are not tactically wise for politics, we should get into power and then implement them', I think, 'oh, he's a liar.' They go, 'oh, he's a HERETIC!'
That's already happened. If you go to his subreddit, it's full of people who do nothing but hate him, like Joe Rogan. I think Reddit is a pretty good barometer as to one's current bona fides in the Democrat party.
You would think that gay men would have a better grasp of straight men, of the internal theory of mind of their fellows. But that doesn't happen. Why?
The 'breeding little fascists' comment is what takes it from merely heated political rhetoric to over the line. Children should be insulated from politics, ideally. Unless you want partisanship to creep down to the elementary schools and kindergardens and have people bully each other over how their parents voted. There is no defense for that comment and he should resign.
I read this off a comment talking about the Sherlock TV show done by the BBC - stupid people think that smart people are wizards. They literally can't understand them, and when they try it's like a smeared caricature of a psychic precognitive superhuman. When Sherlock enters a room, he intuits the correct sequence of events from an incredibly spurious and thin bit of evidence. From the stupid viewpoint, smart people are magic guessing all the time.
It is not, in fact, magic, but rather a systemic way of thinking that is orderly and (ideally) well reasoned. But a stupid person might go 'what makes your magic guess better than mine, huh?'
If you can't understand people's reasons, you sure as hell can't understand their motivations. It's easier to believe that your enemies are malevolent cackling pedophiles than to understand them as agent-actors with self-interest and multiple motivations. And when a smarter person disagrees with you publicly for reasons you can't understand, you lash back in narcissist ego-defense. People don't like being made to feel stupid even if they are and will lash out in comically disproportionate ways.
Ah, oops! My bad.
I don't think it's uncharitable to characterize his actions as a emotional overreaction. If he didn't want to be known as the LibsofTiktok guy, he shouldn't have done it. Sokal himself is primarily known for his hoaxes rather than his academic work. What did he expect?
Is it fair that a singular act overshadows everything else he's done? No, of course not. But that's the impression he made on many of us. The moral of the story is that gay furries shouldn't throw stones from glass houses.
He had a meltie about being called out on the whole LibsofTiktok hoaxing thing.
If he had just did it for the lulz, he would have been forgiven, but he had pretensions on becoming a Serious Intellectual. The whole affair became his cross to bear and he kept on doubling down on how lying to people to make a political point was a Good Thing Actually until he flounced out of here.
Shitposter fails to launch to serious political influencer career, many such cases.
I see you, Arius of Cyrenaica, trying to spread your homoiousian nonsense. Of course we know Jesus agreed to it, because Christ was of the same substance as God the Father, as decided by a council of bishops brought together by God's chosen representative on Earth, Constantine the Great. Being of the same substance logically follows that Christ knew of the true formulation of God's church, even after his death.
The Motte is no place for you or the Arians who hold to your corrupted image of the triune nature of God.
When Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup, it was supposed to be a parable about keeping safe one's inheritance and revering one's forefathers. You're not supposed to actually do it, or say that it's a good thing!
Is 'punch a Nazi' fighting words?
Sorry, that was too much of a hot take.
How about 'helicopter rides?'
I find it hard to think that a person wouldn't take a threat of violence or death seriously, no matter how jaded with irony and self-referential internet culture. If Nazis are irredeemable cannon fodder that can be slaughtered without scruple of conscience, then no one should be called a Nazi unless they actually are. Same goes for pedophile, or any other group that is convenient to other.
Your belief in the compliance of illegal immigrants with the law is hilariously naive. What makes you think they will not just run away and not show up to their deportation? Saw off their monitor bracelets and go into hiding? What is their incentive to not do so?
I've been very rough on self-proclaimed liberals and leftists on the Motte, but what you are stating here would be, in my view, a mean-spirited parody of what I believe my ideological opponents to believe: a policy proposal so ivory tower that they're pulling it off the elephant as we speak. How could you believe for one moment that this could ever work in real life?
I don't think even a five year old would think it would work, and if you're failing the Evil Overlord test on something you consider to be a good thing you should reconsider your political priors.
An even tie implies nonpolitical motivations that are messing up the heuristic.
I think.
I admit that the heuristic still needs some work, and am open to critique and modification.
Use the following helpful heuristic to determine the partisan leanings of political shooters in the future.
Shooter hits their target, coherent manifesto, unadorned weaponry, captured alive (or surrenders themselves?) Right-winger.
Shooter misses their target, nonsensical manifesto, gun covered in stickers, kills themselves (or is killed by law enforcement)? Left-winger.
Thank you for your attention on this matter.
I'm not saying that Trump is bad. (In fact, I think he's more good than bad. Not perfect, but no one is.) I feel like I'm catching friendly fire from someone I agree with. I feel a bit indignant, actually, that you think that I am another 'Trump bad' commentator. I demand an apology!
...regardless, it is my observation that American politicians are big on the performative aspects of politics. It's not enough to merely engage in policy-making: one must make the pious noises of Righteous Rule and kneel to the appropriate deities, which necessitates ideological belief in policy making. In our case, the dogmas are the liberal consensus of the post-war period - and, more recently, the progressive elite culture.
I don't think there's a reason to be overtly cynical about their anger when Trump breaks those mores and disowns those beliefs. One can be self-serving and outraged at the same time.
Trump, I think, has no strong ideology, no more than the CEO of Ford has an ideology when it comes to making cars. He has protectionist beliefs and populist instincts but is readily swayable by anyone with the patience. His political product is himself, for better or for worse. So when a subordinate fucks up, his political movement can go 'if only the Tsar knew!' and he can smoothly purge a disobedient follower without fear of ideological contradiction. This process has happened many times before. Elon is a very prominent example, but no one on his cabinet is safe. I suspect he'll go through more advisors before his term is over.
This is very much not what the Biden administration was like, where the cabinet ministers stayed on permanently no matter how terribly they did because they were the ones really in charge. The difference between top-down and bottom-up leadership. On the Democratic side, the president is merely a figurehead executing on the advice of his well-credentialed advisors. On the Republican side, the president is a emperor whose favor his advisors must pursue.
long exhale
Which, to get back to the point, Trump doesn't care about individual policies not working because to him, it is a manner of changing the people responsible. Democrats do care - because the people responsible are all executing the same policy, no matter who they are! There is nothing inherently offensive about EIF's statement here. It is easier to change personnel then it is to change ideologies. Chadface, YES, this is a good thing. QED.
I think, broadly, that Trump cares about his policies working as much as the CEO of Ford cares about your car getting you to work or the CEO of Dunkin Donuts cares about the taste of your coffee. If your car explodes, or your coffee is poison, they get involved. But if your car breaks down or one time your coffee tastes bitter, he's not going to get personally bothered about it. And that's fine - that's how the world works - but Western politicians are big on the humility and the empathy. It's not enough to just give lip service: you have to believe it.
A certain valence of care, although I'm not sure what EIF is getting at. Personally I'm on the vibes-aligned part of the political spectrum than the policy-based one - if a leader is directionally correct, they can be trusted on the smaller details - but a lot of people don't think that way and want a big rulebook where the leaders care about the rules, no matter how silly those rules may be. And the liberal democracy handbook has a bunch of big rules that he's ignoring. A lot of liberals believe that rules and policies are more important than outcomes. They're silly, but people are allowed to be silly.
I think the insight of EverythingIsFine is that this is Definitely Not How Modern Democracies are supposed to work, not in the idealistic high school sense or even the more pragmatic institutional liberal sense. And even if the underbelly is seedy and corrupt, on the surface people are supposed to pretend that they're meritocratic liberal technocrats above petty corruption and infighting.
Meanwhile, Trump runs his organizations like he's Hitler. Not that he's a Nazi, but that he's making his subordinates compete in a survival-of-the-fittest fashion, people rising and falling in the inner circle to the fickle winds of political power struggle. This is very familiar to classicists: it's a classic balance-of-power strategy of absolute monarchs - and more contemporarily, corporate executives.
Even if he does not have the title of a king, he has the powers of a king, and rules like a king, and that is alarming to liberals.
I agree that the later books aren't as good, but the core of a Way of Kings is Kaladin's story. It's hard to not feel for the literal cannon fodder with the worst job in the world overcoming their own fear of failure and worthlessness. That brotherhood is very real. When he is sentenced to death, it is a touching moment.
...which, arguably, makes all of the other parallel plots feel lacking in comparison. Even Kaladin's story degrades into him 'seeking therapy' in the most soyish of terms. But it had that seed of greatness within it, that made me slog it out three books to see if it would come about again. The fact that Sandersons disappoints does not detract from the strongest themes of the original work.
I subscribe to the philosophy that the process is the punishment. There is no inherent way of making an arrest or a fine a happy event. No one in the history of the universe has ever been overjoyed to sit in the back of a police car or to pay a fine. Any other frame of viewing it is too idealistic for this sinful earth.
In high school, I bit a man because he was bullying me, in a sincere effort to do him harm.
But I didn't attack the teacher that was sent to collect me, and I certainly didn't scream at the police officer that I talked to.
It would have been very silly of me to do so. Childish.
I knew what I had done was shameful and wrong, but I didn't regret it. And since I had the intelligence of the average person, I didn't take it out on them. And I felt no shame for not quixotically attacking authority in the aftermath. I had already gained my satisfaction.
So you presume wrongly. I demand an apology.
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Controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker allegedly uses a shock collar on his dog on stream.
It is narrative shorthand for a villain - to emphasize his wickedness and complete removal from the family of man - to kick a dog for no reason other than vicious spite. While on air last night, expounding upon his hatred of America and its violence and imperialism, his dog Kaya stands up behind him. A Tibetan mastiff/guardhound mix, the streamer purchased her a long time ago as a puppy. Nowadays, she spends the majority of her waking existence sitting behind him, in camera as a prop during his streams. As soon as he sees that she's moving off the bed, he shouts at her, and reaches for something off-camera. Immediately afterwards, the dog yelps as she tries to lay back down.
It is obviously a shock collar that is being used. No amount of denial or snarky comments can get anyone to believe that their lying eyes can see any differently. And if you think that's an overstatement - I invite you to see the footage for yourself. The fact that the man still has a career after saying "America deserved 9/11" is testament to the country's tolerance for extreme left-wing radicalization, but this might very well be the thing that can take him down. Americans love their dogs: creatures of innocent, adoring love for man. The fact that Hasan uses his dog to sustain his flagging social media presence - in emotes and in donation messages - is a transparent attempt to associate his vile personality with an animal's emotional resonance.
You can tell a lot about a character of a man by his treatment of creatures who depend entirely upon his good will and care for their lives. By this metric, Hasan is a despotic and evil blackguard. One hopes that these clips are shown at tonight's congressional hearing to the Twitch CEO. At the very least, it will be entertaining to see how the man deflects for his pet demagogue. Perhaps, in a peace offering, he can offer to collar the streamer?
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