Amadan
I will be here longer than you
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
It's not clear whether it's illegal in the strict formalist sense.
It probably isn't, but as you observed, you can be denied a security clearance for behavior that is not illegal. For example, smoking weed in a state where it's legal (granted, that is still federally illegal), or having too many foreign contacts, or having financial problems or a gambling habit.
It used to be, of course, that homosexuality was grounds for denying a security clearance. The reasoning was that it "made you vulnerable to extortion," but even an out and proud homosexual would be judged unsuitable. Homosexuality is now a protected class, but being a furry hentai aficionado is not (yet).
So yeah, looking at underage hentai, even if they are 1000-year-old vampires, is probably legal but still likely gonna get you flagged as "deviant with lack of impulse control and judgement" by a background investigator. (I too have questions about "intent to continue doing so" - who actually tells the humorless polygrapher who's about to torpedo your career, "Yes, I totally intend to keep doing this"? But then I have watched a lot of police bodycam and predcatcher YouTube, and the things people will admit to on camera is amazing, so...)
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Probably. That was the problem. She could be a good contributor, but she could not control her temper and she thought being offended was a license to shit on people.
Many such cases.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I did unban him. Now that I recall, I think that happened just before the glitch that forced @ZorbaTHut to roll back the site a week. So apparently he was un-unbanned.
Okay, @SkookumTree (if you're still around), you are unbanned. Post about something other than how a goddamn doctor can't do better than a 500-pound meth addict.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Nope, happened to see this belatedly while going through the mod queue.
So, are you going to actually back up anything you claimed?
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
They are clearly not aligned with our geopolitical objectives.
This is not clear to me. You might disagree with our geopolitical objectives, but Israel and the US seem to be pretty much on the same page about them, even if we don't always agree on strategy and tactics.
If we were a serious country we would withhold aid, confiscate military weapons that have already been delivered, and demand Israel align with US objectives in the region. But our news media, University system, and government are all controlled by Zionists so there's nobody to stop them.
When you said:
Israel can follow that playbook if they want to go to war
I claimed that you would not, in fact, consider that to be more ethical than what they are doing now. So you have now admitted that that's correct. My original question was "What can Israel do in its own defense that you would consider ethically defensible?" So the answer from you is clearly "Nothing" and the answer from @functor is "They can cease to exist, or they can fuck off to a backwater of Russia (and cease to exist)."
So now that we've gotten that out of the way:
Israel escalating the conflict with IED tactics that not even the US has used in its wars/occupations is a level of insolence that is only accepted because we are an occupied government.
"Insolence" implies they owe us fealty, which is ironic when you then claim we are an "occupied government." How can ZOG both be insolent and secretly ruling us?
We did fight wars against asymmetrical adversaries who used terrorist tactics. We did not, nor would we ever, boobytrap civilian office supplies with explosives and send them among the civilian population. That is an IRA tactic or a tactic of the Iraqi insurgency.
That's not remotely close to what the IRA or the Iraqis insurgents did. I notice how very carefully you phrased this: "boobytrap civilian office supplies." It must have taken you some small amount of time to figure out the best way to describe "boobytrapped communications equipment used by the Hezballah" in a way that sounds like they were doing something like planting bombs in copy machines. Golf clap for the clever wording. But we've all seen the news and the videos. They targeted Hezballah pagers and walkie talkies, and almost nobody but Hezballah were injured. Yes, I'm sorry for that 10-year-old girl who was killed (I am certain, in fact, that I feel more genuine regret for this than you do), but no war in history has avoided civilian casualties.
Now let's be real here: you aren't morally offended by Israel's tactics. If they sent snipers to take out Hezballah leaders, you'd be accusing them of escalation. If they dropped bombs and rockets, you'd be accusing them of war crimes. If they sent troops, you'd be accusing them of unprovoked aggression and imperialism. If they used Jewish space lasers to target Hezballah leaders from orbit, you'd accuse them of space terrorism. If they had Harry Potter wands and could Avada Kedavra Hezballah soldiers with zero collateral damage, you'd accuse them of black magic. You don't actually care how Israel responds to its enemies. You object to the fact that they exist.
Which brings me to my other question which I'm sure it just slipped your mind to answer, as you so often forget to answer inconvenient points when pressed:
Israel should negotiate a settlement,
With who? What settlement? What is your brilliant plan for peace in the Middle East? @functor's idea is at least rather straightforward about acknowledging that he doesn't think Israel should exist. But you speak of a "settlement" as if you think there is some meaningful and workable deal the Israelis could actually make that allows them to continue to exist but isn't "insolent" or doesn't cause you to shed crocodile tears over dead Arab children. I remain fascinated to hear what it is.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Absolutely not, because I remember this exact same scenario playing out at least three times, and in two of those cases a bet would never have been adjudicated fairly.
Really? Bets were made and stakes were put on the table? I don't remember this. People throw "Want to make a bet on it?" a lot, but I don't recall anyone ever trying to set up a formal wager.
And I'm pretty sure that one catholic girl was banned for pressing them on it at least once.
I wish she were still around to react to being called "that one catholic girl."
I don't know which specific ban you are talking about, but her repeated bans were never because she was saying things mods disagreed with or against someone who enjoyed the mods' favor, but because she had a problem saying things without being an antagonistic and personally insulting about it.
Who's going to judge the bet? Some of the mods are the people from those other cases.
Who? Name names and post links.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
That seems like a terrible deal in every way for the Israelis. Why would they agree to it?
"They're just Jews, they don't really mind wandering around, and we can stick them in a bumfuck corner of unproductive land under the control of a country that historically pogromed Jews often and is currently their enemy" is a proposal only someone who deeply hates Jews would think serious and reasonable.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
You act like it's a hard question
The last 80 years of history would suggest it is.
Israel can follow that playbook if they want to go to war
I find it difficult to believe that if Israel went all-in with the regime-change-and-occupation playbook, you would be less critical of their actions.
Israel should negotiate a settlement
What settlement should they negotiate with an adversary whose only win condition is "You stop existing"?
I am actually not all that sympathetic to Israel, except in comparison to their enemies. But their enemies have made it clear that there is no permanent negotiated settlement that leaves Israel extant. Israel's options are to do what you suggest, and just put a boot on half the Middle East, or keep playing a tower defense game while hoping the Arab world eventually has a generational change of heart.
but also their conduct in waging war should be held to US standards to receive US support.
I think if we were fighting a war against an asymmetrical adversary who uses terrorist tactics, setting off bombs in enemy combatants' electronic devices (and accepting a small amount of civilian collateral damage) would be within our standards. It has certainly done less collateral damage than we did with drone strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I'm sure most people would, but I am very confident the guys who do "No-Fap November" do not explode or die.
You're not typical-minding; you're hyperbolizing.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Yah might be a mutant. I require sex at least once a week and usually much more.
Or what? You explode?
You might want to have sex multiple times a week and you might be unhappy if you don't get it, but you don't require it. Even high-T very horny men are perfectly capable of going without sex. They might not enjoy it, but it won't harm them.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Most humor is very much a matter of taste. The annoying guy who makes a joke out of everything and snarky online humor annoys a lot of people, but they aren't an indictment of humor as a genre. If you don't personally like standup comedy or knock-knock jokes, no one is going to be able to steelman why you should, but that doesn't make humor itself deleterious.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
You just described many uses of humor which you appreciate, then described the sort of humor you don't like. What do you need a steelman for?
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
You do accept that some people are incapable of functioning in an advanced society and we can't/shouldn't live together. Or I assume you do; that you're in favor of prisons and facilities for people with severe mental issues.
Sure, but those people exist among all demographics. We don't put put someone in prison because he comes from a high-crime demographic; we put him in prison because he committed a crime.
Would you want as neighbors an ethnic group where almost none of the members are particularly valuable, roughly half are basically decent people, roughly half are at best borderline-incapable of productive employment (and tend to ruin social institutions which were designed to expect higher-quality input), and maybe five percent are extraordinarily-prone to violence, crime, and so on? Those tails make a big difference.
As literal neighbors, living next to me? No. I feel sorry for the residents of Springfield, Ohio. That said, I would still want any individual Haitian to be judged as an individual.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
That's... okay, I can actually buy that. Having Matt Walsh make fun of you in his movie probably does set you up for harassment by his troll legion.
I am not sure how many of them were actually making that calculation, and how many were just reacting emotionally to a bad man who isn't on their side suddenly appearing in their midst.
If a leftist troll got unmasked at a church or a MAGA event or something, do you think people would be frightened and saying they feel threatened?
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
And to make my point more plainly: yes, I know why they do it. At the same time, maybe I am just too literalist, but I am genuinely curious who is a true believer. Some people did believe in the Red Scare, and heretics, and witches. So when I see a woke person saying, very earnestly, "You are making me feel physically unsafe," I get that it's a tactic, and she probably does "feel" unsafe, but at the same time I don't buy into the whole NPC/zombie meme, so I want to know (and would ask if I were there): "No, seriously, can you explain? Do you think he's literally going to pull a knife on you?"
(It's a good thing I am not a public figure who can be cancelled.)
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Madame Bovary was probably assigned to me in high school because my high school English teacher had to read it in college...
But seriously, Flaubert is important (at least, knowing how he influenced literature) and Madame Bovary has something to say, it's just maybe not a message that a teenager will be receptive to. My personal reading list for high school students might be very different, but I'd still make them read some "difficult" and "old" books, and if they ask "Why should I care about Dickens or Tolstoy or Flaubert?" I'd say "Because these are a few of the small stones in the foundations on which your culture was built. And you should also have some understanding of history, not just seen through history books."
Yeah, I understand the skepticism towards the "literary establishment" and teachers who decide on the curriculum for high school English students. But what I got from you and coffee was a general disdain for literature as something worth studying, or even appreciating beyond the enjoyment you get from any given story. And I think literature is worth studying and appreciating, for its cultural relevance, for its insight, for its facility with language and showing us what can be done with words in the hands of a master.
Fiction can teach a lot about history and psychology and human relationships. (Obviously it can teach incorrect things and even bad things, but then, how much do you trust any given supposedly non-fiction book?)
If we're complaining about whoever the NYT or the London Review of Books has anointed as the latest Important Writer To Read, sure, a lot of the literary establishment does seem like a self-regarding, incestuous coterie. But, ya know, just like Hollywood. Or Wall Street. Or Washington. There is still (arguably) something being produced there that is of value.
I've read some Pulitzer and Man Booker Prize winners that had me going "Why?" But when I reflected honestly, they were actually well written and had something to say - it just wasn't for me.
I think we maybe don't disagree that much, I just dislike seeing people dismiss Literature as if it's all something invented by hoity leftist college professors.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Yes, I do think it's useful to question whether people really believe what they are saying.
Your post is very random and appears kneejerk and written without much reflection or content beyond seething at your enemy tribe.
Just by asking the question you're buying into their frame and positioning the argument right where they want it: fighting over how racist you are for daring to question the lived experiences of trans black womxn.
This makes no sense and looks like outrage generated by ChatGPT.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
Is that from Blindsight? Looks familiar.
Anyway, I see what you (and @coffee_enjoyer) are getting at, but as a book nerd (and also a wannabe-never-was writer) I think the great Literature vs. Entertainment debate is a false dichotomy. Literature, I submit, does do more than entertain. But good literature is entertaining. Conversely, you can enjoy being entertained by something that you recognize is objectively not good literature.
I love me some Dickens (as my post above should make clear). He was a massively popular author in his time. He is still read today because he was a good writer, but also because he gives us insights into his world that are valuable and useful. People have criticisms of his politics and proto-socialism; fair enough. I believe it was Oscar Wilde who called him maudlin and melodramatic. But we still read stories about a time and place that is utterly foreign to most people today because it's still recognizable on a human level, they are human stories told by someone who had a way with words. To me, Dickens is "useful," though I know there are those who do not like him. (Peasants!)
Now, Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert was assigned to me in high school. I found it utterly boring. Gustave Flaubert was an early "realist" writer. It's useful today to know how he fit into the evolution of literary schools, but you could say he's kind of like JRR Tolkien, in that someone reading him today might wonder what the big deal is because we've seen hundreds, thousands of books since that look just like this - not realizing that they are copying his beat.
I reread Madame Bovary a few years ago, and still didn't love it, but... I liked it and understood it a lot more. Because it's about a French housewife who is unhappy and bored with her marriage. It's about middle aged people being unsatisfied and disappointed with how their lives turned out, and how clinging to your juvenile fantasies as an adult is pathetic and a path to ruin. Of course I found it boring and pointless as a teenager, I couldn't relate! As a much older person, I suddenly found myself appreciating what Flaubert was trying to illustrate.
I am not sure if you are complaining about "literature" that seems pointlessly navel-gazing with no real message to it, just exercises in masturbatory wordsmithing, or literature that you think has a bad message (i.e., a weapon in the culture war). Both those things exist. But appreciation for literature doesn't necessarily mean being a Barnard English major sniffing one's own farts.
I also like Stephen King and Brandon Sanderson and JK Rowling and Ian Fleming and Robert Heinlein, and I could go on. All of whom have their own virtues and flaws as writers. I've even read some litrpg and fanfiction and the like, though I find 99% of it unreadable drek. So it's not about having snooty reading tastes.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I love dogs, but dog culture should be ended, and anthropomorphism should be banned from kids entertainment. Kids should be learning to understand humans and their variegated expressions, so that they can understand themselves and adapt to the social world in front of them. They should not be bonding with animals to a significant degree.
As one of those "people who are into literature":
'I'll explain to you, then,' said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, 'why you wouldn't paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—in fact? Do you?'
Yes, sir!' from one half. 'No, sir!' from the other.
'Of course no,' said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. 'Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don't see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don't have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.' Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.
'This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,' said the gentleman. 'Now, I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?'
There being a general conviction by this time that 'No, sir!' was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe.
'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
'So you would carpet your room—or your husband's room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would you?' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?'
'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.
'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?'
'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy—'
'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are never to fancy.'
'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, 'to do anything of that kind.'
'Fact, fact, fact!' said the gentleman. And 'Fact, fact, fact!' repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I can't get over the scene in his mockumentary where the folks at some kind of woke circle realize who he is and kick him out because they "fear for their physical safety."
I find myself wondering: do they really believe this? Do they literally think Matt Walsh is going to rise from his folding chair and physically assault them? I have to think they know they are full of shit and this is just rhetoric to justify kicking someone out whose real crime is being an ass. I do not like Walsh or his tactics, he's a troll, but ffs just say "You're an asshole and we don't feel like being mocked on camera, so gtfo," don't make up some bullshit about fearing for your physical safety.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I think you're not completely wrong, but you're being a little uncharitable. Not sure if you would put my post in that category, but certainly mine is like the majority of posts here consisting of people who used to hold much more progressive beliefs and now believe they were wrong.
But that's the point of the thread (and to some extent, the Motte), isn't it? We test our shady thinking, our untested beliefs, and hopefully are willing to change our thinking based on new evidence. If no one is ever willing to change their mind, what's the point of discussion beyond points-scoring and dunks and getting affirmation from fellow travelers? (Something that many people seem to be here to do and get very angry when told that's not what this place is for.)
I can see how it would be discouraging for a leftist to see a bunch of former leftists saying "Boy, was I stupid," and no former right-wingers are coming forward to say "I changed my mind about women/blacks/gays/Jews," etc. This place attracts a lot more disaffected leftists than it attracts disaffected rightists.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
2mo ago
I was wrong not to buy bitcoin in 2010 (this was partly laziness and partly that I thought it was too risky, that I would end up sending money to drug dealers by accident or something and get roped into an investigation).
I don't think anyone could have honestly been certain it wasn't too risky. Crypto is like stock-picking and forex and every other highly variable investment; it's easy to feel justified/regretful with 20/20 hindsight. The people who bought into Bitcoin were lucky, but they could have been unlucky and crying about it now.
I used to be a blank-slateist, both about race and gender. Fully believed that absent racism and childhood inequality in education and nutrition, etc., we'd see proportional representation of black and white and Asian and Australian Aboriginal Nobel prize winners.
I have since come around to the HBD position, though not the ethnostatist "hard" HBD position that says, essentially, that some people are incapable of functioning in an advanced society and we can't/shouldn't live together.
Likewise, I mostly believed the second wave feminist idea that men and women would all be more or less equal and share roles and aptitudes equally if not for sexism. I started seeing the holes in this sooner, but didn't get completely redpilled* until I was past college age.
I definitely believed "It's just some crazy kids on college campuses who will grow up once they hit the real world" for too long.
Like some of the others below, I used to be pro-marijuana legalization and even considered that it might be better to legalize hard drugs. I think marijuana is kind of a disaster, and like alcohol, if I could magically make it disappear I would, but it's too late now. But experiences where harder drugs have been decriminalized and everything we are seeing in meth country convinces me that drugs are just fucking bad and while I don't want to go all police state and I recognize the failures of the War On Drugs, miss me with libertarian bullshit.
* redpill probably implies too strong a shift, since I still think most redpill guys are outright misogynists - literally, as in they really don't like women and resent the fact that they still want to have sex with them and need their permission to do so. However, I think it's an apt term in the sense that I really did come to an "awakening" about sex differences that I had been in denial about for most of my life.
I think you kind of miss the point. The people arguing that modern SJW ideology is descended from Marxism aren't wrong, but they are wrong when they think it's a direct and coherent lineage, and especially when some people seem to think that it's part of some grand master plan laid out by Gramsci and the Frankfurt school. (Or, going deeper down certain rabbit holes, a grand master plan by George Soros and Da Jooooooos!) Frankly, I think it is all fundamentally about resentment of the have nots against the haves, and this is essentially a parallel development. Marx built an entire economic theory around it, but without Marx, we'd still have people agitating for redistributive efforts and cutting down the tall poppies; they'd just use different labels.
Thus, arguing about whether "Cultural Marxism" is a thing or whether it's "really" Marxism seems pointless to me. Yes, "cultural Marxism" is a thing whether you call it that or something else; are "Cultural Marxists" actually trying to bring about a revolution of the proleteriat and the True Communism That Has Never Been Tried? Mostly not.
Most people (rightists and leftists) don't actually think about this very deeply the way us Motteian nerds do. The average SJW, including, I would wager, the chick who drew that "Kyriarchy" cartoon @FCfromSSC linked to, and the average right-winger railing about "cultural Marxism," cannot actually articulate what Marx espoused except in very general terms. The New Atheist/Christian analogy is apt; you're right that New Atheists smugly declaring they know the Bible better than the Christians they're arguing with were very obnoxious, but they were frequently correct.
The problem with the "Cultural Marxist" label is that it just reads as a cheap low-effort pejorative. "Commie" is still a dirty word in America, and calling SJWs "Cultural Marxists" reads as "Hurr hurr you commie!" It reminds me of right-wingers claiming every Democratic president ever was actually a communist.
There is of course a visible shift happening now where the left is using the same tactics to call every conservative "far right" and every Republican a "fascist." Boomerang back to conservatives claiming Nazis were actually leftists.
It's sloppy thinking all around, and while @FCfromSSC wrote a very thoughtful post tracing the lineage from Marx to Everyday Feminism, most critics don't and can't. (Freddie DeBoer, everyone's favorite anti-woke actual Marxist, is constantly driving himself crazy(er) trying to explain how everyone on the right and the left is Wrong About Everything.)
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