LacklustreFriend
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User ID: 657
I wanted the woke to be defeated by classical liberals.
We could debate all the fundamental philosophical problems of liberalism (classical or otherwise), but what I think is the more pressing problem with this attitude of simply wanting to return to "90s liberalism" which seems to be espoused by many figures is that they make no effort to explain that even if somehow liberalism defeats woke and we all become good liberals again, how will liberalism not immediately give rise to woke again. Woke, if not liberal itself, arose in the conditions of liberalism. Why wouldn't it do it again? Even if you're a 'classical liberal' rather than a '90s liberal' (social liberal) it's just delaying the problem slightly longer.
Ironically, despite the contemporary right-wing movements often being accused of being reactionary, it's really the anti-woke liberals who are reactionary in the quite literal and plain meaning of the word. They think we can just turn back the clock on political and philosophical development of the last thirty, fourty, fifty years and (re)establish a liberal utopia and the last fifteen years of woke will disappear forever like a bad dream, like it never happened. Remember, this 'SJW' 'woke' thing is just a fad that college kids will grow out of once they enter the real world.
Contemporary right-wing thought doesn't do this. It's decidedly post-liberal, not liberal or pre-liberal. It has, with maybe a few exceptions, fully embraced that liberalism has had its political moment, it has failed and the question is how to address those failures. The dialectic has progessed, one might say. Even the ironically named 'neo-reactionaries' aren't really reactionary in any meaningful sense, other than just borrowing basic, well-worn concepts from eons past. Their politics are still clearly post-liberal. I would even argue 'MAGA' (insofar it is a coherent political movement) is post-liberal, again despite the ironic name.
So my question to all those who just want to 'retvrn' to the liberalism of decades past - how to you plan to address or reform liberalism so it will won't cause woke again? What do you acknowledge are its problems? How would your changes keep the essence of liberalism so despite the changes it could still meaningfully be called liberalism? How would it not just be simply nostalgia for a past that can never be returned to, if it existed at all?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
7d ago
I think all of the reasona outlined contributed to at least some degree, but for me the one that has the most salience and is the dominant reason is definitely "the Male Feminist as a man seeking absolution".
Every card-carrying male feminist I'm known has been a sex pest. To clarify, by 'card carrying male feminist' I don't mean a general liberal man who says he's a feminist when I asked, I mean the man who will unprompted talk about 'women's issues' and will make sure everyone (especially the women' knows he is a feminist and one of the good ones. And by sex pest, I don't necessarily mean someone who has committed sexual assault (though they also count) but someone who constantly pesters (as the name suggests) women for dates, relationships, sex. Everytime he talks to any new women he's thinking about how he can manipulate get this woman to date him. He will literally ask out every women he meets.
I have known several men during that fit the above description (unfortunately so, as I have a visceral dislike of them).
The reason I think they fit the "seeking absolution" reason is because:
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They seems to intuit that their behaviour is not appropriate on some level
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Feminism as a religion gives them absolution by blaming their bad behaviour on an external force ("the patriarchy") rather than taking personal responsibility, where as most other religious or moral systems would demand more of them in taking personal responsibility. It also allows them to project their bad behaviour on other men to minimise their culpability ("it's not just me, ALL men are like this.")
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Consent being the be-all-end-all for sexual ethics in feminism allows them to rationalise away the worst of their behaviour. They're not being inappropriate, creepy or overstepping boundaries, they're merely "seeking consent". I am reminded of that thread a while back here discussing a reddit thread about a literal virgin teenager asking a girl he studies with to be fuck buddies and being confused about her negative response.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
12d ago
Scalia's dissent in Morrison v. Olson pretty much warns against this, but that's just a blatantly obvious example. The (over)expansion of bureaucracy generally is, by it's nature, mundane and hard to observe.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
16d ago
That was it, thank you!!!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
16d ago
Trump specifically mentions that Palestinians will be part of the 'international zone', though.
"I envision the world's people living there. You'll make it into an international, unbelievable place. The entire world will be there - Palestinians also - many people will live there. they tried the other for decades and decades, it's not gonna work.
International zones is history have typically been led by a major power, not literally the entire international community. Shanghai by the British and Americans, Tangiers by the French (with support from Britain and Spain) etc.
Sounds like Trump wants to turn Gaza into a kind of international zone of centuries past (maybe post war occupation Japan is a better analogy)? Honestly, not a terrible idea when compared with every other option available. Of course, it can easily go horribly horribly wrong but literally every other idea seems equally likely to be horrible.
shortly after calling for the permanent displacement of the Strip's residents.
I hate hate hate modern journalism. At no point (at least based on the words actually said as reported in article) does Trump actually call for displacement of Palestinians. He is calling for the construction of an international zone in Gaza, which will include the local Palestinians. He is also calling for the creation of something like special economic zones for Gazan migrants in nearby (?) countries, this is honestly super unclear.
Trump is calling for a loss of sovereignity for Gazan and its inhabitants, which is arguably a bad thing (depending on your perspective), but at no point is he straight up calling for displacement. And honestly, Gaza has limited sovereignty anyway, and what sovereignty they do have is largely exerted by a terrorist group.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
18d ago
But Trump is not in the same position as the average American. He’s overweight or slightly obese, giving him a higher share of the risk for heart disease and stroke.
Sounds like the average American to me. Not actually joking - life expectancy already factors in the fact that most Americans are overweight/obese.
Here's the National Catholic Reporter arguing that Vance is wrong, but only rebutting a strawman.
The National Catholic Reporter is a liberal/progressive "Catholic" publication. They have and do promote political positions completely at odds with Catholic teaching, including defence of abortion and IVF, among many other things. To the point where bishops have called on them to remove Catholic from their name. I wouldn't take them as representative of the faithul Catholic position. It's in their interest to misrepresent Vance. This is the polite way of describing the NCR.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
19d ago
A fantastic comment I remember reading (I think it was back on Reddit?) was "all marriages are gay marriages now". It was about the increasingly meaningless of legal definition of marriage, or along those lines. If anyone has a link that would be appreciated.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
22d ago
Chinese value excellence.
A bizarre statement to make about the country that has sewer oil, tofu-dreg buildings, mass counterfeiting of products, extreme academic cheating, among other fraudulent practices.
I don't want to overstate the amount of fraudulent activity that occurs in China, but clearly China's version of "excellence" is a less virtuous and more selfish that how most people would use the term. "Results and personal gain at all costs, even if it's fraud" is certainly one way to define excellence.
My working, internal definition of woke is "the popularised form of Cultural Marxism, particularly its contemporary related and descendent theories and ideologies, including Intersectional Feminism, Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory."
Key features of woke include:
- The sorting of all social groups into oppressor or oppressed
- A belief in the blank slate, or that all disparities between groups are both socially determined and unjust
- A belief that all social relations and interactions are essentially dominated by power relations, if not exclusively so
- A rejection of any hierarchy of value, and that any such hierarchies are inherently oppressive
- Viewing identity or culture as a form of "property" to be dismantled and redistributed.
- Is subversive by nature (this is not an insult, but rather the a fact of how it operates by using existing political movements and institutions, typically liberal)
A key part of my definition that I emphasise is the fact it's a "popularised" form. That is to say, it is the less consistent and coherent form of a political ideology, adopted by the general population, rather than the form adopted by academics, political activists, political philosophers or others who might hold specific and more consistent form of those beliefs. In fact, I would say this is actually part of the tactic that makes woke subversive - the decoupling of the name of the popularised form of a political ideology from the name of its academic or philosophical origins. This is unusual and serves to obfuscate the philosophical origins of woke (quite successfully, I might add).
For example, there is both the popular and academic understanding of 'liberal' or 'conservative'. The average 'liberal' may very well not have the exact same beliefs as either John Locke or John Rawls, but we can recognise and it's generally understood as all belonging to the same philosophical traditions. When someone asks you to describe who are liberals, you can clearly point to and name all these things. No one would seriously suggest liberalism doesn't exist in the public because the average (social) liberal doesn't believe the exact same things as John Rawls. But this is exactly what when people who are defending wokeism by saying others can't define or point to people who are woke. Because woke is strictly a popular form and not pure, academic form which people can name and describe.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
I am Spartacus!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
Holy shit.
I'm a lukewarm (non-American) supporter of Trump, but this is genuinely impressive to me. Even if he can't resolve the situation completely, the fact he can progress some kind of resolution at all at this time is amazing.
Honestly if this is true and succeeds, this might be the single thing that has raised my opinion of Trump the most. He's not even in office yet!
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
Copying an old comment of mine (and follow up topic) from a couple years ago on a similar topic:
By 'colonialism' I assume you're referring to style of so-called 'exploitative colonialism' of Africa and Asia during the 19th century, I think a poor name that betrays the ideological perspective the dominates the analysis of colonialism today. I think the style of 'settler colonialism' of the Americas etc. are not possible today for more fairly obvious reasons.
I do think many of the below comments are correct that nationalism has played a significant role in making colonialism extremely difficult to enforce in the present day. In the past, there was not a huge amount of difference whether you paid taxes to or have allegiance to a 'local' lord or king, or a foreign lord or king. For example in India, for the Rajas who existed British rule, pragmatically there was not much difference between allegiance to a 'local' Islamic Persianised ruler (Mughals) or to the British. Indeed, many Rajas willingly switched allegiance to the British, which they saw as preferable. By and large, colonial rule was legitimate - the colonial powers couldn't have governed such large amounts of land with such little Western manpower otherwise. This changed with the development of a national identity in the colonial states, which ironically is a Western import. Anti-colonialism is ironically a Western invention. What you see consistently during the decolonisation period was Western educated local elites picking up Western political philosophy (liberalism and socialism too) often during their travels and education in the West, and using that as a basis for decolonisation and nationalism. It's the case for figures like Kwame Nkrumah, Obafemi Awolowo, even Gandhi. Once nationalism took hold in colonial regions, it became socially and politically untenable for a militant minority of the local population to be administered by a group deemed not part of the new national identity (anti-colonial movements usually did not have majority support), regardless of any material benefits. Indeed, many of these countries collapsed immediately after decolonisation. A matter of national pride as it were. This is really no different to the Springtime of Nations, where Italians, Czechs, Hungarians opposed Austrian rule (no matter how nominal), Poles under German rule etc.
Another major factor is that there is just no political will to do colonialism in modern societies. A major motivating factor behind the 19th Century colonialism was the Civilising Mission. While this is often the subject of contemporary revisionism like the term 'exploitative colonialism', there was a strong altruistic motivation to European colonialism. The 19th Century was a period of great intellectual and economic progress, and many Europeans strongly believed they had a moral, often religious imperative to bring this progress and civilisation to the unfortunate primitive peoples of Africa and Asia. Again, their motivations were primarily altruistic, whether you think those motivations have merit or where legitimate is up to the reader. The reality is that with a handful of exceptions, colonialism was actually incredibly expensive for European powers and largely was a net deficit for the coloniser, not a benefit, mostly motivated by colonial prestige and the moral imperative of civilising. Building infrastructure, schools, hospitals and a functioning bureaucracy all from scratch isn't exactly cheap. Otto von Bismark was famously anti-colonial, not out of any compassion for would-be colonised people, but rather he saw it as a significant waste of resources that could be spent on strengthening Germany. Germany would eventually reluctantly join the colonial race anyway due to international peer pressure and prestige. This ties into my own personal theory for why I think decolonisation took hold in not just the colonial states themselves, but also in the Western academia and elite in the mid-20th Century - postwar Europe had been devastated by WW2 and could not afford to maintain its colonies, but needed a moral justification to abandon the colonies, if at least to save face. The decolonial movement was that justification - Western elites had a genuine motivation to promote or at least passively accept decolonisation to absolve themselves of any responsibility they may have had to colonial states and people they governed. Though, this may have come back to bite them decades later, giving fuel to what would one day become the contemporary critical social justice movement and anti-Western sentiment in academia more generally. Kind of like the CIA funding the Mujahideen.
As other comments have also mentioned, contemporary Western states just don't do colonialism correctly, in large part caused by ideological and political concerns. To use the common America and Afghanistan (or Iraq) example, the 'correct' or functional way to do colonialism is to copy what the British did, ally with local elites, prop them up, arm them, and help them destroy their enemies, but otherwise keep local governance structures intact (the British were more than happy for local allied chiefs, shieks or rajas to govern their own territory as long as they kept to certain conditions. This is not what the Americans did or tried to do - instead, they tried to completely supplant local government structures by installing a completely foreign, Western style liberal democracy in those states that has no legitimacy and collapses under its own weight. Part of the reason for this is that America is so narcissistic that it thinks that remaking the world into America-style liberal democracies ("spreading democracy/freedom") is just the Greatest Thing Ever, but also because functional British style colonialism would never fly in the ideological waters the West is currently in - human rights, self determination, colonialism creating 'evil' hierarchies and so on. So the Americans have to try and do 'non-colonial colonialism' which obviously doesn't work.
Another thing to consider is that 21st century societies simply don't operate in the same way a 19th century society does, and we shouldn't expect contemporary colonialism to resemble previous colonialism. Obviously, this brings in the neo-colonialism debate. To simplify greatly, modern service economies and financial systems and multinational corporations may have made old boots-on-the-ground colonialism redundant. Why do you need to literally, physically control the governance of states in Africa when you can achieve the same effect from a distance with IMF loans? And it's not just the West - what China is doing could also be called neo-colonialism as well, least of all with the Belt and Road Initiative, where China will indebt half of Africa to China and basically have control of all their finances.
I'm not convinced by the (military) technology arguments put forward by many of the other commenters here. There are several reasons for this. First, the vast majority of European colonialism in the 19th century was not done through military conquest, but primarily through diplomatic means and gaining the allegiance of local elites. This is not to say there was no war, but there was very little compared to the scale we're talking about. You can perhaps make an argument that there was still a lot of indirect military conquest as Western powers would arm and fund elites favorable to them who would then conquer their rivals, but this is both indirect, and negates a lot of the apparent technological advantage by using an intermediary. Secondly, many of the colonised states weren't actually that far behind the Europeans in military technology. India in particular was home to the 'Gunpowder Empire' of the Mughals who were very familiar with advanced firearms long before Crown rule in India. The British defeat in the First Anglo-Afghan war is another good example of this. Third, even when the Europeans had a clear military technology advantage, it still wasn't a clearly decisive factor. The clearest example of this was the Anglo-Zulu War, where the Zulus nearly beat the British despite only having mostly iron-age technology. Fourth, it's not clear to me that the technological disparity between, for example, the British Empire and Iraq in 19th century is larger than it is between the USA and Iraq today. The Americans have a level of military sophistication that is miles ahead of anyone in the Global South. The Americans steamrolled Saddam's forces in 2003. But in my opinion, colonialism was never really a question of military might or technology, but of governance and legitimacy. This is not to say military technology provided no edge for the Europeans, but I think it is generally overstated. Which leads me to my next point:
I might be convinced that technological superiority might be a reason for 19th century colonial success if the technological superiority being described was social, political and economic technology, rather than military technology. Simply put, the Europeans were generally far better administrators, in many cases building a functioning, large-scale administrative system where previously there had only been anarchic tribal and ethnic conflict. The Europeans brought with them engineering, medicine, rule of law and so on, which did wonders for their legitimacy. This gap in social/economic technology between the Europeans and colonial states in the 19th century is still probably larger than the Europeans and even the most dysfunctional post-colonial state (e.g. Somalia) today, though I might be convinced otherwise.
To conclude, I want to link to the article the Case for Colonialism by Bruce Gilley, which I have previously posted on /r/theMotte, rebuts much of the anti-colonialist literature. While not explicitly about the topic at hand, its arguments are highly relevant.
Was the key to colonialism leaving the locals alone as long as they paid up ("otherwise keep local governance structures intact"), or actively trying to change their values ("bring this progress and civilisation to the unfortunate primitive peoples of Africa and Asia")?
As contradictory as it sounds, it was both. The Europeans, and particularly the British, were smart administrators and governors. They knew how to adapt to local political and cultural circumstances while promoting their own political and social goals in a way that contemporary Western states seem to be unable to do. The majority of the British Empire in Africa and Asia was administered via indirect rule. In 1947, even after centuries of British rule (both Company and Crown) and the gradual annexation of many of the Princely States (including the doctrine of lapse), the Princely States still consisted of ~40% of British India by land. But the Princely States weren't just some isolationist islands in the middle of British India, however. They had railways build through them, hospitals and Western schools etc. The difference is that the British worked with the local Rajas who still had a great deal of autonomy and authority. Over decades, many of the Rajas would actually give up significant autonomy and give more authority to the British because it was simply more convenient for them. This general approach was true of other parts of the British Empire, and the European colonisers more generally.
It was not the American approach of storming in to a country, creating a new Western-style liberal democratic government from nothing and expecting everyone to instantly to like it. To use another historical comparison, even when the British (under Company rule) did militarily conquer the Sikh Empire, which was their largest military expansion of the British Rule in India, they did not immediately put the whole region under direct rule, but rather restored many Rajas in the former territory of the Sikh Empire.
Are we saying the Right Way to do Afghanistan would have been to let 'em keep their women in burquas and girls' schools closed and other such things, just pay us some taxes and give up any international terrorists who particularly annoy us? I guess I could buy that, though I'm not sure it's what 19th century Britain would do.
Yes and no. The Right Way to do things would certainly to have have more tacit, been less gung-ho about the whole thing and curb their excessive moralizing. Did you know that the 2004 Constitution of Afghanistan has a provision that 25% of the seats of the Afghan Parliament are to be reserved exclusively for women? Such a provision would be extremely controversial in many Western states, let alone extremely Islamic conservative Afghanistan. The Americans should at the very least not expect to remake Afghanistan overnight, which is seemingly exactly what they thought they could do. To emphasise the point from above, European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries was a gradual process that involved slow integration and change while using indirect rule and local institutions.
I could see Iraq as being a "Civilising Mission" thing - the word at the time was, we knock off Saddam and bring 'em Democracy, Whiskey, and Sexy and they'll just love us right away and it'll go great. Was the problem the lack of widespread and long-lasting zeal about that mission, or that it just plain didn't work?
A while back, I saw an interview that Condoleezza Rice gave to the Hoover Institution in which they discussed the Iraq War. In the interview, Rice basically just straight out admitted that the Bush administration and the US military has no idea what they were getting themselves into in terms of local politics. They had very little knowledge of local power dynamics, local tribal conflicts and alliances, or any kind of understanding of the local Iraqi political and social circumstances in general. The attitude of the Americans seem to literally have been more or less exactly what you describe - 'the Iraqis are just like Americans, crying out for American democracy, if we topple the Saddam and install a democratic government everything will just kind of work itself out'. I doubt the British even in the height of their power were ever so naive and arrogant. Again, you can't change a country and its culture overnight.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
Joining the inevitable chorus of 'it's always the post I write quickly in [un-ideal state] that gets QC'd.' For me, it was writing a rambling post about China's One Child Policy when I was tired on public transport going home from work. Though anti-natalism is something I hate with a burning passion so good combination I suppose even if I don't think it's the best thing I even wrote.
I think there's probably something to be said for writing a post under un-ideal circumstances straight from the heart rather than trying to manicure the perfect post.
I used to be far more active on the Motte, but have sunken back into semi-lurker status as life has gotten in the way. Maybe this is a sign for New Years resolution to become more active with commenting again.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1mo ago
According to the 2021 Canadian Census, over a quarter of Canada's population (pemanent residents and citizens) are first generation immigrants. Based on immigration trends, that number is likely at or approaching a third as of 2025. Mind you, this number does not include immigrants who are on "temporary" visas.
Utter insanity.
China's One Child Policy is the worst, most destructive government (social) policy in history and clearly shows the danger of Malthusian thought put into practice. The effects of the One Child Policy have been ruinous for China, not just for economic reasons (including dependency ratio), but for so may other reasons, including indirectly causing China's gender imbalance, decline of relationships and family, and the social malaise and stagnation that occurs when the elderly outnumber the youth, a highly unnatural and disordered state of affairs.
I strongly believe that despite all the both morally and economically awful things the CCP has done, it is the One Child Policy and the One Child Policy essentially alone that stopped the 'rise of China'. If it were not for the One Child Policy, China would be the clear number one superpower now, rather that floundering behind (despite all its own faults) the surprisingly resilient US. Or at the very least, China would still be ascendant rather than the rapid descent that is waiting for China around the corner.
While it's true that China would be experiencing some effects of the demographic transition today regardless of the One Child Policy, and that these problems are not unique to China, as in both the West and China's developed Asian neighbours, the One Child Policy accelerated China's demographic transition to such a degree that China's demographics are comparable to RoK, Japan and Taiwan, despite those countries having a 20-40 year head start on the demographic transition caused by economic development, depending on how you count it. China's current fertility rate (approx. 1.1) is worse than Japan's (approx. 1.2), similar to Taiwan, and slightly better than RoK (approx. 0.75). And this is without considering the reliability of China's numbers, given that the CCP has a tendency to "mistakenly" inflate their population numbers, the situation may well be much worse than is reported.
Unfortunately, despite all evidence pointing to Malthusian thought being completely and utterly wrong (as well as deeply immoral, in my judgement), it is still heavily influential in both academic and popular though, if bolstered by a pervasive anti-natalist, anti-humanist Zeitgeist. I know I might be preaching to the converted here, but the fertility/demographic crisis is the most significant civilisational crisis, and the mainstream political class and intelligentsia are only just beginning to grasp the enormous problem that we are facing. But I doubt they will face much success in addressing it, as any solution to the problem will necessarily require a repudiation of the modernist individualism which the global political class and intelligentsia currently exist in.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
There was a short thread discussing this issue while ago.
The short version is that Christians are obligated to act with charity and love to all people. However, that does not mean Christians shouldn't condemn the sins people have committed and treat them out harshly out of love (love is willing the good of the other - the good of the other may require some 'tough love'). This includes accepting there may be temporal consequences for sin (penance is built around this concept, but also consequences outside of penance). Additionally, there is a significant degree of prudential judgement Christians should excerise when it comes to determining genuine conversion or not. After all, Jesus warns against 'wolves in sheep's clothing' and false prophets more than once. False prophets easily extends to those who claim to have had an encounter with Christ (i.e. a conversion).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
How timely - Sargon/Carl Benjamin just released a video Lindsay and everything described above. I haven't watched it yet it but Sargon, unsurprisingly, seems critical of Lindsay.
I am reasonably sympathetic to Sargon. He's been somewhat cringe and said some stupid things in the past (especially when he ran as a candidate for UKIP a while ago), but it's clear his views have evolved and matured significantly from what they were even a few years ago, let alone from the GamerGate era which kickstarted his e-fame.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
Could this not be explained by women with high education marrying men with high or even higher education (i.e. wealthy men), which has a positive effect on fertility. Confounder?
The answer to virtually every "why is X industry/sector/institution woke?" is the same: It's the colleges and universities.
Every institution that wants or needs college graduates are getting people filling their ranks who have been subjected to four years of woke propaganda. I would call it entryism, which it kind of is, except it doesn't take much to subvert an insitution when the overwhelming majority of your generational cohort already believes what you do. Every insitution that is not explicitly right-wing/conservative/anti-woke and requires college graduates is subjected to this. Turns out, a lot of insitutions meet this definition, including most of the important ones.
Even if the game developers themselves are mildy resistant to woke ideology on account of their nerdiness (a fact I am not convinced of, but for the sake of the argument), the HR, Payroll, Executive Support etc teams are all full of woke graduates.
I've said it before, but I probably should say it more. If you want to stop 'wokeness', you have to target the academy first and foremost. Otherwise, we are just going to keep reaching "peak wokeness" every year.
I remember a decade and more ago people - back when the woke were called "SJWs", people would just brush them off as silly college kids, it's just a college thing that won't affect the 'real' world. Turns out, those college graduates actually had to go somewhere after college.
What exactly do you charge them with? To be clear, while Gaetz threw the word "extortion" around, there is no extortion in this case. Extortion is when someone threatens to inflict harm unless they are paid.
I believe what OP is alleging/implying is that Greenberg may have made a false allegation against Gaetz in order to save his own skin (offer to point the finger at a juicy target of a Congressman to lessen his own sentence). The implication is that tbe FBI knows that this is a weak or bogus allegation, but proceed with the investigation anyway, or at least conclude as a result of the investigation that it is bogus.
McGee, who is contected to both the Federal Prosecutor's Office and the CIA, attempts to use this knowledge to blackmail the senior Gaetz (through Alford) to get money to rescue Levinson in exchange for using his connections to get the case dropped against the junior Gaetz.
I think most people would agree that "we will drop a bogus/weak case against you in exchange for money" amounts to extortion. Rephrased, it can be "give me money and I'll won't charge you". Even with a legitimate crime being prosecuted it can still amount to extortion, as it's clearly an attempt to violate the defendant's due process rights.
Especially in the case of a high profile figure like a Congressman, there doesn't even have to be a a charge or conviction, the mere reporting that a Congressman js being investigated can be extremely damaging, which is what happened here.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months.
I really hate these weasel words, you see this all the time. It's also true to say "this isn't a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for month." Because clearly there is strongly differing opinions on this controversial major international conflict. But I suppose "this is or isn't a genocide depending on which experts you ask to support your politicial position" isn't particularly useful to the purpose of the letter.
And I say this as somone who is probably more favourable to the Palestinians than most people here.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3mo ago
she was ponderously slow to realize Assad was an asshole, and remained skeptical that he used chemical weapons after.
Assad is an asshole, but my understanding is that the evidence he used chemical weapons is actually quite weak and possibly false intelligence. And it's not like the US and her allies and the international community more broadly have never lied about Middle Eastern dictatorships doing bad things for propaganda.
But it has been a long while since I've looked into this all.
I suppose it's been memory-holed and vastly unpopular both here and in the mainstream media, but Ukraine did take many actions in the lead-up to the 2022 invasion and the 2014 invasion and the period inbetween that reflects poorly on them. They're not blameless for all this (although most blame goes to Russia and the US liberal foreign policy establishment for fucking with Ukraine). I'm not going to go into detail about each point but they include:
I have no lost love for Russia but it's been so dishonest how Ukraine over the past few years has been transformed in the media from a corrupt shithole to the bastion of European democracy (despite, you know, Zelenskyy destroying all his political opposition. If it wasn't for American and European interests meddling in Ukraine for the last two decades, this conflict would be indistinguishable from any other regional global conflict (India-Pakistan, Rwanda-Congo etc)
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