Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
Hello back frens
User ID: 2022
and answering the boundary question with a set of traits from the cluster will rightfully draw ridicule
Why is it better to answer with the entire cluster? It seems progressives should still object to western social norms defining "women" a moderate amount, just like they object to them doing so exclusively.
...lest all of this seem a bit to hostile, I dont remember hearing either the name or clique argument before. Thank you for participating.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
16d ago
Thats because there usually is only one person called William thats relevant to any given statement, and things do in fact go south pretty quickly when you cant keep it that way.
Within philosophy of language more broadly, proper and personal names are always a bit of a pain point. If you dont have a revisionist theory of them (and your argument relies on not doing so), then you generally need a much more fragmentary theory in general, where the pieces are sensitive to more parameters then we would usually expect, and then trying to generalise from personal names to something else would require a lot more checking to see if the situation is analogous, which its definitely not in this case.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
16d ago
So, it only matters to the members of the clique, which is just *checks notes* 50% of the population. Shouldnt be relevant to public discourse then.
But I dont think even outsiders go by self-identification, I would expect them to call people goths for the appearance alone, even if those people themselves disagree. Though they tend include more rather than less. Thats because they dont really care about the subculture, whereas men and women are concerned with each other for obvious reasons. And if there were legal or social rules about goth toleration, obviously it would be different again.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
16d ago
"Keith is goth" clearly means something, even though it doesn't actually tell you any specific thing about what Keith is like besides identifying as goth.
It actually doesnt tell you whether he identifies that way, it tells you whether the speaker identifies him that way. Indeed, pretty much all subcultures will explictly reject self-identification when they feel like it, usually to keep out the "posers" but occasionally also to "claim" prominent people. Persistent disagreements about such claims of inclusion or exclusion tend to fracture the subculture.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
17d ago
But why does man-made beauty need to be something normies hate? As a strong example, consider traditional bonsai, which is primarily about making things more natural than nature. Theres also a strand of modern industrial design which isnt forcefully minimalist;the things it makes are not usually beautiful, but they are cool, and in certain product categories very popular. The architecture version is the glassbox skyscraper, which is not super popular but propably some of the best of modernism.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
20d ago
not because sex is uniquely bad on its face (and sexual liberals do indeed reject that notion) but because, most of the time, it's violating an explicit agreement not to do that.
And that agreement is made because bad to do the things that violate it. Theres a difference between following liberal rules, and believing in liberalism - much like with secularism.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
20d ago
The Tate thesis, insofar as there is such a thing, is that its perfectly fine for you to know who he is, because he doesnt need your cooperation. Weve created a society where he can be rich just fine without being trustworthy. Hence also the islam thing - whether he personally would or could change his tune in a more traditional society remains in question of course, but he may well die before it comes to that.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
20d ago
Hoes are the earliest form of agriculture. Does that mean that the first farmers where less patriarchal? I think Ive heard the opposite.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
20d ago
(I dont mean to argue your experience in person, my experience with this argument was entirely schizo twitter) Wait, do people still talk about this, or has there been some "update" recently?
And, I didnt think of it originally, but you calling it racist is a great example of how it works rethorically. Most onlookers arent gonna know what you mean, it just looks like you call everything racist. And if you do go on to explain... this stereotype of black women being less feminine, I had not heard about before outside this very topic. The version about implictly biased western beauty standards is more common, but also gets into the "nutty demands" territory. Whichever way you roll it, you lose points with those not already in your camp, and it wasnt really necessary to bring it up, either - yet here we go.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
20d ago
Even if Obama is foreign-born or Trump has to go to jail or whatever, people hypothetically should have been able to get the same politics
Thats a reasonable idea, but I dont think they could have. Maybe they could now, but I doubt it still. Trump has viable successors, in many ways better then him, but theyre clearly not Trump.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
20d ago
Every single one of them that mentioned it eagerly brings up new evidence in favor of the theory.
I dont think that implies theyre serious about it. Or, maybe serious but not literal? Basically, if you need the big guns OP is bringing out, the point is made.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
21d ago
Vor einem Gericht, glaubt einer der Beteiligten, würde nichts davon Bestand haben. /
/ One of the participants believes it would not hold up in court
Na ja, dann natürlich... The germans really cant help themselves.
Es soll jetzt schnell gehen, was wohl auch mit zwei politischen Veränderungen zu tun hat: Wenn eine neue Bundesregierung unter Friedrich Merz (CDU) im Kanzleramt auf eine weggeschlossene Geheimbewertung des BND stieße, würde das kritische Fragen nach sich ziehen. Zudem hat der BND seine Schlussfolgerungen Ende 2024 mit der CIA geteilt. Was die Deutschen denken, weiß also bald auch die Trump-Regierung. /
/ They are in a hurry, likely related to to political changes: If a new government under Merz (center-right) found the secret report locked away in the office of the chancellor, it would lead to critical questions. Furthermore the BDN shared its conclusions with the CIA in december 2024. What the germans thing, the Trump administration will know soon after.
I do wonder if the decision to tell the americans really came before the worries about the new german government, especially with Trump already elected. I certainly thought about the timing right away.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
22d ago
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
That is not how I remember that one.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
23d ago
The problem is that there was no Good Populist. Something like the Trump base has been around for a while - but somehow, every candidate that appealed to them had big problems, ones that they should care about even by their own values. And this extends even beyond just american populists: populism is the secret political weapon that the likes of Orban can stay in power by fulfilling. Noone ever uses this tactic for good or even neutral ends. Noone decent ever gives populists what they want, you may at best string them along with empty promises and even thats kind of sus.
I dont see how you could have an explanation for the above, that doesnt change the meaning of "Dont you wish you had a better spokesman" into something unrecognisable.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
23d ago
That's as may be, but it was destabilising enough to cause World War II, where Hitler's stated casus belli was precisely protecting the rights of ethnic Germans outside the internationally recognised borders of Germany.
What was destabilising about it was that a Germany that did control all the majority german areas was too powerful for France and Britain. By that criterion, most any process of border drawing other than the Vienna congress will be "destablising" sometimes.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
23d ago
Losing WW2 was the only good thing Hitler ever did for Germany.
Its not clear how high the risks of communist takeover were without him, but that might count too.
Sure, one requires resources such as rare earth elements for the tech stuff, but the real money is in building the tech, not in mining minerals.
You dont need to mine them, but you do need to have control over your own supply. China, hardly known for environmentalism, invests significantly into solar, because having it increases your ability to tell both oil states and the global maritime power to suck it. I suspect this contributes to the US/Europe differences on green energy as well.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
24d ago
This principle has been foundational to post-WW2 order.
In this context, "justifications" work to some extent just by being restricted. It is in fact possible to have ambitions which are neither in line with international norms nor unlimited conquest, and thats what hes arguing.
While Western interventions have questionable legality, Russia's annexation of territory represents a different category of violation. Iraq wasn't annexed, whatever other flaws that campaign had.
Russian goals from here may be achieved by instating a puppet government in Ukraine that they support against enemies internal and external. I think this wouldnt make an important difference, and hasnt been raised as an option largely because everyone agrees with me. In fact, Russia only annexed the northern parts of their defacto 2014 conquest sometime into 2022 - which seems to me like they calculated better odds of keeping it from doing so at that point.
There is a difference between that and Iraq, which can be seen from how quickly the US let their client collapse again among other things, but Afghanistan seems like its getting there. Whats the difference between indefinite occupation and annexation, especially for a non-democratic state?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
24d ago
And as a source, I'd point to the massive free-market demand for urbanization implied by unfulfilled immigration kept under control by legislative fiat.
Im not sure why you interpret demand for immigration as demand for urbanisation. Mexicans wanting to urbanise can move to mexican cities - and prefering US cities of mexicans ones is not demand for urbanisation. And besides, the limiting factor for american city growth are city-level laws, not the US population.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
24d ago
To maintain the analogy, you can leave any time and start something new elsewhere with your savings. I imagine there would be a constant trickle of people trying that, but if it keeps failing... whites accepting that theyre not on the Cosmic Task anymore is going to be a big change either way, who knows how it ends. That doesnt really depend on living there though, just the existence of that state.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
24d ago
Seconding this as an austrian. About 1/3rd of my history school time was spent on the nazi era, and Ive never heard about the soap, the lampshades mentioned below, or anything of this sort. Just the gas chambers a bajillion times over.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
26d ago
They could get away with a tactical nuke, it's just that doing so would incur various costs.
Yeah I was to vague about this. Of course they wouldnt be strategically nuked back. What I meant is that it might have been viewed a lot more like doing the same thing with conventional explosives (modulo radiation).
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
26d ago
The Russians have secured a swathe of territory in Donbass, they took Mariupol.
Yes, but in the hypothetical different nuclear equilibrium, they wouldnt get to keep it.
I think there must be some concrete reason why all the powers invest so much into conventional forces
The purely nuclear equilibria have very sharp rules. If theres a situation where neither party is allowed to nuke, its a free win for whoever invested in conventional forces. It cant actually, realistically happen outside a toy example world set up with it. In the cold war, I think neither party would have been willing to nuke over losing individual european satellites that somehow happen without a general attack.
I think youre just not confident enough because this mechanism is new to you. Start out small in using it. My example was chosen for illustrating what sort of thing I mean, not for being convincing. Something more realistic might be e.g. the discussions early in this war whether Russia could get away with a "tactical" nuke - they propably cant, but there may well have been a world where they could.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
26d ago
Are those [racial group] in [percentile] or [percentile] among [racial group]?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
26d ago
What are you basing this on? I dont really know much in that regard, but e.g. noone has air superiority in the current war, and thats something I would think the europeans are good at. Of course, a lot of european countries just arent that big individually, and certainly Germany would need time to get its infantery running, but getting overwhelmed? And France has nukes.
Indeed he is, though I wouldnt have considered that part remarkable.
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