MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
No bio...
User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
18d ago
It is slightly more specific than that. The standard meaning of "neoliberal" is "person with economic views to my right who I dislike" in the same way that the unfortunately now-standard meaning of "fascist" is "person with social views to my right who I dislike."
There is also a rarer reclamatory use of the term found on places like /r/neoliberal - the people using the word this way think the key neoliberal beliefs are free trade, support legal immigration at or above current levels, general scepticism of economic regulation, agnosticism about the ideal size of the welfare state.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
19d ago
Women who treat romantic relationships as jobs end up with richer husbands, and therefore a higher material standard of living, than comparably hot women who treat romantic relationships as a source of emotional validation. Taking advantage of this fact is frequently not insane - and was in fact "just common sense" for most of human history.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
19d ago
If you know any lesbians and are under the age of 30, you're likely to run into at least a few lesbians who flirt with transitioning or transition.
In the Blanchardian model, they would be homosexual transexuals (the FtM equivalent of the kathoey-hijra type) and not autoandrophiles.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
19d ago
Normal tomboys want to date straight men. Autoandrophiles (such as exist) want to date gay men.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
19d ago
The glibertarian answer to the Riddle of the Flute Children is "Kill the man who asks who gets the flute." But that doesn't change the fact that someone gets the flute and others don't. If nobody is allowed to ask the question, we will get the default answer. And if the default answer is that the flute children fight among themselves then the flute will be broken as surely as it will be broken by the rival Grand High Flute Adjudicators in the Thirty Flutes' War.
Protection from organised predation is absolutely necessary for survival, and social insurance is mostly necessary. And neither can be practically provided by someone who lacks the powers of a Grand High Flute Adjudicator. If the State doesn't provide those things (or fails to do so effectively), other institutions will. And those institutions will coerce their members, and will seek to coerce nonmembers. And that coercive power will be fought over.
Now if we treat the flute metaphor as fact, the question has an easy default answer, that is revealing in the real world. Daddy decides which child gets the flute. "Kill the outsider who questions Daddy's decision" is a peace treaty between lineages. In the cis-Hajnal context where Daddy is the actual married biological father of actual minor children, it is one that works well.
But cis-Hajnal nuclear families are not the default, and "Kill the outsider who questions Daddy's decision" is a bad treaty if the flute children are productive adults with children of their own and Daddy is an increasingly senile paterfamilias who might not even be a blood relative. The human default is to look to extended family for protection against predation and for social insurance, and the normie way of thinking about other institutions that provide those things (including the State, the Mafia etc.) is as fictive extended families - hence Don Corleone's English-language title of "Godfather" and the often-accurate libertarian jibe against the Mummy Party and the Daddy Party. And in practice the people who find themselves inside those kind of extended family institutions are treated like naughty children whose flutes can be taken away if they backtalk Daddy. And so they work (and, more often than not, fight - Western civilisation's record at kicking the asses of fuzzy-wuzzies on the battlefield is even better than our record of delivering unimaginable universal material prosperity) like naughty children. The canonical book on this point is Mark Weiner's Rule of the Clan
The Peace of God predates the Hajnal line, the Hajnal line predates the Treaty of Westphalia, and the Treaty of Westphalia predates SpaceX. This isn't an accident.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
20d ago
Yes - porn is a cross-cutting issue. The anti-porn faction consists of Blue sex-negative feminists and Red religious conservatives. The pro-porn faction consists of Red libertarians and Blue sex-positive feminists (and the pornographers). Both sex-negative and sex-positive feminists can get published in so-called peer-reviewed journalists, although the sex-positive feminists are currently winning the intra-left political battle.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
20d ago
This meant that if one side was a belligerent in a conflict, the other side abstained from officially sending troops as well.
I think the mutually-agreed, informal rule in the Cold War was (after Korea, where both sides violated it for no net gain) that you don't attack the other superpower's client directly, only with your own client. So the US could send troops to defend South Vietnam, but not to attack North Vietnam. (And the USSR couldn't directly participate in North Vietnamese attacks on South Vietnam, but they didn't need to because they had a much better proxy). And the US couldn't invade Cuba with regular forces, which they otherwise clearly wanted to do, given that they did the Bay of Pigs.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
20d ago
They have a machine and no shot at relevance.
The UK Tory machine doesn't deliver votes any more. To the extent they are irrelevant, it is because nobody can see a scenario where they win a majority at Westminster and form a government (except possibly as a junior coalition partner to Reform, or heaven forfend as a junior partner in an anti-Reform grand coalition with Labour if they find themselves swinging that way). To the extent they are relevant, it is because people can see a scenario where they will continue to hold 100+ seats by inertia and hold the balance of power between Labour and Reform.
The Democrats are likely to take control of the House in 2026, and the 2028 Presidential election winning party market is currently a toss-up on oddschecker.com, which aggregates the big UK sportsbooks. (In contrast, the "Most Westminster seats after next UK election" market is a toss-up between Labour and Reform.) The Dem machine in its current state can deliver 48% of the popular vote for a poor candidate.
Right now, the party which is most likely to blow itself up is the Republicans, because they need to manage the succession to Trump. The MAGA GOP relies on Trump's reality-TV star charisma to turn out the down-with-everything loser voters who are now part of its core vote, and there is no obvious successor who has that. The Democrats OTOH have a decent shot at the 2028 Presidential election with a replacement-level candidate, just like they did in 2024 (where Trump was never as much as a 2-1 favourite after Biden dropped out).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
21d ago
Tournament and cash poker are equally zero-sum.
In poker, if you are strong you want to hide your strength so people pick fights with you and lose. In war, if you are strong you want to advertise it so nobody is stupid enough to pick a fight with you.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
21d ago
A lack of revolution is understandable
Critically, this is a federalism issue with no important underlying policy disagreement. Non-consensually cutting people's hair (except in specific situations like the military draft) is uncontroversially illegal everywhere. In the modern US, nobody cares whether the same policy is implemented by the States or the Feds except in so far as it works as a litigation maneuver. (This isn't true in Europe, where the EU is not a country and the member states are still seen by their electorates as countries, and a substantial minorities of people are deeply attached to the idea that certain types of decision are made at country level)
Since America became a country and the individual States ceased to be countries (which a lot of people date to the Civil War, but I think happened somewhere between the Monroe and Jackson administrations) federalism ceased to be a principle people actually believed in and became a peace treaty. (Compare the infamous Yonatan Zunger essay making the same argument about liberal tolerance.) And right now, politically engaged Americans on both sides unfortunately don't seem to believe in abiding by the long-standing peace treaties between the Red and Blue tribes.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
21d ago
Plausible deniability isn't in practice about plausibility to the other side's leadership, although it is possible that the Truman administration (who coined the phrase and initially developed the doctrine) were stupid enough to think it was. It is about plausibility to a sympathetic audience (primarily your own domestic audience, but also sympathetic neutrals). The Soviet leadership was rarely fooled by US denial of responsibility for obvious US covert ops. The US people frequently were.
Sometimes it provides a face-saving exit for the victim - if the USSR pretends to believe a "plausible denial" from the US then the domestic political consequences of not retaliating are mitigated.
In the modern sense, "plausible deniability" generally means "everyone knows I did it but if it can't be proved in a formal quasi-judicial process my dittoheads can go on pretending to believe that I didn't"
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
21d ago
If Trump thinks we are playing poker, we are doomed. Poker is a zero-sum game where you want your opponent to go all-in and lose. War is a negative-sum game where an all-in confrontation and showdown means everyone loses.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
21d ago
If this is not real,
It isn't real. Both sides are still shooting at each other. Israel is claiming that Iran should be blamed because they fired the first shots after Trump's deadline, and they are just retaliating. What is definitely the case is that both sides tried to do maximum damage in the hours between the ceasefire being announced and entering into force, which is not what people who actually want a ceasefire do.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
21d ago
Full-size vans dominate minivans on UK worksites too.
If a pickup does, in fact, tow significantly better than a full-size SUV that would be a large part of the answer (even if just by perceived option value). Does it?
It would also explain some of the national difference - heavy-duty towing (>750kg trailer and >3500kg combination) requires a license endorsement in the EU (and thus in the pre-Brexit UK) so a lot fewer people imagine themselves doing it.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
22d ago
Are autoandrophiles even a thing? Blanchard was sceptical.
Heck, now the option of identifying as non-binary is more salient, FtMs are barely a thing for autoandrophiles to be a sub-thing of.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
22d ago
I was met with a question regarding my own stance on the matter.
I find if your goal is just to change the subject, saying that the history of the Mandate means that our input is uniquely unwanted by both sides, and that we should take the hint and butt out, works brilliantly. NPCs on both sides are horrified but have no comeback because you are off-script. It's like playing the Sicilian back in the days when everyone was taught opening theory starting e4 e5.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
22d ago
(It's also only a reliable signal of malfunction in men, since there are no male gendered clothes except maybe boxers.)
Not true above a certain level of formality - women's trouser suits look very different to men's suits, starting with the acceptable colour palette. And as the level of formality increases the expectation that women wear dresses gets stronger. This is why tomboys hate formal events - they are used to being able to be performatively androgynous without looking like they are cross-dressing.
Can anyone explain America's love affair with the pickup truck? This is prompted by this Matt Yglesias post talking about abundance politics, and acknowledging that for working-class Hispanics (among others) owning a pickup is a key measuring stick for material prosperity and that it would be politically stupid for abundance-orientated Democrats to argue this point.
This isn't a question about why Americans drive much bigger personal vehicles than people in other countries - that is obvious. (Generally richer country, cheaper fuel, wider roads, more idiot drivers such that "mass wins" is seen as an important part of being safe on the roads). I think I understand why so many of these are built on a truck chassis (mostly CAFE arbitrage). But the thing I don't get is why the pickup as the big-ass form factor of choice. If you look at the big-ass personal vehicles in the London suburbs, you will see at least 5 full-size SUVs (as in the US, the most common form factor in affluent suburbia is the crossover, which no longer counts as big-ass) for every clean pickup. And if you look at work vehicles, you will see at least 10 vans for every pickup. Most of the work pickups I see in the London suburbs are owned by landscapers who regularly haul large quantities of fertilizer, so "ease of cleaning the bed" is the obvious reason for them. The pattern seems to be the same in other European cities, and googling "Tokyo traffic jam" brings up pictures with more pickups than Europe, but still many fewer pickups than vans or big-ass SUVs.
So my small-scale questions are:
- Is it true that there are more clean pickups than full-size SUV's in the US? Everywhere or just in Red/Hispanic areas?
- Is it true that there are more work pickups than work vans in the US?
- Does anyone have a sense of why Americans choose pickups over other big-ass form factors?
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
23d ago
I did remember it, but I was talking about post-2021. The claim a lot of people are making on this site which I disagree with is that there has been a recent increase in political violence.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
24d ago
How would you feel if your daughter turned up on your doorstep on the arm of a McKinsey consultant or a white-shoe lawyer (who we affect to similarly desipse)? If most people's answer is positive, it's prestigious and the haters are just jealous.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
24d ago
The main thing I am seeing here is that (after the very real spate of political violence in 2020, which largely ended on Jan 7th 2021), the demand for political violence in the US massively exceeds the supply, in the same way that Steve Sailer used to joke about the demand for racism exceeding the supply. People on both sides desperately want their opponents to be launching the red/brown terror, both to gain political capital by criticising the other side and to feed their own vicarious martyrdom fantasies. And this desire to big up political-looking violence for partisan reasons leads to the kind of media coverage that attracts copycats, so your average unhinged shooter is now more likely to shoot politicians and less likely to shoot up a school.
This isn't new, of course. If you look at the list of attempted Presidential assassinations going back to the founding the words "insanity" and "unfit to plead" appear an awful lot.
Roughly none of the recent cases of "political" violence that blew up in the media involve any of:
- Someone with a history of Dem activism shooting a Republican
- Someone with a history of GOP activism shooting a Democrat
- A perp affiliated with an organised far-left group
- A perp affiliated with an organised far-right group Instead we see the usual lineup of wackjobs plus the occasional Islamist, and one truly weird fringe group (the Zizians).
Apart from the Islamists, the nearest thing we see to an inteligible political motivation is something like Boelter or Wayne DePape (Paul Pelosi hammer guy) - an unhinged Red Triber who consumes right-wing media and is presumed to vote Republican decides to attack a Democrat for unhinged reasons. And the only reason why this is a mostly-Red thing is that comparably unhinged Blues don't have access to guns.
This is nothing like the Days of Rage, Reconstruction/Redemption, or the early C20 spate of anarchist violence. Nobody keeps the required statistics, but I suspect it is closer to a summer of the shark.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
25d ago
Ted Cruz is a voting member of the Senate Committee responsible for US policy in the greater Middle East. So knowing the approximate population of America's main adversary in the region is basic job-related knowledge. "I'm not good with figures but I know it's a lot bigger than Iraq" would be an acceptable answer if Ted Cruz is, indeed, not good with figures.
"Career" would surely be the common English word?
More options
Context Copy link