SSCReader

SSCReader 3mo ago

Old schools were designed to be "anti-boy." My dad was a headmaster in one, who do you think most of their discipline was aimed at? How many boys did he literally beat obedience into with a belt and paddle?

The problem does not appear to be that modern schools are anti-boy, more than they are not policing boyish behaviour enough.

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SSCReader 3mo ago

You can see how this would put society into a very fragile state of affairs.

Not really, you yourself pointed out a whole bunch of ways society has of dealing with those issues. That society would change is a given, but looking at history you can have stable societies with all kinds of social norms. The men that don't care about getting a woman won't procreate, those that will or can, will. Society will go on.

Society can't work to restore relations between men and women, society is the emergent outcome of millions of individual decisions of men and women. It will change as those decisions change. It might bounce back and forth between different models, and that is ok.

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SSCReader 3mo ago

Absolutely. There are always ups and downs of course, and the last decade perhaps hasn't improved as fast as previous, but a better question to look at is is, has society improved from say the 70's. And the answer I think is (to me!) clearly yes. And part of that is due to progressive influences. Those influences in turn may push too far and alienate people and cause a reaction (just how the progressive movement itself was welded together), some changes are rolled back, some stick, but all in all, humanities story is onwards and upwards.

My kids have it better than I did by a significant margin. This world is significantly less violent and much wealthier than the one I was born into. My kids have and had opportunities I could never have dreamed of. There are still wars and atrocities of course, and there always will be.

My perspective as an outsider in the US, is that things are not nearly as bad as being made out to be by either side. And that stepping away from media and social media, it is quite possible for a middle class Brit to live among both Red tribe rural Trump voters while married to a black urban liberal woman with no problems whatsoever, and also for the same middle class white Brit to be in the middle of the ghetto fixing a fence in a straw hat and khakis and attract nothing but curiosity.

My wife's cousin brought her kids around last weekend, and I was teaching them cricket and showing them my video game collection and I invited my white Republican neighbor over for the bbq, and he was teaching them about hunting. Overall this country is doing just fine in my opinion.

Now many parts do have real problems, rural Rust belt white communities and urban black ones are very similar in many ways (both my wife and J.D. Vance were raised by their grandmothers, in and around poverty and drug use). But overall, yeah I am pretty optimistic about both the world and the USA itself. You're a positive resilient nation with an exuberance and enthusiasm that is somewhat enchanting to this cynical Brit at least. You have problems, but you are great problem solvers and both Red and Blue Tribers can get along, with the moderate middle of each pushing back against the excesses of either side.

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SSCReader 3mo ago

Entirely depends. What is healthy for a society can be very different than what is healthy for specific individuals. In any case it will resolve itself as the population rises or falls.

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SSCReader 3mo ago

Is it an unfortunate state of affairs though? Or is it just normal? My dad was more conservative than my mum, way back in time. They've been married 60 years. How much of our civilization is built between the different preferences of men and women pulling at each other? That men work to deliver what women want so that they can have women is as old as building a shack and a fire.

Just because there are differences doesn't mean its a problem after all. In fact the differences could be what drives our societies to improve. Signalling and status are huge motivators.

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SSCReader 3mo ago

It makes communication between groups more difficult. But it makes communication inside the group and communication of who is in the group easier. Which of those is more useful or valuable is largely dependent on what you're valuing and circumstances.

If everyone in the world spoke perfect English only then communication would be easier. But we would certainly have lost something of value I think.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

Do they? Are you sure about that? The legal frameworks are quite different, but the underlying politics is basically identical.

You are the chosen of your party with all the support in the world, until you are not. Then they brief against you and pressure you to step down/change course.

I'd suggest my position seems to more accurately reflect what is actually happening than yours. It is being seen as legitimate by the Democrat base.

It probably won't be enough to beat Trump, in any case.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

The party forced him out to get a new candidate. Anything else is pure fancy.

And none of that matters a jot. Doesn't matter how much pressure was put on him behind the scenes. That's normal politics. He stepped down. He could have chosen not to, no-one could have forced him. Being briefed against, or maneuvered against is politics 101. You may not like that, but that is the situation. Being pressured is a legitimate political tactic. Happens everywhere. David Cameron called the Brexit referendum because he was facing internal political pressure form his own back benches. It was still a legitimate referendum. Liz Truss stepped down because of huge pressure from her own side. Her ousting was perfectly legitimate.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

Many peoples tequests ate not verifiable in a way that matters though. I may in yheory be able to find out if my new customer asking to be. called Mrs Jones is or is not married, but I am not actually going to bother.

Taking people at their word has served me well for the last 50 odd years, and my experience is the vast vast majority of people are not hiding some complicated reason behind a mundane one. People largely are mundane. If blind Paul asks to know what colour everyone is wearing its very probably because it helps him navigate his world in some way, and very unlikely to be because he is trying to play some kind of power game.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

The Democrats changed their process multiple times in the past. But regardless of all that, when was the last time they had a candidate step down after the primaries?

Is your claim that decision is illegitimate? How so? You can't force someone to run, if they have decided not to, so therefore now they must try to come up with another choice. Failing to do so would be a dereliction of their duty.

They didn't decide they didn't like the candidate and replace him, the candidate stepped down. If they had tried to replace Biden without him stepping down then you may have had a point.

It has to be permissible to replace your candidate, if they die or step down. If Trump had been assassinated would any replacement have been illegitimate? Clearly not, I would argue. If Biden had a stroke, likewise. Replacing your candidate is unusual. But as long as it is done legally with the candidate choosing to step down or being unable to continue, then i can't see a reason it should be presumed illegitimate.

It may or not be a good decision. But that isn't the same thing.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

So like during a phone call, where you're not supposed to ask what people are wearing either (unless we're talking about a very particular type of a on me call)?

Right, but have you ever been the only one dialing into a conference room? Everyone else can see, and all you have is sound? Back in the day I used to have to do that all the time and it was legitimately a pain to make out who was talking, where everyone is in relation to each other and the like. I think it would actually be an improvement to try and construct a visualization in that circumstance. Especially if you don't know who is talking. Indeed what we ended up having to do is preface every statement with "This is Dave, department head of consular services, I think we need to consider the cost implications of adding to ambassadorial security" But that was clunky and time consuming. Now for most people particularly nowadays with video calling that is no longer something that crops up much. But if you are blind it is every meeting, every time. Building up a mechanism to help navigate that seems like exactly the thing that you would do in that circumstance.

I would suggest that the mundane reason for blind people needing/wanting better descriptions of who is talking and how to create visualizations to keep track is exactly the one that should be considered the default. When Bob in network engineering asks me to limit the use of resources on the mainframe on Fridays, I should also consider the mundane reason the most likely one, though it is possible he is training Skynet, the mundane is almost always correct, in my experience.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

Funnily enough, the single blind colleague I have ever worked with, asked for people to tell him their sex and a color of something they were wearing as well as their name. He said this helped him build a mental model of who was where in a meeting room and keep track of who was saying what.

This was over 20 years ago mind you, but perhaps it does help some blind people enough to have become a request/norm.

Before video conferencing was a thing dialing in via phone into a remote meeting was always a pain because keeping track of who said what was a trial. Unlike in a podcast, you're expected to interact back after all.

This may not be as unhelpful as you think in other words.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

That’s a real problem.

And I can equally say that the Republican convention picking a convicted felon is a real problem*, which the Republicans have now done and therefore they are breaking their own established norms and there must have been some reason they don't pick criminals, right? And thus the internal quality control performed by the Republicans is hopelessly compromised. But the truth it is is doesn't matter whether I think that, only whether Republicans accept the outcome or do not. As long as it was done legally, it is entirely up to Republicans to pick their candidate.

If I say that Trump is an illegitimate pick due to the above will that change your mind suddenly? Assuming not, why would you think Democrats will in the reverse situation?

*I don't actually think Trump is a bad candidate, but pretty clearly picking an convicted felon is highly unusual for them.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

But you said above you weren't talking about legality, just legitimacy, because currently they haven't broken any laws right?

Is your position now as long as they don't break any laws, whoever they pick is legititimate?

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SSCReader 4mo ago

Legitimacy is in the eye of the beholder. If Democratic voters accept it then it is by definition legitimate.

The sysyem for how the Democrat party picks its candidates is wholly controlled by the Democrat party. The only people they have to convince are their voters. Thats it. There is no other measure.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

Sure, it could have been. My point is we don't know what the close protection element knew when and what their preplanned positions and roles were. Was she the coordinator in which case her position there might be fine but she messed up on the roof issue, or should she be in the cover team, or the fire tram, or whatever. There is simply too much we don't know.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

The gunman was what over a 100 yards away with a rifle on a roof, having her side arm out doesn't help. Again, it may be correct that she was not doing what she was supposed to, but there is an awful lot of armchair quarterbacking going on, when we have no idea what her role was supposed to be.

At that moment as well as the snipers there are at least 2 rifle armed officers just below/ to the sides of the podium, who run up while Trump is still being covered.

If her job was to direct the cover and tell them when to move, then she may well be exactly where she was supposed to be. If her job was to dive in front of Trump then she wasn't. But we don't know.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

USSS members should be 6’5” terrifying meat shields with guns.

Nah, you want someone calm under pressure first, relatively innocuous, so around 6 feet or so. Good with guns and probably combat experience. That will make most of your good candidates men, but you don't want 10 Jack Reacher's. For a start they need to be able to fit inside vehicles with the principal and some to be able to blend into your crowds if needed. 25-35 and if you have a female principal you will also want some female officers, as your principal is likely to try and keep men out of the bathroom with her at least in a lot of cases. The Secret Service is going to have to guard women at some point, so at least a few of them should be women as well. The female close protective officers I met were certainly...butcher than average, but they could still put on a dress for a garden party or ambassadorial function. Not all of your security should stand out.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

Even then, it depends on whether she was even supposed to be jumping in. Close protection officers will have designated roles in the event of an attack. Some will be tasked with covering/moving the principal. Others will be tasked with looking for exits/shooters. It's hard to tell from that angle but she may be looking past the scrum, and be in charge of telling them which way to move. It's hard to do that from inside the scrum itself. And your sniper teams are probably going to be occupied with putting down the target.

Source: I've never been important enough to warrant close protection, but I have travelled extensively with people who have, so I have talked to them a fair bit. Not the Secret Service, but the idea remains similar. Not everyone is supposed to dive on the principal.

Without knowing what her specific task was, we have no way of judging if she was doing it well or not.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

I wonder if this puts a damper on trying to replace Biden. Trump was already favored to win, and running against someone surviving an assassination attempt adds an even more uphill struggle.

Who is going to want to jump in? For most Democratic politicians in contention now, letting Biden run and lose, so they can run against a new contender in 28, has got to look like a better proposition personally than the nasty fight to replace Biden, then going against a hero bumped Trump.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

Actually, that's irresponsibly optimistic: why would black people stop once equality has been achieved?

Because they are people just like you and I, they aren't monsters or the like. With white friends and white partners and white bosses and white employees., and so on and so forth.

Your points are pessimistic and do not take into account other situations where similar situations play out and rapprochement is being worked upon. Real race blind integrated liberal democracy has not been tried in the United States. Largely because the US is not ready for such. The US is not villainous or uniquely evil for having slavery in its past. But its fix was incomplete and now the situation is where it is today. The choices down the line as I see it are a new civil war, or further attempts at proper integration. The first will be terribly catastrophic, the second is difficult. So it goes.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

but it requires that black people give up their grievances

Sure, but that is a step by step process and at a population level not so easy. People do not just give up their grievances. But they can be put in a position where other things are more valuable. Self-interest is the only cure that sticks I think. As Catholics became wealthier, were given the opportunities to make up for those they had been denied, became more aware that the government bodies that had specifically oppressed them were now more responsive to them, all of a sudden support for the IRA began to disappear.

Until Sinn Fein itself decided the way forward had to be through democracy, as support for violence was drying up. But you can't keep things the same and think that is going to work. It clearly hasn't.

Hell, they didn't even have to actually make things equitable, they just had to say they were going to try and make some good faith efforts. As the Catholic Middle class began to rise, that did the rest.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

All the things you mention are appeasement.

Then peace is never going to be possible in your paradigm. I prefer one that concretely offers that hope, and has shown that it can deliver.

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SSCReader 4mo ago

I'd argue it depends what you mean by appeasement. Back home significant concessions were made to Catholics including dismantling and replacing the entire police force with one that had 50% Catholics ( an over representation), quotas in government jobs etc. Parades commissions to limit where Unionists could march and much more.

Is that appeasement or is it recognizing that building trust with a group that has actually been oppressed requires steps if you actually want a chance at building a lasting peace after?

What is appeasement and what are concessions to make up for real discrimination from government entities?

Northern Ireland certainly isn't perfect now by a long shot but its certainly better than it was for both Protestants and Catholics. It isn't a zero sum enterprise.

Black people aren't going anywhere. They can be treated as an enemy (appeasement or defeat) or they can be treated as a part of the polity that must be somehow reintegrated or else long term stability is a massive risk.

There was a time I felt about Catholics that many people seem to feel about black communities. But time and experience has taught me I was wrong. Rapprochement is possible even with violent history. It does not have to be oppositional.

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