Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6hr ago
It helpfully clarifies that the issue is not actually exploitation of H1-Bs and is in fact just opposition to immigration.
Hooray economic zone?
Can you clarify what this means? The US is an economic zone. It will still be an economic zone if it expels every single foreign-born individual and closes the borders.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
8hr ago
They could just ask Congress to change the law. Trump can whip congressional Republicans to do pretty much whatever he wants, and there would be more than enough Democrats in favor of liberalizing H1-B work restrictions that it would almost certainly pass.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9hr ago
I think the marginal impact of post-mortem rudeness about a guy who was murdered by a lone wolf terrorist on future acts of terrorism is functionally, and in practice completely swamped by other effects arising from the act (e.g. I think the use of Kirk's assassination as a pretext for a crackdown is orders of magnitude more likely to produce further violence).
insofar as the elasticity of terrorist attacks with respect to celebration of terrorist attacks sure seems like it should be positive
This would probably bear credibility wrt to Mangione, who attracted significant direct praise for his actions. The closest Robinson got was a lot of people saying "good riddance" about his victim. But in either case (as with lone wolf terrorism more general), you were looking at strong internal motives, not seeking adulation or other social factors.
It is well known that academic and credential fraud amongst Indians is rife
Is it? I'm sure it's non-zero, but is it of an actual scale that we should care? "Everybody knows" weirdly doesn't seem to include anybody I know in the tech industry. Admittedly, these people are all employed, so they're not really worried about being outcompeted by an allegedly illiterate Indian software dev.
The pervasiveness of blatant racism amongst the "everybody knows crowd" does not exactly lend them credibility, and the severity of this supposed problem seems wildly overblown by people who want to use it as cover for more general anti-immigrant sentiment. (I'm old enough to remember when the nativists were promising it was only 'illegals' they had a problem with).
I don't give a damn about your reverence for rules or processes.
I know you don't, but you should at least care about naked corruption (but I know you don't care about that, either). Flawed processes should be replaced with better processes, not replaced with arbitrary and easily corruptible discretion from an administration that is already among the most corrupt in US history.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
10hr ago
The US is not an economic zone.
What does this mean? Like, policy-wise, this idea would seem to suggest support for social services and doing our best to ensure a minimum standard of living for all Americans. In practice, it seems like the people who say "the US is not an economic zone" are the people most prone to treating the US like an economic zone - indifferent to the welfare of their fellow citizens and primarily interested in making the country a captive market for the purposes of rent-seeking.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
16hr ago
Trump admin replaces rules-based system with corrupt exercise of personal executive discretion, episode 2847. The big catch in all this is that the administration can waive the fee.
Also, it's probably illegal, though that hasn't been a major impediment so far.
I'm also deeply skeptical of the 'productivity' of the vast majority of tech H1B hires
This seems incoherent. H1bs are simultaneously undercutting wages but also not actually a replacement for domestic equivalents?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
Everything else from Mike Brown, to Jacob Blake, to Trayvon Martin
Martin wasn't killed by LE, so is irrelevant to this subject. Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, and Eric Garner immediately leap to mind as unambiguously unjustified police homicides which were widely excused on grounds that the victims were lowlife scum who wouldn't be missed. But the point here is not to trade anecdotes, it is to point out that there is a widespread attitude that is at best indifferent to and frequently outright celebratory of police brutality. Never mind dubious police shootings, the amount of times I've seen people cheer for law enforcement assaulting protestors is disturbing.
Obviously, justified and unjustified uses of force exist. The problem, which I am trying to get across, is that a lot of people subscribe to the Tango and Cash Theory of Criminal Justice. Their concept of what constitutes acceptable/justified use of force includes a great of deal of unambiguous police brutality, they tend to have a negative view of civil liberties, and they are willing to cut LE a ton of slack when they cross the already generous line as long as the victims fit into a category of acceptable targets. Attendantly, criticizing the conduct of law enforcement is often construed as being pro-crime.
The most clear-cut example of police brutality I witnessed was with Tyre Nichols. This came and went in the span of a week for reasons that are probably unsurprising to anybody here who looks into it or remembers the details.
I suspect what you're trying to hint at here is that the perpetrators were also black, but a) that didn't stop people from protesting b) you're understating the scope of the reaction. It's pretty clear that people who care about reducing police violence did care about it. It is somewhat plausible that people who would ordinarily defend cops to the hilt passed on the issue because they were black, although I think (a la Daniel Shaver) it is more likely because the incident was so clear cut and indefensible that there was nothing to argue about. If the cops pull a guy out of out of his car and throw him to the ground and rough him up a bit, T&C Theorists might say "well, he should've been more compliant and it's not a big deal if the cops knock a suspect around a bit anyway". CJRers say "that's appalling", and we're off to the races. If they pull him out of the car, throw him to the ground, and then beat him to death, there's nothing to argue about.
You may still find that ugly, callous, or mistaken. Whatever it is, it's FAR away from dancing when a professional TALKER gets sniped in the throat.
I don't actually think that it is. Excusing (and frequently endorsing) police brutality as a matter of regular practice because you have little regard for their victims' rights or welfare is significantly worse than dancing on a metaphorical grave. One is indecorous. The other contributes to perpetuating unjustified violence (and, it bears repeating, detracts from public safety).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
I feel like people sometimes forget how big the US is. There are about 250 million adults in the US. Five percent of that is 12.5m. If five percent of them made a social media post disparaging Kirk, you'd have 625k Kirk-critical social media posts. You could grab the top one percent most provocative of those and have enough material to show case 15 such posts per day for a year with a solid amount of leftovers for a year-end marathon.
This is just another way of saying the GOP hadn't yet coalesced around the "Donald Trump gets to do whatever he wants" platform. Trump very much wielded the power of the presidency during his first, but he had a less cooperative Congress and judiciary.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
Your mileage may definitely vary. Trump hadn't assume the absolute mastery over the American right he (or at least his coterie of handlers) has now, but he was very much in charge and his political adversaries felt it.
I further feel extremely confident saying that Barr getting canceled was not the product of pressure from the Trump administration, and hold up her statement quoted above as demonstration of a particular kind of delusion victim complex.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
If you want to talk about red flags, lets talk about the insistent conflation of protests and riots being used to excuse the violent suppression of the former.
And let me be blunt: the consequences of bad policing in the US have eclipsed both the human and financial costs of anti-police rioting pretty much every single year, and that includes 2020, which included by far the most dramatic anti-police rioting in ~30 years (hell, the fact that we have anti-police riots in the US is a strong signal that there are serious problems with American policing). The reflexive deference to police authority, even when they are clearly abusing it, is both undignified and immoral. The fact that the police frequently mutiny if threatened with accountability is just straight up a threat to democracy. A riot is an ephemeral public order problem. An uncontrollable law enforcement apparatus is systemic governance problem.
One bad cop treating one possibly-ODing drug addict badly means the necessary response is... billions of dollars in property damage across the country and a couple dozen extra murders? Damn, that's a heck of an exchange rate.
Do you genuinely think that this arose from a singular incident? There's a steady drumbeat of cops murdering people*, but behind the murders is an parade of harassment, dishonesty, and casual brutality so pervasive that many don't even register it as abuse. It's just sort of taken as a given that the police might rough you up a bit if they feel like it, or they might lie about what happened to hide their misconduct.
And, importantly: extremely limited accountability. 'Paid administrative leave' became a punchline for a reason. There'd be a lot less resentment and hostility if brutal or reckless cops were consistently punished for transgressions, but overwhelmingly they are not.
*The unarmed aspect doesn't really matter much. As it must be understood that being unarmed does not mean it was a bad shoot, it must also be understood that being armed does not mean it was a good shoot. And the fact that it was legally a good shoot does not mean it actually was.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
Bending over backwards to make excuses for police murdering people and undermining efforts to hold them accountable is an extreme and hostile form of indifference (and it produces more crime). I used to be more charitably inclined, until 2020 made it abundantly clear that many right-wingers were not simply credulous of police excuses and actively supported police brutality as long as it was directed against their idea of someone who deserved it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
A fair amount of the "police let them do it" can be blamed on the police preferring to attack people protesting police brutality over maintaining public order. Which, you know, kind of vindicates the people protesting police brutality.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
Indifference is insidious.
Interesting. How shall we assess indifference to police brutality? Why is it that when people protest unambiguous police brutality and the police respond by refusing to do their job, it's the fault of the protestors for failing to lick the boot hard enough? Should we be worried that one of the central institutions for public order will mutiny if not granted impunity for their crimes?
What is it with Trumpists forgetting who was president from 2016-2020? Is Barr saying Trump got her fired?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
No. Trump has, from day zero been far above and beyond normal politics in the level of blatant dishonesty, in hus sheer commitment to manufacturing an alternative to reality. It seems to have fallen off again, but for a while posters here even developed their own cope for this with the "Trump lies like a used car salesman" bit, like shameless dishonesty was some kind of virtue (but also that we were supposed to ignore the fact that Trump makes your average politician look positively Washingtonesque).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
He's just slandering a large chunk of the country with laughably false disinformation in a breathtaking display of hypocrisy.
I'm not sure that's the hill the Trumpist movement wants to die on.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
Looks to be less cancellation and more just government censorship:
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr issued a threat Wednesday against ABC and Disney, suggesting he would take action over comments made by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel about the alleged Charlie Kirk assassin.
Pay fealty or be destroyed. Oh, sure, you might win the lawsuit, but can you really justify the risk? Far safer to join in the coalition of corruption than fight it. One of the more consistent patterns we've seen is that businesses fear retribution from the Trump administration far more than they did from the Biden admin (and rightly so).
The long march through the institutions has only just begun, and for the populist right base, it'll be a enjoyable hike indeed.
The ongoing problem for the right is that they have no one to replace their left-wing opponents. There can't be a long march through institutions, because after they fire all their hated enemies they're going to have to hire them back. The movement is creatively and intellectually bankrupt, as evidence by the remarkable collection of individuals they found to fill out the Trump administration. Hell, one of the biggest reasons why these institutions skew so left in the first place is that the American Right proactively retreated from them (unsurprisingly, when you build a culture that disdains artists and intellectuals while your opposition builds a culture that practically worships them, all the artists and intellectuals end up being on the other side).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
No conservatives signing a letter that includes a denouncement of the current leader of the conservatives doesn't tell you conservatives don't care about free speech
Not alone, no, though given that Donald Trump is consistently anti-free speech, you would think principled conservative defenders would be willing to speak out against him on that front. Combined with other factors, it's pretty suggestive that conservatives are not pro-free speech, just pro-conservative. In particular, they never extend the same sufferance or support they demand from others. You say the football has been yanked too many times, but there's no history of betrayed reciprocity here. Cancel Culture has always been a thing, but it didn't become a Thing until right-wingers started complaining about it.
And now FIRE is progressive!
I didn't say FIRE was progressive. One of the peculiar aspects of Free Speech discourse is that is primarily an intra-left debate between liberals and progressives, with the right contributing little beyond parroting liberal arguments and complaining that progressives are rude to them.
Greg Lukanioff, however, is openly and unambiguously a liberal, and more broadly, virtually every non-partisan civil liberties organization is staffed and supported by liberals. There's not really any conservative equivalent to FIRE or the EFF or ACLU.
but of the successful attempts the left clearly dominates.
If by 'clearly dominates' you mean a 50% vs 40% success rate, that would seem like an indictment of the theory of left-wing supremacy, given that this is supposed to be their home turf, where they enjoy material and institutional superiority.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
If you define leftism as forced economic redistribution
This is an unhelpfully broad definition. This would include things like the Inclosure Acts, which redistributed common land to private landowners, or Sulla's proscriptions, which redistributed assets from Sulla's enemies to his allies. I could go on, but seizing the assets of people you don't like and giving them to people you do is a pervasive element of political conflict. Identifying that as the distinguishing feature of leftism is confusing, not illuminating.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5d ago
I'm not sure I agree with that equivalency, but nevertheless: Louis CK wasn't fired (and, as with many cancelled individuals, couldn't be fired by the very nature of his work). He got in trouble for actions taken in the course of his professional career that were not even political, which led to people disassociating from him for a while. Bret Weinstein got in trouble for statements made in his capacity as an Evergreen State professor, and also wasn't fired (he resigned). Damore got in trouble for statements made in his capacity as a Google employee; whether or not they pertained to his regular duties does not strike me as particularly relevant (to illustrate: suppose Damore had made unambiguously fireable remarks to a fellow employee over his lunch break. The fact that this was outside of his normal duties is irrelevant). The argument in Damore's favor is not that Google had no basis to fire him over stuff not directly related to his job duties, but that he was punished for something that didn't warrant it.
However, as I said, I think this is an incredible narrow conceptualization of cancellation that doesn't match common usage, would exclude many instance that are generally considered to be central examples, and would capture all sorts of things that don't fit common understanding.
Like, hypothetical: someone makes a film disparaging MLK Jr (or whoever; it doesn't really matter). Outraged social media mobs lobby to have showings pulled and the director and producer blacklisted. Under your criteria, this would not be cancellation.
It is really interesting to see different Political Weirdo Forums' assessment of public mood re: the Current Moment. Because they're... all over the place.
has anyone else noticed this new “lawmaker” noun?
It picked up like a while ago as a catchall for elected officials (especially sub-Federal). It's suitably generic so you don't embarrass yourself by accidentally calling a county councilor a county boardmember, plus it sounds more impressive to quote a "lawmaker" instead of county board member from Tumbleweed County.
Where have these 'significant number of people' been in the last decade?
Providing basically all of the intellectual defense of free speech as a principle. Organization like FIRE, for instance, provide legal backing in First Amendment cases on a broad, non-ideological front despite being founded and run by liberals. The vast majority of signatories on the famous Harper's Letter are liberals or leftists. Few are conservative, and virtually none are associated with the populist Right that dominates the Republican establishment.
By contrast, right wing "free speech" defenders have mostly been massive hypocrites, e.g. Musk making a habit of suing critics or anti-BDS laws in Red states. Likewise, there are no real conservative equivalents to organizations like FIRE (or even the ACLU, despite its serious institutional decay) that make a point of standing up for free speech regardless of who the speaker is.
In the real world, it doesn't matter how highbrow and principled you are if you do nothing for them. If you sacrifice nothing for them. You're just a coward.
Can you be specific as to what you're expecting? If speaking out and providing legal support doesn't amount to anything, I'm not really sure what would count.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
I am not sure I follow. My comment was not meant to suggest these people deserved to be shitcanned; it was meant to provide well-known examples of people being cancelled for their actions. That in turn was meant to substantiate my point that Jiro's proposed definition of being cancelled would exclude many cases we'd intuitive consider to be central examples.
No. Not going into specifics, but mostly a mix of prominent tech firms and small startups. A lot of Indian co-workers, but no distinctive complaints.
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