Sunshine
7d ago
Money is the unit of caring. Societies that discount the interests of their big businesses actually run worse than the ones that let big money buy favorable legislation. History is chock full of governments who strangled their economies because they had contempt for the concept of commerce. If there's a billion-dollar opportunity that requires a friendly government, letting businesses pay a million dollars to make friends with the government can result in better outcomes.
Sunshine
10d ago
Andrews can believe she is good enough without necessarily believing she's better than literally every other man in the country.
She also doesn't need to, nor does she need to (as the previous poster) prove "That there is no man at all in the entire USA better qualified or better at the job than she is".
To have perfect meritocracy, she obviously just needs to prove that she's better than the best man in the country who applied for a job in her field and was turned down. She doesn't need to be better than Bari Weiss or Ezra Klein, she just needs to be better than the marginal next-best candidate.
There is room in America for more than one journalist.
Sunshine
10d ago
You can't be both "don't drink" and "I am a drunk."
Yes you can. What could possibly be wrong with that? It is clearly possible for one person to believe both statements simultaneously - for instance, an alcoholic who got drunk and now regrets it. Why would you forbid people to say things that they believe, or to provide good advice based on their life experiences?
Sunshine
11d ago
I know. I described just such an event. See: Emperor hacked to pieces by Praetorian Guard.
Sunshine
11d ago
I agree, but I want to present a different way of looking at it: Men and women are offended by different things.
Within the typically-male psyche, there is a revulsion against certain behaviours instilled by evolution. Someone downthread described how male animals (especially mammals) use competition rituals to battle for dominance without being injured. The idea is to work out the dominance hierarchy without wasting too much energy on infighting, and to emerge from that with a strong coalition that can be used to fight the next battle. Men feel revulsion at anything that deviates from this.
Key point: There is always a next battle. The need to balance victory in this battle with continued strength afterward. This gives rise to a beautiful tapestry of complex psychology. Forgiveness becomes a martial virtue, because sometimes the winning strategy is to ally with A against B and then B against A. Loyalty becomes a complex and many-faceted thing; loyalty to a state or a crown can adapt to the needs of a situation more effectively than loyalty to a person; for example, a patriotic Frenchman like Talleyrand managed to be loyal to the Bourbons, the Revolution, Emperor Napoleon, and then the restored Bourbons again in quick succession. Battles become more perfunctory and symbolic the more sophisticated the combatants become, as opposing sides are increasingly able to predict the outcome of a fight and skip to the end without killing each other.
Male psychology is the product of a literal evolutionary arms race, one that has given rise both to warfare and to most of politics.
A few images to think about: In medieval Italy, armies of mercenaries fought wars of maneuver on behalf of city-states. Opposing armies would compete for strategic positions and supply lines, then whichever side lost would often give up without fighting - both sides being mercenaries, they took a pragmatic view of war. In ancient Rome, Julius Caesar made a show of forgiving politicians who sided against him in the civil wars, which is a big part of how he was able to take so much power so quickly after winning just a few battles (but then the enemies he forgave assassinated him).
Men have a culturally mediated disgust reaction against dishonorable conduct. Executing prisoners, attacks that violate the local rules of warfare, assassinations, these things are regarded as unacceptable. They happen, of course (there would be no evolved reaction if they didn't) but note the common result: Instant and massive loss of legitimacy. I recall a certain Roman emperor who schemed against his brother; when the Praetorians found out what their leader was up to, they rose up and hacked him to pieces.
If your leader gets caught breaking the rules you and your fellow men fly into a rage and murder him on the spot. Think about how intense of a psychological reaction that is.
Women aren't programmed to work like that, generally. Female chimpanzees are much less active in coalitions to overthrow the alpha chimp, and likewise with female humans. They don't have as much of an evolutionary benefit in terms of number of expected offspring from rising up and overthrowing their leaders. They don't have a longstanding need to mediate dominance contests because they don't have the same need to fight an internal war followed in quick succession by a bunch of external wars. A male coalition that weakens itself by infighting will be displaced by rival males; a female coalition that weakens itself by infighting has no such risk because female coalitions don't invade and displace each other. The whole reason to evolve that pattern of behaviour doesn't exist.
The coming war against outsiders is equivalent to the mission of the organization. A male coalition battles for dominance and then organizes itself and conquers new territory. A female coalition battles for dominance within the existing territory and never tries to expand. In a business or a government where the 'conquest' means capturing market share or winning new voters, that kind of stagnation is poisonous.
Sunshine
12d ago
Hello brand new account that was created yesterday. I see that every comment you've ever made has either been defending magicalkittycat, replying to magicalkittycat, or attacking their detractors. I find it interesting that you would say the quality of this debate forum has "dropped" since you've only been here for about twenty four hours. What baseline has it dropped relative to?
Either you're a longstanding lurker who decided to create an account for the sole purpose of defending magicalkittycat's honor, or...
Well, it's hard not to connect these chains of logic with a certain someone has been accused of using alts and/or being an alt.
Sunshine
14d ago
Do you think that the passage of time just turns this real violence into meaningless "symbolic" violence when the impacts are still tangible and visible?
Yes. If nobody alive has any engagement with a subject beyond historical knowledge, then by definition it has been reduced to merely symbolic violence. Literally, the violence exists only in the symbols of our history textbooks. It no longer exists in real life.
Symbols do not justify murder, next question.
On that note, given that the primary justification for the creation of Israel was the holocaust, we may as well shut the entire enterprise down. At some point you have to let history go, after all.
Well, first of all, no it wasn't. Secondly, it wouldn't matter if it was.
The primary justification for the establishment of Mexico was to enslave the natives to mine gold and silver to send back to Spain. Now that they've stopped doing that, should they all just get on a boat and sail to Spain? No, of course not, that would be insane.
The justification for the ongoing existence of a nation is to provide a home for the people who live there, not whatever historic reason they had for establishing it however many hundreds of years ago.
This is the thing you're not getting: Revanchism is actually really stupid. The only things that matter are the things that are happening right now to people who are actually alive right now. That's why nobody in power takes the Palestinian cause seriously. Bitching and complaining about things that happened before you were born is not a sound basis for setting geopolitical policies that will affect the lives of millions or billions of people.
No, you just decide to arbitrarily pick the starting point of the conflict, so you can point to a reprisal and claim that it is an offensive strike.
No, you see, this is the crux of the issue: It doesn't matter whether it's a reprisal or an 'offensive strike'. Those are the same thing. Attacking innocent people to get revenge on their ethnic group is evil. Yes, really.
I categorically deny the right of anyone to commit murder to get revenge for things that happened before they were born. No exceptions. That is the line I'm drawing in the sand.
Sunshine
15d ago
Deir Yassin massacre
April 9, 1948
Someone born during the Deir Yassin massacre would be in their late seventies today. You are literally talking about acts committed by people who have since died of old age.
I actually don't think it's reasonable to retaliate against an entire ethnic group for acts committed multiple generations ago. I think there's a statute of limitations on these things. For instance, I wouldn't consider it justified for England to invade France to take revenge for 1066. At some point you have to let history go.
I see that we are again entering a disagreement about what it means to 'attack' someone. You seem to take a symbolic view. When you say the Israelis attacked the Palestinians, you mean some Israelis attacked some Palestinians roughly eighty years ago. There is a symbolic crime and a symbolic guilt born by the innocent people who had the symbolic misfortune to be born in the wrong place at the wrong time. Therefore, it is okay to murder them. Symbols are taken to justify real violence.
I take a more practical view. When I say the Palestinians attacked the Israelis, I mean the current regime in Gaza attacked Israel last year. They are still alive, and they are still in power.
The Palestinians were there before Israel was, and we can even directly identify many of the violent terror groups that helped establish Israel like Irgun and Lehi. The Palestinians didn't start this fight any more than the Jews of Nazi Germany started the holocaust.
When I use the word 'attacked,' I do not refer to the crime of existing while being Jewish. I use the word 'attacked' to refer to that thing where you use guns and bombs to kill people.
If the Palestinians were there first (debatable), so what? The German gentiles were undeniably 'there' before the German Jews. Does that mean the German Jews were 'attacking' the German gentiles with their presence? No. By logical extension, the Israelis are not 'attacking' the Palestinians by existing in their vicinity.
On the other hand, last year the Palestinians launched a literal attack on Israel. Lots of people died. It started a war. Ring any bells?
Mass extermination of unwanted brown people to give your society a bit more lebensraum is the kind of gross crime against humanity that gets your nation completely ostracised from the rest of the world. Not only that, the actual human infrastructure of the state would likely have trouble - look at growing number of IDF suicides and imagine how much worse it would be if they were explicitly committing another holocaust without any figleaves. Just nuking them would engender such a hostile reaction from the rest of the world that Israel would simply cease to be a viable state.
Then why are you so concerned that the Palestinians will be 'wiped out'? Since you've just explained why it can't possibly happen regardless of what the Palestinians do, you yourself prove that Palestinian 'resistance' is just a waste of lives. By your own argument there will be no 'wiping out' so what are we even talking about?
In the absence of violent resistance Israel would simply do to Gaza what they are doing with the west bank and take over the land piecemeal. As I've said, they believe that a lack of resistance means they will simply be wiped out and dispossessed - and I think they're right to believe that. I do agree that this conflict is a meaningless source of misery and the world would be a better place if it didn't happen at all, but sadly I'm not in charge of the region.
wiped out and dispossessed
I see. When you say 'wiped out' you don't actually mean anyone will be killed. It's a kind of nonviolent 'wiping out' where people lose landownership in a dispute over whose ancestors stole what from whom, but continue living their lives without being bodily harmed in any way. This is one of those irregular verbs, you know, I'm buying a house, you're dispossessing the native population, he's committing genocide.
So in order to prevent the Jews from metaphorically 'wiping them out' (by existing nearby), the Palestinians must heroically resist (by massacring the Jews). I do not like this abuse of language.
Sunshine
15d ago
The only explanations I can come to are that it was the Russians
I can think of another explanation: Explosives factories sometimes blow up and Fox News doesn't cover everything. Industrial accidents aren't exactly sensational reporting, and they probably take a lot more legwork than reporting on Trump's tweets or whatever. I'm not surprised that not every media outlet is covering it.
Sunshine
15d ago
Would you apply this argument to the jews of Nazi germany? Was it their fault for attacking the big meanie and then having a sook and cry about how badly it went for them? Why did they pick a fight they couldn't win?
The Jews of Nazi Germany didn't attack the Germans. That's literally an antisemetic conspiracy theory invented by the Nazis to demonize the Jews, and I wasn't aware that anyone believed it except a few diehard neo-Nazis. Conventional history tells us that it was actually the Nazis who attacked the Jews.
If the Palestinians stop fighting they believe they will be wiped out, which is supported by a vast number of statements from members of the Israeli government. What alternative are you leaving besides a final solution?
If they believe that then they're simply wrong. If the Israelis wanted to wipe out the Palestinians they could have done it at any time. Ergo, they don't want to. Given that recent history suggests that every Palestinian attack on Israel is followed by an immediate upswing in Palestinian deaths, it is not clear to me how this course of action prevents the Israelis from wiping them out.
If wiping out is on the table, it seems clear to me that starting pointless wars over and over again for decades can only increase its likelihood. If it isn't on the table then the pointless wars are just that - a meaningless outpouring of useless hatred that accomplishes nothing and causes only misery.
They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Having better weapons makes you the bad guy? When the Americans fought Nazi Germany, the Americans had way more bombs and planes than the Germans did. Does that mean the Americans were big meanies, or does it mean the Nazis shouldn't have picked a fight they couldn't win?
Palestine supporters do this all the time, and it's never persuasive. Israel fires more bombs, Israel kills more people, as if these are bad things to do in a war. Winning is evil? When they get attacked, the Israelis should chivalrously lower their military power to be equal to their opponents? It strikes as sour grapes; 'They're only winning because they have more weapons!' See: don't pick fights you can't win.
Every time someone says that the Israelis have killed more Palestinians than vice-versa or set off more bombs or whatever, my only thought it that they clearly haven't done enough because the Palestinians haven't stopped fighting yet! How can you set the bar for too many casualties in a war below the number required to win? You can hardly ask the Israelis to stop fighting and wait for the Palestinians to catch up in the kill count.
Sunshine
19d ago
If the defense industries can't function without Chinese support then they're useless and should be destroyed. What were they planning to do if war with China ever came?
Sunshine
19d ago
I had the same thought when I read that first line. How can the 'nuclear option' for a nuclear power be anything except using nuclear weapons? Surely that's the nuclear option.
Sunshine
22d ago
And why are those actions morally illegitimate? What is the source of moral illegitimacy in those two cases?
Sunshine
22d ago
The word 'men' conveys inherent dignity, and even saying the words 'white men' has become right-coded. That's why when the Harris campaign decided to make a Zoom call for every race/gender combo, the names were Black Men for Harris but White Dudes for Harris. Calling the white dudes 'men' would be too respectful in the mind of the politics-brained consultant who came up with it. They flinch back from it, even subconsciously.
Some day I will write an essay on the psychological fuckedupedness that the Western left has towards men.
Sunshine
28d ago
Lying in applications for federal funding comes with significant institutional and personal penalties.
It never has before, why would it start now? Any punishment that isn't felt keenly before Trump leaves office in 3 years is no punishment at all. I don't think that's enough time for the court case and ten appeals that would follow any attempt to punish liars.
Sunshine
1mo ago
You are the one who asked. This is an answer to your question.
And what's the answer to the other question: "Was Joe Biden a bad president for not listening to you on Medicare For All/Free Palestine/Abolish Prisons/Annex Cuba?"
Step 1: Ask question.
Step 2: Get answer.
Step 3: Blue screen.
Step 4: Accuse interlocutor of writing fanfiction?
Sunshine
1mo ago
But in the end she did... nothing.
I think this sums it up. There are a lot of things she could have done, and if she had picked one of them and committed to it I think she'd have had a chance. But she didn't, so she didn't.
Sunshine
1mo ago
"Joe Biden was a great president, and we've worked together to achieve great things over the past four years. We delivered a great economy, we passed legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and Build Back Better that helped millions of Americans, and (<insert third thing here, I'm having trouble remembering what Biden did during his term>). I consider myself privileged to have been given four years to learn from one of the great statesmen of our time."
"But there are so many more things to do. As your nominee for President of the United States, I'm ready to build upon everything President Biden and I achieved together over the last four years. To that end, I am proud to introduce a new piece of legislation for consideration of Congress (or whatever you say when you do that), the Medicare for All Act, co-sponsored by my good friend Bernie Sanders. I believe that America is the greatest country in the world, and I believe that we can deliver healthcare to every single citizen of this great nation."
"It won't be easy. Trump and his Republicans are going to fight us on it every step of the way. That's why I need your help, America. I need you to come out on election day and give me the Democratic majority I need to get this bill through Congress. I need you to give me four more years! If you choose me to represent you as your president, I promise I will deliver healthcare for every - single - American!"
(Hold for applause from friendly L.A. or New York studio audience.)
Sunshine
1mo ago
she must across as kind, at least to her allies
Did Margaret Thatcher come across as kind? I think the traits a woman needs to overcome the gender barrier in politics are: tough without being bitchy, intelligent without being smug, passionate without being hysterical. It's a bit of a tightrope, but I think if you can manage those three you basically don't suffer any disadvantages for being female.
Sunshine
1mo ago
Eh? Do American voters really have no attention span, they forget about inflation that happened a couple years ago?
I don't know how well-supported this is (and it's obviously impossible to conduct double blind laboratory studies on election phenomena) but one of the things Dominic Cummings advocated for with the Brexit campaign was to save their money for a massive ad blitz in the week leading up to the vote. The logic is that the effect of an ad mostly wears off after a few days. You only need people to agree with you on the day of the election, so the best time to buy ads is right before.
They won, and AFAICT the British people really did support Brexit on election day and not a moment longer, so it's hard to argue with the results.
What bold policy slogan could she have used?
In this alternate universe she would have some kind of sincere belief to advocate for. Obama clearly believes in socialized medicine or he wouldn't have fought for Obamacare. Trump clearly believes in barriers that separate the nation from the outside world or he wouldn't be so consistently interested in walls and tariffs. Kamala Harris doesn't seem to actually believe in anything, and that's the problem.
I think it's a lot harder to be a charismatic leader if you don't actually believe in anything.
That being said: Just pick one! Pick a direction and start directing people! She was running for President, people must have been beating down her door to give her policy proposals. She was VP for four years! Did she not have a single idea in four years?
She can't escape the questions of "Why haven't you done this already?"
To be honest, I don't think that would stick to a VP who was trying to spread their wings and fly in a new direction. The answer to that question is obviously "Because I was the Vice President, not the President." Everyone watching that clip would know that's what the answer is. This isn't an obscure point of political minutia, everyone knows the VP isn't allowed to go behind the President's back like that. It's an empty gotcha and I doubt it would resonate.
If- and this is the sticking point- if she actually stood for something, if Harris had hit the floor day 1 advocating for Medicare for All in a clear departure from Biden's policies, I think people would respect her for that. The problem is that she actually doesn't have any policy differences from Biden. My read on Kamala Harris is that she wanted to be President because she likes to be the top banana, not because there's something in particular she wants to do with the most powerful office in the world.
I didn't say they did. I said they exhibited an evolved primate behaviour that caused them to fly into a mass hysterical rage and commit regicide in response to perceived violations of the rules of their honor-based society. What part of that sounds like developing a moral compass?
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