Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
1d ago
The overt, propaganda use of a text can be significantly distinct from its artistic merits (eg: Triumph of the Will, which is both noisome NSDAP propaganda and beautifully shot)
Supah_Schmendrick
4d ago
(and this baseball fan finds T-20 cricket immense fun)
Supah_Schmendrick
4d ago
The climate is terrible, and pollution and crime are rampant there. The Central Valley - especially the southern bits - is a miserable place.
Supah_Schmendrick
4d ago
young non hispanic white men are no longer even a majority of young men if you look at gen alpha.
They're still a massive plurality, and might be a majority depending on how the "hispanic"-identification shakes out (if you're the product of a mixed family, are roughly the same color as Taylor Lautner and have the surname "Lopez" are you hispanic or white? It's not immediately obvious absent cultural signifiers which are malleable to self-ID and incentive).
Also, pointing to black women isn't the flex you think it is, because they wield massive political power in the Democratic party, which very much has a puncher's chance of winning any given elections despite being a dysfunctional krazy-glue ethnic spoils coalition. Even gen alpha white men are a much larger and higher-earning-potential demographic.
Supah_Schmendrick
4d ago
Except for the fact that white young men are now by far the strongest GOP demographic.
Supah_Schmendrick
5d ago
why the distinction?
Madison in Federalist No. 45 wrote that "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."
The Tenth Amendment explicitly states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Of course, all this assumes that people will be most involved in their localities and states, with only sporadic contact with national-level politics. That theory didn't really survive contact with modern communication and transportation technologies.
Supah_Schmendrick
5d ago
All you have to do is to make it effectively impossible to get a bank account, phone number, get paid and other necessities without having an ID number and then freeze those functions for people who have are illegally in the country and they'll end up largely deporting themselves.
You're vastly underestimating the scale of Social Security Number (the closest the U.S. has to a "national ID number") fraud and the difficulties of enforcing it.
Supah_Schmendrick
8d ago
Yes, this has been a traditionalist/progressive vs. liberals tension for a long, long time. Traditionalists argue that good behavior and virtue (i.e. cultural aesthetics) are terminal values, liberals argue the only terminal value are results, and the world turns.
Interestingly, if you look at other domains, the sides reverse. Liberals/Progressives attack the Trump administration on the grounds that they are not displaying the proper "good behavior and virtue" (i.e. "subverting our democracy," "norms", "rule of law", etc.) where Trumpist-rightists are arguing that, e.g. in the recent immigration kerfuffles, "the only terminal value [is] results" such that any district court which purports to order Tren de Aragua gangmembers brought back into the country after their deportation flight had already left US airspace cannot be legitimate on a fundamental level.
Even on family-planning issues, there's a similar dynamic between a progressive left that views upholding an ideal of women's role in society as the primary goal (virtue primacy), whereas the natalist right points at crashing TFR and marriage rates (material primacy).
Supah_Schmendrick
8d ago
Anyway, sliding all the way down the slope, unless Trump is flying the plane, deportations until the executive branch are illegal
Under normal circumstances, I would expect this statute to cover it:
Title 3 USC §301. General authorization to delegate functions; publication of delegations. The President of the United States is authorized to designate and empower the head of any department or agency in the executive branch, or any official thereof who is required to be appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to perform without approval, ratification, or other action by the President (1) any function which is vested in the President by law, or (2) any function which such officer is required or authorized by law to perform only with or subject to the approval, ratification, or other action of the President: Provided, That nothing contained herein shall relieve the President of his responsibility in office for the acts of any such head or other official designated by him to perform such functions. Such designation and authorization shall be in writing, shall be published in the Federal Register, shall be subject to such terms, conditions, and limitations as the President may deem advisable, and shall be revocable at any time by the President in whole or in part.
However if the President isn't compos mentis, there's a question whether he's able to functionally delegate those powers unless he had something previously set up, either via another statutory scheme which explicitly authorizes the devolution of powers to another executive officer, or via regulation and/or EO. And obviously here there's the factual question of whether the "senior staffer" who allegedly hijacked Biden's autopen" fills the relevant criteria of 301.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
The US could sort out the corruption and drugs,
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh citation very much needed.
Supah_Schmendrick
14d ago
Setting aside Benjamin's socialism, it seems to me that the important aspect of this definition is the dislocation of politics from materiality, and its fusion with aesthetics.
What is Trump's focus on curtailing immigration if not extremely material?
There's pro-Palestinian protests and there's pro-Palestinian protests. I don't think there's much sympathy for the latter, however there would rightly be a huge outcry over targeting the former.
EDIT - the one guy named in the article you linked seems to have...uh...some spicy takes about October 7 and the proper solution to the Israel/Palestine question. Those takes in and of themselves are obviously not grounds for deportation (although given what he teaches - "a first-year Africana Studies writing seminar called 'What is Blackness? Race and Processes of Racialization'" - I can't imagine we'd be losing that much of real merit - or anything that you in particular would particularly like having in our country).
However, one of the protests he was involved with allegedly involved a mob forcing their way inside a hotel where a career fair including Boeing and L3Harris was being held (those companies make weapons which Israel uses, which apparently makes them persona non grata), and making the event impossible to continue through the use of "bullhorns, cymbals, pots, and pans" and chanting. He also appears to have been a ringleader in Cornell's SJP encampment. Regardless of the cause, it's reasonable for a college to suspend someone over that kind of disruptive behavior which is sufficient to cause loss of an F-1 visa, apparently. The guy knew the terms of his immigration status, and still thought that playing radical was more important. FAFO.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
his behavior in the Zelensky meeting and in general on social media have been the opposite at least in my perception, it seems to maximize for heat vs light in the real world.
The problem was that Zelensky was using that meeting for heat as well, grandstanding to the press and dragging the subject away from the actual purpose of the meeting, which was signing the minerals deal that his own government suggested as a backdoor tripwire security guarantee. Zelensky has a habit of double-dipping like this; Biden also allegedly yelled at Zelensky for being an ingrate, just like Trump and Vance, when, on a call to discuss an aid package Biden had just secured for Ukraine, Zelensky immediately launched into a spiel about all the additional things he needed and wasn't getting from the U.S.
Supah_Schmendrick
15d ago
It's a lot harder to sympathize with people as just another political advocacy organization when the thing they're advocating for is an islamist terror group, which is one of the closest things we have these days to out-and-out hostis humani generis.
And to be clear, that would be as true for people waiving Boko Haram or Janjaweed flags as Hamas or Hizbullah.
The anti-zionists would have a much easier row to hoe if the palestinian oppostion were still secularist/leftist.
Supah_Schmendrick
16d ago
Oh, that's deeply unfortunate.
Supah_Schmendrick
17d ago
Isn't that "rein" with no "g"?
Supah_Schmendrick
17d ago
Fair enough. To be clear, I didn't ask the question rhetorically or as a "gotcha." I'm not even sure there is a single "correct" response there.
Supah_Schmendrick
18d ago
No, just actively supplying the harmful chemicals/drugs.
Supah_Schmendrick
18d ago
The US until recently occupied Afghanistan flooding Russia with heroin
China does this with fentanyl and precursor chemicals in Mexico. Does this give us a casus belli against the Chinese?
Supah_Schmendrick
18d ago
How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else?
I'm not sure about exact numbers. But sending weapons or monetary support is reasonable. (not doing these things is also reasonable - we don't, and shouldn't fund every conflict around the globe). Putting US soldiers/sailors/airmen in direct combat with the Russians seems like a bad idea which we should avoid.
What is the end-state your policy is aiming for? A ceasefire? Deter subsequent Russian invasion? Restoration of Ukraine's original borders? The Russian army destroyed? Putin deposed? Russia broken up? Something else?
I wouldn't say no if Putin fell; his government is rather odious. But I don't think that should be our goal because we don't have a reasonable way of accomplishing it without incurring disproportionate risk.
The more reasonable goal would be empowering the Ukranians to resist as long as they want to resist; even though the Ukranians haven't covered themselves with glory in the way they've handled e.g. the Donbass, Russia is the overall aggressor here, both in general (trying to force the Ukranians into their sphere of influence) and in specific (the "special military operation"). As we want to discourage military aggression for territorial expansion or political subjugation, enabling the attacked party to resist more effectively would seem to generally be a good (though not mandatory) thing.
Is there an end-state or a potential event in the war that you think would falsify your understanding of the war, and convince you that providing aid was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
I would need some evidence that Ukraine was generally the aggressor in this matter, e.g., the "special military operation" launched by Russian in February 2022 was either a false flag, or that the Ukranian government had been substantially harming Russia in some way sufficient to constitute a real casus belli prior to that.
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
Both republican and democratic defense secretaries are speaking out about Trump firing senior military leaders in an unprecedented fashion.
Even if we grant everything else in your comment, what does this have to do with "democracy?" Is it undemocratic for a civilian head of state to exercise control over the leadership of the professional military?
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
"Social trust" isn't just between a population and its rulers, but also between the members of the polity themselves. Perception of crime, "thickness" of social bonds, community engagement, etc. That also has been going down thanks partially to increasing diversity but also thanks to the internet which has everyone staring at a screen instead of each other and staying in instead of going out.
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
He's a Willie Brown disciple? I thought he was a Getty guy...
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
Newsom is thoroughly integrated into the Democratic apparatus: he's not someone who has built a brand on any kind of independence or heterodox thinking.
He did in fact originally build his brand on being a cutting-edge progressive on woke-ish issues; he was the mayor of San Francisco who started issuing same-sex marriage licenses in open violation of then-applicable California statute as a way of ginning up a test case.
They've been shouting "death to Israel" for a while too; elite colleges being anti-zionist and "anti-colonial" isn't some new development.
Moreover, the anti-white attitudes haven't recently coalesced into the types of encampments, campus takeovers, and outright militancy that the recent Gaza demonstrations have. Do you really think that the folks in the Trump administration would have refused to go after Columbia if it had "just" been anti-white or anti-Christian encampments and campus takeovers? They're pulling funding from schools for permitting single transgender athletes to compete outside their biological sex; I'm pretty sure they'd jump at the chance to take any plausible reason to strike at the universities.
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