Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
We did get a middling detective story out of it, at least.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
The suggestion here is that as sexuality (outside the context of reproduction in a heterosexual marriage) becomes more socially acceptable, it begins to lose the creative and rebellious aspects that made it so distinctive in the first place.
This isn't right at all. The issue for Marcuse isn't the acceptability of previously-taboo sexual preferences in the first place; its the way in which that acceptability is generated. If the acceptability comes from a critical mass of people exercising their own independent choices, for Marcuse it's a good thing: "[r]eactivation of polymorphous and narcissistic sexuality ceases to be a threat to culture and can itself lead to culture-building if the organism exists not as an instrument of alienated labor, but as a subject of self realization." Eros & Civilization, ppg. 191-192. What Marcuse is criticizing is pseudo-sexual liberation handed out by a "culture industry" just as controlled by the bourgeois and alienated from the great mass of the population as the means of industrial production. It's also tied up in Marcuse's (and the rest of his fellow Frankfurt School colleagues') instinctive revulsion at the American culture they got plonked down in, which they viewed as horrifyingly common and unrefined compared to their highly-individuated and sensitive central-European lives got ripped away from them.
As Horkheimer wrote in his letter on Freud, "the greater a work, the more it is rooted in the concrete historical situation." As refugees from Central Europe, who had been tutored in all its rich cultural heritage had to offer, they were inevitably ill-at-ease in the less-rarified atmosphere of their new American environment. On occasion, this alienation meant unresponsiveness to the spontaneous elements in American popular culture - Adorno's unremitting hostility to jazz, for example, suffers from a certain a priori insensitivity. But at the same time, it provided an invaluable critical distance from the culture, which prevented the Institut from equating mass culture with true democracy. The category of "repressive desublimation" which Marcuse was to develop years later to characterize the pseudo-liberation of modern culture, existed in embryo in the personal experiences of the Institut's members. Having known an alternative cultural milieu, they were unwilling to trade in its promesse de bonheur for the debased coin of the culture industry.
As Adorno later explained, the phrase "culture industry" was chosen by Horkheimer and himself in Dialectic of the Enlightenment because of its antipopulist connotations. The Frankfurt School disliked mass culture, not because it was democratic, but precisely because it was not. The notion of "popular" culture, they argued, was ideological; the culture industry administered a nonspontaneous, reified, phony culture rather than the real thing. The old distinction between high and low culture had all but vanished in the "stylized barbarism" of mass culture. . . .
Increasingly, the Institut came to feel that the culture industry enslaved men in far more subtle and effective ways than the crude methods of domination practiced in earlier eras. The false harmony of particular and universal was in some ways more sinister than the clash of social contradictions, because of its ability to lull its victims into passive acceptance. With the decline of mediating forces in the society - here the Institut drew on its earlier studies of the lessening role of the family [!] in the process of socialization - the chances for the development of negative resistance were seriously diminished. Moreover, the spread of technology served the culture industry in America just as it helped tighten the control of authoritarian governments in Europe. Radio, Horkheimer and Adorno argued, was to fascism as the printing press had been to the Reformation.
~Jay, Martin: The Dialectical Imagination, pg. 215-217.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
they don’t have the right to demand a blank cheque from the rest of the world.
A blank check would entail allowing Israel to actually do what the rest of the arab world - including the palestinians - did and continue to do: pushing all of their enemy's co-ethnics out of all territory they can martially claim. What they're doing now is significantly more humane than what the Saudis did to the Yemenis (and lost), or what the anti-Assad rebels backed by the west did to the Yazidis, or what NATO-ally Turkey does to Kurds, etc., etc., etc. Much of the criticism of Israel is one giant isolated demand for rigor.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
There is a 0% chance of Jews subject to actual antisemitism not getting asylum in a nice western country without Israel. This has been true for Israel’s entire existence,
That's a convenient elision of the fact that the Jews trying to escape the Nazis were in large part turned away from those nice western countries. Even years after the end of WWII, hundreds of thousands of European jews were still sitting in Displaced Persons camps guarded by allied soldiers because no "nice western country" would take them, and were only able to leave after the establishment of Israel as a national homeland for jews (those "nice western countries" still weren't willing to take them).
And I wouldn't count on most of Europe being too safe for jews in the future. France is already markedly unsafe, and as Britain islamicizes over the next couple decades anti-jewish sentiment is likely to increase.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
To the feds: I know it's going to hurt your pride but tuck your tail between your legs and ask the local churches how you can help and then do what they say.
Amen. This is what democracy actually looks like; life-and-death power being exercised by common people for their own benefit and that of their neighbors
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
If we can send emergency money to Lebanon, Ukraine, Israel and everybody else, then we should have no problem doing the same in The US.
But it's not as simple as sending money - that's my whole point. Money alone won't haul a tree out of a roadway or repair a washed out bridge; you need road crews and equipment for that. Money will help you acquire those things, but unless you already know where to go to put them together and how to get them quickly to the places where they're needed, you're SOL. FEMA don't appear to be logistically-competent to put together that kind of a response, so they're left waving money around in the air with nothing to show for it.
We're sending aircraft carriers to the region to assist Israel in their ridiculous war, redirect those aircraft carriers to Myrtle Beach, and make the pilots fly over ENC with thermal cameras pointed at the ground.
It's at least two weeks from the eastern Mediterranean back to the U.S., and longer from the Persian Gulf or Red Sea - even if we ordered them back as soon as the hurricane hit, they'd still be at sea.
Put a drone in the air and look for people. Send helicopters.
This is a more valid complaint; I'm not sure what, if anything, holding up the 82nd Airborne and other rapid reaction forces on domestic bases from deploying. But that's a matter of will and organization (notably we have a President who is clearly suffering from advanced dementia, works like two hours per day, and spends the rest on the beach, while his VP is notably vacuous, scared of her own shadow, and busy campaigning. Not promising) not funding.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Yeah, but DeSantis appears to have the FL state disaster relief organizations running well, so while the destruction may be significant, I'd bet on the response being significantly faster/more effective than normal as well.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
mine are that we seem to have unlimited money for Ukraine or Israel (or anybody else, actually!) but when it's our own citizenry, then everything is somehow jammed up.
TBH if it were as simple as just cutting a check I think the Feds would be quite effective. But as discussed last week, it's not that simple; they actually have to go into a chaotic and desperate situation in very rough terrain and try to coordinate between thousands of local folks, out-of-state good samaritans, etc., and they have to do it with unionized and over-bureaucratized government workers who suffer very little personal blowback for failure.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Then why "Put a chick in it and make it gay" and some other related tropes have such big predictive power about what we will see in the sequel/reboot?
Because Hollywood is subject to epistemic closure and a lot of moralistic rent-seeking.
And predictive power in the box office bombing.
Because predicting what movies will make money is hard even under optimal circumstances, and right now the entertainment market is both fragmented and oversaturated thanks to the internet, and Hollywood's epistemic bubble is out of joint with major audiences.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
am pretty sure there is no studio that will deliberately put out a money-loser because all the money-men are on board with a "punish incels" program.
Knowing what we do about how good people are at rationalizing, wouldn't it be fairly trivial for studio execs to talk themselves (or let themselves be talked by motivated outsiders) into a perspective that deconstructing "incels" like this would, in fact, be a money-maker?
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Given that FEMA's major contributions at this point appear to be (1) preventing competent private citizens from actually achieving things, and (2) promising to distribute too-small-to-really-help checks at some point in the future (which, realistically, is going to get defrauded like crazy just like the CovidBux did), why are you assuming that dumping more money into the FEMA moneypit would have positive results?
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Importation of unwatered wine by various Gaullish tribes is noted to have produced what appears to be a wide-spread plague of alcoholism. The price of wine rose so high that in addition to paying vast sums of precious metals to the merchants, the Gauls were willing to enslave their own and trade them for the stuff (who were promptly shipped to Roman vineyards and put to work making more wine grapes to be sent to Gaul). I added in a quote from Diodorus Siculus attesting to this to my post above.
Yes, there is a line where prohibition makes sense, but I don't think any human society comes close to crossing that line when it comes to alcohol.
The following winter (this was the year in which Cn. Pompey and M. Crassus were consuls [55 B.C.]), those Germans [called] the Usipetes, and likewise the Tenchtheri, with a great number of men, crossed the Rhine , not far from the place at which that river discharges itself into the sea. The motive for crossing [that river] was, that having been for several years harassed by the Suevi, they were constantly engaged in war, and hindered from the pursuits of agriculture. The nation of the Suevi is by far the largest and the most warlike nation of all the Germans. They are said to possess a hundred cantons, from each of which they yearly send from their territories for the purpose of war a thousand armed men: the others who remain at home, maintain [both] themselves and those-engaged in the expedition. The latter again, in their turn, are in arms the year after: the former remain at home. Thus neither husbandry, nor the art and practice of war are neglected. But among them there exists no private and separate land; nor are they permitted to remain more than one year in one place for the purpose of residence. They do not live much on corn, but subsist for the most part on milk and flesh, and are much [engaged] in hunting; which circumstance must, by the nature of their food, and by their daily exercise and the freedom of their life (for having from boyhood been accustomed to no employment, or discipline, they do nothing at all contrary to their inclination), both promote their strength and render them men of vast stature of body. And to such a habit have they brought themselves, that even in the coldest parts they wear no clothing whatever except skins, by reason of the scantiness of which, a great portion of their body is bare, and besides they bathe in open rivers.
Merchants have access to them rather that they may have persons to whom they may sell those things which they have taken in war, than because they need any commodity to be imported to them. Moreover, even as to laboring cattle, in which the Gauls take the greatest pleasure, and which they procure at a great price, the Germans do not employ such as are imported, but those poor and ill-shaped animals, which belong to their country; these, however, they render capable of the greatest labor by daily exercise. In cavalry actions they frequently leap from their horses and fight on foot; and train their horses to stand still in the very spot on which they leave them, to which they retreat with great activity when there is occasion; nor, according to their practice, is any thing regarded as more unseemly, or more unmanly, than to use housings. Accordingly, they have the courage, though they be themselves but few, to advance against any number whatever of horse mounted with housings. They on no account permit wine to be imported to them, because they consider that men degenerate in their powers of enduring fatigue, and are rendered effeminate by that commodity.
C. Julius Caesar. Caesar's Gallic War. Translator. W. A. McDevitte. Translator. W. S. Bohn. 1st Edition. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1869. Harper's New Classical Library. Hirt-Gal 4.1-2.
The Gauls are exceedingly addicted to the use of wine and fill themselves with the wine which is brought into their country by merchants, drinking it unmixed, and since they partake of this drink without moderation by reason of their craving for it, when they are drunken they fall into a stupor or a state of madness. Consequently many of the Italian traders, induced by the love of money which characterizes them, believe that the love of wine of these Gauls is their own godsend. For these transport the wine on the navigable rivers by means of boats and through the level plain on wagons, and receive for it an incredible price; for in exchange for a jar of wine they receive a slave, getting a servant in return for the drink.
Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History. Book V, Part 25.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I don't know; it would be interesting to look into!
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Reducing the speed limit on all roads to 25mph will reliably reduce traffic deaths
It really depends on which roads you're talking about, and who's using them. Reducing the speed limit to 25 on the DC beltway at rush hour won't do anything because no-one's going 25 to begin with. And reducing the speed limit to 25 in rural Mauretania won't do anything because no-one has a car anyway.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
There are no gangs . . . associated with drugs.
I thought the Yakuza were pretty involved in the drugs trade.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I'm not a huge fan of alcohol prohibition, personally, but I wonder if that is, to some extent, a luxury believe of mine.
TBH the devil will be in the details of the baseline murder level (if there's already rampant organized crime murders, the addition of alcohol to the black sector may not make much of a dent), how the distribution system of alcohol works in SA, the availability of smuggled alternatives, whether there's local traditions of brewing/distilling that people can fall back on for moonshine, the competence and reach of police, etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Temporary Protected Status and Asylum are different legal protections, with different criteria and processes. More generally, what does the term "illegal immigrant" refer to? I am under the impression it refers to people in the United States without a legal status that permits them to remain. That very literally does not include people with TPS (like the Haitians in Springfield have). if "illegal immigrant" includes even people who have legal permission to be here, what precisely are the boundaries? Are there green card holders who are "illegal immigrants?"
"TPS does not eliminate the effect of [an] unlawful entry.” (Sanchez v. Mayorkas (2021) 593 U.S. 409) It, similarly to DACA/DAPA, just temporarily waves a magic wand over otherwise-unlawfully-present migrants because the executive believes that extenuating circumstances make repatriation a bad idea at the moment. Worse, the Biden Administration is affirmatively facilitating the importation of well north of a million migrants who have no reasonable avenue to U.S. citizenship or even long-term work authorizations through the unprecedented expansion of a "parole" authority from the early 50's.
So technically yes, these people aren't "illegal immigrants" in the classic sense of the term; there are legal fig leaves justifying the government's failure to remove them. However, they certainly are not modal immigrants, i.e. people who intend to and are authorized to permanently remain in the U.S. and who in due course will become citizens. Instead, the law has shifted in order to find ways to putatively bless the importation of a millions-strong second-class-citizen helot class entirely dependent upon the whims of the state and their employers. Heckuva job. sarcastic clapping.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Because the ways in which they would be partisan, and their institutional incentives, would be different. Additionally, it is unclear the degree to which the incumbent effect would effect appointments from small legislative bodies, particularly the seventeen states whose legislatures turn over frequently due to term limit restrictions.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
What does the Overton window look like for dialing back Union power?
It's not just a binary of [less power<------------->more power]; it's also a question of scope and legal position in the economy. The U.S. under the Wagner Act has uncommonly-confrontational unions which are limited in scope and operating in a fairly inflexible legal framework. There are other models of unions - German unions are frequently mentioned here, but there are other examples as well - which don't work on this model at all, and have their own benefits and tradeoffs. I have no idea what the modal voter thinks about any of this (which I guess means this comment isn't all that responsive to the question you actually asked...oops :(...) but wanted to make the point that there's potentially room for policy entrepreneurship here.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I'm happy to report that in this case, at least, your assumption was at least partially incorrect. I can't speak to whether you would glean anything from the debate, as I don't know how much you know about either campaign's issue positions. However, it was the furthest thing from bullying both Vance and Walz were very civil throughout, and the debate was far more policy-heavy than the Presidential overcard a few weeks ago. Though they disagreed a lot, they did so politely, and also were ready to acknowledge areas of commonality. Both men saw an approximately 20 point increase in their favorability ratings post-debate, according to a CNN poll.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
asylum-seekers are expected to appear in court
The current backlog is, iirc, somewhere between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 cases. There are approximately 700 immigration ALJs ("Administrative Law Judges") working on these cases. A year ago, when the backlog was only half as large, the wait-time for a hearing was nearly four years. This translates to effectively open immigration so long as you know to mouth the right platitudes, because what is the point of deporting someone after a decade?
asylum-seekers are expected to . . . have a place to stay and in some cases are given ankle monitors to track their location.
Monitoring like this isn't all that common - as of March of this year, only 185,000 of the over 6,000,000 asylees were in this program, and possibly as few as 19,000 were given ankle monitors. And of course, being assigned to the program is no guarantee of compliance; people just cut the ankle monitors off, and the government cares more about retrieving the tech than it does tracking down the fugitive:
Many men with monitors “cut them loose and take off,” Maria said. “Better if I stay here and follow instructions to the end.”
Two former case workers with a GEO subsidiary, who spoke on condition that they not be named because they wanted to safeguard their chances for future government employment, said it was common for ankle monitors to be removed prematurely, and people who do so are rarely pursued. That’s consistent with the 2015 DHS inspector general’s report, which found that ICE lacked the resources to chase many who abscond.
“ICE has other priorities and most likely will not look for them,” said one of the former case workers, who worked in Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi. He said that if someone did flee, the priority was recovering their ankle monitor — not tracking down the person who abandoned it. “We would visit their house and knock on their door,” the former case worker said, “and at most try to look for the GPS unit.”
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Well, the VP is the President of the Senate. That role is not defined by the Constitution, and right now has been pretty much eclipsed by permanent Presidents Pro Tempore elected from within the Senate itself. However, it could theoretically be made much more powerful if the Senate's rules provided for such.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I would think the major argument against this would be that it massively increases the incentives for a deranged partisan to try and elevate their guy to the presidency through assassination. As such, I don't think repealing the 12th would be a good idea at all.
Bush was also being compared to the hyper-articulate Bill Clinton, and with memories of his father's media-aided gaffes smoothing the path as well.
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