Tanista
2mo ago
Why should they not fight back when getting occupied?
If the battle is to stop the occupation of Lebanese land, then Hezbollah can make some ploughshares now.
I obviously get that it's a GWOT hangup, it's the first response you get. I was being polite: I don't "get" it in the sense that I think there are significant disanalogies I often see the sorts of people making the above argument or your comparison simply ignore for unclear reeasons. If OP gave an alternative to violence, it'd explain why he thinks those don't apply.
Also, you switched the question. Nobody is really asking why Hezbollah is doing this.
The question was why Americans seem to behave with not only with absolute fatalism but also with condemnation that others don't take them at their word that, because they lost, nothing can be done. And why they think that's an option for a nation that can't just fly away and let any Afghans dumb enough to believe that they were now global citizens fall to their deaths or be beaten back into niqabs.
Why should I as a right winger support people who went to the middle east and try to bring wokeness and globalism to the third world?
Also not the question. These people, like OP, don't say they don't support it. They actively condemn. "Their bed to lie in" is totally different. Because that goes both ways.
Tanista
2mo ago
Maybe not just in the Arab world at this point.
If I was the sort of person inclined to try to convince people that "They" didn't get Epstein, shit like this would certainly make my job harder.
Tanista
2mo ago
I just don't understand the point of an operation like this except to provoke fear and a regional conflict. It's not going to cause Hezbollah to surrender or significantly disrupt their wartime capabilities at the northern front. It's just a terrorist attack
I see this attitude - you can't beat Muslim terrorists and militias and will only make it worse so don't even try- a lot amongst Americans (usually left leaning ones) and I don't get it.
What's the alternative? Full scale war? Some peace deal?
Tanista
2mo ago
Different incentive structure? Death guarantees heaven, victory guarantees glory, and heaven. Eventually.
Still too optimistic.
I don’t think that’s true, because this is something that absolutely hits the sensibilities of the PMC who have been basically able to ignore the problem because it’s not affecting them. Pets are in many parts of the PMC class a very sensitive point.
And race isn't? Arguably it's the sensitive point. If it was refugees from Scotland you might have a shot.
Your mistake here is assuming people are going to treat this as a neutral rational argument and not a plate of political sewage; they will react with visceral disgust. 2rafa's post about how people react in Britain to bringing up uncomfortable immigration facts is how it'll actually go:
It reminds me of real life conversations I’ve had with white English people, intelligent, center-right conservative types, about groups, identity, mass immigration, genetics, civilization, and they just shut down. I don’t mean that they shut down the debate, they’re usually polite enough and I wouldn’t discuss ‘edgy’ things with people I didn’t trust anyway, but they shut down internally. They display the exact pigheaded stubbornness that the Seattle video interviewees do, the strange combination of [post] Christian guilt complex and superiority complex and absolute, ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ type emphasis on propriety above policy
In the American case they'll simply refuse to even grant it unless it's absolutely unavoidable. And even then, you might get some of the "pigheaded 'what of it?' stubbornness" with the more left wing types.
There are some things people of good character and breeding just don't want to hear, let alone talk about in polite conversation. "Black savages are eating people's cats" (which is how it'll sound to them because, let's be real, that's what the DR is saying) is as close to the top of the list as I can imagine. You really need the 4K video. And something that hints it wasn't one deranged person.
Tanista
2mo ago
It's catchy, but dangerous.
That's actually optimistic. IMO it's just dangerous and the damage has already been done.
My take is that it doesn't matter if they pull up a case. It's already too late at this point.
Unless Trump went into the debate with multiple, verifiable (as in "caught in 4K video") cases it was always going to seem crazy and be easy to dismiss.
I think the idea that this is what gets John and Jane Q finally onboard is the sort of thing jaded internet people who've seen Democrats seemingly escape every single "immigrant t-bones/rapes/robs citizen" story thinks will finally land and cause the scales to fall from the eyes of the nation. It won't. It just looks weird to even bring up and people will recoil. If they don't Google it, see the first mainstream outlet and fuck off.
The truth is that Democrats in the real world (as opposed to online leftists who have a clear incentive to never cede an inch) aren't getting away with it; people are already dissatisfied with Democrats on immigration (which is why they tried to deal) and the polling indicates this is one of Trump's (or any Republican's) strongest issue and the one where he has the most credibility relative to his Democratic opponent.
It's just that Trump is unpopular enough (and has a flexible enough relationship with the truth) that it's still close. If it was anyone else you likely wouldn't need the dogs and cats thing in the first place. And it certainly would be more believable if Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley decided to sound the alarm.
a right wing media ecosystem catastrophizing Ring Of Fire disasters out of very real but currently statistically ineffective culture war pain points,
Yeah, the campaign feels very online. The Haitian thing is incredibly specific and the sort of thing you think lands when you follow too many DR accounts.
It feels like in 2016 Trump was saying things that people felt but couldn't hear on cable news or the debate stage. Now it feels like he's digging up things a lot of the people who wanted that would see as the theories of online weirdos.
Even this is not really true. The right wing gives police grace in the face of criticism because they, imo rightly, don't believe their opponents are acting in good faith.
The discussion is not really about whether there're bad cops, anymore than the education debate is about there're bad teachers (where I'm sure a right-winger can accuse progressives of refusing to grant this when it comes time to defend teacher's unions)
Why does the right say it, then?
They literally think the police are the bulwark between order and chaos, as the phrase implies?
I'm asking why we shouldn't take them at their word. If progressives say "teachers shape the future" enough that it becomes a cliche that their enemies use to describe their position do we need to wonder why progressives are still on the pro-teacher bandwagon despite obvious problems with the educational system? Do we need to wonder what progressives mean by this? Shit happens, no institution is perfect but if you believe in it you don't throw out the baby.
If I had to guess at a bog-standard conservative belief… The average Republican voter probably thinks policing is difficult and unpleasant but necessary for a social contract, that they’d prefer a heavy hand to an absent one, and that the consequences of policing mostly fall on criminals who asked for it.
More or less my model but, as with anything in America, sharpened by partisanship and the perception of bad faith on the other side.
I think you can get many conservatives on board for certain things like civil forfeiture being bad. Or even that something like what happened to George Floyd Sonya Massey was wrong. The problem is that it's an iterated game and it never stops at that cop.
Same reason progressives don't want to yield on teachers or public schools.
Tanista
2mo ago
I'm not sure exactly why people on right in the USA are till on the "thin blue line" team. Perhaps its because the median cop is more conservative. Perhaps its being more comfortable with authority and generally being more conscientious - leading to less altercations
You clearly know why the right says it's for police.
"Thin blue line" is not a content free slogan, it doesn't just mean "pro-cop". It says something about the right's view of society that explains why they're pro-cop. The right has told you why and you clearly heard them.
Is the right so insincere that their given explanation doesn't suffice and we need to speculate ?
That's already covered by the "shrill Karens are less capable than 192lb men" clause, no matter what absurd statements came out of the bird-watcher or Citibike situations.
Tanista
2mo ago
Practically speaking, Harris can't win, she can only lose.
Then why take the debate?
Tanista
2mo ago
Currently rereading R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series .
Got sucked into reading some passages across both trilogies since I haven't toughed it since the second trilogy wrapped up and finally decided to bite the bullet and just do the whole thing from The Darkness That Comes Before.
Can't be that hard. I managed it for a good four years of college.
Tanista
2mo ago
Do we have any blocker app even close to ColdTurkey in terms of flexibility and robustness for Android without jailbreaking?
I love how over the course of this forum's lifetime we went from criticizing conservatives for freaking out over "just a couple crazy kids on college campuses" to "being late to discover wokeness".
I think it's fairer to say that it took them this long to come up with any theory of the case or solution besides pointing and yelling about campuses being woke.
Everyone knew but conservative activists today like Rufo tend to take a very different tack than just complaining and hoping to win the cultural battle the way they perceived the wokes to have won it . Or appealing to "classical liberal" values and expecting the dam to hold.
That's now being done by left-wingers closer to the center like Haidt and Yascha Mounk. With a similar rate of success.
Tanista
2mo ago
Men are clearly getting something out of the voluntary side of dirty, violent, tough jobs.
Yes. Status and achievement. Which is useful for...acquiring and providing for a family. Men have these drives because sitting around is probably a less successful strategy towards those goals.
There's a reason one of the benefits of jihad is a bevy of heavenly hotties. There's a reason the "cliche" male action movie involves bravery and/or violence followed by being rewarded by a objectified love interest. There's a reason many societies become less stable and men engage in more risk-seeking behavior when the number of available partners are low.
Most people don't get whatever sort of grand satisfaction from their job elite feminists think all women are being denied by being reduced to mothers and partners. It's a toll to secure status, life and family. Men do certain difficult jobs because it's just a niche they in particular can slide into to pay their way.
Discussed a couple of days ago in the latest "why does Hollywood suck now" subthread and now finally here: GRRM goes into business for himself and criticizes House of the Dragon Season 2. Reddit link with text, in case archive goes down too
He also spoils the Season 3 outline, just to salt the Earth. The talk of the butterfly effect is telling me that this is a man that regrets biting his tongue after Lady Stoneheart & Aegon lol.
It was taken down immediately but I'm shocked he even published it, given his status as producer and how unprofessional it is to reveal season outlines for an ongoing show. HBO had long enough to take him into a darkly lit room and threaten his royalties.
Tanista
2mo ago
Less schooling. Schooling is a big driver of child cost so reducing it seems to make sense. Ideally you wouldn't just get rid of college but bite into secondary education as well. Most people should be, by age 16, out of school and into a paid apprenticeship that offers a career path (so, not tomato-picker-forever type things). I think our world is too complex for this to be possible, we wouldn't be able to decide who's worth putting the apprenticeship training into.
And yet we can somehow decide who needs to go into a 4 year degree and tens of thousands in debt when they're seventeen? We're already putting people in essentially extremely expensive and extended apprentice training!
Either we do have some way to tell, in which case we can use it. Or we don't and the huge amounts of support for a system that is not only costly but damaging to fertility (especially for people who don't then even end up with a useful degree, or a degree at all) becomes much more dubious.
Tanista
2mo ago
A society that respects elders has kids naturally and almost subconsciously slow down to meet their speed. My grandmother took care of me and managed it because she knew to let us run sometimes and we knew when to behave.
The bigger problem is that a society full of people who're expected to move for work can count on grandparents less.
That and there was a lot of slack picked up by extended family that Americans may just not be able to depend upon both because of the moving and the small family size.
Tanista
2mo ago
There were definitely dark veins and they could have tried to balance things (or just kept "classic" SG and then added things like Universe).
But I think they were just embarrassed, it's a status thing. Stargate was essentially the sort of show people mean when they say "I don't like fantasy besides Game of Thrones". BSG and the praise it got gave them an alternative/pretext.
A shame it wasn't actually as popular or well-regarded as Game of Thrones.
Tanista
2mo ago
We Stargate fans blame it for killing that franchise too, except it was more the network wanting a series that focused more on the melodrama BSG had in its later (arguably worst) seasons than the classic SG technobabble optimism.
Tanista
2mo ago
Reading those articles, they're pretty neutral - or ambivalent - towards those claims.
His office has issued repeated statements in recent weeks and days stressing the importance of maintaining control over the Philadelphi Corridor. “The need for sustained control of the Philadelphi Corridor is a security one… If Israel withdraws, the pressure to prevent its recapture will be enormous, putting our ability to return in significant doubt,” read the most recent one issued on Tuesday.
The remarks drew hostile responses from other ministers, as well as from Netanyahu, according to reports.
“If we give in to Hamas’s demands, like Gallant wants, we’ve lost the war,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was quoted saying.
However, the outlet claimed that Netanyahu also said he was willing to compromise in other areas aside from the Philadelphi Corridor, maintaining that a hostage deal with Hamas was still possible.
Both Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Foreign Minister Israel Katz reportedly accused Gallant of creating a dynamic in which Hamas would receive concessions from Israel as a result of murdering hostages.
These all seem like reasonable concerns that aren't really answered in the article.
Since we just had a discussion on whether #MeToo has run out of steam last week: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs jailed by judge after sex trafficking indictment
This sounds very similar to the tactics used by Keith Raniere, which bodes ill for Diddy.
He's always been a Weinstein figure in hip hop (both in the sexual deviant sense and because he fit the stereotype of record/studio owner screwing artists over better than any Jewish exec in hip hop at this poinnt). Most of the stories centered around his homosexuality in perhaps the most openly homophobic genre. But, as with Weinstein, this goes way past the lurid stories passed around for years.
Funnily enough, I was just watching a video of one of the victims of Raniere [talk about the FBI's recalcitrance to take on the case up until it became public, at which point "speed of government" ceased to be a joke.
In this case, I wonder if Cassie's very public lawsuit against Diddy, facilitated by the Adult Survivor's Act and its extension of the statute of limitations (the same thing that got Trump in trouble with E. Jean Carroll) is what opened him up to a more vigorous investigation?
So, a MeToo win or not?
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