It didn't have to be this way! We could have decriminalized possession without simultaneously legalizing being a menace to the public! What the hell happened?
I think you have one group of people trying to solve a problem at the tails, while some more radical people think the problem is closer to the median. Basically police reform vs abolition.
Strangely, the radicals may sometimes have a better idea of the scope of the problem than the normies. If both sides agree too many people are in jail and one wants to solve it via letting out people caught with marijuana (because they saw some horror story about some kid being trapped for months because of a joint) they'll hit diminishing returns much faster than the people willing to have much laxer standards
Tanista
3mo ago
There's been a marked shift to the right for young men in the past couple of years, while women have gone in the other direction. It can't all just be the industrial revolution.
The left does not seem to care about its suicide as long as it can destroy the right, for it seeks just that brief moment in the sun where it can scream 'SEE REAL COMMUNISM CAN WORK'
I think it's just pure arrogance; it's not gonna fail, it can't fail.
Western leftists are acting as if this is the height of empire and no foreign threat matters as much as their fellow whites on the wrong side of their feud. The Muslims who are not assimilating are just harmless compared to some football hooligans carrying the wrong flag being proven right about the ray guns. That is intolerable and dangerous.
It's fascinating to watch. All of the arrogance and narcissism of arch-imperialists with none of the in-group preference or survival instinct you need when you actually are trying to conquer people.
Tanista
3mo ago
If the modal European could wave their hands and stop immigration they would. But if they see a picture of a crying child they will cave every time.
I honestly think, if that happened today, people would be tapped out on sympathy. But, as with the homeless problem in some parts of America, it just doesn't seem to matter what they think.
You'll get sucked into a loop of activists, judges and feckless government decisions (the latter always blaming the first two) and by the time you realize what's going on the people who should have been deported haven't been for years and nothing has changed.
I'm not sure these beliefs are as foundational as you think, given that they are of such recent vintage.
They're the new foundation. The old one was exclusionary.
Which has some implications for adopting it as a way to keep out migrants.
Buck-passing is dangerous because, in the moment, you actually think you're being clever. You're saving money, you're avoiding a needless arms race.
America can't really take too much credit for the consequences (beyond maybe making it clear the left wing of the establishment wouldn't cooperate with Trump on NATO).
EDIT: Pre-war anyway. Nordstream, whatever happened there...
Tanista
3mo ago
Things like LGBT acceptance always involve some element of atomizing hostility towards traditions that bind people together. They cause their own dysfunction.
So maybe a bit like the cold that kills you after AIDS.
They already tried the whole "live with a certain amount of rocket fire and hope your enemies are rational and indolent enough to just live off the aid money" strat
Same thing, though. His punishment was carried out. Presumably his country deemed that punishment sufficient for the nature of his crimes.
And that is their right. I tend to fall more on the American normie side of "maybe people who fuck 12 year-olds don't need to be around".
And no, I wouldn't apply it to marijuana. I'm not sure where the line is.
is a pretty simple rule and certainly isn't the worst way to govern these things, but preventing someone with actual skills from using those skills to their fullest extent also creates economic deadweight loss
We suffer this loss all the time. Plenty of people are talented. Kevin Spacey has literally been found innocent in multiple trials and will still likely not be allowed to climb back to anything like his peak status. Ryan Garcia is currently in the doghouse. Poor Kyrie Irving was suspended for moronic conspiracy theories of the sort you hear yelled in the subway, no threat to anyone. He wasn't even allowed to pay jizya at first because he was not sufficiently deferential in his apologies.
Most people don't really care about any of these things on a deep level (unless your team lost out), yet it's not in doubt that this is the status quo. We don't really need to craft some justification for it from first principles like it's novel.
None of these high status roles are pure meritocracies. There's always been a debate about just who deserves to get these benefits (enhanced by the stage and national quality of the Olympics). Perhaps the one bit of crystal clear consensus is that something like race shouldn't be a barrier. The rest is debated constantly.
Tanista
3mo ago
A 12 year old could trivially just leave home on the first bus to the city 100 years ago to find work
I come from a very patriarchal culture, arguably not truly feminist (though it's made its impact on the educated). No one would put their 12 year old daughter on a bus alone to go find work.
Tanista
3mo ago
But it is not clear that this should impact his ability to compete in a sport he's actually very good at if he's maintained good behavior since.
It has no impact on him competing - he can go compete at his local community gym - it impacts him representing his country on the largest stage possible.
Tanista
3mo ago
And how good a job she did as "border czar" probably doesn't matter all that much - what matters (to me) is watching the entire media apparatus turn on a dime to reinforce DNC talking points and everyone thinks that's fine and that people trying to point out the discrepancy are just bad-faith Harris-haters.
This point will likely be ceded once it's irrelevant, like the unfortunate implications of the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
So there is some good news on the horizon.
Tanista
3mo ago
Sounds like a lot of explanation to be doing.
Consider who this works on: Democrats who'd actually trust fact-checkers (Republicans wrote them off for the same reason they wrote off regular media reporting) and have been told attacks on the credibility of the media are attacks on Democracy. These are the sorts of people that'll check quickly, see the "'fact check" and then tune out yet more Republican whining about the refs protecting democracy.
Tanista
3mo ago
I thought this was going to be an anticapitalist screed until it took this turn. Mass immigration poses issues, but I fail to connect it to boring, incompetent, commodified art.
Trying to connect them, for my own amusement more than anything:
- Rapid diversification creates a desire for models to manage diversity.
- America's model is quite well known.
- It's adopted both by the cultural elites but more importantly by the mass of new citizens who want a way to express their situation.
- Art thus tends towards a globalized, already commodified version of American culture with assumptions that feel inauthentic in local contexts , local culture becomes reskinned GAE culture, and drag queens proliferate.
Tanista
3mo ago
There's also the obvious jihadi advantage that they're willing to die. So some rando can pick up a knife and stab people at a farmer's market or subway. This requires much less overhead or structure.
Organized crime would prefer to make money without being labeled as a terroristic enterprise and getting the full force of the government turned on it, no matter how much you offer. Rational people just aren't as scary.
I didn't think you could make that White House McDonald's photo any funnier but here we are.
I'm just imagining him pulling out that worn yellow baby and reminding people MJ has one before ordering.
Tanista
3mo ago
I would add the centralization of internet forums into places like reddit under bullet point 2.
One of the downsides of unification, super-spreader mods and ideas can travel much farther than in a more fractured landscape.
Tanista
3mo ago
Kids have grown up with astroturf, and thus have become the astroturf theory. It's fun to wear political suits and bash the fash. Now it's all the kids have known. Even many of the kids have kids now.
I'm more familiar with the online left spaces but many people really have imbibed a certain mindset. They sound like CNN anchors or press secretaries that are deeply anxious about the discourse and how giving voice to certain narratives or allowing the opposition to set the frame will lead to defeat. Kind of understandable if you have an audience of millions and a bit silly and sad if you're on reddit.
But these are the sorts of people that'd self-astroturf.
It's really no different to what happened to many IRL institutions post-Trump. In fact, we should expect it to happen more because it takes vastly less effort to take over online spaces.
All it takes is someone with too much time who's imbibed the Left's idea of fighting where you are and that controlling the discourse will determine reality and, instead of running around trying to decolonize birdwatching or joining and shifting the ACLU, they just become a mod or a reply guy that harangues mods into submission.
Tanista
3mo ago
You can put someone more presentable with a similar platform, and Democrats will blow the "literally Hilter" gasket just the same (see: DeSantis).
Exhibit B: Van Jones ‘shaking’ over Ramaswamy remarks: ‘That guy is dangerous’
“And the smug, condescending way that he just spews this poison out, is very, very dangerous. Because he won’t stop Trump, but he’s going to outlive Trump by about 50 years,” he said.
“You’re watching the rise of an American demagogue that is a very, very despicable person. And I literally, I was— I was shaking listening to him talk because a lot of people don’t know. That is one step away from Nazi propaganda coming out of his mouth.”
Tanista
3mo ago
It was more a shot at the pretense that large numbers of people are going to peel away for a global issue that's ostensibly of ultimate importance but is really just a way to play out people's more short-range anti-apartheid larps or fight their domestic opponents (Gaza)
As I said, voting on your economy or political system is quite rational.
Shithousery is about satisficing more than anything. A draw is a win for the inferior team. The goal is to eke out enough turnout. If people have to hold their noses or take a shower later so be it.
I firmly believe that Americans are narcissists and it's to their credit here; they'll mostly vote on domestic matters that truly impact them. I doubt Ukraine will in any way be a major stumbling block, no matter what the really Left says. Israel might, if only because of some very motivated voters in Michigan. The progressive Left has been somewhat contained on this.
Without Biden's age the media will default to hating on Trump again, reminding the base What's At Stake.
Not much she can do about inflation at this point. The border is also going to be bad, especially since she was briefly appointed to help manage it. It remains to be seen how bad (how many people even recall that?).
I imagine she'll continue Biden's desperate pandering: capping rent increases, deporting some migrants while allowing others to stay, talking about SCOTUS reform and more giveaways to their base that took college loans.
Just throw enough at the base that people project enough hope unto your candidacy that you hopefully squeak out a win. And, if you don't, stop sinking the rest of the ticket. That's really what's essential here. The Democrats may have to just take a Harris loss so long as she runs ahead of Biden and lets people who want to vote for a Democrat elsewhere do so. Newsom and co. can pick up the pieces later, so long as they haven't been ground into a fine powder by the mobility scooter of a candidate 2/3rds of their party thinks literally cannot run.
What moxie does Kamala have?
She has the media, Dobbs, the most partisan American voting base in my lifetime and an 80-something opponent who may as well be Satan to her base. And the election is going to be before the honeymoon phase is over. And she can talk in complete sentences
If the goal is to shithouse a win, or just shithouse a lower impact on downballot races, it's a foundation.
Tanista
4mo ago
If they had already calculated Biden wouldn't be the nominee, surely that factored into their VP pick?
Yeah, that's the point. Losing after having advanced warning would be particularly inexcusable.
People have been prosecuted for defending themselves in a tense situation in a non-premeditated way. If you're caught being in an armed vigilante gang in places like NY...
Normal, prosocial people have shit to lose. By definition, they're much easier to cow than nihilistic criminal sociopaths and high impulsivity druggies and morons.
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