Tanista
5hr ago
Nations lost territory and survived, or even thrived. Full-fledged demographic replacement didn't usually end half as well.
One doesn't impact the other. Especially given that the nation doing the conquering has its own demographic issues.
Nations give up clay, the point was that you don't do it easily. Not based on the whims of some Boomer who wishes he didn't miss the boat on land acquisition and who there's no evidence will be particularly grateful anyway. And especially not when said Boomer also has a deep contempt for weakness.
Tanista
5hr ago
I can channel @ThisIsSin and say that there's actually nothing particularly arcane or hypocritical about it. The "post-national" state is still ruled by the powers that be in eastern Canada, so it's really their state regardless of whatever legitimizing ideology they stamp on it.
One can also say that Trudeau's point was essentially just an entrenchment of the compromise on Quebec that is now being applied to new migrants. The lack of a Canadian mainstream means the lack of any national identity that excludes French Canadians and other premium minorities (First Nations) which is really just securing their position and the status quo. Why would they want to lose that? Especially since the current status quo gives them more of a lever for cultural preservation than Anglos (there'd also be no escape hatch from the Supreme Court in the US like they currently have with the Notwithstanding Clause). It's in line with self-interest to prefer a non-assertive federal government.
Even putting that all aside, Trump's offer was admirably concrete for once: 51st state. One state for all the disparate interests. Even if you had no sentimental attachment to Canada at all and actually trusted Trump's word you can see that as a bad deal. I doubt even Sin would consider that optimal.
But, honestly, who cares? The whole point of sovereignty is that you decide, even if it's stupid. I don't understand this weird complaint that, because people want to configure their nation in a particular way (in ways Americans or even I might find insipid) that compels them to yield any demand made by odious, unserious bullies like Trump.
I especially don't get the complaint that it's a violation of truth in advertising. I don't know how you square the idea that Canada is anti-nationalist, with the claim that Canadian nationalism is loudly and consistently about being anti-American and act surprise that Canadians don't react well to the idea that they'll be annexed against their will. And I'm seeing all three in this thread.
The European reaction to the Greenland affair is similarly deranged.
Never give up clay if you can help it. Very old law.
What's this "we" shit, paleface?
It's not in Republicans' interests for Canadians to vote. It's very much in the interests of Democrats.
Tanista
6hr ago
The truly baffling thing here is Canadians thinking they are somehow privileged and above Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans have been US citizens for over a century. Canadians have been (understandably) oppositional to Americans since 1812.
This makes it sound as if the response to the 51st state about seat allocation and not just terror and anger at the idea itself.
Any Canadian who wants to become an American and can hack it takes a short drive down. The ones who stay were fine with deep economic and cultural links without being Americans. Well, mostly.
Trump could say (or could get his people to say) that of course the US doesn't have a problem with Quebec preserving its language and culture and try to play divide-and-rule with Quebec the way is (ineptly) trying to do with Alberta, but he didn't.
He has essentially said this on Truth Social
Ordinarily, it would be easy to believe that the American government just doesn't care that much about bilingualism beyond seeing it as annoyance that is nonetheless a red line for Canada. It's the sort of thing a Canadian PM looking to win in Quebec would emphasize.
But people in Canada believe it (or, at least, prefer to trust Carney) because it's easy to fit into a narrative of divide and conquer in light of Trump's annexation comments and his escalation of tariffs and unreliability.
Tanista
1d ago
Biden could become a President (indeed, beat Trump at a debate!) while in early stages of dementia
He was also never that smart or studious when his brain was at full power either.
Tanista
2d ago
Indeed, the issue appears to be so universally mandated up north that Carney’s nemesis, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, has primarily attacked Carney for… not being antagonistic enough towards the US, particularly in regard to said tariffs. Obviously Poilievre is falling into a classic bear trap tendency of conservatives: fearing the social isolation of a strongly differentiated viewpoint and therefore gradually moulding himself into “Liberals but sensible”
No, PP is responding to incentives.
Trump's response to the chance of having a potential ally as Canada's PM was to go out of the way to be so needlessly insulting and toxic that the Tories lost the election. The Canadian people are not offering a road to political power if you appear servile to a bully who keeps going around threatening to annex the country.
It's almost trolling to write an entire piece about the lack of Canadian nationalism and to opine on how conservative leaders in Canada should act and ignore the very thing that triggers nationalistic fear that makes it impossible.
Tanista
3d ago
Not precluding that it would become a religious war, but the animosity was not centered on their competing religious beliefs. Indeed, as I understand Islam the Jews are recognized as a historically significant and distinct group, and Islam's theological precursor, so the Arab nations had to do a lot of rejiggering to make them a valid religious target and enemy (indeed getting into the theories about Israelis not being the original Jewish people).
As with Christianity, it can be complicated.
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."
Tanista
4d ago
Amongst some online. Does that change a) the cultural forces pushing this that the British public have not yet been checked or b) the policies that are justified in the name of this view and increasingly make this view the only viable model?
I don't even disagree that Britons are resistant to the elite view on some issues - immigration - but how resistant are they to this one? And how much energy have they expended to defeat it?
Tanista
4d ago
Why not both? It's the position Britons have allowed to dominate in their name so it is what Britishness is.
The Israelis have absolutely taken a different tack, but if they had acceded to a one-state reality surely it would also become tendentious to start claiming the state and nation in the name of their ethnic group? That's the given reason for why Israelis will never accept it.
America is TBD but the rejection of the ethnic component of Americanism has led to disastrous consequences within a single generation.
Did I miss some catastrophes coming from massive Catholic/non-WASP immigration in my readings?
Tanista
5d ago
It's of a piece with a lot of Dune discourse but, in general, the movie just has no interest in Herbert's Darwinistic tendencies (the Jihad as a human drive that was never going to be suppressed forever) if there's a chance to make an anticolonial point.
and the viewpoint shift that frames the Atreides as the next in a series of colonizers make the first movie almost unrecognizable, tonally, from the book.
The ending also just doesn't make any sense. You can't both have the marriage to Irulan and retcon out what the marriage is meant to avoid because you don't want the Fremen to have any agency in their actions.
Always the hilarious imaginings of the Slave Trade with random White People running around with nets in deepest darkest Africa as if that wasn't going to get everybody involved killed instead of just taking advantage of pre-existing Slave trading societies.
This was actually fixed in the remake of Roots, one rare example of retellings for the modern audience improving something by trying to historicize the section in Africa.
I'd suggest it was a response to a shift in the general audience's view of the slave trade but it was pre-2020 and whatever progress that represented may have gotten wiped.
Tanista
7d ago
You don't need to read a collection of Dworkin. You just need to know that your hosts don't like it. And that is literally everywhere.
I know someone who raped women in the UK. I hadn't seen him in a lifetime so I don't know what happened to him as he aged but I knew the media diet we grew up on. I simply cannot believe that he didn't get that the freedom Western women were granted also had a corresponding expectation of safety despite them being sluts by local standards, especially since we weren't Wahhabis* - girls didn't veil outside of a mosque in my youth.
Would he have done it at home? Maybe not. You're more restricted when family can monitor you and I suspect that the taboo against alcohol really helps.
For another, as @Bingbong mentions, the one thing the government did try to actually police was threatening or even annoying tourists, who were the gravy train for a poor country. Same reason you would rob a Western store and not a local one: you would get instant mob justice in the second case.
If that's true, a sort of nebbish focus on protocol and telling people they "might" get punished is actively damaging. Because one takeaway from that is that you might find a way to wiggle your way out. The men won't lynch you (in fact, the focus on human rights is an emasculation of the local men) before you can pull any crocodile tears, the police won't beat you or toss you into a hellhole masquerading as a jail. Maybe you slip out.
you're not going to just absorb Westernism by vibe if you already have a culture installed in your brain.
People absorb a lot this way, even things that violate their values. It may be superficial a lot of the time but it happens.
* While we're at it: it doesn't actually follow that, because women are heathen and Muslims are allowed to rape slaves captured in jihad, you can rape random women you run into at a club. That's the contempt showing through, not ignorance.
Tanista
7d ago
Although I think that there are some milder approaches to culturally assimilate the better lot of them if we are hard enough.
If the local community got a direct vote on which migrants got to stay, you'd see a level of civility that would rival major tourist centers.
I don't know if that's assimilation but it'd certainly be different.
I guess having myself careened down a mountain at 13,000 feet desperately trying to regain control of my ice axe made me skeptical...
Ah, but that's what it has going for it! Sheer gall. Even if you entered skeptical of the military and the inherently propagandistic nature of the picture (I saw the film first and then excerpts of the book), you'd just assume the death scenes were vastly exaggerated for jingoistic purposes and not dig any deeper. If you do like the military...you could come to the same conclusion and still find it emotionally true.
If you're really skeptical, you'll think that it coming down to a trolley problem of killing or not killing the allegedly random herders was way too convenient. Oh sure, they would have won but for fear of war crimes charges and liberal newspapers back home!
The movie gives you an exit where you can watch it and leave believing you've seen through it. And, in fact, how contentious a claim is makes you want to stop and argue that war crimes are never justified! But that's the trap, that's a much better argument for the Navy.
But, as someone who very much doesn't wage war, deeper arguments about why it was an operational omnishambles would have totally escaped me if I didn't run into a story about the disgruntled translator and gone down a rabbit hole. What comms systems work or don't in Afghanistan or what to do with the rope you rappel from isn't information I tend to have handy.
Suggestion: DEI but for people who couldn't sit still in class let alone thrive.
Problem with stacking your government full of talented Hermiones is that they don't seem to get that schooling just doesn't work for everything and everyone. Not everyone is terrified of disappointing teacher.
I've seen some people suggest that what makes a lot of Third World men abuse Western women who're seen as too loose is because of terminal pornbrain. But, honestly, I think they're just contemptuous and/or revert to habit. I don't know how you have access to the Western internet enough to watch porn but not get Western attitudes on this. Seems like quokka cope.
Tanista
7d ago
If the concept of "asylum" is coherent at all
I think the revealed preference of a lot of people is that they don't actually want a coherent asylum system, they want a practical one. The moral sentiment of a right to asylum is nice, so people are for it so long as the technological and political situations are such that its full implications are never seen.
That is the mismatch between the populace and the people who have to implement the rules as written.
Tanista
7d ago
what if their home country refuses to take them back?
The typical right wing response is "stop aid and remittances, refuse to issue visas to anyone else from those countries"
I think that might work for removing illegal migrants, but wholesale uprooting of the community that sends remittances in the first place is basically threatening to shoot the hostage unless you get what you want.
It's already a political problem sending some of these people back home in places like West Africa. People would dig in their heels
Marcus Luttrell
This one is understandable because, even putting aside the decade of Navy Seal propaganda, most people have no idea what Afghanistan is like or why something like Red Wings was a total fuck up because we've never been in the military. And it's not like any of the major Navy guys (who all have podcasts) were forthcoming to explain it to us plebs.
(The one exception seems to have been the idea that they voted, which was so controversial it was removed from the film adaptation)
There's also just an element of social proof in having the only guy who survived out there telling the story. Luttrell survived something awful, no one disputes that. Who would be that fucking brazen as to pull that guy out of his well earned break and have him lie about how his friends died to turn things around?
Any child could tell Arday was lying about some of this stuff. And you don't even need the lying: the plagiarism was like shooting fish in a barrel.
It was just Cofnas' bad luck that he was also a ridiculous liar who was likely on the hook for paying back whatever unearned advance he got for that book and that likely helped cause his tailspin.
Tanista
7d ago
It's just that suicide as revenge worked here.
They may have been willing to tolerate him despite the stink of his original firing and his unrepentant attitude. They may even have been willing to tolerate him taking down a fabulist.
Arday's death turned the situation on its head. Everyone is running away from the issue. I doubt it would have happened if he slunk into the darkness for a year or so.
No bad incentives whatsoever!
Tanista
8d ago
That would be an effective filter for me then. I just don't have the level of anxiety tolerance people like Arday and Hilaria Baldwin seem to have, let alone Arday's (good enough) social awareness of how to flatter white people.
Maybe for the best, I hear it's addictive
Tanista
13d ago
Firstly, most people had no say or were not even born yet when these decisions were made.
This is true of everyone. Plenty of people are dying right now of preventable poverty because of their horrible leadership. It's accepted as a (tragic) fact of life. Why must the Israelis or Palestinians be saved? Why does this tragedy have to be the litmus test for civilization?
But inflicting it on others for no personal gain other than some sense of schadenfreude is about where I draw the line.
I need not inflict anything on them and I don't have the power to in any case. They're inflicting it on one another.
But this isn't the apologetic position.
The Israeli apologetic position is that they should be allowed to wreck Hamas and Gaza now precisely because things have not been harmonious and Palestinians willfully destroyed a dissatisfying but functional equilibrium meant to minimize their suffering (and the hit to Israeli PR) so fuck them.
The line is "they could have made Gaza a paradise but chose rockets" not "Gaza was a paradise and then the Fire Nation attacked".
Neither side actually defends the view that things were fine. The point is they're bad because of the other side and it's time to give up on pretending they'll ever be good with them still in the picture.
More options
Context Copy link