crushedoranges
No bio...
User ID: 111
You're forgetting intersectionality.
Ironically, the ideology that presumes to be about collectivist organization is, in practice, extremely individualist. There are no factions, not in the traditional sense: but thousands of extremely self-interested individuals who have been handed a superweapon to destroy the 'pale, male, and stales' in their way of sinecures and political power.
When you get cancelled, the factions cease to have all meaning.
All of their hands are stained with this blood. Internally, they are just as paranoid as Stalinists. They may internally not believe in idpol but they are forced to because there are hundreds of people after their jobs. They are all replacable, mediocre nobodies that can have everything taken away from them because all they have was given and that is by design.
crushedoranges
22hr ago
The fact that their first instinct to oppose him is to open up a lawsuit is telling. It may have been more effective in a previous era, but it relied on a high-trust society which saw the institutions of government as legitimate. They really have absorbed the Asimovian morality of 'violence is the last resort of the incompetent', but hoping that historical forces give you victory isn't strategy. It's not even tactics. It's assuming that the universe will award you with moral victories without developing virtue.
crushedoranges
5d ago
Let me take the neutral ground and say that GamerGate wasn't the precipitating event, but it was pivotal insomuch as videogames were (and still are) a universal hobby of young men. And when confronted with the blunt and obvious truth of Noticing the blue-hairs ruin everything, one could either go down the trail of Noticing everything else or sticking your head in the sand and saying it's a good thing. The 4chan/Resetra divergence, the chud/woke speciation.
It was the universal radicalizing event of the generation, and even those who were normie enough to not care were inculcated with the memes (on both the left and right.) No one questions the cultural impact of music or movies. Video games as a medium are larger than both combined. At some point, video games transitioned from being influenced by political trends to making them. Comparing the financial success of chudgames vs wokegames has become a tribal sport.
Which is to say... if someone plays a piece of media for thousands of hours, having it consume every waking moment of their lives, of course it would effect their political values. New Atheism and BLM are dead and gone but people are still mad that they got rid of Tracer's ass wiggle. I think you're just disconnected with what young men back then and now consider important.
crushedoranges
6d ago
But Catholicism is a monotheist faith, which denies that any other religion has validity and it is the one true path to salvation.
To get away from the analogy, it would be like say that Wokism is a tolerant and diverse sociological lense, but it doesn't consider any other interpretation to disparate impact other than racism.
It is trivially easy to assert that your parochial views are actually universal unpartisan principles. Or 'just being a good person', as I've heard it being told.
crushedoranges
7d ago
I feel called out at the moment, so, first, my mea culpas.
@Amadan I am aware that being a rightist partisan is not very conducive to the kind of space that the moderates wish to nurture. I, myself, personally moderate spaces where I have to manage people being political. Knowing this makes my behaviour even more unacceptable, and for that I apologize. I don't really have an excuse for my rhetoric, for liking the heat instead of the light. But I am not a passing internet troll, or fishing for responses from outraged liberals. I have been here in one form or another, and I actually like being here.
Moving forward, I will try to not clog up your moderation queue with my hot takes. I'll try.
@4bpp I disagree with the notion of reports as an enforcement mechanism because it is trivially easy to game, if one is a motivated bad actor. If an individual post is bad, one can downvote it. If it annoys one sufficiently, one can rebut it (although I concede the effort may not be worth the squeeze in nearly all cases.) Reporting is the tool of last resort, when something is noisome and of no value whatsoever.
But you report so much that the lack of response feels like a waste of effort?
I can't recall the last time I reported anyone. That's how little I use the feature. Do you want to be a moderator? You have a thousand posts... a lot more than me. Obviously you have opinions on what the Motte should be. But the demos has an opinion, too. Expressed through upvotes. Metathoughts about the pernicious nature of such social media systems nonwithstanding, is that not the fairest way of determining the merit of what someone is saying?
(I admit that the proposition of 'being maximally evil in posture to EA people' is horrifying, but no more so than the people who constantly talk about 'race realism'.)
I am also aware that the Motte has problems with ideological diversity. But that isn't my fault, that those on the left evaporatively leave. It's not like I'm running around conspiratorially reporting the TracingWoodgrains of the world. They left. Cannot I talk to those of a similar ideological bent? It's not like I'm pretending to be objective or anything. Am I being asked to keep it down to make sure the last leftists don't just pull up stakes and leave, leaving the Motte a witch-chamber?
I've been on a hot streak of hot takes recently, so I'll probably take a step back for a while. But if you have a problem with my posts or you believe that I don't belong here, you can say so. You don't have to write me up in a post complaining about moderation. That's all I have to say.
crushedoranges
8d ago
I was speaking circuitously: what I meant is that 'conservatives should act as if the value foreign lives at zero'.
This serves a tactical purpose, as to defang reflexive knee-jerk appeals to sympathy.
But also strategically, in shining a spotlight on the revealed preference of their enemies as to the value of foreign life. If foreign lives are valued at one to one, and conservatives are through inaction killing them, then liberals are put in a moral dilemna to overthrow the government or reduce their valuation in contrast to their rhetoric. More likely, however, there will be a downward correction: and then the true work of negotiation begins.
crushedoranges
8d ago
I believe that the entire US federal government and civil service is an obstacle to conservative victory. There's only so many times you can play kayfabe and watch your politicians be devoured by DC and come out as creatures of the American imperium. It was a mistake to believe that the institutions would abide by the popular will and not act in their own self-interest. At some point Elrond has to push Isildur into the volcano instead of hoping he won't be tempted.
crushedoranges
8d ago
All I am asking is for conservatives to put the same level of value on the lives of foreigners as their domestic opponents do on fertilized human embryros. That is the level of commitment that they will need to win. If they can endure that level of opprobrium then the battle is already won. Do you believe that pro-choicers support abortions to 'own the cons'..? On some level, maybe. But they have a genuine belief in the liberty of women, unshackling them from the tyranny of biology. We must similarly have cruel principles that put our own well being over the needs of others.
crushedoranges
8d ago
You flatter me. I have a sophist's love of rhetoric: but if politics is serious - if it is about human life - then it should be taken seriously. I find it less moral to equivocate, to pretend that there is a difference between 'save some lives' and 'save all'. Removing the room for argument is the only way to reduce the size of government otherwise you are merely a ratchet on Leviathan's appetite.
Seventy years pro-life activists have called their opponents baby-killers and it did not swerve their opposition's resolve by one inch.
Conservatives, particularly MAGA conservatives, must harden their hearts as such. In the coming months and years, there will be no end to the wailing. They will beg you in the name that all that is decent and humane to give them the one exception and save many lives. The rationalist crowd will come to you with spreadsheets and lives per dollar and give logical arguments to save lives. You will be constantly bombarded with propaganda designed to psyop you to support the return of the old status quo.
Put on your biggest smile and say no. That's your cross to bear. Resist the temptation to give in, and to be seen as 'one of the good ones'. Mercy and compassion are the luxuries of the victor, and you have not won yet. This is but the first of many battles in a long war. If your opponents say that your proposals will cost millions of lives, say to them: "Billions." And do what you intended to do, and do it so throughly and completely that it does not have to be done again. Embrace the virtue of Lycurgus and destroy what you must to save what you can.
crushedoranges
9d ago
Popular presidents ignore the constitution all the time. Unless you're arguing that FDR's internment of Japanese-Americans was constitutional. The Biden administration made clear its intent to ignore the constitution when it was searching for a way to make good on its promise to make a handout to the college educated. It's unclear as to the executive branch auditing itself and controlling its staffing is unconstitutional: the Trump administration should ignore the lower courts until a clarifying ruling comes down from the Supreme Court.
crushedoranges
10d ago
They could. But then Trump could instruct the DoJ not to enforce that ruling.
You see, without the rule of law and trust in institutions, all judges are is old people in unfashionable black robes. They're not wizards. If the judiciary is percieved (and acts) in a partisan way, then the other branches of government can hit back. The people shouting about checks and balances are unhappy it's being used on them.
All of this line-pushing is designed to go to the Supreme Court. It's clear from the Trump Administration's intent that they will no longer tolerate the judiciary getting in the way of their agenda with legalese. They don't regard them as a neutral institution enforcing the rule of law, but one colonized by its enemies.
I predict that the Supreme Court will give way to Trump to preserve its own legitimacy, as the court did to FDR to prevent him from stuffing it with his appointees.
crushedoranges
10d ago
The judiciary doesn't have any formal mechanism to enforce a ruling upon the executive branch other than by tradition and precedent. If he makes unlawful, unconstitutional orders, Congress has reason to impeach him. But if Congress doesn't want to impeach him, then he gets away with it. It really is that simple. What do you want the judiciary to do? Send in the US Marshals, start a civil war?
Now perhaps there's a constitutional argument to go against whatever the president is doing. Certainly you could make a case for anything. But the vesting clause is very clear that the President is endowed with the full powers of the office. The Supreme Court will not suddenly make a ruling that will formalize any sort of control on the executive branch.
Do you have an argument to bring to bear against the unitary executive? How is the presidency supposed to work? Is there a strong legal theory behind the ability of fifty state judges to have a veto over the President?
crushedoranges
10d ago
Checks and balances does not mean that your political enemies don't get to do any of their agenda. Sometimes in a democracy things happen you don't like. The judiciary is the least democratic institution in the American republic, the least accountable. If the President defies the judiciary and Congress supports him then the President gets his way. That's the part of checks and balances you probably don't like, and that's probably how it's going to end.
crushedoranges
11d ago
I have seen too many anthro german shepherds in suspicious outfits to say that he would not be in good company if he did make the change.
It's not that I wasn't sympathetic before. I too, was on the left. But that was fifteen years ago. I feel at this point that everyone persuadable has already decamped and we are in the last stages of Schmittian hyperwar. I can't imagine sharing common ground with those on the left who call TW a fascist. They live in their own partisan hyperreality and attempting to convert them is like being a Christian missionary to the Sentinelese.
I'm sorry. There is no way to survive. You have to pick your lane, or you end up like James Damore. If I have to make a choice between the twitter racists and the race communists, I'm siding with the former over the latter every time. It's not a great choice. But it's better than refusing to acknowledge that one has to make a choice at all.
crushedoranges
11d ago
No. Obviously not.
Yes.
Despite this, or perhaps because of it: I feel that I have an infinitely easier and gladder task of convincing partisans of my ideological bent to come around to reason then TW does for theirs. Not everyone on my side is an honest truthteller. We have our share of witches and evil liars. But there's the kind of lies that make you feel the ick, and the kind of lies that make planes fall out of the sky. One is a more egregious imposition on reality than the other.
crushedoranges
12d ago
The fact that TracingWoodgrains doesn't fully come over to the right because of this and doggedly is determined to stay in the principled center makes me completely unsympathetic. So as far as I'm concerned, they're stuck between the icky chuds like me who know it's a problem but have aesthetically unpleasant views and the other kind of people who stick their heads in the sand in the face of overwhelming evidence. People who will bald-facedly lie even when you bring the smoldering gun, the receipt, and a signed confession are bad people.
And despite all of this... they are more aligned with the latter kind of people then the former.
I will make a prediction now: TW will still be hacking at this ten years from now, doing their enlightened centrist gig, making no progress. Because the liberals they are trying to convince don't really exist: they are trying to persuade a species of extinct men who could be swayed by reason and good faith.
But how does this affect you personally? Think of it this way.
We are prairie dogs watching humans test atomic bombs. The kulturekampf is fundamentally the clash of inhuman worldviews, as impersonal and inscrutable as the forces binding subatomic particles together. As individuals, there is very little we can do to affect the outcome, unless we use our fifteen minutes in the right place at the right time.
But not all worldviews are created equally.
As distasteful and terrible the new regime may seem to be... it is closer to consensus-reality than its ideological opposite. It benefits you to live in a regime that believes in up and down and left and right. Men can't be women. There is no infinite money printer. The liberal world order is dead and gone and it's time to move on. It never benefits you to live under a regime that has delusional principles, even if makes your bellyfeel cozy.
It's easy to be cynical and just shrug it off as mere partisanry. But the left has been more dangerously deluded for a long time now. Sure, the right may be cruel in their revenge, but nothing they can do is worse than the shattering of the illusion of the end of history. That in of itself is a crime that will never be forgiven by the left, but the right was never obliged to participate in its perpetuation.
Is it cruel to tell someone they have to fight for everything they took for granted? Perhaps. But my side began that journey a decade ago. What can I say? You're not going to convince to stop anytime soon. I am full of hubris. I will die someday, but today is glory and triumph.
It is my opinion that the sowing should be followed up by the reaping.
Namely, if they knock down all the checks and balances, formal and informal, in the pursuit of what they believe is good: and then this house of cards they made falls into the hands of their enemies. How foolish they were! Those rules were not to protect their enemies, or to bar what was right. It was to protect themselves.
No, they don't get to stand on principles. Because in this moment, they are not lamenting the death of the republic. They are weeping because all the enemies they have made in their ascent are waiting for them at the bottom. Their only regret is that they didn't get away with it. If they didn't want to live in Schmittian friend-enemy world they should have lived up to the liberal principles they so callously abandoned.
What follows will not be happy, or even pleasant. But it will be indisputably just.
crushedoranges
13d ago
All is right in the world. Everything has returned to normal. In this moment, there is no doom or ill will: one is given enough room to hope.
crushedoranges
13d ago
Okay, but can it be their side that does the virtuous losing and my side that does the vicious winning? I'm content with that state of affairs. They can win as many moral victories as they like and I can have the actual victories.
crushedoranges
13d ago
It should be the goal and ambition of every man to have his grandchildren scorn him as a villain and imperialist, knowing that they live lives of supreme comfort and ease to feel guilt over the transcendent elevation over the unwashed masses of the global diversity.
crushedoranges
13d ago
Judith Butler is putting an unbounded demand for empathy as default and defining everything else as cruelty. You can't get it with me anymore. I can see the transparent attempt at manipulation. I didn't want to be a cruel person, but if I want anything for myself I have to be. Empathy requires reciprocal return. Why should I care for people who hate me and want to see me destroyed?
Because it would look (and be shamelessly) corrupt. When you shine a light in a dark place, the cockroaches scurry - not from any intellect, but from billions of years of survival instinct. Being quiet and hoping the bear eats you last is the play here: making a scene just makes you a priority target for the vengeful Trump administration.
More options
Context Copy link