professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
No bio...
User ID: 1157
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
6d ago
I may be a little overly defensive of that quiet little place, but I hardly associate it with Trace even if he started it. He and his cofounder more or less abandoned The Schism for an extended period after the launch, so I wouldn't necessarily call it one of his hangouts even though he did recruit occasionally. He spent much more time on Twitter and Substack, though now he's put both on hiatus.
He did get quite embittered about this place, and those exchanges were... disappointing.
So it goes.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
6d ago
starting an anti-motte subreddit back before this forum self exiled fully
He got mad about certain rude and catastrophic language being used and not pushed back against enough, particularly during/around the Kenosha self-defense event as the breaking point IIRC. It wasn't exactly anti-Motte as it was... more pointedly opinionated than the Motte, but early on it did attract people wanting to complain about the Motte, for a little while.
that subreddit had really some great posts interspersed with really intense egotripping personal drama that sometimes bled out to this refuge here
TheSchism still exists! Sort of. Quietly. And it was composed mostly of (ex-?) Mottezans so yes it did bleed back over on occassion.
I mentally flag rationalwiki drama as adjacent
Our dear T-dubs wrote a long piece about David Gerard, who was a prominent editor of regular Wikipedia and sysadmin of Rationalwiki.
Possibly some other rationalwiki and drama connections along the way?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7d ago
for.... most things that aren't heavily politicized
Or not in English which may have a much higher rate of outright encyclopedia-formatted fiction.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7d ago
Gotcha. Figured they wouldn't see my responses but didn't want to test in case it was broken. Thanks!
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8d ago
The description on the Blocked User page of the profile says "They cannot notify you or send you messages and their comments are hidden."
I noticed earlier a comment with a little red pawn next to it, and the hover text said "This user is blocking you." I could see the comment, it wasn't hidden, and I didn't do anything to uncollapse it or what have you. I can view the user's profile and indeed I've upvoted several of their comments, but I don't recall having other interactions.
So... Does blocking actually do anything here?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
12d ago
2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner
One of my favorite things about Trump is his ongoing refusal to go to the dinner. It's delightfully petty, but I also think it's good policy, that being so buddy-buddy with the press (like Obama was) actually is a bad thing for the office.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
12d ago
And French never even justifies his theory that the justice system we have today is peak justice
Like many people, French is stuck in the perception of his childhood and still runs high on the liberal's nostalgia for the Civil Rights movement. One could say he groans for a nation that never existed.
And, in a very human error, he overindexes on his personal experience of being insulted for adopting an African kid and ignores the broader context of crime disparities.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
12d ago
French makes Ahmari look like an absolute clown.
French is a good debater that despises conservatives that disagree with him and the South, and has absolutely no vision of how to deal with opposing ideologies that don't support viewpoint-neutrality.
I don't think the French strategy can lead to an overall 'victory'
The French strategy is at best a slow defeat but without even Tolkien's literary merit, which is why the post-Christian right hates him so much. It doesn't just not lead to an overall victory, the French strategy spends a decade in court just for Roberts to write into an opinion how Harvard can keep doing racial discrimination the 'right' way.
On balance, I like that David is principled. Given the choice of a dinner party guest, I'd choose him over much of the "dissident right," though to be fair I'd rather dine with a rabid badger than someone like Hanania. But I also think French is a much bigger asshole than most of his fans are willing to admit.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
Then how should I respond to the accusation that liberals are to blame for right wing skinheads?
Question underdefined. I met an actual, I think reforming, skinhead once. Small rural town, worked at the barbershop there. Still had the shaved head and camo cargo pants, and a tattoo on his arm looked like a coverup- I didn't ask of what. Nice enough, to me anyways; if he wasn't fully reformed at least he had no issue with Amerimutt micks. I don't blame liberals for that kind of guy, and your response to the suggestion liberals are to blame for him and his (former?) compatriots should be a scoff.
But I don't think that's the kind of guy you mean, that Mottezans want to blame liberals for.
Is '"Liberals are the only people with agency" theory undefeated' the professorgerm approved line?
Good to know I have a fan! With attribution, I'll accept your usage. And to some degree, yes; I think liberals (writ broadly) like to ignore how much agency they've been able to exert and prefer to avoid the consequences of their influence. This is probably true across the board, though, and less a liberal issue so much as a human one.
Who cares?
So it goes.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
On one hand, the Trumpian open vulgarity and corruption is easier to discover and critique. On the other, there's the argument that the fig leaf- jawboning, sue and settle, saving your stupid jokes for the Correspondent's Dinner- is important.
The Age of the Fig Leaf is over.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
Trump revels in deliberately antagonizing liberals. This is bad. This erodes norms which leads to things like Reddit openly celebrating murder.
"Trump is the only person with agency" theory undefeated.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
It makes zero strategic sense from my perspective, all it does is fan the flames. I suppose if he wants to fan the flames of the culture war, fine, but that's also not something I'm behind.
Your first sentence assumes strategy, which is the mistake. Trump "weaves" and, I think, is just having fun. Crass fun, but nothing strategic.
Then again, The Mule is a special case and I'm not a predictor.
I simply find his aesthetics to be revolting.
Do you see any functional alternatives? I too find the aesthetic revolting, and yet- no one else is picking up the crown from the gutter. The alternatives are no less revolting. The tolerable alternative is, seemingly, retreat and quietude.
The left offers no superior aesthetics, and I'll take the shit plane over 'whiteness is a contract with the devil.' David Frenchism is about losing correctly. I'll also take the shit plane over EHC-posting; even toilet humor is better than that.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
That is, moral principles such that you can say what the right or wrong thing for Alice and Bob to do might be, in a hypothetical world where you yourself don't exist at all.
And in that case, one of the constraints could be along the lines of "any policy that sets the state above the policy is morally wrong," and another could be that "each family should prioritize their own wellbeing."
Thus, when we get to a policy where the state overrides the family, that is wrong.
The US government need not put my children above all others, but neither should it believe that it knows what's better for them than I do.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
What?
It's a joke/reference about Hamas, and the way the universities are supposed to be above reproach since they harbor scientists (valuable), terrorists (not), and grievance studies (at least terrorists have the conviction of their beliefs).
If you want me to take responsibility for a hundred year old eugenics movement
I don't really want you to, I'm saying that's the appropriate price to pay to claim abolitionists as "your side" too as much closer ancestors of the modern progressive. Most abolitionists were deeply religious, and hardly the model of modern progressives- of course, so were the slave owners.
I am slightly fascinated by the sociocultural manipulations and upheavals that resulted in progressives keeping the name progressive, keeping abortion and sort of keeping evolution, but managing to shed the eugenic affiliations. Neat!
In a single conversation, I've been told I need to take responsibility for...
Maybe don't take claim of abolitionists if you don't want to be saddled with everything else over three centuries?
maybe try taking responsibility for the president you elected 20 years ago instead of frantically trying to recast him as a democrat.
Dubyah? I'm not quite as old as you think, I guess; I couldn't vote yet. Given my druthers I probably would've voted third party.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
The postwar amendments were designed to secure the rights of freed slaves.
And they were written in the same idealistically neutral manner as all the other founding documents; it was the later activist Supreme Courts that made the preferences explicit.
Ames v. Ohio was pleasantly unanimous, but Harvard v. SFFA was not and even the majority had Roberts keeping in a how-to section to keep discriminating; I suspect whatever comes out of Callais will closer resemble the latter.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
progressives have been telling you this would happen since you brought the first slave ships over in the 17th century!
If you want to own abolitionists, you have to own the eugenicists too. Is that really what you want?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
Seriously, replace identitarian with vast majority of the modern left - is your statement significantly different?
The vast majority of the modern left are identitarian, so not incorrect but also not a clarifying statement.
you can't be naive enough to ask an entire nation not to Notice that people of one skin color are overwhelmingly worse off
Some people are really good at Noticing what they want and ignoring what they don't, aren't they? One really shouldn't believe their lying eyes, that's what Official Experts are for.
and it doesn't even matter what the cause is
Why not?
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
Yeah, I was underrating the Marshall Plan and other programs. Thank you.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
I'd bet you couldn't name him without looking
No, and no one could name Myron Gaines without looking either.
And while it hasn't worked well for all white men, as a group white men have been in the best position.
Alas, I am not a randomly-assigned member of the group! Identitarianism is a corrosive poison that is utterly destructive to having a functional, pluralistic, multicultural society.
Anyways, my point is trying to provide an alternative to the perception that Democrats (writ broadly) hate white men. It isn't quite true, but that perception stems from this.
If you don't care about that perception and the effect it's having on politics... good luck.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
I'm also not impressed by the mere fact that Trump decided to sue a bunch of Blue Tribe institutions.
Well of course not, they strategically located their weapons depots under the hospitals universities.
It's a bit condescending to suggest that Jews protesting Israel killing thousands of Gazan civilians must be doing it out of some psychological ailment.
I learned from the best! I don't think it's a requirement, of course; I'm sure there are very good sane people on both sides. But certainly an option.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
What 'm saying is: if you have moral principles at all, then surely, surely you recognize that there is some amount or degree of harm inflicted to random strangers that would outweigh the welfare of your child? That, no matter how much you want your child not to be transed, it would be evil of you to put material pursuit of that goal over the lives of ten million people you've never met and never will?
Why do you seemingly struggle to accept that is a moral principle, just one you disagree with?
Not everyone is a universalist. Not everyone is a utilitarian. I would find it evil to put any number of people above your own children- maybe, if it were truly existential, I would crack (and indeed I've heard Southern Baptist preachers use that example to describe the Father sacrificing the Son, as the singular unique time such a thing was justifiable).
You're doing a fine job highlighting innate familial conservatism and Scott's "don't want to play the philosophical game" rebuttal to WWOTF, though.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
it also requires leftish cooperation
Right, approximately no one left public service over open and unironic anti-whiteness, and Kittycat almost certainly didn't care one jot about any of that.
It's an asymmetric game.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
There are at least 38 states that explicitly passed laws that discourage anti-israel activities.
Truly these modern Nazis are insidious, what with their pro-Semitic policies and staffing! Lulling them into a false sense of security no doubt.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
because of bad moderation
Being a forum descended from Reddit, left-liberals that find their way here are unaccustomed to any degree of pushback or less-than-infinite mod bias in their favor.
Mostly leaving aside the race factor, two possibilities:
A) she has high chipmunky cheeks, and I suspect that's an unfortunately polarizing feature that she can't do much about. Some people find it cute, some find it off-putting, maybe fewer opinions in the middle.
B) she seems to have decided against adapting her makeup to the podium lighting, and it gives her an almost plastic look. Every picture on Google Photos she's just so shiny. I wouldn't say hideous but a somewhat 'uncanny' feeling.
I agree her smile does her many favors, and in the photos where she doesn't have that shiny-plastic look, yeah, above the political average and the prettiest of the last several press secretaries. Surprises me a bit to skip over the redhead.
More options
Context Copy link