professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
No bio...
User ID: 1157
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7hr ago
Paxton is kind of a standout but yeah, my understanding would be the AG is the second-most important politician in most states, or at least not lower than third.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7hr ago
No, saw that name in this thread but didn't check the context. How disgusting!
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7hr ago
Democrats are doing their soft racism thing of belittling minority groups?
Doesn't count as racist for these purposes, but really should be more damning for Dems.
Democrats in private are just as racist as Republicans are in private
Democrats in public have spent several years being way more racist than Republicans in private or public, they just don't call stuff like "white people are goblins" and "whiteness is a contract with the devil" racism, because they gerrymandered racism to primarily be about black people. Belittling white men is a favored pastime. Et cetera and so forth.
So I would imagine whatever they say in private is even worse than what they've been publishing in public for my entire adult life.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8hr ago
This post seems aimed at a constituency that I’m not sure exists, those that believe fascists are everywhere but are opposed to any political violence.
This probably isn't that uncommon a view among his immediate friend group, which I assume to be wildly progressive but relatively pacifist compared to most progs. Niceness and Civilization progressives, as it were and however misguided they may otherwise be.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8hr ago
What is the difference between a person who says they love Hitler and a person like me who doesn't say it?
What is the difference between a person who says they love terrorism and a person like me who doesn't say it?
A degree from Cambridge? A job at Harvard? The presidency? Man, loving terrorists must be good for your career... as long as they're left-wing terrorists, of course.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8hr ago
More like "being against bad jokes in groupchats."
Anyone been fired recently for calling white people goblins? No? Yawn.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8hr ago
hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?
New flair day, thank you.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9hr ago
Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler.
Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats? I get the feeling it's a lot less irony-infected than this kind of thing.
is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?
Is Hanania a person to trust, here?
Two, for a long time nobody gave a shit about unabashed bigotry from the left perpetrated by every major institution and every university in this country, and most people still don't care. While I think these jokes are very trashy and a kind of male socialization I've never really understood, I'm gonna need a little more than trashy jokes to get up in arms about.
When we get "blackness is evil and must but abolished, but don't worry that technically doesn't mean black people, wink wink nudge nudge" unironically preached by a major university or newspaper, I'll be concerned.
Is this tribalist loyalty helping to empower extremism and violence?
Do you want to revisit a 2020 discussion?
why do so many of these self identifying Nazis seem to feel at home in the GOP
Nazis have replaced the Devil. If you wanted to spit in the eye of Christians, you identify as Satanist and make dead baby jokes. If you want to spit in the eye of hypocritical liberal-progressives, you identify as a Nazi and make those jokes.
For Mark Robinson it was a weird fetish thing, not quite the same example as the rest, btw.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
5d ago
It's kind of impressive how thoroughly captured 'decentralized' social media is.
If someone says they're on Mastodon or Bluesky, it reveals way more about their personality and ideology than FB, Twitter, Threads, Tikitok, etc.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
6d ago
it's not this or that column from over a decade ago, it's the way that Klein in general, in his politics and more importantly in his whole affect, symbolises a type of holier-than-thou policy wonk who calmly explains why you're wrong about everything, why your values suck, and why it all needs to be bulldozed.
That's the point- that old column is a particularly concentrated and surprisingly open synecdoche for everything else about him. If someone doesn't understand why the right doesn't like Klein, they could go listen to 30 hours of his podcast... or they can just read the one article that displays most of his worst traits.
No, the column isn't the reason; it's a handy- ha ha- Voxsplainer.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
6d ago
Too gay but also not gay enough.
That's not entirely a joke but I think the current issue is some post-Kirk comments that weren't entirely mealymouthed and immediately walked back. Could be wrong though.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
7d ago
Vote for me my niggas!
Head of State isn't a great movie, but it is a decently funny artifact of a different time in US politics and culture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_of_State_(2003_film)
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
14d ago
Have you ever tried to coax, say, an elderly Chinese man though a non-standard use of their phone, with all the text in Mandarin? It is sufficiently advanced technology, and it is indistinguishable from magic.
No, but I have used Google Translate as part of an effort to help an elderly Chinese man communicate with a somewhat belligerent and unpleasant customer in his shop, and I have rarely appreciated the magic more.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
the Sokal or Sokal Squared hoaxes are good things, of which I am one
It's one of those weird things about left vs right and the modern social media landscape, but I continue to think there's an important difference in showing that academic publishing is useless versus demonstrating the low (but not zero) standards of a Tiktok outrage-merchant.
also that the overwhelmingly negative reaction he received was very clearly both tribal, unreasonable and unnecessary
He took The Motte's offense particularly hard for obvious reasons, but the reaction of Blocked and Reported's subreddit was not much better from the "don't make yourself the story" angle and considerably less tribal IMO.
He learned an important lesson a hard way, and is at least as good faith as any other "personality" these days, and more so than many.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
15d ago
simple reason that they were carried out against minority groups
Petty nitpick, curious if there's other reporting that suggests it was targeted for some reason: North Carolina shooter was motivated against a minority group (in a schizo way) but carried out the attack against what was, afaict, a generic normie waterfront bar. Newsweek quotes the police saying it was targeted but that just seems to be the kind of thing they say in almost every case.
When I first heard about it I half expected it was some local that snapped and decided to target tourists and increasing prices.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
16d ago
There is no background check which can 100% assure you that someone is not abusive, or not a North Korean spy.
I don't expect 100% of background checks to be 100% perfect.
The guy in question has held at least 4 different jobs in four different districts (three different states plus DC). All four either didn't do a background or the background failed? Dude's got pretty good luck or the background check system school districts use is a farce.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
16d ago
Yeah I considered adding that in as the closest example that doesn't quite fit.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
16d ago
Then we should go back to calling each other hideous hermaphroditical characters
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
19d ago
Hate speech is used as evidence in prosecuting hate crimes, but technically that's just an enhancement charge and I don't really want to fight about this or dig for sources. Statement redacted.
The current standard for where speech stops being lawful is when it is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action.
Hate speech is another exception to lawful speech and doesn't require incitement. technically wrong, mea culpa
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
19d ago
And I've never gotten a good answer on how "imminent" applies: can I promote a planned riot as long as it's more than, say, 12 months from now?
Didn't the Supreme Court rule that Trump's speech on j6 didn't count?
It depends on the judge you get and how many appeals you want to suffer through, but my understanding of the Supreme Court precedent on incitement is something like "My fellow activists, let's go right now to burn down the courthouse!" and then you all go right then to burn down the courthouse. If instead you all go to lunch, and some of the the people you talked to burn it down tomorrow but you didn't repeat your speech before they did, that wasn't incitement.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
19d ago
revoke their honorary degrees
The honorary degree I had in mind was all the way back in... June 2025. The acceptance is strong and there's no movement to disclaim them.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
19d ago
I think the route from one to the other is shorter than you do, and the allowance of calling one's enemies Nazis (or cockroaches) makes it shorter still.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
19d ago
But I don't think anyone is honestly confused about this.
Nazis have replaced the concept of Satan and demons as the "ultimate evil" in secularized Western culture. I do not think this is merely a pedantic issue when it's not merely in accurate in the way of an ambulatory anus, but as an effort to mark one's enemies as not just bad, not just evil, but THE ULTIMATE EVIL beyond any and all redemption.
a needlessly pedantic hill to die on
New flair inspiration, thank you.
It is interesting to see it potentially developing as the last straw for a lot of people, where a passive lack of charity crosses into something more active.
Once, I did care, but I burned out before this. I don't really consider the right "my side" in an affirmative sense, but my anti-leftness solidified sometime during the whole "whiteness is the source of all evil but technically doesn't mean white people wink wink nudge nudge" era of egregious bigotry.
This is not good for society, and it's definitely not good for my intellectual charity when talking to whatever infinitesimal fraction of the left refused to tolerate that shit, but I don't really feel like the ball is in my court for solving it, either. For all my many flaws and failures, I've never declared an ethnicity a contract with the devil, or tried to create high-minded academic fig leaves for virulent racism.
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