professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
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User ID: 1157
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
8d ago
how do you justify this morally?
Clearly
I'll be voting for my own team
is a moral position.
It may not be one you agree with, but it's no less a (n a) moral position than the "post-liberal racial spoils hellscape."
You seem to be begging the question that there is an objectively correct morality and deviating from the progressive racism violates that, without actually filling in the gaps of why that is objectively correct and the losers should enjoy being in the hands of an angry god sacrificing their children for the wellbeing of the ungrateful.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d ago
Even lots of fantastic conservative guys who are actively condemning this behavior like Governor Scott, or some of the guys at the Babylon bee or some of the National Review reporters.
AKA "guys who know and accept the work rules."
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d ago
Don't you have a concept of politics as rooted in moral values unrelated to your own personal fate?
The other side sure doesn't care about my fate. Why is it on me to be their infinite moral superior, to sacrifice myself and everyone I care about?
Is there any amount of evil that people to your right could wreak on strangers that would outweigh making the trains run on time in your specific neck of the woods?
Any, yes. When the amount of evil is somewhere near the "actual death camps or radio broadcasts telling people to hack apart their neighbors" level, I would care.
Does that amount include my people being the only acceptable target of racism and sexism, to the point the other side tried changing the dictionary so their bigotry doesn't count? No.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d ago
Yeah, true. They just say it out in the open, rarely any consequences! Well, except for losing to Trump twice.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d ago
Is "I've rewritten the dictionary so I can't be racist" really an acceptable reason to call them not racist, though?
That whole "whiteness doesn't mean white people" thing was loathsome racist gaslighting and that 'deflection' does not change the state of reality.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d ago
Tim Walz style "black pepper is too spicy" is a racist joke, shibboleth, and tribal signal.
"That fascist deserved to get shot in front of his kids, let's do it again" may be a tribal signal, but it's not a joke. Wearing a symbol of terrorism is a tribal signal, but also not a joke.
I, for one, am not such a free speech advocate that I would be opposed to banning all of it. The only stumbling block is that, as we already see, enforcement would be wildly biased in favor of the left's shitbirds having no consequences.
If a leftwing group chat made jokes about the Holodomor, Mao or Pol Pot, this would make me very much disinclined to trust them with any power, as they have clearly not learned from the past.
Jokes on you, nobody else cares! I mean, I agree that they absolutely shouldn't be trusted with so much as town dogcatcher. But that hasn't stopped anyone to the left of Mitt Romney in my lifetime. Praising communist psychopaths gets you elite university professions and has no negative consequences.
For example, if a guy tends to joke about having taken 20 cocks in the ass during the weekend, that will do little to cement his reputation as straight.
Hey, have a little respect for the MSM crowd that don't like the gaudy flags.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d ago
It's somewhat older but had a resurgence when AOC was doing her Green New Deal schtick, which was called green but was mostly about wealth redistribution and spoils for the preferred groups.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d ago
Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals?
Cooperate-bot is a good way to lose forever.
Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War?
There needs to be a sufficiently-influential and popular figure that can actually, credibly lead the first move. Unfortunately, no one like that exists on either side, and neither side believes they need to be the one to produce that figure. There's no longer a messianic organizer, an MLK or Billy Graham, that can credibly speak to and for enough people.
I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.”
I started reading Nussbaum's From Disgust to Humanity yesterday, and was immediately struck by how self-serving and blinkered liberal usage of the disgust concept is. Indeed, it is always possible, and this circles back to the lack of the messianic figure.
I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
Is public versus private similar enough for these purposes? Or is this, as an anti-parallel to recognize one can always conjure self-serving reasons as to why it's different, a desire to conjure a self-serving reason why it's not? Jay Jones is much more similar than the Kirk commentary, and I think lumping them together weakens your broader point for that reason.
We don't have to go fully braindead and think that Lawrence v Texas means public indecency laws are moot.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d ago
the ones who were already jumping at the bit.
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.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d 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
9d ago
No, saw that name in this thread but didn't check the context. How disgusting!
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d 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
9d 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
9d 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
9d 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
9d ago
hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?
New flair day, thank you.
professorgerm
clutching my imitation pearls
9d 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
15d 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
15d 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
16d 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
16d 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
23d 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
24d 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.
Harvard, Columbia, and many other universities are still fighting court cases about their abject failures to make that distinction, aren't they? Not to mention the Trumpian attacks on them, that used that as one of the motivations.
Now, the richest, most prestigious universities in the country aren't themselves a "broad swathe," but I feel fairly comfortable saying it's not nutpicking to put them up as examples.
And the people most likely to preach that white people are the scum of the earth are progressive white women and pick-me progressive white men. Projected self-hatred is not exactly an uncommon psychological ailment.
No principles to stand on? You must become what the enemy believes? I get you're trying a parallel thing but you're so bitter when you comment here now.
Still waiting to an answer on this one first.
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