doglatine
3mo ago
There was a striking incident yesterday in the UK when a beach party in Southend turned into general public disorder, with open fights between young men with machetes.
My question for the sub isn’t directly about this, but rather the widespread use of knives in gang warfare as weapons in countries where firearms aren’t readily available. In particular, why aren’t pole arms more widely used instead? My understanding from medieval warfare is that pole arms are generally preferable to close-range weapons like swords and axes, in terms of ease of use, lethality, and safety. Granted, a spear would be hard to conceal, but you’d think that enterprising young men could find ways to eg convert umbrellas or walking sticks into effective melee weapons by attaching a sharp point to them.
Is this a case of an inadequate equilibrium in weapon usage? Or is there a very good reason why pole arms aren’t being used?
doglatine
3mo ago
Very welcome! Matt Lakeman's whole blog is amazing; if ever I have an hour to kill (e.g., a train journey) I'll just load up one of his posts and come away knowing so much more about a new country.
doglatine
3mo ago
I can also recommend Matt Lakeman’s excellent post on Bukele and El Salvador for those wanting a deep dive into the issue.
doglatine
3mo ago
Based on the Google Gemini/Imagen fiasco I’m willing to bet it’s something very dumb and crude being pushed by upper leadership with limited understanding of how the technology works.
doglatine
3mo ago
This is a very unfortunate state of affairs for everyone, but I’d flag that the left needs to be careful here, more so than the right. In the event of a collapse of the existing social and political order, young men play an outsize role in both committing and defending against acts of violence. To the extent that the left can’t call on this constituency in a time of crisis, it may be disastrous for them.
doglatine
3mo ago
It was called “The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States” and I found it quite fun. Jeffrey Lewis is a military wonk rather than a politician so it was mostly interesting from a miltech and strategy point of view. The Trump nuclear football scene was clearly tongue in cheek fan service.
doglatine
3mo ago
As an Englishman I’m pleased to hear it. We were this close to settling the Hundred Years War and then Henry V got dysentery and some peasant women ate ergot-infested bread and the whole mess kicked off again.
doglatine
3mo ago
Yes, I think affluence has a far more significant role in declining standards than DEI, the societal equivalent of “zero interest rates phenomena”. You can see similar declines in willingness to suffer for excellence in East Asian cultures (the “lying flat” movement in China, for example) and the decline in formal dress, neither of which are plausibly identified with DEI.
But I think this explanation also should make us wonder whether maybe it’s all for the best. Living has never been easier and appetites have never been more easily satisfied. Isn’t this what winning is supposed to look like?
doglatine
3mo ago
You can skip the opening ceremony, watch the sports that you feel best reflect athletic ideals, and skip the ones that don’t. It’s a tiny signal but a signal nonetheless.
doglatine
3mo ago
I definitely agree that message and meme discipline has been lapsing on the part of the American Right in the last few days. It looks to me like Trump has a dominant strategy for winning the election that can be summarised in the simple maxim "Don't scare the hoes" (as I believe the kids say). That means reining in bad messaging from the retarded and extremely online segment of their base. As it is, the right-wing bits of my social feeds are currently full of conspiracies (Trump assassination attempt was a plot by the Deep State, Biden is dead, Biden didn't agree to step down, etc.) and some pretty vulgar and dumb memes about Kamala and blowjobs. None of that will persuade your average normie voter and will actively put a lot of them off. Meanwhile, the equivalent messaging from the Left has been pretty bland and innocuous (remixes with coconut tree samples, lots of friendly memes about unburdening).
Unfortunately I think that the "weirdo activist" part of the US Right (Fuentes, BAP, etc.) has been gaining in visibility over the last few years. Regardless of whether you agree with their policy goals, I think this is bad news, because their memes and messages are baroque and weird to normies. The Left has had the same problem of being dominated by its weirdo activist members for the last decade or so, but thanks to their long march through the institutions they've been able to endow their shibboleths with cultural cachet: for white people, talking about "white privilege" or "patriarchy" is a solid (but declining) signal you're a member of the upper middle class and above. The same doesn't apply at all for the Right, so their weirdo activist elements just give people the ick.
I should add that I don't hold a negative opinion of weirdo activists in general; many of my close friends fall into that camp. I also enjoy reading conspiracy posts etc. in places like this, where I think it's safe to assume that everyone is an extremely online weirdo. But insofar as the Right wants to win the next US election, it needs to keep a lid on this stuff. For my part, I don't have particularly strong feelings about Kamala vs Trump, but it would be nice if the progressivism weakened its iron grip on our institutions, and I don't see that happening unless Rightists can lean into the contrast between themselves and the Looney Left.
doglatine
4mo ago
How about this: “According to our algorithms, you have at least a 13% chance of being shot if you stay in this city. Perhaps it’s time for a new start. Join our New Leaf program today and we’ll relocate you to a new metro area on the other side of the country, and find you a basic job and lodging.”
I know, I know, I’m being hopelessly naive and idealistic. But maybe there’s a tiny fraction for whom this kind of algorithmic warning might serve as a life-changing trigger.
doglatine
4mo ago
There are equilibria that are better for the collective out there but we probably do need tit-for-tat to get to them.
doglatine
4mo ago
I don’t relish this but I think it needs to be done. “Cancel culture” is still the setup to a joke in most leftist circles I frequent. Until we get mass society-wide incidents of leopards eating faces, we won’t be able to meaningfully converge on anti- face-eating measures.
doglatine
4mo ago
At one point I had finished some consulting work and was considering getting a moderately fancy (few hundred dollar range) watch. My wife warned me that I should on no account get a Rolex. She ended up taking charge of the project for me and got me a nice vintage Seamaster.
doglatine
4mo ago
Not true for Rolexes, but yes if you want a shot at a Birkin bag you need to build up a relationship as an Hermes customer.
doglatine
4mo ago
Great post, interesting observation, keen to hear what others have to say. But two quick thoughts.
(1) how much of this is the rise of wealthy Arabs/Russians/Chinese etc. as potential potential customers? Norms can be difficult to communicate cross-culturally and even harder to motivate (“so what if French people think shorts are just for sport and the beach, if it’s hot I’ll wear them to lunch”). But as the purchasing power of outsiders increases, the cost of excluding them becomes greater, so these codes get retired.
(2) Enforcing these codes requires a certain amount of skill and perspicacity, especially once we get beyond Rolexes into Patek Philippes and Vacheron Constantins. As the role of sales clerk has been shunted down the social ladder, most employees don’t have the knowledge or empowerment to enforce them.
doglatine
4mo ago
I would say that the growing gender divide on politics is more important than generational shifts. It doesn’t matter much if Gen Y is 50/50 red and blue if Gen Y males skew 80/20 red. Of course young women can fly a drone or shoot a gun in principle, but young men are both more suited to combat and more amenable to it.
doglatine
4mo ago
Until Trump's statement a few minutes ago, it's possible that Trump's ear injury was caused by shrapnel from a near-miss, so there's a reason you might not want to explicitly say that Trump took a bullet. That said, I broadly agree that the obvious headline is "Trump survives assassination attempt", or at least (more conservatively) "Trump injured in apparent assassination attempt."
doglatine
4mo ago
To go full Draconian here, I’m tempted to think a full South East Asia-style zero tolerance policy for opiate drugs might work here. Anyone caught with anything other than tiny amounts of Fent or H or Tranq just gets fast-tracked for lethal injection. And the police would actively go looking for anyone slinging.
It would produce horrible optics and questionable outcomes for six months, but I think it would dramatically reduce the number of ruined lives, and even the net deaths (including those executed). The present situation is a classic worst-of-both-world scenario where we tolerate antisocial and dysfunctional behaviour and also have no serious social technologies in place (like family shame networks) to rescue people from its effects.
doglatine
4mo ago
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Kamala would be too bad. I don’t think she’s especially smart or talented, but a lot of her most cringe appearances have been a consequence of her pretending to be someone she’s not, namely a mystic person of colour speaking truth to power. Ultimately I think she’s on the side of order and capital, and is probably a fair bit smarter than she’s been allowed to express on the campaign trail. I was mostly convinced of the above points by hard leftist friends who considered them disqualifying points, whereas to my mind they make her more plausible.
Of course, whether she’s able to run as a wonk and a cop is a different story. Democratic campaign incentives probably require her to play-act the role of mystic minority. But once in power, I think she could be pretty decent, and potentially far more autonomous than Biden.
doglatine
4mo ago
Maybe I'm just outing myself as a sexually enervated low-T guy but I honestly don’t relate to this at all. When young women act flirty with me in any vaguely work-related contexts, I generally find it quite annoying, like they’re trying to trick me into extending professional favours to them. Maybe when I was a horn-dog 20-something I would have reacted differently, but these days the most important women in my life are my wife, mother, and daughter, and I channel my energy into building my assets, progressing my career, and working on our home. Perhaps I just haven’t been tempted very strongly but I remember feeling utter contempt in grad school for the older male professors who were in the thrall of pretty female students and did them favours and I very strongly imprinted on not becoming that sort of guy.
doglatine
4mo ago
You can limit the harms of people’s shit decisions and put barriers in place to deter them making the worst ones.
That said, I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying. I tend towards being maximally permissive about self-funded medical procedures by adults. From plastic surgery to suicide, as long as the state isn’t contributing a penny, you’re a compos mentis adult, and no-one else will be directly harmed, then I see no good reason for imposing any significant limits. Minors are obviously a very difficult case, and deserve greater protections.
doglatine
5mo ago
By what mechanism do they propose to defend themselves after their better part falls firmly on the wrong side of these things?
Was this a deliberate echo of Sir Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons?
I'm beyond expecting Dems to follow the norms of martial-hierarchical honour culture, but I have higher hopes for the modern GOP; as we say round our way, ξιφοδηλήτῳ, θανάτῳ τίσας ᾇπερ ἦρχεν. Maybe Kemp should follow Hanania's (sadly unpursued) advice to DeSantis, and challenge Trump to a fight.
More options
Context Copy link