hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
10d ago
The DOJ did not slow-walk their investigation into 2020 voter fraud; Bill Barr actually moved sufficiently faster than normal that it was, at the time, reasonable to consider this evidence of political pressure campaigns on the DOJ which called their impartiality into question.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Trump is pro-gay marriage, although he probably won’t die on that hill, and it seems like he understands that he depends on people who wouldn’t like it if he did. Even if the Supreme Court overturns obergefell(I don’t think this is likely) gay marriage will stay the law of the land in most states, and more likely than not Missouri will be required to recognize gay marriages performed in Illinois, even if both participants were Missouri residents at the time.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
No, the far right wants to ban transgenderism in adults. Centrists want to go delay transition to adulthood and remove trannies from women’s sports.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
No, but he depends on people who do and he’s smart enough to realize that.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
I observed this a lot in school, in which the smartest students tended to also look the oldest and were also taller.
Uh, how much of that is just the difference between the youngest and oldest kids in the class? You could potentially have almost a year’s worth of development difference- a pretty big deal for kids both physically and cognitively.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
I thought there was a guy who actually did it?
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Interesting because most people in my filter bubble would take- well not the gay-o-caust, but maybe door to door gun confiscations or serious infringements on the 1a or something like that- to mean the constitution has lost the mandate of heaven(they wouldn’t use those words) and therefore it becomes legal to open fire on government officials acting under orders because there’s no social contract anymore.
Would they actually do it? I dunno. Probably most wouldn’t. But equally, if the government actually did enact robust hate speech laws or something, they wouldn’t inform on people who did.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
While public schools are mostly run by functionaries who are their jobs as being about spending as much money as possible as inefficiently as possible and think the rest of society exists solely to serve that goal, education is also just expensive. Eyeballing Catholic schools near me, tuition for one kid is about $6500/yr at schools attached to working class parishes(upper middle class ones list tuition as ‘it depends’, which probably means it’s subsidized for all but the very wealthy)- with subsidized tuition for subsequent children(presumably this subsidy is paid by the Catholic Church, either at the parish level or by the diocese). My local school district spends just under $10k/yr per kid, not counting capital improvements(Catholic schools don’t either, so this is a fair comparison). So by that comparison about 35% of public school spending is overspending. Charters in my state get about $10,000/yr, with an additional $1,000/student in years with construction going on at the school, so more like public schools.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Public schools spend a lot, but it doesn’t cost anywhere near $6000/month. The American average is more like $1000/month.
Now I’m not claiming that lots of lower middle class families are good for the city budget. But public school costs are only about half their family income(Catholic schools could get the job done for a third, if you’re looking for a benchmark of ‘how much of that is just the government spending more money because it can’).
hydroacetylene
10d ago
Wasn’t there a tech billionaire who bought blood from teenagers to try to extend his life that way? What happened with that?
hydroacetylene
10d ago
that no human being on Earth could possibly believe a woman gets to "back out" once she's gone that far with a man,
Really not difficult to believe someone could think the current conception of consent is fantastical and ridiculous. I 100% believe that woman had the right to back out at the last minute, but that right was granted by man, not nature. Some primitives finding it shocking isn’t a surprise, especially when they’re closely related to the man in trouble for it.
That doesn't actually fit my experience. The times I've talked IRL to left-wingers of my acquaintance, they've been rather ignorant of the racial breakdown of abortion in America, and rather surprised when I've introduced them to the stats.
Hmm. You seem to know more progressives than I do, although it seems like common knowledge.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
I mean, calling them Latinx also didn’t help the democrats. I’m really not surprised that someone who used that term unironically has no theory of mind of Hispanics(or anyone else- ‘we’re inventing a new and difficult to pronounce term for you because you might be transgender’ is, uh, not a way to appeal to blue collar people. And yes, that -nks sound is quite difficult for a native Spanish speaker to pronounce, just like those Russian and German consonant clusters are to Americans.)
The native woman also doesn’t shock me; people tend to take personal tragedies as so obviously unjust that they’re evidence of malice from whoever imposed them.
It’s the whole white nationalist plot to enslave women that seems strange to believe. I can get my head around a few people in ivory towers believing unevidenced things that can plausibly be connected to some real rhetoric(there are people who will cite demographic change as a reason to oppose immigration, and great replacement theory is really a thing that republicans believe). But white nationalists tend to be mostly aware that the women seeking abortions are fairly black- and everyone else is too. It just seems strange.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
#2 is true for Haiti, but not as much for other parts of Latin America. Honduras, Guatemala, etc are crappy places to live, but they’re ‘normal lower middle income country’ crappy, not ‘Haiti Afghanistan and the worst parts of sub Saharan Africa’ crappy. There are plenty of underclass Americans who split a rented bedroom in a bad neighborhood, ride bikes, and eat shitty food while working two crappy jobs. You are drastically overestimating the standard of living of Americans who, for whatever reason, cannot function normally.
On the other hand, economic growth in Mexico and declining TFR in Latin America reduces immigration pressure to begin with.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
The people who employ illegal immigrants tend to ones that republicans want to keep happy.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
I do not know why there’s a progressive idea that pro-life laws exist to boost the white fertility rate by controlling women(no reasonable person thinks that they do this- pro-life advocates are well aware of the color of the women getting abortions). But it seems like they literally actually believe this?
Of course being a sterile woman is not a good idea if the based patriarchy actually comes about.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
As I’ve said before- ‘mos maiorum oppugnatus est ait Sulla et veritatem Dixit.’
In other words, democracy really is crumbling, but the people screeching about it do not have clean hands. Trying to jail Trump on pissant charges with legal theories that haven’t been used before after what should have been counted as a hung jury is just transparently a political operation, the sort of thing we see in second world hybrid regimes. Etc, etc.
Trump’s not a saint either, but democrats have actually declared their intent to do the things which hybrid regimes do, just the same. I back the potential illiberal democracy which stands up for the interests of social conservatives(no, not socially conservative interests, the interests of social conservatives), and not the one which announces its intent to persecute us. C’est la vie.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
No, the mood around me has been jubilant. Much hay about the large gains with Hispanics. Granted, I went from a rad trad election watching party to deer camp.
But, of course, that’s precisely the point. Opposite filter bubbles exist. The anti-trump machine is, I would suggest, now confined entirely to one of them. It needs to expand or die. And it is upon this machine that lies the fate of the democrats, barring fraud. Democrats have two possible economic platforms- quasi socialist economic illiteracy and unpopular Goldman Sachs technocracy. Fully embracing one of them on a national level means losing key voters they need to win. Their social policy is far left extremism that, at best, is slightly less unpopular than republicans’ far right extremism(and that’s only for abortion, on other social issues the GOP wins). And of course there’s the trust issue with big swaths of the electorate.
The dems’ best hope in ‘28 is for a rape victim to die from an ectopic pregnancy right before the election during an oil price spike. Structurally it’s difficult for democrats to make credible signals of moderating.
hydroacetylene
10d ago
plus mechanical reapers.
Well yes, this is a relevant factor in the late Victorian era. But the per farmer productivity gap opened very early.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
Operation wetback enacted a meaningful amount of deportations in the fifties.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
Life of Saint Louis by John of Joinville.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
Yes. Subsistence farming hung on in America surprisingly late; LBJ famously grew up on a subsistence farm in the Texas hill country- some of the worst grain growing land of its climate anywhere. And of course the Deep South had lots of the population living as subsistence farmers until Jim Crow- my great-grandfather recounted them as a major presence after WWII.
I think it’s accurate to call into question how wealthy it’s possible to be and stay a subsistence farmer- Little House on the Prairie is about a family’s transition to commercial production to take advantage of greater access to markets before it becomes a romance novel, but it’s quite clear that the Ingallses are farming because the alternative to growing enough food is not eating in the early books, and later on after buying a mechanical reaper they eagerly take advantage of markets.
hydroacetylene
11d ago
AIUI American homesteads starting in the late 19th century were the most prosperous example of subsistence farmer ever in the history of the world, and the gap in per farmer productivity vs the old country opened up very early.
Was this an artifact of social equality? Of more land per farmer? Of better access to markets due to settlement patterns?
hydroacetylene
11d ago
I pick a side and agree with their claims.
Historians have flowerier justifications.
hydroacetylene
12d ago
For 5, are we including South Africa? I can see opposition to continuing Central African immigration leading to a nativist governing majority much more easily than for other western-ish countries.
It really depends on whether Trump or the rest of the GOP is more willing to call the other’s bluff.
When I put it that way, you already know the answer. I suspect Trump would sign a 15 week abortion ban(he opposes late term abortions), but the Republican Party doesn’t defy trump well at all.
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