monoamine
2mo ago
I do think democracies are a proxy for civil unrest, even if that wasn’t the express purpose of democracy originally (cf etymology fallacy). Democracy is an outlet for political rage and catharsis. Radicals become political influencers and their danger to civil order is diminished as a result.
Exactly. This is why what Trump did with the 2020 election is so dangerous and corrosive. January 6 was a natural outpouring of what he set in motion, even if he didn't literally tell his supporters to breach the Capitol building. We should expect to see more serious civil unrest if he loses the 2024 election, since he will very likely claim it was rigged no matter what.
monoamine
2mo ago
Yeah, to be clear, that's definitely what I would do if I were to share it. I was just kind of being hyperbolic so that it wouldn't seem like I'd be tiptoeing around the fact that it's partly an attempt to grow the user count. I would not try to share it in an actual shill-y or marketing-y way at all.
monoamine
3mo ago
According to this, anything besides depicting relationships that aren't cisgender and heterosexual: https://x.com/KarlMaxxer/status/1823753493783699901
(This isn't necessarily due to those prompts being blocked for traditionalist cultural reasons, of course. But it's interesting.)
monoamine
3mo ago
So I just don't get the anti-retaliation side at all. I just don't. Do you apply this logic to other aspects of your lives?
I'm on the left and I find the "retaliation" angle here somewhat odd. If done solely or primarily out of retaliation or spite - like Cernovich with Sam Seder - where you do not think someone did something bad for real but you just want to give them a taste of their own medicine, then it feels like stupid, emotional, warmongering bullshit to me and I agree with all of the criticisms of the "right wing cancel squads" that I've seen in the past few days.
If you genuinely think it's really bad to support the attempted assassination of any major political figure, then while there can certainly be a retaliation motive, you're still broadly acting in good faith by trying to get people cancelled. If there's some sort of "I have a principle of supporting freedom of speech and opposing cancel culture but the desire for just deserts is temporarily overriding that at the moment" going on as well - sure, whatever. But if you actually are disgusted and outraged by people endorsing assassination attempts, I really see zero issue with any of these cancellations, because 1) that part of the motive seems "pure", and 2) I personally agree that it's bad to endorse assassinating politicians (including Trump, who I detest) so I feel fine with it.
I'm assuming most of these pro-cancellers on the right aren't just looking for some excuse to cancel annoying leftoids and gleefully jumping on the opportunity. As Scott points out, such behavior is bad and dumb for many reasons, including that one has no evidence any of these assassination-supporters endorse the sorts of cancellations the canceller despises, even if it could be likely. I figure most of the pro-cancellers in this situation just share the logic of most pro-cancellers on the left: they see something they find sickening and corrosive to society and antithetical to morality, and they're doing something about it.
(There's some wiggle room here: a liberal making a joke about the shooting does not necessarily genuinely think the shooting is good or desirable. For the sake of argument I'm speaking about the people who clearly sincerely are saying and believing "I wish the shooter hadn't missed".)
monoamine
3mo ago
I'm staunchly on the left, virulently anti-Trump, and am completely okay with people being cancelled for these comments. I would be a hypocrite if I weren't. I think there's a lot of crocodile tears from the left on this: if Obama were almost killed and people were saying the same things, how many would protest those people being fired?
monoamine
3mo ago
Sorry for the ad hominem, but I really can't understand the sorts of people who think this way. It's very strange to me. My assumption is that you probably believe there's a high likelihood for many other conspiracy theories. Can you please prove me right or wrong and tell me your opinions on the JFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Seth Rich, and the 2020 election?
Off-topic, but as someone who tries to never have a take on something without seeing the full context and who also hates viewing photos or videos that involve (real) violence, these are rough for me. (I'm indeed a lib, if it wasn't obvious.) I've never seen any of the George Floyd or Rittenhouse footage, for example.
monoamine
3mo ago
but I'd bet for real blue-teamers, in their mind she would have won anyway so why bother with the formalities? In fact why even think about that! We've got an election to win!
As a blue-teamer myself, that is definitely my view. And everyone else I know's view. Though there's also the notion that if you have a president and vice-president - or presidential and vice-presidential candidate - who are voted for, and the president/presidential candidate steps down, people expect the second-up to take their place.
monoamine
3mo ago
That's fair due to his statements about Israel. (That Wikipedia article shows even more divisive examples than just saying Israel should wipe out Hamas.) I think if he were just a random Jew who hadn't commented on Israel or was somewhat more critical, they mostly would be fine with voting for him.
Muslims can certainly be antisemitic, but - and I could be wrong - I think most Muslims in the US don't really have an issue with Jews who aren't known to be supportive of Israel. For some that may require active condemnation of Israel, but for others I think lack of explicit, vocal support is sufficient.
Because it's just random feel-good nonsense slogans. (Several prominent liberals on Twitter like Yglesias have also pointed out the inconsistency.) I'm referring to what's stated in that thread - people should scroll down and read it if they haven't. I'm not saying they're great slogans. I'm saying it isn't literally-Satanic-literal-communism.
monoamine
3mo ago
Why are people replying to this like "oh, that's interesting"? It's paranoid delusion.
monoamine
3mo ago
If the candidate doesn't signal support for Israel or preferably explicitly signals disapproval, I don't think many Michigan Muslims would care about the mere fact they're Jewish. At least not enough for it to make them not vote.
monoamine
3mo ago
To the extent that "normie" voters are even aware of the "online right" as an entity, it's from what they occasionally hear filtered through the opinions of "official" channels, where they are/will be portrayed as a bunch of neo-nazi white supremist weirdo ghouls regardless.
I remember scoffing at "Twitter is full of Nazis" for years, until it eventually became true.
monoamine
3mo ago
I rather envy the Democrats' ability to snap quickly into place around a candidate, utterly unbothered by whatever claims they made or positions they staked out a mere week ago.
One could perhaps say "unburdened by what has been".
monoamine
3mo ago
FBI decided to craft a kidnapping plot with which to libel right wingers
Full headline:
Lawyers: FBI lured men for Michigan Gov. Whitmer kidnap plot
That's what their defense attorneys say. Which is of course what they'd say. I'd recommend people read the full article to get a more comprehensive presentation.
monoamine
3mo ago
He'll be viewed with respect in hindsight if Trump ends up losing this election, at least. He'll be admired for stepping down when he could've pushed forward.
monoamine
3mo ago
I'm a Democrat but I'm not sure how I feel about this. Despite what feels like obvious intuition, it's not entirely clear a new candidate will fare better. There's really no way to know and I think he had no choice but to step down, but, yeah, the counterfactuals here are difficult to calculate.
monoamine
3mo ago
I work in the industry and while I can confirm that regulatory compliance related to cybersecurity is theatrical bullshit, your assessment of CrowdStrike is completely wrong and nonsensical. It's certainly not the case for every vendor in the industry, but CrowdStrike's products and services do significantly reduce the risk of certain types of cybersecurity threats companies face.
monoamine
3mo ago
I think it's good to separate the principle from the instances. One can theorize or perhaps identify an absolute autocrat who is "good" by some standard. The principle of dictatorships, and therefore the act of ever advocating for any dictator to be installed in any nation, is 100% bad. This is one of the many issues I have with Yarvin and Yarvinism.
I agree with much of what you say here in a general sense (minus the use of the vitriol aimed at everyone here; I agree with it but I wouldn't say it, because incivility is pointless), but I think it's also fair to say that it's kind of a "meh" case. He paid off a porn star so that disclosure of his affair with her wouldn't hurt his electoral odds, and the payments were deceptively labeled as legal services payments to hide the fact that it was hush money.
This is bad, but: 1) Trump has done so much worse stuff that it's hard for me to care that much about this. Sure, if Biden or Obama did this then the right would talk about it every day for a decade, but that's in part because it would be their biggest known scandal. Relative to the rest of Trump, it's basically a blip. And 2) it feels tough for me to evoke the vibe of "felony" when picturing this case.
It feels a little like the example in Scott's noncentral fallacy post:
Suppose someone wants to build a statue honoring Martin Luther King Jr. for his nonviolent resistance to racism. An opponent of the statue objects: "But Martin Luther King was a criminal!"
Any historian can confirm this is correct. A criminal is technically someone who breaks the law, and King knowingly broke a law against peaceful anti-segregation protest - hence his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.
But in this case calling Martin Luther King a criminal is the noncentral. The archetypal criminal is a mugger or bank robber. He is driven only by greed, preys on the innocent, and weakens the fabric of society. Since we don't like these things, calling someone a "criminal" naturally lowers our opinion of them.
The opponent is saying "Because you don't like criminals, and Martin Luther King is a criminal, you should stop liking Martin Luther King."
It's ironic because I think (in an informal sense) being a criminal is central to who Trump is and I think comparing him to MLK is absurd, but I also think there's a lot of "people don't like criminals, Trump is now technically a criminal and a felon, so we will now call him that every time we mention him forever" going on here. I wish the trials would move forward for anything related to the "alternative electors" plot or at least the classified documents case. Then I'd feel much more comfortable with this.
monoamine
3mo ago
Absolutely, and one can point to several fact checking site examples that oversimplify an analysis in a misleading way, but most things left-leaning media/fact checkers deboonk are indeed just complete bullshit. You can throw examples of the press repeating things like "Trump said white supremacists at Charlottesville are very good people", and I'll scoff at them with the rest of you, but I find the dismissal of fact checkers disingenuous when one considers the big picture. They're much more right than they are wrong, given how much wrongness circulates.
I think you're close but it's not quite that far. To be sure, a lot of 4channers definitely hold that sentiment, but most probably hold a sentiment more like "I wish women would have sex with me, they won't, and as a result I think they deserve to suffer as punishment". They don't typically have a desire to rape anyone, but they feel a general bitterness and vengefulness.
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