naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
Amidst the Trump verdict and the SCOTUS drops, it might be easy to miss a smaller verdict this week: Chad Daybell guilty of murder.
If this doesn't ring any bells, you can watch a whole damn documentary about it, should you feel so inclined. Or read a book about it. Or just a timeline. Go ahead! It's okay. I'll wait.
Anyway, this is perhaps the second-least surprising verdict of the week. Absent literal video of the murders, the evidence that Daybell took part in these killings is about as ironclad as it comes. So the trial, really, was about which part. This is often a challenge when "conspiracy" comes into play. If you have two good suspects, and you think they worked together, but each points a finger at the other, what do you do?
Lori Vallow was sentenced last year to life in prison for killing two of her children and conspiring in the murder of Chad Daybell's first wife. In arguing that case, prosecutors were tasked in part with establishing both that Vallow was mentally competent to stand trail, and that she was not entitled to mitigation on grounds that she was being manipulated by Chad. In fact the prosecution went further, asserting that Vallow was the one manipulating Daybell "through emotional and sexual control." Vallow was convicted on that account of events.
CW angle: quite naturally, that was a big part of Daybell's defense. "The state already proved that I was being manipulated by Vallow!" Indeed. In no time at all, a journalist (and author of the book linked above) was ready to call that defense "misogynistic."
Reporter Leah Sottile, whose book When the Moon Turns to Blood details how Daybell and Vallow fell into a twisted belief system of their own making, was in attendance at court. Sottile tweeted that Prior’s strategy of deflecting blame to the already convicted and sentenced Vallow was “misogynistic” and an attempt to convince members of the jury that Daybell had been “overtaken by a Jezebel figure like Vallow — a woman of failed marriages, irresistible sexuality.” She also noted the irony of this alongside Prior’s argument that Tammy was primarily responsible for her husband’s publishing business: “a man from a very patriarchal faith saying the women around him controlled him.”
Returning to today, Daybell was convicted on three charges of first degree murder as well as three charges of conspiracy to commit murder (plus some irrelevant lesser charges). While Vallow was given multiple life sentences (reportedly, the death penalty was taken off the table due to the prosecution making a late discovery submission), Daybell's day in court isn't over: prosecution is pushing for the death penalty.
Overall, this seems like a case where police investigation basically functioned as intended. The "doomsday cult" stuff makes for sensational reading/viewing, and there were indeed a number of plots to untangle--a fact which took law enforcement a little time to pick up on. Aside from Chad's sentencing (and the inevitable appeals), one loose thread remains: Vallow has been extradited to Arizona, to stand trial for conspiring to murder her fourth husband and planning the attempted murder of her niece's ex-husband (her now-deceased brother was the one with the gun).
So I don't feel like there's a lot of reason to pick at the CW bits, it looks like justice is broadly being done. It's a bit of a mental splinter to me that the prosecution never had to really get its story straight, and that Chad and Lori have both been convicted, in part, on the theory that they masterminded the whole thing and the other party was merely a catspaw. Perhaps the Arizona trial will give us a clearer picture--Alex Cox, Lori's deceased brother, appears to have also been a bit of a Daybell disciple. Before his death he reportedly expressed concern that he might become Lori and Chad's fall guy.
Perhaps all that remains is some inescapable head-scratching over the relationship between mental illness, religious zeal, and romantic entanglements. I would colloquially and informally call these people crazy. As far as I can tell, Chad's wife was murdered because he wanted out of a marriage without the hassle (or "sin?") of divorce, and Lori's children were murdered because they were interfering with her living her best life with husband number five. (I assume that Daybell and Vallow were not actually perceiving demons, which appears to be how they justified the killings to themselves, and only perceived "darkness" possessing others as a post hoc excuse for hating those who disagreed with them or otherwise interfered with their aims.) Competence to stand trial does not require a person to be in perfect mental health, they just need the ability to have a rational and factual understanding of what the judges and lawyers tell them. Vallow and Daybell appear to meet that standard, so why the state's song-and-dance of insisting that each of them, separately, was psychologically dominating the other? Why not just tell the most likely story--that these were mutually unstable people who fed one another's delusions?
The practical answer, I suspect, is just that the state did not want either jury to perceive the slightest possibility of mitigation. To prevent the obviously guilty from getting off light, the state focused not on the (perfectly adequate!) truth in a logically consistent way, but on the most compelling available narrative in any given moment. Given that I have no sympathy for Vallow or Daybell, I'd say "and nothing of value was lost," but I value the truth too much to dismiss even this slight disregard for consistency across claims as "of no value."
I leave you with this small excerpt from C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters:
If, on the other hand, he is an emotional, gullible man, feed him on minor poets and fifth-rate novelists of the old school until you have made him believe that “Love” is both irresistible and somehow intrinsically meritorious. This belief is not much help, I grant you, in producing casual unchastity; but it is an incomparable recipe for prolonged, “noble”, romantic, tragic adulteries, ending, if all goes well, in murders and suicides.
If the Israelis had never invaded Mandatory Palestine in the first place, there'd be no Israel, and there'd be no fighting.
Er... no? Mandatory Palestine begins in, what, 1920? After the Roman expulsion and the slaughter of the Crusades, Jews began to re-establish their homeland again no later than the 13th century. The Mizrahim migrated back in the 18th century, and no small number of Ashkenazim in the 19th. These were as involved in the fight against the Ottomans as the Muslim Arabs; both groups were angling for political control of the area, which partly informs the establishment of Mandatory Palestine in the first place.
That is to say, you started this, no?
The idea that any single group "started this" is absurd. The Jews, Alexander, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Crusaders, if I believed a particular plot of land could be cursed I would certainly wonder about Israel. Who is tunnel visioned, exactly?
The Israeli prime minister is making speeches in the Knesset about how you're waging a holy war of eradication against the Biblical Amalekites. Does that not classify as 'ideologically committed to actual genocide, as a matter of religious prescription'?
This assertion genuinely surprised me, and it is something I would want to condemn if it were true. But it isn't, unless one is being deliberately and maximally uncharitable for whatever reason, so... no, that particular comment does not appear to classify, despite your perplexing and pointless effort to tart it up.
And the IRA wanted Northern Ireland to be part of the Republic of Ireland. And this you may note has not happened. What the goal of an organization is and what they can be persuaded or forced to accept can be very different things.
The IRA wasn't the catspaw of multiple Muslim countries populated by people with a millennium-old grudge against any non-Muslim living within the boundaries of the fullest historical extent of the caliphate.
I really think the only long term solution is going to require Israel to be willing to absorb attacks, even though morally they are under no real requirement to do so.
I mean--genocide either way would also be a long term solution, and it is the one to which the Palestinians have repeatedly returned despite the number of times Israel has unilaterally assumed the cost of de-escalation.
The IRA comparison is misleading at best, because Muslim extremists are a totally different kettle of fish. I simply cannot take seriously any analysis of what Israel should or should not do that does not 100% foreground the deep religious commitment of these people to the specific proposition that the Jews should die:
Kill them wherever you encounter them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, for persecution is more serious than killing. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they fight you there. If they do fight you, kill them--this is what such disbelievers deserve. (Surah Al-
The IRA wanted a certain political outcome, and weren't much bothered by the idea of killing to make that happen. But "independent Palestine" is not really the goal; it is at best instrumental to the goal of removing unbelievers from holy lands by any means. Persuading them to accept a different goal means fundamentally altering their religious convictions--not something Britain really had to achieve with the IRA.
My credence on the possible success of your proposed plan is less than 20%. Pre-October, I might have given you even odds, but murdering a thousand people in a single night, raping women, kidnapping hundreds of civilian hostages, that's way past IRA shit.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
No, the steelman is, they were there first
They weren't there first. Why isn't your reaction to the (re)creation of Israel, "what fucking savages" but "they kinda have a point" as well? Because 2000 years is longer than 400? Or 50? My whole point is that it doesn't matter if the Palestinians "kinda have a point" about being told by their government, "sorry guys, time to move." What matters is what they do about that; what they have repeatedly chosen to do about it is not to pursue peaceful solutions, but to pursue the solution "murder as many Jews as we can, say we're sorry so the international community suppresses Israel's response, then prepare for the next opportunity to murder as many Jews as we can."
You have assiduously avoided addressing this angle, at all, in your responses. This is, at best, a botched "steelman" grounded in simply omitting relevant facts. What it feels like is just completely dishonest engagement.
Just because they didn't have a flag doesn't mean it didn't exist.
Ah. Well, if stand up comedy is the level at which you engage with history, that would explain a lot of what you've written here.
The Palestinian Declaration of Independence was written in 1988. Prior to that, both Arab and Jewish nationalists in the 20th century helped to overthrow the Ottoman Turks in hopes of creating their own nation, but Britain and France did not follow through on those expectations. The region has been ruled from afar for just about all of recorded history, albeit mostly by Jews, then Muslims, and occasionally Christians. Although many Jews were driven from the region by Hadrian (and others), there were always some who remained. By the early 19th century, many had begun to return.
But once more (since you're apparently ignoring it every time I write it anyway): it doesn't ultimately matter who has or had a flag, or whose ancestors were from where (though don't think I don't notice the rhetorical trick of making conveniently inconsistent claims about what counts as being somewhere "first"). What matters is that there is a group of terrorists pretending to be a "nation" for the express purpose of killing as many Jews as possible, and that this is (contra to your bizarre claims) in no way "symmetrical" to a democratically elected government doing what it can to respond to the mass murder and rape of its people by Muslim Arab terrorists pretending to be a "nation."
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
But any attempt to take a view of the whole situation is impossible without trying to steelman the positions, and I was trying to do this with respect to the Palestinians.
I don't think it's a "steelman" to soften their actual beliefs, though. They want all the Jews to either leave Israel or die. They are quite explicit about this. They literally make children's shows teaching this. To steelman that view requires you to elaborate reasons why, all things considered, this is a reasonable view to hold. Your response appears to be something like "there's no meaningful difference between Israel's government and Hamas, so their positions are just equally bad." That's not a steelman, that's ignoring inconvenient facts in hopes of strengthening an objectively outrageous position.
The question is whether Palestinians should be empowered to exterminate Israel, and aided by the world in their mission to do so. The answer is "no."
Why not? After all, we're letting Israel do the same.
Bullshit. In the first place, there never was a "Palestine" to exterminate. Furthermore, the Israelis have repeatedly demonstrated their ability, if they so chose, to militarily conquer not only Israel itself but much of the neighboring territory as well. Israel has treated the Palestinians with kid gloves for decades.
Letting Israel control where the Palestinians are allowed to live, what they are allowed to do and so on is symmetrical to letting the Palestinians control where the Israelis are allowed to live, what they are allowed to do and so on.
More bullshit. There's nothing symmetrical here; the Palestinians wish to kill all the Jews. Do you seriously not understand this? If Israel's goals were "symmetrical" to those of the Palestinians, all the Palestinians would already be dead. You are not steelmanning anything, you are literally making shit up.
Yes, Palestine would be a much worse place to live in than Israel, but that's not a meaningful way to decide which side to support.
How the fuck is that not meaningful? That is often, perhaps always how nations decide "which side" to support (though nations are also at times wrong about what will make something a "worse place," in the end).
But never mind that; we have an absolute laundry list of economic and political reasons to support a productive and educated first-world democracy over a couple of terrorist cells whose aspirations toward theocracy are often not only explicitly anti-Israel, but explicitly anti-American. To say nothing of the events of October 7, which are independently sufficient evidence that every civilized person everywhere should regard Palestine as, if it is a state at all, only a terrorist state.
After all, there are lots of mismanaged countries, but we no longer let the Netherlands take over and manage them.
Palestine is not a country in any particularly meaningful way, and it never has been. It is two separate terrorist groups living on the largess of other nations within the borders of Israel, actively oppressing their own supporters for theological reasons. Writing as though we were dealing with an oppressive colonial nation-state and its equal-but-opposite conquered territory demonstrates either ignorance, or willful ignorance.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
I find your responses uncharitable and probably disingenuous. You seem to simply be engaged in motivated reasoning toward a preferred outcome, rather than attempting to take a view of the whole situation.
"Why should there be another Muslim Arab country?" is a loaded question. It's like asking, "why should Panama exist when there are many other Latin American countries?"
No. The question is not whether Palestine should exist or not. The question is whether Palestinians should be empowered to exterminate Israel, and aided by the world in their mission to do so. The answer is "no." Your response was, "but what about independent Palestine" and my answer was, "I am sympathetic to arguments for independence and self-determination, but what Palestinians (and you) say in that regard does not match with their actions over the years. Talk is cheap. Peace is a choice they refuse to make."
From the viewpoint of the Palestinians, they weren't granted half of Palestine, half of Palestine was taken from them and awarded to Israel.
I don't really care about their "viewpoint," especially when it is clearly ahistorical. But even if they weren't the literal and ideological descendants of colonists now complaining about being colonized, it wouldn't matter: Israel is there, now, and has been for a long time, and the actual options are (A) stop the Palestinians from occasionally murdering Israelis due to an ancient grudge or (B) allow the Palestinians to continue occasionally murdering Israelis due to an ancient grudge, and in turn get murdered right back. "Two peaceful states getting along peacefully" is a much better option! But it will never be on the table while the Palestinians and their useful idiots continue to chant "from the river to the sea, Palestine is for Muslim Arabs."
Yes, they are much better stewards of this land than the Arabs, but that's saying you shouldn't complain that you woke up with a kidney missing just because Terence Tao was the recipient.
Except we're not dealing with a human being here, we're dealing with nation-states and identity groups. There are so many problems with nation-states, and identity groups are, if anything, worse. The original expulsions were horrible and shouldn't have happened, and under the standard of modern liberal democracies likely would not have happened. But the empires of yore worked differently. The Muslim Arabs in Palestine weren't sovereign, and had never been sovereign.
Again: insofar as they seek full freedom and self-determination, I'm pretty open to that. But it can't be on "by murdering everyone else in the region" terms, and they have repeatedly shown themselves unwilling or incapable of accepting those terms.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
If Palestinians stop fighting, there will be no independent Palestine either. Palestinians will become permanent second-rate residents of Israel in everything but name.
This argument flies in the face of facts and history. There are several independent Muslim Arab states in the region; Israel is a tiny portion of the region, smaller than many American counties. "Independent Palestine" is a call for a Muslim Arab country specifically in Gaza and the West Bank, which was granted in the Two State Solution, and refused by the Palestinians. Palestinians still refuse it as a solution. Give them a two state solution, and within half a generation they will be raiding Israel from behind their "borders," calling yet again for the extermination of the Jews. How do we know this? Because they keep doing it.
Not only that, but a substantial percentage of Israeli nationals are Muslim Arabs, from when Israel tried to just allow Palestinians to choose to participate in a liberal democracy along with the rest of the developed world. Some took the offer, and are pretty universally better off for having done so. I have known a few Palestinian Israelis, and they were not "second-rate residents" in any sense but perhaps the fact that they lived in an officially Jewish nation--not unlike the Jews and Christians who are sometimes permitted to live in officially Muslim nations, except for the part where Jews and Christians are generally treated far worse in Muslim nations. Rural Americans in many states often have less political power or self-determination than Palestinian Israelis.
Attitudes like yours toward the conflict in Israel strike me as the most absurd exercise of both-sides-ism in modern history. Israel has taken every reasonable avenue, and perhaps some unreasonable ones, toward peace and coexistence. Every olive branch they have extended has been sharpened into a stake and used to murder their children. In some ways Israel may be the single most Christian nation ever to exist, so far has it extended forgiveness and amnesty to the descendants of the Muslim Arab colonists who live within their borders.
I've lived through this cycle so many times I've actually lost count, but it repeats like clockwork. Every time it looks like we're going to get "peace in the Middle East" at last, the Palestinians sabotage it (usually, with financing and support from other Muslim nations). "Independent Palestine" is a canard, code for "death to Israel," because coexistence is not on the menu, and as long as Muslims are religiously committed to reclaiming every inch of their holy lands, it never will be. Israel's Muslim neighbors wish to see it destroyed, and Palestinians are the stooges they have been using to pursue that goal for longer than most Mottizens have been alive. Nothing has changed, nothing is new. I feel bad for the Palestinians, they are being used harshly by bad actors. But they have had many opportunities to escape the cycle, and they have squandered them without hesitation.
I am sympathetic to arguments for independence and self-determination, but what Palestinians (and you) say in that regard does not match with their actions over the years. Talk is cheap. Peace is a choice they refuse to make.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5mo ago
That was the first mention of Israel, that I could recall, but the whole conversation is about Ukraine, Russia, Putin, and NATO. It's not exactly new to me, but it's refreshing to hear someone so clearly say that this is a war of choice, and the choice is being made by the USA, and their puppet states involved in NATO.
I don't understand how it's possible for you, or anyone, to believe this. Insofar as any conflict in Israel is a "war of choice," the people making that choice are, and have been, Muslim Arabs, whether inside or outside of Israel. For generations, now. If Palestinians stop fighting, there will be no more fighting. If Israelis stop fighting, there will be no more Israel. The commitment of Hamas, its handlers abroad, and most of the people living under its rule is the eradication of Israel. They have never accepted any of the compromises offered to them for more than a handful of years, during which time they have always been sharpening their spears for their next attempt.
I understand that the United States is entangled in this, as it is entangled one way or another in most armed conflicts around the world. At minimum, the American government is a well-compensated arms dealer! And I understand that the Israeli government has made a variety of foolish, cruel, and otherwise objectionable decisions along the way. Nobody in that region has anything approaching clean hands. But exactly one side of the Israel conflict is ideologically committed to actual genocide, as a matter of religious prescription, and it's not the Israelis.
Ukraine, okay! There's a conflict where American (or at least NATO) interests have absolutely been downplayed in favor of spinning a Russophobic narrative. I still tend to see Russia as the bad actor there, because I am prejudiced against aggressors, but I can accept that the United States played at least an indirect role in poking that particular bear. The United States had nothing to do with the murder, mayhem, robbery, and rape perpetrated by the Palestinian stooges of Islamist governments on October 7, and Israel's response to that attack has been, if not obviously proportional, absolutely understandable. If a bunch of Canadians, at the urging of their government, snuck across the border to rape and murder a thousand innocent Americans, I would not be satisfied with a merely proportional response; as a matter of clear deterrence, I would definitely want to see an absolutely merciless escalation.
And if it kept happening, over and over again, over years and decades, well... at some point the only thing that makes sense is to reach for the metaphorical banhammer.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
goatfucker patriarchy
Write like everyone is reading and you want to include them in the conversation, please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Long form and relitigating every frame hinders the ability to develop models to apply to new situations.
Inflammatory comments and shorthand integration-by-reference hinder the ability to create a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.
That's the goal--it's right there at the top of the page! Of course, the community is what it is; personalities and culture and such are bound to develop and play a part. The goal of moderation is to do what we can to preserve the foundation in the face of that.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
So it would at least be good to specify the viewpoint from which you're judging a particular claim as inflammatory.
As with all rules, it's the viewpoint of the best judgment of the moderators.
I personally don't think there's anything inflammatory at all about "women love a killer".
That's why I referenced the specific/general rule there, rather than the inflammatory one.
Is no one allowed to post under the assumption that HBD is true unless they include a link to a list of HBD 101 resources laying out the supporting evidence?
That depends largely on the tone of the post. A factual and charitable but non-inflammatory post that leads a person toward uncomfortable conclusions is a very different thing than a meticulously-researched-and-linked post that paints whole groups of people in demeaning or derogatory ways using needlessly hostile language.
In this particular case, I would point out for example that while drawing comparisons between urban crime today and literally barbaric behavior in the ancient world is different in tone than straight up referring to a group as "barbarians." The objection might be--"well yeah, but if it quacks like a duck..." and I am totally sympathetic to wanting to resist the pejorative treadmill. Fortunately, the rules are not self-enforcing, and the mod team is comprised of reasonable individuals doing their best to prevent this from becoming a community where one particular sort of person just comes to vent their spleen.
The most we can do is our best.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
adoration for murderous, rapey barbarians
Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat. Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
Women love a killer
Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible.
This post is actually a pretty clean example of exactly what we don't want people posting, here. I am familiar with the evidence I would expect you to provide in support of each of your claims, but you didn't actually do so. And even if you had, your rhetoric simply comes in too sweeping and too hot. The tone is all wrong; you're not discussing a culture war topic, you're waging culture war.
You've stacked some AAQCs which have somewhat shielded you, but the number of warnings for low effort booing on your account is getting cumbersome. This time it's a three day ban.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
I've been in a bit of back-and-forth on reddit about this article, and also commented on the Substack, which I don't usually do. I disagree with Hanania that the civil rights movement is the origin of wokism. Certainly the civil rights movement has been a vehicle for wokism, at times, but there are many ways to do civil rights, and just as there are radical feminists and liberal feminists, there are radical race theorists and liberal race theorists. But (as Scott seems to imply) Hanania doesn't seem to actually care about which way the causal arrows point in reality, he just wants to dismantle the stuff to which he objects, and sees this as a possible way to do it.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
You're here, and I really wish you weren't.
This is very much the opposite of "write like everyone is reading, and you want to include them in the conversation."
Please don't post like this.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
you're either a coward or a dullard
This is not allowed. Banned for three days.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
It’s part of the reason I could never have a one night stand. The idea of letting a complete stranger into your house surrounded by all your valuables...
I have always sort of assumed this was part of the hotel/motel trope. Obviously with extramarital affairs on both sides you'd need some other place to go, but with one night stands it further cements the ephemeral nature of the interaction: neither of you even knows where the other lives.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
Yeah, the comment was a bit longer (and from a fresh-rolled zero-karma account) but the quoted text is the gist of it.
A similar question was posed a couple months ago so I approved this comment because it wasn't obviously spam, but it did seem a little bait-y. That the user's apparent response was to delete the question strengthens my sense that something fishy was happening there.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
I think the study of the paranormal would benefit by more smart people focusing on it.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but smart people who focus on the study of the paranormal (and who are not actively grifting) tend to conclude that paranormal studies are only really valuable as a grift. The only way the study of the paranormal "benefits" is by having each phenomenon either debunked or explained; in the former case, most people didn't need it debunked because it was obviously a grift from the start, and in the latter case the explanation removes the phenomenon from the realm of the "paranormal" and into the realm of the "normal." In other words, either way, "success" in paranormal studies inevitably means the elimination of paranormal studies. So we can be much more efficient by just eliminating paranormal studies entirely, and when a plausibly interesting but unexplained phenomenon occurs, subjecting that phenomenon to normal studies.
Sometimes the conclusion will be "we still can't explain this phenomenon." That doesn't mean something "paranormal" has happened. It just means that we're limited beings who are often underequipped to grasp or explain some things. The universe is complex enough given what we do know; adding further complexity by building shrines to our own ignorance does not help us in any way.
Yep! There is of course a law review article (PDF warning) about it. Totally normal and well within the rules, even though it seems painfully obvious (at least to me, and the author of that article) that it shouldn't be.
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