popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
popocatepetl
14d ago
Is it an AI video? If so, it's the best I've seen (well, subject to the 'how do you know elephants are good at hiding in trees?' problem). I can't find a single off frame or weird verbal cadence.
Wokeness — I refuse to use scarequotes as if it's not a real and easily definable ideology — took over all the real institutions of power over the last 30 years, and in a sudden rush in 2020. Major companies without DEI goals, universities that don't act as seminaries for wokeness, and media and information sources that don't assume wokeness as a foundational premise are as rare as hen teeth.
2024 Republicans (who include several anti-woke ideologies under their tent) have seized the political organs. This is because public office is the only part of the American power structure that takes input from the dalit and shudra castes, or to some extent even the vaisyas.
Whether political power will translate to real institutional change is yet to be seen. I predict that unless Trump is willing to be a Red Caesar, that is, to step out of the bounds of his legal constitutional authority and dare anyone to stop him, it will not.
popocatepetl
14d ago
Internet speak for "self-indulgent extreme pessimism".
Honestly, I was nonplussed at how convinced The Motte was about a Kamala victory in the predictions subthread. Most picked Harris, and even those who picked Trump expressed less confidence than the prediction markets, which were about 65% Trump at the time.
My guess? I don't think you guys are susceptible to propaganda so much as addicted to the black pill. This is a very dour message board. So I agree with the second half of your post more than the headline.
Electoral college - 80% Trump
Popular vote - Cointoss
Polls show a close race, but pollsters underestimated Trump support in both 2016 and 2020, when he was supposed to lose soundly. (In October 2020, poll aggregators were showing him down by 10 points nationally.) I see a lot of people arguing "surely they've adjusted now", but if anything, my impression is the media has been trying to hyperstition a Kamala victory, and I wouldn't put it past polling organizations to be part of that attempt. Reports of a close race encourage turnout from an otherwise divided and demoralized Democratic base. The timing of the sudden Kamala swing in polls feels artificial.
Riots/violent coup attempts - 10%
For either party. The level of passion from Democrats is lower, and the sort of Republicans who would consider staging a January 6th again will, I think, have been spooked by the DOJ's level of political repression in the last four years.
Relatedly, do you think there will be issues certifying the election results? Which side do you think will struggle more if they lose?
Neither side will contest the election. Republicans will bark about illegal votes if they lose, but not bite. Meanwhile, Democrats will kvetch about the electoral college if they lose despite a popular vote victory, but otherwise stand down.
MAGA Republicans will be devastated if they lose this one, woke Democrats merely irritated.
popocatepetl
17d ago
More identifiable name is the whole of it. Donald could be anyone (Sutherland, Rumsfeld, Duck), while if you say Trump, it could only be one man. So "Trump" is a more useful signifier when bringing up a topic involving him, which makes that use habitual. The same goes for Kamala vs Harris.
You see this all the time in sports. Patrick Mahomes is always "Mahomes", while Lamar Jackson is "Lamar".
popocatepetl
1mo ago
There aren't that many interesting regular season narratives this year. "Will Aaron Rodgers succeed with the Jets?" "The Bengals are a dumpster fire despite Joe Burrow." Most of the rest I can think of are playoff specifics. (eg "Can the Bills/Ravens stop choking?")
My gut says this a growing problem. With expanded playoffs, every high Q-rating quarterback will almost certainly get into the dance. This leaves the regular season feeling a bit like a formality.
Modernist entryists or Nietzschean reactionaries have an equal tendency to quote scripture out of context and not holistically. Let me suggest gently that you do not know scripture as well as Thomas Aquinas, other doctors of the church, or the great theologians of the middle ages. I am sure that if radical self-mutilation becomes a trend in the year 2500, similar people will be quoting Matthew 5:30 and saying Christians are being inconsistent for not cutting their hands off.
As for these specific errors, the meaning of Matthew 8:21-22 is that God comes before family in the order of charity (this is a part of Christian virtue theology I did not mention because it was irrelevant to the point at hand).
Luke 18:18-23 was a rich young man called to a vocation in the priesthood, but he rejected the call because of earthly attachment. Jesus does not demand self-penury of many other people who ask for salvation in the gospels; it was particular to the rich young man's circumstances. Every soul has need of its own mortifications. Some of Jesus's closest friends feast, drink wine, and anoint with three hundred denarii oils. To address your specific point, the "poor" in this instance that the rich young man would give to are members of his tribal ingroup; his family is ostensibly already well taken care of, thus obeying the order of charity.
You're discussing early in his ministry (Matthew 10:5-6). Later on Jesus has no problem healing Gentiles (e.g. Matthew 15) and ultimately he sent the disciples out to Save literally everyone (Matthew 28:19-20):
Yes, this is exactly my point. He went first to his in-group, and then to all nations. When a member of the out-group appeared in need before him (immediate neighbor), he ministered to them. But he observed the order of charity. In parable, first the Lord invites his family and friends to the wedding banquet, and when they refuse, he goes into the streets to summon others.
Any moral system that insists you have some obligation to black crack babies across the country is trivially extendible to cover unfortunates all across the world and I suspect there's cognitive dissonance in not doing so.
That moral system is called Christianity. Precious few have any problem tolerating the cognitive dissonance
Traditionally Christianity has taught an order of charity, expounded most famously by St. Aquinas, formulated by synthesizing the teachings of the epistles. To cut through the scholasticism talk, it went something like: immediate family, immediate neighbors, extended family, coreligionists and countrymen, distant neighbors (eg people in Malawi), and then enemies.
The modern progressive version of "all biomass is equally loved by God, buy mosquito nets for Ndugu rather than a toy for Johnny" is not eternally the Christian moral system, but something that appeared rather recently.
If a progressive Christian comes at you with the Good Samaritan, ask them why Jesus sent out the twelve telling them to not to go among the Gentiles or enter Samaritan towns.
popocatepetl
2mo ago
So are you saying all subjective categories are self-referential? "Republicans are people who vote for other Republicans" and such?
That is a volitional category, not a subjective category. With volitional categories you can give the appearance of circularity with statements like "Christians are those who believe in Christianity" or "Military families are families where a father/mother has enlisted in the military." This superficial circularity is resolved by defining the second term. "Christians are those who believe Jesus of Nazarath (0-33 AD) was the son of God and his teachings result in eternal life for those who follow them." "Military families are families where a father/mother receives a salary from the government to train in the use of weapons and fight in the event of war."
This cannot be done with "A female is someone who wants to be treated as a female". Even if female is understood to be volitional, the second term goes undefined.
I think we can both agree that gender does exist as something independent of sex?
With the exception of grammar? No. If gender is not sex, it is incumbent on gender theorists to provide a non-circular definition.
"External gender" is your term for "gender roles", which can be defined as the manners and expectations society has for the male/female biological sex. If you want to say "gender roles should be abolished", you have a coherent position. But trans advocates do not (usually) want this; they want the gender roles to remain even as they deny female/male (the real, definable concepts) as meaningful categories.
I'm waiting for a non-self-referential definition of gender
External Gender: People perceived as "female" get treated differently
Internal Gender: I prefer being called "ma'am", and am happier when my external gender is "female".
This is self-referential. "The meaning of female gender is treating a person like a female, and a person who is of female gender is one who wants to be treated like a female."
popocatepetl
3mo ago
the main appeal is texture
This is the key. In some East Asian cuisine, while the flavor matters it's just one dimension. (Interesting substack. TW descriptions of disgusting food.)
popocatepetl
3mo ago
I'm curious if anyone has any other opinions.
It's nonsense. The LLM did a good job identifying the concepts and vocabulary people use when trying to say something profound about reality, whether or not they have anything substantive to say. (Which it doesn't.)
popocatepetl
3mo ago
Though the lens of US politics: In recent days the Biden admin has been pushing hard for a Gaza ceasefire. (My interpretation sees this as part of the fresh burst to win the 2024 election now that Biden has withdrawn.) Does this keep Israel-Palestine a live issue through election day?
popocatepetl
3mo ago
Wild take: Right-wingers don't dislike Kamala.
Not wild. I'm as opposed to DEI and representationalism as anyone. Here's (what I'll try to make) an unvarnished report of my feelings.
I feel no animosity towards her. From the catbird seat, she will doubtless say things to make me dislike her in the future. But for now, I see her as a minority actress who was chosen to play the wife of an rich white guy in an insurance ad, except instead of playing wife she was playing vice president, and the rich white guy wasn't her husband but Joe Biden.
My animosity is for the people who put her there, both on the supply and demand end. That animosity is fairly strong, more or less whenever I see a BIPOC/gender-nonconforming minority in a leadership position now.
popocatepetl
3mo ago
"woe to him who has the full backing of the board—he is a dead man walking.”
It's the same with starting quarterbacks. By the time a head coach has to answer questions about benching them, it's over.
"Trust arrives walking and departs riding."
The political value of maintaining moral high ground here does not pay the cost of letting your opponents keep a chilling effect superweapon for their exclusive use. Do I want rando home depot employees fired for venting political frustrations on Facebook? No. But given conservatives are laboring under a system where they often can't be caught misgendering someone online, letting democrats do a "haha just kidding... unless?" routine for political assassinations is insane.
Yes, that would be entirely legal. (Though difficult to imagine in practice, because a large part of the GOP is still legacy republicans). What Vance suggested, though, was "when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'"
Why wouldn’t this work?
I do not believe TPTB will allow the populists to win through the normal methods. This is just a prior, not a position I have proof of, besides observing Lucy pull away the football on many occasions. If the above program were seriously approaching accomplishment through legal methods, the establishment would throw a coup of their own.
popocatepetl
4mo ago
By this standard Biden has couped too. The border and student loans would both be considered illegal actions.
As I understand it, Biden accomplished these by slithering through legal loopholes, not disobeying the courts. When the Supreme Court overturned student loan forgiveness, the Biden team did not say "Screw you, Clarence Thomas, let's see you stop us" and strike the ledgers anyway; they set lawyers to find every technicality on the books. Same with opening the borders.
Of course, I am not implying moral superiority on the Biden side. Merely that, as Scott wrote about populism vs. the deep state in Turkey:
"The populace can genuinely seize the reins of a democracy if it really wants. But if that happens, the government will be arrayed against every other institution in the nation. Elites naturally rise to the top of everything - media, academia, culture - so all of those institutions will hate the new government and be hated by it in turn. Since all natural organic processes favor elites, if the government wants to win, it will have to destroy everything natural and organic"
Coups are necessary for anti-establishment side of a populist vs. establishment showdown. The establishment side can just let the systems run and get their way.
popocatepetl
4mo ago
If you intentionally break the law by firing bureaucrats on partisan grounds
I would think that the plan would be to fire them based on lack of merit?
He's not saying to fire bad bureaucrats or incompetent DEI hires; he's saying to fire democrats.
I don't understand this. We had this system for nearly two hundred years and nobody called it a coup when the old guy's people got cleaned out and the new guy's people got installed.
And then we passed civil service reform acts, which are still on the books. If you intentionally break the law by firing bureaucrats on partisan grounds, and then ignore the courts ordering you to reinstate them, you have made an illegal power grab and set the constitution aside. In my mind this can reasonably be called a coup.
popocatepetl
4mo ago
His segments were largely about dishonest media, cancel culture, GOP politicians betraying their base, and the administrative deepstate. You can call this "carrying water for Trump" because the people who vote for Trump also complain about these things. To me, it was "accurate political commentary".
Just a reminder that Tucker Carlson is a proven liar and despised trump during his presidency.
Yes, this is what Reddit said about that. But I don't recall any Tucker segments from around then where he lavishly praised Trump? I consider Trump a narcissist and mostly a fool, and I thought his presidential term was horribly ineffective. Nevertheless, I agreed with Tucker segments at the time. I understand that many progressives learn third-hand that Tucker Carlson Tonight was the "Praise God-Emperor Trump Show", but was there actual lying here or just a clickbait insinuation of it?
I've been looking into this guy. Peg me as shocked that, if only superficially, neoreactionary thought has penetrated the highest levels of GOP politics. Vance cites Curtis Yarvin as one of his influences and follows BronzeAgePervert and Steve Sailer on X. He advocated for dismantling the federal bureaucracy and ignoring legal challenges to it in a 2022 Vanity Fair interview — which they correctly characterize as a coup.
All this feels like nothing more than watching 2012 Tumblr ideas leap into the Democratic platform overnight. Whether Vance's NRx ideas are sincerely held or not, it's fascinating. As an NRx favorite, Mosca, said:
In reality the dominion of an organized minority, obeying a single impulse, over the unorganized majority is inevitable. The power of any minority is irresistible as against each single individual in the majority, who stands alone before the totality of the organized minority. A hundred men acting uniformly in concert, with a common understanding, will triumph over a thousand men who are not in accord and can therefore be dealt with one by one.
So a tiny gaggle of too-online neoreactionaries triumph and take command of MAGA, quite ignoring the mass of tens of millions of boomer normiecons.
Total violation of Hume's guillotine. Yes, obviously, whichever human organisms manage to reproduce in the modern environment, will, and their traits will proliferate, and afterwards it may be said that evolution "worked". Evolution also works when underground mammals lose their sight, or male anglerfish lose their brains. Whether these adaptations to selection pressures are desirable is another question.
The bulk of people reproducing now are (a) extremely high time-preference poor people, or (b) highly religious people. There is also a tiny number of rich people breeding well. If you do not want humanity to consist of this type of population in the future, low birth rates should bother you.
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