Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
4d ago
So, there's a recurring criticism I see in many spaces regarding various right-wing projects in building parallel institutions, alternative ideological frames to that of the left, cultural resilience, and so on (ranging from critics of "Benedict Option" strategies, to Neema Parvini when talking about why "American nationalism" does not and cannot exist), which is that the thing in question is "a LARP," or "LARP-y," or something similar. Which is to say that it is "performative," that the actions aren't backed by some sort of deep-down "genuine" belief.
To which I say: so what?
First, whence this idea that the "deep-down" internal mindset of a person is more important than the actions themselves? Do a person's deeds carry so little weight, compared to their mental state when doing them?
But more importantly, isn't this how anyone gets started with something? I mean, a lot of the examples that come to my mind are things that I'm only familiar with second-hand, but I'll try to explain.
I'm old enough that back in the first few grades of elementary school, they made us stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day. I think back on us as first graders, doing that. Were we actually earnestly pledging our undying allegiance to the Republic and its flag? We didn't even understand all the words we were saying. We were just reciting what we were told to recite, the way we were taught to recite it, because we didn't want to get in trouble. It was all fake, all performative, all "a LARP."
Those of you who grew up religious, did you really understand every hymn you sang, every element of each ritual you participated in, from the very first time you did it? Or was there at least some "going through the motions" and mimicking your elders, with true understanding coming later?
In one of the replies to that Twitter post on the "homeschool prom" linked late last thread, someone described school dances as "a LARP" of the actual 'courtship' scene/process. Well, how else do people learn?
One common criticism of Pascal's Wager is that, even if you buy the argument, it only serves to persuade you that you should believe God exists, and there's a clear gap between thinking "I should believe God exists" and thinking "God exists." I mention it, because Pascal himself addressed this point shortly after introducing the Wager. And his answer is LARPing. Once you're convinced you should believe in God, then start acting as if He exists. "LARP" as a person who believes in God. If you do it thoroughly enough for long enough, Pascal argues, you'll start to actually believe it.
I've seen similar arguments in everything from job interview advice to dating advice — picture the person you want to be, and then act as they would, even if it's "all pretend."
It all comes down to the same classic piece of advice: "fake it till you make it." And what is the "fake it" stage, if not "LARP-y"? If not "performative" and, well, fake?
The reason given for this strategy is that it rarely stays fake forever. Maintaining a performative pretense, saying and doing one thing all while constantly going "this is silly, this is stupid, this is fake, this isn't me, I don't believe any of this" in your head is hard (at least for non-sociopaths). It's why governments have made citizens recite propaganda slogans over and over, why they made us say the Pledge of Allegiance over and over — because many times, it doesn't stay fake, doesn't stay merely performative. Again, it's fake it till you make it.
And even if an individual never "makes it," never achieves real belief no matter how long they perfectly maintain "the LARP"? Well, when we're talking about a long-term project involving a significant number of people, you have to consider future generations. Which gets to a concept mentioned here on the Motte before: generational loss of hypocrisy. Even if the first generation never get rid of their inner "this is so fake" thoughts… well, the next generations — whether that's new recruits, or their literal children — can't see those inner thoughts, only the outer "act." The LARP will not be multi-generational. To quote @WhiningCoil again:
I'm reminded of some joke about the difference between a cult and a religion. A cult is all made up by people. In a religion, all those people are dead.
So, to sum up, the accusation that a project of this sort is "LARP-y" is kind of irrelevant. Yes, it'll be LARP-y to start with; it kind of has to be. That's how things work. It's a phase — a necessary phase in the process of becoming something more, and if the people involved stay determined enough, and keep it up long enough, that phase will pass, and it will become something more.
Fake it till you make it.
(I'm hoping this isn't too incoherent, and isn't too low effort for a top-level post.)
Are their any non-religious organizations whose members take vows oaths of celibacy, a la the Night's Watch or the Maesters from ASOIAF?
(I'm pretty sure the answer is "no," but I'd like to double-check my bases so I can be more certain in replying as such the next time someone "advises" me to "go join the Night's Watch" or similar.)
(Edited per @FiveHourMarathon's fine pedantry.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7d ago
If you want to hold sustained political, you'll have to find a formulation that meets as much of your goals as possible without alienating lots of voters.
Only if you keep holding elections. If you go all Augustus or Napoleon, it doesn't matter how many voters you alienate.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
9d ago
The entire political spectrum moves left with the new median voter, maintaining equal winning chances. Show goes on.
I hate this attitude to politics (as I have written elsewhere on the web many times). It treats it like modern professional sports, where you pick your "team," and all that you care about is how often your team "wins." It treats "[insert party here] wins elections" as a terminal goal, rather than an instrumental goal.
I do not care that the Republican party would "maintaining equal winning chances" if it has to move leftward to do so. Because what I care about is where we are (and which way we are moving) on the political spectrum. I care about "my party winning" as an instrumental goal, as a means to that end.
"The entire political spectrum moving left" is a long-term loss for the right, regardless of whether or not some body called the "Republican party" wins or loses elections.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
12d ago
If anyone who is right-leaning engages with violent methods, people will make an example out of him
Does that include Trump sending in the Marines? Or a future President Vance rolling tanks into Harvard yard a la Yarvin?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
12d ago
while the right polishes their gun collection muttering "one of these days, for sure..."
Yes, which is why I'm not calling for rebellion, but a Caesar sending soldiers as "right-wing death squads" to purge the domestic enemy.
how do we stop it happening again?"
The only answers to that question, at this point, involve literal bullets.
Well, now that I'm off ban, to clarify: I mean less "2nd amendment solutions," more Suharto.
How we stop it happening again is we get a Caesar Augustus or a Bonaparte, with the loyalty of the warriors, and the willingness to use them to purge the enemy. It's "tanks in Harvard yard" as part of going Henry VIII (or Qin Shi Huangdi) on academia.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
24d ago
This is what frustrates me about these discussions — how people like you have this veritable worship of intelligence as the ultimate superpower. That "smarter" always translates to "more powerful"; that sufficiently-advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from godhood; that every foe of lesser intelligence can always be "outthought."
It relates to one of my peeves with liberalism, specifically its utopian strain: that every barrier or obstacle is just a problem to be solved, and that every problem can be solved if only you're "smart enough." It's a view that refuses to accept the possibility that some things simply cannot be outthought, no matter how massive your intelligence.
You mentioned the possibility of diminishing returns in how smart an entity can get, and that humans are probably not near that upper bound. Sure, granted. But you don't consider that intelligence can itself have diminishing returns in power/efficacy/whatever you want to call ability to affect the world and overcome other agents. Just because we can make a machine that's say, 100 times smarter than us, doesn't mean it will be 100 times more powerful, or even 10 times more.
(Do I need to mention how plenty of people die to organisms with rather minuscule brains?)
There's an assumption in your arguments I'd like to point to: that any barrier we can put up against a machine intelligence will always have a way of being overcome through sufficient intelligence. That a being can always "think a way around it" if only it's smart enough. We can't see any way around the problem? Well, then we're just not smart enough, but a way has to be there, waiting for a smart enough agent to find it.
Note that this is an assumption: that such a way around must always exist. That there is no problem that intelligence cannot overcome, if only an entity has enough of it.
I challenge this assumption, and with it, the possibility of "superintelligence" as you seem to define it. I argue that it probably isn't possible to build an AI with sufficient intelligence to have the kind of invincibility you posit, not — as you seem to be interpreting the critics — because we cannot make something much smarter than us, but because however smarter than us it is, will not be sufficient. It doesn't matter if it's a thousand times smarter than a human being, a million times, a billion times smarter; no amount of intelligence will ever give an entity the sort of invincibility and omni-competence you hold as a precondition for being a "superintelligence."
Like Shrike said, "superintelligence" isn't real because intelligence does not work that way.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
25d ago
But between him and moldbug putting out "okay, newage rightwing, sometimes the system is actually pretty good, we just need to change who the system caters to" posts, I've noticed my growing confusion on what they actually wanted with the change of the guard.
Without getting into my whole long analysis/rant about Yarvin's thought and political project (and my many disagreements with it), it seems to me that it was always about an internal turnover within the "Brahmin"/"Elf" ruling caste, away from quasi-religious "Puritan" Mayflower descendants trying to "uplift" the chuds and towards people like, well, himself; away from promoting ideology and toward efficient technocracy a la "Fnargl."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
I'd like to thank you for this post, because it very much sums up neatly a lot of my own disagreements with the sort of "Dissident Right" thinkers you mention. (I also thought of that same Sargon video you linked when I was reading it.)
(It also helped clarify, by showing points of agreement, where both of my differences with you, and those with Hlynka, lie.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Well, I was referring, at least somewhat, to things ranging from Parvini's "putting the woke away" to this piece at unz.com:
Lying propaganda incorporates elements of truth. “Red pilled” Trumpists denounce the “Deep State,” only to get flypapered into a more complex Trump 2.0 iteration of the QAnon psyop. DOGE is a simulation of the Ronald Reagan psyop, part of a long-game program that transformed America from a public/private sector entity into the fully privatized ZioCorp.
to the general attitude at therightstuff.biz.
But if you must know, I'm a couple of degrees of IRL separation from those TRS podcasters, and the Charlottesville organizers, etc., mostly thanks to a couple of old friends from grade school. (OTOH, I'm also a couple of IRL degrees of separation from the likes of Rod Dreher.) Very much "I know a guy who knows a guy…," along with how pretty much everyone in the Anchorage School District's gifted program around my age ended up either solidly woke leftists or far-right radicals, and the far right can be a pretty small space.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
you downplay the electorate's power in this process
Because I don't see the electorate as really having much power, nor their temporary, merely-elected representatives. To quote the Dreaded Jim:
It is obviously unconstitutional for the merely elected government to attempt to interfere with the permanent government, and the judges are going to strike down such absurdly illegal acts.
You say:
Think of the absolute fiasco for the progressive project that happened when those Ivy League Deans - all women who were very obviously hired for diversity points and were completely unable to handle the gravity of the situation - were questioned by Congress and unable to deny even the most outrageous accusations against the campus culture they fostered because the institutional jargon they use to defend it only worsens their case in the eyes of the public.
I don't see how that was a fiasco. The Ivy League seems pretty undiminished in institutional power to me. And if the NYU hack was any indicator, they're probably actively defying the recent Supreme Court ruling (as they declared they would), and I'd say they still have good odds of getting away with it. (Because who's gonna stop them?)
they have no idea how stupid and hypocritical they sound to anyone outside of it - all while doing all in their power to push as many people out of said space as possible.
My point is that as the system is set up, working within the confines of the law, they don't have to care how stupid and hypocritical they sound, because all real power centers lie inside their bubble, and the people outside it, including the many people they've pushed out of it, are mostly powerless, no matter how numerous.
There's also just been a massive cratering in terms of intellectual standards, which I guess was to be expected of any environment that punishes skepticism.
I doubt Genghis Khan's inner circle had highly rigorous intellectual standards, and that didn't stop him. So long as you have power…
Regardless, Trump's rather decisive re-election (and it's equally significant flip side, the electorate's clear disapproval of Kamala Harris) should have been the writing on the wall for how useless this style of politics has become
"Should," but from what I've seen, it hasn't — only that they haven't tried "this style of politics" hard enough.
but these strings are increasingly being stress-tested, dismantled, and in some cases, outright disregarded by the current administration
I'd say way it's too early to tell if this really is the case, and there's plenty of people in the circles I frequent who are highly skeptical, viewing Trump as "containment" by the establishment, and all of his "victories" as just an empty show for the rubes.
By keeping up this arrogant and deliberately antagonistic style, the establishment seems to be heading for a scorched Earth policy rather than any serious attempt to recapture their lost electorate - how long will it last?
Until the next Democrat administration holds Nuremberg trials for Trump, Vance, Musk, etc., and engages in a thorough "de-Nazification" of the electorate, potentially with re-education camps?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
I find it rather telling that the one regime this tribe constantly holds up as the bright shining light of model liberal democracy is the FRG i.e. former West Germany. It makes sense, as it’s an otherwise nonsensical polity that was artificially created by first merging America’s local zone of military occupation with those of Britain and France i.e. states that economically and militarily depended on the American empire for their very existence after 1945, and then absorbing another fake state, the GDR into it in 1990 and then lying that this constituted the “reunification” of two sovereign states.
I don't remember where I read it — if it was Unherd or Compact or elsewhere — but I recall about half a year ago or so reading an essay by a German about German politics, and specifically why the AfD should be banned. The author argued that the West German constitution — and thus modern Germany — was basically set up to be a system with three major parties that would pretty much set the limits of political options, and thus the space on which the electorate may vote. That where those parties are in agreement on an issue — such as immigration — then the voters simply don't have a say. And especially that trying to form a party around such a forbidden view, particularly those beyond the rightward edge of elite-acceptable views, must be shut down.
That modern "democracy" is when elites decide most issues, then let the electorate vote from a carefully curated and limited menu of options for the remaining issues (because anything less restrictive risks another Austrian Painter Party).
I suggest that instead of linking to two dozen or so comments, you post the first comments of comment chains / discussions where you participated.
Except I tried to make sure those comments were all from different comment chains / discussions (though I may have gotten one or two from the same). They should be spaced out across various discussions over the past several months or more. Thus, that would still be about the same number of links.
When I said I've written a lot about this, I meant it.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
What's the idea behind this kind of discourse? It seems so alien to any kind of strategic understanding of politics and campaigning to me, especially now when the liberal order is more vulnerable than ever.
As someone who spends time on Tumblr (and thus sees a lot of people on the left behaving the way you describe), I've written a lot about this, both here and elsewhere. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
In short, they're operating on a very different definition of "democracy" than you are.
you need to get people on your side.
No, you need to get elite institutions on your side. The peasant masses are irrelevant.
It's practical effect is essentially them saying "please see yourself as our political opposition and consider yourself excluded from our political project"
Except it's not "our political project" they see themselves casting people out of, it's "polite society," it's "the right side of history"… in short, you are being excommunicated from the One True Church, cast into the outer darkness with the damned, unless and until you repent and make penance. And, of course, shunning only works if everyone does it, thus those who fail to shun must be shunned themselves.
How does a firebrand Puritan preacher accumulate a flock? Not by friendly chats "exclusively through the lens of what we could agree on," but through fire-and-brimstone sermons denouncing them as damned sinners, and demanding they repent.
I come back to my classroom analogy (it's in one of those links above). It's long been a noted phenomenon — the subject of jokes, even — that whenever someone on the Left says "we need to have a conversation about [X]," what they actually mean is "I'm going to lecture you about [X], and you're going to sit down, shut up, and listen uncritically to what I say." Which I bring up because it's also what a teacher usually means when saying they "need to have a conversation" with a student and/or their parents about the student's behavior.
How does a teacher "get students on her side"? By asserting her authority, telling them to sit down, be quiet, and listen up; and punishing those who fail to obey.
That's the way the classroom works. The Expert speaks, and everyone else listens. Your grade, your status, is based on how well you absorb what Teacher says, and how flawlessly you parrot it back. Then you get to college, and its more of the same. Professor gives you the Correct Position, and your progress is based on how well you parrot it back. And then you get your degree that says you're an Expert now, so you either stay and become Professor, and tell the kids How It Is; or you leave into the world… and tell all the non-Experts How It Is. In both cases, when you speak, everyone is supposed to Listen to Teacher; that's how it's always worked.
And if students aren't learning the lesson? Well, maybe the teacher isn't matching their learning styles ("Democrats have a messaging problem"). Or maybe the kids are being distracted ("pipelines for alt-right disinformation like Musk's x.com") and you need to shut down anything that keeps them from Listening to Teacher. Or maybe they're just being stubborn and refusing to accept that the curriculum is Correct, and thus they are misbehaving and need to be punished; perhaps even expelled. In any event, the curriculum, the Lesson, is never wrong, no matter how large a fraction of the student body disagrees with it.
Are they still this oblivious to the disillusionment and loss of trust in institutions that is well entrenched in Western society today?
No, from what I've seen, they're quite aware of it, and do see it as a problem. They just don't see it as a problem with the institutions, but a problem with the people. If you don't find the mainstream media credible anymore? Then you're willingly choosing to believe lies over The Truth, and you're what needs fixed. You need to be made to trust the institutions again, even if it means literal re-education camps.
Where does this desire to grow your own political opposition come from?
It's not a desire to "grow their own political opposition," it's a desire to make people submit, to punish disagreement until people stop disagreeing with them. To make all the Bad Students Listen To Teacher. To denounce all the sinners, heretics, apostates, and infidels, and impose all the punishments their priestly powers allow them to inflict, until all repent and accept the dogmas of the One True Church. Because error has no rights.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Not only that the “tax the rich” thing only works until you start living on your own and get into a permanent job. It’s popular with college kids because they don’t pay taxes and would get free money, essentially. But once you see your first check at a full time salaried job and realize that you’re paying nearly 40 of your check to the government, the appeal of “gibs” goes down a lot.
Not necessarily. I'm reminded here of my dad's last employer before he retired. Jake was a landlord who owned various properties — apartments, a commercial warehouse, houses — all either as rental properties or as investments to repair/improve and "flip." He was worth somewhere in the tens of millions at his peak. He'd take vacations down to Vegas at least once a year and blow five figures on poker.
Jake also disliked paying taxes. That's pretty much how he ended up going out of business, after he had to liquidate and sell off a bunch of assets when the IRS came after him for a bunch of back taxes and associated fines.
And yet, Jake was a solid Democrat, an avid NPR listener, and a frequent proponent of increasing taxes on "the rich" to pay for more socialist "gibs."
How did he square these things?
Simple. As far as Jake was concerned, he wasn't part of "the rich." He's just your ordinary, overtaxed middle-class millionaire. No, it's the billionaires and the hundred millionaires who need to be paying "their fair share" to fund all these programs he supports, not him. Because when he said to tax "the rich" more, he meant anyone richer than him.
Never underestimate the power of envy.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
You might notice that neither side in my example scenario had any political descriptors attached.
Which is exactly why your question cannot be answered. It's like asking if a blouse would pair better with a light-colored skirt, or a dark-colored skirt, without specifying the color of the blouse. Since the answer depends entirely on the blouse's color, it's impossible to answer either way without that answer.
Similarly, it's impossible to answer your original question of whether the board's actions against the CEO are "Fascist Authoritarian" or not — because the answer does not lie in the nature of the acts, but their political direction.
I can't recall which book by which historian it was, but I remember many years ago an author writing about the origins of "fascist tactics." He talked about Mussolini's early days with the Communists, and went on to detail about how the tactics used by the early Italian Fascists, the early Nazi party, the early Falangists, so on, had all been used by various Communist groups first, and that all the early 20th century "fascist" movements could be seen as starting with people on the right deciding to use the (far) left's own tactics against them. He did this not to excuse the fascists, or reduce any opprobrium against their methods, but only to argue that methods themselves are not inherently fascist. That there are no "fascist tactics," only tactics that are "fascist" when used by the right against the left (and never when used by the left against the right). That whether these tactics are good or evil depends entirely on whether they are used to "punch right" or "punch left."
Now, in the past, when I was more of a linguistic prescriptivist, I might have pushed back harder against this sort of thing. But at a certain point, one has to bow to common usage. And IME, the common usage of words (again, including by plenty of notable academics) like "fascist" and "authoritarian" defines them in this way.
In your scenario, the acts of the board against the CEO make them "Fascist Authoritarians" if and only if the board is to the right of the CEO and they are "punching left"; and they are not "Fascist Authoritarians" (and the CEO probably is) if they are to the left of the CEO and they are "punching right."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Depends upon the relative political positions of the board and the CEO, of course.
It's something I see often. I recall once reading an online discussion of the political slant in Adorno's Authoritarian Personality and "F-scale," and more recent attempts to address left-wing authoritarianism. Specifically, I saw someone defend the political slant, and argue that there's no such thing as "left-wing authoritarianism." Not that the left can't do the things of hold the attitudes that are used to describe authoritarianism, but that these things are not inherently authoritarian, but only depending on who is doing them; and that under the "proper" definition, these things are only "authoritarian" when done by the Right, not the Left, so that "left-wing authoritarianism" is impossible by definition (because it's different when they do it).
It's the slogan of "no bad tactics, only bad targets" taken to it's conclusion, in the naked tribalism of Lenin's "who, whom?" When they, the bad guys, do it, it's fascism; when we, the good guys, do it, it's antifascism.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Human sacrifice was mostly just a Mesoamerican thing, and usually just the big regional power players, not the small tribes living under their boot heel.
AIUI, the Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest would sometimes sacrifice slaves during a potlatch, as well as other ceremonial human sacrifices. See also here (pdf):
Similar to potlatches in neighboring coastal societies, the Tlingit potlatch involved several types of gifts, some of them reserved for the aristocracy (cf. Goldman 1975:136-137). Along the entire Northwest Coast, slaves and copper sheets ("coppers," Tlingit *tinna9) were the most valuable, their symbolism similar but not identical to that of other ritual prestations. Both slaves and coppers were brought from the “outside,” the former through warfare with the neighbors to the south, the latter through trade with the interior Athabascans and later with Europeans (Keithahn 1963b). Neither slaves nor coppers were used for utilitarian purposes, since the former were purchased just before the potlatch and did not do any work (Oberg 1973:116) and the latter were reserved exclusively for ceremonial exchanges. Slaves, like other gifts, were placed in physical contact with the hosts’ crests: they were killed with a special club depicting their master’s crest, or held a rope tied to a headdress owned by their master (Olson 1967:63). The freeing of slaves, which increased in the postcontact period due to European pressure, was equivalent to killing them, since both acts made them socially dead (freed slaves had to leave their owner’s community; cf. Goldman 1975:54). The slaves sacrificed in the potlatch became the servants of the hosts’ matrilineal ancestors, while those given away became the guests’ property. The spirits of the latter most likely became the property of the dead as well.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
As someone with a close relative who works at one of our libraries (here in Alaska), and has listened to her complain about both the workplace and her coworkers, as well as spent some time in said library, I'll second what @6tjk, @CrispyFriedBarnacles, and @ThenElection have said below.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
The problem for the Left is how to extract themselves from these bubbles, or maybe even reform them.
Is it? I mean, why should they bother? As I see it, their actual problem is more what you noted here:
In the Legacy Knowing, you got with the party line quick if you knew what was good for you, or you were banned or cancelled. It didn't matter if they said masks were dumb last week, now they believe masks are good, and so now you will believe that too, with exactly the same certainty as the previous contradictory belief.
That is to say, the problem is how to restore their hegemony, and force the rest of us to obey whatever they come up with within their epistemic bubble. "It's the children voters who are wrong."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
Algorithms have ruled everything the Gen Zers have done since they were young, from Video Games to Dating to School to Jobs.
Once again, I find myself quoting:
“The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines," Leto said. "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed.”
And this:
And I think the hard truth is just that everyone is TRYING to capture the top 20% performers across the board, so anyone not in the top 20% performance bracket for any given category is going to be left out, and very confused as to what their real options are.
reminds me of the gritty cyberpunk dystopia Tyler Cowen forecasts our civilization becoming in Average is Over.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
What does any of this have to do with the culture war? AIUI, this is the "culture war roundup" post, not a general "open thread" post; so this really belongs somewhere else.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1mo ago
There were over 10M illegal immigrants under Biden, so that would need ~4k daily deportations for the entire presidency to undo. Seems unlikely/impossible to happen.
Why? When it comes to the capacity of modern states for mass deportations, I like to point to the example of the post-War "flight and expulsion" of Germans:
Between 1944 and 1948, millions of people, including ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) and German citizens (Reichsdeutsche), were permanently or temporarily moved from Central and Eastern Europe. By 1950, about 12 million[4] Germans had fled or been expelled from east-central Europe into Allied-occupied Germany and Austria. The West German government put the total at 14.6 million,[5] including a million ethnic Germans who had settled in territories conquered by Nazi Germany during World War II, ethnic German migrants to Germany after 1950, and the children born to expelled parents. The largest numbers came from former eastern territories of Germany ceded to the Polish People's Republic and Soviet Union (about seven million),[6][7] and from Czechoslovakia (about three million).
So it looks to me that the real question is one of will.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2mo ago
I think a lot depends on how likely it is that SF was causally responsible.
IME, that isn't how it works in environmental law, particularly when you get to what happens if an endangered species is found on your land (as was satirized by The Simpsons with the screamapillar.) I vaguely remember hearing about a case where a guy got caught in a Catch-22 because he had two endangered species on his land, one of which was preying upon the other (failure to protect the prey species was a punishable offense; any measures taken to protect the prey species were also a punishable offense, vis-à-vis the predator species).
that would be deeply unfair
What does fairness have to do with law?
Per my Alaskan upbringing — including a childhood where a 6-7 hour roadtrip across 220+ miles of road (one way), much of it winding two-lane mountain roads where it can be 80+ miles between gas stations, and there's often nowhere to pull off the road except the occasional gravel pit, was a common summer weekend activity — the answer was "whenever you can get far enough into the trees/bushes that someone on the road can't readily see you're doing so."
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