FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
No bio...
User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7hr ago
The failure mode of the US left is the French revolution, where every day the radicals will find their enemies of the state so that the guillotine baskets will be full by nightfall, while the failure mode of the right would be fascism, where party loyalty prevents any insiders from speaking out against crazy ideas.
The left does not seem very good about speaking out about crazy ideas either. And in fairness, I do not think the Right is immune to filling baskets with heads. I'm not sure this distinction works either way.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7hr ago
No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.
-Socrates, or so I'm told.
Can these perspectives be reconciled?
There is no health as such, and all attempts to define such a thing have failed miserably.
Is there a good as such? Have not all attempts to define such a thing failed miserably?
...I think this argument relies for its persuasive power on either ignorance of or a peculiar axiomatic commitment to its evident results. I have in my life "enjoyed" variant and deviant forms of "health" at some length. Once upon a time, I did not care much about conventional notions of health, because I quite consciously did not particularly wish to live to advanced age. Now I contemplate that I am rather unlikely to live to hold my grandchildren, and rather likely to leave my wife a widow, despite all promises to the contrary, and I wish I had not been so foolish in my youth. I wish further that others had not been so cruel as to encourage my delusions.
Only then would it be timely to reflect on the health and illness of the soul and to locate the virtue peculiar to each man in its health - which of course could look in one person like the opposite of health in another.
Concrete examples would be really ideal here, and given the language, the higher-contrast, the better.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
I couldn't really be a psychiatrist if I subscribed to that notion, could I?
Consistancy is the hobgoblin of small minds, or so I'm informed.
I think "healthy at any size" is crap, and I say this as a member of the target audience. But in order to take that position, I'm implicitly making an objective claim that some states are healthier than others, regardless of what the people experiencing those states think. It doesn't seem to me that this sort of position is compatible with your critique of the naturalist fallacy above. The argument against obesity is that it's divergent from our natural state, from what we ought to be. But as you say, rabies, infant mortality, etc, etc, and it seems to follow that any downside to obesity could easily be framed as just a matter of insufficient technology.
I would argue that we should value the places where nature is consonant with our desires, and we should be skeptical of places where our desires require wholesale rejection of nature. To the extent that our desires potentially bring us into conflict with nature, I think we should favor the desires that are as concrete and general as possible, over the desires that are highly individual and unusual. I think doing so would allow us to pursue common ground for a supermajority of the population.
To the extent that values are sufficiently mutually incoherent that the rabies vaccine, reduced infant mortality, and prepubescent gender transition can't be distinguished, it seems to me that Dril rules are in effect.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
Would it be fair to say that you view the word "healthy" to be meaningless outside of direct reference to atomic individualist personal preference? That is to say, the question of whether something is "healthy" begins and ends with their subjective opinion of their current state?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
For those not getting it, everything after "Did you read ymeshkhout's post?" is a contiguous direct quote from the article.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
2d ago
There's a risk that when the Anti-Woke seek to abandon the tactic, that they'll have accustomed the normies to the idea that college kids can suffer grave consequences for making people uncomfortable.
Things that have already happened are not risks. College kids already routinely suffer grave consequences for making people uncomfortable, and in fact such consequences have been deeply imbedded in longstanding policy. Given this reality, having these rules at least apply more fairly than they currently do is an obvious positive.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5d ago
but I'm not aware of a single instance of a Twitter mob eventually snowballing into a genuine boycott from consumers at large.
Bud Light.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
5d ago
You've been here a while now and have had a fair amount of interaction with other users. Can you point to a conversation you've had with someone who disagreed with you that you would describe as positive and constructive? You often seem unhappy with the engagement you're getting, but it might help if you could give an example of what you're hoping to get out of your participation here.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6d ago
Did you see the original version of the text marked in brackets?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7d ago
Like the confederacy there seems to have been a gentlemen’s agreement that we could all respect their martial accomplishments even if we’re glad they lost.
Has that changed? My interest in pointing out the savagery of the natives is limited to countering narratives that whites were the true savages. None of this is new.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7d ago
Examples?
Operation Fast and Furious would be one example. Benghazi and the surrounding narrative shaping would be another.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7d ago
I cannot rise to your cynicism.
I don't particularly want you to. I am not writing the above as a way to say "others should think as I do". I am writing it to point out what I see actually happening in the real world, and to hopefully offer some building-blocks toward insight as to why it is happening. Unlike Kulak, I would strongly prefer moderation to win, for us to find a way to extend the peace and plenty, to keep the Belle Epoch running as long as we can. And even if it does not win, I am committed, at some personal cost, to rejecting motorcycle-warlord-ism and all its works.
In order for that to have any chance at all of happening, Moderates need to understand the fact that moderation is currently losing, and put together some workable model of why and what to do about it. Ideally this would happen before something breaks that none of us can fix and we can't actually do without.
I am glad that you are an ocean away, in a place where perhaps moderation fairs better. You have always come across as a fundamentally-decent person, and I hope your life remains a pleasant one.
"Reassessing the realities of the present situation" is a vague pronouncement, of the kind that is not your habit.
Vagueness is not my aim. Broadness is.
I've argued for years now that the Constitution is dead. By this, I mean that I personally do not expect the Constitution, as a codified legal document, to protect me in any meaningful way, either now or most especially in the future. This is not a novel perspective, but it seems to me that it is an increasingly common one, often tacitly and increasingly explicitly, among millions of my fellow tribesmen. Since we have no reasonable expectation that the Constitution will in fact protect us when we need protecting, we have no particular reason to accept appeals to Constitutionality when they are raised against actions we consider needful.
I used to be a fairly doctrinaire conservative. I certainly am not one any more. I am not particularly interested in "fiscal responsibility" as it is traditionally formulated, or in limited government as an end unto itself for reasons that might be summarized as "nature abhors a vacuum". I am increasingly skeptical of free markets, free trade, and economics as a discipline. I have neither interest in nor patience for wars abroad and large-scale military alliances. To me, the question "What has Conservatism conserved" was fatal to any allegiance I still held to the ideological pillars of my youth. Again, I do not perceive my political metamorphosis to be particularly unusual; much of my tribe has gone through the same.
I do not consider myself an American in any deep, meaningful sense. Largely, this is because I no longer perceive America as a coherent concept, much less a live, meaningful political entity. People appeal to a "Nation of Ideas", but the collective mind which contains those ideas is best modelled as a schizophrenic with dementia. I think America's political history is best understood as a succession of philosophical errors and misapprehensions which, once corrected by practical experiment, have resulted in the nation's accelerating dissolution. I do not believe that I share some core set of fundamental values in common with a supermajority of my fellow countrymen; in fact, I perceive abundant evidence that the opposite is the case. Ozy's magnum opus is valuable and should be read and understood because their views pretty clearly generalize to a significant portion of the population, Red and Blue alike. I am quite convinced that Red and Blue tribal values are mutually incompatible and incoherent, and I do not believe that this mutual incoherence is in any sense temporary or amenable to reconciliation. Blue Tribe values are both deeply alien and deeply repugnant to me, and I am entirely aware that large and growing numbers of them feel likewise about my values. I do not trust Blues to rule me fairly, and I do not expect them to trust rule by people like me, or to acquiesce willingly to it. I do not believe that coexistence is likely to work out well for anyone involved; our differences are irreconcilable, and we need a national divorce before our growing mutual hatred gives birth to large-scale tragedy.
When Crooks' bullet missed Trump's brainstem by an inch or less in Butler, PA, a significant portion of the American population experienced acute angst and disappointment. Likewise when Rittenhouse was acquitted. When Mangione murdered a law-abiding husband and father in cold blood, a significant portion of the American population experienced joy and elation. Likewise when Antifa publicly celebrated the cold-blooded murder of Aaron Danielson in Portland, as evidenced by the glazing journalists provided to his murderer. We are more than a decade past the start of our most recent wave of widespread, organized political violence condoned and facilitated by significant portions of our institutions and local, state and federal governments. Calls for the murder of Elon Musk are frequent and widespread.
I appreciate that much of the above is bitter and immoderate. It seems evident to me that our present situation is likewise bitter and immoderate. People who have not internalized that reality are not, I think, paying sufficient attention to what has been happening in the world around them. Appeals to "freedom" and "America" are not going to cut it, and I would never under any circumstances be so foolish as to deploy them in an attempt to persuade my outgroup. They are, at this point, a punchline, like Freeze Peach.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7d ago
They are not, in my case at least. I try to upvote people I debate with to counteract the downvote swarm, but it is a losing battle.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
7d ago
Conservatives are now pushing for random passport/citizenship spot checks as you’re walking down the street, that’s what “freedom” and america means to you?
Do you believe that Conservatism is a live political force? Do you believe America is a live political entity? The Constitution? In what meaningful sense would any of these be true?
I think you perhaps should consider taking a few steps back and reassessing the realities of the present situation.
Yeah I just don’t think these petty deportations are good politics though.
What constitutes "Good Politics" is indeed the core of the disagreement here. You and others arguing for accepting the illegals appear to believe that Reds should accept large-scale, chronic violation of the law as a fiat accompli, because what can we do about it, after all?
One thing we could do about it would be to, as Blues have a long history of doing, simply stop pretending that laws mean anything when they contradict what we perceive to be desirable or necessary outcomes. And then you and others who make arguments similar to the above can offer your "sure what they did was grossly illegal, but it's done and it'd be far too much effort to fix" arguments to the Blues instead, and see how receptive they are.
I understand that you might not think this sounds like a good idea. What I'm curious about is why specifically it would not be a good idea.
Christians, in general society, promote social conservatism, and God - who is love - is not compatible with social conservatism.
I can readily agree that under a definition of "Christian" that considers social conservatism disqualifying, most Christians are not actually Christian. Likewise, under the definition of Christianity employed by the Westborough Baptist Church, only themselves and those who agree with them are the true followers of Christ. This is an obvious feature of arbitrary, bespoke definitions, which is why most people who wish to communicate clearly try to avoid them.
I do wonder, though: have you ever interacted with a serious addict? Suppose a meth junkie asks you for help securing more meth so that they can get very high. Under your definition of Christianity, what is the properly Christian response? What is the proper Christian response to a heroin addict asking to use your bathroom to shoot up?
Obviously Scardina; unless Phillips also refused to bake a cake for alcoholics, murderers, adulators, liars, thieves, and all of the other sins, which are seen as equally bad as homosexuality, then he is judging and condemning based on his own preferences and not because of his religion, which is un-Christian.
Suppose, hypothetically, that Phillips had not refused to sell a cake to a trans person, but rather had refused to customize a cake to celebrate transition itself, in the same way that he would refuse to customize a cake themed to celebrate acts of alcoholism, murder, adultery, deceit, theft, or any other sin. Suppose designing artwork whose message was celebration of sinful behavior in general was what he was objecting to, and that Scardina's request was not to buy a cake generally, but to commission exactly this sort of sin-celebratory confectionary. In this hypothetical scenario, would your assessment of either Phillips' or Scardina's actions change?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
8d ago
This is an unflattering paraphrase of what the author purports to be a progressive position. It is not a good example of progressive attitudes toward Christians, because it was not written by a progressive. I find it a useful text to encapsulate what I perceive to be a common attitude among Progressives, but if you want to assert that this attitude really is widespread among progressives, you need to provide actual examples of the behavior, not the mocking paraphrase.
What’s the limiting principle here?
What was the limiting principle under the previous regime? "Whatever we can get away with"? Why is a more rigorous standard necessary now, all of a sudden?
My preferred end-state here is the tribes undergo a soft divorce and our system devolves into robust federalism, where we stop trying to rule each other and simply try to leave each other alone. I'm not looking for a restoration of our previous system because I do not believe that such a restoration is possible. I'm open to arguments that my assessment of the situation is wrong and that actually we've been living under robust rule-of-law all along, and I was deceived to believe otherwise, but my expectation is that I can win that argument pretty easily by pointing to a whole bunch of things that have pretty clearly happened. Absent a developed argument as to why all of the many, many previous times where Blue Tribe ignored black-letter law or court decisions they found inconvenient were different, actually, "but the judge said so" just isn't an argument I find persuasive especially in an area where the law has been chronically ignored for decades.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
8d ago
Your definition was "a William is someone who calls himself William". You made no mention previously of frivolity invalidating self-assigned Williamosity. You make no mention here of what separates frivolous self-designations from serious ones. You seem to think that changing the name back and forth to secure a position in the front of a line would be illegitimate, but you've offered no justification for why that particular arbitrary change is the lone illegitimate one, nor a list of what the other exceptions might be, much less a general method for discerning legitimate changes from illegitimate ones.
Would you agree that "people are called William if they want to be called William" appears to be a definition that doesn't actually work, given that it appears very easy to abuse without adding an unspecified number of additional caveats?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
9d ago
A teacher lines students up to use the water fountain:
"Line up by reverse alphabetical order this time. ...Aaron, it's reverse alphabetical order, you should be at the back." "I've decided that I'm called William, actually."
What should the teacher do?
Again, "people are called William if they want to be called William" is likewise not a problem if and only if no action or statement ever depends on or is connected to this definition in any way. When we try to actually do things with this information, allowing the data to be completely arbitrary breaks whatever we try to use it for. We do not, in fact, generally allow people to arbitrarily change their own names; to the extent that we allow name changes, we do so through legible processes, because names are important in a lot of ways.
Their concerns were ignored for generations. They tried to soldier on in any case, but ended up entirely discredited as FDR-descended systemic changes continued to snowball. And now they are effectively extinct, politically speaking. If their political perspective was valuable, perhaps those who now consider it valuable should have put more effort into preserving it when such effort might have born fruit.
Alternatively, once Trumpism has entirely run its course, secured all its victories, crushed all opposition, and set the bedrock rules for the coming century, there will probably be many who will agree that "We should never have another Trump."
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