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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37165 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Once again, someone of Indian descent is on the cusp of power in the West (well Indian and black in this case). Are there any theories why, among Asians, Indians in the West so often end up in leadership positions (especially in the corporate world), and East Asians don't?

I can only imagine that whatever the sauce is, adding black genes to mix might quicken it.

Edit: Also, lol at Elon's lame attack on her on Twitter. They're afraid.

  • -29

The way you phrase your non-question "Are there any theories why-?" looks an awful lot like certain previous alts who like to Just Ask Questions about Jews, Chinese, Blacks, etc. Haven't seen Indians become a particular focus for this "line of inquiry" before, but if you genuinely want to start a thread discussing the role and success of Indians in the West, you chose about the shadiest way to do it.

You are allowed to trot out your racial theories, your conspiracy theories, your grievances with Group X, here. But we strongly discourage Dark Hinting and shady speculation. If you have a cultural or HBD argument to make, make it. If you just want to say "How weird that there are so many Indians in top positions, what could it mean?" well, it is not believable that you have just happened to Notice this phenomenon and are innocently asking if anyone else has any theories.

Are there any theories why, among Asians, Indians in the West so often end up in leadership positions (especially in the corporate world), and East Asians don't?

The typical answer given is that "the leadership attainment gap between East Asians and South Asians [is] consistently explained by cultural differences in assertiveness, but not by prejudice or motivation". We see this reflected in the types of stories told in each culture about how an individual may rise to prominence and leadership: Chinese examples tend to be something like "kid studies hard for the imperial exams and passes at age 17, lifting his family out of poverty" or "brilliant strategist lives a quiet life in the countryside until a worthy leader seeks him out and asks for his help reunifying the empire", neither of which lend themselves to the type of assertive self-promotion needed to succeed in American business or politics. This may be less of an issue for 3rd generation immigrants and beyond who are fully assimilated, but they are relatively small in number at the moment.

Indians have been plugged into the Anglosphere & Western Democracy for centuries at this point, plus there's a level of gamesmanship that comes from sheer population scrabbling for limited resources that seems to outstrip Western equivalents.

Given that this seems to be the thread all about discussing Harris, can I bring up the fact that she is TINY.

She is only 5 foot 2. Versus Trumps 6 foot 3! I don’t mean to sound like some Height obsessed incel (probably too late for that now but anyway) that is just a yuuuge difference. If I were Trump I would demand any debate be on an open floor in a townhouse style so that it maximizes the height differential. Advantage: Trump

  1. The more salient facts about her are: she can't keep staff, huge turnover, she apparently refuses to read her briefings and then lashes out at them for it.

  2. she's apparently so socially insecure she ended up rehearsing for a dinner at some donor or..

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/22/biden-kamala-harris-election-chances

As with many things in life, men have the burden of performance, including Doing the Bare Minimum of being tall and not being short.

Calling 5'2" Harris "Little Kamala" would just be perceived by normies as somewhere between a weird non-sequitur and just plain mean-spirited, even for what they view as Trump's standards. After all, Hillary is/was only three inches taller than Kamala and it wasn't an issue at all. In contrast, calling 5'9" Marco Rubio "Little Marco" on stage basically ended Rubio's Presidential campaign. There was tremendous compass unity in laughing at "Little Marco" getting pwned.

Despite the average Burgerland heights of women and men being 5'5" and 5'10", respectively, a 5'2" woman is just a woman. At worst called "petite," which can even be a positive. Most women like feeling smol, even if they don't like openly admitting it. A 5'9" man may very well find himself in manlet territory and mocked accordingly.

From recollection, studies on the height premium in the workplace (e.g., compensation, CEOs, or CEOs and compensation) tend to show a materially... higher... height premium for men than women. One way academics have tried to cope with this is to claim that African Americans are More Affected:

There’s also a gendered component. Research conducted by Inas R Kelly, professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, California, revealed marked differences in the effect of height on mean income by gender. “White men face a much larger premium for each additional 10cm than white women,” she says, and that gap is even more pronounced for African Americans.

Or that, secondly, if there's less of a height premium for women, it's because male insecurities and female internalized misogyny punish tall women:

This links into the idea that women can be too tall, and that tall women face discrimination in a way tall men don't. According to a study of tall female college students, their above-average height resulted in ‘unintended intimidation’. “If there’s a woman towering over others, they might view her as a threat … As a woman, if you show dominance, it’s considered aggression. It could be problematic,” says Pritchard.

Men Judged Harshly for Their Height (or Lack Thereof): Women, Minorities Hardest Hit.

and it wasn't an issue at all.

Except the whole losing thing

In my Emotional Truth, Hillary won in 2016, Federer won in 2019, and it was The Berenstein Bears the whole time *crosses arms and turns away*.

The question is, would she had been better off being a 5’10” man in the 2016 campaign? It’s a definite no for me, especially since she could had then easily gotten dabbed upon with a “Little Hillary” like Marco did. It’d be even for worse for Kamala to be a 5’7” man.

Height doesn't really matter in women as long as it is within the normal range, which 5'2" is. If she had been a man, it would've mattered at least a bit, but she isn't.

I remember Obama saying Buttigieg was unelectable. Not for being gay, but too short at 5'8".

When looking at the height pay gap (tall people get paid more than short people), it exists in both women and men, but is much larger in men.

Given the lack of public presence and the, uh, unorthodox manner of announcing the withdrawal, what's the possibility that Biden has actually died and this is all a smokescreen to make sure there's not an open convention due to the DNC's rules around death of a presumptive nominee?

What would there be for the Dems to gain for hiding Biden's death?

I'm reminded of the time when Kate Middleton went on an extended media hiatus and the odd behavior by the British royals around it led to a host of conspiracy theories, ranging from relatively benign "they're divorced" to the raving ones like "They've harvested her for organs to keep King Charles alive". Or when Putin was absent from publicity for some time in late 2022 and there was fervent speculation that he had died and there was a power struggle in Kremlin. In both cases the supposedly dead party eventually turned up and the speculators, well, at least didn't come out looking so good afterwards.

Of course it is entirely possibly that it does turn out that Biden has died or been seriously incapacitated by Covid, but again, why wouldn't they just come right out with it to get sympathy points and make Kamala's road to nomination even easier?

What would there be for the Dems to gain for hiding Biden's death?

His staff / family delegating power to their allies before the jig is up, perhaps?

If Biden is dead then the Democrats don’t have a tie breaker vote in the Senate until a new VP is confirmed.

You're right that it's irrational, but it's not unthinkable coming from a severely dysfunctional organisation where there are very strong incentives to lie.

What would there be for the Dems to gain for hiding Biden's death?

Who knows. Maybe they are so addicted to lying, it's so much their first and most natural impulse, that they do it even when it serves no purpose what so ever. This has been shown to be true for Hillary Clinton and all the made up stories she tells, Biden was a habitual liar his entire political career and it tanked his Presidential run in the 80's, Kamala has been caught plagiarizing stories and adopting them as her own. I was listening to Dan Carlin, one of the Supernova in the East episodes I think, and he mentions Roosevelt had a reputation as "a man who would never tell the truth when a lie would serve him just as well" or something to that effect.

It may be time to consider that most politicians are just congenital liars.

I think Kamala would rather campaign as an incumbent, even an unpopular one, rather than as a veep.

Possibly to prevent a new VP that might be forced upon her by the Congress, so she can run with whoever she wants?

Well sure but that doesn't affect the ticket, just the last few months of the current administration.

Kamala gets to appoint her own VP if Biden resigns/gets 25th Amendmented. It's subject to congressional approval but it's still her nomination.

If he actually died surely he would have also ‘resigned’ as president for Kamala?

Can a president resign via letter on Twitter? Sure, they can announce their intention to resign, but there are formal constitutional requirements to actually resign that a dead Biden would be unable to fulfill.

And would the optics be as believable as a gradual acclimation to Harris and a later handoff? Biden being presented as succumbing to external pressure to withdraw, then dying days or weeks later with his life's work completed (or of anguish at Washington's betrayal) is much more palatable than "I resign and withdraw immediately" via Twitter without a public appearance or recorded statement with a public death announcement a few days or weeks later. The latter is just a transparently papered-over coup whereas the former at least provides plausible deniability and media massaging.

Can a president resign via letter on Twitter? Sure, they can announce their intention to resign, but there are formal constitutional requirements to actually resign that a dead Biden would be unable to fulfill.

Per the Nixon precedent, it requires a letter to the Secretary of State, on which someone willing to run this conspiracy would happily forge Biden's signature. (It isn't deliberate, but it is useful the SoS has probably seen more wet-ink Presidential signatures than anyone else except the National Archivist because they countersign documents that require sealing). You can publish the letter on Twitter, but it isn't effective until someone couriers the wet-ink original to Blinken's office. If Blinken isn't on board with the conspiracy and refuses the letter until Biden authenticates it in person, then you probably didn't have enough support to pull it off to begin with.

Some Brahmin sub-groups appear to have extremely high verbal IQ, possibly on par with Jews. Consider that in stand-up comedy, one of the purest tests of verbal intelligence, Indians are quite overrepresented in the US and UK.

Tamil Brahmins are uniquely successful even among Brahmins. If anything it is interesting that Harris’ verbal ability and charisma appear comparatively poor given her background.

Is it possible that Harris is a sort of mirror image of Trump? Both are quirky and memeable and voluble and unintentionally funny but maybe in ways that appeal to (and repel) opposite groups of people. Neither is seen as particularly principled or deep, but their unseriousness manifests in ways associated with their sex and social class: his fragile masculine ego, her giggly femininity; his chest-thumping and locker room talk, her woo-adjacent babbling; his blue-collar affectations, her PMC wine mom energy. He uses his wealth and status to access sex; she uses her sex to access status. (Sorry, I know I stepped away from the Indian thing.)

Also, lol at Elon's lame attack on her on Twitter. They're afraid.

I know they’ll figure it out eventually but watching in real time as rightoids try to figure out how to attack Kamala is pretty funny.

In the spirit of equal-opportunity sneering, it was cringy how everyone’s bye Biden tweets all used the word “consequential” like someone must have directed them to.

People are throwing every kind of insult at Kamala to see what sticks. Many are very sexist and very racist, which I imagine would push any non-misogynistic, non-racist moderate away from voting Republican. It's all pretty vile, but workshopping takes time. I'm sure Trump will eventually come up with something.

With Kamala as the Democratic nominee, Trump will have to pivot in his rhetoric. He was already pretty mellow in his debate with Biden, at least compared to his usual self. The assassination attempt reportedly mellowed him out even further. His RNC speech had to be scrapped and re-written with unity as the central theme.

But Trump's platform of unity lasted only a week. I believe that unity is no longer a working, winning strategy now that Biden is gone.

People are throwing every kind of insult at Kamala to see what sticks.

Cacklin' Kamala has a certain ring to it, don't you think? Isn't sexist or racist either which is another plus.

Cacklin' Kamala

High Fiber breakfast cereal that makes a pleasing sound when milk is added.

Geared towards children 5 - 10 with health conscious parents. Not a premium brand, but not bottom shelf. Sold next to Kix and Honey Bunches of Oats.

Eh. It just doesn't sting for me. What, she laughs too much? The best anti-Kamala taunt was the throw in I've seen on bumper stickers and flags: Joe and the Ho Have Got to Go.

I'm sure once Trump puts his mind to it he'll come up with something. Ron DeSanctimonious was still pretty good.

Isn't sexist or racist either

"Cackling" carries connotations of femininity (it generally is not used to describe a man's laughter), so it could be considered sexist. (I can't think of a masculine counterpart word.)

"Guffawing" is a more masculine-coded often-negative connotation word for laughing, though not exclusively masculine nor always negative. Also when negative it connotes boorishness, not bitchiness or supernatural evil.

I dunno,I follow some spicy people on twitter and the most risable things I've heard is that she's an Affirmative Action VP or that she slept her way into politics neither of which are new.

Many are very sexist and very racist, which I imagine would push any non-misogynistic, non-racist moderate away from voting Republican.

I think the effect will be lower than expected. People are intelligent enough to distinguish between sexism and misogyny and vitriol towards specific person even if they do performative pearl clutch.

How much ammo does one need to summon to crush a wounded, pathetic little duckling?

I respect the possibility that she may WOW me with a pivot to a smart, competent, and incisive campaign. If only these were qualities she had ever managed to exhibit or sustain beyond a 30-second edit. This meme you're pushing that "Repubs are scrambling to figure out an attack on Kamala" is one of the most fanciful things I've read in this last week, as if she hasn't been repeatedly trotted out as a pinata to playfully hit with a stick in between more serious concerns regarding Joe Biden and the Blob. She is known to her opponents, and they make hay out of her every day.

The Trump campaign should give her a cursory acknowledgment as the Dem nominee, and then go back to hammering the Biden admin while pretending she's not even in the room.

How much ammo does one need to summon to crush a wounded, pathetic little duckling?

On the one hand, I see this sort of thing in some quarters. Like Neema Parvini declaring that Kamala is a "sacrificial lamb" intended to lose to Trump, and that this whole election proves his thesis about how our elites are "putting the woke away" and actively pursuing Trump's return as "right-wing containment" and a pivot to rebuilding America's force-projection capacity to maintain the global American empire.

On the other hand, I encounter others arguing that this guarantees Trump's defeat, because the only candidate he could even possibly defeat was Biden, and he's utterly doomed against literally anyone else. Further, many of these argue that this is Good, Actually — not because they support Dem policies (far from it), but because they "want to see Trump supporters cry" and think that the sooner "this MAGA shit dies" the better, to make way for their preferred alternative.

And then you have the Dreaded Jim predicting that "Kamala gets one hundred and twenty million votes at three in the morning after all voting centres have been locked down and Republican scrutineers expelled."

(And don't get me started on the opinions about Vance — he's a based neoreactionary, he's an "anti-MAGA" Republican establishment type, he's a race traitor, he's a CIA/Palantir plant intended to bring about digital passports and a central bank digital currency, he's secretly gay…)

I'm really not sure who — if anyone — has the right of it.

Has the present tumult weakened your confidence that Blues have already won and Reds should despair?

No, not really. The only question is whether they win by using Trump as "containment" — giving Reds another meaningless "win", to defuse tension and slow the proverbial frog-boiling, that translates to no actual rightward movement due to the permanent bureaucracy being fully insulated from election outcomes (Project 2025 is utterly doomed); by using deep-cover CIA Vance to get the GOP back on script as the Washington Generals outer party jobbers; or by announcing Kamala as the winner with over 100 million votes in the most-safester-and-securester election ever, and these absolutely-not-fake official results are unquestionable — literally unquestionable because anyone engaged in "election denial" is officially a domestic terrorist and will be arrested by the FBI forthwith; or some other horror scenario.

Every battleground but one, every mode of conflict between the tribes but one, inherently favors the left. There is only one field of battle where the right has a relative, comparative advantage, and that's the actual field of battle. Any other method, we're guaranteed to lose. And as I've said to you before, I still think that — thanks to the nature of modern military technology and to our inability to organize (because anyone who so much as mentions "organizing" is a Fed) — we almost-certainly lose that one too.

So yes, we're still doomed. Come back to me after you've won a civil war, and then I'll have likely changed my mind.

, among Asians, Indians in the West so often end up in leadership positions (especially in the corporate world), and East Asians don't?

Let me quote Kissinger on that

"They (Indians) are superb flatterers, Mr. President. They are masters at flattery. They are masters at subtle flattery. That's how they survived 600 years. They suck up...their great skill is to suck up to people in key positions."

As someone who much more prefers a yelling match or being told "this is crap" and "this will never work" and being blunt, I have a deep loathing for the Indian ethos of bending the truth or just straight out lying about things.

This is a constant. I hear it from my family who sometimes have the misfortune of dealing with Indians employed by their contractors, I see it on twitter where are few of the RWers I talk to are developers who have to deal with frequently lying Indian contractors.

My experience dealing with non first tier Bangalore software shops. You will never get any kind of negative feedback or pushback. It is always yes sir all the way to the failure.

What are the meetings like after the initial failure? Like, say they just blow through a sprint and don't deliver anything.

"Why didn't you get anything done?"

"Yes! We will work harder?"

How does it go? I have trouble seeing how there wouldn't just be a ton of nonsequitors and straight dodging questions.

My experience dealing with Koreans in Korea. There needs to be training for dealing with Westerners. If an American asks you a yes/no question and the correct answer is no, say no. Don't repeatedly say yes many times and then entirely fail to deliver as promised.

There needs to be training for dealing with Westerners.

Oh, you mean diversity and inclusion training?

I have a deep loathing for the Indian ethos of bending the truth or just straight out lying about things.

The power of just nodding in agreement, affirming that you understand, and then refusing to actually do it wins again and again.

It's amazing how unreasonably effective this tactic is, not that I condone it or anything.

It seems obvious to me that the yes-man strategy dominates all others as a way to get ahead. It's definitely the default model in most of the world. So why isn't it the default model in northern European culture? Why is Europe, especially northern Europe, so weird?

Because it doesn't work in Europe, which is just as well because yes man culture is a terrible basis for effective organisations. "Most of the world" got steamrolled by northern Europeans!

Why is Europe, especially northern western Europe, so weird?

There's an obvious answer but I dont think it's one a lot users here are going to like.

How so? If the idea is that Christians don't lie because of their Christian belief, wouldn't they start lying again once they become atheists? But that doesn't seem to have happened in, for example, the Nordic countries.

More convincing is that big changes happened once the Catholic Church banned cousin marriage in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.

Its not that "Christians don't lie" so much that the Christian worldview in general and Western attitudes regarding individual worth and the treatment of servants/subordinates in particular are unusually conducive to building trust in an otherwise low trust environment.

At the same time are we sure "wouldn't they start lying again once they become atheists?" Is not exactly what we are seeing? Do you believe that the Democratic party of Jimmy Carter would've allowed the current situation to occur? What about the party of Truman?

I hope he responds with a really off the wall interpretation like how the schisms among high IQ subsets of Europeans over theological quibbles turned into bloodshed resulting in a eugenic selection for intellectual disagreeableness.

Surely that's the kind of thing that selects for agreeableness. At least, that's what people claim about China.

Christianity led to long term cultural changes that resulted in the reaction to persistent and bloody disagreements being liberalism, and not to genocide.

Of course, that doesn't mean Christian societies can't be brutal and repressive- see the entire history of Russia- but the fragmentation in western Europe made bloody disagreements persistent enough long term to render that solution non-viable.

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Brahmins had power in India, And Kamala is Brahmin. Just from what I’ve read about the corporate world online, the stereotype of Indians (as opposed to East Asians) is that they are better at the social games which lead to promotions. Whereas East Asians historically had a test that guaranteed promotions, perhaps Indian culture relied more on social quid pro quo?

India is very communalist and is divided into thousands of endogamous castes. China is one big melting pot of a population with a big focus on being a meritocratic peasant society. These lead to very different societies.

Can't tell you about mixed indians or epigenetic causes, but specifically she is very much down for corruption and sex for favors.

That’s the kind of hot take which requires evidence.

You’ve been warned half a dozen times for lazy, snide culture warring. One day ban this time.

"Kamala kickstarted her career by engaging in sex-for-favours (ie. corruption) with Willie Brown" is a hot-take?

Nah, that’s pretty defensible.

OP did not bother being so specific.

What is this, Culture War for ants babies? I think we should be allowed to assume a certain level of common knowledge, else posting gets pretty cumbersome.

He's just providing a tiny sample of how the media is going to run this campaign. One of my favorite mods for doing that so reliably.
Get ready to hear the word "malinformation" until you want to scream.

Well, I for one didn't know (and still don't, since nobody's spoonfeeding)...but then again, I can live with not getting all the implications about US insider baseball.

Willie Brown is a titan of California state politics. Back when Kamala was young she was decent looking. Proof for those in shock she was ever passable. She was also abandoned by her father as a young child. Willie Brown was a much older patronizing man to her.

He gave her no-effort high-paying political sinecures. And advocated for her advancement to higher office in a state in which merely being the Democratic anointed candidate near-guarantees election.

She gave him something else in return.

The short version is what I just said -- she had an affair with him while he was mayor of SF, at the same time landing pretty good jobs under his control/with his support.

Anyways the point is not that everyone should know this, but that Crows' statement was totally true, and banning him for not typing enough background seems out of line.

Maybe I’m misreading Fistfullofcrows, but I didn’t understand him to be connecting Kamala’s sexual past with her Indian heritage, just saying that she, specifically, ended up in a leadership position due to her past sexual activities.

  1. Kamala is more outgoing and forward than Asian people. The most important trait to reach the political and media elite is to have the personality of a narcissistic car salesmen. Asians are a bit too timid and not outgoing enough.

  2. Indians like to fight internally but whenever they go abroad they seem to hold together much better. Even Indians and Pakistanis seem to be great friends as soon as they leave their home region. Asians don't have the same level of Asian cohesion.

Except when posting about his companies' achievements, Elon Musk is usually lame on Twitter.

Politics is a profession where only the paranoid survive, so I am sure Team Trump are going to respond in ways which could be spun as "They're afraid" - even if all they are "afraid" of is that Trump has gone from a 80% favourite to a 75% one. Musk will respond as shitposter-in-chief and will be pretty lame for the usual reasons.

One of the less talked about outcomes of Musk buying twitter is the predictable revelation that he's sort of a dweeby edgelord. Some of the things he retweets are absolutely perfect mappings to "the weird IT guys have been passing around this meme all week. eye roll"

I think he has just enough self-awareness to catch this much of the time. One of his ticks is a retweet with a single word comment - "true", "this","wow" etc. But other times he goes full 'sperg. The one this week was him retweeting the "AI fashion show" that included (among the Pope, Nancy Pelosi, and Kim Jong Un) an AI Elon in a weird speedo quickly followed by a suit of armor.

But keen observes will see that the shtick has been going on for some time. Elon has learned to deploy a simulacra of high end verbal intelligence - dramatic pauses, quickened speech patterns with some jargon thrown in, and verbal intonations that make you think he's bestowing something deep upon you. If Musk and Aaron Sorkin ever team up on a show, I will pen my suicide note to it.

Afraid of what?

I've been trying to find the right sports metaphor for dropping Biden for a while now and I've finally got it:

The new candidate is Big Sam Allardyce, getting brought in to save the democrats from relegation.

Big Sam often succeeded though. What moxie does Kamala have? She seems a bit like a midwit to me.

There are two quantitative facts for me that set up what Kamala has to get through independent of Trump.

  1. The beating heart of the Democrat party today is college-educated women, frequently unmarried

  2. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost White women outright. It was even worse for white married women.

"Just turn out the base" is a red herring of a strategy because a big part of the base has already demonstrate that, absent total ideological capture, when push comes to voting booth, they might torpedo their publicly professed choice. Revealed preferences and female-on-female relative-status aggression. Yes, there is a pretty high floor of Democrat voters who are so down for the cause that they'll vote Kamala no matter what, but there's also a non-trivial amount that will scream that in public and then do something different in the ballot box.

Furthermore, as I am certain we will see from Nate Silver this week, the polls are going to be all over the place and kind of valueless until maybe September. Too many structural assumptions are out of whack.

So what's Kamala to do? Well, the obvious answer is something. But I think that's a high bar to clear for her. Most of VP-ship has been staff turnover and other .... unburdenings.

What moxie does Kamala have?

She has the media, Dobbs, the most partisan American voting base in my lifetime and an 80-something opponent who may as well be Satan to her base. And the election is going to be before the honeymoon phase is over. And she can talk in complete sentences

If the goal is to shithouse a win, or just shithouse a lower impact on downballot races, it's a foundation.

SatanDonald Trump is "only" 78.

I don't think Kamala is going to get a honeymoon phase; she's been around and is associated with the administration, and she doesn't even get the benefit of being a primary winner. She's probably strictly better than Biden (who will only get worse), but IMO the Democrats would have been better off going for the higher-risk strategy of an open convention where the winner probably WOULD get some sort of honeymoon (if they didn't split the party)

I think the honeymoon phase for politicians ends pretty quickly once real policy changes are being proposed. It's easy to present oneself as a reasonable, upstanding figure that wants what's best for everyone. It's much harder to keep that image when tough choices have to be made.

Voters can agree that the status quo sucks, but in aggregate hate any suggested changes to it. I don't think the honeymoon will continue once Harris has had to clarify her positions on immigration, inflation, the Middle East, and Ukraine. Thus far she's mostly been hiding (or perhaps forced to hide) behind Biden's positions, and there is no combination of views there that satisfies all the left's core constituencies.

don't think the honeymoon will continue once Harris has had to clarify her positions on immigration, inflation, the Middle East, and Ukraine.

I think it's fair to say that she doesn't have positions on these topics. Why can't she just dodge these issues and remain opaque? It's not like the mainstream media will ask her hard questions.

Shithousery is about satisficing more than anything. A draw is a win for the inferior team. The goal is to eke out enough turnout. If people have to hold their noses or take a shower later so be it.

I firmly believe that Americans are narcissists and it's to their credit here; they'll mostly vote on domestic matters that truly impact them. I doubt Ukraine will in any way be a major stumbling block, no matter what the really Left says. Israel might, if only because of some very motivated voters in Michigan. The progressive Left has been somewhat contained on this.

Without Biden's age the media will default to hating on Trump again, reminding the base What's At Stake.

Not much she can do about inflation at this point. The border is also going to be bad, especially since she was briefly appointed to help manage it. It remains to be seen how bad (how many people even recall that?).

I imagine she'll continue Biden's desperate pandering: capping rent increases, deporting some migrants while allowing others to stay, talking about SCOTUS reform and more giveaways to their base that took college loans.

Just throw enough at the base that people project enough hope unto your candidacy that you hopefully squeak out a win. And, if you don't, stop sinking the rest of the ticket. That's really what's essential here. The Democrats may have to just take a Harris loss so long as she runs ahead of Biden and lets people who want to vote for a Democrat elsewhere do so. Newsom and co. can pick up the pieces later, so long as they haven't been ground into a fine powder by the mobility scooter of a candidate 2/3rds of their party thinks literally cannot run.

I firmly believe that Americans are narcissists and it's to their credit here; they'll mostly vote on domestic matters that truly impact them.

Does that make them narcissists? I'm not sure why anyone should be expected to vote more on the basis of issues affecting people overseas rather than domestic concerns.

It was more a shot at the pretense that large numbers of people are going to peel away for a global issue that's ostensibly of ultimate importance but is really just a way to play out people's more short-range anti-apartheid larps or fight their domestic opponents (Gaza)

As I said, voting on your economy or political system is quite rational.

And the election is going to be before the honeymoon phase is over.

With the news velocity lately - don't count on predicting honeymoon duration.

Big Sam is the model. You need a guy who can keep a bad team from getting played off the field.

So you’re not going to even tell us what Elon said, just boo outgroup it?

It's a video of Harris saying "I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit."

Various responses are saying that she's talking to blind people, as if that somehow makes it not weird.

It isn't weird for videotaped presentations among a certain crowd. Such as some people who work for some major tech companies that employ me.

I'm blind. I cringed. It sounds like the opening narration in a really bad first person novella.

But, you know, there aren't that many blind voters. They might be outnumbered by the activist types who like that conspicuous inclusivity signaling that alienates the people it's supposedly including (I'm sure there are dozens of trans people with pronouns in their bios, but it's mostly cis signalers; trans people I've come across just go for a name that communicates the gender they're presenting as and leave it at that, unless pressured).

In other words, she's aiming for the progressive whitewomenin HR vote. As said elsewhere in this thread, if they're the heart of the democratic voters, then she needs to appeal to them. Trans and blind voters combined might feel up a mid-sized city, if I remember the statistics correctly.

Exactly this. Most people want to be treated like they're normal, not like they're special. Yeah sometimes a particular thing becomes an obstacle and you have to work around that as best you can, but disabled people don't usually want everyone constantly acknowledging that they're disabled, immigrants don't like being perpetually reminded they're immigrants, etc, etc. It's actually the opposite of inclusive to constantly orient your language and behaviour around the thing that is different about someone.

What all these language and behaviour rules actually are is a modern form of elite etiquette. Whereas once upon a time you might have needed to demonstrate that you knew the right fork to use or how to curtsey the right way, now you need to show that you know the proper modes of address in different situations. It's not for the the actual blind/trans/whatever people, it's for the cultural class you're showing you are properly a member of.

Are the people even blind? The visible ones mostly seem to be taking pen & paper notes, one of them has glasses, and at least two seem to be gazing longlingly at Kamala?

Apparently it's a meeting of disability activists, some of whom are blind. Others may have other disabilities, or no disability at all.

Various responses are saying that she's talking to blind people, as if that somehow makes it not weird.

That's a perfectly reasonable thing to say if you're talking to blind people, or at least the sitting at a table wearing a blue suit stuff is reasonable. If I were blind I'd appreciate it as that would give me a better mental model of the space I'm inhabiting.

The difference between this situation and a phone call is that phone calls are symmetric and nobody has info about what the other is wearing etc. while in this case the sighted people will have a more accurate representation of the situation than the blind ones. Her words were just a way to try and equalise the situation a bit more.

A better comparison would be to a Google Meets session where Alice has audio+video of Bob while Bob can only hear her. There's definitely an inherent element of weirdness in this situation caused by the imbalance (as I'm sure everyone who has been involved in such a situation knows) and the way Kamala was talking attempts to at least cut down on how severe it is.

The rest of the quote is just standard left wing greeting rituals.

There's definitely an inherent element of weirdness in this situation caused by the imbalance (as I'm sure everyone who has been involved in such a situation knows)

How does having the person with no video state their sex and apparel make it any less weird?

Fair enough.

I think this is a typical case of boomer right wingers not recognizing how far behind the curve they are. They don't get to decide what is socially acceptable in the bio-leninist coalition. Those things are already long decided on before they are performed publicly.

As the owner of Twitter Elon now does get to decide that, or at least influence it, which is why his propaganda edit has 77 million views.

There are a lot of right wing boomers in the world. Be that by birth or spirituality. I don't remember the last time any of them at any time in the past 80 years could make any relevant change to the course of history. It seems like it doesn't matter how many 'SJW Owned Compilation's there are, or how many boomers watch them and cackle.

Those derided Boomers represent the change the didn't happen.

We didn't go full Australia on Covid lockdowns. We are still allowed to own guns. The state only takes 35% of our income instead of 50%. Etc...

A country with those "right wing Boomers" gone looks a lot like Canada or Australia, but with the addition of urban decay and a large criminal underclass. It's not a great look.

We didn't go full Australia on Covid lockdowns.

Nor did most of Australia. Australia had tough restrictions at the border, but inside Australia lockdowns were localised, imposed only as necessary, and abandoned once the most vulnerable groups had been vaccinated.

The only part of Australia that was locked down for longer than California was Melbourne.

We didn't go full Australia on Covid lockdowns.

Neither did Canada.

We are still allowed to own guns.

So are Canadians.

The state only takes 35% of our income instead of 50%

Again, look at Canada.

All involved are neck deep in mass immigration. I'm not seeing the boomer utility here.

I reject pretending that the US and Canada are equivalent. Especially when it comes to portion of the population that are first generation immigrants. And their meager crumb of gun ownership privileges.

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Yeah I have a feeling that when all those right wing boomers die off the world is gonna miss them a lot more than they think.

It does make it not weird, everyone else at the table was saying similar things. I mean it’s still kind of performative but it’s not as if she just said that out of imbecility

That everyone else was doing it doesn't make it not weird either. Blind people don't need to know what colour suit you're wearing. When I listen to the radio or to a podcast I can't see the speakers either, and not once have I thought "gee I really wish this person would tell me their pronouns and what they're wearing".

Introduce yourself by name, fair enough. Everything else is unnecessary and if you're participating in some nutty subculture that likes to pretend that this nonsense is somehow supportive of disabled people, that itself is a reflection on you.

You know, it just occurred to me... blind people have their own activist organizations. They have conventions and speakers and seminars and conference calls and stuff. I had to attend a number of those for scholarships and the best training available. In none of the numerous speeches, presentations, seminars, etc that I heard did anyone describe what they were wearing, or what they looked like, in any way. I remember one banquet speaker who brought up diversity and said that, when he looked at the crowd, he saw a rainbow. Which was obvious because of things like accents and ... OK how do I point out that people from different ethnicities smell different without getting accused of saying PoC stink? Because I feel like someone is going to take it that way.

To quote a blind Aspy with a cringie youtube channel where he used to complain about random encounters, "Blind people don't do that."

OK how do I point out that people from different ethnicities smell different without getting accused of saying PoC stink? Because I feel like someone is going to take it that way.

Just the way you did right there.

Funnily enough, the single blind colleague I have ever worked with, asked for people to tell him their sex and a color of something they were wearing as well as their name. He said this helped him build a mental model of who was where in a meeting room and keep track of who was saying what.

This was over 20 years ago mind you, but perhaps it does help some blind people enough to have become a request/norm.

Before video conferencing was a thing dialing in via phone into a remote meeting was always a pain because keeping track of who said what was a trial. Unlike in a podcast, you're expected to interact back after all.

This may not be as unhelpful as you think in other words.

... why a color specifically? You'd think that type of clothing, hair style, distinguishing feature, or a half-dozen other things would be more relatable than color.

Was he one of the many (most?) legally blind people who still have some (ultra-blurry) color vision?

Or is it a sense of humor thing? "Hey, you know how there's this major qualia that I'll never get to experience? Could you bring it up in a way that will sound natural at first but will make you feel a little more confused and uncomfortable the longer you think about it?" That would actually be awesome.

I thought it had to do with that most blind people are not fully blind like you mention so they can sort of fuzzily perceive that there is a woman wearing blue

... why a color specifically? You'd think that type of clothing, hair style, distinguishing feature, or a half-dozen other things would be more relatable than color.

OK so then you can go back to the 2020/2021 Microsoft meetings where people built more detailed models of themselves and got made fun of for that.

Do I find it intolerably cringe and another way for narcissists to discuss themselves with the excuse of accessibility? Yes. But if I were in a meeting with someone blind I think this is all a reasonable accommodation, is the point.

Oh, it seems entirely reasonable to me, just a very specifically weird way to be reasonable, out of a lot of alternatives. As a choice pushed by narcissists it would make sense to me. But as a request specifically made by a blind person it's an interesting mystery.

Unlike in a podcast, you're expected to interact back after all.

So like during a phone call, where you're not supposed to ask what people are wearing either (unless we're talking about a very particular type of a on me call)?

There's more then one reason for asking these sorts of favors of others, and I don't see why we should go with a mundane one by default.

So like during a phone call, where you're not supposed to ask what people are wearing either (unless we're talking about a very particular type of a on me call)?

Right, but have you ever been the only one dialing into a conference room? Everyone else can see, and all you have is sound? Back in the day I used to have to do that all the time and it was legitimately a pain to make out who was talking, where everyone is in relation to each other and the like. I think it would actually be an improvement to try and construct a visualization in that circumstance. Especially if you don't know who is talking. Indeed what we ended up having to do is preface every statement with "This is Dave, department head of consular services, I think we need to consider the cost implications of adding to ambassadorial security" But that was clunky and time consuming. Now for most people particularly nowadays with video calling that is no longer something that crops up much. But if you are blind it is every meeting, every time. Building up a mechanism to help navigate that seems like exactly the thing that you would do in that circumstance.

I would suggest that the mundane reason for blind people needing/wanting better descriptions of who is talking and how to create visualizations to keep track is exactly the one that should be considered the default. When Bob in network engineering asks me to limit the use of resources on the mainframe on Fridays, I should also consider the mundane reason the most likely one, though it is possible he is training Skynet, the mundane is almost always correct, in my experience.

Right, but have you ever been the only one dialing into a conference room? Everyone else can see, and all you have is sound.

Sure, and the primary reason that's a problem isn't that other people have visuals, and I do not, it's because other people are present in a 3 dimensional space, and I'm not. The sound that I do get is flattened and muffled, just as the sound that they get from me. We know this, because no one decided that demanding participants state their sex and attire helps to communicate in that situation.

When Bob in network engineering asks me to limit the use of resources on the mainframe on Fridays, I should also consider the mundane reason the most likely one, though it is possible he is training Skynet, the mundane is almost always correct, in my experience.

The big difference is that even though you might choose to trust Bob, his claims are verifiable. People asking that you comply with an arbitrary request, who's utility is not only unproven in the instant, but is fundamentally unprovable, tends is not typically explainable by mundane reasons.

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It's unusual but doesn't seem weird to me. Blind (the community notes say blind and poor vision) are not always blind from birth. They might have internal representation of colour and specifying blue suit can be useful for them to have her image in their minds.

At first her mentioning her pronouns seemed weird but then again – for blind people it could be helpful in certain cases.

No one cares how blue her clothes are. Formerly sighted blind people included.

Yeah, I've always been legally blind, but was not always totally blind, so I have some amount of visual memory.

Of course, I've read this whole thread and still am picturing Harris in a generic almost-black dark grey suit, in spite of the subject matter. My visual imagination can be stubborn.

I don't think the pronouns were for blind people. I think introducing themselves with pronouns is just what people do in place of saying "I am a serious progressive who supports trans people." I'm still annoyed by this trend; 20 years ago, I was supporting trans people by complaining whenever an online service would require disclosing gender in an irrelevant context. Now it's in vogue to do the opposite, and that's somehow more inclusive. But I digress.

Of course, I've read this whole thread and still am picturing Harris in a generic almost-black dark grey suit, in spite of the subject matter. My visual imagination can be stubborn.

It's not a bad thing to assume. She's in blue in that particular video but usually wears more muted colours.

Have you ever talked to a person on the telephone?

Do you open by telling them what you're wearing so they can imagine you in their minds?

Yes, sometimes I do.

Only when they're paying $5.99 a minute.

Ha-ha. Of course you can do that.

But with friends and family, sometimes I tell them how I am doing, what new clothes I have bought and what colour they are. It's a normal talk.

While some of Kamala's recorded speech indeed seems frivolous and unfit for the occasion, I am judging her charitably.

The same critique was directed towards Trump when it was claimed that he suggested drinking bleach etc. He didn't. He was just musing about potential treatments. That wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. But people take seriously everything that the president says, sometimes uncharitably.

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