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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   36916 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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Obviously there’s a lot of euphoria happening now, but let’s be serious.

  1. Nothing serious has happened yet that can’t be reversed on Day 1 of the next Democratic administration. If anything, the right has only taught the left that it can go further and faster.

  2. Core things like deporting even a substantial proportion (more than 3m) long term settled illegal immigrants seem extremely unlikely and currently have no viable plan.

  3. Major tensions in the ‘Trump coalition’ between the workers faction and the CEOs faction continue to simmer, the H1B thing is unresolved, the corn lobby vs RFK drama hasn’t even really started yet etc.

  4. A big economic crash could see Trump become extraordinarily unpopular extremely quickly, and in 4 (or fewer) years it could all be over in tears.

  5. The anti-DEI stuff is surface level. When they force every Air Traffic Controller to take an IQ test and fire those below a threshold (and have SCOTUS allow it) to get out of the current hole, then they’ll have started doing something in this area.

This seems like setting the bar impossibly high: 1-3 can't be satisfied by 10 days of performance, 4 applies to any Head of State, and 5 would be an arbitrary policy that very few people want and which those people only want for impure reasons (using an objective test of aptitude for specific job duties, performance on which would presumably correlate with IQ, is one thing; a literal IQ test and a threshold presumed to correspond to minimum acceptable aptitude for specific job duties is another).

Obviously there’s a lot of euphoria happening now, but let’s be serious.

This seems like setting the bar impossibly high: 1-3 can't be satisfied by 10 days of performance

So? The obvious conclusion is that there should never be a lot of euphoria after 10 days of performance. It's just too soon.

And points 4 and 5?

I would agree with you on 4 and 5. 4 could affect anyone and 5 is weirdly specific.

I'm not sure if this was an IQ problem more than it was a labor shortage problem. Even someone motivated and with high IQ might have a problem doing the job of two, lesser IQ people.

Maybe AI can take over air traffic controller duties to help offset labor shortage, but so far I don't see that happening soon.

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