site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Time for current culture war item, reviving 20 years old controversies in much different world.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now a Christian

Some feel it as betrayal, some as vindication, but all see it as big thing. But is it a thing of any importance?

Reading through the manifesto, it seems strange. First, it does not contain the word "Jesus", not even once. Neither the word "salvation".

So what it talks about?

Threats to precious Western democracy, freedom, rules based international order and Judeo-Christian tradition

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

But we can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order”. The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

historical facts as accurate as "Cleopatra was black"

To me, this freedom of conscience and speech is perhaps the greatest benefit of Western civilisation. It does not come naturally to man. It is the product of centuries of debate within Jewish and Christian communities.

and mid-life crisis. Permanent Middle Eastern crisis is child's play compared to eternally recurring middle life crisis.

Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?

So why Christianity?

In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilisational. We can’t withstand China, Russia and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do. We can’t fight woke ideology if we can’t defend the civilisation that it is determined to destroy.

How is Christianity supposed to help in fighting "China, Russia and Iran" is left unclear. Of these coutries, Russia explicitly claims to fight for Christianity against Western Jewish Nazi homosexual Satanism.

How would AHA answer Putin, how would she prove that his interpretation of Christianity is wrong and her "Judo-Christian" faith is the true Christian tradition and true message of Jesus?

And for wokeism, Christianity hadn't proved not to be very effective in fighting it.

(and if you need Christianity do defeat something so absurd as wokeism, you already lost)

SENIOR: What would you like for your birthday, son?

JUNIOR: I want to chop off my dick, dad.

SENIOR: Do not do it, son!

JUNIOR: Why?

SENIOR: (long pause and head scratching) The Bible! The Bible forbids it, son!

JUNIOR: Where?

SENIOR: (fast and frantic searching through book) Wait, son! It must be here, somewhere!

That is why I no longer consider myself a Muslim apostate, but a lapsed atheist. Of course, I still have a great deal to learn about Christianity. I discover a little more at church each Sunday. But I have recognised, in my own long journey through a wilderness of fear and self-doubt, that there is a better way to manage the challenges of existence than either Islam or unbelief had to offer.

Curious what exact church AHA joined. Churches that simultaneously reject wokeism and support "civilization war" against Axis of Evil, churches that fly Ukraine, Israeli and Taiwan flags but lack rainbow, trans and BLM flags tend to be rather thin of the ground.

SENIOR: (long pause and head scratching) The Bible! The Bible forbids it, son!

JUNIOR: Where?

SENIOR: (fast and frantic searching through book) Wait, son! It must be here, somewhere!

Strawman Senior really, really doesn't know his Bible. Sad! It's on page 1 or maybe 2, depending on your copy.

Genesis 1:27

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.

As far as the text is concerned, there are just sexes, gender as a separate idea doesn't enter into the conversation. Under Levitical Law crossdressing is a capital crime.

There are plenty of infertile women and eunuchs (by birth and those made so by other humans) and men who lay with men (not recorded positively) throughout the Bible.

As far as self-mutilation is concerned, Jesus advises cutting off your own hands or feet or plucking out an eye if it leads you to sin, but this is after talking about tying a millstone to the neck + throwing into the sea to anyone who leads a child into sin. He does talk about making yourself a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven, but Origen, who is rumored to have taken it literally, says it would be very foolish to take this mechanically literally.

I'd be fascinated to see a thriving church (Nicene affirming, biologically reproductive, retaining generations, active missions) that is trans-affirming.

Nicene affirming, biologically reproductive, retaining generations, active missions

How many of these are there, though? Even the Mormons (who I understand don’t fully affirm the Nicene creed, but still) are facing a big drop off. Evangelicalism only does ‘OK’ because so many Catholics (and other Prots) continue to convert to it.

I dislike people dancing around the issue.

There is a massive population of white Americans, mainly Evangelicals, who had been indoctrinated with this meaningless Judeo-Christian gibberish that just means "everything good in the world". Invoking «Judeo-Christian» is the master key to getting their cooperation in literally any matter: they'll automatically recall "everything good" (freedom, democracy, tradition, civilization, antiwoke, diversity, LGBT rights, Christ, Rapture, our Middle Eastern allies – doesn't matter, details of what counts as goodness will be prompted by the context of the Current Year, they don't really have stable moral doctrines) and associate it with you, then go and kill or die for whatever cause you propose… Or, at least, that seems to be the theory driving Republican politics (and politicking on Republican-coded but in actuality bipartisan issues). The problem is that these people were a little bit too successfully dunked upon in years where great power conflict seemed less probable, and warm bodies less needed, than in the near future. They've been somewhat jaded and demoralized and alienated and their demographic representation has simply shrunk. New Atheism has been complicit in this.

So now we will be having New Atheist influencers peddling this stuff harder (and old fighters for Pure Reason like Gad Saad will be asked to pipe it down with habitual anti-whitey remarks). We'll also be seeing more "based" recruiting ads for the Army. As Trump has proven, the Republican base only asks for tokens of respect, nothing more, so I expect this vulgar pandering to work well.

So now we will be having New Atheist influencers peddling this stuff harder (and old fighters for Pure Reason like Gad Saad will be asked to pipe it down with habitual anti-whitey remarks). We'll also be seeing more "based" recruiting ads for the Army. As Trump has proven, the Republican base only asks for tokens of respect, nothing more, so I expect this vulgar pandering to work well.

That this is what they will be trying to do seems to be the consensus in the dissident sphere, whether it will work is a subject of some debate. Between the crazy activist types already being in positions of influence, and people already throwing jokes like "welp! there's white guys in military recruitment ads, looks like we're going to war!" around, the result doesn't look obvious to me. The failure of Bud Light to do damage control might be the blueprint for what's about to happen to the American establishment.

The problem is that these people were a little bit too successfully dunked upon in years where great power conflict seemed less probable, and warm bodies less needed, than in the near future.

Right, and the problem with reversing course is that while they don't require more than a few tokens of respect, the dunking may have gone so far that there might also be a "we're sorry" needed to bring them back into the fold. It's not a lot, but I doubt it's possible to provide without having the blue tribe rebel.

the result doesn't look obvious to me

It’s more of a dilemma, though. You might not want to join an institution that you perceive as hostile to you, but you also probably don’t want your military, which is also the most powerful military in the world, to be staffed by your enemies.

If the US military goes blue top to bottom, any kind of red tribe insurrection in the US becomes substantially more difficult.

In any case, all they need is Donald (upon returning to office if he makes it back) to say that they should join the military and it’ll be fine, as Dase said.

If the US military goes blue top to bottom, any kind of red tribe insurrection in the US becomes substantially more difficult.

Wouldn't you argue that optimizing for insurrection conditions, by adding your body to the mutiny pile at that, is a ludicrous political agenda in any case? I would. Like, this is some 1907 Russian sailor shit.

I don’t know if they still do, but a few years ago French nationalists were very concerned about the ever growing numbers of Maghrebi soldiers in the French military (it’s France, so data on how many there actually are is extremely scarce). Germans are constantly hand-wringing that the Bundeswehr essentially consists of BND/BfV agents and neo-Nazis with little in-between (but plenty of overlap). US red tribers have trusted certainly since the early-mid Cold War that the military is if not a conservative organ then certainly a red-adjacent organ, at least in the enlisted ranks.

but you also probably don’t want your military, which is also the most powerful military in the world, to be staffed by your enemies.

I might. What good does it do me to "staff" the military if people like me are cannon fodder, and all the officers are my enemies?

If the US military goes blue top to bottom, any kind of red tribe insurrection in the US becomes substantially more difficult.

Thing is - if they could achieve that, they already would have. Arguably that was the whole point of these weird woke military recruitment ads. The fact that they're reversing course shows it was not a viable strategy.

It's also interesting to consider if blue tribe grunts would even remain blue for very long, if they had to do a tour of duty in a war zone.

In any case, all they need is Donald (upon returning to office if he makes it back) to say that they should join the military and it’ll be fine, as Dase said.

Maybe, maybe not. Trump was also very pro-vaccine.

Trump was also very pro-vaccine.

Trump was out of office by the time the vaccine became widely available. I think the counterfactual where he’s constantly tweeting about how great the vaccine is and bragging about it in every daily press briefing is quite different.

Again, it's possible, but you're way to certain of this, and you're fatally misunderstanding the entire Trump phenomenon if you think this is a sure thing. It's not a cult of personality, he's popular because he's good at pandering. There was a brief period where it looked like his base might turn on him, and it was when he had some Iranian guy killed. Nothing came out of it, so people moved on, but I'm really not sure if he could get people to reenact the Bush era.

There was a brief period where it looked like his base might turn on him, and it was when he had some Iranian guy killed.

You mean the immensely popular decision that 85% of Trump’s voters approved of (vs 70% disapproval from Democrats)?

Very online dissident rightists aren’t ‘the base’, boomers in MAGA hats who care about Israel, abortion, bringing jobs back from Jyna, The Wall and trans bathroom policies are.

Again, you're talking about the attack itself, and I'm talking when people thought this meant another war.

More comments

One important difference today might be the lower percentage of young Americans eligible for military service. 77 percent of Americans age 17-24 can’t hack it, an increase from 71 percent six years ago.

That stat becomes a lot less alarming when you remember that 50% of Americans that age are women.

So now we will be having New Atheist influencers peddling this stuff harder (and old fighters for Pure Reason like Gad Saad will be asked to pipe it down with habitual anti-whitey remarks).

Right on cue: now the problem isn't Whitey from Nebraska, it's unassimilable migration that is causing the Death Spiral of the West. These Jews adopting 2016 alt-right talking points for their immediate benefit aren't going to convince anyone.

Jews say things you disagree with: Perfidious, deceitful

Jews say things you agree with: trickery that won’t convince anyone

The irony (and I say this as someone who doesn’t like him) is that half the people clowning on Saad for saying hardcore white antisemitism still exists in the US are literally hardcore white antisemites such as yourself on dissident right Twitter. Saad says “yeah midwestern whites can still be antisemitic” and then some midwestern white American in the tweet replies says some implicit or explicit version of “this treacherous Jew is so wedded to his destructive leftism and hatred of whites that he doesn’t recognize that white antisemitism doesn’t even exist anymore”, which is an interesting way of disagreeing with him.

In the end, every donor cent that no longer goes to progressive causes is good for the American right. Getting upset about Jews turning against mass immigration because they have the temerity to acknowledge your own (real) contempt for them seems cheap. The only thing these dissident rightists would accept from Jews is crying, apologetic prostration along with maybe ritual suicide after tearfully admitting all the wrongs they have done to the Huwhite race.

Come on now. Gad Saad's long-running beef with the archetypal "Roscoe" is entirely motivated by Roscoe being a rural white hick on whom it's acceptable, fashionable and fun to dunk, not by him buying into SS-style politics.

I don’t know who Saad is other than that I suppose I vaguely typecast him into that generic midwit-bait Israeli pseudointellectual category like Yuval Harari. Nevertheless, I thought the linked tweet did not seem particularly unreasonable.

Expecting Jews in general to become wignats overnight after brave DR types ‘call them out’ on apparent hypocrisy over ethnonationalism is clearly hostile. Here is Saad realizing, just as rightist whites (although far from all whites, of course) have, that mass immigration from the third world is a bad idea, and all SS can imply is that he only did it because he finally realized they’re a threat to him and his kind. This is true, but that same logic, of course, applies to many a gentile white anti-immigration activist too.

Ok but he's literally having some fixation on this Roscoe person, I had to check https://twitter.com/search?q=roscoe%20from%3Agadsaad&src=typed_query

I defer to you as someone with more knowledge of his posting history. Still, surely you understand my point? It's as if someone on the left says "well, you know it's just ridiculous to say that most progressives want children to be able to have gender reassignment surgery without their parents permission. Oh, me? Well, I actually do believe that, sure, I was speaking in general terms". This may be true, but it's still a strange argument, and one that would get rather a lot of pushback from many here.

Perfidious, deceitful

Gad Saad is unable to hide his contempt for ordinary white people, but in his next breath he's a stalwart defender of Western demographics. No he isn't, he's a Jewish ethnonationalist trying to give permission to White people to be racist towards Arabs on behalf of the war being fought by his tribe.

It's similar to the sentiment "Britain is finished if Jews no longer feel safe here". So Britain isn't finished when there are no more British, or when British are denied their identity and claim to particularity and self-advocacy. It's finished when Jews don't feel safe. When Gad Saad and Ben Shapiro start adopting these alt-right talking points, the Neocon grift is obvious.

I like Zach Snyder's film 300, but it's not lost on me that Hollywood producing such a sincerely fascist film took place at a moment time when many were beating the war-drum for America to go to war against the Persians. Fascism is a white interpretation of Socialism, and Neoconservatism is a Jewish interpretation of Fascism. The resurgence of 2003 neoconservatism with the assimilation of dissident right rhetoric is not something I agree with, even if they are able to say some things I agree with- no, I'm actually not falling for it and I can see clearly what they are doing. I strongly oppose the resurgence of 2003 neoconservatism. It's predictable they would try to steer the energy of the alt-right towards opposing their own enemies in endless Middle East conflict. But they won't allow that energy to be used to actually advoacte for white people.

Getting upset about Jews turning against mass immigration because they have the temerity to acknowledge your own (real) contempt for them seems cheap.

Jews are turning against mass immigration because they now perceive some parts of it to be against their own ethnic interests. So their (highly limited and far-too-late) turnaround is perfectly aligned with complaints about their behavior: they support what's in the interest of Jews, even at the expense of White people. When mass immigration is at the expense of White people but benefits Jews, they have no problem with it. Now they have a problem with it because of their war against the Arab world, and I'm supposed to pretend that this means their interests are now aligned with mine?

Nathan Cofnas is an example of a Jew engaging in some honest self-reflection (although he makes some dubious assumptions). Gad Saad and Ben Shapiro and others trying to make their religio-tribal war a matter of "Judeo-Christian civilization" hanging in the balance is perfidious and deceitful no matter how much alt-right window dressing they try to throw on top of it.

The irony (and I say this as someone who doesn’t like him) is that half the people clowning on Saad for saying hardcore white antisemitism still exists in the US are literally hardcore white antisemites such as yourself on dissident right Twitter.

Gad Saad felt compelled to dunk on the demographic that might be the most pro-Israel on the entire planet. Maybe it's Dissident Right Twitter's fault that Gad Saad hates the average White person from Arkansas. But Dissident Right twitter wasn't around for the 2003 Neoconservative era, where working class White Christians were helplessly manipulated into supporting Israel, and that didn't spare them from the ethnic contempt of Jews in academia, popular culture, and political policy. Their demographic decline has been celebrated.

When mass immigration is at the expense of White people but benefits Jews

How did the mass immigration of Muslims into Western Europe (or indeed Mexicans into the United States) benefit Jews? It is not enough to respond by citing Barbara Spectre or some other Jew saying that diversity keeps Jews safe or Tikkun Olam or something, I mean seriously, if you think it benefits me (a rich Jewish New York banker, the kind of person who matters in this thought experiment) then tell me how.

It seems rather more likely that Jews bought into the progressive, enlightenment, democratic narrative of universal progress upon which the United States was founded by gentile men. This is why there are also gentile whites of the kind who celebrate their own incoming minority status, for example, and indeed many of them.

I'm supposed to pretend that this means their interests are now aligned with mine?

Why do most white conservatives oppose mass immigration in practice? It’s not out of an esoteric quasi-spiritual reverence for Yamnaya ancestry or the legacy of Greece and Rome, or ethnic purity (and it mostly never was). It’s about the fact that they don’t want to live in a dirtier, poorer, more violent, culturally foreign society peopled largely by people who don’t like them (I don’t, for what it’s worth, think any large percentage American Jews ‘dislike’ whites).

That is the realization most anti-immigrant whites have had; that is what Saad seems to have had. His interests may or may not align with yours, certainly it’s unlikely they do on every issue. But if the issue is mass immigration from the Islamic world (which is by orders of magnitude the number one issue for the European right and Europe in general), then he and them would appear, on this issue, to want it to stop.

Well, as ever, the tragedy of Jewish assimilation is that we tried too hard and were too good at it. Too good at capitalism, too good at liberalism, too good at socialism. Jews took liberalism, fundamentally a gentile invention, too literally, bought into it too wholly, took its premises to their logical conclusions too honestly and too directly. I think of this often. Peter Singer, for better or worse, could only be Jewish; like Marx with Hegel, he is guilty only of extending a gentile ideology - that of Bentham and Mill - to its logical conclusions. It is no surprise that many of the ‘Jewish’ elites far rightists decry (along with many far right Jews like BAP and Moldbug) are only ‘half-Jewish’, because assimilation rates for secular Jews are at 70%+ and have been since at least the 1980s in the US, again in part it’s the extreme rate of Jewish assimilation that leads to such overrepresentation, because Jews had and have the temerity to get rich and then marry the existing elite rather than their own.

This is the grand irony of rightist antisemitism. The greatest charge is hypocrisy, that Jews do unto others (diversity, moral degeneracy etc) what they do not do unto themselves. In reality, precisely the opposite is true, far from cynically exploiting Western enlightenment ideas, (Ashkenazi) Jews tried too hard to implement them. They gleefully expropriated Jewish capitalists in Russia, gleefully embraced the sexual revolution of Hugh Hefner et al (for all the kvetching about Jewish pornographers preying on innocent blonde girls, Jewish women are actually extremely overrepresented among female porn actresses (Casey Calvert, Abella Danger, Nina Hartley), it’s not as if they spared themselves sexual modernity), and gleefully promoted refugee rights, socialism and a generous peace with the Palestinians in Israel even after multiple humiliations (and were only, ultimately, rebuffed because they were demographically swamped by Sephardim, Mizrachim and 1/8 Jewish Soviet immigrants.

The problem, which I think we have always failed to understand, is that the gentile writers of the enlightenment were less revolutionary than they appear from their writings. They were thinking in the context of an established civilizational structure whose boundaries they wanted to test, but which they did not wholesale wish to upend - even if they wrote as such. Freed from the metaphorical and sometimes literal ghetto by this ideology, the mistake we made was thinking it was SO great that we should take these ideas of universalism, of rights, of equality, of peace, of personal and communal liberation to their logical conclusions. We didn’t understand that the gentiles, writing in the context of their own worldview, their own educations and faith and so on, did not mean that themselves.

I really think this is the tragedy of the Haskalah.

Why not? Aren’t you glad they’ll use their unstoppable ‘narrative-crafting’ powers for the good of civilization?

I don’t see why a newly discovered personal stake in a subject should make one a hypocrite for changing one’s mind (and I don’t even know if this guy changed his mind, or if you just assimilate him to a collective, jewry).

There is a massive population of white Americans, mainly Evangelicals, who had been indoctrinated with this meaningless Judeo-Christian gibberish that just means "everything good in the world".

Not only Americans, strongly Zionist Evangelical churches are spreading worldwide, from Brazil to Finland. One of lesser known American cultural exports.

Maybe the future is two moron mobs beating each other heads with rainbow and Israeli flags, all over the world, for all eternity.

So now we will be having New Atheist influencers peddling this stuff harder (and old fighters for Pure Reason like Gad Saad will be asked to pipe it down with habitual anti-whitey remarks). We'll also be seeing more "based" recruiting ads for the Army. As Trump has proven, the Republican base only asks for tokens of respect, nothing more, so I expect this vulgar pandering to work well.

We might also see greatest American allies moderating themselves and stopping spitting on and assaulting Christians in Israel, at least the American ones.

It is something going on for a long time against local Arab Christians, but recently Western and even American Christians became targets too and even Western press began noticing.

edit: more links

While I am personally sympathetic to rejecting Christianity, I still think your post is in large parts a "boo outgroup".

Also, not all of us were here since New Atheism. According to Wikipedia, AHA was a central figure in that movement, where she mostly criticized Islam, I guess?

I remember the lesser AHAs of the aughts too. Ibn Warraq, Irshad Manji. But haven't heard their names in years.

As always I'm thankful not to be cursed with such absurdities as a God-shaped hole, or a drive for someone to hand me "objective" meaning instead of being perfectly content in deriving my own as I see fit.

At any rate, I've never heard of this woman, even if I am familiar with the usual thought-leaders in the early 2000s New Atheism movement, even if that was before my time really. I don't mourn it, it managed to do its job before it died, or was subsumed into proto-Wokism as Scott suggests.

Frankly speaking, I find this intellectually dishonest and a bad idea overall, I doubt her beliefs are sincerely held, and I agree with you that Christianity, nor any other major religion, is a solution to the problems of modernity. Belief-in-belief rarely stands for much, and I regard anyone who can intentionally subvert their own cognition and better judgement of reality to adopt it with scorn. I respect people who take their religion seriously more than I do such wishy-washy Cultural Catholics, "moderate" Muslims and the like. If the clear and obvious demands of your religion are to go on Jihad against the infidels, then that's what you should do, even if I find that a terrible act. If you think your holy books are the Word of God, then why the fuck are you cherry picking the aspects you find convenient rather than doing your best to sincerely adopt all of it, even if it's incompatible with modern civilization?

At any rate, I think this is more of a grift/attempt at seeking attention from a C-list intellectual than anything worth taking seriously, but it is illustrative of a certain minority of people who decide that adopting the trappings of a religion and mouthing some of the lines might fill the void in their hearts. Won't work, and is a bad idea either way, while modern Western society is far from ideal, it's not going to be improved by a RETVRN.

AHA absolutely was a major figure in the 2000s New Atheism / Counterjihad era (I associate her more with the latter than the former), though it's also possible she was more visible in Europe than in the US during the peak of her influence.

At any rate, I've never heard of this woman, even if I am familiar with the usual thought-leaders in the early 2000s New Atheism movement, even if that was before my time really. I don't mourn it, it managed to do its job before it died, or was subsumed into proto-Wokism as Scott suggests.

If you missed the Great Atheist-Christian War of the noughties, you missed the peak of the internet. All went downhill since then.

And if you were there, you would know that the "proto-woke" side was the creationist intelligent design one.

At least the better part of them - while the dumb ones tried to scientifically prove that six day creation and Noah flood were literally real, the smarter were loud antiracists and antifascists who were roaring how Darwin was racist colonialist genocidist and how "Darwinism" is source of all evil in modern history.

You got things like From Darwin to Hitler, Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots or even this.

STALIN'S FAITH--WHAT WAS IT?

Often an individual's faith is firmly attached to a book of some kind. Muslims have the Koran; Hindus, their Veda; and Christians, the Bible. Writings of Confucius, Buddha, and indeed, Mao Tse-Tung, serve similar purposes for other groups. In Stalin's case, the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin incited him, but to stop here would be premature. There is one man-book amalgam which may have been even more determinative for Stalin, especially during his youthful, impressionable years.

The man was Charles Darwin.

The book--his The Origin of Species.

To document this, appeal is made first to a book published in Moscow entitled, Landmarks in the Life of Stalin. It was written during Stalin's "glory," and was designed to set him in a positive light. Note in the selection cited, that faith in Darwin and his "book" contrasts markedly with faith in a supreme being:

At a very early age, while still a pupil in the ecclesiastical school, Comrade Stalin developed a critical mind and revolutionary sentiments. He began to read Darwin and became an atheist.

G. Glurdjidze, a boyhood friend of Stalin's, relates:

"I began to speak of God, Joseph heard me out, and after a moment's silence, said: "'You know, they are fooling us, there is no God. . . .' "I was astonished at these words, I had never heard anything like it before. "'How can you say such things, Soso?' I exclaimed. "'I'll lend you a book to read; it will show you that the world and all living things are quite different from what you imagine, and all this talk about God is sheer nonsense,' Joseph said. "'What book is that?' I enquired. "'Darwin. You must read it,' Joseph impressed on me"

They failed to cancel Darwin and all of his work, but not for the lack of trying.

I don’t remember antiracism/anti fascism having much sway over the narrative. I’m sure some authors were trying to pick at Darwin from any angle, but the real emphasis was Biblical literalism, no? Hence “teach the controversy,” the relevant court cases, and so on.

The creationists ranting about ‘Darwinism causes x’ has to be seen in the context of, well, ranting about how Darwinism causes x. Yes, ‘belief in evolution was an inspiration for Hitler’ was one of a family of arguments they used about that, but the reason behind talking more about Darwin=Hitler than Darwin=Margaret Sanger is because Hitler is 1) recognizably evil and 2) the causal link there is easy to explain.

Remember that the whole Atheist Armageddon was started by Christians who were feeling emboldened in Dubya's time and began to push intelligent design into schools. It was symbolic thing like most things about school curriculum, but it spooked lots of people and provoked strong and unexpected reaction.

It was only secondary about Islam and Middle Eastern issues.

Why they chose this particular form of offensive? Did they really believed that evolution is cornerstone of atheism, did they believed that if they succesfully demolish "Darwinism" the whole tower of unbelief will collapse and whole nation will return to church?

They hadn't got their wish, but no one from this time had.

Interestingly enough, a lot of the pushback against trans only really started gaining ground once the gender/trans/DQSH stuff was pushed so egregiously as to break through into normie awareness. If it hadn't started hitting people close to home, it may have consolidated even more cultural power. Again, it's a case of a (different) group that was feeling emboldened in their time and tried to push for the complete educational/cultural victory.

And if you were there, you would know that the "proto-woke" side was the creationist intelligent design one.

idk, Scott makes a compelling case that the proto-woke side was the atheists. That coheres with my personal experience as well. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/30/new-atheism-the-godlessness-that-failed/

proto-woke side was the atheists Well some of them at least. Like a third? Maybe a third-ish. There were the atheists who hated their dad and then there were the atheists who were too autistic so they made the unfortunate mistake of actually reading the bible. The atheism+ side disintegrated into a million little pieces mostly by canceling each other and purity spiraling, but not before killing the fun for everyone else.

To add to this, as one of the "dumb ones" on the pro-Christian side (though for the record I've never been a Young Earth Creationist) I don't recall seeing many people on the pro-religion side making arguments along the "evolution is racist" angle.

How is Christianity supposed to help in fighting "China, Russia and Iran" is left unclear. Of these coutries, Russia explicitly claims to fight for Christianity against Western Jewish Nazi homosexual Satanism.

How would AHA answer Putin, how would she prove that his interpretation of Christianity is wrong and her "Judo-Christian" faith is the true Christian tradition and true message of Jesus?

How did Protestants answer the Catholics?

SENIOR: (fast and frantic searching through book) Wait, son! It must be here, somewhere!

This sort of thing seems like how it'd go when you're positing an already moribund religion (and a weak proponent of that religion)

Do you think this is how the discussion would go in a traditional Islamic household?

If New Atheism didn't die from Dawkins aging, Harris contracting terminal TDS, or Hitchens dying, this is certainly the final nail in the coffin.

Or it was never really alive as a "movement" in the first place. It was a bunch of people writing books at the same time.

It was a bunch of people writing books at the same time.

What's the difference between that and an intellectual movement?

A movement can start with a few people it has to have a living intellectual tradition or a way of life or unified purpose.

The New Atheists, in terms of beliefs, were not meaningfully separate from the ratskeps that preceded them/overlapped with them (is Matt Dillahunty a New Atheist?) and almost none of their stuff was really original nor did it create any sort of succeeding tradition imo. Atheism wasn't really even the central intellectual focus of most of them. Dawkins and Dennett had distinct and successful careers out of that and even Harris, who may have been the least prominent in his field before the association, admits he finds "atheism" a very limiting box. I don't think any of them have really engaged with any responses to them on the topic in further publications?

And, in terms of a movement to create a way of life, I don't know if I can say they utterly failed because they didn't really try. It's pretty telling that one of the moments of tension (Elevatorgate) led to an attempt to create a more substantive political philosophy for left-wing atheists and it didn't come from them.

Four people just happened to write books when the Anglo world was secularizing/dealing with 9/11 and so someone came up with a pithy title and then people tried to make it bigger than it is. Like if there were a couple of (very different) hot Indian directors and someone coined "New Bollywood" and everyone kept trying to make it more of a thing than it was. The BRICS of atheism.

Hmm, personally I think that sets too high a bar for constituting a "movement" at least in the intellectual or cultural sense. Sure, a handful of books doesn't constitute a political movement - for that you need crowds, voting, candidates (though note that this definition also means the "alt right", such as it ever was, was not a "movement") but I think the bar is different/lower for an intellectual or cultural movement.

It's a consistent cliché in intellectual history that some group strongly disavows belonging to a single movement, while then spending the next 200 years being taught and studied as one. French New Wave Cinema, the Vienna Circle, etc.

My suspicion is that, (if there are such things as essays and undergaduates a hundred years hence) a student writing in the future about how American religiosity collapsed to European levels in the first decades of the 21st century will mention "the new athiests". Before of course talking about the triumphant rise of Zensunni Catholocism in the 2030s, which fuelled the Butlerian Jihad.

So she wants cultural Christianity back? And this is converting?

I think stating that she goes to church, and emphasizing the religion's role in answering ultimate questions makes me think she's actually talking about converting.

Just about every Boomer Evangelical church I've seen is anti-woke and anti-axis of evil.

Just about every Boomer Evangelical church I've seen is anti-woke and anti-axis of evil.

Point taken, such people would support even Ukraine (if only because they still see Russia as communist), but these churches would demand confession of faith in literal resurrection of Jesus Christ and literal truth of the bible, not Dubya era National Review editorial.

They’re usually pretty chill if people are ‘struggling’ with their faith, I thought?

None of the reasons she gives for why she now considers herself a Christian are anything even close to "I have come to believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and literally rose from the dead". In other words, by my outsider's understanding of Christianity, she is not a Christian.

I don't see why I would have to be a Christian in order to enjoy the various good ways in which Christianity changed Western Civilization. There is no contradiction when a man enjoys the fruits of democracy without also adopting an ancient Athenian's entire political worldview. It is fine to take the good things from Christianity but ignore the rest. Indeed, just as modern democracy is much more actually democratic than Athenian democracy, it is possible that we can figure out how to extend and improve on the benefits that Christianity brought to the West, but in a secular way. Indeed, I would say that this is already happening. In some ways modern secular societies are politically much more to my taste than the much more heavily Christian societies of, say, 100 years ago.

I guess she is saying that Western society needs some real spiritual belief to unite it against its enemies, but I don't see how one could manufacture such a belief on a mass scale and I don't think that it would be desirable even if one could. Part of what makes Western modernity good is the respect for truth as opposed to belief, and I think that adopting Christianity is in contradiction to this.

Yeah, I'm not a Christian either but reading her article makes me go "Nicene Creed or GTFO..."

modern democracy is much more actually democratic than Athenian democracy

The Athenians took the word "democracy" to mean one thing, and modern Western politicians take it to mean [almost anything they want]. It's small-minded to claim one particular state of affairs is more "democratic" than another - very many political system can fairly lay claim to the term.

It's a defensible position to describe as "democratic" any that involves a reasonable number of people voting on what's to be done/whom to rule them.

Beyond those bare bones, it's like arguing which of Louisiana and Utah is the more American, or Pentecostalism and Anglicanism is the more Christian. Ie, a futile endeavour to rile up true believers

I am using the common notion of "more democratic" in which the larger a fraction of the population has the franchise, the more democratic the system is.

My understanding is that about 10-20% of ancient Athenians could vote, so by the common notion it was much less democratic than the modern US system, for example, in which maybe about 70-75% or so of the entire population can vote. I say about 70-75% based on some quick rough research about how many of the humans who live in the US are citizens older than 18, but I could be off a bit.

Would the USA be "more democratic" if toddlers could vote?

Obviously yes.

It wouldn’t be better, but it would be more democratic.

I guess she is saying that Western society needs some real spiritual belief to unite it against its enemies, but I don't see how one could manufacture such a belief on a mass scale

She doesn't think you can, which is why she abandoned secular humanism and New Atheism (which was very optimistic about how easy it is to do so). The point is to try to regenerate the old one. I think it's likely impossible too but it's a better bet.

Part of what makes Western modernity good is the respect for truth as opposed to belief

There're plenty of illusions in modern "rational" Western society too. Maybe it's pick your poison, because "a spectacularly unsuccessful Jewish agitator is looking out for you in heaven" as a belief system - at least the liberal version - is less worrisome than some of the secular nonsense I've seen.

‘The Marvels’ Meltdown: Disney MCU Seeing Lowest B.O. Opening Ever At $47M+ — What Went Wrong

SATURDAY AM UPDATE: The last-minute push for The Marvels with an appearance by star Brie Larson on The Tonight Show and at a theater in NYC post-actors strike have not moved weekend grosses any higher for Marvel Studios‘ The Marvels. The film is seeing a Friday in the vicinity of where we expected it at $21.5M, and a weekend opening between $47M-$52M, the lowest ever for Disney‘s Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Oh, also, The Marvels gets one of several post-pandemic B CinemaScores from audiences after Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (B+), Thor Love & Thunder (B+), Eternals (B), and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (B). Comscore/Screen Engine PostTrak exits are worse at 3 1/2 stars and a 73% positi

It's even worse after factoring in double-digit inflation since 2021 or so. Disney, however, is the master of 'Hollywood accounting' and squeezing every drop of water from a franchise installment, such as licensing or merchandizes for years after the movie is discontinued from theatres. Also the "Disney‘s Marvel Cinematic Universe" is comprised of 24 movies. Some of these movies are expected to be underwhelming or loss-leaders and are not given an equal marketing push. It's assumed that Iron Man sequels will do better than stuff like "Ant-Man and the Wasp".

Richard Hanania blames gender pandering/wokeness, but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well ($800+ million gross total , $100+ million open) despite obviously having a female lead. Also, having a pretty (by conventional Western standards) blonde lead does not also fit into the wokeness paradigm either.

I think "wokeness" is the wrong way to think about what's happening.

It has more to do with women who have worked their way up in the entertainment industry with the help of some affirmative action and are now in important decision making positions.

As they approach the end of their careers they want to be remembered as groundbreaking feminists and give talks at women's conferences and that sort of thing. But they can't get much attention for that sort of thing if they are producing content that's mostly popular with males.

There are other contributing factors. Advertising driven TV networks produced content mostly aimed at women. Women make most household purchasing decisions, so they are what advertisers want. Subscriber funded content naturally has a more even male-female split. However the back catalog is more female focussed.

So the marketing numbers tell them to produce more male focussed content. The lady execs resent that and push back. It feels wrong to them.

There was that famous quote from an Amazon exec who complained that if they based their decisions on focus group results they'd make nothing but movies about white men with guns.

Which strikes me as false. I'm open to other races. I'm sure they could find an American Chow Yun-fat.

Sci-fi / fantasy genre content has another issue. Making content nerdy men enjoy feels low status. After a few comic con panels they want to try to attract young women.

There also seems to be a thing where men who have daughters start wanting to make their content more appealing to young girls. However they overestimate the crossover appeal of their stories and end up producing things no one wants.

Wonder Woman is a hyper sexualized Amazonian played by the top model of Israel who wears skimpy clothes while being a bad-ass and falling in love. It is literally the opposite of woke. Her rogues gallery (villains) are also women and she was never gender swapped.

A strong woman != woke movie.

If wonder woman had been made in the 90s, it would not have been THAT different.

An interesting specification here:

a pretty (by conventional Western standards) blonde lead

Is the detail in the brackets really necessary? Is there really any hetrosexual man who wouldn't, in his heart of hearts, grant that this woman is at least "pretty"?

I mean perhaps there are some freaks who'd demur - but they'd simply be wrong. This is "pregnant people" hair-splitting.

If the word "pretty" means anything, and if there are any moral/æsthetic truths at all, then it's just simply true that this actress is "pretty".

To my eyes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is physically attractive enough that she could transition directly into modelling/influencing at the end of her term in office with no loss to her income. While Zendaya is by no means the most physically attractive actress of her generation, I have a hard time understanding how anyone could find her ugly. And yet, I've seen hundreds of memes and jokes about how both of these women are ugly - not merely "mid" or "not as hot as they're made out to be" but actively ugly - usually taking the form of asserting that AOC has a "horse face" or representing Zendaya using the "mutt" wojak. It's baffling to me, but there you go. Not quite as baffling (but in the same ballpark) are those people saying that Margot Robbie is "mid", when to my eyes she's easily one of the most beautiful people alive, even speaking as someone who doesn't normally go for the blonde blue-eyed type.

Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder I guess.

I've also never understood the "Zendaya is ugly" thing (I haven't even really seen people call AOC ugly that much). Most people arguing it seem to mainly refer to still images of her from "Dune", a movie where she's deliberately portraying a somewhat unkempt desert nomad.

Of course, many claiming this are the sort of lady-doth-protest-too-much white nationalists going "Well, I CERTAINLY would never find a nonwhite attractive! Not me! That's something I would never do! I consider them all ugly as sin and none of their women would certainly cause me to pop a boner!"

They also played down her looks for a lot of scenes in Spider Man Homecoming because they wanted her to be more of an outsider type.

She got her start as a child model and she definitely has a look better described as striking and distinct instead of bombshell.

There are women where a certain number of men will find her very attractive but another group of men will find absolutely hideous. See this blog post about the mathematics of beauty.

Data is a bit old and from OkCupid blog, but this shows there are men that would rate women a 1/5 even if in my opinion they are fairly average. These same women get a lot of men that would rate her a 5/5. It goes on to show that being divisive on how attractive you are is an advantage compared to being a 7/10 to everyone (at least on OkCupid circa 2010s).

It's also possible that a lot of the people calling AOC/Zendaya ugly are influenced by their personal dislike of the individuals rather than by actual attractiveness of the two.

It's also possible that a lot of the people calling AOC/Zendaya ugly are influenced by their personal dislike of the individuals rather than by actual attractiveness of the two.

That was my assumption. Sort of the mirror image of leftists who deny that Elon Musk can possibly have any good qualities whatsoever because they dislike his politics.

I read it as saying that it's evidence of non wokeness that the lead is pretty and blonde, not in some interesting, scissor kind of way that heterosexual men have mixed feelings about (but people generally enjoy watching act) like Sarah Jessica Parker or Tilda Swinton, or in a clearly Very Pretty and rather charismatic way, like Scarlett Johansson, but in a conventionally, even generically pretty way.

For instance, an article that starts out talking about how nobody recognizes Bri Larson in person https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/a43340909/brie-larson-captain-marvel-interview-2023/ "'I don’t get recognized,” she told comedian Mike Birbiglia on an episode of his podcast. “I get ‘Are you friends with my cousin?’ I am the classic face of ‘friend of your cousin.’ ”"

Maybe I'm weird, but the knowledge that someone holds me in contempt takes a big chunk out of my aesthetic appreciation of them. Plus, maybe this is my bias talking, but she never looks happy or joyful in any of the photos I've seen of her. People in general are more attractive when they're happy than when they're scowling.

I wouldn't call Brie unattractive, but I definitely don't find her attractive for precisely the reasons you stated.

She was quite comely in Kong: Skull Island, lol

it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well ($800+ million gross total , $100+ million open) despite obviously having a female lead.

Woke is defined by presentation, not by having a female lead. Also, the female lead in Wonder Woman is Israeli and Jewish which the woke have really mixed feelings over (as has recently become obvious).

got dogpiled so badly here. even SBF got easier treatment at his trial. I dunno. I feel like if this were 2020 and I made this same comment few would have disagreed so strongly. I am not even sure what people are disagreeing with. i thought my commentary was unopinionated and was not expecting such strong rebuke. feels like a minefield posting here lately.

There's been a lot of heavy news and discussion about Gaza lately. I think there was an appetite for something lighter and you just stumbled into it with some pop culture discussion.

I think the reference to Wonder Woman as a counter argument to the claim that gender pandering/wokeness is killing movies suggests that Wonder Woman is a gender pandering, woke movie, which implies that you think wokeness isn't a leading cause of the failures of the recent movies.

Maybe Wonder Woman is a gender pandering, woke movie (I haven't seen it), but is it as woke or pandering as the movies that are failing today?

There does seem to be a general societal trend against wokeness nowadays. Maybe people are looking to bash anything woke so anything that might go against that narrative can cause more friction that it would have years ago.

Probably should also take into consideration that the economy was doing much better in 2017 and superhero movies were in general doing well. Except for Barbie and Oppenheimer, I'm struggling to recall a recent movie that did well, so perhaps the movie industry as a whole is struggling right now.

Yeah. Woke is not casting a female. Woke is casting a female lead and then making her perfect and the villains exclusively male.

That's just one form of Mary Sue. It's not actually woke until the character herself points this out.

I’ve seen it. The first half felt, I kid you not, just like watching the local college women’s basketball team.

My family loves the Lobos of the University of New Mexico. I’ve gone to many games at The Pit, our basketball arena, and watched both men and women play. With the men, it’s about the almost martial precision as they dribble, shoot, pass, and execute plays. With the women, it’s about watching them put in the effort and the emotion, feeling their drama as they play.

The Marvels is a superheroine movie, a different beast than its spear counterparts. The emotions are more important than the scenarios; issues of identity, status, duty, wants and fears are what matter. Kamala is a teenager worried about her family, Carol is an unaging guilt-ridden mess, and Monica is an orphaned grownup working through her grief. Their punches and zaps don’t hit as hard, though that may be the directors’ fault. They want to convince, not to fight, but their appeals aren’t to logic, they’re pleas of emotion.

They’re, quite simply, beta Avengers in a made-for-TV movie trying to be postmodern and flailing back into modernity for money shots.

It’s worth sitting through the first half to get to the second half. Ironically, it’s when they get to the Bollywood planet that things come together. Once that fight finishes, however, the movie seems to delight in swapping them into other scenarios where their swift action is necessary, making the point that women’s lives are all about multitasking. Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury stuck in Earth orbit but available by ear comms makes the whole thing Charlie’s Avengers.

(Culture war angle: the villain looks uncannily like VP Kamala Harris.)

All in all, I watched it for the Marvel continuity, and enjoyed it, but I was moved more by the movie I watched directly afterward: Five Nights At Freddy’s.

Out of curiosity, what movies would you say capture that male, high-octane, martial precision?

I didn't think of it in these terms, but I think DuplexFields captured exactly what I was feeling when I watched The Matrix: Resurrections, compared to the original The Matrix, vis a vis the action scenes. The first film was full of that high-octane martial precision, famously so. Almost down to the individual punch, each action of each character in each fight scene seemed like another paragraph in the story being told, holding intent and purpose that communicated the flow of how the particular fight was going, what emotions the combatants might have been experiencing, what sorts of risks and rewards they were seeking, etc. The soft reboot, directed by one of the two original directors, had none of that, and the fight scenes looked like little more than people waving their hands at each other while explosions went off in the background, along with super-ugly slowmo.

Now I'm wondering how much, if any, of the transition of the gender from male-to-female of the one director who directed both films played into this. The soft reboot also didn't hire the same martial arts choreographer (or perhaps any martial arts choreographer? I don't recall) that they did for the 1st 3 films, which obviously must have played a factor, but that just moves it back a step of why did the director decide that she wanted her Matrix film not to make use of an martial arts choreographer, or was okay with putting her name on the film if she was prevented from hiring one by executives?

My interpretation of Matrix 4 is that it's a giant FU to the Hollywood exec who came up with the idea to make one. The hints aren't exactly subtle. From that perspective it's no surprise they were half-assing the fight. Other than the fights Keanu Reeves looks like he was specifically directed to look like he doesn't care, and doesn't want to be there.

I'll recommend the Chris Hemsworth Extraction flicks.

I remember reading that Hemsworth was tapped for a US adaptation of The Raid films. I didn't think it would work because American fight choreography wouldn't capture the appeal of silat.

Suddenly I'm watching a prison fight in Extraction 2 that feels very similar to Raid 2's. And it works! Sure, the protagonist has merc gear and guns, and it dodges direct comparisons to the Indonesian films since it's not an adaptation. But without knowing anything about Extraction's production history, it feels like vestiges of the old pitch made their way in.

I was specifically thinking of the gold standard in cape flicks, the big Iron Man/Thor/Captain America fight in Avengers, although the fights in Iron Man 2 choreographed by Genndy Tartakovsky are tremendous. I could pick through a half-dozen good Marvel fights with high stakes and high emotions with good choreography.

The first fight in The Marvels had a lot of spectacle, but like Black Panther 2’s big fight, it just became too over-choreographed, dance-like, and blatantly stuntperson-reliant, and the cameras were zoom-and-pan messes. The second fight was CG-heavy and bounced between several sites, and with better direction could have been a classic Marvel fight.

Inception. Any Christopher Nolan movie really. People say he can't even write female characters.

Mad Max: Fury Road?

Master and Commander?

Crank 2: High Voltage

Fury Road was exactly what I had in mind. Or maybe something like Bourne Identity or John Wick.

I still haven't seen Master and Commander, actually.

I still haven't seen Master and Commander, actually

2003 saw the release of two big naval films, Master and Commander and Pirates of the Carribbean. It is a sad indictment of our fallen world that Master and Commander stopped at 1 film (despite having a huge amount of written book plots that could easily be turned into movies) while Pirates of the Caribbean became a huge franchise.

I guess I'll just leave people with this...

In some ways I think it's better they didn't make a millions sequel movies. Knowing how cinema developed now, there's a decent chance they would have ruined what is truly sublime source material.

With respect to your link, the score and sound were top notch. I'm still impressed how much justice they did to the role music plays in the books. Midshipmen Geoghegan appears something like three times in The Yellow Admiral, but I still think about his tragic death whenever I hear the Oboe Quartet.

I still haven't seen Master and Commander, actually.

Worthwhile. It's like a manly and warm-hearted 19th British century writer, such as Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, or Rider Haggard somehow travelled through time and made a big budget film, with a talented cast and astounding craftsmanship by the crew.

Master and Commander is so effortlessly high quality it makes me weep remembering it was basically an “average” excellent movie that we simply took for granted that we would be treated to up to a dozen times a year for like basically 15 years between 1993 - 2008.

It’s also, hilariously, completely bereft of female dialogue. I find it to be a very funny coincidence but frog twitter and their world see it as a sign akin to a burning bush.

It’s fucking rad, A+ would recommend.

Watched it. Liked it overall, but I just can't get myself to like Russell Crowe. Not sure why exactly. I'm somehow under the very vague impression that he's too full of himself and not half the actor he thinks he is, but I can't actually pinpoint why I see him that way.

Still, nice movie. 1 out of 1, did not regret giving two irreplaceable hours of my finite, fleeting life for it.

Oh yeah I’m very aware, my wife loves the movie too.

You gotta watch it. If only for the hilarious french accents.

The main problem, other than the general trend lately of MCU movies losing steam, is that the first one wasn't any good. Nobody walked out of that theater wanting to see more of Carol Danvers. This simple fact was extensively covered-up. With Rotten Tomatoes changing it's rules not once, but twice in order to prop up the audience score.

Yeah the first one was awful. Jude Law was atrocious in that movie, and I usually like him. I think that was the last Marvel movie I saw in the theater and stopped because I hated it so much.

despite obviously having a female lead.

Nobody has a problem with "a female lead". Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley were anchoring movies before I was born. Nobody had a problem with Black Widow. Nobody was annoyed by the original Charlie's Angels movies, even if they hated the recent woke abomination

I would say the problem of "wokeness" is beyond that now. Things like Rachel Zegler's comments on Snow White or the replacing of the dwarves had nothing to do with the mere presence of women in a fairy tale about a woman. It often just feels hostile to the existing IPs, general beloved tropes and stories and even the legacy audience (which matters since they drive hype)

That sort of wokeness applies in two ways here: Brie Larson is seen in a similar light as Zegler by the sorts of males who love this shit and (more importantly) the original movie was "woke" in the sense that Larson's character was so bland (most of her struggle being essentially against social forces telling her she's not good, fitting wokeness) that there's nothing to be loyal to. Middle class people will go watch that movie when they're told it's The First , and it's right before Endgame. But they don't love the character the way people love Stark or even Black Widow and so they have no reason to stick with her when the MCU's brand is collapsing.

Besides that, the problems are:

  1. This "phase" is dead so there's nothing to be excited for. Between Ant-Man fumbling Kang and Johnathan Majors allegedly beating women right around the time two movies of him being an intimidating boxer were in theaters it's clearly going to have to be rejiggered. So what's there to be excited about?
  2. Too much Disney+ material fatigues people.
  3. Audiences know they can get mediocre Marvel movies on Disney+ eventually, especially since they're no longer event movies due to the first two points.
  4. Feige clearly seems stretched thin by all that extra material he needs to produce, and Marvel's ad hoc style (decide after we film) apparently doesn't work if someone doesn't have their hands around everything.

I would say the problem of "wokeness" is beyond that now.

"Woke" is them not making the movie you want, but the movie they think a better person would want, on the theory that their audience will live up to their expectations.

Nobody had a problem with Black Widow.

Black Widow - Clumsy, Dumb and Disappointing

Black Widow is AWFUL | Marvel's Second-Worst Movie

Black Widow: An Unbridled Catastrophe

Nobody had a problem with Black Widow in the original run of the MCU. Her movie was quite woke and legitimately awful.

Fair enough. I spoke too strongly. Let me correct...a Black Widow led movie wasn't that controversial as a concept.

The problems with the film we got was that it was too late , it was derivative (the ending was basically The Winter Soldier) and it frankly sucked beyond the actors' charisma.

I only watched the first link to conclusion and The Critical Drinker, who is one of those anti-woke guys, basically says as much: it's disappointing because he actually wanted a good movie. Not true for a lot of "woke" stuff that crosses his path. I'm inclined to believe him because his reaction to the trailer was negative, but a lot of that was because of the tardiness

Too much Disney+ material fatigues people.

It's clear Loki and the Wanda thing should have been full feature films, I guess they had to "degrade them" into being tv shows due to covid?

Marvel plans it's films/movies five years out. These were effectively finished pieces before Covid happened.

Worth noting this same general timeline is abused to make it seem that Bob Chapek is responsible for the Disney flops that were well underway when Iger was still in his first run as CEO.

I think at least Loki was always planned to be a show. A lot of content was mandated to get Disney+ going as a Netflix competitor. Why not go with Loki, who is one of the second-stringers with a fanbase?

They overestimated Disney+, something I was pretty sure of at the time. It flattens out Disney's product line putting classic Cinderella on par with Brandy's Cinderella or Little Mermaid with Little Mermaid 2-4. There's no distinction between television, direct to DVD and big budget film projects. They screwed the pooch on planning and execution and IIRC, this is mostly under Bob Iger's leadership.

It's insane that Iger caused a huge mess, ducked out for a break during COVID and is now coming back as savior.

He's also to blame for the entire Star Wars fuck-up.

Disney/Marvel's current predicament is best expressed by describing their post-Endgame plan.

  • Drop all of the well-known characters who are portrayed by popular actors.
  • Ignore most of the established continuity that normal people will recognize and remember from other films.
  • Replace the well-known characters with obscure, unlikable characters.
  • Replace the popular actors with cheap actors that fill out the DEI bingo card.
  • In an effort to lower the barrier to entry (and thus cost) for new writers, throw away existing continuity with something something multiverse something something.
  • Create dozens of low-budget tie-in properties and make the entire edifice look like a massive effort to follow.

Suddenly, in 2023, Disney is surprised that people don't want to spend a ton of time and effort to watch movies:

  • That may or may not jive with what they know
  • Starring actors who acted in a soap opera and a cereal commercial once
  • Are written by bargain-bin writers
  • About characters who aren't interesting
  • That probably won't make sense without watching 40+ hours of content on Disney+ for $14.99/month.

Is anyone surprised that sales are down?

On a related note - where was that movie even marketed? I'm not the most "hip" or "plugged in" person, but even I knew that movies like "Avengers" or "Iron Man" were being released. When a friend of mine first told me about "The Marvels", I thought that it was a soon to be released streaming TV show. That's probably a sign of an absolute marketing meltdown.

The sequel came too late, Captain Marvel (female version) was too obscure a character, Brie Larson went around shooting her mouth off after the first movie and made it actively unpleasant to even contemplate watching, and when they finally released it, it had been downgraded from the sequel to Captain Marvel to "The Marvels" which was (1) a character you probably didn't like from the first movie (2) a character you probably didn't remember from the small parts she had in the other movies and (3) a teenybopper from a Disney+ TV show you may have watched. Or not.

The irony here is that the audience which is going seems to be predominantly men, but they've failed to get the Young Female Demographic they may have been going for. I haven't watched any of the Marvel movies in so long that I was honestly shocked to learn they had killed off Iron Man. An understandable move because the actor would be too expensive to cast in new movies (as well as aging out of the part), but a stupid move because the characters that comics fans know and want are Iron Man, Captain America, and so on.

Not "So she used to be Ms. Marvel, but when Captain Marvel became Shazam, now she's in his boots and Ms. Marvel is now a teenager and it's all different and worse".

Disney and Marvel Studios went one too many times to the well, and milked the cow dry (to mix my metaphors). The golden goose has stopped laying. They need to give it all a rest, then come back in a couple years and reboot with a new Iron Man (but please God don't update too much and make it bad). Find a halfway decent actor to replace Robert Downey, write a script that isn't "Rings of Power" level stupidity, and ditch the cheap costuming and awful CGI. If the movie looks cheap even though you spent the GDP of a minor European nation on it, nobody is going to like that.

a stupid move because the characters that comics fans know and want are Iron Man, Captain America, and so on.

I think the issue was a bit different:

  • Iron Man, etc. became popular because of the MCU movies. Back when Marvel was broke, they sold off the movie rights for all their most popular characters (Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic 4, Hulk), and Iron Man and Captain America were the most popular out of the ones they had left.
  • Captain America wasn't even popular in the first 2 movies he appeared in. I remember in the Honest Trailer for The Avengers[1], they called Captain America "no one's favorite character". He only got popular after The Winter Soldier came out because that movie was really good.

My point being, the MCU could have been just fine without Iron Man and Captain America. They made those characters popular, so they could have done the same thing again—introduce some new characters to the film-going audience and make them compelling. The problem wasn't that they brought in unknown characters, it was that they didn't make those characters compelling.

[1] This is a tangent but re-watching this video reminded me of how when they switched from their old narrator (who does this video) to the new one, tons of people complained that the old one was better. Which was crazy to me? The "new" narrator (not really new at this point, he's been doing it for >10 years) sounds like an actual movie trailer narrator, the old one sounds like a guy who can do a decent impression of a movie trailer narrator.

The irony here is that the audience which is going seems to be predominantly men, but they've failed to get the Young Female Demographic they may have been going for. I haven't watched any of the Marvel movies in so long that I was honestly shocked to learn they had killed off Iron Man. An understandable move because the actor would be too expensive to cast in new movies (as well as aging out of the part), but a stupid move because the characters that comics fans know and want are Iron Man, Captain America, and so on.

Random aside: given that the MCU audience is and will almost always be mostly male, I'm wondering if there's an alternate universe where The Marvels film was more like a Charlie's Angels wearing a Marvel skinsuit. You've got 3 young women as heroines, along with Nick Fury who's been the "Charlie" sort of figure for the Avengers for a long time already, and the MCU franchise is already known for its rather irreverent sense of humor. What if they'd leaned into that and sexified the ladies, maybe it would've been more successful. I'm pretty sure Cameron Diaz doing booty dances in her underwear helped sell the Charlie's Angels film to men, who knows what Brie Larson doing the same could accomplish.

And on Iron Man, I had thought Iron Man had become so popular because of the MCU, and so perhaps Marvel thought they could elevate another hero from their comics to take his place? As someone who wasn't big into superhero comics, pre-MCU, I would've said Iron Man was probably a tier below Captain America in terms of stature or popularity, who in turn is a tier beneath Superman and Batman (with Spiderman and X-Men probably flirting with both tiers). Still, that's several tiers above characters like Ms. Marvel or even Captain Marvel, I suppose, whom I had never heard of before the film or TV show.

They need to give it all a rest, then come back in a couple years and reboot with a new Iron Man (but please God don't update too much and make it bad).

That makes sense, but it might not make sense financially for them. They seem to have planned on the assumption that comic book movies and Star Wars were IPs that would keep paying dividends every year. Can they afford to leave those fields fallow?

If they're blowing huge budgets on movies no-one is coming to watch, it makes more sense to find out what is the new up-and-coming popular genre. Horror? Romantic comedies? Chick flicks? Good old fashioned action blockbusters?

Then again, they can always cancel movies for the tax write-offs, as Warner seems to have done. Allegedly (but who knows?) this movie had good previews so should have been successful if released, but they needed the tax breaks much more:

In another maneuver by the David Zaslav-run Warner Bros Discovery to kill movies, we hear on very good authority that Warner Bros will not be releasing the hybrid live-action/animated Coyote vs. Acme, with the conglom taking an estimated $30M write-down on the $70M production. We understand the write-down for the pic was applied to the recently reported Q3.

This reps the third time that Zaslav’s Warner Bros has pulled the plug on a movie greenlighted by the previous Warner Media administration, the other two being the Max-destined Batgirl and the animated Scoob Holiday Haunt!

The difference here is that Coyote vs. Acme is a completed movie with very good test scores, 14 points above the family norm. We’re told that the cash-strapped Warners finds that it’s not worth the cost to release the film theatrically or to sell to other buyers (and there are parties who are interested for their own streaming services; we hear Amazon kicked the tires). After reporting a mixed third quarter, the best means for Warners money is a tax write-off. At one point, Coyote vs. Acme was dated for theatrical release on July 21, 2023, before getting pulled; that date was taken by Barbie, which went on to become Warner Bros’ biggest hit of all-time at $1.4 billion worldwide.

All that being said, I had to laugh as I read this review of The Marvels, given that it's bombing at the box office.

A Cosmic Triumph Grounded In Sincerity And Humanity

The Marvels ignites Phase 5 of the MCU with an emotional sincerity and vibrancy that penetrates through the formulaic façade of much of Phase 4’s offerings. Every facet of the production — from the thoughtfully designed costumes to the immersive set pieces — feels meticulously crafted, a far cry from the often over-relied-upon CGI of its predecessor.

At the heart of The Marvels is a trio of realized heroines. Larson’s Carol Danvers is afforded a complexity and depth that showcases Larson’s acting range, delving into the hero’s cosmic journey and the dual impact of her actions — both the lives she’s touched and the unintended damage she’s caused. Parris’ Monica Rambeau exudes charisma and nuance, while Vellani’s Kamala Khan brings a refreshing innocence and humor to the table. Together, they transcend the contrived “girl power” narrative, instead shining through the strength of their individuality and agency. This authenticity extends to the soundtrack, which eschews on-the-nose anthems for a more nuanced score that resonates with the narrative core.

Uh-huh. I thought (but this is just impressions from the trailers) that the costumes looked cheap, dull, and plastic; the characters were kludged together with no reason why they're linked, and the movie can't figure out if it wants to take this seriously or be a comedy (jellyfish on her head, really?) and ultimately, nobody cares about the characters. I don't care about Photon, I don't care about Ms Marvel teen superheroine, and I certainly don't care about Captain Marvel.

That excerpt looks like AI written content (I'm expecting a "It's important to note that" or "In summary, Libya is a land of contrasts" at the end of the review) but I suppose LLMs like ChatGPT were trained on such dreck, so it's hard for reviewers like that to avoid such an impression.

Then again, they can always cancel movies for the tax write-offs,

Am I the one terribly misunderstanding tax write-offs, or is seemingly every person that talks about them? Like, sure, you can add the money you spent to your costs, but you're only getting $cost * $tax_rate from that back. You're still losing money.

From what I've seen, the idea is that they have such debts, they need the $30 million write-off now even if the movie cost $70 million to make.

I have no idea if that's true or not, but that's the explanation I've seen for it. The $70 mil has already been spent a couple of years back; the $30 mil will reduce their debt repayments (or whatever it is) right now. They've offset the tax against their recent Q3 earnings, so they've got the benefit of that.

There's a thread here discussing what is going on; basically the movie cost somewhere around $70 million to make. Okay. But if they release it, they need to spend as much again on marketing, and then the cinemas take their bite of the profits, and so on. So they'd need to make about $170 million to break even, and even if they do that, that return is spread out over the next financial year. Meanwhile, they have to pay taxes etc. on their earnings now, so taking the write-off makes more financial sense.

I dunno, I'm not an accountant or an economist 🤷‍♀️ But this Variety article from March of this year say Warner Studios (or whatever name they're going by this minute) are drowning in debt:

Warner Bros. Discovery, which is struggling with billions of dollars in debt, is willing to pay more money to executives who might be able to help reduce it.

...Warner Bros. Discovery has been under extreme pressure to lower its debt, and the company has cut staffing levels, scuttled major plans like the CNN+ streaming service, and taken $3.5 billion in content writedowns.

It has $45 billion in debt, and if I go by this breakdown, its assets don't cover its liabilities in the short term.

It's true that you're still losing money, but you're losing less money than you are if you release it and it does poorly. In order for releasing it to do better than writing it off, you have to make $cost * $rate after paying the expenses of releasing it, profits to other people in the chain, etc. They've probably also got a limited number of slots to release things in and it's probably not going to make $cost * $rate * $expenses more than the thing whose slot it replaces. They could release it to streaming, where they don't have a limited number of slots but if they do, it'll make no money at the margins, and zero is still less than $cost * $rate.

It seems clear that it’s Marvel fatigue rather than wokeness or the casting. That doesn’t help, especially in some international markets like China (where the movie has also done poorly iirc), but it’s not the cause. After all, Black Panther and Ms Captain Marvel both did very well.

If I were Iger I’d be annihilating the upcoming Marvel slate right now and cancelling as much pre-production stuff as possible. The only MCU properties that can survive now are Holland’s Spider-Man and RDJ’s Iron Man, so Bob should probably call the latter up and ask how much it’s going to take to bring him back.

The more interesting question is what the next big Hollywood trend is going to be.

RDJ’s Iron Man, so Bob should probably call the latter up and ask how much it’s going to take to bring him back.

After how they ditched him for cost-cutting, Downey should ask for the moon on a stick. Depends whether or not he wants to go back to playing the part, of course. But I couldn't blame him for getting a little revenge in, if they do come back cap-in-hand to him.

It seems clear that it’s Marvel fatigue rather than wokeness or the casting.

Not quite. There were extensive reshoots - and a lot of anti woke critics that I follow (specifically the critical drinker) note how surprisingly low woke the film is. So it may have been tone down since Bob Iger came back, but maybe it was just not possible with project already in motion.

Also Capitan Marvel was designated to be the feminist woke banner bearer.

From my understanding the problem with the movie is that it is just dull and weak.

From my own perspective, as someone rabidly anti woke and very ready to criticize “cape-shit” and every opportunity, it’s definitely not that.

Because all that being said, I absolutely adored the last two animated Sony Spider-Man movies, “Into the Spider-Verse” and “Across the Spider-Verse”.

We’re they “woke”? Oh absolutely, noticeably so.

But they were extremely high quality, clearly made with passion and drive, absolutely gorgeous, creative almost to a fault, stylish, full of interesting characters with tons of personality, compelling, and often hilarious.

I watched them both with my kids multiple times. No regrets.

I watched them both with my kids multiple times. No regrets. someone rabidly anti woke

And that "spiderman-but-black" shit didn't crawl up your ass and bite your spine hard enough? The animated spider things were fine but very much inspite of the diverse characters. Like the race swap with morales has always stunk to high heaven.

"Spiderman-but-black" debuted in 2011.

I had successfully managed to not care about their "x-but-black/woman" shit they have going on in the print comics.

It did at first but but honestly Miles Morales is actually a pretty interesting character, very distinct from Peter Parker on multiple levels apart from the obvious skin tone.

Going in I suspected it would be another insipid, brainless race/gender swap to stick it to the legacy fandom, but I feel I was proven wrong. Despite the obvious and very cynical dei-style calculus at work, the character was interesting and somewhat inspired. At least compared to the vast majority of marvel-dom.

Honestly it’s nice to be proven wrong once in a while.

My young kids really enjoy the "spider friends" cartoon. Its basically young miles, young peter, and young gwen teaming up to fight bad guys.

It feels like a very traditional kids cartoon thing, where the worst thing the villains are trying to do is "ruin everyone's fun".

I feel like the spiderverse concept saved the spiderman franchise a bit. I liked the original spiderverse movie and miles simply because I've heard the peter storyline so many times.

It may not be "woke" by today's standard, but if they dropped this in 2008 when the MCU was first coming out with Iron Man, people would have said this is super woke/SJW/progressive and be like wtf is this?

I don't think that Black Panther would count as "woke-casted", which I'd associate with the sort of casting that seems to be intent on going through an Excel sheet of ethnicities to present whatever are considered to be the correct ratios at the moment. Almost all of the important cast consists of black actors, with Martin Freeman as the rather oddly-cast token whitey CIA agent.

Blacks are over-represented in most media and the only criticism is that it doesn't go further. The correct woke ratio is 100% black.

At the time of Black Panther coming out black people were hardly overrepresented as main characters in superhero movies.

I’m not even sure that will stop the bleeding. I see the same things happening with most franchises— the problem isn’t woke (though I think it’s a symptom) it’s that the franchises have been essentially coasting of name-brand recognition and bizarre fan-service ideas rather than doing anything new, thought provoking, or interesting.

I can’t remember the last franchise show that I’ve genuinely been surprised by, or even thought about ten seconds after I stopped watching it. That’s not just Marvel, it’s any franchise TV series or movie. I follow Trek a bit more than Marvel, but even here it’s like they’re so insular that they don’t even realize just how silly the ideas are. It’s like they think if they throw the images of old characters on the screen, or crib notes from ten year old franchises that they’re going to attract people. The academy idea is pretty much literally “Harry Potter, but in the Star Trek universe,” Picard is basically “hey, look, it’s those character from other, better shows, reprising their old roles,” and both Discovery and Strange New Worlds are busy reintroducing Spock to Kirk because really, in an entire universe, with an entire galaxy, the best modern Hollywood has is “let’s imitate things that worked before, change nothing, say nothing, and cover it up with current thing”.

I follow Trek a bit more than Marvel, but even here it’s like they’re so insular that they don’t even realize just how silly the ideas are.

Do not get me started on what they did to Trek. I'll just note that even there, with Disco being all! original! girlboss!, they still had to bring back Pike, who was only briefly mentioned in original Trek, in order to have a character who was connected to canon and wasn't an unpleasant, self-righteous, pain in the backside.

Discovery could have been okay, if it hadn't been chock-full of (excuse the phrase) the woke agenda from the very start. It's like they set out to make a parody: the mushroom-obsessed Chief Engineer? Potty-mouth Ensign? "my name's Michael but I'm a girl ha ha see what we did there?" and the rest of it. Plus they went full Mirror Universe in the first season and you don't do a Mirror Universe episode until a couple seasons in, when your characters have been established and the audience is familiar with them.

They had Klingon Richard Spencer who was PURELY WHITE SKINNED for crying out loud. The only thing he didn't do was chant "the knife-ears will not replace us."

What Enterprise did to the Vulcans (now they're Space Fascists, Father?) pissed me off. Don't even talk to me about the idiot scriptwriters who made it canonical (because it's in a televised show, the bastards!) that Vulcans think Humans are literally stinky and have to wear nasal filters around us. I thought this was meant to be a not-very-funny in-series joke amongst Humans, but nope. It Troo. This, among other things (I was delighted when I heard Scott Bakula was cast as Archer because I think he's a good actor who can give sensitive performances, then they made Archer a well-balanced character by having a chip on both shoulders), make me nope the hell out of it. I've heard it got a lot better in later seasons, but by then it was too late, I was never coming back.

Then Discovery showed me that you can always go lower. I haven't watched any Trek since then, no matter how well-reviewed it's been, and I was a Trekkie since I was seven.

Picard is unwatchable except the last season is mildly ok. STD (lel) is a complete write off. Strange New Worlds is suprisingly not that bad, it's ok when it's not focosuing on uhura(actress can't fill those shoes not even one bit) or Nurse Chapel ( her character is she's an E-girl but in space wearing a medical uniform ). And don't get me started on Pike doing most of the captaining from his personal mess hall while he's cooking. Other than that it's not as rage inducing as it could have been. Honestly STD set the bar so low it formed a black hole in the middle of the earth and is slowly consuming the planet. Anything else in comparison to that is ecstatic.

And don't get me started on Pike doing most of the captaining from his personal mess hall while he's cooking.

Y'know, this makes me glad I haven't watched any of the new stuff. And I still think Chef Pike sounds better than "Start an interstellar incident because I couldn't keep my goddamn dog on a lead" Archer 😀

But why the hell are they always doing Chapel dirty? I know the original got saddled with an unrequited romance for Spock, but she was a scientific researcher in her own right who re-trained as a nurse so she could join Starfleet to search for her missing scientist fiancé. She wasn't an idiot or the punchline of a bad sex joke like reboot made her.

TBH the knife ear bit would at least be sort of creative. Bad, but creative. I don’t even mind messages I disagree with, but I think especially in science fiction, you don’t beat people over the head with them, and you show rather than tell. My nanowromo is more subtle than professional Star Trek. That’s not a good thing.

It seems clear that it’s Marvel fatigue rather than wokeness or the casting.

I think this is probably most of the issue: there have been lots of MCU movies and the universe as a whole has changed so much it's hard for people outside of the fandom to keep up. Someone watching Iron Man cold in 2008 saw a very familiar world with American weapons in Afghanistan being a major part of the plot. Someone watching anything after Endgame needs to know that half of everyone disappeared for a year or two. Lately I've been thinking it would have been better to have Endgame end in an even larger reset to a world more like our own: Marvel is trapped in a huge escalation loop where each villain of the week has to threaten even bigger than the one before. Either force the heroes into hiding (a la The Incredibles) after their final victory or somehow resolve the time travel to undo the whole thing, or some combination of the two: there's a chance for cameos of the familiar actors, but also re-telling the origin story of a new character playing a new take on a familiar hero.

Honestly, you can see some evidence they tried to go that way (trying to pass the mantle of Captain America in one of the TV shows, and the hammer of Thor), but it feels like they weren't willing to commit to the bit and either (1) tell a smaller-scoped origin story against smaller enemies and (2) commit to writing off familiar characters and starting over.

Although I did see an interesting take on the wokeness claim that the MCU has stopped or slowed showing shirtless male superheroes of late, which had been a fairly constant feature of the early movies. I don't get much out of male eye candy personally, so I'm not sure I had noticed its absence, or its effect on the other half of the potential audience. I will say that all the most recent heroes are almost visually uninteresting in matching full-body spandex suits, only differing in colors and patterns, which is perhaps related (and they all shoot beams of different colors of light).

After all, Black Panther and Ms Marvel both did very well.

You mean Black Panther and Captain Marvel? Ms. Marvel was one of the least watched Disney+ shows. (which is a shame; the actress playing her is wonderfully charismatic)

It's possible that Captain Marvel is the important case to look at here, though. The audience decision during the Captain Marvel release was roughly "we're in the middle of the biggest cliffhanger in history; do we want to watch an extra 2 hour blockbuster movie that might be important to the epic resolution?" Obviously yes. The audience decision for The Marvels release is roughly "we're in the middle of a bit of a lull; do we want to subscribe to an extra streaming service and watch an extra 10 hours of direct-to-video shows that might be important to the blockbuster movie?" (Wanda Vision introduced the third one of The Marvels' protagonists) That's not so obvious a yes.

Yeah sorry I meant Captain Marvel, the one with the blonde woman.

No problem, that was confusing even in the comics continuity, and (if I'm remembering the Old Days right) in part because of feminism; why is the female superhero still being Ms. Marvel while the male superhero gets to be Captain Marvel? Since you couldn't have two Captain Marvels running around, she got promoted to being the Captain Marvel and he got killed off. The history is tangled since they kept swapping around "who is Captain Marvel now?"

Not that simple, of course, but it was part of it: keep the character as "female empowerment".

The more interesting question is what the next big Hollywood trend is going to be.

I don't think there will be another trend. Two hour movies at the movie theater are now deprecated. They are increasingly irrelevant to the culture zeitgeist. My prediction is that there will never be another major popcorn movie franchise at the level of Star Wars, MCU, or Harry Potter. That time in history is now over.

In terms of general trends in video, then AI has to be the next frontier. I was just watching some prehistoric planet thing on Netflix narrated by Morgan Freeman. It seems like the technology is already available to replace a person with an AI generated voice. And it'd be a lot cheaper than Morgan Freeman.

It's seems like it might be movie/TV adaptations of other properties that are actually competently made.

There are some early successes here and if studios shift away from superheroes this might be the next thing. You both get the brand brand recognition of a pre-existing property and get around the "franchise fatigue" stuff. You also have a product line ready to sell stuff from. It works kind of like how anime works for the manga industry, it's often not really intended to make a big profit on it's own, it's marketing. You could even integrate the streaming services to directly sell stuff from the shows/movies.

I could easily see there being ten+ years until ai stuff really takes off in a transformative way for media production in such a way that these kinds of trends don't matter as much but until then this could fill the void.

I think honestly, the writing is 99% of the problem. The reason these franchises suck is that they’re badly written, have no actual thought behind them, and no characters that people actually care about. A simple test here. If the first thing you’d ever seen of your franchise were the most recent three entries, would you even care? It’s a quality problem. The stories are poorly constructed, poorly thought out, full of plot holes, and have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said.

This does sound convincing. I remember as a child eagerly awaiting the release of "The Wizard", a glorified commercial for Super Mario 3. At the time, I would have also been happy to watch an actual 90 minute Super Mario 3 commercial.

but but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well despite obviously having a female lead.

Wonder Woman is a girlier Rosie the Riveter and Gal Gadot has a desirable personality. There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."

The problem isnt putting a chick in it, it's the making her lame and gay.

Edit: And doing it all the time while pretending that it's daring.

There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."

Lol. Did that actually happen? I think we should be thankful to whoever invented that phrase. I can think of few more reliable signals to avoid something or someone.

Related note: I have noticed "Black Girl Magic" wine on sale at the local Grocery Outlet discount store.

They put it in the trailer.

I respect that decision. It should probably be legally required for consumer protection purposes.

The top comment is "it's all so tiresome" lol

A leftist talking point between 2017 and 2019 was that if someone seems to deny someone else their rights, then they forfeit their own rights. Therefore, it is okay to "punch Nazis".

Now, I'm hearing a lot of the opposite, that queers and feminists stand with Palestine because homophobic transmisogynists are human too.

It's hard to know for certain what happened. My hunch is that these are largely the same people, and that they've never been interested in meta level principles. But it's possible that these are totally different people who've replaced the leftist activists of a few years ago. That's certainly a more charitable explanation.

(I'm not posting this in the Israel/Gaza thread because it's not directly about that conflict.)

This is not a new phenomenon. The Black September massacre of the 1972 Israeli Olympic delegation in Munich was supported and facilitated by German anti-fascist radical leftist groups, and the airplane hijacking that resulted in the Entebbe raid a decade later was also a joint effort between the PFLP and German leftists.

Literally the kids of Nazis, who were so obsessed with being anti-Nazi and repudiating the sins of their parents that...they wound up separating Jews from non-Jews to figure out who to shoot. The contemporary far left has a pattern of these kinds of contradictions.

What are the names of the German anti-fascist radical leftist groups who supported the Black September massacre? I see RZ was half of the hijacking team from the Entebbe raid, but couldn't find anything about local German support for the Black September stuff.

I'm not sure. I'm pulling from Darryl Cooper's account, but he doesn't give names. Apparently a German Neo-Nazi was also involved (Willi Pohl/Voss).

There is, of course, a consistent idea- it’s totally wrong but consistent- behind this.

And that idea is that Nazis have power in the western societies these leftists live in(lol) are about to have total power(lol) and so they’re punching up to save themselves from imminent oppression, while realistically there’s nothing Hamas can do to hurt western minorities(this is basically true; no doubt Hamas could carry out the odd lone wolf terror attack in the US or France or wherever if it really wanted to, but they’re pretty busy with Israel at the moment and also they can’t carry out a big enough campaign of organized violence to be worth worrying about in America or Europe, it’s beyond their capabilities). Obviously the first things are wrong, but by every indication the people actually making excuses for western leftist violence(as opposed to just trying to downplay it) genuinely believe that modern western rightists are going to create some kind of horribly oppressive authoritarian regime.

Cynically, the only consistent principle on the far left is best described by quoting Lenin: "who will overtake whom?" -- "кто кого?": to quote that article "In this view, all compromises and promises between enemies are just expedients." Everyone is just using what angles they can to get as much for themselves as possible, and any sort of principles really exist as rhetorical cudgels rather than lofty ideals to strive for.

Even more cynically, it's interesting to see that the masked far-left protesters shouting about "punching Nazis" a few years back have disappeared, but now we have masked far-left protesters shouting about exterminating Jews. It's funny, I don't think we've seen both groups at the same time.

Now, I'm hearing a lot of the opposite, that queers and feminists stand with Palestine because homophobic transmisogynists are human too.

There is nothing inconsistent about this; Race and identity will always be above tolerance/intolerance. It has been this way for decades. In 2002 during the Iraq War, or the far-left support for PLO in the 60s. Non-whites are always oppressed and their illiberal views are either irrelevant or somehow as a result of being oppressed

I don't think there's necessarily any contradiction or change of mind. One can think of it this way:

"In this situation, the Israelis are the bigger Nazis, which is why it's ok for Palestinians to punch them. Yes, Palestine is controlled by homophobic sexists, but that is something that can be fixed after we take care of the immediate problem, which is that Israel is violently oppressing Palestine. Palestinian women and LGBT folk are themselves the victims of the homophobic sexist culture that is perpetuated by Palestinian straight men, which is all the more reason why Israel is being barbaric by bombing Palestinian areas even though on the ground Palestinian women and LGBTs are mixed in together with the straight men who are oppressing them. Palestinian women and LGBTs are the biggest victims here and Israelis are the biggest Nazis here. Palestinian straight men are somewhere in the middle, but getting Israel to stop its genocidal attack is a more pressing issue than trying to reform Palestinian cultural norms in the middle of the war and oppression."

I'm not saying it's necessarily an accurate view of things, but I think it's more or less coherent and non-contradictory at least by the low standard of how coherent and non-contradictory the average political ideology is.

The real motivations behind these attitudes are probably much more emotional than rational, and the rational arguments are made up after the emotions in order to justify the emotions. But then, that's the case for the vast majority of political thinking everywhere, including here on The Motte. And to be technical, I don't even think it's possible to ever get rid of emotion-driven politics because a lot of politics boils down to preferences which in principle cannot be argued for or against. But that's a tangent. My main point is that even if the dominant progressive attitude toward this conflict is emotion-driven, it is not hard to come up with pretty coherent rationalizations of it.

One might as well ask why most US conservatives who support small government, social conservatism, and armed resistance to an oppressive state here in the US also support sending a bunch of my tax money to Israel's military-intelligence complex to help it fight against a rag-tag band of socially conservative resistance fighters who are using their guns to fight government oppression.

One might as well ask why most US conservatives who support small government, social conservatism, and armed resistance to an oppressive state here in the US also support sending a bunch of my tax money to Israel's military-intelligence complex to help it fight against a rag-tag band of socially conservative resistance fighters who are using their guns to fight government oppression.

If the boomercons I spent the weekend with are any indication, the answer is ‘the people in Palestine are basically the scum of the whole region that no one wants to have to deal with so Israel’s stuck with them. If gypsies rebelled I would support the EU, and it’s kind of the same thing’. Kto-kogo, indeed.

One might as well ask why most US conservatives who support small government, social conservatism, and armed resistance to an oppressive state here in the US also support sending a bunch of my tax money to Israel's military-intelligence complex to help it fight against a rag-tag band of socially conservative resistance fighters who are using their guns to fight government oppression.

That's a good question too, why not ask it as well? And why on earth are you trying to lowest common denominator this? Holding people to the standard of average political discourse, defending emotional reasoning because it's really easy and requires no thought, boiling everything down to preferences and then giving up. "Hey, even on the motte people have shitty arguments sometimes, so may as well give in to your basest impulses and go who, whom like everyone else".

If you find yourself lowering your standards to rationalise your ideological bedfellows behaviour, doesn't that imply they aren't really your bedfellows on this issue? You don't have to become conservative instead, just hold yourself to the standards I know you prefer deep down (because your post is full of reluctant resignation.) It's the only way to raise the bar again.

I'm not defending the emotional reasoning, I'm just explaining it. Also, progressives are not my ideological bedfellows any more than conservatives are. My political views are too complex to describe succinctly, but if I had to put a simple label on them I'd say that they are probably closer to classical liberalism than to any other major political ideology.

If I come off as being full of resignation, it's probably because I have spent my entire life so far feeling like no major political movement represents my politics well and I have seen just how much more powerful emotion-driven politics usually is than reason-driven politics. However, I do not think that improvement is impossible. It clearly is possible, because modern Western societies are on average vastly different politically, and in my opinion almost in every single way better, than they were say 2000 years ago. So despite my cynical view of the political landscape, I have not given up hope, nor do I think that my efforts to make things better are meaningless.

I feel lie your political position and mine are about the same and every time an election comes up, I'm simply floored by the amount of people who actually believe and are energized by their chosen party. It really baffles me that anyone can believe any of it. I often feel like my lack of faith is my biggest failing.

they’ve never been interested in meta level principles

Almost nobody is interested in meta level principles. Tons of the same right-adjacent people who were advocating for free speech and against cancelling were instantly on the front lines of trying to cancel pro Palestinian college students in the wake of the Hamas attack.

Some are self-conscious enough to justify it with slogans like “my rules > your rules applied fairly > your rules applied unfairly” but ultimately a good model of public debate is that people advocate for their side on the object level using whatever weapons they can.

I think you are right. Of course those who do not care about meta principles get eventually devoured by their own for their troubles, as Scott pointed out in his "why don't whales get cancer more often post.

One could argue rightists are aware of this and just want to give them a taste of their own medicine. Not that revenge is a healthy thing to pursue. I don't advocate punishing anyone for criticism of Israel, but I do get a perverse delight in seeing leftists do a surprised Pikachu face when the exact thing they asked for happens to them.

A leftist talking point between 2017 and 2019 was that if someone seems to deny someone else their rights, then they forfeit their own rights. Therefore, it is okay to "punch Nazis".

I think this is incomplete. The standard framing of this is "if a person in a position of power denies someone else their rights, then they forfeit their own rights, therefore it's okay to punch Nazis."

It's the same reasoning that underlines "you can't be racist against white people" - racism = prejudice + power, ergo it isn't racist for a black person to say "if it was up to me I'd send all those fuckin crackers to the gas chamber" in the way it would be if the boot was on the other foot. The debate about "punching up" vs. "punching down" in standup comedy may seem innocuous and trivial, but it leads directly to people defending Hamas for gang-raping Israeli women.

So we aren't entitled to punch Richard Spencer in the face because of the things he said: we're entitled to punch him in the face because of the things he said and because he has power.

"What do you mean Richard Spencer has power? He's never been elected to public office, the membership in the organisation he founded is vanishingly small, he was so broke he had to move back in with his parents." Well, who has "power" and who doesn't (who's punching up and who's punching down) are intentionally defined in a manner which is fuzzy, opaque and prone to being gamed. It's practically a defining characteristic of leftists/woke people that they see themselves as always and forever supporting the oppressed and downtrodden, which means that whenever a leftist/woke person supports Alice over Bob, they must find (or invent) a reason that Alice is disempowered relative to Bob.

Israel and Palestine is a relatively straightforward case, in that it's hard to deny that Israel is the stronger of the two belligerents - technologically, economically and militarily superior, backed by the US, nukes etc. - but you will often find murkier cases, wherein the claim that Alice is disempowered relative to Bob seems a lot more contrived than this. For example, I've seen woke people argue that wealthy black people making fun of homeless white people is "punching up", because the homeless people are still beneficiaries of "white privilege". The whole "punching up" vs. "punching down" framework has so many degrees of freedom that it will almost always be possible to find some reason why the person you like is actually disempowered relative to the person you don't.

If it was done in a systemic way, we would aggregate all of the relevant characteristics of the two individuals or parties ("Alice makes €50k, is myopic, is a lesbian, speaks English as a second language and is a recent migrant; Bob makes €40k, wears hearing aids, is straight and suffers from pronounced PTSD") and then make a determination of who is allowed to crack jokes at the other's expense/beat the other one up/steal the other's shit. (This was probably the idea behind "privilege walks", in which you take a group of people, a series of statements are read out, and each person moves one step forward if the statement applies to them and one step back if it doesn't. I haven't heard much about them for years, probably because the technique's objectivity meant that it could easily show that a female person is more privileged than a male, or a POC more privileged than a white person - and we can't have that, can we?) In practice, all you need to do is find one axis on which Alice is considered to be worse off than Bob, and then claim that her position on this axis negates whatever positions she might occupy on any other axes which might be relevant to the debate over who has more power in an interpersonal or political debate. (Hillary Clinton may be white, cis, straight, fabulously wealthy, well-educated and extremely powerful in the literal sense of having held numerous high-ranking government positions in a career spanning decades - but she is a WOMAN, therefore all criticism and jokes directed at her are unacceptable punching down.)

This is one reason woke people get so hostile and defensive when people bring up class, education and income as axes of privilege: on some level they are well aware that almost all woke people are well-educated middle-to-upper-class people whose salaries are well above the national average, and that many anti-woke people are none of those things. It must be profoundly discomforting to simultaneously think of yourself as someone who always sticks up for the little guy, while also being aware that you routinely express sneering contempt for people who are poorer and less educated than you. Their preferred strategy for defusing this cognitive dissonance is to insist that they don't hate poor white people because they're poor but rather because they're racist and sexist and etc.; that race matters more than class; that if you're white and poor in a white supremacist society then that means you must have squandered your white privilege ("why can't you just pull yourself up by your Klanstraps?").

As a person who thinks, fundamentally, that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, I was never going to feel at home in woke spaces. I've read tens of thousands of words trying to justify the claim that it's okay for black people to express seething hatred for white people but not vice versa (and by extension that it's okay for Palestinians to gang rape Israelis but not vice versa). Dozens of people have tried to explain to me in person why they believe it to be so, or treated it as so self-evident that they're honestly baffled why I don't accept it face value (like I didn't understand why 2+2=4). It's obviously an assertion that makes a great deal of intuitive sense for a large proportion of the population - I'm just not one of those people and I don't think I ever will be.

They have meta level principles, but those aren't it. You're reading the slogans that are meant to beat liberals into submission, not the inner thoughts of the movement. These people do not believe in rights as a concept.

Their philosophy is ultimately one of love of the weak and hatred of the strong, they are slave moralists above most things and if Hebrew and Palestinian were swapped in perceived relative power they would likely have different allegiances.

Do note that the hierarchy of power seems to have been dogmatically set and isn't mutable. If the oppressed become the oppressors they don't switch sides, it's "justice".

You're reading the slogans that are meant to beat liberals into submission, not the inner thoughts of the movement.

I often wonder whether neurotypicals can read minds, since they so often as though they can.

I see your point, though. And I think you may be right, but I'd like to be charitable.

I'm not quite mind reading here, so much as actually reading.

They plainly say the slogans are bullshit for libs in their own writings. Go read the CRT authors, they literally explain how they're trying to trick liberals into bringing about a real revolution instead of extinguishing it.

They will deny it in interviews (there's this hilarious bit where Crenshaw is asked point blank if she's a Marxist as a softball and has to give a non answer which puzzles the interviewer) but they are pretty open about this in their esoteric literature.

I don't know who Crenshaw is. I only know who Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo are. Tell me more about this Crenshaw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberl%C3%A9_Crenshaw

She coined the term intersectionality, influenced the equality clause of the South African constitution and is one of the major founders of CRT with Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado.

I recommend reading Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement which gives a good overview of the movement and its authors.

To give a candid reading of their ideas: Liberals tricked American blacks into false liberation through the idea of colorblindness and individualism, true liberation can only come from race consciousness, Common Law and private property are inherently incompatible with black liberation and their existence is a structural inequality that requires no less than a new constitutional order that places social justice above such principles.

I often wonder whether neurotypicals can read minds, since they so often as though they can.

Your post reminds me of captchas where the user is presented a single picture, divided into squares, and asked to identify all squares with a bicycle (or whatever) in them. Sometimes there are perhaps a few pixels that are from the bicycle on the edge of one of the squares. Does that count or not? What if the pixel in the square is only partly colored by the bicycle, and the other half of its color comes from background? What about reflections? I used to get a bit stressed trying to answer correctly based on my understanding of what "correct" was. That is wrong. You are not being asked to identify all squares with a bicycle in them. You're being asked to reproduce how an average person would respond to this task, given the prompt "identify all squares with a bicycle in them". An average person doesn't think about reflections, or subpixels, or any of that. And so I am no longer stressed about captchas.

It's not reading minds exactly, but it is a combination of "not overthinking" and "enough shared culture so that they all understand those critical, unstated assumptions".

Ah. Sadly, not only do I not share normie cultural assumptions, I don't even understand the assumptions of the terminally online culture I've grown up in.

Your formulation makes it sound like it is intended as an attack, but as a (hopefully not too non-central) leftist, I'm fairly happy to stand by "[love the weak and] hate the strong" - more the latter than the former - as a tenet. Right-wingers who celebrate strength, in my general experience and certainly on here, are very quick to conflate strength and excellence (in the sense of being good at something that the speaker values terminally, hopefully not circularly including strength qua strength); but as I see it, the evolutionary telos of strength is the telos of evolution itself - that is, survival, domination and reproduction - and though strength makes it easier to attain excellence, it only does so reluctantly as a side effect when excellence is the least-resistance path to attain said domination. This, in turn, is actually more often the case when we do not grant strength the compound interest of celebrating it for itself, but instead denigrate it to force it to camouflage as something else.

I think many right-wingers, at least here, actually understand the difference between strength and excellence quite well; at least I do not see them, looking out to the sea as the SJ juggernaut rises, going "Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?" with sparkly eyes. What draws me to oppose the SJ movement is its strength, and to the extent any conservatives are drawn to support it on that basis, they become the "liberals who are the real authoritarians" that are only spoken about in hushed tones, whether you fear the modus ponens or the modus tollens.

Maybe this is a total failure of reading comprehension on my part, but passages such as

the evolutionary telos of strength is the telos of evolution itself - that is, survival, domination and reproduction - and though strength makes it easier to attain excellence, it only does so reluctantly as a side effect when excellence is the least-resistance path to attain said domination. This, in turn, is actually more often the case when we do not grant strength the compound interest of celebrating it for itself, but instead denigrate it to force it to camouflage as something else

read as complete word salad to me. I genuinely have no idea what point you’re trying to make, or why strength is supposed to be a bad thing in this construction. Are you saying you hate strength because it’s instrumentally useful to rhetorically deploy expressions of hate toward strength, because strong people have to strive harder to achieve excellence if we don’t just let them use their strength to take the shortcut to excellence? That’s my read of what you’re saying if I squint, but honestly I’m not confident that I’m interpreting anything of value in your post.

This is how I interpreted it:

  • Strength makes it easier to attain excellence.
  • But strength does not particularly care about excellence. Strength only produces excellence as a side effect under certain conditions.
  • If strength is widely denigrated, then the only way for strength to make itself look good is to be excellent.
  • Therefore, we ought to denigrate strength, to force it to be excellent.

That’s the thing that I find interesting (the fact that hierarchies can’t change). Why? Is it that they hated the strong for so long that even when they aren’t strong the hate remains?

Because it's not about weak vs. strong. It's about signalling.

Poor people can't afford to have slave morality. They need to fight for their rights. Rich woke people are thriving and can afford to send expensive signals such as "white people are evil", "defund the police", and "raise taxes".

It's worth pointing out that these people are overwhelmingly more likely to send their own children to private school and live in a safe neighborhood.

Hate for the strong and love for the weak is just another layer of the onion; it's not a true meta-principle either.

Part of me thinks it isn’t really hate for the strong and love for the weak but hate for the competent and love for the dysfunctional.

It's hate for the weakness and dysfunction within themselves that leads to the hate for the strength and competence they see in others. Also the fear of being weak and dysfunctional themselves and not knowing enough about themselves to know their own strength or weakness. People who have pushed themselves to see themselves fully aren't as easily led astray into these modes of thinking.

Competent are competitors, the dysfunctional are clients ?

There are children in Palestine, too.

'Hold specific people accountable for their personal actions, don't vilify and attack entire ethnicities based on the actions of a few of their members' has also always been a leftist philosophy (whether or not it shows up reliably in tactics).

Will the pro Israel people promoting this line of argument so consistently try to pay a little attention to the pro Jewish far left?

Recently, Harvard declared that Jews are to be considered as non white as far as their policies go. Many far left donors decided that wokeness is just fine but not criticisms towards Jews or Israel. So what are you doing about the influential faction that is pro jewish and anti white, and wants Jews high in the progressive stack? Because it seems that only focusing on muslim wokeness is helping them to get their agenda through.

Also, unlike the fact that the woke left is promoting nonsense, Palestinians are genuinely oppressed. Both in West Bank and in Gaza. days ago I heard the number 10000 dead. Their homes have been mass obliterated.

It is the Jewish side which abuses identity politics. Of course if one looks at the politics of palestinians, they are if they are accepted as immigrants on mass join with movements against the native people. But they are oppressed in their homeland.

My problem with leftist whining is not the same with the Green Greenwald antiwar type of opposition to actual attrocities. It is ironically excessive tribalism, feelings over facts emotionalism, manipulative and identity politics to disminish real issues because of dichotomizing politics into different packages of beliefs and tribal allegiances. So we should reject as leading humanity into monstrous teritory to dismiss actual morality, due to our correct opposition to those who complain over BS and are actually the oppressive force in society. Actually the Jewish identitarians qualify more as part of this than being targeted by this and the reinforcement of Jewish victimhood including with Christians and Europeans as perpetrators is something we constantly see. My stance is that the obvious antiracist path is these cult of personalities for ethnicities to stop and to recognize that Jews didn't do nothing and is all evil non jewish, or white and christians and demonizing othe ethnic groups and calling any resistance and disagreement as antisemitism, is actually insanely racist hate speech, which shouldn't be tolerated. Actually the anti racist and less tribalist and more moral and factual path is to aknowledge that the Jews and also non jewish racists in favor of Jews, have done and are doing plenty against europeans, palestinians and should stop. Books like one written from a Jewish rabbi I found once about the Jewish role in multiculturalism and victimhood industry that is negative about it but has a reconciliatory tone.

Is there an element of third world nationalism islamist and even anti western in the broad sense civilization that is pro palestine? Of course. And same applies with pro Jewish, probably even more so among institutional power but probably less applied to the ground activists.

But that should be addressed directly, rather than us at any point thinking the correct attitude to it is to support atrocities against the Palestinians. At the end of the day, ethnic groups that I consider extremists (and I consider the Jews to be an ethnic group with pervasive problem of extremism and racism) and don't want them to rule over others still have human rights. So do others, since there are some Jews with sane politics and non Jews who are racists for Jews and other groups.

The way I talk about human rights and I don't have Israel in mind which actually is a country that routinely violates the genuine human rights of others its not a suicide pact, not an excuse to avoid self defense or pathological altruism. Its about avoiding predatory attrocities but still defending yourself and taking the right measures that do not allow criminal factions to act with impunity. Punishment is still a necessary element of justice and so is people with criminal agendas being stopped from enacting said agendas.

Also in regards to coalitional politics, you should try to give the anti woke you are trying to appeal a better offer. Because I see the Jewish supremacist antiwhite left (part of that are many neocons who are leftists and converge in most things ADL does and are the type to call for replacing the white working class) being the faction that gets most of what it wants. It includes in it those who pretend it doesn't exist by the way and promote postmodernist FUD on reality.

That some of the people this manipulative one sided offer aren't playing harder to get and making demands probably has something to do with why they are never getting a better offer. Its a relationship when one party makes unconditional demands and willing to call you a jew hater and evil or nazi if you don't go along with them, and the other party's reaction is grosslly idiotic if it just complies with this moral blackmail. It is also dishonorable Reek behavior. The attitude of "if you don't give us what we want we will slander you" is a very good reason additionally to be hostile to the pro jewish racist faction. Which slanders your ancestors and anyone who isn't subservient to them anyway.

Anyhow, in both the USA and in Britain, people are persecuted both for supposed Islamophobia and supposed anti jewish sentiment. The end result isn't targeting hatred but promoting supremacy of said groups and promoting totalitarianism.

Why shouldn't Christians and the native european types demand to be treated with respect and getting at least some level of protection instead of unconditionally supporting a faction that has been quite comfortable to a) mistreat them due to their identity politics and part of this mistreatment includes the enforced consensus of Jewish moral superiority and opposition to valid criticisms b) have been actually willing to make some common ground with third world nationalist especially non islamists (of course delegitimizing the rights of the native people also makes common cause with them) but even allow room against negativity towards muslims, at least when done outside pro jewish context, but have been very hostile to european tribalism. This is a very bad offer provided by those who are much more willing to promote aggressively pro jewish identity politics than work to support or tolerate the identity politics of others. Not to mention the support of the invade the world types for the invite the world agenda.

The end point of both islamist and pro jewish faction's agenda and what they are promoting is a progressive stack intersectionality that has some level of compromise among those two factions and is a totalitarian racist supremacist society at expense of right wingers, christians, europeans and other groups not part of the progressive stack alliance. While lying about how it is a society against racism, for freedom and the typical lies. Actually Britain is one example of a society already there and will go even further in said direction on the short term. However, I don't think the currently pro jewish direction is stable.

Of course, the pro jewish faction are going to find that their victories have plenty to do with native westerners being willing to stupidly side with them which doesn't apply actually to many of the people they invited over at the expense, especially with changing of the guard of power and even the guilible native westerners can just take so much abuse, especially as it intensified and new generations have been turning against them. Plus their cause is blatantly unjust also in Palestine. Lets just say that I don't expect on the long term the white-ish Jews to be treated very well as the west stops being the west and some of those of native descent identify with an antiwhite ideology which is going to be hostile to Jews too and remaining parts of the west in spirit too understand how hostile the Jews have been and are to them, and therefore are not pro Jewish when the Jews have consistently mistreated them. But for the majority of those Jews who have been participating in politics and the culture war it would be reaping what they have sowed.

*** But aren't the Jews supergeniuses who wouldn't pursue this strategy if it could prove detrimental? I don't see this display of supergenius. I see a disciplined fanatical attempt to promote jewish identity politics and a resentful prejudice agaisnt european christians. There is some method in the madness and to the racist agenda but plenty of irrationality too. Their arrogance exceed the Ashkenazi Jewish IQ. In their interaction with the right and europeans and christians they really are driven by irrational racist resentment with a heavy crossover with parts of non jewish left too which have succeeded also due to fanaticism, ruthlessness and probably some other advantages but also quite irrational and driven by resentment. They are more willing to compromise and respect ironically left wing identity politics despite the cynical targeting of it.

I blame the western right and native people in smaller part. The reason both the left and the Jews in west have become so resentful and unwilling of any sane compromise with them was the fact that the right wing have been complete pushovers and that feed into the arrogance of the Jews and he far left. This is why they demand that the right be self hating racist pushovers or else call them nazis. They have become accustomed to this, even though it would make more sense to be much kinder to the european natives.

Enforcing moderation and good rules and not allowing people to promote one sided racist demagoguery and propaganda at your expense and then pretend that they are antiracists and anyone else is a nazi antisemite, was the sane thing that the non Jewish establishment failed to do. Fixing things requires we do just that and not tolerate this kind of propaganda ever again.

This is a worthwhile post, but it doesn't relate to what I'm talking about and would better fit in the Gaza megathread.

The influence of the pro Jewish far left like the ADL and how just focusing on the woke pro muslims empowers it is definitely directly relevant.

Fundamentally my position has been that rather than hateful extremism the idea of the Jews as a racist party is the sane and less racist way to understand Jewish behavior, and Jewish identity politics are genuinely poison for western civilization. Contrarilly the idea of Jews as the people who never done nothing and have a legitimate grudge against others to demonize them and it is antisemitic to question it, is in fact extremist racist hatred. Of course this shouldn't be conflated with attrocities towards Jews or any group. Not tolerating racist propaganda is different than that and it is in fact possible to do so without having the same mentality of what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine.

Of course there are many ways I disagree with certain far righters. Fundamentally stopping all the annoying and immoral grudge stirrers against your civilization is the obvious way to go and this means stopping both the pro palestinian anti western far elft. But I have more of a moderate end. I don't want the dominant discourse to be propagandistic in the other direction. I do want of course to make the whole woke framework taboo. I am more into moralism than some people on the right.

Additionally, I always found a respectable decency in certain more fact based anti war leftists. If someone opposes warmongering and attrocities I see this as a good thing and different than someone who is out to get your civilization. The whole attempt to associate wokeness with pro palestinians which was part of your post foregoes actually analyzing the facts of the situation. We shouldn't reflexively side against a group when they are actually mistreated.

Lets just say that I think our reaction towards group X should be much different if they are a) promoting propaganda against your civilization and disrespecting its human rights promoting mass migration, and all sort of other policies b) Are getting bombed.

I have little sympathy for say the Palestinian cheering for Islamization of the west even if they are using the mistreatment of palestinians as part of their argument but much more for the Palestinian getting bombed and the argument against that. The problem of wokeness is they take the side of people in the wrong and have an extreme mentality for their ingroup and against their outgroup. It is the wrong reaction to that to always take the side of groups and against other groups. This applies also in cases were it would be favorable to Jews. Like I think when Jews were targeted by attrocities such as in WW2, opposing that would be the correct thing to do although now we should disentangle the past history with the modern movements milking it dry. It is more about opposing it as it happens.

Also we should be careful to not let sympathy against certain mistreatment mean tolerance for propaganda movements.

You shouldn't support say 19th century slavery but you should be intolerant of the movement using it as a weapon towards modern people and their general civilization and overly promoting narratives that also shit on their ancestors. Same with holocaust but with the Jews there is also a promotion of false narrative of Jews historically as always oppressed, victimized, doing nothing wrong and others as oppressors. Which narrative has plenty to do with authoritarian persecution of opposite facts. A few on the right thing that the way to go is to actually cheer for that as the way to counter the left and of course I disagree. The bigger problem is tolerance of propagandists out to get you, or thinking that said history is inherently sacred. Its not sacred but profane for people to use it against you and must be made taboo. A bit like Poland criminalized blaming the Poles for the holocaust.

The whole "wokeness muslim" argument as people here promote it is an arguement to completely forget the pro Jewish far left and join them in promoting authoritarian racist Jewish identity politics and also abandon considerations of human rights entirely but only in the case of regime approved targets and support Israel in its atrocities against Palestinians. Both of these approaches are wrong.

My hunch is that these are largely the same people, and that they've never been interested in meta level principles.

It's almost always this, but I think most Motteposters (myself included) ignore this idea since it would make 90% of CW-analysis posting moot, and we enjoy our hate-read dopamine too much.

They is currently an 8 month old baby in the UK with a mitochondrial disease which is almost definitely terminal. The babies name is Indi: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/italy-grants-citizenship-terminally-ill-british-baby-after-104666139

A UK judge has ordered that that the baby be killed. Her parents have protested this, saying that they don’t think the government should kill their baby.

The Catholics have said: give us the baby and we will put the baby in our pediatric Vatican hospital, and the Italian government has said they would cover the medical bills. The Italian government has also said that the family can have Italian citizenship.

The UK has said no, you can’t leave, you need to keep the baby here so we can kill it.

I know this sounds hyperbolic, but…I don’t think it is. Read the article. Absolutely deranged behavior.

I understand that in socialized medicine countries there is some calculation about how much life support will cost, and famously in Canada sometimes this means the government just tries to get you to kill yourself, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The Catholics are being pretty Catholic about this and just trying to save the baby. The UK government won’t let them and insists that they should just kill her.

Insanity.

mitochondrial disease which is almost definitely terminal.

I would like to hear your justification for the use of the word "almost" in this sentence - so far as I can tell this baby is doomed, and has nothing in her short future but suffering (insofar as she is even capable of feeling suffering at this point) and death.

The Catholics are being pretty Catholic about this and just trying to save the baby.

And the protestants are just being protestant about this and acting under pragmatism rather than dogma.

Look, I'm sure the folks at Bambino Gesu are operating with only the best of intentions, but good intentions don't heal babies with broken genomes. The Vatican would have better odds building a colony on Titan than of saving this child.

Indi is a British citizen. As such the court is bound to act in her interests. Not her parents, hers. It is blatantly obvious to me (and the judge, apparently) that any sentient creature with zero capacity to do anything but suffer is better off in a state of inexistence. Prolonging her life for the sake of, what, her parent's feels? Not justifiable.

And the protestants are just being protestant about this and acting under pragmatism rather than dogma.

Discontinuing care would be pragmatic. Preventing the child from going somewhere else, were care will be given is just as dogmatic.

I think the point is UK courts will rule that letting a child die might be best for the patient and override parental wishes, but they will also override parental wishes to save a child if they deem that best for the patient (With Jehovahs Witnesses and blood products most commonly I think).

So they don't have a, "always preserve life as much as possible" rule, or a "always end life early" rule, but they choose depending on the circumstances.

Papal infallibility is a dogma, even when what the pope says is pretty nuanced. This is just "healthcare system infallibility".

I don't think that makes sense,because we don't allow doctors to make the choice on their own. And multiple witnesses and doctors were called before multiple judges, including up to the ECHR which isn't even British.

When we lock up a criminal after a trial is that dogma because we're assuming "justice system infallibility"? Or that we know its not infallible but decisions have to be made in the best interests of people anyway, even though it could be incorrect?

Sure, if a jurisdiction outlaws, say, gender affirming care, it would be a claim on infallibility if you not only prevented people from providing it within the jurisdiction, but also prevented the from going where it's legal.

No, I think you're wrong there. You don't have to think you are infallible to stop someone doing X, you just have to think you are more likely to be right than they are. It might be a claim that you know better than them, but that's not the same thing as thinking you are infallible.

If I forbid you to take cocaine (assuming I am in a position to do so, and care about you), and when you tell me you are going round to your friend's house to do coke and I lock you up instead, I can freely acknowledge that it is possible that it will be a positive healthy experience for you with no downsides. I just have to think the cost/benefit is tipped too far into the negatives. But it isn't a claim to infallibility. You can ask me "Isn't there a chance you are wrong SSCReader?" and I will say, "Yes, I might be". Yet I still won't open the door. I know I am not infallible, yet, if I think your judgement is (for whatever reason) too badly compromised, I just have to trust it MORE than yours.

It's comparative, not absolute in other words.

Sorry, can you stay within the bounds of my hypothetical instead of changing it so that it no longer applies to the situation?

More comments

Normally people are free to take their baby to Italy if they want though -- the UK health system choosing not to treat the baby due to hopelessness seems fine, but actively preventing the family from seeking other options is a bit nuts. (and reflects a high degree of egotism on the part of the UK justice/health system, if not quite 'infallibility')

It's not just due to hopelessness, the treating specialists claimed that treatment was not just useless but causing pain and therefore further treatment was not in the best interests of the patient. As long as you accept that is on the balance of probability true, then the choice is allowing further torture. You don't have to think you're infallible for that. Indeed it went to what, at least 4 different courts (one of which was the ECHR and not controlled by the UK), all of which are checking the work of the other.

It may still be wrong of course. But if you have double checking built into the system, it seems clear the system has at least taken some steps to try to minimise mistakes.

It's the extension of jurisdiction to Italy that is key here -- if Italy (or Vatican City I guess) thinks that the treatment is literal torture, they could ban it.

What even are the mechanics of this -- is the state taking over custody of this kid? ie. if the parents show up with an ambulance and a bunch of Vatican doctors, the police will prevent them from moving the child?

More comments

What struck me as dogmatic is the prolongation of life as the highest priority, the greatest possible good, regardless of anything. There is no consideration given to the possibility that maybe prolonging Indi's life is not a good thing for her.

It's in your comment too. If you'll pardon me trying to guess your thought processes, the only negative you can even consider is the economic cost of keeping Indi alive. If someone else is covering that then there is literally no downside.

This is only true if treatment is an unalloyed good, which, of course, it isn't.

What struck me as dogmatic is the prolongation of life as the highest priority, the greatest possible good, regardless of anything. There is no consideration given to the possibility that maybe prolonging Indi's life is not a good thing for her.

I find that absolutely backwards. Even if the UK healthcare system ran some advanced calculus on whether it makes sense to keep her alive, they are the ones failing to consider that someone else might come to a different conclusion. Actually, failing to consider wouldn't even be that bad, the issue is that they are so absolutely certain, that they believe they have a right to stop, by force, other people from prolonging her life. A non-dogmatic person does not act this way.

It's in your comment too. If you'll pardon me trying to guess your thought processes, the only negative you can even consider is the economic cost of keeping Indi alive. If someone else is covering that then there is literally no downside.

This is only true if treatment is an unalloyed good, which, of course, it isn't.

Usually we let the patient decide whether or not to undergo treatment, and if they are in a state where they cannot make that decision, we lave that to their family. You're so certain about being right, that you think it gives you the right to override the parents, and you're calling others dogmatic?

I really don't think it is the place of a judge to ever order a cessation of treatment, except to settle a dispute over power of attorney or something similar.

The article doesn't make it clear what mitochondrial disease is responsible, but the UK is probably the world leader in treating it. The caveat: It has to be done via in-vitro fertilization.

This would have to be a defect in mitochondrial proteins that are coded for in nuclear DNA, right? The mother obviously doesn't have the disease, or she would never have lived long enough to reproduce. Since mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother without recombination, then it can't be carried in mitochondrial DNA, unless it's a de novo mutation.

Many (most?) mitochondrial genes have migrated into nuclear DNA, so an autosomal recessive disease could explain how she was able to inherit the disease without either of her parents having it.

From the topic text:

Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

Please don't post things like this.

I think I crossed out the parts you didn’t like. Is that what you meant?

Those are definitely the worst parts, but the rest of it ain't great either - it appears the entire point of this post is to complain about someone doing a thing you don't like. What's the point? Why are you posting it? If it's "these people are doing a bad thing", then it's not a good post; if there's some other reason, go into that.

Why are you posting it? If it's "these people are doing a bad thing", then it's not a good post; if there's some other reason, go into that.

He did. The ethics of euthanasia are an interesting topic, and discussing a general topic through a recent example is a very common thing here. You might as well ban the Gaza megathread, if that's you interpretation of the rule.

The ethics of euthanasia are an interesting topic

Then write something about that, not just "look how bad these people are".

and discussing a general topic through a recent example is a very common thing here

Then start a discussion, instead of just dropping "look how bad these people are".

This particular rule isn't new, it's existed before this branch of the forum has.

https://www.themotte.org/post/757/israel-gaza-megathread-iv/158907?context=8#context

Three most recent posts in the Gaza megathread:

Someone writing about an event

A specific set of four questions to people

A specific single question to people

If anyone's just posting "boy look at how bad these people are" then report them, please.

If anyone's just posting "boy look at how bad these people are" then report them, please.

The thing is, I'm not really bothered by people doing that, and I don't think it's possible to not do it while discussing certain events. For example from the CW of the week of the Gaza attack:

Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel.

Sure sounds like "boy look at how bad these people are" to me!

I get it, it's a judgement call. Some things are just The News, and others you kind of have to go out of your way to find, I was just taken aback that describing in plain terms what occurred in this event has made the cut for mod-worthy.

From the article, it seems like the government merely ruled that (government-provided, in the UK) life support should be withdrawn, which does not register as "ordered to be killed" any more than I would consider the government refusing to subsidise plane tickets for unemployed people to amount to imprisonment. The weird part only begins at the point where they also arrogate to themselves the right to prohibit transferring the baby to a different hospital - but this is part of a general tendency towards legal paternalism in medicine. I was under the impression that the appetite for making it illegal to go do something that is not authorized locally (including recreational drugs, experimental treatment, and especially medical interventions that touch upon ethically touchy topics such as abortions, embryonal selection, cloning...) is generally high, and people get away with it it is only due to the inattention of the legal system.

There's a very high amount of authoritarianism and arrogance found in senior medical professionals. They don't like to be disobeyed or disagreed with. Look at the "Take Care of Maya" case that just finished.

Another interesting example is that now there are several countries that ban drugs like ketamine, psilocybin, or MDMA for treatment of severe mental disorders. But they allow assisted suicide in those cases. Because a dead patient happens all the time, but to be proven wrong would be truly horrendous.

This contradiction doesn’t hold if the people banning the drugs aren’t the same people in charge of treating severe mental disorders or carrying out euthanasia. Maybe I’m wrong and medical professionals do have a right to use prohibited drugs which they’re not exercising.

t. The weird part only begins at the point where they also arrogate to themselves the right to prohibit transferring the baby to a different hospital - but this is part of a general tendency towards legal paternalism in medicine.

It seems to me most of these stories concern the UK. I don't recall such a story - prohibit privately funded transfer of a hopeless baby - from any other country.

The government is also preventing the parents from taking the child out of the country to get treatment. So, no, the government has specifically decided the child needs to die because keeping it alive or trying to treat it is cruel.

Yes, I understood that (see second half of the post). But in that interpretation, isn't any legal prohibition of experimental or perceived-to-be-unethical medical interventions still similarly equivalent to "deciding someone needs to die"?

But in that interpretation, isn't any legal prohibition of experimental or perceived-to-be-unethical medical interventions still similarly equivalent to "deciding someone needs to die"?

YesChad.jpg

Seriously, I'm perfectly willing to bite that bullet. Even in the case of treatments almost certainly being useless, denying people the option of trying to do something for themselves in the face of a terminal disease is telling them that they must learn to die on the state's terms.

for themselves

If this were true, it would be a very different situation.

Government telling adult citizens what to do is very fraught.

Government protecting the interests of dependent minors in limited cases where parents are not acting in those interests is well-established law and a sad but necessary institution.

This is just a weird mind worm that Catholics have. They’ve lost control of society, of culture, Francis is on the verge of allowing gay marriage, Vatican 2 has been in place for 60 years, divorce is commonplace, but one brain-dead infant needs to be pumped full of drugs and kept alive as a vegetable for the longest possible time. Maximizing the number of deformed, disabled, unwanted, underclass or critically sick babies appears - in the 21st century perhaps along with supporting large scale immigration - to be the guiding principle of the Catholic Church.

This isn’t even opposition to euthanasia, because as others have suggested, she wouldn’t survive for any period naturally (which is the traditional threshold), but rather must be artificially kept alive in what amounts to a gruesome and morbid Frankenstein-esque medical experiment.

I will respect Catholic trads when they actually fight for for something that might improve civilization in a material way for people currently alive and their healthy descendants instead of kvetching endlessly about irrelevancies. Until then, for God’s sake if for nobody else’s, they ought to let this deeply unfortunate child rest in peace.

The sanctity of human life as a bright line between good and evil is an important load bearing principle of our civilization that is much too often taken for granted.

It's easy to call Catholics idealistic and impractical, but you're the one who lacks foresight if you think it isn't worth fighting tooth and nail on this particular battlefield.

Consider carefully the horrors that we know lie beyond the door of the State deciding who lives and dies. And remember it isn't you who controls it at the moment.

The sanctity of human life as a bright line between good and evil is an important load bearing principle of our civilization

Are you a staunch pacifist? Do you believe that no human being can ever kill any other human being under any circumstances? Even if your answer is yes, surely you can acknowledge that nearly no other person on earth, including in any nation you consider civilized, holds this belief. The vast majority of people believe that it is completely permissible to take another human life in at least some circumstance. That means that the line you are pointing at is not actually very bright at all, and is certainly not foundational to our civilization.

I am not. However I believe killing is only appropriate in cases where other options are exhausted such as self defense and war. And that it is not something that can be applied to people who did nothing wrong.

I entirely condemn it as a means of administrating a society, which is why though I am sympathetic to the idea of a death penalty for serious crimes, I am against it in practice. The State can not be trusted with the power to kill outside of the regimented confines of necessity. Death panels do not qualify.

And yes this is foundational to Western civilization in general and English civilization in particular which both place a lot more value on individual life than their contemporaries. Which is why the English, who like their rights, have historically not been very fond of the continental style of planned society. And why communism took root in the east and not in the west, contrary to Marx's predictions.

Again, it was England that had the Bloody Code, one of the most punitive and authoritarian legal regimes in European history. Any talk of “the natural rights and liberties of Englishmen” needs to grapple with that. It turns out that actually England does have a robust history of state institutions - such as secret police - that have intervened substantially into the lives of their citizens, no different from any other European state. So, if you’re going to make an argument about why state violence against citizens is a priori wrong, rather than trying to appeal to an extremely contentious and revisionist model of English history.

There’s a difference between a war and the state deciding that one of its own must die. I don’t think the line is death qua death but the line is certainly the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness of those citizens who live within the borders of the state. The concept of human rights is absolutely foundational to the west and I think this is the line that must be defended.

Are you suggesting that the death penalty - something eagerly practiced by every single country you would consider part of “the West” until practically yesterday, is “anti-Western”? Again, if you do, then you’re applying a definition of “Western Civilization” that didn’t exist until about forty years ago at the earliest.

It seems that you have an extremely progressive understanding of Western history, in which the West only started at the exact point in history in which your exact values became solidified. No Western person three hundred years ago cared about or believed in “human rights” in the way you’re using the phrase. Western countries were all totally fine with slavery at that point. Were they “not Western” at that point? England at least was executing thousands of people per year for even petty crimes. Was England not “Western” until it stopped doing so?

I’m suggesting that killing somebody outside of a state of war without due process (with the exception of self-defense) isn’t part of the enlightenment western tradition. It took a long time to get there, and we’re still working to get there.

Are you suggesting that the death penalty - something eagerly practiced by every single country you would consider part of “the West” until practically yesterday, is “anti-Western”? Again, if you do, then you’re applying a definition of “Western Civilization” that didn’t exist until about forty years ago at the earliest.

I don't think that they were saying that "the state should never decide that one of its own should die." It seems that we can draw distinctions between a convicted child murderer and a child, for example.

However, I agree that human rights, in the modern sense (secular nonlegal rights that one holds because of being human) is extremely recent. The traditional Western view (going back to the days of the Roman Empire) was that one's extra-legal entitlements vs. others came from God. There were other Western ethical systems that worked differently (Stoicism, Peripateticism, Epicureanism) but these weren't based on the legalistic model that Western civilizations inherited from the Ancient Hebrews.

It was certainly abolished by appealing to Western principles. Much like slavery.

There's always a distance between the principles people hold and what they actually do.

But this is precisely the shell game I’m accusing you of. “Western countries happily lived one way for hundreds of years, and then very recently they decided to do things a different way. That means the original way they did things, which lasted for much longer than the more recent thing, was never actually Western at all.”

I don't see the enlightenment as a divergence but simply a continuation of the principles that have guided western civilization since it's foundation.

I suppose we might simply disagree there.

There’s a difference between a war and the state deciding that one of its own must die

The death sentence, while slowly dying itself (or being strangled through lawfare and regulations) still exists in many Western states.

Further, there are plenty of cases where the state summarily executes people outside a state of war, try and shoot a police officer, or in the case of the UK, attempt to stab one and see how far the sanctity of life gets you.

Holding human life as sacred/uncomprisable simply doesn't work, at most you can argue that a high premium should be put on it, which is already true in the West, unless people are willfully blind to the historical state of affairs or the misfortunes of the rest of the globe.

Further, one can easily (and correctly) argue that this particular case lies at the confluence of a conflict between multiple different "rights", such as a right to medical care, a right not to be tortured, the right to die, or parental rights over their offspring. No matter how you slice it, someone's sacred ox is getting gored.

States can and will kill people, it's how they perpetuate themselves, and necessary for their very existence until we manage to eliminate violence altogether (hah).

try and shoot a police officer, or in the case of the UK, attempt to stab one and see how far the sanctity of life gets you.

Seeing how regular police officers don’t carry firearms in the UK (aside from in Northern Ireland), you’ll probably get pretty far.

but one brain-dead infant needs to be pumped full of drugs and kept alive as a vegetable for the longest possible time

Yes, the better answer is to turn it into ragouts and fricassees since then they would get some return for their time and expenditure.

I don't think you can piously mutter about "this deeply unfortunate child" after characterising it at the start as a brain-dead vegetable. You've shown your real opinion, no need to pretend to care about the child as such. And indeed sick children in general; you explicitly mention "healthy descendants" so - diabetic babies should die? blind babies are a hobble around the ankle of the healthy? At what stage does one reach a sufficient level of "not a healthy descendant" to be for the scrap heap, and at what point is "sufficiently healthy to be allowed live" reached?

I think barring cases where therapy would likely involve growing a new brain for them, such as microcephalic infants, in an ideal world everyone should be kept alive until we have the medical treatment to heal them, which I wager is easily within the current nominee life expectancy of most people reading.

Unfortunately, we live in a far from ideal world and budgets aren't infinite, so I have no qualms about letting die those who are an onerous burden.

For a more formal/object assessment criteria of how much a year of one person's life is compared to the average, we have QALY and DALY which adjusts for "quality" and disability respectively, to formalize the intuitive notion that a year of a doddering dementia patient's life is not worth as much as one of a healthy 20 yo.

A baby that no amount of money would save today before they die would certainly qualify for someone who should be allowed to die, or at least be cryogenically preserved in the hopes of resuscitation in a more enlightened age.

Regardless of earnest hand-wringing about the sanctity of life and how it's beyond such loathsome things as cost-benefit analysis, you don't see the global GDP diverted to help an orphan that fell down a well, or the Pope emptying the church's coffers for the sake of any old malarial infant.

Since it must be done, then it's best done as intelligently as we can manage, instead of letting moral outrage do all the work.

Diabetic babies aren't particularly expensive to rear, the Indian government, impoverished as it is, can give insulin away for free, and even the blind are being cured with reproducible therapies that promise to end the disease once and for all, no need for miracles not of our own making.

Sure, but our friend didn't make any fine distinctions when talking about "healthy descendants". So what level of health counts as 'healthy' for his purposes?

we live in a far from ideal world and budgets aren't infinite, so I have no qualms about letting die those who are an onerous burden.

If the cost is being borne largely by private actors, what cost is it to the government? Surely, if a private individual or charity group is able and willing to direct their funds to keeping those children alive, they should be allowed to, no?

Regardless of earnest hand-wringing about the sanctity of life and how it's beyond such loathsome things as cost-benefit analysis, you don't see the global GDP diverted to help an orphan that fell down a well

You do see people expend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to save kids trapped in a cave or save an individual diver who went into a cave, however. Much of that is almost always from the national coffers. To say nothing of charities who's entire goals are to save such people, regardless of said cost.

If society can forward cash from its coffers toward elderly patients at nursing homes, it can spend some money keeping some kids alive. Especially if a society-- hell, an individual- chooses to shoulder that burden, keeping most of the cost of the existence of that child out of a country's own economic burdens. It's one thing to say "the state will not fund this any more" - it's another too deny access and use of private resources.

If the cost is being borne largely by private actors, what cost is it to the government? Surely, if a private individual or charity group is able and willing to direct their funds to keeping those children alive, they should be allowed to, no?

I have no objection to this at all. By all means, people should be allowed to make hail mary attempts as long as they're taking the financial burden upon themselves.

You do see people expend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to save kids trapped in a cave or save an individual diver who went into a cave, however. Much of that is almost always from the national coffers. To say nothing of charities who's entire goals are to save such people, regardless of said cost.

This does not change the fact that the willingness to pay is not infinite, far from it.

Refugee is just a modern euphemism for illegal immigrant. Hence why thousands of Albanian men who wash up on the southern shore of England are called 'refugees' by the open border crowd.

Refugees is basically the NGO way to enable large scale immigration.

If you count the millions of asylum seekers pouring across the southern border, than refugee resettlement is at all-time highs surely.

It seems like you are playing semantic word games, using some technical definition of refugee that isn't the common sense definition.

Conflating the number of asylum seekers with the number of *refugee resettlements is itself semantically dubious, isn't it? Especially given that most of those asylum applications will be denied

The application may be denied, but that doesn't force them to go home. They can just disappear into the US.

Well, voluntary departure is a much smarter move, since it avoids having a removal order issued, But I am sure you have data on how many rejected asylum seekers stay illegally.

In Germany, at least, the standard operating procedure is for an illegal immigrant to falsely claim asylum, have his application rejected, and then not be deported.

The Catholic Church and Bishops Conference (ie the leadership body of American Catholicism) also lobbied extensively for Hart-Cellar and for amnesty for all illegal migrants whenever it’s been an issue in American politics. The Sanctuary (city/state) movement evolved out of steps that largely Catholic churches took to harbor Central American migrants in opposition to Reaganite immigration policy in the early ‘80s.

That being said, the historical record shows that in 1965 very few people who supported Hart-Celler envisioned that the level of demographic change would be what it turned out to be.

But how many civil society groups, including the Church, have changed their minds at all, knowing what we know now?

Canada already proved euthanasia is a slippery slope, so I don't buy all the talk about how this isn't an important issue.

I will respect Catholic trads when they actually fight for for something that might improve civilization in a material way for people currently alive and their healthy descendants instead of kvetching endlessly about irrelevancies

All the misery of modernity was brought upon us by people obsessed with material improvement, so I'm happy respecting Catholics now.

Canada has proved that conservatives will meme about euthanasia being a slippery slope given the slightest provocation.

It's not like every hospital ward is flooded with sarin gas once a week, I haven't heard any actual horror stories beyond 'someone mentioned to someone that this was one of their many options' or 'someone who was probably a high risk for suicide anyway got to do it painlessly'.

Let me know if you know of something more substantial than that, it's admittedly not something I follow closely but I don't ever remember being impressed by this narrative when I've seen it and gone to read the original source.

Offering euthanasia for anything other than a terminal illness is breaking of the original promise for what it would be used for, and thus a vindication of the slippery slope. If you want to shift the goalposts even more, go ahead.

I don't know what you mean by 'original promise', whether that's a single specific document or a general sense that most of the public got from reading hundreds of politicians and pundits talk about the matter, or what.

Not that I'm totally disagreeing, I'm sure there are some specific groups involved who were either lying or mistaken about what course things would take and didn't project it looking exactly like it does today. Which isn't teh same thing as the whole enterprise being deceptive from the start, I don't know enough of how it was proposed to judge that either way, would be interested to learn more if you are thinking about a specific document or speech.

I think there should be a principled difference between 'this is a slippery slope' and 'this was sold using deceptive rhetoric'.

If so far nothing crazy has happened, and nothing that the original proposers wouldn't have been happy with has happened, and it's only been a short time since it was implemented, then I'm not sure that's evidence that it will slide into crazy things that the original proposers would not want.

It just sounds like original proposers were downplaying how big the change would be, which is bad because it's dishonest, but not strong evidence of an ongoing trajectory.

Anyway, if the proposition is 'Canada has proven that the government can't be trusted with medical decisions involving life or death', then I think I'd have to see the Canadian government do something objectionable before it was strong evidence of that. Not just 'it's being used in sensible ways that weren't originally specified'.

(of course, maybe you believe the current way Canada is using it is objectionable in and of itself. That's something I'd be interested to hear more about, but it's a different argument than the slippery slope argument)

I don't know what you mean by 'original promise', whether that's a single specific document or a general sense that most of the public got from reading hundreds of politicians and pundits talk about the matter, or what.

The latter, and I think it's disingenuous to imply only the former should be relevant in a democratic society.

Which isn't teh same thing as the whole enterprise being deceptive from the start,

"Slippery slope" does not mean an enterprise is deceptive from the start. It's possible for people to really honestly believe it will not go further than the point discussed when pushing through a policy. I actually was on the pro-euthanasia side until recently, and it is because I believed they will be limited to people suffering from a terminal illness.

However given the history of policies growing beyond the originally discussed scope, I think it's justified to assume most enterprises put forward today are deceptive from the start.

I think there should be a principled difference between 'this is a slippery slope' and 'this was sold using deceptive rhetoric'.

One is a subsection of the other. If you asked me for a definition of "slippery slope" it would boil down to "selling a social change through a type of deceptive rhetoric, where the scope of the planned change is much larger than originally discussed".

If so far nothing crazy has happened

(of course, maybe you believe the current way Canada is using it is objectionable in and of itself. That's something I'd be interested to hear more about, but it's a different argument than the slippery slope argument)

Yes, I do believe that. Crazy things have already happened. Even crazier things would have, were it not for public backlash. They're also scheduled to relax the rules even more next year, which will again, ensure even more crazy things happening.

I don’t have any issue with Canada’s euthanasia system, and the only flaw people seem to note is that they get upset when someone they don’t think should choose to kill themselves does so. But again, depressives, people dealing with extreme loneliness etc have always killed themselves at disproportionate rates, I don’t consider it morally abhorrent to ease their pain more painlessly.

But I understand the fear. If I were eg diabetic in Canada, I might be a little nervous about where things are headed.

That seems like a gross over-reaction to me, as I've had reason to say already today, insulin is cheap enough that the beleaguered and impoverished Indian government gives it away for free, and we're no NHS or Canadian equivalent.

There is no country in the world that can afford truly unlimited healthcare for all of its citizens, because that necessarily entails spending tens of millions or more on the more intractable cases, or even an indefinite sum if you include exploratory therapies.

I personally support the right of anyone to commit suicide for just about any reason, though I think they should be restrained if it's because of an acute mental or physical illness where we can reasonably expect their future self to desist and be thankful we saved them. I don't succumb to the usual temptation of terming any desire to end your life as a mental illness in of itself, if someone thinks I'm ruling out 100% of people by that heuristic. I recognize plenty of philosophical or personal reasons to prefer non-existence, including more prosaic ones such as terminal or incurable chronic illness that ruins QOL. I'd normally exhort people who think that way to hang on for just a few more years till the Singularity, but my timetable for the same is only a modestly informed guess and I can't demand anyone adhere to it.

I personally support the right of anyone to commit suicide for just about any reason, though I think they should be restrained if it's because of an acute mental or physical illness where we can reasonably expect their future self to desist and be thankful we saved them.

The problem is that very, very many people are flaky and short-sighted. Death is a one way trip, with no ability to undo a mistake. Euthanasia always gets sold based on this ideal image of a well-thought out, persistent desire. In reality, the advocates seem to slippery slope themselves into supporting euthanasia for cases that are light years from the ideal.

For example, an increasingly common scenario in The Netherlands is that someone with dementia in the family writes a euthanasia declaration where they state that they want euthanasia when they get dementia. The problem with dementia is that usually, people don't yet want to die as long as they are still reasonably rational. So euthanasia only becomes an option once they are so demented that they are effectively unable to make rational statements. The horror show that family members experience and which results them into making a euthanasia declaration beforehand, is also not necessarily what the patients feel themselves, once the time comes. We have about as much sense of whether a person with severe dementia experiences enough happy moments to want to keep living, as we do for a cat. People with dementia appear to lose the ability to form a long term happiness level anyway and experience emotions much more in the moment. How can we then judge if the good outweighs the bad?

What happens in practice is that the doctor tries to extract some proof for a persistent death wish, from a person with no ability to reason rationally. In the absence of solid evidence, the risk is enormous that the doctor will interpret their own feelings, or the feelings of the family, as being the feeling of the patient, intentionally or unknowingly.

For example, in one case, a patient would declare that it was too early for euthanasia on some days, but would say that she didn't want to live a moment longer on other days. In the face of this lack of clarity, the euthanasia doctor based her decision on statements by the family and the GP of the patient. Then the patient was killed by secretly putting a sedative in her coffee, followed by a lethal injection while she was sleeping. At no point was the patient even told that she would be killed, so there was no ability for her to object.

A Dutch political party is pushing for euthanasia with no medical grounds (either mental or physical illness is currently necessary) for those that have a 'completed life,' which I consider to be a manipulative propaganda word, which implicitly writes off people who do not contribute a lot to society, as it implies that once you get to a certain stage in life, there is nothing left for you to live for (after all, your life is completed). Research into a desire for euthanasia by the Dutch elderly with a death wish found that:

  • 72% of respondents have inconsistent feelings on the matter, wanting to die at some times and wanting to live at other times
  • 19% of all respondents and 28% of those that want euthanasia (rather than those that have a more passive wish to die, which was a pretty large group) have had a death wish for their entire lives, yet apparently never acted on it, even when they were young and able
  • Factors that the respondents who want euthanasia named as having an influence on their desire to die were:
  • Worrying (81%)
  • Mental or physical deterioration (61%)
  • Loneliness (56%)
  • Lack of control over their lives (50%)
  • Disease (47%)
  • The feeling of being a burden to others (42%)
  • Financial problems (36%)
  • People with a desire to die were disproportionally poor, urban and single

I personally see a lot of red flags in the data, in particular the extent to which the desire to die is flaky and often seems rather weak. Do we really want to kill people who are edge cases and who may just be going through a bad period? Also, a lot of factors that people name as reasons for wanting to die seem like they could potentially be fixed. Excessive worrying might be improved through mental health care or altering people's news diet. Loneliness seems highly influenced by how we organize modern society and was much less in the past. Shouldn't we try to fix society instead of killing the people who are unhappy because of societal pathologies? Similarly, a feeling of being a burden to others seems heavily influenced by modern beliefs, where people are valued on what they can do, versus beliefs of the past where the idea of inherent human value was more important. That the group with a desire to die is disproportionally poor, urban and single, suggests a strong societal component is at play.

Funny you should say this, since about an hour back, I was woken from a much needed nap by a panicked nurse in order to attend to a cancer patient, and arrived to see her grossly decompensating, with particular issues that made most of the initial resuscitation measures I'm in a position to provide useless.

I lost a bit of hair over how I was supposed to treat her, but was incredibly relieved to discover that, despite the nurses losing their shit, she was a palliative patient who had just had her End of Life and DNR forms filled by her family after the consultant in charge had informed them that all hope was lost as the brain mets gradually ate away at whatever made her human.

No amount of medical care any ICU could provide would save her or make her whole, at most we could prolong the process by keeping a living corpse hooked up to a ventilator at ruinous cost and taking space better served with the living. That calmed me down, even if this was the first time I had to deal with a dying patient entirely alone with nobody to back me up, I've read the guidelines, I know the drugs, and after some faffing around because apparently the oncology ward of the fanciest hospital in my part of the country didn't have syringe drivers capable of providing subcutaneous meds (utterly ridiculous, but they almost certainly have them in the ICU, but she was categorically forbidden from being transferred there), I managed to figure out a protocol that would ease the pain, or at least any residual discomfort someone who hadn't been conscious for days and never would be again might feel till her lungs filled with fluid and her heart became fitful and her ribs were no longer a cage for her soul.

So there you have it, I'm complicit in killing someone today, and I think it was a good decision, or at least the least bad of the options at hand. That's euthanasia for you, the modal case, representative of the end of suffering for millions.

It still hurt, at least for me, you'd think that working in an Onco ward would dissipate delusions that you can make sure your patients always walk out hale and hearty, but I did enter the profession because I'm proud to heal people. If that's not possible, may they pass gently into the good night, rage is more appropriate for the living who must deal with the banal, apathetic cruelty of an unfeeling world.

The problem is that very, very many people are flaky and short-sighted. Death is a one way trip, with no ability to undo a mistake.

Speaking very broadly, since practised and legal norms vary so grossly, euthanasia for the atypical cases where they're "physically" healthy involve lengthy periods of consultation and various opportunities to back out, though I think Canada has a more streamlined process, for better or worse.

So it's typically the case that multiple earnest medical professionals and social workers will repeatedly inquire as to the continued choice of the person to continue on the course. Even then, in my opinion, if someone who doesn't have a lack of capacity earnestly tells me they want to die, I wish to do my best to accommodate them promptly, even if I won't literally pull out a gun the moment they say so. This decision is obviously dependent on factors like acute pain or a severe bout of acute depression, where I can reasonably expect that treating them or will reasonably make the patient desist from their demands, but there's nobody who just kills people who have acute pain that I'm aware of, usually it's chronic and refractory to treatment.

People make plenty of decisions that they might vacillate on before death, the act of dying isn't special in that regard even if I agree it's rather terminal. They might want to adjust their will as they succumb to dementia and lose capacity to do so, they might want to feel the arms of a lover estranged for decades, it's the very lucky few who get to leave with no regrets at all.

Should their be due process and a period of waitful watching? I would certainly endorse that, but if someone over a span of weeks, months or even years keeps asking to die, I'm going to live and let die. That's how I address:

Do we really want to kill people who are edge cases and who may just be going through a bad period?

As for-

Excessive worrying might be improved through mental health care or altering people's news diet.

I can only chuckle ruefully at the idea that the majority of people who opt for euthanasia haven't had "mental health care" and oodles of it. They're usually refractory to treatment in the form of drugs, therapy and even physical interventions like ECT. They've failed to work.

I doubt the average neurotic woman with Trump Derangement Syndrome or even those who become anti-natalists or anti-humanists are lining up to kill themselves.

Shouldn't we try to fix society instead of killing the people who are unhappy because of societal pathologies?

That's a false dichotomy in my eyes. We can do both, and should do both.

That the group with a desire to die is disproportionally poor, urban and single, suggests a strong societal component is at play.

All associated with severe unhappiness and poor life outcomes and for good reason. Being poor, "urban" and single against your wishes sucks.

If you have a means of turning such people into rich, rural and married individuals, then I'm willing to hear it, but I doubt anyone does short of waiting for the world to get much wealthier.

That's a false dichotomy in my eyes. We can do both, and should do both.

But in my society we are not actually doing both. At least some of the issues are caused by choices that people are doubling down on, if anything. Loneliness is now only on the agenda because it is becoming such a huge issue, but no one is undoing the cultural and political changes that caused it, or coming up with any real, new solutions. Unless you count euthanasia as a solution.

What I see is a pathological unwillingness to even face facts and instead, everything gets viewed from extremely dogmatic viewpoints, like the idea that all problems will be solved if we achieve things like inclusivity, gender equality, racial equality, etc; despite a completely lack of a rational analysis of what we would actually need to achieve such things; let alone an honest analysis of the up- and downsides of the policies being implemented (politically, culturally, etc).

In the face of such irrationality, 'solving' issues by getting rid of the evidence as much as possible by killing the victims of modern culture and modern policies, seems like a logical outcome that will lessen the pressure to recognize or fix the pathologies of modernity.

All associated with severe unhappiness and poor life outcomes and for good reason. Being poor, "urban" and single against your wishes sucks. If you have a means of turning such people into rich, rural and married individuals, then I'm willing to hear it, but I doubt anyone does short of waiting for the world to get much wealthier.

And yet people of modest means seemed to have an easier time in the past of actually getting the main things that most people want, a house, a partner, children and a decent level of respect (which may have just been 'successful while knowing your place,' but that is a lot better than just a bare 'loser'). And they were poorer than today, so this idea that wealth can fix a broken society seems false, as things have become increasingly broken despite increased wealth.

In my country even the progressives have woken up to the reality that people increasingly see lower education as a path to failure. Of course, their solution is foolish, to rename it to 'practical education,' due to their post-modern belief that words create, rather than reflect reality.

And rural living is itself failing as well. Rural women get convinced that they need to find a leftist yuppie and be part of city life, so they leave for the city, leaving a large gender imbalance, forcing men to leave as well and to become yuppies, but those men often fail, since the official messaging is sabotaging. So many boys don't see this as a path to success. Again, the progressives seem to have finally woken up to this too, but of course their answer is to vilify and censor people like Andrew Tate, rather than fix their own messaging or even just giving a shit about boys/men.

And it is not just sabotaging for men, but also for women, many of whom now seek out parasocial, dysfunctional substitutes for real friends and a real partner, for instance by streaming (although men do that too).

And of course, globalist culture stimulates breaking physical bonds with family and the friends you grow up with.

I could go on, but I think you get the point that I disagree very strongly with sentiments like 'of course the poors/urbans be sad' or with ignoring that society has a big influence on how successful people are at finding and maintaining relationships (romantic, but also friendships and family relationships). I see your beliefs as part of the pathological culture that refuses to learn from the cultures of the past and pretends that its dysfunctions and problems are inevitable.

But again, depressives, people dealing with extreme loneliness etc have always killed themselves at disproportionate rates, I don’t consider it morally abhorrent to ease their pain more painlessly.

As someone who has suffered from bouts of depression and loneliness in my life, I’m glad that I had people around me who cared enough to check in and look after me. They didn’t simply refer me to a government euthanasia program. That would be morally abhorrent. I hope you would never suggest that to one of your own friends or family members.

I wouldn’t, but if after a long time it seemed intractable that they wanted to kill themselves, and they were in great pain, and I didn’t want them to suffer horrifically in e way in which people so often do in suicide [attempts], I would accept their decision to go to Dignitas or whatever. Would I raise it as a possibility? I don’t know, but it certainly isn’t inconceivable that I would.

Canada already proved euthanasia is a slippery slope, so I don't buy all the talk about how this isn't an important issue.

Slippery slope? Canada is doing absolutely the right thing when it comes to Euthanasia. It is not being forced upon anyone, merely given as an extra option in addition to the normal healthcare system for those who's diseases are really bad.

Offering to euthenize veterans when they have the temerity to complain that their wheelchair ramp is taking a long time to install is not what I'd call "who's diseases are really bad".

Ah, you mean that grand myth about an offer that was “made verbally” and for which the veteran in question was unable to provide any evidence for whatsoever, that one?

Someone claims they want to die but were refused: we must believe them, don't ask for proof!

Someone claims they want to live but were told to die: where's the proof? oral only? it's a myth!

This is reminding me of #MeToo and 'believe (all) women' - when the accusations were against the guy we hate, it was mandatory to believe them and no doubt could be cast on the claims; when it was against our guy, of course the bitch was a lying, politically motivated, fabulist.

I don’t see why a verbal referral, possibly made sarcastically to a “squeaky wheel”, would have been recorded.

This is one of the reasons American conservatives don’t trust a large, central, bureaucratic government: “The part of the government which oversees the government states they couldn’t find anything in the files of the part of the government which works with citizens who served the government in fighting another government to indicate there was a referral to the part of the government which kills its own citizens to prevent them using excess government resources which could be used for more productive citizens.”

Well it’s relevant becuase in the Canadian bureaucracy (as in most bureaucracies) most things are recorded in writing, including offers of this kind of assistance apparently. Almost nothing in a Western bureaucracy when it comes to interaction between some government body and the citizen would ever happen ‘verbally’, even minor stuff requires 7 forms and a bushel of letters sent to the citizen about everything that relates to anything to do with an issue.

So while the government may have conveniently lost its copy, it’s much more suspicious that the veteran did, especially when she went directly to the press to complain about it.

Well hon, I've worked in a Western bureaucracy implementing government grants and policies, and we often communicated with the public over the phone or face-to-face at the enquiry window. And didn't write down every single word we and the client uttered.

So "interaction between some government body and the citizen" did "happen ‘verbally’". The 7 forms came later in the process.

More comments

Almost nothing in a Western bureaucracy when it comes to interaction between some government body and the citizen would ever happen ‘verbally’, even minor stuff requires 7 forms and a bushel of letters sent to the citizen about everything that relates to anything to do with an issue.

None of this is true, and bureaucrats know perfectly well that if they want to get something done, but it's not really up to code, they need to handle it over a phone call, or a face to face meeting, instead of via email for example.

More comments

I definitely have an issue with how you present the findings of the article. No one wants to kill the baby. They withhold care and not even on cost base, but because there is no benefit. Second - the article is preciously light with details about the treatment that the Vatican hospital proposes. I doubt that the UK doctors wouldn't recommend the baby to be moved to Italy if there was even a shred of evidence that their treatment there would potentially lead to permanent improvement. Or even to advancement for the medicine as a field.

No one wants to kill the baby. They withhold care and not even on cost base, but because there is no benefit.

If you are refusing to hand it over to someone who wants to give them care, how is that not killing them? If you're in an ambulance, is it ok if I block your way to the hospital?

If that care is almost certain to be ineffective, then it's not, regardless of the good intentions of the would be saviour. Suppose my baby was dying and a charlatan offered to exorcise it of the demon that was surely killing it. It would not be murder for me to ignore this claim, or the claims of anyone else who proffered some dubious miracle cure.

Again, I am yet to hear anyone make the claim that the care of the Vatican hospital is qualitatively different from that of the UK system, so if they're charlatans, so is the UK healthcare system.

I am also yet to hear anyone claim that the kid cannot be kept alive for a while longer, people are only claiming that it's ultimately futile. While it maybe true, it is also true that actively preventing people from delivering the child to a place that offers to keep the child alive for a while longer is equal to murder.

The UK healthcare system at least had the decency to desist when it became obvious that the treatment didn't work or, if the diagnosis was made later, couldn't work. A charlatan is someone who knows that their cures don't work, and very much keeps plying them after that becomes obvious.

While I certainly support the right of the parents to take their child to the Vatican hospital since it's not on the dime of the UK taxpayer (beyond presumably airfare and the logistics of getting them there), I still only have disdain for those who demand that a life worse than death be continued at any cost.

And I don’t think anybody claims that the parents or the UK have the obligation to continue treating the child indefinitely(certainly the majority opinion of theologians in the Catholic Church does not require medical treatment to continue when there is no chance of recovery- although it does require ordinary caretaking[feeding, diaper changing, etc, but not ventilation]). However the parents have the right to make medical decisions for their own children, especially when making the ‘wrong’ one doesn’t make the kid worse off or cost more money(because the Italian government is paying for it).

It's not the government's right to feel disdain that's in question, it's their right to get in the way that is.

What makes a charlatan a charlatan is claiming to have miracle cures, not being unable to produce them (which is true of all of them). That said, I don't know if the Vatican is making this claim, so I couldn't say if they are charlatans or not.

The Vatican hospital has one of the top icu’s in the world, so I don’t think the treatment plan being vetoed is ‘I dunno, will incense and holy water work?’

It seems like what’s actually happening is that UK government bureaucrats- probably someone in the NHS’s cost effectiveness department- doesn’t like being reminded of not owning other people’s children.

If there was actually a credible plan to treat this baby, it would be produced. But so far all I've heard is to keep the baby alive in the hope for a miraculous recovery.

Such a bureaucrat would have no power to issue an injunction. Injunctions like this are handed down by judges, not NICE, which doesn't have power to do anything of the sort or even intervene in individual cases.

Would it be murder to stop you from trying it at gunpoint, were you so inclined?

No. Obviously, it is not murder to prevent someone from performing an exorcism. The premise is faulty, that an offer to save someone's life instantly creates an obligation not to do anything to interfere, regardless of how incredible that claim is.

I disagree. I think prisons have a duty to allow for medical care and that armies that close humanitarian corridors are guilty of war crimes.

Bad analogy. Anyway look at the facts - the baby is with major brain damage, needs constant life support, it may not survive the trip, the logistics of the trip themselves are not trivial, and that care is terribly vague. All of the first were could be taken out of consideration if there was some serious data on the last. It is not blocking the way to the hospital, it is blocking the way to a quack.

Your analogy is the bad one, the Vatican hospital aren't quacks.

Everything you brought up is also irrelevant. Can I block your way to the hospital, if I'm sure you will die anyway? That's what your arguments boil down to.

In that case they are - otherwise they would have provided details what magic they would do that the UK doctors won't. No but I can block your way to the torture chambers - and invasive treatment without chance of improvement is exactly that.

IIRC the Vatican hospital(which are not random quacks but a very highly ranked institution in a first world country) wants to try an experimental procedure that the NHS won’t authorize because it’s very expensive and has a low chance of working. It’s fair for the NHS not to want to do it, but it doesn’t seem like they should be able to stop the parents from taking their child to a hospital that wants to do the procedure.

In the article itself is mentioned that the Vatican hospital is quite short on details about what this procedure is.

If the Vatican hospital is a torture chamber, and what they're doing is no different than what the UK hospital did at this point, than the UK hospital is a torture chamber, and all people involved in it must be punished.

I think it's ok for the government to make utilitarian decisions on behalf of children when the stake are high enough and the outcome clear enough.

I don't know for sure if this case meets that standard, I'd need to both be a doctor and read an unbiased account of the situation (and no one without a biased take would bother reporting on this case from either side).

But the pitch is: this infant will die shortly no matter what, it's already suffered severe neurological damage that would prevent it from appreciating any potential positive experiences it might have during that time, keeping it alive on life support for a few months is gaining it absolutely nothing except torturous pain and suffering.

Again, I don't know how well the actual case fits that hypothetical, but in a hypothetical like that I do believe that it's in the infant's best interests to have life support suspended, and I would be ok with the government enforcing that. Children need something to protest their interests in cases where parents are acting against those interests starkly enough (even if they do so out of misguided love), and it's possible to invent a stark enough scenario to justify this intervention.

Of course, aside from what it would be right for the government to do in theory, is the question of what powers and policies we want to government to have in the real world, where it's run by often stupid people and we have to live with the full variance of its actions. In a case like this I am cheered by the fact that the judge is just siding with the doctor's strong recommendations rather than judging the merits of the case on his own; I feel like there's probably some system of relying on expert advocates that produces good outcomes in expectation. But I'd be very sympathetic to someone arguing that the government can't be trusted with these types of decisions, and we just have to accept whatever child suffering denying them that power incurs as the cost of preventing even more suffering if we gave them that power.

This is one of those horrible situations where I could see myself making this call, and would sympathize with anyone who was in that position... except agents of the british government.
There are legitimately "injuries incompatible with life" that should cause a physician to cease all but palliative treatment; it's almost obscene to go through the motions of treating bisection, brain destruction, and other unsurvivable conditions as if you're seriously trying to save the patient, and every cell in your body being unable to function due to an innate and permanent defect is one of those cases.

On the other hand, people in the US have now started surviving bisection thanks to a tradition of unlimited care in the most hopeless cases, while Canada has slid down the slope of euthanizing patients like a Krieg medic faster than anyone ever imagined. Even if it's a decision I'd make, it's not one I would trust anyone else to.

In a sane world the baby would be cryopreserved until the singularity.

In a sane world the baby would be cryopreserved until the singularity.

Do you happen to be dath ilan citizen shipwrecked on this planet of apes? I mean, another one?

Didn’t they eventually have to scoop up a decomposed human as bio-goop sludge from the bottom of one of the earliest cryopreservation capsules?

A lot of people died attempting to fly before we figured out how to do it.

The earliest version of a lot of things didn't work /shrug.

Most of the early cryo-patients didn't survive, the most notable incident being the Chatsworth disaster.

Cryonics has learned from those mistakes. In particular, cryonic orgs now absolutely refuse to preserve a patient unless he has already provided enough money to cover both his preservation and his upkeep, in perpetuity. This is important, because most cryonics failures happened partly or wholly due to financial problems.

From "Suspension Failures: Lessons from the Early Years", first published in Cryonics, February 1992:

One important lesson to be drawn from this tale of woe is that cryonic suspensions should only be maintained by those who have a strong personal interest in being cryopreserved themselves and have made arrangements. This includes the financial backers as well as those in charge of daily care. Those who are personally committed generally have superior judgment and realize the advisability of the neuro option (head-only preservation) in cases where funds are limited. Such people will fight hard to maintain even someone they hardly knew, who is not a relative, as happened at Alcor during the Dora Kent crisis for instance. They are not afraid to take measures others squeamishly shun, when a patient’s survival is at stake. Neuroconversions carried out by such people have saved several patients whose funding ran out [28]. Not one of the many suspension failures was a neuro.

Of seventeen documented freezings through 1973, all but one ended in failure, while maybe five or six later cases, some of them privately maintained, were later terminated (or were continued under questionable circumstances, such as attempted permafrost interment). In most of these cases, finances were a factor.

And from "Don’t Ask, But Do Tell" by Mike Darwin:

Your statement “(CSNY) underestimated the costs associated with maintaining the leaky Cryo-care capsules (sound familiar?)” is incorrect. The estimates for the cost of cryopreservation presented to the public ranged from $8,500 posited by Bob Ettinger in THE PROSPECT OF IMMORTALITY in 1964 to the $10,000 widely quoted by the media as being the cost of indefinite cryopreservation at both CSC and CSNY during the period from1969 to 1972. Of that $10,000 no less than $8,000 was to be invested for long-term care. $8,000.00 in 1969 had about the same buying power as $44,561.80 in 2006, or roughly twice what CI currently budgets for long-term storage for Option One Members ($23,000 per patient). The problem was that this money was never set aside, and indeed never existed in the first place. What’s more, with the exception of Paul Hurst, Sr. (and later Herman Greenberg), CSNY was not consistently paid, or in the case of Steven Mandell, paid at all. Steven’s life insurance was applied for after he was already (terminally) ill and did not pay out. Pauline Mandell never paid Cryo-Span for the CC dewar, the charges for “encapsulating” Steven, or for liquid nitrogen or facility floor space (rent). The $4,500 for the CC dewar, the $1,100 for the Sergeant-Welch vacuum pumps, and the costs of welding, transportation, and miscellaneous hardware were paid for by Curtis Henderson.

Didn’t they eventually have to scoop up a decomposed human as bio-goop sludge from the bottom of one of the earliest cryopreservation capsules?

You probably mean Chatsworth scandal, this was indeed one of more embarrassing failures of early cryonics.

Normie introduction

Cryonicist-transhumanist introduction

"The stench near the crypt is disarming, strips away all defenses, spins the stomach into a thousand dizzying somersaults."

If the improbable case anyone is interested in in-depth analysis what went wrong with cryonics, see "Cryonics: An Historical Failure Analysis" series.

When the long awaited ‗freezing‘ of the first man took place on 12 January, 1967, the man in charge was Robert F. Nelson, aka Frank Bucelli, a Santa Monica TV repairman. Bucelli was much more than a TV repairman; he was a convicted felon with a long criminal record beginning in his youth; including violent offenses such as assault and battery as well as numerous charges, and several convictions for fraud and theft.

Yes, freezing people is not easy.

I'm not sure, but this shouldn't be an issue with modern preservation techniques.

Modern preservations techniques are virtually the same as they were back then; build a human-sized thermos, fill it with liquid nitrogen, stick the patient inside, and occasionally top it off with liquid nitrogen to keep it full as it boils off. The biggest difference is that they now pump a patient full of cryoprotectants to prevent freezing damage from ice crystals, a process called vitrification.

The big changes that were instituted as a result of the early disasters were institutional, not technological. Cryonics companies will refuse to touch you until you have paid them cold, hard cash, or given them ownership of a life insurance policy with a reputable life insurance company. Patients are stored upside-down so that their heads are protected longest in the event of liquid nitrogen boil-off. Cryonics orgs are prepared to convert their whole-body patients into neuros if that is the only way to keep them suspended.

These are all bitter lessons that had to be learned the hard way. Family members would arrange to cryopreserve their relatives, then lose interest in paying for their upkeep as the grief faded. Patients used to be stored upright for optics reasons. Patients that could have been saved were never converted to neuro, usually because of family objections.

It’s not about preservation techniques, it’s about organizational continuity and goal rigidity. Unless the freezing capsules are buried in the Antarctic permafrost, they aren’t passively safe for the occupants and cryopreservation must be actively maintained.

Under British law, the primary issue in such cases is whether a proposed treatment is in the best interests of the child. Judges have repeatedly upheld doctors’ decisions to end life support even when that conflicts with the parents’ wishes.

So, for some reason, it is up to the doctors and judges whether the baby should receive life support, and not the parents, and furthermore, somehow that means they can prevent a child from leaving the country if they're going to get medical treatment they consider to not be in the best interests of the child, which in this case is undergoing painful treatment instead of letting her die? Do I have that right?

Why isn't it up to the parents why can't they take their child out of the country? What's the legal basis for this?

It makes a little more sense in custody disputes where the parents can't decide something so then a judge intervenes and picks a side, but in this case, both parents want the child treated. So why don't they get to make the decision?

Usually parents have autonomy over their children's treatment. If doctors believe that the parents are acting massively against their child's best interest, then they'll take it to the courts. This is because under law the doctors have a duty of care for the child, otherwise the doctors would be deemed negligent. So here it is a case of doctors vs parents.

In these case, the court will act in the child's best interest. So here, you might think paradoxically, the best interest is to withdraw care and allow the child to die. Modern medical technology can prolong death and make it a long and painful process. See Scott's blog for more on this.

If two parents wanted to let their baby die instead of receive care, would you defer to their judgement in the same way?

Because it can amount to torture, and we don't generally allow parents to do that. Parental rights are not unlimited.

I lost a child myself, so I understand the pain and grief the parents are going through. But if the child is in significant pain and is not able to be treated ( which doctors seem to agree on), then its a choice of a long drawn out painful death or a quicker painful death. The parents in this state may not be able to make objective choices about what is best for their child.

or a quicker painful death

Why isn't pumping the patient full of heroin never an option? Hell, keep the little bugger on a cocktails of joy drugs or whatever until it dies of RNA related malnutrition ( You can guess I'm not a doctor ).

I have a doctor story about that. My aunt was in pain and dying of a quick cancer, and I asked a doctor why they couldn’t give her morphine, and he told me that they couldn’t because it would increase her tolerance. I give doctors some slack for their high intelligence to open-mindedness ratio because they have to deal with so many lying idiots, but I still find them insufferable. It’s like they’re not talking to you, they’re just reciting you your miranda rights.

Is the bureaucracy with all its political biases the best place to make that call?

In the average case, parents with consultation from doctors are the best persons to make that call, and that's why they do make that call (I'm guessing) ~99.999% of the time.

But sometimes that process doesn't work for whatever reason, and the government steps in.

This isn't weird, it's approximately how things are supposed to work with the legal system. 99.999999% of the time, men choose not to rape or murder or rob anyone; when one of them is an outlier who makes the wrong choice, the government has to step in to correct it.

I don't think it's inconsistent to say both 'Citizens make their own choices' and 'The government fordbids a small corner of decision-space with extremely bad outcomes for other people'. Lots of things constrain a person's choices, including brute physical reality, capitalism, social policing, etc; we're right to worry and fight over how much an individual's choices are restrained and guided, but I don't think it's right to say they're not making them.

You mean doctors? Then a judge? Yes probably.

Good thing that it's not just some nameless bureaucracy making the choice here but all the involved doctors also agree with it.

As someone with lots of personal & professional experience with doctors (working as a postdoc in medical science and helped the father of a close friend navigate his own cancer diagnosis), I have to take the opposite position. Doctors have a very strong tendency to groupthink, to defer to the leading doctor and to generally behave in such a way as to maximize ass-covering as opposed to the best interest of the patient. They can and will manipulate and keep secrets from you for the purpose of their own convenience. Don't misunderstand me, they do so since they're extremely overworked and just try their best to do good with limited time and resources, but they will frequently miss the mark especially in unusual cases.

Why is the pain necessary? Just put the baby on powerful enough painkillers to risk brain damage if necessary, then go for the long drawn out chance of life.

At 8 months, that will just kill them, which doctors are not allowed to do. They have to follow things like the Liverpool pathway which is withdrawal of support or feeding etc.

No, it will not kill them. We routinely sedate 8 month old children for various medical procedures. It can even be done for a long time as long as the risk of long term complications is acceptable.

Infants can't be sedated or given strong painkillers?

Yes, they can most definitely be sedated or be given very strong painkillers. They can cause permanent harm if done for extended periods of time, but it can be done. Speaking from a related expertise- I'm an anaesthetist.

Not if it will be harmful to them, in the UK at least. A compromise between a doctors moral and legal duty to do no harm and the cruel reality that some people can't be treated and death might be a kindness. They are allowed to withdraw life saving care but not give treatment that itself causes harm. The idea being that not saving someone is not the same as killing them.

Its been an ethical debate for a long time, Google Liverpool Care pathway for more (though it isn't called that any more i believe).

The UK is bad like this. I don't know why or how it got to be this way. But this is not an isolated example. The case of Charlie Gard got some attention a few years back, and the situation was basically the same.

Which is to say that if something in the laws or regulations is not changed, these awful situations will happen again and again.

Alfie Evans as well, nearly identical. That case shocked me. Absolutely brutal and senseless

Wasn't he brain dead basically?

A UK judge has ordered that that the baby be killed. Her parents have protested this, saying that they don’t think the government should kill their baby.

Now wait a minute, the order is to stop actively keeping the baby alive, which seems pretty different from killing the baby, even if the end result is the same.

The court point of view is that they're ordering the parents to stop torturing their child, and that they can't condone the parents moving the baby to a different country that is willing to torture it. Obviously there's clear disagreement over whether the medical care is comparable to torture.

I don't think the court is obviously right here, but I think you're being unreasonable in claiming they're obviously wrong.

When there are available other ways to provide resources and methods to keep the baby alive, and the court and hospital refuse and actively fight against it, that is exactly the same as killing the baby.

It would be more honest if the court and hospital directly argued in your manner that the parents are torturing the baby in keeping the baby alive. The have chosen instead to argue that more treatment is not in the baby's best interest, and just leave conclusions obvious but nebulous.

I don't agree with the parents here, but I think it would be monstrous and unjust to prosecute the parents for torturing their baby. Even if you think it's dishonest to do otherwise.

If the issue is pain, that's easy to fix with enough painkillers and sedatives. Of course, that probably has terrible side effects on babies, but the alternative is death. Even if the medical care is literal torture there are ways to make it humane.

Seems pretty clear the underlying motivation to end care really is about money, and forbidding the family from leaving is more about control and optics than about the wellbeing of the child.

Do you believe that every human, no matter how unviable, has to be kept alive at any cost?

If someone wants to try to do that and use their own legitimately acquired ressources to do it, trying to stop them seems monstrous.

No, but I think if the parents are willing to pay the price, and it's possible to do so without causing too much suffering (e.g. by using tons of painkillers), then it's usually immoral to step in and stop them.

Not the person you replied to, but here's my opinion - no, every human does not have to be kept alive, and certainly not at public expense. However, if the parents are willing to pay out of their pocket for a chance at keeping their baby alive, I don't think anyone else should have a say in it. Probably a more moral use of their money than buying a sports car or having a destination wedding.


What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats