domain:abc.net.au?page=4
SlowBoy
8m ago
Read Ymeskhout's if you haven't
He's my friend, I have a cameo in the article. His belief is that Republicans are going crazy, he respects my intelligence but thinks I have a reality distortion field that makes me irrational about Trump. Sure, he can think that -- and I think he's wrong! The theory is that we're wrong about everything, we're conspiracy theorists, we're cranks, we're crazy, we believe things without evidence, etc. etc. etc. Most of these guys don't actually know anything about the evidence: I sincerely doubt Hanania could give a steelman of RFK's position about vaccines, or Corona, or a steelman about anything, frankly. Yassine, at least, has been very patient in having these kinds of conversations, but I don't think he would really accept any of these arguments as legitimate: he isn't convinced, and he's not convinced anyone else should be convinced. So they're not just wrong arguments, they're crank arguments, conspiracy arguments, etc.
the fact that Republicans really have become the party of choice for conspiracy theorists that have very little grounding in reality
Democrats are the party of people who act as if there isn't a Replication Crisis. I see the worst nonsense taken credulously just because it was in a study somewhere. Corona came from wet markets? Puberty blockers are reversible? I can go on bluesky right now and find people arguing that Kamala won the election and has all the evidence and will coup Trump any day now. Please, please, I cannot stand to hear more about how I need to carefully consider the people who call me crazy because they didn't carefully consider me. The right does not have a monopoly on nonsense and that is so apparent that it's embarrassing to be told otherwise.
TequilaMockingbird
17m ago
I avoid leftist spaces like the plague, but it really does seem like the right is more inundated with obvious, low-quality grifters.
Probably true if we confine our examination to X.
But, literally, there are tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of people who are employed in DEI. They are being paid billions of dollars each year to grift in an official capacity. I think we should probably tackle the taxpayer-funded grifters before worrying about random Twitter bros.
I do agree that it's a great time to be a right-wing grifter, but only because it's a growth industry. The number of people making money off left-wing grifts still exceeeds the inverse by a factor of at least 10.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
20m ago
This is just an appeal to authority. If there are particularly compelling arguments, you can reproduce them directly here.
I viewed the entire document she put together as compelling - I can repost the entire thing here if you want, but why? If I just copy and paste the arguments I like piecemeal, there's way too much room for forgotten citations or other misunderstandings. There's an immense number of citations and I don't really see what would be gained by reposting the whole thing here with worse formatting.
So there's no point gathering evidence to support your claim? That's a bold position to take.
You missed the other half of that point. You can't use casualty numbers to determine whether or not a genocide is taking place, because by the time you can accurately identify a genocide via casualty numbers those people are already dead and there's nothing you can do. That's why people rely on other signs that a genocide is taking place or is otherwise imminent, because if your goal is to prevent genocides from taking place you have to be able to show that one is in progress or about to start, rather than just showing up after the victims are all dead, saying "Well, now that we have the numbers I guess this was actually a genocide." and shrugging your shoulders.
That's not really an argument. I could just as easily say the answer is so clearly and blatantly no.
Yes, it isn't an argument - it is just restating my position because the actual argument was already linked in pdf form above.
I think your mask might be slipping here. But I'm not surprised you like these conversations more when your opponent just admits you're right and they're wrong. You do have to do the work of convincing them first, though.
Mask? Assuming that you're accusing me of being an antisemite who is disguising my hatred for jews as a more generic opposition to crimes against humanity and genocide, I have to disagree. I'm a (very unconventional) leftist and I think that what Israel is doing is morally and ethically wrong, and this is a direct consequence of left wing political values. I've broken bread with jews and gotten along with them just fine at the protest marches against the genocide, so at the very least I can say that my own personal experience is not that of an anti-semite. If you think that all criticism of Israel is anti-semitic, then I fall into that category (and I'm in good company to boot).
Incidentally I'm curious as to where you get the idea that Israel is intent on ethnic purity. You do know that 20% of the population is Arab, right?
The Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. I have been repeatedly told by Israelis that a single state solution is unviable because it would loses its Jewish character, and that seems to be backed up by the laws passed and enforced by Israel. If it isn't intent on ethnic purity, there should be no barrier to a single state solution with full-franchise for everyone, including non-jewish Palestinians.
daguerrean
21m ago
Maybe I get this impression just because I avoid leftist spaces like the plague, but it really does seem like the right is more inundated with obvious, low-quality grifters. I attribute this to the fact that Republicans have become more heavily dependent on the less educated, but also because a lack of established media orgs leads to grifters fulfilling the demand from an underserved market.
Templexious
29m ago
How many headlines showed up, pointing to random studies, calling right wingers dumb or conspiracy-prone?
How many left figures show up now and imply that the left rejects grifters and grift in a way that the right does not? Perhaps this point is worth its own high-level post.
JulianRota
34m ago
Maybe! I've lived in or visited several big cities, and never seen or heard of things like that though. It seems more plausible to me that things might be more like what Maiq described in what I guess you could call "dead cities" - the medium-small cities that used to be thriving, but all of the industries that were there left for various reasons. Most of the decent people with good life potential also left due to the lack of good jobs long before things got bad. The resulting downward spiral leads to a pretty bad place.
But then, those places are not exactly havens of progressivism, and I don't think any blue-affiliated people are going to decide to move there, which was the point of this whole thread.
roche
53m ago
I definitely get you overall. Though IMO, there's a danger of getting lost out in the weeds making neat discoveries, while you cease to make true, profound progress. What we've covered so far is documented more or less by the ancient sages and practiced in their faiths, but if that alone were enough, we would surely have a better world than we do now. Even if some unbelievable truths were unearthed and documented in antiquity which had the power to perfect our lives if only we knew of them, the error still lies in a failure to communicate those truths to us, and we'd have to restate them in such a way they wouldn't be lost again. But that's assuming some incredible thing has been discovered, which I'm fairly pessimistic/skeptical of. All the things we've covered are neat, but they fall within the bounds of conventional religion/wisdom, so nothing mind-blowing -- like pieces to some grander puzzle we have no reckoning of. Take Nietzsche's "new psychology" for example which tears down the old antitheses of good and evil or pleasure and pain. This new psychology does not exist, because every man with the sagacity to notice that possibility does not pursue it, because there is a more comfortable road of easy discoveries and insights open to him. But that road's been walked for millennia; they unearth the same truths, and get the same results. For example...
in order to believe in the power of their subconsciousness, people need to believe that a diety is present (The oracle). People can barely meet a wise character in a dream without thinking that some external being helped them. It seems like we need to believe in something higher than ourselves, or even in something higher within ourselves (being made in the image of god, the transcendental function, being connected to a higher power, etc).
This is true, but why? There's clearly some rules in effect here -- like, just as Aristotle's says: "When humans think, there's a small set of axioms we assume like the principle of non-contradiction that are necessary for thought to occur". In the same way, there's a determined logic to the human mind and perspective, a set of rules to perception and feeling that we currently don't know. Why is it psychedelic/meditative experiences require a guru? Why is the parent/child relation so incredibly effective in religion? Is it because we have this deeply ingrained relation from childhood? Or (more likely) is it a natural part of the human mind? Which constructs of the human mind are innate, and which are constructed? Could we create a methodology to produce the perfect LSD trip? Could we eliminate the dark night of the soul from The Path? Could we create some environmental trigger that produces good dreams in us every night? These questions and more lie open, and they depend on strict and consistent rules that have yet to be found.
jeroboam
56m ago
However, I don't think that changes the fact that Republicans really have become the party of choice for conspiracy theorists that have very little grounding in reality.
I just don't know man. What percent of people believe in Russiagate still?
Let's be honest. We're all cranks on some level. What percentage of people are religious? And for the atheist left, it's arguably worst. They seem to have replaced the religion sized hole in their hearts with a grab-bag of semi coherent belief systems.
What percentage of people believe in astrology? How many believe in bad luck?
I think what we're really noticing is that the left credentializes its cranks while the right does not. We have a (now resigned in disgrace) editor of Scientific American saying that the only reason male athletes beat female athletes is societal bias. The scientific establishment has been colonized by the left, who have used it to give a scientific sheen to many of their wacky, incorrect beliefs.
At one point, people who believed in antiseptic medicine were cranks. People who believed in plate tectonics were cranks.
But (going further back now) doctors of the church who calculated the age of the Earth using Biblical text were not cranks. They were credentialed experts.
I think what broke a lot of people (myself included) was the disastrous and anti-scientific response to Covid, which every step of the way was blessed by the so-called experts. It's not really about magical belief systems (which the Left has in plenty). It's about power.
urquan
1hr ago
In general, both the Republicans and Democrats are centrist parties. And more ideologically-driven members of both parties are, IMO, correct when they say that "RINOs" or "neoliberals" are weaksauce versions of their ideologies.
Trump talks a big game about deportation and immigration, but will accomplish very little. No mass deportations will occur during a Trump presidency any more than under a Harris presidency. Trump also talks about repatriating trade, but will only implement tarriffs that will increase prices without increasing US manufacturing. Republicans also talk a lot about how great of a pro-life success Dobbs was, but as far as I can tell, handing control over abortion policy back to the states has resulted in a more pro-choice regulatory landscape than under the status quo. And there's a lot of discussion of "law and order," but the streets are unsafe even in red states, and forget about riding public transit.
Likewise, Democrats talked a big game about defunding the police, and while there were definitely areas where budgets were slashed, no actual "defunding" or "abolishing" took place. They've also talked about healthcare reform for a long time, but since 2010 have accomplished approximately nothing. Redistribution of wealth in any appreciable sense has never happened, and entitlements continue to be soaked up by boomers with fat wallets while the poor and disabled are still means-tested to the bone. Significant movement on workers' protections hasn't happened; instead delusional baristas are setting up labor unions, because when I think of exploitation of labor, I think of not putting up rainbow flags. And not, you know, what's going on in Amazon warehouses.
But while the serious economic and philosophical problems of the US continue to fester, we keep getting distracted by irrelevant culture war issues like weird sex and gender identity things and whether or not Trump is literally Hitler. It's good to know we're focusing on the important things!
Throwaway05
1hr ago
However, I am not a medical doctor, so what am I missing?
Coming in way too hot.
The VA has had hiring freezes for the last two years, to my understanding. So no traditional shortage there.
Hiring extra VA physicians does nothing for the general problems we have in any case (which isn't a traditional shortage).
SteveKirk
1hr ago
Ymeskhout called it a crazy conspiracy theory to think progressive prosecutors were using procedural manipulation to favor BLM rioters.
Corvos
1hr ago
DeBoer does this:
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/clinton-and-obama-gave-us-trump
when the far-right party and the center-right party both move right, guess what direction the country goes in?
The Marxist left thinks of the left-right in economic terms and considers anyone not explicitly socialist/communist as being right wing, the reactionary right considers the divide mainly in cultural terms and thinks anyone not based is essentially left wing.
urquan
1hr ago
because neither of them can offer anything which actually helps people deal with the problems they're facing in their daily lives
I think I agree with you, but I'd like to hear you elaborate: if we could snap our fingers and generate political capital for things that would help pepole deal with the problems they're facing in their daily lives, what would those things be?
hooser
1hr ago
I would love to know why you don't think it wouldn't help with the shortage. I figure that, having a shortage of doctors willing to work in VA, combined with doctors from other countries who are willing to work at VA because it will gain them the higher US pay + a path to US citizenship, would indeed alleviate shortage of doctors at VA. However, I am not a medical doctor, so what am I missing?
daguerrean
1hr ago
I think this is an unfairly low effort dismissal. I don't like all the people above, but they are thoughtful and making more of an effort at fairness than you suggest. Read Ymeskhout's if you haven't and look at things like Trump's post about AI crowds that were included in it. I understand the traditional Motte argument that Trump lies like a used car salesman and Democrats lie like lawyers and there is certainly some truth to that. And I agree that at the moment Democrat lies are more dangerous precisely because they have a veneer of respectability and acceptability by institutions. However, I don't think that changes the fact that Republicans really have become the party of choice for conspiracy theorists that have very little grounding in reality. It is a very particular kind of mindset that is a not insignificant portion of the electorate and it has become increasingly partisan in recent years particularly since Trump and doubly so since COVID.
aqouta
1hr ago
I live in downtown Chicago and this does not reflect my experience. It's less that you need to be in an excessively exclusive area, just avoid the very bad areas. People actively want to live in several of the downtown clusters, especially in their youth. We'll probably move out to the burbs when we have out kid of school age for the better schools, not because we fear the area.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
Apologies for the delayed response - I don't post on the motte on weekends.
Out of curiosity, have you actually read any books about the history of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Do you think you could accurately summarize both the Israeli and the Palestinian positions in words that they themselves would agree with?
Yes, I have, and I've read a lot about the history of the region due to the prominence of the issue. As for accurately summarizing both positions... the Palestinian side would be easy but as for the Israeli side I honestly don't think so - there are real divisions in Israeli society on these topics, and coming up with an answer that could satisfy all of them is hard. There are hardline settlers who believe that all the land God gave them in their scriptures belongs to them with no negotiation, and there are Israelis who want a two or one-state solution to the Palestinian issue. At the same time I have actually discussed the issue with people who were born Israeli citizens and they've agreed with my understanding... but given that I met them at a protest against the genocide, I am not actually sure that they'd qualify for your purposes here. I could definitely come up with an accurate summary of the Israeli position that the current government would agree with, but I would prefer not to lie.
Who is them? The footballers in Amsterdam?
"Israeli partisans". The Amsterdam crew count, but they're a subset of the larger category.
It's undeniable that tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. There is no war, especially one happening in an urban environment, where lots of casualties weren't women and children. This doesn't make their war just, but it does make it unexceptional.
Disproportionate numbers of women and children are showing up in the casualty lists and this is being reported on by reputable media organisations - these figures are actually exceptional.
The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Friday nearly 70% of the fatalities it has verified in the Gaza war were women and children, and condemned what it called a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.
The U.N. tally since the start of the war, in which Israel's military is fighting Hamas militants, includes only fatalities it has managed to verify with three sources, and counting continues.
The 8,119 victims verified is a much lower number than the toll of more than 43,000 provided by Palestinian health authorities for the 13-month-old war. But the U.N. breakdown of the victims' age and gender backs the Palestinian assertion that women and children represent a large portion of those killed in the war.
This finding indicates "a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality", the U.N. rights office said in a statement accompanying the 32-page report.
Nor are the Israelis exceptional in having some drunken footballers chanting terrible things and soldiers in the field sometimes getting up to stupid and offensive grunt shit to amuse themselves.
I have never in my life heard a football chant that was as offensive and cruel as the ones from Maccabi Tel Aviv. Taking glee and exulting in the mass extermination of children is way beyond the bounds of football banter, at least in my experience. Do you have any examples of ones that were worse or even comparable? As for soldiers in the field, I'm going by reputable third-party numbers as linked above. There's a difference between soldiers in the field getting up to stupid and offensive grunt shit to amuse themselves and "systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality." Even if your argument holds, the idea that they're disproportionately murdering women and children to amuse themselves says worse things about the IDF than any of the claims I've made so far.
That would require you to describe them as they would describe themselves. Do you think they would describe themselves as "a blood-drenched, bronze-age state intent on ethnic purity and conquest via force of arms to reclaim the territory their god said was theirs"?
I have had conversations with hardline Israelis who would proudly adopt that label for themselves, but I understand those people are a minority in Israeli society. At the same time, I know several people who would object to entirely accurate and factual descriptions of themselves because they don't want to admit something that they actually did. If I murdered someone in cold blood and was convicted, you'd be entirely justified in calling me a murderer, even if I would disagree and describe myself as a patriot who did what I had to do to save my nation. The standard you're applying here prevents any kind of condemnation of the Nazis as well - they'd view themselves as brave heroes protecting their nation from evil parasites, so they'd disagree with any of the negative descriptions that they deserve to receive.
Again, you aren't using the word "evil" but you're clearly saying, in not so many words, that they're evil monsters and there is no other way to explain them.
I believe they're ethnonationalists who want to reclaim the territory that their god supposedly promised them in their religious scriptures. That's the explanation! It sounds unflattering to modern, non-Bronze age ears, but that's because the actions the Israelis have actually undertaken are unflattering. You don't get to run an apartheid state and then complain that people are saying you run an apartheid state because you'd call it something else that's not as bad for your reputation.
Also, Likud is one political party in Israel whose popularity waxes and wanes. They do not speak for the Israeli state and the entirety of the Israeli citizenry. This would be like taking some of the Republicans' most extreme statements and saying they speak for Americans. (Which of course is exactly what they and their enemies would both like to claim, but it doesn't make it true.) Much has been made of Netanyahu's "Amelek" comment. Netanyahu is a sort of Trump-like figure in Israel - he has a lot of supporters, especially after 10/7, but a substantial portion of the Israeli's population hates him. Think of all the outrageous things Trump has said, which a sizeable portion of the American population would not agree with, and then claiming that Trump was clearly speaking for the American people, and reflecting what Americans think. In an abstract sense, this may be true (they elected him, after all), but at the same time, you'd be completely wrong in claiming he's channelling the American psyche and voicing what the average American thinks about everything.
Likud is currently in power and Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest serving PM the country has had. Unless you want to make the claim that Israel isn't a democracy and their elected leaders do not represent the will of the people, Likud and Netanyahu do speak for the Israeli state. You make the point about extreme republicans, but Zero HP Lovecraft isn't the POTUS right now - and when Trump takes office again, I have no problem saying that he speaks for Americans. Do I think that all Israelis act like this? Absolutely not, I've even mentioned the Israelis I marched and protested alongside. But when I look at the polls, a lot of those more noxious beliefs have incredibly broad support amongst Israeli citizens.
https://truthout.org/articles/polls-show-broad-support-in-israel-for-gazas-destruction-and-starvation/ (yes, the source for this is anti-zionist - I don't believe that means they are just publishing fiction.)
Polls seem to offer confirmation of this statement. A 2013 survey showed that over half of Israeli Jews believe “very strongly” that Jews are the chosen people and that nearly two-thirds believe this statement either “very strongly” or “quite strongly.”
In a January 2023 poll, 93 percent of Israeli Jews said that all of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River belongs to them. The justification for this belief is not discussed in the poll
93 percent of Israeli jews support the claim that their god promised them all the territory between the river and the sea. If you put the claim that the Jews are god's chosen people and that he has given them all that territory (including Palestine) to the Israeli people on a referendum, polling data suggests that's what they'd vote for! I don't think you can really say that these ideas don't represent the will of the people when a majority of them say they do when asked.
Netanyahu, and other militant Likud officials, are pretty open about despising Palestinians, and there's a sizeable portion of Israel that would just like the Palestinians to go away (who can blame them, after all this time?).
Me! I can blame them! Not once have I ever in my life said that I would like another ethnicity to just 'go away' because I don't like the political consequences of their continued existence. If you want to defend that impulse, go ahead - but you're forever giving up the ability to criticize antisemites, racists and white nationalists. After all, they would just like the jews to go away - who can blame them, after all this time?
But most Israelis do not want to exterminate Palestinians because God said to, and you know this and you know it's not an accurate characterization, you're just using that description because it makes Israel sound really super-evil.
I said it because the polling data supports it. That's what it means when over half the population says that they are god's chosen people, and 93% of them of them believe that the territory promised to them in their scriptures belongs to them.
We have a number of white ethnonationalists here, and while sometimes they will admit that they would be okay with a violent solution to create the ethnostate they want, none of them would accept as uncharitable a description of their motives as the one you are claiming is the Israeli one.
I'm not just aware, I've spoken to and argued with them. And you're totally right - very few of them would accept as uncharitable a description of their motives. But at the same time, I'm willing to bet if you assembled all the white nationalists here on the motte and asked them if they were willing to go to the lengths Israel has gone to in order to rid their country of jews and non-whites, many of them would actually say that they would prefer less overtly violent and bloodthirsty methods. I have no problems criticising white nationalists and other ethnic supremacists who would support the disproportionate murder of women and children in support of their ethnostate, and when I see white nationalist troops blowing up hospitals I'll be protesting against them too.
No, you are assuredly and absolutely not. Again, can I ask what books you have read?
Most of them I read over fifteen years ago and can't recall, but the most recent one was Righteous Victims.
cjet79
1hr ago
Ya have a bunch of setups like this on aquilo, and now maybe starting to do them on gleba
Throwaway05
1hr ago
I mean it's like comparing ships from the age of sail to modern battleships. Do they both suck and are too expensive? Quite possibly.
Are they totally different things? Also true.
The population is completely different in terms of age and health. What we can do for patients is also totally different - more patients are on more medications that are more effective.
If a given type of health plan increases the chance that patients actually take their diabetes medication that alone will have a radical impact on outcomes.
Those things didn't exist 40 years ago. Nor did the diabetes rates...
Apple to oranges, maybe the conclusion is the same, but still apples to oranges.
faceh
1hr ago
Do you have a more recent study to cite because every factor that's changed since that one was published would have made the problem worse. Fewer doctors per capita, more regs, Obamacare, and an older, sicker population.
What's the current status of the situation, according to your research?
Throwaway05
1hr ago
Huh, interesting - definitely missed how much things have changed on this front, thank you for the update.
I don't support catastrophic plans anyway so it makes sense, yeah some of it is the healthy need to subsidize the sick, but also people struggle to understand if they are healthy or sick, and how quickly that can change and so on.
The young always think they are invincible and then you get diabetes and sit on it unmanaged for a decade and end up with a heart attack and bilateral knee amputations or no kidneys.
Preventative care saves people and money in the long run and is cheap as hell but people will refuse.
That's a complicated question, and I don't think I can actually provide an answer for Americans because I am not one. I can tell you what those policies would look like for the country where I live (Australia), and those policies would probably look something like this.
More options
Context Copy link