surely lack of citizenship is revolting, ie. the fact that a person can be abandoned by every state on Earth, trapped in no-mans-land without support or freedom of movement.
Actually, it’s against international law to make someone stateless. Everyone is supposed to belong to some state, even if many people would rather belong to a different one.
Having mechanisms of citizenship is just acknowledging incentives, though.
So am I a leftist (not a liberal) because I am unmoved by arguments that XYZ activist tactic is “incompatible with the norms we must maintain as a free society” or the like
Or am I a liberal (not a leftist) because when I read the news about whichever XYZ people are talking about in this way, it usually looks to me like no political goals are being accomplished and it’s not helping anyone
I want people to tell me about effectiveness and not principles, and a lot of leftist pro-XYZ stuff is still about principles, just the other way around: “since I have no principle against doing this, it’s a good idea”
When I read stuff like this
The bloc takes care to stay together, move together, and blend together. Within minutes, bottle rockets were shooting skyward and bricks were flying through bank windows. You don’t know who does what in a bloc, you don’t look to find out. If bodies run out of formation to take a rock to a Starbucks window, they melt back to the bloc in as many seconds. Bodies reconciled, kinetic beauty. If that sounds to you like a precondition for mob violence, you’re right. But this is only a problem if you think there are no righteous mobs, or that windows feel pain, or that counter-violence (like punching Richard Spencer) is never valid.
I feel like I’ve woken up to find that my bed is covered in piles of fertilizer, and I’m like “why is my bed covered in piles of fertilizer,” and my weird roommate, who put piles of fertilizer on my bed, is all “do you think there should never be fertilizer anywhere? you think farmers should just not fertilize their crops?”
Or like smashing banks’ property is a perfectly acceptable expression of rage and revenge at such powerful institutions causing immense suffering and if there any fucking justice in this world someone in power would punish the bastards so violent mobs don’t have to do it themselves.
Hah, as if those in charge of the banks will let the burden fall on themselves and not push it off on their underlings and customers, as they have the power to do! Smashing banks is meaningless self-gratification that is used to fuel the Police State.
I’m not going to tell you what kind of political violence would be necessary to be more effective, because I don’t want to encourage political violence, much less effective political violence, but that sure isn’t it.
Oh, huh, a Democrat who thinks that raising the minimum wage at which (foreign) workers can be hired causes less of them to be hired? I don’t think they got the memo about how price doesn’t actually affect demand and economics was an inside job.
The system does need to be reformed, but a better way would be to replace the lottery system with a blind auction rather than setting salary requirements.
Yeah, an auction would price it more accurately. Other interventions include making it easier for H1Bs to change jobs - thus if they really are worth more than the lower wages that are claimed, they won’t stay at the company. Making it easy to deport but hard to change jobs is just begging for corruption and replacing the native labor pool with labor that can be credibly threatened with being kicked out of the country.
Though, I admit my first instinct was to limit the number of slots and auction them off. “Oh, it’s so important to you? Then clearly, you’ll be willing to pay the necessary amount of money to show it’s important.”
i should follow more people. get my attention, fags
You should follow me because:
1. I’m definitely not a Time Cop.
You can tell because, let’s be honest, how many future timelines are dominated by Crypto-Centrist Transhumanist Nationalists rather than either Leftists, the Chinese Hyperunion, the Ultra-Caliphate, or Google Defense Network?
2. Even if I were a Time Cop (which I’m not), there’s no way I’m from the mid North American Union timeline and am just visiting the Trump Timeline, since, let’s be honest, there is no way any timeline Leftist enough to unite North America into one country modeled on the EU would allow time travel to right-wing timelines, much less by paramilitary cyborgs.
3. You already follow me in several branches already. Probably. This is just a hypothetical which I’d have no way of knowing. I’m just, you know, putting it out there as a possibility.
i remember years ago before LRAD cannons were a thing i watched a TED talk from the guy who developed LRAD cannons and he demonstrated the technology for the audience - using soft orchestral music, at its base LRAD is a technology for long-range projection of any sound - and was like ‘haha yeah we sold this shit to the military, no idea what they’re gonna do with it’
this one, it was filmed way back in 2004. LRAD cannons weren’t used against protesters in the US until 2009 during the pittsburgh G20 protests
Ideas worth spreading®
i swear to fuck this is why i hate when people share videos of those boston dynamics robots acting like they’re all cute when 10 years down the line they’ll have tasers and pepper spray and mini lrads and millimeter microwave guns and they’ll be using them on protesters
Just for future reference, readers, whenever you see me post a video of some Boston Dynamics robot that moves way too much like an animal, assume there is some minor nervous undertone, even though I’m not the protesting kind.
Why am I getting reblogged by tacky Western porn blogs all of a sudden?
I mean, at least they don’t sound like bots or anything but… why?
I give it 80/20 it’s just a more sophisticated component of spam vs you just happen to appeal to those people by posting what you post. (I follow you partly because you remind me a bit of one of my exes.)
Porn bots also follow people to get clicks, to answer one of your earlier probably rhetorical questions.
I was mostly just wondering why they’d want my posts over at their blogs.
I mean, it was a relationship post but it was not the lewd kind, it was the heartwarming kind.
Not to mention the fact that I have a personal aversion to meatspace porn, still…
(Derailing my own post to ask: In what ways am I like your ex? Good ways, I hope?)
I was mostly just wondering why they’d want my posts over at their blogs.
To be honest, I don’t fully understand the behavior of porn blogs on this platform, and I can’t figure out how to tell which ones are real and which ones are bots, nor why some (but not all) of the bots do what they do.
It feels almost like they just exist to insert porn into places for no reason, or as part as some sort of “sexual enrichment project” or something.
“Here, mammal, we see that you find images of copulation satisfactory with high probability, based on your demographic data. Gaze upon these images. Our bountiful network capacity blesses you with these gif(t)s.” - pornbots, probably
(Derailing my own post to ask: In what ways am I like your ex? Good ways, I hope?)
That’s, uh, complicated. But I don’t hate-follow blogs, so it’s good ways, yeah. Most of my exes are nerdy subby bi women. One of them was very devoted, and needed me as a stabilizer at the time. I’d still be with her today except for reasons. You aren’t exactly like her, you just have some traits that happen to line up.
The primary reason I follow your blog is that I find it interesting, though. In fact, I seem to recall having briefly seen it some years ago while reading some discourse involving theunitofcaring, I think? I registered a Tumblr lately because I was impressed with the discourse on Rationalist/Rationalist-Adjacent Tumblr. I added your blog a while after I saw it again.
Trump is like a Nazi because he advocates for an immigration policy slightly less strict than that of Australia.
Now you can go a few different ways with this observation:
1. This demonstrates that comparing Trump with Nazis is hyperbole that may just cause people to tune out. (”Are you saying that Australians are Nazis too?”)
2. Immigration is only one issue, you also have to look at other economic and defense policies, the complete picture is suggestive of fascism.
Why am I getting reblogged by tacky Western porn blogs all of a sudden?
I mean, at least they don’t sound like bots or anything but… why?
I give it 80/20 it’s just a more sophisticated component of spam vs you just happen to appeal to those people by posting what you post. (I follow you partly because you remind me a bit of one of my exes.)
Porn bots also follow people to get clicks, to answer one of your earlier probably rhetorical questions.
immigration policy is the equivalent of the state offering insurance for damages to the host nation. not gonna convince progs, might convince libertarian or ancap types.
He worries that if we focus on opposing Trump, and Trump is impeached or obstructed or just all around foil and discredited, it will open up a lot of space for other conservatives to be seen as “acceptable” and “moderate.” “Oh, you only want to gut the welfare state, you don’t want to stop green card holders from entering the US because they’re brown? Well that’s not so bad.”
History has provided plenty of examples of that.
The other possibility is that if Trump is discredited as a massive joke, everything even remotely related to him is going to look bad, and left-liberals will get a surprisingly free hand to implement their agenda while accusing anyone who isn’t on board with them of being a Trumpkin.
History has provided plenty examples of that.
Not to mention the possibility that attempts to defeat Trump will all fail and we are wasting our breath talking about Paul Ryan.
And the thing is, each of these seem equally plausible to me. I feel I have no way to determine what the political order of a post-Trump world will look like. I don’t know if deBoer is just being small-minded, or this is the actual threat to watch out for.
Consequentialism is true, but of limited usefulness, and not trustworthy in just anyone’s hands. Rights are not true, but are great for resolving situations.
Australia should take America’s Trump trouble as a galvanising moment. Universities, corporations, industry associations, sports bodies, cultural institutions and governments should step up recruitment efforts to win the attention of an entire generation of ambitious and talented people who would normally have had their sights set on the US. And bring the best of them to Australia to top up our human capital.
As a Nationalist I cannot object to Australia doing this, as weird as that may sound.
Last night there was a highly upvoted, highly-trafficked post on r/the_donald declaring that the Quebec shooter (a far-right white nationalist) was definitely a Muslim because no information had been announced yet which meant the media was colluding to cover for a Muslim. Some select (upvoted) comments:
There are rumors of one week old refugees committing this act of terrorism. Wake the fuck up people.
“the media will not report on violent incidents till they ascertain that the perpetrators were not muslim”
Takes time to patch up all the cracks in The Narrative™
> Also to poorly photoshop their picture so they appear whiter.
I checked back there this morning to see if the news that the shooter was actually a white rightist Canadian had gotten any discussion. It hadn’t, of course - the front page is all people declaring they’re proudly boycotting Starbucks, which recently said they will hire refugees.
I bet there are a lot of people who read r/the_donald and have a vague impression that refugees committed six murders in Canada last night, a vague impression which will stack with other similarly unverified vague impressions and leave them convinced there’s an epidemic of refugee violence. I have no idea what to do about that, and it terrifies me.
This is partially a side effect of the media blowing their own credibility, and partially a side effect of conservatives setting up their own bubble. I’m not even a conservative and I don’t really know who to trust these days.
It’s hardly unique to the Left though, since social conservatives burned through an unbelievable amount of social capital fighting against gays lately.
I think you’re overconfident in your interpretation of what the anon meant. Maybe that’s what you would’ve meant in their shoes, but they’re them and you’re you.
I think people can pick up on these things on a subconscious level even if they aren’t fully thinking that way explicitly on a conscious level. I certainly can’t name most logical fallacies even when I can spot them. (I didn’t know what the formal name for what the problem with religious threats about the afterlife was, but I could tell something was wrong with them, for instance.)
Take, for example, the treatment of racial diversity in America. If a 100% black company is okay, but a 100% white company “needs diversity”, then this implies that blacks are worth more than whites. That may not be what (most of) the advocates really mean, but that’s the sum vector of their words and actions as received by a number of people. And people pick up on that as being unwanted/unwelcome.
Or to take a stronger example, if men and women are equally capable of doing good things, but men are uniquely violent and evil, then it logically follows that men are worse than women. …and the ways to escape that tend to look like either MRA or “redpiller” (not the same thing) behavior, which are definitely not welcome within Feminism.
It should come as no surprise that are a lot of people that do not feel wanted/welcome within Feminism and refuse to have the label applied to them, even though many Feminists would want to apply the label to them.
But anyhow, both groups often don’t really go chasing down these chains of reasoning and making them explicit, since people don’t really think that way (and most people are relatively average). But I think they do notice them, and they become feelings that baffle their opponents.
Now, it’s possible that the Anon really does believe America has an ownership claim to those University positions, and that Anon has a partial ownership claim to America, and thus some claim to those positions. But that gets into the philosophy of ownership/property, which is a whole other thing, especially since I view ownership/property as useful rather than true.
Anyway…I don’t know much about the history of academic visa policy in America. So I can’t comment on whether every attempt to tighten it is characterized as racist xenophobia. But this particular attempt pretty clearly is xenophobic and maybe racist too.
Well, I don’t think it was handled well. I would have done TUoC’s “xenophobic plan” version instead if I were Orange Capitalism Man. But there is a reason I didn’t vote for Orange Capitalism Man despite being an unironic Nationalist.
What about the American PhD students the Iranian PhD students were taking grad school slots away from?
I think grad schools should accept the best students for their programs. I think taking less qualified students because by random accident they were born in the country, instead of people who are actively choosing to spend their lives in this country, does not strengthen the country, it weakens it.
And I think that the costs imposed by suddenly yanking the rug out from under someone who has been here five years are unacceptably high, and that if we decided to go full racist xenophobes we should at least be racist xenophobes with some semblance of trustworthiness and integrity by making the ban one on evaluating or accepting future students, instead of stranding people who have already built lives here.
Doing it this way is not just horrible, it is demonstrating a willingness to be gratuitously horrible on a whim, and one of its consequences is that no one should ever again expect that the U.S. government will behave consistently or make it possible to make long-term plans that involve travel into or out of the country. And the cost imposed by that expectation is extraordinarily high. If you care about financial outlooks more than the lives of people stranded in foreign countries away from their newborn children (yes, I personally know of a case of that), you might care that lots of companies have frantically recalled departments of overseas workers lest they later not be able to return to the country, and that they’ve said research and development and their success as businesses will be damaged by the necessity of coping with an immigration system that is suddenly bucking wildly at the whims of an appallingly ignorant corrupt cronyist.
But mostly it’s just that if you think where people are born should decide what rights they have, then we’re fundamentally on a very different page about everything.
then again, banning citizens of every Middle Eastern country except those involved in the 9/11 attacks is about as sensible as invading every country except those involved in the 9/11 attacks.
Orange Capitalism Man has shown more opposition than most politicians to the apparent US Death Pact with Saudi Arabia, but it remains to be seen if he’ll do anything about it.
What about the American PhD students the Iranian PhD students were taking grad school slots away from?
I think grad schools should accept the best students for their programs. I think taking less qualified students because by random accident they were born in the country, instead of people who are actively choosing to spend their lives in this country, does not strengthen the country, it weakens it.
And I think that the costs imposed by suddenly yanking the rug out from under someone who has been here five years are unacceptably high, and that if we decided to go full racist xenophobes we should at least be racist xenophobes with some semblance of trustworthiness and integrity by making the ban one on evaluating or accepting future students, instead of stranding people who have already built lives here.
Doing it this way is not just horrible, it is demonstrating a willingness to be gratuitously horrible on a whim, and one of its consequences is that no one should ever again expect that the U.S. government will behave consistently or make it possible to make long-term plans that involve travel into or out of the country. And the cost imposed by that expectation is extraordinarily high. If you care about financial outlooks more than the lives of people stranded in foreign countries away from their newborn children (yes, I personally know of a case of that), you might care that lots of companies have frantically recalled departments of overseas workers lest they later not be able to return to the country, and that they’ve said research and development and their success as businesses will be damaged by the necessity of coping with an immigration system that is suddenly bucking wildly at the whims of an appallingly ignorant corrupt cronyist.
But mostly it’s just that if you think where people are born should decide what rights they have, then we’re fundamentally on a very different page about everything.
Where, oh where, is the constituency for moderate liberal democracy, the constituency for assimilation? Radicals to my left, saying you should bring your vile customs here; fascists to my right, saying you should keep your vile customs at home. Where are the liberals saying that you can bring the surface features of your culture here–we’ll cover your traditional bread-and-protein dish in cheese and sugar, and your myths and heroes will appear in our comic books–but the rest, you have to leave behind. Your religion will be about as mighty a cultural force as Unitarianism; your deep tribal divisions will mean as much as anti-Irish sentiment means nowadays; you will be another slice of modern liberal democracy with a fancy new paint job.
You wouldn’t want to use your vile White Western Imperialist Colonialist Culture to erase that of proud foreign People of Colour and other Minorities, would you?
In other words, the people now believe their own information-culture war munitions. Those whose goal is to play ideological chicken with Islam and cultures that involve FGM and honor killings, and think Liberalism will win, on purpose, are becoming fewer and farther between.
The actual purposes of both diversity and religious tolerance were not even forgotten, as they weren’t even known in the first place.
What about the American PhD students the Iranian PhD students were taking grad school slots away from?
I think grad schools should accept the best students for their programs. I think taking less qualified students because by random accident they were born in the country, instead of people who are actively choosing to spend their lives in this country, does not strengthen the country, it weakens it.
And I think that the costs imposed by suddenly yanking the rug out from under someone who has been here five years are unacceptably high, and that if we decided to go full racist xenophobes we should at least be racist xenophobes with some semblance of trustworthiness and integrity by making the ban one on evaluating or accepting future students, instead of stranding people who have already built lives here.
Doing it this way is not just horrible, it is demonstrating a willingness to be gratuitously horrible on a whim, and one of its consequences is that no one should ever again expect that the U.S. government will behave consistently or make it possible to make long-term plans that involve travel into or out of the country. And the cost imposed by that expectation is extraordinarily high. If you care about financial outlooks more than the lives of people stranded in foreign countries away from their newborn children (yes, I personally know of a case of that), you might care that lots of companies have frantically recalled departments of overseas workers lest they later not be able to return to the country, and that they’ve said research and development and their success as businesses will be damaged by the necessity of coping with an immigration system that is suddenly bucking wildly at the whims of an appallingly ignorant corrupt cronyist.
But mostly it’s just that if you think where people are born should decide what rights they have, then we’re fundamentally on a very different page about everything.
I’m sad. A lot of good, brilliant, kind people who believed in what the United States stood for, and wanted to work and study and build lives here, are instead stranded in countries where they are in a ton of danger. People who helped Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and risked retaliation for it, have been betrayed; we promised them they’d have the chance to come build lives here. We broke that promise. Hopefully no one in occupied countries will ever trust us or cooperate with us again.
I’ve been refraining from saying anything because I can’t think of anything charitable and balanced and open-minded that will resonate with people who think turning away Iranian PhD students is some sort of courageous strike for justice. I have nothing to say to those people right now. I value non-Americans and I want them to be safe and happy and I think we and they are strengthened when they have the chance to live and work here; if you don’t care about people who birth placed outside our borders, then for the moment I can’t think of anything to say to you.
But I’m not going to stay quiet until I come up with something.
This is wrong. This is cruel. This should be fought in the courts and fought by any other achievable means. This is not defensible as a means of reducing violence; this is not defensible as a means of preserving our values; this is only defensible if you think people born in other countries don’t matter, and promises don’t matter, and integrity doesn’t matter, and symbolic expressions of loathing for Muslims matter a great deal.
That’s not charitable at all. I don’t think I really care.
Maybe someone could organize a fund to pay to house these people for the duration.
The statuary source of that executive order from 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) is … pretty broad and far reaching:
Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. […]
There seems to be no Congressional check at all on that power? The president can basically shut down entry into the US as he pleases, effective immediately and indefinitely? This seems kind of excessive.
there might be a number of situations where granting excessive powers to the executive branch begins to feel like an error in hindsight.
“But Our Guy would never have abused them!” - politicals
that's sex workers operating in a secure setting designed to parody courtship priming
And, like, phoneworkers and people in brothels; both of which might be considered “secure”, but neither of which is really an imitation of anything like courtship.
Sure, there’s intimacy, because this is someone you’re being sexual with - but I think that’s kind of the point. These are people who can’t let their guard down around anyone else because they can’t feel intimate with anyone else.
The other issue here is “melting pot” ideology. The melting pot imagines that all cultures can not only coexist, but also borrow from each other indiscriminately, and blend together into a colorblind mush.
quick: dailystormer or everydayfeminism
How about truth? The entire point of Melting Pot is to destroy deep cultural differences and leave only surface ones.
It’s the ethnic food court model of culture - lots of different dishes, all served on the same Capitalist plate.
Under melting pot, a more painful cultural difference like FGM is usually destroyed and replaced with bland (and less violent) Liberalism.
What is but one little lie if it serves the greater cause of Justice, Comrade, eh? Haha.
No but seriously, I have seen some drama around this user, BB. I wouldn’t necessarily assume they are acting in good faith, or are charitable enough to forgive an internet hiccough.
For the record to third parties, I have argued repeatedly with BB without getting blocked, and haven’t seen any indications of them blocking anyone yet.
I wish that “It’s a moral imperative to enact libertarian policies even if they result in mass starvation“ got people even a quarter as mad as “Punching Nazis is good.“
But apparently endorsing mass death makes you an interesting person to ask economics and ethics questions to as long as you do it in the right way.
Brah, I argue with Right Libertarians pretty often, and even accused a man in a “Taxes Are Theft” shirt of being an enemy of humanity due to automation once.
Noah Smith is doing his “you people on the left need to be re-conciliatory, join up with moderate conservatives like McMullin to fight Trumpism“ that’s continuing his “The US is turning into civil war spain“ idea.
And he’s presenting it like people on the left are too prideful to do it, which some are. But the other problem with this he’s not addressing is that this plan could basically be “We’re about to be shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean, so what we need to do is to tie ourselves to the heaviest and fastest-sinking piece of the ship!“
Boring answer is that granting the premises there’s risks and benefits to either strategy, and while the risks and benefits for one strategy or the other might in principle be calculable, the noise of motivated reasoning means we won’t be able to tell which strategy is “right” ahead of time.
I’m largely in the camp that we should do what we can to defend liberal-democratic norms and make a coalition with anyone else who is also defending liberal-democratic norms, whatever else their views may be. Granted, that’s partly because there’s no real coherent agenda with broad support among the left, and we shouldn’t be picky about ideological purity when we don’t know what our ideology is.
(I mean, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are very popular on the left, but their popularity is more about personality and symbolism than policy)
I think the agenda with broad support is social democracy. That’s what the Bernie and Warren supporters want, that’s actually something that exists, and it’s a goal that can be worked towards.
And I’m not sure what level or type of support the left is expected to give. Is the left supposed to agree with McMullin when he says the Real Problem is the size of the US deficit? That’s the problem here, what exactly does this “coalition“ entail? Who gets thrown under the bus?
The closest thing to an answer I could think of is the generic culture war “Tone down the PC“ thing. But even leaving aside the morality and possible damage of that decision it’s tricky because it’s not something that can be given away, I don’t think it’s so much the law that pisses people off as the actions of people. It’s not available to give up.
I think we could actually get some support for social democracy. I don’t think it will be as pragmatic as I’d like, but a relatively coherent social democracy that is not indifferent to the conditions of WWC rural Americans could rally up some enthusiasm and take some of the pressure off of automation.
And yeah, social democracy exists, and unlike Communism, it doesn’t involve killing lots of people.
I’m not sure how well it would work when combined with Globalism, which seems to be a thing the Left really does not want to remove, which I want to see removed.
On top of that, I recently had someone argue that all cultures are equal, despite my clearly explaining that FGM is cultural (not even religious), and them appearing to be opposed to FGM. So I’m not sure how much pragmatism there is to be had.
So, the current president of the US and the political party that controls the government won, this year, on a platform that, in part, openly appealed to white nationalists. The only thing I have seen from the rationalistsphere about this fact is A) telling people they're overreacting and B) treating people like monsters because they don't condemn the punching of a prominent neo-nazi. Why is this? Why the commitment to pretending that the "left" in the US is the real danger?
A fair question. I agree with @raggedjackscarlet the other day that lots of anti-SJ types are underestimating the possibility of right wing dictatorship.
I think a lot of people are struggling with how to deal with Trump, and honestly no one has found a good way to do so yet. He’s like the zombie we’ve shot all our ammunition into, and keeps on coming. Finding out how to defeat him is a top priority.
But let’s not ignore how much of the world is a liberal order - ie, focused on rights like free speech and property and voting and privacy, rather than trying to merge all of society into one collective body under the Leader. Even if Trump isn’t a rights based liberal, he doesn’t run all of society. Paul Ryan is a libertarian, and most Senators can be fit under this rubric. The richest CEOs of the richest companies are good liberals (like Tim Cook.) The top bureaucrats at all agencies believe in this worldview, not to mention the media and academia.
So if you’re worried “liberals might hate me and wish me harm” vs “fascists might hate me and wish me harm” that former group still has a lot more power to do so. And if liberals promise to be kind to each other and protect each other, actually the fascists will find there isn’t much they can do to us.
I at least reject very much political programs that try to unite everyone around hating “one idiot.” Even the most dangerous idiot in the free world is still one dude. The question is the system that gets everyone to play along to his stupid antics.
Don’t read his twitter.
Don’t believe what his federal agencies say and who they accuse of crimes especially.
Don’t give him ratings.
Don’t turn in immigrants and Muslims.
Don’t accept his “us vs them” mentality.
…is how I fight Trump. Dodge the draft and evade taxes if it becomes necessary even.
I admit this doesn’t sound like the most effective plan ever. But in absence of a guaranteed way to defeat him, for the love of god, stop beating each up or other bystanders.
*****
Also you are not a monster if you want to punch a Nazi. It’s okay. These are pretty normal urges shared by many people. I hope you don’t do it, but I definitely don’t think you are a monster. Like, how would you even log onto to tumblr and submit an ask if you were? The monitor would melt and your claws would crush the keyboard. No you’re totally human.
Seriously though it pisses me off immensely that most leftist’s response to the possibility of immortality only for the rich is to oppose immortality rather than to try and make it available for everyone.
Like, what the actual fuck, you’re the left, that is supposed to be your thing, saying you’d rather just ban transhumanism is basically just ceding ground to capitalism.
Immortality for all.
basically just ceding ground to capitalism.
That’s a good point, actually. If you offer people to be Capitalist and have a chance of not dying, or be Communist and have a 100% chance of dying, they’re probably going to pick the former.
Anyhow, the good news is that life extension is probably worth a lot of money for any government that has to pay for healthcare, simply because aging is so ludicrously expensive. If costs $100,000 to delay aging-related care for 10 years, then to a government like that of France’s, it’s worth it to just subsidize it en masse.
The other thing is that it’s not that probable that whatever procedure is needed will be necessarily expensive because of physics, the way rocket launches are. It will probably be able to see large cost-reductions long-term through automation.
You most likely would not be eliminating old age and end-of-life costs but only delaying their onset by X years. And during much of that X-year period the person is very probably going to be retired and drawing a Social Security or equivalent payment. In this case, it’s a net absolutely massive *rise* in costs.
(Also, trust me, the procedure will be expensive. Look at immunotherapy and biologic cancer drugs and get back to me.)
And during much of that X-year period the person is very probably going to be retired and drawing a Social Security or equivalent payment. In this case, it’s a net absolutely massive *rise* in costs.
That’s assuming the life extension effect doesn’t kick in until the person is already quite old. That probably is not the case, or the life extension mechanism is not likely to be effective at its goal of extending life. It won’t stretch out puberty, either (probably), so that leaves an effect on early and particularly middle adulthood, which are prime earning years.
If you can extend the amount of time that someone is effectively 40 by about a decade, or even just five years, then sure it isn’t as fun as being in one’s 20s, but it still adds plenty of earning potential.
(Also, trust me, the procedure will be expensive. Look at immunotherapy and biologic cancer drugs and get back to me.)
At first, sure. And the willingness of wealthy tech executives to pay almost any cost for it will fund a lot of the research necessary to make it cheap enough to be more widely available. But while we are on the side of the medical cost curve where medical costs come down from infinity, and therefore costs go up since we start actually paying them rather than dying, there should be a far side of the curve where the costs start going back down again.
We’re growing new organs on laboratory animals, printing new (and functional) organs with 3D printers, and we just got CRISPR. Apparently this year the NHS will be testing some kind of gene therapy on a subset of blind patients. Surgical robots, while not autonomous, are becoming more common. (That’s leaving aside the prosthetic robot arms since those aren’t relevant to aging right now.) Even those immunotherapy drugs are a step up.
On the far side of that curve, the sorts of chronic conditions that cost us so much money are prevented through gene therapy and selective IVF, while tissue engineering replaces organs damaged by disease with natural ones that require no immunosuppressant drugs. Robots decrease the cost of surgery, either by automating part of it or allowing more labor to enter the field from elsewhere in the economy. Critically damaged limbs can be replaced by nervous-system-linked prosthetics (which already exist) produced by highly-automated factories and custom-fit to the patient (factories are getting massive reductions in staff even in places like China), without drastically impacting patient mobility.
Much of the cost is in the research. One can gene mod bacteria to synthesize the desired chemicals, build big heavily-automated factories, that sort of thing.
Many very expensive drugs cater to an illness that is not common in the population. However, the market for life extension is probably at least one quarter of the population in all developed nations, if not much more, and they would be willing to pay an enormous amount of money to have it. That’s a very large number of people to amortize the research cost over.
Now, reading all this, you might say I’m being naive and that it will require personalized interventions for each person, not a nice mass-manufactured one-size-fits-all solution.
But that’s what we have computers and big data for. The market is enormous, and computer power is still increasing, so even if the genes have to be tailored to each specific person, the genetic tailoring can still probably be done by machines.
Now, it’s possible that I’m wrong about this, and it will remain unreachably expensive forever. However, I think that sort of pessimism on this matter is driven in large part by how unattainable life extension has been for humanity, and all the Deathist myths in our culture that tell us that old age and mortality are really better for us, and that the immortality we crave but cannot have would be terrible. In our myths, it is often associated with vampires and other undead, the temptation that drives sorcerers and other villains to do evil and corrupts their hearts.
In fact, weren’t people joking about Peter Thiel wanting to look into the qualities of young blood? But we can just grow cell cultures, and if it’s something that’s common to all young blood, then that sort of thing would only last for about ten years before they crack the secret of how to do semi-artificially it on an industrial scale.
It seems likely to me that either the rich will have life extension treatment and it will become cheaper over a couple of decades, or that no one will have effective life extension treatment worth more than a few years, and not a stable in-between state where we go for a century with only the wealthy having life extension.
Clearly the interventions won’t be priced in the mid-six-figures on the rare-disease model, but that doesn’t mean that an intervention with everyone as its target market will necessarily be cheap, nor that there’ll be the fundamental willingness to pay for it on a large scale. Right now there are mortality-extending drugs for patient populations in the millions, pricing in the $4K-$6K a year range – that’s rack rate, obviously, much higher than the various sorts of actual rates – and the payor landscape has been extremely resistant, despite not only rigorous clinical evidence and strong medical guidelines recommendations but also great pharmacoeconomics models and strong value propositions across health-systems, hospital, and patient levels. It’s not going to be as simple as demonstrating impressive clinical benefits and rigorously proving cost-effectiveness.
(And I mean I’d really, really like the answer here to be as simple as “well, fucking well charge a bit less and just roll around in a zillion tons of moneys instead of a jillion,” cf: literally everyone. I get that. I spent fifteen years in oncology. I’ve seen some shit. Suffice it to say structural incentives across biopharma and the entire US access landscape are pervasively and fundamentally fucked in that way where you can’t do much more than tinker with any one bit without catastrophic repercussions due to the whole contextual gestalt of it and solving for pricing strategy is a killer of a hard problem.)
As per the rest of your response, of course, there’s always the possibility (necessity) of a lateral and sharply innovative solution.
I actually like your optimism and find it less implausible that outsider/cross-industry thinking could in fact end up generating the way to break the back of what look like intractable problems from here than that the healthcare industry will manage to painfully stepping-stone its own way out of the mess. I’ve been in the industry for a long time (mostly in biopharma rather than devices, which your post is kind of suggesting to me might be part of the problem) and I’m tired and maybe jaded. And personally I might be a little bitter about transhumanism. I’m over forty and feel like even if all of this really truly comes to pass it’s going to be too late for me to benefit, certainly while in my prime, on which I haven’t yet lost my goddamn death-grip [so to speak] thank you very much but the writing would seem to be on the wall even if I’m not yet forced to look that way. It’s hateful tbh.
And personally I might be a little bitter about transhumanism. I’m over forty and feel like even if all of this really truly comes to pass it’s going to be too late for me to benefit, certainly while in my prime, on which I haven’t yet lost my goddamn death-grip [so to speak] thank you very much but the writing would seem to be on the wall even if I’m not yet forced to look that way. It’s hateful tbh.
I’m younger than you are, enough that I may benefit from at least replacement organ technology (probably only 10-20 years out now), if not reach at least the early tiers of life extension or cryo that actually works.
But my parents aren’t. I’m fortunate enough that they’ve made it this far, but I need to start thinking about how they may not be here in 20 years. And that hurts, because I have not yet showed them me being successful. I want them to at least see that, before it’s too late. I’m trying to record some more things, too.
They had me late. On the one hand, that put me perhaps ten years farther into the future, which gives me more of a fighting chance, and allowed me to meet the people and have the experiences that are important to me. On the other hand, I won’t be able to know them as long, and they are good people.
I know you may feel bitter about Transhumanism, because younger generations will benefit more than you will, and younger generations still would benefit more than me.
…but isn’t it better to be one of the last generations than any generation before? Isn’t it better than to be born earlier than this, in the 1700s or the 1800s, or the early 1900s, where the people were recognizable to us, but the only hope was some vague abstract notion that progress would overcome it? Clashing against a seemingly-indestructible monolith of despair.
It’s like knowing a war will end soon, and that even though you won’t make it through to the end, your children will, and after this, they may never have to experience a total war again, not the way you have.
Please, keep fighting, though. At this point, even a few years could make a difference, for both you and for others. Those tech billionaire money spigots are starting to turn. If we can just manage to keep the economy going for another 20 to 30 years, I think we may just make it through to the other side as a species.
Seriously though it pisses me off immensely that most leftist’s response to the possibility of immortality only for the rich is to oppose immortality rather than to try and make it available for everyone.
Like, what the actual fuck, you’re the left, that is supposed to be your thing, saying you’d rather just ban transhumanism is basically just ceding ground to capitalism.
Immortality for all.
basically just ceding ground to capitalism.
That’s a good point, actually. If you offer people to be Capitalist and have a chance of not dying, or be Communist and have a 100% chance of dying, they’re probably going to pick the former.
Anyhow, the good news is that life extension is probably worth a lot of money for any government that has to pay for healthcare, simply because aging is so ludicrously expensive. If costs $100,000 to delay aging-related care for 10 years, then to a government like that of France’s, it’s worth it to just subsidize it en masse.
The other thing is that it’s not that probable that whatever procedure is needed will be necessarily expensive because of physics, the way rocket launches are. It will probably be able to see large cost-reductions long-term through automation.
You most likely would not be eliminating old age and end-of-life costs but only delaying their onset by X years. And during much of that X-year period the person is very probably going to be retired and drawing a Social Security or equivalent payment. In this case, it’s a net absolutely massive *rise* in costs.
(Also, trust me, the procedure will be expensive. Look at immunotherapy and biologic cancer drugs and get back to me.)
And during much of that X-year period the person is very probably going to be retired and drawing a Social Security or equivalent payment. In this case, it’s a net absolutely massive *rise* in costs.
That’s assuming the life extension effect doesn’t kick in until the person is already quite old. That probably is not the case, or the life extension mechanism is not likely to be effective at its goal of extending life. It won’t stretch out puberty, either (probably), so that leaves an effect on early and particularly middle adulthood, which are prime earning years.
If you can extend the amount of time that someone is effectively 40 by about a decade, or even just five years, then sure it isn’t as fun as being in one’s 20s, but it still adds plenty of earning potential.
(Also, trust me, the procedure will be expensive. Look at immunotherapy and biologic cancer drugs and get back to me.)
At first, sure. And the willingness of wealthy tech executives to pay almost any cost for it will fund a lot of the research necessary to make it cheap enough to be more widely available. But while we are on the side of the medical cost curve where medical costs come down from infinity, and therefore costs go up since we start actually paying them rather than dying, there should be a far side of the curve where the costs start going back down again.
We’re growing new organs on laboratory animals, printing new (and functional) organs with 3D printers, and we just got CRISPR. Apparently this year the NHS will be testing some kind of gene therapy on a subset of blind patients. Surgical robots, while not autonomous, are becoming more common. (That’s leaving aside the prosthetic robot arms since those aren’t relevant to aging right now.) Even those immunotherapy drugs are a step up.
On the far side of that curve, the sorts of chronic conditions that cost us so much money are prevented through gene therapy and selective IVF, while tissue engineering replaces organs damaged by disease with natural ones that require no immunosuppressant drugs. Robots decrease the cost of surgery, either by automating part of it or allowing more labor to enter the field from elsewhere in the economy. Critically damaged limbs can be replaced by nervous-system-linked prosthetics (which already exist) produced by highly-automated factories and custom-fit to the patient (factories are getting massive reductions in staff even in places like China), without drastically impacting patient mobility.
Much of the cost is in the research. One can gene mod bacteria to synthesize the desired chemicals, build big heavily-automated factories, that sort of thing.
Many very expensive drugs cater to an illness that is not common in the population. However, the market for life extension is probably at least one quarter of the population in all developed nations, if not much more, and they would be willing to pay an enormous amount of money to have it. That’s a very large number of people to amortize the research cost over.
Now, reading all this, you might say I’m being naive and that it will require personalized interventions for each person, not a nice mass-manufactured one-size-fits-all solution.
But that’s what we have computers and big data for. The market is enormous, and computer power is still increasing, so even if the genes have to be tailored to each specific person, the genetic tailoring can still probably be done by machines.
Now, it’s possible that I’m wrong about this, and it will remain unreachably expensive forever. However, I think that sort of pessimism on this matter is driven in large part by how unattainable life extension has been for humanity, and all the Deathist myths in our culture that tell us that old age and mortality are really better for us, and that the immortality we crave but cannot have would be terrible. In our myths, it is often associated with vampires and other undead, the temptation that drives sorcerers and other villains to do evil and corrupts their hearts.
In fact, weren’t people joking about Peter Thiel wanting to look into the qualities of young blood? But we can just grow cell cultures, and if it’s something that’s common to all young blood, then that sort of thing would only last for about ten years before they crack the secret of how to do semi-artificially it on an industrial scale.
It seems likely to me that either the rich will have life extension treatment and it will become cheaper over a couple of decades, or that no one will have effective life extension treatment worth more than a few years, and not a stable in-between state where we go for a century with only the wealthy having life extension.
Seriously though it pisses me off immensely that most leftist’s response to the possibility of immortality only for the rich is to oppose immortality rather than to try and make it available for everyone.
Like, what the actual fuck, you’re the left, that is supposed to be your thing, saying you’d rather just ban transhumanism is basically just ceding ground to capitalism.
Immortality for all.
basically just ceding ground to capitalism.
That’s a good point, actually. If you offer people to be Capitalist and have a chance of not dying, or be Communist and have a 100% chance of dying, they’re probably going to pick the former.
Anyhow, the good news is that life extension is probably worth a lot of money for any government that has to pay for healthcare, simply because aging is so ludicrously expensive. If costs $100,000 to delay aging-related care for 10 years, then to a government like that of France’s, it’s worth it to just subsidize it en masse.
The other thing is that it’s not that probable that whatever procedure is needed will be necessarily expensive because of physics, the way rocket launches are. It will probably be able to see large cost-reductions long-term through automation.
the main reason I regret Hillary lost is the intense cognitive dissonance that would have bloomed during her reign, with great potential for the Discourse.
instead we get Garbage Hitler, and that’s no fun at all.
What cognitive dissonance?
Everything Trump does is bad for two reasons: one because it’s actually bad, and one because it’s Trump who is doing it.
With Obama it’s much more complicated; you get Obama/Biden bro GIFs and Obama family photo tributes sitting uneasily with drone attacks and expansions of executive power and all the other stuff that every President typically does.
The reason why I would not approve of this is that if you have the ability to time travel like that then why go straight to killing? Why be savage like that?
Like, it would be just as easy to render him impotent or out of the picture without killing him. You could, for example, take him back to the future with you (assuming you can return) or prevent his parents from meeting, or something. There are many possibilities here.
Depending on your resources and abilities (which, coming from the future, are likely to be significant), you could even try to tackle the root issues that created Nazi Germany and its allies, which would be much more beneficial and likely to prevent fascism than just killing Baby Hitler and declaring your job done.
This assumes time travel is not horrifically immoral to begin with, which depends a lot on how time travel works. Does it create a new world, or does it cause 6 billion people who exist now to never be born? Also, so far this timeline has avoided global nuclear war.
hey does it feel good to be so passive aggressive against someone who calls for violence against those calling for genocide instead of the ones actually calling for genocide? cause its pretty fucking sad
Buddy, you and your friends are absolutely horrible at telling who is and is not “calling for genocide”, especially since you include anyone questioning the violence in your calls for violence - you wanted violence against “bigots” and said people against the violence were also “bigots”.
You can block me, but it’s the truth. The reason so many people are saying “hey, wait a minute” about this Punching Nazis thing is because we know that it doesn’t end there.
Maybe if it were enforced consistently and actually ended there we could tolerate it, but hey, “Racism is prejudice plus power, and <ingroup> have no power” people already exist, so realistically that is not going to happen.
I can’t wait for liberals to go “ok we marched and we wore these cool hats now we’re done, we finished it, things will be fixed now”
See but that’s the reassuring thing, it means that people won’t actually be out in the streets assaulting random civilians for looking like nazis.
I’m sorry I can’t hear you over the beautiful sound of Richard Spencer’s glass jaw cracking under the force of glory-knuckled justice
why are you all like this
Because people keep asking me stupid loaded questions on my posts lmao
look I don’t want to live in a world where lots of people are roaming around looking to start fights with people who disagree on which batshit crazy political ideology they should implement, and I think you would too.
I’m annoyed at the liberals spamming “punch nazi” memes, but it’s reassuring to know that basically all of it is just posturing and signalling, and that most of them can’t be bothered to get off their asses to do the very things they advocate.
in? what? world? could? u? be? possibly? living? in? where? nazis? getting? attacked? isnt? something? to? cheer? for? ??? you act like this wasnt a known neo nazi that questions if jewish people are people and if black peoples “are neccessary” like lmao how about instead trying to act above violence you complain about the people calling for mass murder and genocide like??? messy messy messy
you complain about the people calling for mass murder and genocide like
Tankies call for mass murder and genocide literally non-stop and unironically, yet they are on the other side of the fist for some reason. But they should not be. ///
i support them doing that tbh a fascist is a fascist, one should not and i mean never tolerate intolerance that bitch wants the government to control every aspect of peoples loves yeah she and anyone like her should be killed simple as that, theres no arguing their stupidity only crushing it
You missed the part where you people can’t tell who the Nazis are. “She must have been a Nazi anyways, right?”
“you people” who people??? pretty easy to tell whos a bigot when they down talk someone else for race or talk up their own as some sort of master race like??? no, its not hard to see whos arrogant and punishment of who is arrogant is more than good, also any liberals who wanna defend bigots on the basis of free speech can feel free to join the pile of bigoted garbage
That is right, comrade. Anyone who questions our use of political violence is our enemy, and we must inflict political violence on them until the work camps swell with their numbers for the good of Communism. Only those who have already always ever agreed with us and those who are silent out of fear have virtue.
There is no possible way that expanding this sentiment of violence might have terrible consequences and get our regime labelled as one of history’s great monsters - after all, we are good Communists, and by definition, all monsters are counter-revolutionaries in disguise, right?
????? just saying man its not even an ounce of hard to tell whos a scumbag bigot and whos not and honestly? like i’ve said before yes antifa or whatever far left groups should make and maintain a more calm and organized look to the masses at large but actual nazi’s like spencer and his goons will always make up shit to legitimize their bigoted actions and someone going around questioning the humanity of other people based on imaginary shit like race needs not only their lights knocked out but their heads blown off plain and simple its not advocating violence it is 100% self defense against people calling for genocide
Yes. Certainly, we must ignore all claims by the Fascists that any of their violence is a form of self-defense. As they are corrupted by the sick, twisted, and vile influence of Fascism, they must assuredly know that any such claims are complete fabrications. They are evil, and cannot be reasoned with, otherwise they would be good Communists like us - everyone knows Communism is true, deep in their hearts.
The defense of Communism is always an act of self-defense by the oppressed masses. And the best defense is a good offense. Until the last thoughts of Fascism have been purged from society, we must be ready to kill at a moment’s notice.
Anyone who doesn’t support killing all Fascists is also tainted by Fascism and must be killed. Recursively.
History will smile on us and our glorious revolutionary Communist wave. They will sing songs of our struggles. Our leaders will never be put side-by-side in textbooks with Adolf Hitler, used as a justification for why Communism must be destroyed and alienating the same working men and women we sought to protect. Completely impossible. We are the good guys, here. Definitely.
I can’t wait for liberals to go “ok we marched and we wore these cool hats now we’re done, we finished it, things will be fixed now”
See but that’s the reassuring thing, it means that people won’t actually be out in the streets assaulting random civilians for looking like nazis.
I’m sorry I can’t hear you over the beautiful sound of Richard Spencer’s glass jaw cracking under the force of glory-knuckled justice
why are you all like this
Because people keep asking me stupid loaded questions on my posts lmao
look I don’t want to live in a world where lots of people are roaming around looking to start fights with people who disagree on which batshit crazy political ideology they should implement, and I think you would too.
I’m annoyed at the liberals spamming “punch nazi” memes, but it’s reassuring to know that basically all of it is just posturing and signalling, and that most of them can’t be bothered to get off their asses to do the very things they advocate.
in? what? world? could? u? be? possibly? living? in? where? nazis? getting? attacked? isnt? something? to? cheer? for? ??? you act like this wasnt a known neo nazi that questions if jewish people are people and if black peoples “are neccessary” like lmao how about instead trying to act above violence you complain about the people calling for mass murder and genocide like??? messy messy messy
you complain about the people calling for mass murder and genocide like
Tankies call for mass murder and genocide literally non-stop and unironically, yet they are on the other side of the fist for some reason. But they should not be. ///
Let me know when that extremely unlikely thing happens and then maybe we can worry. In the meantime, Make Nazis Afraid Again.
That’s right, comrade. Anyone our enemies salute is also our enemy. There is no danger in this, since despite being evil, manipulative, and duplicitous, our enemies would never salute someone in an attempt to control where our violence is directed, and none of our followers would ever do something like beat up a woman for wearing a spanish flag braclet. And if they did, well, she was a fascist, since good people like us only ever punch fascists, by definition.
There is totally a missing mood around Nazi punching. It’s not “I hate this, but punching them really seems to be the best option right now, so I’m gonna go punch a Nazi and then probably feel guilty even though I think it was right”. It’s “punching Nazis, fuck yeah. Nazis are bad, it’s great to punch them. While we’re at it, let’s punch people who support Nazi free speech rights. Surplus to human requirements! Nazis are bad! Punch punch punch!”
So yeah, it really doesn’t sound like you’ve done a cost-benefit analysis, and put “a person gets hurt” as a negative that gets outweighed by the positives. It certainly doesn’t sound like you’ve done that taking into account the possibility of motivated cognition and the dangers of normalizing violence. What it sounds like is you just want to punch Nazis.
That’s understandable, but you don’t get to punch people just because you want to.
I can’t wait for liberals to go “ok we marched and we wore these cool hats now we’re done, we finished it, things will be fixed now”
See but that’s the reassuring thing, it means that people won’t actually be out in the streets assaulting random civilians for looking like nazis.
I’m sorry I can’t hear you over the beautiful sound of Richard Spencer’s glass jaw cracking under the force of glory-knuckled justice
why are you all like this
Because people keep asking me stupid loaded questions on my posts lmao
look I don’t want to live in a world where lots of people are roaming around looking to start fights with people who disagree on which batshit crazy political ideology they should implement, and I think you would too.
I’m annoyed at the liberals spamming “punch nazi” memes, but it’s reassuring to know that basically all of it is just posturing and signalling, and that most of them can’t be bothered to get off their asses to do the very things they advocate.
in? what? world? could? u? be? possibly? living? in? where? nazis? getting? attacked? isnt? something? to? cheer? for? ??? you act like this wasnt a known neo nazi that questions if jewish people are people and if black peoples “are neccessary” like lmao how about instead trying to act above violence you complain about the people calling for mass murder and genocide like??? messy messy messy
you complain about the people calling for mass murder and genocide like
Tankies call for mass murder and genocide literally non-stop and unironically, yet they are on the other side of the fist for some reason. But they should not be. ///
i support them doing that tbh a fascist is a fascist, one should not and i mean never tolerate intolerance that bitch wants the government to control every aspect of peoples loves yeah she and anyone like her should be killed simple as that, theres no arguing their stupidity only crushing it
You missed the part where you people can’t tell who the Nazis are. “She must have been a Nazi anyways, right?”
“you people” who people??? pretty easy to tell whos a bigot when they down talk someone else for race or talk up their own as some sort of master race like??? no, its not hard to see whos arrogant and punishment of who is arrogant is more than good, also any liberals who wanna defend bigots on the basis of free speech can feel free to join the pile of bigoted garbage
That is right, comrade. Anyone who questions our use of political violence is our enemy, and we must inflict political violence on them until the work camps swell with their numbers for the good of Communism. Only those who have already always ever agreed with us and those who are silent out of fear have virtue.
There is no possible way that expanding this sentiment of violence might have terrible consequences and get our regime labelled as one of history’s great monsters - after all, we are good Communists, and by definition, all monsters are counter-revolutionaries in disguise, right?
To be sure, but we have to decide whether we think those tactics are just strategically ineffective, or actually ethically wrong. If you try to say “both”, then you’re going to face some hard choices on the day it looks like a nasty tactic can get you a victory (and that day always comes.)
Well, there is not only a question of effectiveness and morality, but there is also a question of trust.
Brutal tactics can backfire, but they can also work. And there are times and places that even I might be willing to engage in those tactics.
But those tactics are costly, and there is far too much temptation to use them in situations where it is not warranted - in part because political ideologies thrive on a siege mentality and treating themselves as the underdog, even when they are actually quite popular or are even in the middle of going Full Overdog and bulldozing everything and everyone in their path.
A lot of actual, literal Nazis had to be shot during the second World War to put an end to the Nazi regime. Since the alternatives were worse, I would say it was correct - and perhaps even praiseworthy - to do so.
However, lots of people have been tricked into killing and dying for terrible political ideologies over the years, so my bar for when to use these sorts of tactics is a lot higher. And, here’s the trust part - I don’t trust the kinds of people who are hyped about this latest punching incident to keep that bar high. And ironically, exactly the sorts of people who are saying “hey, wait a minute” instead of cheering are the people I would trust more on when to initiate political violence.
If we could actually have a nice clear line at “it’s okay to punch people who openly call for genocide or certain genocide”, that might be okay. But let’s be realistic. That isn’t going to happen. Politicals will deliberately blur the boundaries in order to be allowed to punch people they want to punch. They already distort definitions of words like “violence” and “racism” for their own ends. There is no reason to believe they would stop. …and then the counter-punching would begin.
Thus I’m stuck opposing punching Nazis even though under other circumstances I might permit it.
I’m not the biggest anarchist either, but anarchism is really important for the same reason libertarianism is: you need people constantly questioning “do we really need this regulation?” and nitpicking everything you do or you just cede a bunch of power to the state for no reason and won’t get it back.
Oh, I came around to a view not so different from that one a few years ago. The vast majority of states are not so… let’s call it “technocratic” as to say “let us regularly prune regulations that are ineffective and put mandatory sunset provisions into all of our laws”. Nor, for that matter, is the typical government as careful as it should be about making laws in the first place. And quite frankly, the typical voter isn’t going to make them behave like that. So it’s useful to have Anarchists and Libertarians around.
I just still don’t like Anarchism, even if it’s useful. Of course, you won’t see me calling for punching, firing, doxxing, etc Anarchists. Sometimes you might see me argue with them on the Internet.
I said I’d talk about politics less, but I feel like I do need to get this out of my system.
There’s an idea going around both on my dash, and people I know in person, that the behavior of people on the left is what caused Trump to be elected. Different groups get the blame, whether it is rich white liberals in Silicon Valley, DC, and Hollywood, the campus left, black lives matter, internet SJWs and feminists, mainstream media journalists, late night comedians, or some combination of these, the theory goes that Trump was essentially a white working class middle finger to the condescension, radicalism, and disrespect toward traditional values of members of these various left-wing groups. People who put forward this theory say that to win back Trump voters, the left needs to be kinder, more compassionate, and less radical toward white working class (WWC) culture, values, and way of life. The claim is that if only the left were nicer to WWC people and respected their way of life more, Trump would have never even won a Republican primary, let alone an electoral college majority.
Now, leaving aside whether it would be personally moral and virtuous to be more compassionate and less radical toward the WWC (probably to at least some extent), I want to raise doubts about whether this perspective is actually useful for winning elections and defeating Trumpism.
No doubt many WWC people, and those sympathetic to them, feel condescended to, disrespected, and that their way of life is under attack by the left. There is also no doubt that there have been individuals and groups on the left that have been openly hostile to the WWC way of life, where “white male” is an insult, conservative Christians are publicly degraded and mocked, performative flag-waving nationalism is seen as not just gauche but stupid and hick-ish, and where white rural people are assumed to be personally racist and homophobic.
But, all political movements are going to have their assholes who degrade the other side and openly disrespect them. It’s easy to miss when you largely live in left-wing bubbles online and off, which I imagine is true of most people on my dash, and is certainly true of me, but the right has their own version of this, and it’s popular. There’s a post going around my dash about a condescending line in a Meryl Streep speech, and how this is an example of liberal condescension that created Trump, but I guarantee you that more people listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity on the radio every day than saw that Meryl Streep speech. And Limbaugh and Hannity on an almost daily basis disrespect, mock, and condescend to liberal constituencies, values, and ways of life. And guess what, Republicans still won.
People like Limbaugh and Hannity, not to mention Fox News and Breitbart, make their money by inflaming a sense of grievance and resentment of the left among the disproportionately rural, older, religious, and WWC Republican base. These outlets have far more political reach and power than random SJW blogs, the campus left, black lives matter, actors or tech billionaires giving speeches, or even late night comedians.
In the educated liberal bubbles that I and many people in my online and offline circles reside in, the reverse can seem true. It can seem like left-wing culture is omnipresent and the right is completely stifled by blacks lives matter, SJWs, and late night comedians. But in other circles, which comprise nearly half the country, the reverse is true.
In many ways, the left is already on net more compassionate to the WWC than the right is to left-wing constituencies. There were countless articles in left-wing outlets talking to Trump voters in order to understand and sympathize with Trump voters. I don’t think I’ve ever once seen an article in a right-wing outlet that went to Harlem, San Francisco, or Ann Arbor, trying to compassionately understand the motivations and lifestyle of people on the other side from their point of view.
So the idea that the left must hold itself to an even higher standard on compassion and than the right to win elections seems implausible to me (again, leaving aside whether holding ourselves to a higher standard would be more virtuous and moral).
Even if the left was nicer to the WWC, I don’t see that changing vote patterns, or making the WWC feel any less resentful and under attack. Suppose 90% of the left-wing people who are being blamed for the rise of Trumpism became nicer. The Limbaughs and Hannitys and Breitbarts of the world, and the millions who follow them, wouldn’t take a step back and say “you know, maybe the left doesn’t hate me or my way of life”. No. They would continue to cherry pick the worst examples, as they already do, from a smaller set of mean liberals in order to inflame cultural resentment and grievance among their followers, and they would also continue to see things that I think aren’t mean and are true that the left says, like that black people have a rougher relationship with the police than other groups, as offensive and attacking their dignity and way of life.
I’m not saying there’s no way to convince some of these people over to the left. But, pointing the finger at the meaner (and numerically smaller) strains of the left and thinking that if only for them being condescending and disrespectful we would be in a golden age of liberal dominance in politics doesn’t strike me as true or productive.
So I get your frustration, and a lot of what you say is correct. It’s far too tempting to say “Hey leftists-who-disagree-with-me, YOU’RE the reason our enemy won!” without sufficient proof. That’s just opportunism.
And we should treat the WWC (and all of the WC) in this country with compassion, and we should help their material needs, regardless of whether it wins us elections. Trying to come up with political justifications for basic human decency is a bit creepy.
(Plus, not to mention a Far Right resurgence is occurring across the entire developed world. It seems very petty to blame that on a few annoying American liberals. There are deeper trends here.)
I feel you here.
However, there is some countervailing evidence here.
1. If we’re not being condescending to them, we should listen to what our enemies are saying. And in between accusations of corruption and defending the free market, Republican voters seem really, really upset about Political Correctness. Obsessed with it, and explicitly saying they support idiots like Trump just to defy Political Correctness.
You can dismiss what they say and come up with other reasons they voted the way they did (they just want to be racist, or economic anxiety) but then that is being patronizing because you aren’t really listening anymore. If you listen, Political Correctness is a huge deal to them, and teasing out the source of that sounds like a worthwhile endeavor.
2. A lot of this is just projection from some left-of-center allies about the illiberal tactics used by establishment social justice, such as extreme arrogance, dismissiveness, shallow analysis, using institutional power to punish dissenters, and a bunch of other mindkilling, groupthink tactics. Said allies (or, former allies) really hated those tactics, and so rejoice in blaming them for the defeat of the mainstream SJ candidate.
Projection is not a good source of analysis of course, and so they might be wrong that this really caused Trump’s victory. But said establishment really should pay attention to how many enemies it has, even “on its own side.” Their tactics are really ticking off their friends, causing dissension every step away. SJ can try to ignore this dissent and pain as long as they wield the hammer, but don’t be surprised when their enemies leap at any weakness as a chance to earn some rhetorical points.
Social justice has enraged and alienated conservatives, libertarians, moderates, socialists, communists, and artsy anarchists. At some point it will have no friends left except the business-friendly / socially liberal wing of a city-based party.
3. Something happened between 2012 and 2016. There’s some reason Republicans started really getting into unbridled rudeness and race-baiting. You can’t even wholly blame Trump for finally opening the floodgates, he tried in 2012. What the hell happened to make voters so much more racist, or at least racist-tolerant? It’s not like there are a lot more immigrants around or other normal causes of racial strife (let alone to explain the tolerance of crude sexual behavior.)
And to the unaided eye, one of the real changes of the past 4 years was the political visibility of intolerant liberalism. So it’s at least worth considering “the thing that changed in the last 4 years, is somewhat responsible for the rather different outcome this time around.”
Regarding #1: If a 100% black company is okay, but a 100% white company “isn’t diverse enough”, this implies whites are inherently worth less than PoC. If women have equal beneficial capabilities to men, but men are uniquely violent and oppressive, this implies women are better than men.
I think people can feel this even if they don’t consciously realize it.
Also, as one of those alienated types, those tactics you mention make SJ a liability to me in many ways.
if you try to do both, don’t be surprised if everyone else is suddenly very interested in protecting even literal nazis from punchings, because you’ve shown an inability to distinguish the two
if you ask me, this is America
the country of Indiana Jones, Captain America, etc.
this is not the USSR
this is not the country where we label everyone we disagree with as fascists
if you want to do that, go back to Russia, comrade
There is actually a very consistent heuristic for punchings which would avoid the aforementioned issue. It should be perfectly possible to punch Spencer without justifying the punchings of people who aren’t like Spencer.
(This section used to contain information that seemed superficially true but has been corrected by insider knowledge; Spencer actually fired the guy who wrote the genocide posts in question but this information was not easily available on common sources. I apologize for the misinformation that happened. Spencer is a shithead who heils Trump but he did fire the guy who was even worse.)
So, if you do not entertain totalitarian notions of ethnic cleansing etc., you shouldn’t have to be worried that a heuristic that leads to Spencer being punched would be a threat to yourself. It is totally possible to have the rule that only people advocating ethnic cleansing (Spencer claims he wants “non-violent” ethnic cleansing which is a fucking joke; there is no non-violence in ethnic cleansing, the only question is how horrible the violence one will inflict in the process is), tyranny, democide etc. and actively politically working for it get punched.
So why the fuck are people afraid that punching Spencer means they too might get punched? I blame the tankies. No, really.
You see, if we had a consistent heuristic that (only) advocating tyranny and democide is what gets you the punchings, tankies would be on the wrong side of the fist as far as their preferences are concerned. Tankies don’t want this kind of consistency, so they will go to whatever lengths it takes to undermine the consistent attitude that democidal tyranny is the only thing that gets the punchings, and instead replace it with tribal bullshit.
And our broader culture and discourse are way more influenced by tankies than one would naively expect.
For example, Angela Davis, retired University of California professor and honorary co-chair of the Women’s March a couple of days ago, liked tankie-ism so much she got her doctorate in East Germany, and provided the guns people were killed with in the Marin County courthouse incident.
And here is Davis shaking hands with Erich Honecker, the leader of the tankie dictatorship of the GDR:
Apparently the principle of the progressive cultural elite no-platforming evil people only applies to right-wing evil people.
For comparison, let’s suppose some conservative professor were pals with B.J. Vorster, got his doctorate from the RSA because he liked apartheid so much, and was involved in supplying guns for a Klan shootout? What would it do to his career? The BDS people are adamant that anyone dealing with Israel is Bad, but how many people deal with Israel specifically because they like its treatment of Palestineans so much, and not just because it’s a first-world country with a lot of high-tech industry and good infrastructure etc.?
To say that I smell a bit of hypocrisy here would trivialize the traumas of those whose respiratory organs were devastated by chemical weapons.
And I don’t even mean to disparage prof. Davis’ work on the evils of the prison-industrial complex. Shocking as it might be, even people who have supported utterly evil things may be right sometimes. I’m not even trying to unfairly single her out because she’s only one example of the entrenched tankie corruption festering in the halls of left-wing power.
But it is clear that any sort of principled opposition to evil would require a massive purge in the progressive cultural elite, so naturally they will never support it. So instead the question of punching Richard Spencer gets turned into a tribal battle as the tankies try to justify punching anyone they don’t like and everyone else sees that and reacts in the only rational way.
On the other hand…
The super-structures that the marxist would typically speak entirely in terms of are ultimately simplistic macroscopic abstractions floating above a far more complicated and dynamic reality. The marxist loves to talk in terms of classes, the anarchist prioritizes talking in terms of interpersonal relationships and interactions.
Social justice has — on the whole — thus become in many regards a rather pragmatic attempt to hash out an etiquette or legal system (albeit a decentralized one largely enforced through reputation rather than state violence). This is an undertaking quite different from ethics. Indeed the biggest advantage and disadvantage of social justice is that it seeks to be as motivation-independent as it can be. It doesn’t attempt to establish why one should be for example opposed to misogyny. It either takes for granted that its audience already shares the same values (naturally causing some confusion from slight differences in these assumed values), or it seeks to arrange a sociocultural state of affairs independent of people’s underlying values. “Who cares what people actually believe, let’s find ways of browbeating them into at least acting decently.”
One can see why, as with marxism, most anarchists find the mainstream of social justice profoundly incomplete and insufficiently audacious. It often gives up before going deeper into challenging all power relations in and of themselves, settling instead for an incomplete intersectionality, and it shies away from the far more fractious problems of figuring out what we really value or should value, much less speaking explicitly of such values and their tensions. Of course the failure mode of some teens browbeating people over inane otherkin-style shit is a hell of a lot better than the marxist failure mode of The People’s Cops actually physically beating people.
Similarly there’s a temptation to see anarchist nuance and absolutism as frustratingly unpragmatic. There are big enemies doing a lot of damage that need to be knocked down and dithering trying to add complexities to our picture or speak in terms of distant and even more idealistic aspirations can understandably seem like a bunch of sabotague and backstabbing. When there’s a goal practically right in front of your nose you don’t want to hear some buzzkill well-actually anarchist telling you that’s not the ultimate goal and that the shortcut you want to take risks endangering their grander aspirations. Fuck their preposterously grand ambitions of a world without relations of control, you just want fucking bread. The picture you have, both of the world and your desires within it, are just common sense. Why dirty that up? Why undermine it?
Marxism and social justice largely look at the radicalism of anarchism with suspicion, seeing it as the kind of “reductionism” so accursed in the humanities. As something that either gets in the way of common sense or dissolves it entirely into useless and masturbatory intellectual rabbit holes. (“Oh so we’re supposed to care about individuals ultimately, I suppose that means ignoring systematic injustice and prioritizing every white dude with hurt feels cuz someone yelled at him.”) The proper notion of radicalism/reductionism — as something that compliments a realization of broad patterns and ultimately provides additional useful perspectives without undermining all capacity to prioritize — is alien to them.
Similarly the marxist (and the more vulgar social justice advocates) develop a kind of laser focus on some specific categories or forms of domination, often completely unequipped or unwilling to address more nuanced or complicated situations. Indeed just as marxist organizations have become particularly infamous among the activist left for tolerating and protecting abusers and rapists in their leadership, everyone is aware of circles of social justice where horrific interpersonal abuse is given a pass or becomes clouded and impossible to speak cleanly of because the perpetrators behavior isn’t easily definable along traditional dimensions of heteropatriarchal and white supremacist categories. The now quite old joke “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face while shouting ‘but this isn’t Formal Oppression!’ forever” reveals just how insufficient the “practical” lens can be. Aligning yourself against the currently most prominent expressions of power and domination does not equate preparing yourself to resist new or more local and particular instantiations of power, which can be all the more insidious or silencing for their relatively uniqueness or rarity.
While there’s no doubt often immense utility to the practical, the stakes in this world are too high to sit back and take things for granted. (…) [H]istory shows that oversimplifications into neat rhetorical frameworks have their own long-lasting momentum. People come to associate not with their original ethical motivations (if they even notice them) but merely in terms of the affiliations and strategies that once derived from such. The crude macroscopic patterns or tendencies that may well be correctly identified eventually get detached from their underlying roots. Those self-identified as underdogs remain stubbornly self-identified underdogs even when they come to rule regimes that slaughter millions, set up gulags, or occupy Palestine.
The radicalism of anarchism is what has left it fairly distinct among ideologies and mass movements, with no instances of mass murder in its name. It’s hard to stray too far, to ever let inertia and some “common sense” lead you down the road of slaughter and tyranny, when your philosophy grounds itself so directly in ethics, highlights it in every way and never lets you detach from your ultimate values. Many passingly claim to be champions of liberty, but anarchism demands of every action, every plan, does this liberate? Could this be more coherent with liberty? And if there are necessary tradeoffs how exactly do they work? Can they be improved? Are there better ways?
To reach a moment where we sit back, entirely satisfied, would be to abandon anarchism. To the radical there is no litmus for “due diligence”, no final finish line, no moment where we pat ourselves on the back. The vigilance of the radical is never satiated.
Anyone who claims anarchists are or should be friends with tankies is lying and has a gulag to sell you.
The Status451 article on the book ‘Days of Rage’ is extremely interesting and important. Read it. If you wonder what the right-wingers got from UR, read this one instead because it contains the good parts of Moldbug without the bad parts of Moldbug. If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, read the article so you’ll know.
TL;DR: tankies are way more influential than most people ever realize.
It’s also not an accident that within the article itself, marxism is named 2 times, communism 8 times, maoism 3 times, and even stalinism once, but anarchism exactly zero times.
Tankies and nazis want political violence where the nuances of reality get collapsed into a simplistic “us vs. them” frontline. Fuck that noise.
Bring back the Iron Front. Show people that one can be against nazis and tankies simultaneously. Show people that they have options beyond the bullshit quagmire. Queer the “with us or against us” binary.
This is America. We don’t punch someone who voted for Trump because they are afraid that a college professor promoting “white genocide” is actually serious (a fear which, when considering the stuff rich progressive cryptotankies have been all too happy to write endless apologetics for, is far less unreasonable than rich well-educated C-tribers might realize). We don’t punch nonviolent people who have shitty opinions if they aren’t involved in actively trying to impose their opinions into violent reality. We don’t even punch people who indent with tabs instead of spaces. And if we are to punch Richard Spencer, consistency demands that we shall recognize that with the same logic it’s perfectly okay to punch the tankie leaders too.
Fuck nazis
Fuck tankies
Fuck king George III too I guess
///
Mostly endorsed with nitpicking that would distract from the message
Not a fan of Anarchism, but yeah, basically. And yeah, thr Anarchists get more standing to talk about this than the tankies, since they don’t have the same historical record.
