Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

@collapsedsquid On the other hand, given proportional manpower required relative to population size (small, due to force multipliers), and the wave of response to 9/11, would a draft have prevented the Iraq War from getting launched?

I’m not so sure.  And that’s an enormous political cost to pay if it may not even work for that goal.

[collapsedsquid]

While the article called it a draft and I sort of continued that, in truth what I think it’s suggesting is some sort of mandatory national service program. “Requiring everyone to serve“ is the phrase used in the article.

And I wasn’t suggesting it as policy, I was discussing it as something to react to.

[mitigatedchaos]

Right, I just mean the general case of “well America would be less likely to randomly go to war if it had a draft,” since that did come up.  I do think we should be looking for ways to prevent the next Iraq War, I just don’t think that would work for that.  (Though I’m not quite opposed national service in principle.)

As for left-leaning youngsters learning to fight, while the older Millennials are more strongly Democrat, apparently the younger ones are only weakly so, and the dividing line happens to correspond to how old people were during the Bush Administration.

(I don’t think the Bush Administration realized just how much damage they were doing to the cause of Conservatism itself in America.)

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@collapsedsquid On the other hand, given proportional manpower required relative to population size (small, due to force multipliers), and the wave of response to 9/11, would a draft have prevented the Iraq War from getting launched?

I’m not so sure.  And that’s an enormous political cost to pay if it may not even work for that goal.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[w-r-o-u-g-h-t]

the fact hillary clinton has a children’s book is super creepy honestly

that’s political propaganda

it’s for children

how have i not seen anyone else freaking out about this

[moontouched-moogle]

Probably because everyone’s too busy laughing and memeing about how awful and blatant it is

[mutant-aesthetic]

Don’t all political leaders in the US get children’s books? Like, I thought that shit was normal. Hillary’s is only noteworthy because it’s fucking awful.

[mitigatedchaos]

I’ll be publishing my first children’s book soon.  It’s mostly about Singapore.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[imp]

that whole radical vulnerability thing was just performative softness it wasnt actual vulnerability because it would be a lot darker otherwise lol

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

If I were fictional, what kind of Discourse would I cause?

[mitigatedchaos]

Ask meme!

…on the other hand, aren’t I kind of riding the line between fictional and real already?

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mutant-aesthetic]

I actually wonder if the Alt-Right changed their message to focus more on exit rather than revolution, how the public attitude towards them would change. Like, if their fundamental thesis was something along the lines of this:

“In order to secure the existence of our people and a future for white children, we would like to have our own Amish/Indian sort of deal where we can peacefully withdraw from a society we find repulsive.”

Obviously by and large it would still be offensive to hardcore lefties and true believer progs, but how would it impact the moderates, the average joe? What about the free speech/gamergater/cultural libertarian crowd? Certainly it wouldn’t make them more willing to adopt the alt-right’s white nationalism, but would the idea of giving these people an exit from modernity be seen as more reasonable than them wanting to take over the US and make it a white ethno-state?

[mitigatedchaos]

What you have to understand is that everyone in politics is incompetent and ideology-huffed.  In part, because if you aren’t, it’s hard to derive enough motive power.

So, while “White People Reservation” is an order of magnitude more achievable, and two or three orders of magnitude less damaging than “make the US into a white ethno-state,” they aren’t going to take it up as their rallying cry.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[nostalgebraist]

It’s funny how much it’s possible to dissociate fascination with the conversation around a work from enjoyment of the work itself – to have one in pure form without the other.  An example of this, with me, is James Bond.

I don’t actually like anything about James Bond.  The franchise seems to mostly differ from completely generic action thrillers by starring a character who lacks the nobility, or the salt-of-the-earth gut appeal, of most action heroes – a cold, suave, cruel guy who’d normally be cast as the villain.  I don’t watch many action movies to begin with, and this is even worse to me than the baseline.

But reading about the franchise is a wonderful aesthetic experience – it’s like I have a sixth sensory modality devoted to experience stuff like this.  The different actors and eras, each having their/its own internal arc and relation to the others, the various takes on the character and their relation to the original novels (a whole other layer) … the amazing titles!  It’s the kind of thing I wrote this about.  On the rare occasions when I see a Bond movie, I don’t enjoy it much as a movie, and yet I enjoy it as a part of this other thing, this structure, this wonderful web.

[mitigatedchaos]

“No, no, you see, I’m a meta-fan-”
- Nostalgebraist, probably

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Now, I know people will object “but the Alt-Right / hard right ARE disconnected from reality!”

But keep in mind those smug forecasts of a 98% Clinton victory.

The hard right don’t need to be totally connected to reality to gain more power, they just need to monopolize key, salient, missing pieces.

I’d consider saying something like “don’t let them do that,” but of course, the intersection of (people who read this blog) (who have the power to change the liberal and left political operatives’ behavior), and (who would actually act on that advice, from me of all people) is basically zero.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[kontextmaschine]

Mike Cernovich acquired a copy of that “Shitty Men in Media” list (he was offering $10,000) and is using it to run hit pieces

says he’s going to give the accused a chance to reply, I suspect that’s an excuse to sequence them strung out for maximum news impact, in priority as culture war enemies

[slatestarscratchpad]

What a moron.

These people are going to get away with it, because the accusations will forever be associated with the alt-right. If he’d waited a week or two, someone else would have taken the bait, published, and the media would have eaten it up.

But now the whole issue has been coded “of interest to racists” and everyone else will be careful not to touch it. The people involved will defend with “You’re accusing me of sexual harassment? Aha, I see you’re a fan of Mike Cernovich” and it’ll never go anywhere.

[shieldfoss]

here you are assuming Cernovich intends to bring abusers to justice in an effort to help women

which

i mean

[osberend]

Nah, the analysis still applies if he wants to take down Biddle et al. for being sociopolitical enemies. Where it falls apart, of course, is if he really just wants to gather money and love from guess existing base for “boldly standing up to the hypocritical liberal media establishment,” etc. In that case, he’s actually better if the left drops it as a result of his support, because it gives him more “lone voice crying the wilderness” cred.

[mitigatedchaos]

Beyond just him, does it not empower the hard right in general if this wagon circling happens?

One of the things that’s been really empowering for the hard right (in my opinion) are conditions in Europe, including sex crimes.  Because of just who was committing those crimes, they were able to gain a temporary monopoly on “justice” as a platform for that particular issue.  

Do people realize how bad that is for Liberals?

They’re building a narrative that the Left and the Liberals are thick with pedophiles, molesters, and sex traffickers, and that when they aren’t committing those crimes themselves, the Left and Liberals are willing to overlook them depending on ethnicity.

Circling the wagons isn’t what the Liberals should do.  The way to prevent the hard right from gaining ground in Rotherham was to be better than they were, by actually enforcing the laws, like they are supposed to and, ostensibly, which is in line with their principles.

We’ve seen that at least some of the hard right are willing to fabricate a narrative if they have to, but a non-fabricated narrative has a lot more solidity to it.  

So maybe they circle the wagons, and this outsider can’t actually take these guys down.  But what if the point isn’t to take them down?  What if the point is recruitment?  Long-term recruitment, shifting the margins of power, which, when you only need a majority, matters.

Their faction is relatively small right now, but it has room to grow in proportion to how badly their rivals fuck up and/or are disconnected from reality.