“banning Muslim immigration will only increase terrorism!”
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such an outburst.
it’s literally “the terrorism will continue until immigration improves”
Consider what it says about Muslims. It isn’t good. It only reinforces the Conservative viewpoint, much like some of the reaction to Charlie Hebdo did.
so yeah the obvious reason why the left shouldn’t justify its policies for non-leftist reasons is that short-term justifications are slippery and can twist in your hands, and you don’t want to put effort into undermining your own ideology.
for example, say you justified an extensive recycling program on environment grounds, then later it turned out that it actually had a higher environmental cost than straight landfill- wait shit this is a terrible example let me come in again.
say I strongly believe that these propositions are true:
A
A → B
A → C
A → D
…
perhaps proposition A is that everyone deserves equal opportunity in life, and from that I draw B (open borders!) and C (public healthcare!) and D (antiracism!) and all kinds of other things.
now perhaps I can’t convince someone of proposition A, or I’m too gutless to try, so instead I construct alternative justifications and try to sell those instead:
X → B
Y → C
Z → D
…
perhaps proposition X is we should strengthen the country (by boosting skilled immigration!), and Y is that we should strive for efficiency (public healthcare!), and Z is that we shouldn’t make Jesus cry so much (fight racism!).
but wait, these alternative justifications might prove much more than I intended! investing heavily in the military might also strengthen the country, and clamping down on premarital sex might also stop Jesus crying.
or the implications may not be factual: someone might decide that actually the country isn’t strengthened by increased immigration, and then we have a pickle on our hands; by ceding our true motivations we’ve compromised our entire political program.
this doesn’t mean you can’t mention when a policy has multiple benefits, and something can be win-win on more than one axis. but it’s almost impossible to be a win on every axis and anyone who says otherwise is lying, although typically to themselves.
Sometimes people may also not agree on the A→B, however. I’m not a Nationalist because I think my country is always correct, but for more Consequentialist reasons. Same thing for rejecting open borders. Antiracism seemed to be a good thing but as practically implemented by activists it’s a lot more mixed (see: Bernie got accused of being White Supremacist, numerous attempts to redefine both “Racism” and “Violence”.) My opposition to Communism is not because I’m against redistribution from an inherent perspective - I believe property is useful but not true - but based on how it turned out.
The anon asks I’ve been getting have continued after I blocked the first one, so clearly they’re coming from multiple sources, so lemme be LOUD AND CLEAR for anyone who somehow isn’t getting this
LIKING 1940S CLOTHES DOESN’T MAKE ME A FUCKING NAZI AND IMPLYING IT DOES IS ACTUALLY INCREDIBLY OFFENSIVE TO COUTURIERS OF THE TIME WHO WERE ACTIVELY RESISTING NAZIS
That you even need to specify this shows that the pro-punching crowd can’t be trusted with punching.
Anonymous asked:
argumate answered:
There is a broader question here: to what degree are political movements about outcomes over emotional affiliations.
(And of course, “being about outcomes” is another emotional affiliation!)
Keep in mind that people will see through these kinds of cynical ploys, Anon.
The Left (at least in the US) has parts that have been actively cheering for the death-by-aging and demographic destruction of the native population. The native population, quite frankly, has little reason to believe that movements that treat them as a fulcrum for leveraging the identity politics of all other groups will actually work for their benefit, so why should they believe them? Especially when increasing the supply of labor will increase their competition, not just for jobs, but also for real estate, etc? For that matter, why should they believe it’s in their interests to bring in immigrants on behalf of anti-assimilationists, who want a “salad bowl” instead of a “melting pot” model? Who have shown no reluctance to throw the word “racist” at any criticism of immigration? Who give free passes to actions influenced by foreign religions and ideologies that they wouldn’t to actions influenced by local ones?
Trust will have to be reestablished with actions, not branding. And reestablishing trust is costly. The Left must become willing to actually pay that cost.
Right now, I don’t see a reason to believe that will happen.
I think China’s gonna get stuck in the late-Soviet productivity trap, you guys
like, the problem with Beijing crushing Hong Kong and Taipei is that the non-communists were the only folks who knew how to coordinate investment, marketize innovations, and reward efficiency
letting Beijing and Shanghai coordinate investment while promoting SOEs, starving private firms of capital, and distorting financial markets is a recipe for disaster
I’ve gradually become convinced that the 21st century is going to remain the American century until some other region of the world can pull its head out of its butt and craft some decent institutions.
Europe and Asia might have just had a disastrous run of own goals, but now America’s working hard to even the score
meanwhile on Earth Prime, President Clinton has opened the borders with Mexico and Canada and is negotiating a global free trade deal
on Earth Prime, Stein and Johnson and Sanders voters are all very smug
(more interesting is Earth 3, where Bernie presides over the killing of Nawar al-Awlaki and years of legislative gridlock)
Anonymous asked:
sinesalvatorem answered:
“Having conception be based on random selection” fails at “letting people have as many kids as they want” so hard it’s not even funny.
Like, you do realise that deciding who gets to have kids via lottery has exactly zero relation to letting them have the number they want, right? You are necessarily going to force some people to have fewer kids than they want, or some to have more kids than they want, or probably both.
I mean, as long as we have democracy, things are going to go one of two ways:
1) There will be a lot of people from groups who are currently minorities and the political landscape will shift and there may end up being laws which fuck you over and maybe become bad enough to be dystopian, or-
2) Massively invasive fertility controls or genocide get implemented to ensure that we definitely have a dystopia.
Which basically boils down to “Democracy sucks when you’re not in a powerful coalition”, which is also the status quo that people currently in powerful positions don’t recognise. This is also a major reason why countries limit immigration. It sucks when you end up in the cluster on which the laws are forced and from which the rents are sought.
Solution here, it seems to me, is to end the state - but that’s its own can of worms.
Someone has alerted me to the possible interpretation of “you are allowed to have kids, just with random genetic material rather than yours”.
My apologies for mistaking one incredibly stupid idea that no one would actually like for another incredibly stupid idea that no one would actually like. I am truly mortified by the magnitude of my error.
I thought anon that thought their policy would actually lead to people having the children they want. I was wrong. This anon wants people to raise as many children as they want, while having none of the specific children they want, because kids are fungible resources.
But at least they don’t want anything that’ll be bad for the few people who prefer to adopt! They only want to fuck over 99% of people! That’s better than originally expected!
When most people no longer think cuckolding is bad, then anon can come back to me.
Something ridiculous just occurred to me, probably won’t work as a solution, but…
Lots of people aren’t going to want to live forever. So if we do hand out the ability to have kids by lottery, rather than handing out kids themselves by lottery, this means that eventually, if you live an infinite amount of time, you can have an infinite amount of kids.
This doesn’t actually solve the preferences thing though, insomuch as those preferences are genetic. And I doubt the kind of people that want to have lots of children would want to have those genes “patched” in their children.
opposition to Trump seems a lot wider and more unified than opposition to Dubya; we’re barely three weeks in and the people are preparing to march on the White House.
maybe because Dubya passed the “bloke you’d have a beer with” test, and we all know Trump has no hope in hell of ever passing that.
even after the Iraq War kicked off, a lot of people who opposed it were still iffy about opposing Bush’s whole agenda, whereas it’s harder to believe that Trump has some hidden reserve of Good Policies he’s going to wheel out any day now.
Also, W has already happened, informing current political discourse.
It is hard to pick what my favorite piece of Awful Radfem Discourse is, but I think this might just win the prize.
Okay, but to answer the question. It’s more of a correlation thing.
Trans girls are often anime girls, for example, but not all anime girls are trans girls.
I’ve long had a theory that some groups that are drawn to anime are drawn to it because it telegraphs emotions in a very blatant manner.
For people around gender issues, it also often leaves facial features more vague and less gendered.
