Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

I reasoned the PC stuff was like antibiotic resistance in bacteria.  It doesn’t matter today, it doesn’t matter tomorrow, but one day, 30 years from now, multi-drug-resistant TB develops and the problems pile on and on from there.  

…but if you can keep developing new antibiotics fast enough to keep up with it, you can sort-of ignore your bad practices and the collateral damage they cause.  

I thought that’s what was happening, and that the reckoning wasn’t going to be until 2028, as the result of a slowly building fire of, well, various mens’ movements refusing to comply with male gender roles (something already in progress at the fringes).  Instead the tension was lurking beneath the surface across multiple axes, but the media didn’t want to talk about it and people would be socially punished for talking about it sometimes, so it wasn’t as visible.

I’d like to think there is some new path where the word “Racism” can be made powerful again, but I cannot find it.  It would require socially punishing false accusations of racism, which simply isn’t feasible under the current ideological framework.  I’m not one to buy into the “Contradictions of $Ideology” idea much, (since most of the people pushing it are Communists ignoring the ‘contradictions’ essentially inevitable to their own system,) but I think this is partially a case of that.

In some ways I welcome the Populism, though.  My estimate of corporate oligarchy and permanent majority has declined significantly.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

Really says something that now I sort all political commentary I read into  “Pre-Trump“ and “Post-Trump.“

[collapsedsquid]

mitigatedchaos said: Did you at least give Trump a 15%+ chance of winning the election?                            

I hate to give odds on stuff like that because it drives me nuts, but to me the “Trump era” starts well before the election. I’m defining it as the moment when we knew that “Trumpism” was something that existed and was more than marginally popular in the US.

Even if Hillary had won or probably even if Cruz had squeaked out the nomination, it would have changed shit.  The political writing reflects that.

[argumate]

What about all the people who were going nuts for Palin in 2008?

[collapsedsquid]

Palin didn’t go through the primary.  We could all say that she basically didn’t matter. She was just this weird VP that McCain chose and didn’t take seriously.  Trump was chosen directly by primary voters, the fact that he could win says something.

[mitigatedchaos]

I would tend to agree on Palin.  I haven’t seen excitement for Palin like I have for Trump.

There are so many things that allowed this to happen, and I think many of them would have been preventable if people, uh, behaved better.  I don’t mean this as a virtue critique of the Trump voters, but rather the opposite.  Overuse of terms like “racism”, ignoring the plight of American workers, not reaching out to areas outside the cities, focusing primarily on minority demographics, talking about “demographic destiny” with glee, and so on.

@collapsedsquid My question was mostly to ping whether you were aware of these looming things beforehand, and if so, for how long.  While I saw “sexism” being overused as a term, I didn’t really realize just how thin it had worn outside of internet communities.  However, the further they got into the primary, the more I said “this is unpredictable, so I’m revising the chance of a Trump win upwards”.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

So hyped to watch as our future becomes so crazy that intellectuals now would be hostile if you even suggested it as a possible future

sadoeconomist answered:

I propose a new form of measurement of how interesting the times you live in are - the amount of days you’d need to travel backwards in time until the average person would refuse to believe you and perhaps think you were joking/insane/trying to start a fight for describing to them the major historical events that happened between their time and yours. Let’s call the unit of measurement the cassandra.

For example, on the day after the 2016 election, you’d only need to travel back a single day and tell them that Trump won to get that reaction. November 9th was a 1-cassandra day. Since Trump has taken office I think we’re averaging about 7 cassandras. But I estimate most of my lifetime has averaged in the hundreds of cassandras at least. And throughout most of history I’d estimate the cassandra level has been in the thousands, easily.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

Can Donald Trump win the nomination?

wirehead-wannabe answered:

No chance in hell. These suckers are gonna spend the rest of the century scraping every last grain of salt to make me rich.

[mitigatedchaos]

Having won the Presidency, Trump begins his campaign for Hyper-President.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[nuclearspaceheater]

People saying Trump’s plan to deport millions are “unprecedented”, like Operation Wetback wasn’t a thing.

“Unprecedented” does not mean extreme, or bad. If Trump announced an intention to bring back slavery, that would be pretty extreme, and pretty bad, but it’d be the exact opposite of unprecedented.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@txwatson

But there’s a real, and significant, segment of his supporters who voted for him because of, not in spite of, the racism, misogyny, and fascist policy.

Do you know the logic behind the US government releasing Tor to the public?  It’s along the lines of the following - if the only people that use Tor are American spies, than any US agent found using onion routing software will be outed.  If many people use Tor for a variety of activities, then the presence of onion routing software could mean anything from ordinary local black market dealings to just being paranoid.

The signal is hidden in the noise.

Well, congratulations, because that can also happen unintentionally as a Tragedy of the Commons with words such as “racism” and “misogyny”.  People were told to be careful with overusing the terms, but haha, like that was going to happen.  Besides, the people questioning the use of such terms were the Oppressors, right?  They should be mocked for “freeze peach”, right?

Now the overuse of antibiotics has created a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  Oops.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

(1/2) A little while ago, you said: "I can’t think of a great way for a liberal to establish that credibility - emphasizing that you understand why they believe the things they believe was tried very loudly during the campaign ...". You were probably much more in tune with the campaign than I was, but this really isn't what I remember. I recall hearing a lot of "Trump is crazy and so are his policies; it's obvious and he can never win."

theunitofcaring answered:

(2/2) There’s the Michael Moore speech, but I’m not sure what (if anything) he was advocating there. There was also Obama’s thing, but that was at a Clinton rally with Clinton supporters, not an outreach event. Can you point to some examples of Clinton supporters trying to convey understanding to Trump supporters?

I’m thinking mostly of the deluge of articles like these:

Listening to Trump voters

This is who votes for Donald Trump

What a liberal sociologist learned from spending five years in Trump’s America

Who are Donald Trump’s supporters and what do they want?

Understanding the undecided voters

I feel like this was much much more of a genre in the media I was consuming this election compared to any previous election. Of course, maybe all of these attempts at credible empathy were just really bad, because they failed to capture what Trump voters actually cared about or just seeded their characterization with enough “but of course Trump’s still terrible” that it couldn’t resonate with the people it was supposed to describe, but I definitely saw a lot of ‘let’s understand Trump supporters!’

[mitigatedchaos]

The Trump supporters don’t trust the Left/Globalists.  Globalist types held power, and future Trump supporters’ jobs got outsourced, and it wasn’t as easy as economists abstractly imagine it as to get new jobs that paid enough.

In order to get through to them, those against Trump would have had to sacrifice something big and expensive to signal that yes, they really do care, and aren’t just going to throw the Trump supporter-types under the bus the moment they get power, in favor of Multiculturalism, Diversity™ and Globalism.  Hilary Clinton could not credibly send that signal.

Bernie might have, perhaps, but it wasn’t his “turn.”

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Pointless Shitstorm Timeline

[mitigatedchaos]

the issue here is that the “prominent person” in question has no intrinsic value, thus strip-mining them for news leaves them with nothing left.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have each said a host of problematic things over the course of their lives, yet strangely they haven’t been abandoned by everyone yet.

Trump was elected because of this and actively exploited it on purpose, a move most others cannot safely execute.

Intrinsic value isn’t the actual defense against it.  It’s more about a sort of social or political power.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Pointless Shitstorm Timeline

[the-grey-tribe]

Sometimes, a prominent person P says something ambiguous and weird on TV. It can be pre-taped, but it has to be “live” like an interview or a late night talk show. The statement is possibly problematic when taken out of context, and only a small point in support of the main thesis.

For example: “If you don’t know what the candidates stand for, maybe don’t vote” or “Women’s child rearing work is important and should be valued”or “Black men have big penises”.

The talk show host asks next question. Someone tweets this sentence in isolation.

News Cycle I

“P said racist/sexist/fascist thing”

“Other people react to thing said by P“

“What twitter users think of P’s latest gaffe“

“Former friend condemns P”

“People distancing themselves from P”

Now our protagonist clarifies that they meant what they said, but they meant it in an innocuous, literal way.

News Cycle II

“P doubles down on racist/sexist/fascist comments”

“P still not apologising”

“Right-wing weirdos agree with P“

Now P must clarify that he really didn’t mean it like that. He does not agree with the weirdos at all and regrets any offense he may have caused. He clarifies his original statement to eliminate any confusion.

News cycle III

“P offers non-apology, repeats offending statement”

“We decided not to give P a platform any more”

“Has racism/sexism/fascism re-entered the mainstream? A political scientist explains, also P is terrible“

At this point, the actual statement by P is buried three clicks deep in these news articles. P thinks the original offhand statement was blown out of proportion. He tries one more time.

News cycle IV

“P: Concerns about racism/sexism/fascism blown out of proportion“

“P goes on offensive in racism/sexism/fascism row“

Q, a friend of P, tries to give a sympathetic account of the original statement.

News cycle V

“Q: P was misunderstood“

“Q defends P’s racist/sexist/fascist outburst“

“Q’s defense of P proves old boys networks still at work“

“P’s employer has still not fired racist/sexist/fascist P“

After Q, nobody wants to stick their neck out for P now, and nobody wants to be seen talking to P. People who defend P mostly do so anonymously.

News cycle VI (mostly think pieces, not news stories)

“People need to stop defending P“

“Stop saying racism/sexism/fascism is no big deal“

“Waffling about giving racist/sexist/fascist people a platform hurts marginalized people the most“

The media realise that there is nothing more to say, and smaller outlets/latecomers try to milk the issue one last time. Nobody wants to talk to P any more, and P is wary of any journalist who contacts him.

News cycle VII (still no news stories)

“The privilege of P-supporters“

“We’ve had it with pro-P trolls in our comment section“

“Why we don’t talk to P and why people like P do not deserve a right of reply“

P tries to find somebody who wants to talk to him, somebody sympathetic. He does not want to talk to anybody who previously painted him as racist/sexist/fascist.

News cycle VIII

“P sets record straight“

“P shows true colors, talks to far-right ‘newspaper’ “

[mitigatedchaos]

Repeat until so many people get fed up with racism accusations / fear unfounded racism accusations that a living meme gets elected President by showing he doesn’t care about racism accusations and plows through them like fresh fallen snow.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[thathopeyetlives]

First question: What does one even do about Russia secretly interfering with our politics? If people are actually involved (and apparently Flynn was) you can impeach or disqualify them. Trump has been president for a few weeks and has managed to screw up royally, so we could kick him out, but earlier on… you’re kinda out of luck unless you want to totally screw up the politics. 

Second question: What is actually going on? Is Trump genuinely trying to be friends with Russia and enemies with China (stupid plan in a world that successfully avoids war!) or just Putin wants to weaken the USA with idiot leaders or what?

[wirehead-wannabe]

My gut feeling is that either that Putin blackmailing/threatening/bribing Trump, or that authoritarian leaders with a socially conservative support base flock together. Or both.

[mitigatedchaos]

Russia + China is not an unreasonable combination.  So yes, I think preventing that is part of it.  China is about to enter a period of decline, but it’s still more likely to become a global hegemon than Russia.

I think there are several things going on here.

• Trump actually does have some level of respect for authoritarian rulers, I think.  Even I sometimes look at China and think about what could be accomplished if all the NIMBYs were stopped from holding up projects, even though I know actually doing that wouldn’t work out so well.  But I think half of it on Trump’s part is just signalling.
• The sanctions over the Ukraine, as far as I can remember, have not actually been lifted and are likely to stay in place, as far as I can tell.
• Russia itself is less powerful than it has been, both in terms of its economy and its conventional military.  They couldn’t really invade America even if they wanted to, and they aren’t going to become a global hegemon.  China is a much greater threat to America’s global power long-term, depending on just how bad all their looming crises become.  China also sticks out more to his base because it wasn’t Russia that the jobs got offshored to.
• Trump is probably seeking to cooperate with Russia when it suits America’s interests, rather than just fight Russia across the board.  In part, he wants to signal this to Moscow.
• This also depends on just how you define “America’s interests”.  If you think of democracy or global capitalism as being synonymous with “America’s interests”, then I don’t think Trump agrees with you.
  
• Trump probably does find Islam threatening in a way that he does not actually find Christians, Hindus, gays, transgender people, etc threatening.  So, let’s suppose he wants to drain the migrants out of Europe.  Right-wing parties are gaining steam, and others are shifting right on the issue.  But so long as there is nowhere to put the migrants, the media can pelt the nativists with stories about migrant suffering.  Enter the Syrian “safe zones” plan from his campaign.  Paying off the construction of temporary housing and mass issuing of rations is cheaper than a lot of military action, it keeps the migrants out of Europe, and it creates somewhere to put them for when they leave Europe without triggering the same level of media-based political fallout.  However, to do this, he needs support from Russia/Putin.
• Trump is signalling that he does not care if Syria is ruled by a tyrant.  He’s willing to compromise if it gets him his safe zones.