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U.S. Politics: Oh Donnie Boy, the Feds are calling...


A Horse Named Stranger

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1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

I’ve heard Peterson come out so many times against Spencer , the Alt Right and the Nazis that I think it’s pretty disingenuous to suggest he’s courting them or has any love for them at all. 

I'm not one to spend hours watching Peterson. If this is in fact the case, then fair enough.

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2 hours ago, SweetPea said:

Demographic changes can't cause cultural changes in directions one would not prefer?

...

Of course they do, just look at the general increase in non-adherents in formerly christian demographics in the west. Plenty of deeply religious people are uncomfortable with that, doesn't mean they get to dictate the behaviour of others.

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Are you really going to equate migration to the deliberate and systematic extermination of a group of people for belonging to an ethnicity or religion?

No, and that isn't what I said. I was specifically talking about importing millions of people from wildly different cultures, as is the case in several European countries today. There is nothing organic about that cultural exchange. In my opinion. If you consider that to be organic and natural, good for you. I think it's wrong.   (the whole reason I'm mentioning this is in reference to the alt-right being a global movement, not limited to the US)

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

So SweetPea, who not long ago claimed to definitely NOT be an alt-right troll now tells us he "follows" a number of alt-right figures and that these guys are "misunderstood."

I'm not an alt-right troll, and I do follow a number of alt-right figures, no contradiction there. And yes, some of them are misunderstood (by several posters here), as evidence by the misrepresentations I've pointed out above. It just really bothers me. I don't care if you hate someone with a passion, but don't misrepresent them, or lie about their position.

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13 hours ago, DMC said:

I won't stipulate to that until Josh Friedman gets to finish Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is never.  Skynet is omnipresent, and that's not gonna change with John Connor as a stupid kid.

Complete Topic Derail for a second, but this. 10000x this. That show broke me emotionally.

Apprently Josh Friedman was part of the writers room when they were writing Terminator 6 or T3 try 3 or whatever the reboot that's not a reboot but is is that's coming out, so that gives me a small sparkle of hope.

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Your obsession with the "natural" and, even more so, with the "organic" suggests that indeed, you have fallen for fascist propaganda. The analogy between the nation and the body, the insistence that all cultural expression be "organic" (while organizing grand spectacles of said organicness) and the associated cult of purity were precisely what made fascism and Nazism such terrible ideologies. The main target of ire may have shifted from Jews to Muslims, but the underlying analogy is the same - and it will lead to the same kind of regime if unchecked.

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1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I’ve heard Peterson come out so many times against Spencer , the Alt Right and the Nazis that I think it’s pretty disingenuous to suggest he’s courting them or has any love for them at all. 

Absolutely, and to add to this, it goes both ways. It's an interesting situation where they both dislike eachother, but hate it even more that they are constantly lumped together in the same category.

It's a technique used to discredit people using guilt by association. It's simple and it works. Not that long ago Sam Harris was (unironically) wondering if he can talk to someone who was four degrees of separation away from a KKK member or a nazi or something. I can't remember the details of the story, but it was a funny example of how effective this technique is.

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30 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Of course, it allows him to victimize white males by pretending that they are the ones being oppressed by a dominant "neo-marxist" ideology. Throw in there a bit of bad faith about climate change or the gender pay gap, and one has to wonder why this guy is even considered an intellectual to begin with.

At the heart of practically all of these movements (right or left) is the idea that somebody is not getting what they justly deserve and therefore resources (wealth, social status, positions at powerful institutions, etc.) should be redistributed to correct this. This idea has always been surrounded by explanations for why it is the case -- some more reasonable than others (at least from a 21st century perspective). From what's happening today, it appears to me that the more intense the competition for resources, the less the explanatory fluff matters. A bit of jargon, something to indicate whose side you're on and voila: instant intellectualism. It works both for the right and for the left, though the leftist version is a bit trickier as it has to accommodate multiple groups some of which share nothing except their hatred for a common enemy.

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21 minutes ago, Altherion said:

At the heart of practically all of these movements (right or left) is the idea that somebody is not getting what they justly deserve and therefore resources (wealth, social status, positions at powerful institutions, etc.) should be redistributed to correct this. This idea has always been surrounded by explanations for why it is the case -- some more reasonable than others (at least from a 21st century perspective). From what's happening today, it appears to me that the more intense the competition for resources, the less the explanatory fluff matters. A bit of jargon, something to indicate whose side you're on and voila: instant intellectualism. It works both for the right and for the left, though the leftist version is a bit trickier as it has to accommodate multiple groups some of which share nothing except their hatred for a common enemy.

You're not wrong, but this type of "both-sides"-ism obscures the fact that among the various narratives of this or that group being abused there are some with far more merit than others.
In fact, one of the few things you and I may agree on is the fact that the multiplication of such narratives is meant precisely to obscure this fact.
 

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1 hour ago, SweetPea said:

No, and that isn't what I said. I was specifically talking about importing millions of people from wildly different cultures, as is the case in several European countries today. There is nothing organic about that cultural exchange. In my opinion. If you consider that to be organic and natural, good for you. I think it's wrong.   (the whole reason I'm mentioning this is in reference to the alt-right being a global movement, not limited to the US) 

...

Utterly normal part of European history. Even immigrants keeping part of their culture alive is a long standing tradition. The Netherlands still has french-speaking churches which originated in the late 1500s when French speaking Calvinists fled the success of the Spanish armies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walloon_church

Of course alt-right types generally will claim that those historical movements were somehow different in kind to what is happening today.

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28 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

You're not wrong, but this type of "both-sides"-ism obscures the fact that among the various narratives of this or that group being abused there are some with far more merit than others.
In fact, one of the few things you and I may agree on is the fact that the multiplication of such narratives is meant precisely to obscure this fact.
 

Peterson, like certain sorts of people, on the alt right, like to portray themselves as objective thinkers who are just calling balls and strikes.
But, really, just how objective is Peterson? I don't think very. From what I recall his whole claim to fame got started because of his hyperbolic misrepresentation about a Canadian Hate Crime Law.
He then links Marxism with post modernism, when both those ideologies have had their own arguments.
He then goes on and makes economic claims, that are dubious at best. I wonder if he has bothered to read the Raj Chetty paper on race and income inequality. Or papers about the disastrous effects of Redlining.
 I wonder if he has bothered to read Alan Manning whose written a lot about monopsony power and the growing evidence that it exist.
And I wonder if he has pondered anything about conservative screw ups and dipshittery during the GFC.
Evidently, he worries about a marxist takeover, which doesn't seem to imminent, particularly in the US, where even the most leftwing politicians, like AOC, don't exactly call for the proletariat to take over the means of production.
Peterson might be an accomplished psychologist, but it seems to me he tried to switch lanes, as it were, without doing any actual proper preparation before switching lanes. And I think we know how that often works out.

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3 minutes ago, Seli said:

Utterly normal part of European history. Even immigrants keeping part of their culture alive is a long standing tradition. The Netherlands still has french-speaking churches which originated in the late 1500s when French speaking Calvinists fled the success of the Spanish armies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walloon_church

Of course alt-right types generally will claim that those historical movements were somehow different in kind to what is happening today.

Of course they were different --- Caucasoid migration is never the problem to these precious snowflakes. Dark people on the move is their nightmare.

You could call it projection, since the most prominent examples of migrants overwhelming and destroying native cultures have almost entirely been white people colonizing everyone else. And their terror at being outnumbered is informed by the fear that they might be treated the way white colonists have treated the cultures they conquered and subjugated.

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7 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I think his popularity on the right is more to do with the way he's been able to highlight a lot of the hyperbole and hypocrisy of many far left arguments. His views do track pretty well along centre right lines, but in 2018 that would put him firmly in the Nazi camp.

You do know that Hilary Clinton would be center-right?  So when you talk about everyone being slightly centre right being classified as a Nazi, you are either being disingenuous or ignorant.  

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11 minutes ago, ants said:

You do know that Hilary Clinton would be center-right?  So when you talk about everyone being slightly centre right being classified as a Nazi, you are either being disingenuous or ignorant.  

Maybe HeartofIce meant the new right. Hillary was definitely center-right of the George Bush party, but the Republican party really doesn't seem to match that anymore. That's how I took it, anyway.

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On 1/1/2019 at 9:36 AM, lokisnow said:

In more cheerful news, the attacks on the robot scabs has finally started. _good!_

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/us/waymo-self-driving-cars-arizona-attacks.html

Hmm, I'm a big fan of driverless cars.  I believe it should long term be better for the environment than current systems and reduce accidents and all the hurts that come from them.  

These people do seem to be following in the Luddite tradition.  

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Mitt Romney: The president shapes the public character of the nation. Trump’s character falls short.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-the-president-shapes-the-public-character-of-the-nation-trumps-character-falls-short/2019/01/01/37a3c8c2-0d1a-11e9-8938-5898adc28fa2_story.html?utm_term=.73ae95b5703d

But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency.

Quote

To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.

 

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33 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Maybe HeartofIce meant the new right. Hillary was definitely center-right of the George Bush party, but the Republican party really doesn't seem to match that anymore. That's how I took it, anyway.

You're completely wrong. She's center right in European politics - like Angela Merkel - but she is far more leftist in American politics than any Republican for the last 50 years. 

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4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

You're not wrong, but this type of "both-sides"-ism obscures the fact that among the various narratives of this or that group being abused there are some with far more merit than others.
In fact, one of the few things you and I may agree on is the fact that the multiplication of such narratives is meant precisely to obscure this fact.

I do agree with you in that there has been a multiplication of such narratives, but I'm not sure how you would determine which ones of them have more merit than others. What one can do -- and in fact what various "experts" across the world have done for a few decades -- is to measure various parameters which are important to them and conclude that according to the values of the "experts", some groups are worse off than others. This bolstered the claims of these groups and resulted in a redistribution of resources in their direction (and therefore away from certain other groups), but with the side effect of both these "experts" and people with expertise in many related fields being reviled and despised by a significant fraction of the population. The reaction of the "experts" and those affiliated with them has been to call the people who despise them names, but it doesn't help: there is no divinely provided set of values that qualifies people to consider themselves oppressed.

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2 hours ago, Triskele said:

My skepticism of GOP Senators standing up to Trump in substantive ways is fairly bottomless after Flake's many disappointments, but I was already thinking that Romney could just maybe be different.  Like Flake, he obviously can't stand Trump and knows what a disaster he is.  But unlike Flake he faces nowhere near the same potential in Utah, both where he is unusually strong, and where Trump's support comes from a bit of a different kind of Republican than Arizona, and also because he's coming in after Trump got a significant rebuke in the midterm rather than having just won the Presidency.  

 

Romney might say some stuff but I doubt he does anything. I think he takes up Flake's mantel. 

That being said, he should be applauded for speaking out at the very least.

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