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176
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2 yr. ago

  • Damn, I can't wait to hear about all the things you're doing to try and actually end the abominable genocide against the people of Palestine. Meanwhile the rest of us are looking for ways to do that and also voting against the guy who promised to double-down and bring the violence home against immigrants.

    Pretending Trump's presidency wouldn't be objectively worse for all the causes leftists care about, even the ones (like Palestine) Harris isn't going to do shit about isn't taking a principled stand. It's hiding from what little power you have in the electoral system in order to keep whatever happens next off your conscience. And frankly, the Palestinians don't care about your conscience any more than the Hispanic Americans or trans kids.

  • So when Ukrainians try to push for closer alignment with the EU it's a Washington-backed color revolution and thus is no different than Russia rolling into the literal tanks.

    Like, even if you're not a Russian troll you're still adopting a conspiracy theory that completely ignores any agency the Ukrainian people have.

  • But only the specific subset of anarchists that I read about first in my early 20s! All the others are just like those fascists in the Judean People's Front!

  • Honestly I feel like trying to find the root of his bullshit and how specifically it's so radically off-base is actually kind of an important part of the project Otherwise the follower crowd will just claim that he's not being given a fair shake, when he was obviously talking about (insert a brief and misleading explanation of the circle thing that actually does try to make it make sense).

    That's what the whole narrative is built on, after al I'll.

  • I mean, if you want to trace it back that far you're talking about the bronze age Canaanites, and arguably through them the Phonecians and Carthaginians would be better successors than the Israelites. If that's the case then the land should either be under Tunisian administration (for maximum cultural continuity after the fall of Carthage during the Punic wars) or either Turkey or Italy for political continuity through right of successive conquests. Or maybe we want to go with one of the theories about just how far afield the Phonecian diaspora went and consider the state of Utah their most direct modern descendent.

    The ancient history of the levant is fascinating, but in the context of the current conflict over the nation of Israel it is relevant only in that it is a major part of Israeli nationalist mythmaking. If you want to actually trace who lived in the region thousands of years ago and where they ended up to determine who the "rightful" government should be you're going to end up in some really goofy places unless you already know what answer you want to get and are seeking justification rather than illumination. Hell, nationalism as a concept only dates back a few hundred years, and before then you're arguing about the competing claims of kings and empires through descent, conquest, oaths of fealty, and whatever else. Who ruled/owned/managed your land and who you were as a people were far less connected, and using that as a justification for modern government actions honestly sounds like they're out of actual justifications. It's just Putin ranting to Tucker Carlson about medieval maps for two hours while Russian troops shell Ukrainian cities.

  • I think the other important point to add is that evo psych in popular discourse is rarely used to explain alone. Instead it seems to always lead into the naturalistic fallacy as an explanation for why the world can't or shouldn't be kinder, more humane, or less authoritarian. Add on to this that the people making these arguments are usually pretty out of touch with the actual archaeological record about their supposed environment of evolutionary adaptiveness and it's not at all surprising that whatever legitimate insights it may offer are buried under a mountain of bullshit.

  • Honestly I think a lot of the worst evo psych takes don't even get as far as hypothesizing or evidence. They fail at the first hurdle of "identify something about the world". It's the classic Freudian error of never once asking "hey wait is everyone like this or is it just me?"

  • Honestly I feel like in this case it works out better. "Eat shit, Rene Magritte" is such a good line to have no context on.

  • Cheeky

    Jump
  • Horses were at least marginally less ridiculous before people got involved. Not quite to the same extent as dogs, but compare a steppe horse with a thoroughbred and you'll see that they're smaller and hardier. Much better equipped to live, slightly less able to carry fully armored people on their back.

  • Of course, some months later as fall approached, travellers saw stretched between the ruined pillars a banner proclaiming: Spirit Halloween Now Hiring!

  • How are you holding them accountable when one of them is still going to be in power? You're just sacrificing one of the few concrete mechanisms you have to actually make things better. Yeah, a Harris victory doesn't mean immediate victory in the fight against this atrocity, but a Trump election does mean defeat.

  • Actually it's vitally important if you're going to have an outdoor catgirl. Otherwise they'll decimate the local birdgirl population.

  • I got all the way down on my one knee and nothing short of the second coming is gonna move me from this spot

  • I'm sympathetic to the concept, but I think that the advantages that organized parties have in terms of coordination (e.g. people with broadly similar values and policy goals choosing one candidate to represent those goals to avoid splitting the vote and seeing someone antithetical to those shared goals elected) are sufficiently strong that you would just see the current primaries replaced immediately by a primary process run completely independent of government oversight and resources. I can't imagine that being good from a perspective of electoral legitimacy or reducing the influence of money in politics.

  • I feel like there's a "law as it currently exists" thing versus the ideal. The law as it currently exists makes it illegal to discriminate based on content. This has historically been an important vector for, say, allowing civil rights activists to send essays to be published in newspapers. But much as it was illegal to deny a gay couple their marriage license, it ought be somehow made illegal to spread damaging lies about trans people in order to stir up a hate campaign.

    In this case I'd say that 5 days fully paid suspension is probably an appropriate consequence for this rule-breaking, and could only be made more appropriate if it actually included tickets to spend those days someplace warmer and friendlier than that part of Canada and a knowing wink from the postmaster general.

  • I want to know when that report was filed. "I can't find my cat, therefore my Haitian neighbors stole it to eat" is the kind of statement dreamed up by the utterly deranged, unless the idea was already in the water supply because a vice presidential candidate was saying it in interviews ahead of a national debate.

  • A police report would mark a diversion from the usual pattern of these things where Trump surrogates talk a big game about the massive conspiriacies against them (and therefore against You, the hypothetical American voter) to the media, but if they ever end up in front of a court or a police report or something where lying may have actual consequences they back off hard. How many times did we hear about all the mountains of evidence they had of voter fraud in 2020, and how many of the resulting court cases include those same lawyers specifically saying "we do not allege voter fraud" when the judge asks about it.

  • Do you think he actively avoids those, or was this just the most convenient seat at the time?