Grumpyoldcommunist - Post-Apocalyptic Commumism

This tendency always fascinated me. There's a guy in my neighborhood with a big sign on his fence claiming that Obama passed a certain law making propaganda legal, as though Obama (or any ruler) would want to make sure his naked seizure of power was legalized prior to doing it? Such a strange mix of total paranoia combined with a childish belief in the law as inviolable.

i’ve been thinking about a bit in a recent Shaun video, where he has a short clip taken from a terf or anti-vax or wayfair truther rally, i don’t remember which (sort of the point, these groups all bleed into each other), where someone was claiming that the mRNA vaccine was a plot by transhumanists to alter people’s DNA so they wouldn’t be human anymore and thus, under the law, they would no longer have human rights.

and, like, the major takeaway here is just “oh, these people are crazy crazy,” but i can’t help but be kind of astounded at the logic regardless. like, the existence of legal rights predates the discovery of DNA. your rights as a person do not at all depend on your genome. nevermind that the casual conflation of DNA with the true essence of a living organism is a fundamental misreading of science; if you could magically remove all the DNA from someone’s body, they would still (in the brief interval before they died horribly) have human rights! no court anywhere on Earth would entertain the argument that someone’s legal status as a person is dependent on a DNA test.

and obviously there are much more salient objections to this whole line of reasoning, which is purely emotive “technology bad” nonsense rhetoric, but like… do they think that if they trick someone into standing next to a strong gamma-ray source, they have the legal right to murder them??

Kids are dumb and will say weird shit; of they hear this from their parents, what's the context? Is this a case of genuine conviction or edgy lower-class humor? For all the fervor over Muslims, I've yet to see any investigative journalism over how Muslims in Europe actually raise their kids to interact with society at large, and whether they use homeschooling, etc to their advantage like fundamentalists in the US. There also seems to be no concerted effort from even the right-wingers to attack Islam as an ideology/belief system anymore, which is a shame.

Even preschoolers are radicalizing in Belgium “They threaten to murder ‘infidels’, slice their necks, call classmates pigs”

A recently started initiative “Network Islam-experts” records issues of radicalized students. Since 2016 there have been 481 cases of schools who encountered ‘problems’. Today for the first time a case-file was made public involving toddlers.

An East-Flemishs school network made an internal report named “indoctrination among toddlers”, it details problematic behavior:

“Citing Arabic verses during playtime, refusing to come to class because it doesn’t fit their beliefs, not coming to school on Friday for ‘religious reasons’. A girl refuses to give a boy a hand or to stand in line near boys.”

Sadly these are the least frightening cases:

A preschooler already has a ‘friend’ in Morocco she will be married to later. A child threatens to murder ‘infidels’. Calling non-Muslim students ‘pigs’. Making the motion of slicing someones neck.”

After conversation with parents it was concluded they support these actions and found them funny.

1, 2, 3

"My enemies are dehumanizing me by calling me a remorseless monster. Time to prove them wrong by dehumanizing them as a justification of cruelty towards them."

They REALLY don’t like the NPC meme. Keep pushing it! Maybe they’ll stop fucking calling us “Russian bots”.

Attention: Tumblr has Alex Jonesed the old Right Smarts account. Please follow this new account. Thank You!

I'm not sure why anyone would seriously mourn the death of Ted Kazcynski, when both a) his basic critique of technology is stupidly, fundamentally flawed to anyone who thinks about it for five minutes and b) plenty of morally palatable and effective enviormentalist protestors exist. But nobody's making any "Jessica Reznicek did nothing wrong" memes.

I'm not a native to the rationalist part of the internet, but it seems like that idea's gotten a lot more popular since Scott Alexander created his idea of the Archipelago. It strikes me as the kind of "liberal defeatist" politics that a lot of rationalists seem to share: we should tolerate difference and let people choose their communities, but universal values don't exist or are impossible/not worth it to establish, so the best we can do is create as many cultural islands as possible and let God/Moloch/citizen choice sort it out.

OK, why do so many political and fiction writers seem enamored with this idea of breaking the world into little micro-statelets?  I think the idea is that it’s nice to have your own law shared with people who agree with you, it seems like a massive punt on the actual political problems of the day unless you live in total isolation from others.

I see this shit and I can’t help but wonder if these people think of law on purely an aesthetic level or something.

I'm certainly not a Hamas supporter, but the idea that Israel has ever been interested in working towards a peaceful 2-state solution (and that their relation-building with Saudi Arabia has anything to do with that) is laughable.

Israelis may disapprove of Netanyahu, but from the polling data I've seen, it has more to do with his attempted subversion of democracy than his treatment of Palestine. So the idea that popular opinion in Israel was about to result in a sudden relaxation of the political and economic repression of the Palestinians (if only those no-goodniks in Hamas hadn't ruined it for the rest of them! Ah well, maybe we can try again in 50 years) is bullshit.

Israel (it's voters, state, and institutions) has had decades to do something to end the cycle, and they are indeed the ONLY party that can end this cycle. If the Palestinians' only choices are: 1. Give up and accept total defeat on Israel's terms or 2. Rage impotently and drag a bunch of innocents down into hell with you out of spite, maybe Israel should consider offering them a better set of choices?

Obviously Hamas actions are abhorrent and the rise in antisemitism is uncalled for. What is the proper the response to 75yrs of apartheid though? Something has to be done about that or his cycle will never cease.

So you came from the post in which I explicitly named three organizations working for a two-state solution. And didn’t think… to look into… their proposals for a two-state solution…

As a reminder, before Hamas’s attack, Israel was working on normalizing peaceful relations with Saudi Arabia. That’s dead in the water because Hamas broke a ceasefire and killed a thousand Jewish civilians.

Before Hamas’s attack, there were massive, frequent, and often daily protests among the Israeli public, speaking out against an administration comprised of anti-Palestinians. Those are on hold now, because a thousand Jewish civilians were killed, and the country is at war. But Netanyahu’s coalition of asswipes is built like a house of cards, and they’ll suffer in the next election. That much is clear.

Hamas wasn’t looking to gain territory, win, or free Palestine on October 7th. Israel has never lost a war in its modern history, and it has overcome far worse odds than a couple thousand terrorists. There’s no feasible way for Hamas to have won. They broke the ceasefire and killed civilians anyway. Why? Why waste those lives and those resources, knowing that Israel would retaliate against Gazans?

Because Hamas looked around and saw something that horrified them. They saw Arab nations, once their allies, walking away from the idea of killing millions of Jews in favor of normalization and peace with Israel. They saw the citizens of Israel, rallying in unprecedented numbers for peace and democracy. They saw Fatah, their Palestinian enemies since 2007, ready to come back to the bargaining table for a peaceful two-state resolution.

Hamas broke a ceasefire for a media ploy. They did it, knowing that it would stop the normalization process between the Saudis and Israelis. They did it, knowing that it would bring an abrupt halt to Israeli protests. They did it, knowing that Israel would retaliate, and that the world would be watching as Hamas put Palestinian civilians in the line of fire and blamed it on Israel. They were looking to propagandize a dying movement, and friend, it seems like you bought into it.

Something does have to be done about Israeli’s treatment of Palestinians. Something does have to happen to end this cycle of violence. And plenty of things were being done about it, in the Knesset, on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But Hamas considers peace without genocide to be a failure. Peace without genocide leaves Hamas out of a job. So they put a stop to it, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives.

And you don’t gotta take that from me. Ask them. They aren’t trying to hide it, they’ve been saying it all month. It’s in their founding charter.

This seems like one of those trends that will come to define politics a few years on down the line. Racial tension is nothing new in the US, but this kind of gender clash has no historical precedent, at least to my knowledge. Someone on reddit once joked that the future of politics was the (implied nonstraight, nonwhite, liberal/leftist, feminist, etc) Tumblr party losing national elections to the (implied straight, white, rightist, anti-liberal and anti-feminist) 4chan party, and they're probably right. This is what happens when we focus on gender instead of class.

Most Popular Posts of 2018, and what that says about 2019

These are my most popular original posts of last year. You may notice a theme:

Why men bottle up their feelings - “Men need to get in touch with their feelings,” they say, right up until they do.

On the play “Straight White Men” - Or how being the ally you’re told to be makes you disliked by the people you’re supposed to be supporting.

Dirty Sock Sexuality - When the sexuality of young males is portrayed as gross, everybody suffers.

We Built an Incel Factory - A model of dirty sock sexuality appears in the wild. 

What if Sex Ed helped boys get laid? - A solution to dirty sock sexuality.

Pick your man myth, pick your misery - When fear and myth drives a woman from one set of abusers to another. 

The dumbest thing I’ve ever done - In which I am the dirty sock and waste hours upon hours of a therapist’s time. 

Cunnilingus class is cancelled until further notice - Nobody wants to learn from someone who actively loathes them, and sex-positive feminists will never change male behavior without recognizing that.

“Entitled” isn’t a catch-all for men who do bad things - Incels aren’t entitled, they hate themselves. 

Special mention: The help-to-prison pipeline - A trans man discovers that the women tasked with helping vulnerable men fear and blame them, with predictable results.  

The pattern here is that all of my top posts are about vulnerable men and boys. Specifically, how they are given from people who see them mostly as threats to be mitigated, not individuals who want growth, love, and success just like anyone else. Models for men fall into the bitter MRA whine, the anachronistic trad, or the pop-feminist “good man” schtick that sees men’s behavior only through the lens of what it accomplishes for women. There must be a way forward that allows for self-advocacy and self-worth but still respects others and I don’t think any of these models get it right. These posts poked around the edges, seeking to define the contours of the problem. In 2019, I hope to explore these themes more.

Thank you to my readers for your support in 2018!

It's hard to look at senior politicians like McConnel or Pelosi and conclude that experienced politicians are somehow any more resistant to lobbyists than freshmen. Fundamentally Congress relies on lobbyists because the government has to interface with the private sector at some point, and certain private interests can make or break the fortunes of entire states. Even Bernie will jump when Lockheed Martin (a major employer in Vermont) tells him to. But this list is definitely a good starting place.

What sort of reforms would you suggest if you think term limits for Congress would be bad/more corrupt? I don't see how it would be any more corrupt than how things currently are. It's too late for me to think too in depth right now on it, but I feel like it would be harder for lobbyists to sink their teeth into a politician if they can only serve a maximum of X years. People that can just be voted in every single election would be more likely to be corrupt imo.

And how do you feel about term limits for the supreme court?

On the contrary, it is much easier for lobbyists to sink their teeth into new members of congress. New members of congress who want to survive have a strong need for legislative information and institutional experience; professional lobbyists have both, and are very eager to build relationships with the new lawmakers who need it. This is why there's an event attended by all new members of congress which is basically a convention led by lobbyists and business executives. Term limits do mean lobbyists have to create new relationships more often, but they're also the easiest type of relationship to make.

Grose, et. al. (2022): "Our survey reveals that lobbyists in states with term limits reported meetings [with legislators] in social settings more frequently than lobbyists in states without term limits (e.g., 79% of lobbyists in term-limits states met a legislator at a coffee shop and 65% in states with no term limits; p≤:01)."

I have a long list of ideas for reforming congress but if we're talking about addressing corruption specifically:

Ban members of congress, their spouses, and their senior staffers from owning individual stocks, instead requiring them to keep all of their money in pre-approved mutual or index funds while in office.

Restrict members of congress from accepting suspicious outside payments, like high-paid speeches at corporate events.

Lifelong ban on lobbying for former members of congress, along with public disclosures of their income in the years after leaving office. (Doing this effectively would also require expanding our definition of what counts as lobbying).

Completely overhaul our anti-revolving door policies and lobbying regulations to address ethics and corruption directly (this could be a long list in itself).

Turn the Office of Congressional Ethics into an independently-funded organization with authority over both chambers of congress. Further empower ethics committees as well.

Expand independent congressional organizations who can replace the role of lobbyists in providing policymakers with important legislative information (CBO, CRS, GAO, etc.)

Strengthen truth-in-testimony rules so that people providing testimony to congress have to disclose their institutional conflicts of interest.

Pay congressional staffers better, encourage their unionization efforts, and provide congressional offices with the resources necessary to conduct their own research.

(There is also a large and unambiguous body of evidence suggesting that paying legislators themselves better reduces corruption, but this is such an extremely unpopular idea that I don't really waste time advocating for it)

calling human rights and liberties “bourgeois liberties” doesn’t actually devalue them.

I first encountered the idea of "pay politicians more to reduce corruption" in college in the context of economic development in the global south. IIRC, there is evidence that this is true.

The problem is that in a liberal/capitalist economy, what people describe as "bribes" or "corruption" are part and parcel of the system of governance, as much as taxation or lawsuits. We can ban all the symptoms of this relationship that we like (steak dinners, exceptionally unethical agreements, outright fraud/collusion) but it isn't going to change the fact that if you want political power in Texas or Montana, you are going to have to satisfy the largest and most powerful of your constituents- oil/gas and ranchers, respectively.

Anyway now that all that dress drama has faded: members of congress are underpaid, and creating a less corrupt congress means paying them and their employees more (while banning all sources of outside income and making them divest from individual stocks).

As a separate matter, future pay raises beyond the new standard should be indexed to median wage growth- their incomes won’t grow unless their constituents’ income grows