General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)

glennmagusharvey

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/belaruss-lukashenko-says-there-can-be-nuclear-weapons-everyone-2023-05-29/

Belarus's Lukashenko says there can be 'nuclear weapons for everyone'

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that if any other country wanted to join a Russia-Belarus union there could be "nuclear weapons for everyone".

Oprah : car :: Lukashenko : nuke

fourteenwings

CUUUUBIX!!~

Big Nukes for Everyone

glennmagusharvey

wondering if i should post a video of a panel discussion with trans athletes

I kinda want to because it's a relevant follow-up to an earlier discussion

but said earlier discussion is fourteenwings and me arguing over it

lrdgck

If you guys want to do a follow-up to that discussion... go ahead, I'm pretty sure neither me nor Storm is gonna shame you.

glennmagusharvey

I'm just wondering whether I want to commit myself to the time and energy of arguing with him again.

Well, I'm just gonna post it anyway, will deal with the fallout, if any, later.

Stormtroper

I'm just wondering whether I want to commit myself to the time and energy of arguing with him again.

No need to wonder, I know for a fact you don't want to.
(Too late I guess.)

lrdgck

Anyways, it's been quite fun in here recently, since the Party pushed through a law that allows for a Special Commission to investigate practically anyone who looked at them funny. Obviously, it's supposed to be made of politicians, not judges or whoeverelse you'd expect to deliver judgement on people, and has very broad prerogatives. About the only thing it can't do is to demand a priest to break the seal of the confessional (the text of the law explicitly calls out this single exception), and can apply a period of inapplicability for public office (ranging from ten years to forever) on anyone it finds guilty of whatever it claims to investigate. Low-ranking Party members are pretty open in that it's supposed to do just that to the opposition leader (we've got elections coming this year).

lrdgck

Continuing the previous entry:

• The Party pushed through a law transparently designed to bar any bothersome opposition member from running in elections.
• Young wolves of the Party openly stated this is exactly the intent.
• The Prezzie signed off on it pretty much immediately despite it being pretty much fractally unconstitutional, of which he as a Doctor of Law must be perfectly aware.
• He technically speaking sent it then to the Constitutional Court, but it's already signed, so it's not like it matters unless the Court issues an opinion.
• The Constitutional Court is filled with Party plants who know perfectly well what a Party plant is supposed to be doing there.
• Despite that, the Court is locked in due to infighting between two factions of Party plants, which makes a negative opinion even less likely.
• Meaning, unless the Court issues an opinion, unless it is a negative opinion, unless it drops before the fun begins - note that this is three separate big ifs - they've got the green light to do as they please.
• About everyone with a shred of a sense of decency has called the Party out. Not like they care about opinions, but they might just care about, say, euromonies or American defense contracts.
• The Prezzie publicly claimed every and all of these people are bad and wrong.
• The Party didn't lift a finger, but the Prezzie, who is a Party plant but is also easy to crack under pressure, began to backtrack on his words.
• The Prezzie, who by Polish law can introduce bill proposals to the Parliament, has produced a slightly modified version which seems to kinda-sorta respond to the American demands.
• That is despite defending the old version so fervently.
• To replace the old version, Prezzie's version must pass through the Parliament. (And possibly the Constitutional Court.)
• The old version already passed through Parliament, and since Prezzie signed it, it's the law until Prezzie's version passes too. Which may happen in months and doesn't have to at all.

And something tells me shizzle's far from over. What a mess. You know what fellas, I know like half of you live in places where stuff like that already happened so perhaps I shouldn't, like, complain or something, but it's a curious ride to watch from a front row seat. And I've got a feeling it wasn't so blundering and pathetic then.

Stormtroper

That's awful, democracy backsliding anywhere is a tragedy everywhere.
I'm guessing it's not super-likely that somewhere else in the PiS they'll budge to external pressure?

fourteenwings

Yeah I mean we never really had a functioning democracy, so it's not like there was anything to feel sorrowful over to start with.

I guess since I'm here, it seems 40 women from here are stuck in* Oman under the Kafala system** and this issue was assigned like... $4m in funding two years ago at which point every single person involved stopped being held accountable for their actions.

So I mean, they obviously went to Oman for a fun, government funded vacation to "hold meetings with officials", and they were basically just like "Well they signed contracts and it's like, Omani culture so it's okay"????

**

In most situations, workers need their sponsor’s permission to transfer jobs, end employment, and enter or exit the host country. Leaving the workplace without permission is an offense that results in the termination of the worker’s legal status and potentially imprisonment or deportation, even if the worker is fleeing abuse.

lrdgck

I'm guessing it's not super-likely that somewhere else in the PiS they'll budge to external pressure?

There was that time when they wanted to silence an opposition-friendly TV station, but they miscalculated and didn't take into account the station was owned by an American company. A few Party attack dogs tried going after them on Twitter, but that was all the bark the Party gave once Washington spoke their mind on the issue.

(For comparison, another TV station, which used to be opposition-friendly but is owned by a Polish businessman, has over the last few years become oddly quiet about various Party antics.)

So, it's possible they will budge and then either act like nothing happened in hope nobody will remember, or barring that try to sell it as generously responding to popular demand. I mean, I said that young wolves of the Party said the intent is to go after opposition leadership, but they're not the ones who make decisions. I'd guess, those who actually make decisions in the Party, their intent was a bit like, drop a big, provocative, obviously authoritarian law to intimidate the opposition rather than eliminate. (Legal harassment by nevereding court calls is a threat in itself, whether or not they finally decide to slap a sentence on you.)

I guess they miscalculated again, in that they didn't expect it to have a rallying effect on the opposition, but we'll see. The opposition plans a demonstration on 4th and I'm mildly curious how much will come out of it.

Anyways, I don't have much hope for an actual opposition victory in this autumn's elections, but who knows.

I guess since I'm here, it seems 40 women from here are stuck in* Oman under the Kafala system** and this issue was assigned like... $4m in funding two years ago at which point every single person involved stopped being held accountable for their actions.

We're not yet there, but I trust the Party is working on it. (Also, I'm wondering if there's any sense of "it's not worth it" on the matter of going to work there, surely the people must know stuff like that happens.)

fourteenwings

on the matter of going to work there

To be blunt; people around here can be amazingly uneducated about such things.

Unrelatedly the fact that this is the season where Donald Trump defends the COVID vaccine (but apparently not vaccine mandates*) and DeSantis Supporters take up the position of like, genuinely believing in "Died Suddenly" conspiracy theories makes this somehow an even bigger joke than the 2016 Republican Primary.

Anyways, I look forward to getting lots of free HD pictures of Alpha Tan Mike Pence for a year or so.

Also ngl seeing conservatives pick up "I'm offended" rhetoric is kind of amazing...?

I hope I don't sound like I've stopped being a conservative but honestly the people who claim to be "conservatives" all seem really bad at doing it*, and in fact if you stick to your beliefs for over a year at a time you're the one who ends up getting tossed across political spectrums.

(Ignore my use of the ADL as a source in establishing my conservative bonafides, it was the most convenient tl;dr I could find).

*Except, I guess, when it comes to anti-gay-sentiment.

Stormtroper

All that goes to show what we already knew: the only reasonable political position to hold is smug centrism.

glennmagusharvey

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision resulted in the following meme:

fourteenwings

The most recent Trump case is ridiculously clear and members of the Republican party -especially those running against him in the Republican primary- choosing to specifically not nip at him over this is both obvious and extremely stupid.

Literally the only person I can think of who has said anything who wasn't already rabidly anti-Trump to begin with is like, Ann Coulter.

Also I didn't want to say this at all ever but this "Pride Month" I learned why we need 'gay pride'. The two are very different, as far as I'm concerned, and the drama that resulted in this epiphany is really way too obscurely twitter for me to bother explaining.

ngl I personally avoided learning this lesson for several years because "conservatives are super cool with gay people and gay people don't need that much aside from basic acknowledgement anyways".

Anyways, I've started to think that Donald Trump has this thing where he breaks lots of rules and as long as you believe he's justified in breaking said rules and norms because of "Them"* due to a giant "Us vs. Them" ideology, then you basically just brush a lot of Not Good nonsense aside.

I don't think it's super worth it and unless DeSanctis can get out from under that thumb the Republican party will just continue sort of being dumb, and this isn't in a "This makes Democrats better" way because man those guys suck.

*haha this works both for "Us vs. Them" mentality and "They/Them"s.

fourteenwings

How I used to feel about the gay cake debate: "Come on guys, you won marriage equality. Leave the religious cake guys alone, there aren't too many of them and they can do whatever they want."

How I'm starting to feel about it now: "Kick them where it hurts because they'd do the same if they had the chance."

lrdgck

You got me to respond to the previous post.

Anyways, I've started to think that Donald Trump has this thing where he breaks lots of rules and as long as you believe he's justified in breaking said rules and norms because of "Them"* due to a giant "Us vs. Them" ideology, then you basically just brush a lot of Not Good nonsense aside.

Yeah, well, I'm not throwing around names because that's not my point, but this line of thinking is, like, considered an important factor in (*check Storm's post for spelling*) democracy backsliding. Rule of law is not hip, it's boring and bureaucratic and slow. Not as fun as hanging people on lampposts. And then you get a bunch of folks into power who are fine with breaking lots of rules as long as that's justified. Sometimes it turns out they define "justified" not quite as you pictured they would, sometimes it is just them stealing public money.

fourteenwings

I haven't done enough looking around but I'm disappointed in the lack of "See? Russia truly is the future!!!" posts from conservatives.

(All I'm saying here is that conservatives will ally themselves with Russia despite them clearly being in the wrong as long as they're owning the libs in some way, not discussing the issue at hand).

fourteenwings

I remember a time when a certain segment of Florida-esque conservatives got in a tizzy about banning flavored vaping pens, even though it was obviously the right call in every way (I didn't realize it at the time, I just thought it was weird they were sperging so hard).

That's the whole story.

Otherwise, I really dislike this sort of argument where you're like "free speech is under attack" when the person who said the thing clearly meant something very very bad.

In addition, realizing that illegal (and legal sometimes) immigration is a problem will never mean you can reverse-emigrate certain people, so people who act as if once the borders are closed, a country will revert to being 100% it's indigenous population, really confuse me.

fourteenwings

You know, these anti-war types who abhor the military industrial complex can't seem to explain how Russia invading Ukraine is America's fault.

lrdgck

You know, these anti-war types who abhor the military industrial complex can't seem to explain how Russia invading Ukraine is America's fault.

Can't seem? They're, like, droning on and on about how NATO bullied poor innocent Russia. Russia just, like, flipped out in, like... pass me that spliff, dude... self-defence or shit, dude.

----

Some interesting links:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1498692916511924232.html - kinda-sorta related. I think that Eastsplaining dude was posting it at some point.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/christine-emba-masculinity-new-model/ - should be readable, if not, incognito mode is sometimes enough to get around the lock.

https://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/ - technically it's about a specific issue described in a specific book, but I found it a good layman-level entry into some more esoteric parts of economics.

fourteenwings

It's kind of amazing how conservatives lost hold of the Brandon thing.

I mean Biden might be senile but he sure is going to ride Donald Trump's insanity to second term.

Frankly as bad as guys on YouTube are, the last person I'd trust with a "roadmap to masculinity" is a woman who writes for WaPo. However, this article might be a bit annoying, but it was overall surprisingly decent.

I mean, it's literally a ripoff of several Christina Hoff Sommers books (from 10 years ago!!!), and extremely overly long, but liberals being less crazy is good! I don't like how liberals are still all like "Well there's a problem but if we fix it then the men might go all Ken in Barbie 2023 and destroy us all again", but acknowledging there is a problem is a good first step.

a growing number of women are choosing to create families by themselves, with the help of reproductive technology

I don't even care if women choose to have their own babies via artificial insemination* but this framing is amazingly gross.

*Well, actually, there's the part where they kill all the unchosen embryos, still not over that.

Much of the content in the online men’s space is misogyny masquerading as being simply pro-male, advocating a return to a strict hierarchy in which a particular kind of man deserves to rule over everyone else.

She's not wrong about this? Even mild right-leaning figures can take stereotypes about women from way too long ago and try to make them seem true.

For all its humor, “Bronze Age Mindset” is unquestionably racist, violent and homophobic. Its definition of masculinity is predicated on nihilism, barbarism and the subjugation of others.

I wish I could be like "she's putting this book out of context" but honestly despite BAP clearly being absolutely* a homosexual whose type is blond frat guys*, she's not wrong.

*There's not evidence of this but come on.
*Literally all he ever posts.

In 2014, President Barack Obama announced the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, a $200 million program meant to improve the lives of at-risk boys and men of color. The pushback came immediately: More than 1,000 women signed an open letter criticizing the program for not including girls.

Hilarious.

It is harder to be a man today, and in many ways, that is a good thing

Not for the sad men.

Anyways I guess related to this, I feel like a lot of the people I thought were "The People" to listen to in 2019-2021 just fell off at some point when I specifically was like "Well uh yeah I don't want to listen to this anymore it's kind of dumb" and now they're in a place where I feel like "Come on you guys are you okay???"

glennmagusharvey

Ken in Barbie 2023

I have yet to watch that movie, and I probably won't for at least the foreseeable future (nor Oppenheimer, for that matter; neither movie particularly interests me).

Though I know that a number of right-wing personalities have hated on it. And the ways they've done so has been meme-worthy apparently.

Don't make me watch it solely for the sake of understanding internet political discourse.



Anyway, my first take in response to that article was the following:

* The various qualities of personality aren't intrinsically female or male, even though we've been taught (whether explicitly or implicitly) to recognize them as such, as various archetypal/stereotypical social roles.
* In order to make better behavior appealing to young men, probably the most important thing (I can first think of, at least) is that we as a society have good male role models.

fourteenwings

When I heard about the Ken plot in Barbie I was vaguely disappointed nit for RW reasons but because I thought the Mattel executives would be the bad guys. I thought America Ferrera's character would be the pseudo-main character (with Barbie befriending her and making her perspective on life better).

Also I thought it would be an all ages movie but the trailer had a lot of dumb PG13 jokes.

Personally I'm looking forward to Barbie - A Touch of Magic instead.

Stormtroper

Jordan Peterson too always struck me as much better (before he became literally crazy anyways) than any the manosphere grifters that preceded or succeeded him. A bunch of his stuff is obvious and some other is obviously wrong, but on the whole I didn't think it was a negative influence, at least from what I saw of him. His fanbase absolutely was a negative influence tho.

Take BAP’s laughable yet weirdly compelling depiction of the masculine ideal, attractive in part because of its transgressiveness: “Imagine a Mitt Romney, but different … a Romney who was actually capable of acting like he looks.” This Übermensch is a modern-day Alcibiades, as one admiring reviewer of BAP’s “Bronze Age Mindset” puts it: “a piratical man of adventure who attempts to engineer a coup in the United States, sleeps with Vladimir Putin’s wife, and then dies fighting the U.S. empire alongside wild tribesmen in Afghanistan.”

Is it me or is this paragraph incomprehensible.

fourteenwings

before he became literally crazy anyways

Yeah I really have no idea what happened there, I blame excessive twitter usage (or the aftereffects of his mysterious Russian rehab treatment).

is this paragraph incomprehensible

No, but I read a lot of this liberal gobbledygook to start with. Overall it isn't saying much though.

glennmagusharvey

Stormtroper wrote: »

Take BAP’s laughable yet weirdly compelling depiction of the masculine ideal, attractive in part because of its transgressiveness: “Imagine a Mitt Romney, but different … a Romney who was actually capable of acting like he looks.” This Übermensch is a modern-day Alcibiades, as one admiring reviewer of BAP’s “Bronze Age Mindset” puts it: “a piratical man of adventure who attempts to engineer a coup in the United States, sleeps with Vladimir Putin’s wife, and then dies fighting the U.S. empire alongside wild tribesmen in Afghanistan.”

Is it me or is this paragraph incomprehensible.

There is a certain point when internet social commentary jargon-speak becomes just too much to infer even from context and IMO this happened here lol

fourteenwings

"Joe Biden graduated 76th out of a cass of 85" maybe we put too much stock in this hypersmart/hypereducated thing.

Then again I'm guessing the smarter kids ended up super rich and out of the public eye so if they ever had a kid as insane as Hunter Biden, nobody would care.

fourteenwings

The currently ongoing Lauren Boebert thing and that popular new song by that one guy reminds me of this article.

Conservatism as an Oppositional Culture

[...]the rise of an “oppositional culture,” that is, an active rejection of the rules and norms of mainstream American society.

Modern conservatives find themselves in a similar position with regards to Stop the Steal and other right-wings scams. As part of the low status tribe, they are driven by resentment towards those above them. This has become the emotional core of much political activism. Within an oppositional culture, we see low IQ members of the community engaging in inexcusable behavior, and high IQ members ignoring such conduct when they’re not enabling it.

Rather than taking a consistent stand against the cult of victimhood, populism can be understood as conservatives trying to join it.

glennmagusharvey

I could point to various problems with this author's portrayal of the "left" but (1) I'm on my phone and (2) I'm lazy and (3) it's beside the point anyway.