Everyone has a second full time job being mad at the government now
MSc Aquatic and Fish Biology, Hólar University. Interested in Phenotypic plasticity, eco-evo-devo feedbacks, and long-term effects of climate change on species
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Everyone has a second full time job being mad at the government now
I don't understand this sentiment. Is it because SARS-COV-2 is still in the population? It's endemic now, it's gonna be 'going around' forever. Would you still say we are currently in the 100+ year H1N1 pandemic, otherwise known as Spanish flu, because the disease is endemic in humans?
for a guy who spends as much time as he does arguing with socialists you'd think he'd know more about 1848
This website is so fascinating. Where, in all of my posts, have I supported the Democratic party? I hate the Democrats man. They suck so bad.
I don't support the Democratic Party? Wha...? I was making a joke at the expense of Matt Ygelsiasis?
I think this is where the vast majority of the meat in pro-family policy is. You're not going to convince people who don't want to have children to have them, and you shouldn't want to anyway.
*Interview with President Trump after nuclear war* "Mr President, tens of millions of Americans have died today in this horrific war. What do you have say to the nation in this time of crisis?" Trump: "Well, that still means hundreds of millions are alive, doesn't it? Stop being such a downer"
As always, Trump remains arguably the most unintentionally hilarious person in the world. He truly MEANS this. He really thinks it's a great point!
Listen he's undefeated in banter okay. You can't defeat Stirling logic like this. It's impossible.
In a stunning announcement from the Oval Office, President Trump reveals that he is dead, that we’re all dead. God has abandoned us and the place we thought was the world is actually hell. We go live now to Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room,
I would define Ygelsiasism as the habit of imagining an account criticizing an imaginary voter for their imaginary policy positions, and then declaring that said made up scenario means something for The Left™
it is interesting that Yglesias makes all of his arguments adopting the stance of an entirely hypothetical moderate voter whose opinions he himself does not share, but when pressed on the issue uses himself as a proxy for the opinions which he surely does not hold himself.
I'll just end by saying there's a reason most Christians in America aren't leftists, despite Jesus being a very "leftist-like" figure (in some ways) in the New Testament.
I'm not stupid, I know religion isn't going away. I just think we should be concerned that non-evidence-based beliefs are spreading like wildfire through our society and do our best to discourage it.
And by the way, I see this all the time in secular communities too. That discourse about how Public Defenders are bad and we should just spiritually "know" who's guilty and have them killed via lunch mob? Yeah.
Of course religious people can do good things and be inspired by their beliefs to do good. I never claimed otherwise. I said that superstitious (I suppose faith-based is probably a better term to use) thinking is harmful and often leads to fascist adjacent beliefs and actions.
No, I've been very specifically *not* talking about your specific beliefs, I've been speaking generally about the power of magical thinking and how it is harmful.
A lot of Marxists fall into this trap where they seek to find common ground with lumpenprole fascists merely because they're exploited. And on the other side, liberals do the opposite, arguing that if the shop owner is trans then they'll treat the trans worker better, despite all evidence.
You could be the nicest person in the world as a capitalist and you would still be exploiting workers by extracting surplus value. You could be the poorest most desperate worker and still be a piece of shit.
The idea that being a proletarian makes you a "good" person and bourgeois a "bad" person is missing the point. It's not about their individual moral ethics, it's about the broader socio-economic situation.
Also it's really irksome when people use class analysis to try and make individualistic moral judgments? Class analysis doesn't say anything about morality. It just says that a minority of people own the MoP and extract surplus value and the majority sell their labor power for a wage.
You know, I know Marx is often dry and long winded but it would be good for Marxists to... Actually read what he said lol.
I'm speaking in very broad strokes here to make a point. If a worker is a violent bigot, then they're a bad person. That doesn't erase the fact they're economically exploited. Being a lumpenprole is bad because they're serving their own exploitation by being reactionary.
At this point, the post isn't even a rejection of class reductionism, it's a rejection of class analysis as a whole. Also fwiw, lawyers aren't inherently bourgeois? Most lawyers don't own the means of production. They're part of the professional class, like doctors.
The whole point of "you have more in common with X worker from X country than with the owner of the X business in your country" is to acknowledge the economic parallels of workers. It isn't meant to suggest that "all workers are good people" We have a word for reactionary workers: lumpenproles.
Huh? This who discourse only makes sense if you think that "proletarians have more in common with each other than with the bourgeoisie" literally means "all proletarians get along and have the same opinions" No Marxist has ever said that as far as I can tell.
Yeah New Atheism had... Issues, to say the least.
Nobody who is not a nazi has every enjoyed reading Mein Kampf. Of course it's hateful and morally repulsive and all that, but it's also terrible just as a piece of writing, basically a transcribed and only loosely edited stream of consciousness rant. It's an interminable slog and really rather dull.
The United States had one of the worst COVID outcomes in the entire world from a body count standpoint. Anyone who argues with a straight face we were TOO cautious is an unserious imbecile.
I got my dog from an antivaxx breeder who told us puppies had “herd immunity” to rabies.
Saw this exchange on Reddit about Saw Gerrera in Andor and Rogue One and haven’t been able to stop laughing since.
I do think we should have gotten more Saw content in ANDOR S2, but specifically what I wanted was an episode about the formal creation of the Rebel Alliance where he breaks from the united front because he's incapable of sharing leadership with anybody else.
Ok, but it's pretty funny how basically every piece of media about this guy has consistently portrayed him a paranoid, reckless loose canon incapable of leading a functional movement, and people keep being like "Ok but where's the REAL Saw Gerrera?"
my dad is a Trump 2016-blank 2020-??? 2024 voter and this exact Gaza messaging would get him
So even if you weren't told explicitly not to criticize Democrats, you're still less likely to do so because they're paying you. it's basic human behavior. Don't rock the boat, so to speak.
of money will... Change your perspective on the people giving you the money.
But I'm less interested in what Chorus *says* than I am the effect its existence and the money paid to creators has on their own conscious and subconscious positions. Even if Chorus was the most transparent, honest institution ever, it wouldn't change the fact that receiving large amounts
Well that's the thing about dark money, we don't know. The contract does say that they need to run their ideas for interviews by Chorus, but like so much of our politics, presumably much is left unsaid with only a nudge and a wink, or explained in a private communication.
I'm not saying we don't need a messaging apparatus, I'm saying that apparatus shouldn't be funded by dark money super PACs who may or may not lobby Democrat pundits and content creators to say, idk, lay off criticism of Israel. Or idk, not defend trans people.
I'm not gonna be holier than thou (no pun intended haha) and say I've never engaged in superstitious thinking or anything. But it's something you have to check on, because if you are willing to suspend rationality in one circumstance you can do it in any.
I'm not going to go up to you and tell you "your God doesn't exist prayer doesn't work haha you're stupid" because that's dumb and ineffective. But I'm also not going to pretend like religious beliefs are morally neutral and a personal choice that has no effect on your way of thinking.
Being against fascism requires being against esotericism and superstition, because those are critical components to fascist indoctrination. There's a reason all the left wing antivaxxers are all QAnon MAGA freaks now, you know what I mean?
There's a reason Marx described religion as the Opiate of the Masses... I'm not really interested in hearing about how *your* brand of left wing paganism is super based or whatever, when the American electorate are by and large, superstitious morons who are easily misled by fascist bullshit.
Whether or not huge swaths of left activists believe in something incorrect has zero bearing on... Anything? If 99.9% of leftists believed there was a giant unicorn in the sky, that wouldn't mean that there is. Religious practices and superstitious thinking cause material harm. Blasphemy doesn't.
Ultimately the problem with this is the same as with everything involving the Dems at the national level: they come across as out of touch elites who hate the general public and especially their voter base.
I'm already negatively polarized against the Dem Party in general as a lefty, so maybe I'm not the target for this, but I can't imagine that "Democrats are paying influencers to push the party line" sits well with the public either.
But that's par for the course with electoral politics, I suppose. It just really bothers me how defensive and condescending they were when confronted. And how they lied to defend it, too. It makes it look shady.
Well I'm primarily worried about disclosure, yeah. If they hadn't been so secretive about it, and been so defensive when the expose came out, I wouldn't have nearly as big of an issue with it. I'm still concerned about the potential for soft influence, even subconsciously
And you know how I know I'm right on this? Because every video I've seen from people in this group, team, whatever has been the same: Extremely defensive, insincere, and frankly sneeringly condescending.
Like, it's pretty unlikely someone is going to take money from someone and go "Thanks for the money! Now here's why I hate you". Even if subconsciously, you become indebted to them and are going to be less willing to criticize them.
Okay but the problem is, Even someone with the best of intentions who is willing to criticize their own party is going to be less critical when they are receiving money from their party. Even if they say that you can say whatever you want.
It can do good work and still be a dark money group though. It's a project funded primarily by mega donors connected to the DNC where the money's destination is not disclosed.
The thing that often blows by is not only is crime the lowest its been for any non-senior citizen's life, it has been roughly that safe for *fifteen years*. We have had fifteen years of steady, low crime while the irrational freakout over crime has relentlessly grown to a fevered, disordered pitch.
Granted, a lot of the New Atheist people did end up becoming right-wing anti feminist weirdos, so... It seems very few people are committed to a sincere, antitheist position.
Like, I don't think it's a coincidence that the backlash to Edgy Internet Atheists™ came as Christians tried to rebrand as "countercultural" And now you have a bunch of Gen-Z kids talking about how cool and subversive it is to be a Christian tradwife. No! It was never cool!
Have those people not been completely vindicated though? People like TJ Kirk were sounding the alarm on Republicans being insane christofascists back in the 2010s, and look where we are now. I feel we owe the Edgy Internet Atheists™ an apology. They were completely correct, despite being cringe
What if they not letting Trump speak because he had a Reverse Fetterman Stroke and hes woke now
and they're saying, they're saying landlords extract value parasitically. parasitically. para-sit-ic-ly. we're going to be looking into the landlords very strongly and we're going to be redistributing the ownership. redistribution, such an interesting word
Someone please kill me right now.
In need Zohran to give Silwa a job in a new department called "the Committee to Save Gotham" or some shit. And just let him cook up his ideas and if he has a funny one like this, Mayor Zohran does it.
One reason for Democrats to ditch their reflex to say "You have a point" to the other side is the right wing hasn't had a good point about anything in most of our lifetimes
it’s kind of annoying how complaining about transplants has become the new hipster xenophobia
Cultivate within yourself the utmost possible contempt for the far right and only then will their behavior become comprehensible and predictable to you. They’re animals masquerading as people
And even under W, when The Greatest Generation FDR liberals had begun dying off, the memory was still strong enough that his attempt to privatize Social Security was a huge public relations disaster that helped end his effective Presidency early
...to the extent that the GOP Presidents after FDR mostly didn't challenge the New Deal consensus rhetorically - even Reagan ran as a disaffected New Dealer who sold his flavor of conservativism, absurdly, as the true inheritor of FDR's legacy. Only Goldwater openly challenged it (and got stomped)
the thing that was terrifying to them about FDR wasn't so much the policies themselves (which were, of course, far short of socialism or communism) but that they were incredibly popular and lead to electoral dominance until FDR's death (and even somewhat after)
Just saw a video of Bill Maher calling Mamdani a “straight up communist” and I continue to be struck by the depiction of policies associated with the New Deal Order as far-left extremism, which goes along with a refusal to depict Trump’s unprecedented authoritarian actions as far-right extremism.
rip to everyone whos become delusional after talking to chatgpt but im built different. like actually different. according to chatgpt im some kind of god. the one who decides
This is America God damn it
I've said a number of times that when studying adversaries, it has to be people who want to learn more about them to hate them more effectively because you're otherwise vulnerable to carrying water for them
Gentrification is what we call it when demand exceeds supply. It is not caused by bike lanes. The answer is not to suppress demand by enshittifying cities, or to justify endangering & killing people outside of cars as a rent control mechanism, but to increase supply.
my father-in-law is a “I know a guy” Guy. sadly all the old Guys are aging out of the Guy Economy. Guys are fundamentally incompatible with Hustle Culture because it’s not about “winning” a deal, it’s about collecting favors and goodwill in a mutually-beneficial cycle. protect your local Guy Economy
On one hand, reducing car use reduces urban pollution. But on the other, everyone likes it and cities become more livable
one of the great conservative moves over the past decade has been to make themselves so unpleasant that their own family members are forced to cut them off, and then use that fact to argue that *liberals* are too uncivil
Seperate but equal, you say? Now where have I heard THAT before? Hmmm....
on the aquaculture note how did I of all people not already know that Rutgers scientists saved the Northeastern oyster population from extinction. I have a brand to maintain!
It's a joke man holy shit
My brother sent me this
uKKKrainian goes hard though, gotta find a way to use that in a sentence.
You can just do things btw
the country has gone mad from the revelations of modernity and fled headlong into a new dark age, Howard Phillips was tragically spitting here
chat is it good when Lovecraft works as real-life political theory
The Showa comparisons are honestly applicable given that "the Army has fallen from the favor of the emperor, it is now the Navy's time in the limelight" is a headline
Turkey’s Cypriot puppet state being more free and democratic than Turkey itself is a great bit, it’s going to be so cool when it happens to us.
absolutely insane to see a man with a completely cooked brain take a country with such an intense founding mythology about the rejection of kings, and turn it into his personal vanity project in the span of like six months. kind of embarrassing for us collectively as a society
And they have the audacity to claim the mantle of "real Americans" while us "coastal elites" are supposedly destroying the fabric of society because we're decent people. Conservatives love to decry our low trust society, and then proceed to believe and do things that make it low trust!
The median American conservative is a stupid, selfish asshole who cares not for anyone but themselves, and resents anyone suggesting they should care more about the society they live in. We've created a society of anti-social freaks.
Meanwhile, you think any of the people who wave the flag on their disgusting F350 pickups would ever be willing to do something important for their family, their friends, their neighbors? God no.
Conservatism in America, especially the past 50 years, has focused primarily on how being a "real American" means owning a gun you can use to shoot Black people who come to close to your suburban mini mansion in Kentucky. No community, no purpose. Just a big Fuck You to everyone but yourself
There's a broader point here about how fake and plastic American patriotism is. Sure, people wave the flag or whatever, but when it comes to sticking up for other Americans, for "American values"? Forget it. As always, you can blame conservatives for this.
truly an American thing, because look at how righteously mad Canada got over the annexation shit. the closest country to the US both culturally and politically was exposed to like five seconds of our bullshit and instituted a spontaneous national boycott of the global hegemon to make a point.
our elites have spent so long surrounding themselves with blind sycophants that they have forgotten what it looks like to be your own person
we have a crisis of self-respect in this country, among other things
That "Democrat fight song" actually makes me want to end it all. More than anything Trump has done or could ever do. We're so cooked man. This country has no future lmao
I really think we need to have some mechanism in place for being able to say, in print and in the media, that a problem with a public figure is that they are insane. Not in a hyperbolic way. RFK Jr is a maniac.