The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Rural population loss is a sore spot that runs deep in the American psyche. The agrarian myth was woven into the country's folklore and nationalist ideology from the very beginning of our push to develop the continent. Going back to the industrialization of the 19th century, there's been a lot of angst about the urbanization trend being the end of the American dream of self-sufficiency, the ability to produce and enjoy a simple abundance, honest industry, a frank spirit of equality, and so on. One of my favorite songs is "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues", which I feel captures the existential dread of life in a dead-end small town perfectly. When communities are already ravaged by natural disasters like the 1930s Dust Bowl and man-made ones like the farm debt problem of the 1980s, and the children who the communities hope will keep their way of life alive want to leave, it understandably makes the ones whose life and pride revolves around a familial identity of land ownership pretty resentful. Democrats needed at least some of the Reagan Democrats' votes until pretty recently, so yeah, of course they had less leeway to be a snob and tell the farmers or the coal miners to learn to code.

Cities, especially the bigger ones, have a different mass creed of constant reinvention and dynamism. Telling New York City to drop dead doesn't hit them quite as hard- they know there's no real danger of that happening anyway. Smallville, not so much. There's plenty of proud history in the cities too of course, but those voters aren't as likely to feel so bad about packing up and moving for a better life.

[Fuzzy Bear]

All I can find is he died at hospital. Obituary website has 2 comments, one from a relative and one from someone saying

"He was a beautiful soul despite his rampant pedophilia, defense of rape, misogyny, but I have always thought he was a smart, very smart, soul, even if he was wrong, very very intelligent. May the devil be kind to him."

These kind of comments doesn’t hurt him, they only hurt the people dealing with his death. Einzige was a unusual awful person, but his family is not necessary at fault for that, and as such I find it in incredible bad taste and a sign of a complete lack of empathy to post such comments on his obituary website, laugh and enjoy his death all you want but leave his family and loved ones alone with their grief.

This post took courage.  ingemann is right, even as Einzage was an awful person.  But he's absolutely right in that the expressions of hate for Einzage hurt no one but his family, who are not responsible for his actions.

Remembering this post caused me to change my mind about another post of mine:

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1520417757778653185

Honestly, I don't feel sorry for these people at all.  The Wall means "STAY OUT!"  It's a Law Enforcement tool that we have every right to employ in enforcing our immigration laws which no legislative body has voted to change.

You can feel sorry for the death of people, even if you think they acted foolishly or broke the law. These people was likely pretty normal people, and in a better world they wouldn’t have tried to climb over the border wall. A country have a right and duty to enforce control over its territory, but it doesn’t make the people like these people bad people.

It is a shame that people die climbing "The Wall".  It's a poor choice, but we feel sorrow from people who overdose on drugs (for example) and that's certainly illegal.   I stand corrected to the point where I do feel sorry for the people climbing the wall, whatever I think of the act itself.  ingemann has shown himself to be one of the most legitimately humane posters, and that is needed here.

[Kamala's side hoe]

RE: BRTD thread on online defenders of Imperial Japan

Most Americans, if asked to name the two (2) "dictators" that fought us in WWII, they would say "Hitler and Mussolini".  Mussolini was actually a rather secondary player in WWII; the other "dictator" that unleashed a sneak attack on our Navy at Pearl Harbor, the only direct attach on American soil since WWII by an actual country.  (I'm not minimizing 9/11, but that was something new and different.)  The leader who was responsible for that was Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, but it seems that few mention his name.  Nor do Americans, in general, consider Japan to be as evil as Nazi Germany (or the USSR, our war ally, for that matter), and it begs an explanation as to why this is so.

One reason is that Tojo was not Prime Minister for the entirety of WWII.  We date the beginning of WWII to September 1, 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland.  As a kid, watching history on documentaries, this seemed inaccurate.  Japan was one of the Axis Powers against us and they were fighting as early as July 20, 1937 in China.  The leader who started THAT war was Prime Minister Fuminaro Kenoe, whose name is virtually unknown to Americans now, and was fairly obscure back then.  Kenoe resigned in 1941 and committed suicide after Japan lost.  We don't date the beginning of WWII until 1939 because the writers of that history have been predominantly Euro-centric; and Asia-centric view of WWII would have reflected events differently. 

The reason Japan went to war was the same reason Germany went to war:  Living Space.  But the nations Germany annexed and attacked were nations with which Britain and/or France had War Guarantees with.  None of the Western Powers had any War Guarantees with either Japan or China (or Manchuria, which was an independent country once).  There were American citizens who were emotionally vested in what Germany did in Eastern Europe, but there was no such sympathy from Chinese-Americans that were relatively low in numbers and, sadly, whose views were pretty much not considered.   We made victory in Europe our first priority after Pearl Harbor, even though it was Japan, and not Germany, that attacked us. 

The atrocities committed by the Japanese were both civilian and military.  The military atrocities are well remembered by Americans, as there are many children of WWII vets still alive who heard the stories and were angered, but they were MILITARY atrocities.  Americans were, sadly, not as concerned about the atrocities in China by Japan as they were with the atrocities of Germany in Europe, and a good deal of that is racism.  And the atrocities, in general, were avenged by the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There is a view that the accounts with Japan were settled with the Atomic Bomb whereas the accounts with the European Axis powers are unsettled to this day.

After the war, General MacArthur (the REAL one) pushed for, and got Emperor Hirohito spared from facing War Crimes charges.  The monarchy was preserved, but it was a Constitutional Monarchy where Hirohito was allowed to be a figurehead.  The hope was that Hirohito would encourage liberal democracy in Japan.  That part has worked out well.  But what happened with this was a conscious minimization of Hirohito's role in starting the hostilities.   Most Americans of my generation and the next generation were told pretty much that Hirohito was this weak individual, propped up by warlord politicians, who was something of a bystander to their warmaking.  This fiction was created to make the scheme go down well with Americans, but the fact is that Hirohito had an active role in many of the hostilities of Japan during those years.  Now that he's dead, more of Hirohito's actual role in the hostilities of WWII are becoming known.  Whether or not that's a good thing depends on how well people can handle the truth.

Today, Imperial Japan is a shell of what it once was.  After WWII, the people that paid the price were the Japanese MILITARY, not the Japanese MONARCHY.  The German Military got off much easier than the Japanese Military because Generals such as Erich von Manstein were able to convince people that the German military was not responsible for the atrocities of the Holocaust.  (This was another fable that may, or may not, have served us well.) 

Anyway, these factors are why I suspect that Imperial Japan has, however undeservedly, been able to be more "defensible" in the eyes of some.  It's because of how the history of the whole of WWII has been written and the whole of how deals were made to restructure Germany and Japan after their destruction.

[Vice President Christian Man]

Atlas is this little sandbox where people behave and identify themselves in such a way as to maximize how interesting it is.  We're mainly here because we're bored, so we try our best to make things interesting.  That means more drama, more outspokenness, more snap judgments, more strong opinions of people.  It's not real life and you shouldn't conflate the two.  People don't act this way in real life... which is why many of us like Atlas, because it's different.

Anonymous internet forums in general are often an outlet for people who like to fight, or stir up drama, or say outrageous and ridiculous things to spark a reaction, but don't want to do that in real life where you can hurt someone's feelings for real or damage your reputation.

[Mechavada]

I'm probably going to get flack for this, but this has got to be one of the best damn posts that Badger has ever written:

.
White women do not experience any oppression in our society today simply because they are women.

This is just… objectively false. I wasn’t aware that the Dobbs decision had a loophole that said white women can still get abortions.

Imagine thinking it being harder to kill your baby in some places is oppression.

Texas woman almost dies because she couldn’t get an abortion

Florida Woman Denied Abortion Miscarried in Hair Salon Bathroom, Lost Half Her Blood

Her miscarriage left her bleeding profusely. An Ohio ER sent her home to wait.

...and so on...

Imagine thinking that denying abortions in those cases isn't oppression.

Except your anger is clearly misplaced. It's the hospitals and medical professionals that failed them in those cases, not the laws y'all are so mad about.

Oh no, honey child. Your moral cowardice is no excuse here. These hospitals and medical professionals so-called failed these women only because they are now afraid to touch abortion with a 20-foot Pole explicitly because the laws that you and yours have put into place making it an issue of those places being shut down and doctors risking prison if they do.

Show an ounce of backbone at least and acknowledge that these incidents are a direct consequence of fighting to being abortion like you've done for years. At least have the courage to say well gee that's bad but it serves a greater good rather than so pathetically wimping out.

It's not "wimping out" to point out that the healthcare professionals involved in those scenarios are more willing to make a political statement than do their jobs.

There is no law that prevents a woman who miscarries from receiving treatment.

What a lying liar you are to hand pick that one in three headline and ignore the fact that it was directly related to abortion law restrictions. As the article noted,

"Holeyman, Zielke's husband, says hospital staff seemed "hesitant." The two of them wondered at the ER if that was because of Ohio's new six-week abortion ban. "I wish someone had come out and said, 'Hey, this is a state law, this is what we're afraid of,' and was a little more frank," he says. Instead he says, paraphrasing what he heard: "It was, 'Well, we don't know if this [pregnancy] is viable, this could still be viable. This is the information you got in D.C., but we need to confirm it."

Not enough of you to crawl out of your shell and admit this is part of your and your ilks doing? Let's proceed shall we?

The situation: Christina Zielke was discharged from an ER in Ohio without treatment for her miscarriage even though she'd been bleeding profusely for hours.

The state law: When Zielke was in Ohio in early September, the state had a law known as a "heartbeat bill" in effect, which bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. The law was passed in 2019, and went into effect the same day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24. In mid-September, a judge in Hamilton County blocked the law. Ohio's Republican attorney general has begun the appeals process, and the case is ultimately expected to go to the state supreme court.

Health care providers who violate the law face fifth-degree felony charges, up to a year in prison, loss of their medical license, and fines up to $20,000.

What's at stake: Ohio's abortion restriction doesn't explicitly restrict the treatment of miscarriages or emergency care, but it can have that effect anyway.

Health care providers use the same clinical tools to manage a miscarriage as they do to perform abortions – the medications and surgical options are identical. That can mean when someone seeks care during a miscarriage, a pharmacist or doctor who suspects a patient is seeking an abortion might deny or delay providing treatment, fearing prosecution.

Not enough for you to cry uncle and say okay we lied to this woman suffering but it's for a greater good because the cruelty is the point? Let's carry on further!

"We're in a moment of tremendous fear, and we're working with hospitals and doctors who are not fans of liability," she says. That has led to situations where "physicians or staff say, 'Only if I think I'm 1,000% safe will I do necessary, potentially life-saving medical care.'"

Just fess up. Show a quarter ounce of guts and say. Yes, this is exactly what me and other pro-life radicals- oh sorry, "activists"-- aimed for. Do not even attempt to disassemble that this is a direct straight line result of strict hardcore abortion restrictions being put into place. Again, very very telling that you only chose the one headline about a miscarriage when in fact it was directly related to abortion restriction loss, and you completely utterly hit under the your bed regarding the two other explicitly abortion related headlines.

At least have the courage of us some other pro-life activists and say well it's tragic but it's necessary to save fertilized zygotes--whoops! I of course mean "babies". If not, again, cowardice at it's most pathetic display.

[MATTROSE94]

Out of the many Iranian vessels seized by the US navy in the past three years alone, crying about Iranian piracy is rich.

[MATTROSE94]

I mean, let’s be honest with ourselves here: The Iranian government couldn’t ever even dream as being as destructive as the American military.

For the record, that’s what the American military does. It destroys things, and nothing more. Meanwhile, the Iranian government builds schools, hospitals, roads, electrification infrastructure, all while being under intense sanctions.

[President Johnson]

snip

It's a false premise to make that the federal govt needs to either priorize domestic problems or grant aid to a foreign nation that's literally fighting for its existence against an imperialist dictator next door. Compared to our overall federal budget or even defense budget, Ukraine aid is peanuts and wise spent money to counter authoritarianism around the globe. It's not just a violation of international law and post-war world order, it's also a factor for stability for the entire world economy. If Putler succeeds, it will encourage him and others - like the PRC - to just move borders via force wherever they believe its in their own interest. If that becomes an acceptable method to solve disputes yet again, it will cause major disruption in our economy which in the long run will automatically lead to cuts in domestic spending as well.

Before people complain about Ukraine aid and the lack of proper healthcare, housing and alike in the states, congress should make sure the wealthy a corporations pay their fair share and tax loopholes are closed. So there will be enough money to do multiple things at once. Ironically it's mostly the same people that vigeroously come out against aid who refuse to legislate on said matters, telling us there is no money for domestic problems because of Ukraine. Yet the same members of congress have neglected these domestic issues for decades and time and time again voted against bills for reform and relief. And even if we cut off all the aid now, anyone who believes homelessness and inflation will be solved like magic has lost it a long time ago.

I'm also against war, like I guess anyone, but that's not on us. The war could be over tomorrow if Putin just ordered his troops back to Russia. If Russia stops the fighting, there won't be war anymore. If Ukraine stops fighting, there won't be any Ukraine anymore.

[MATTROSE94]

Being clinically dead is still a better experience than being clinically alive in Florida.

[Agonized-Statism]

The California GOP is now essentially a social club for Inland Empire fundies. And the Democrats there are drunk on power and seem content to run the state further into the ground.

[Agonized-Statism]

gEe WaLtEr, i ThInK mAyBe hE jUsT mIgHt HaVe BeEn. BuT tHeN AgAiN, mAyBe NoT.

Stumbled on this one and thought it was the Mocking SpongeBob meme from a few years ago.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Drug decriminalization makes sense in theory but has been disastrous for the Northwest in practice. When you have drugs as deadly and addictive as fentanyl, addiction treatment and prevention has to be the primary focus, and unfortunately people addicted to fentanyl highly resist treatment even when faced with an ongoing overdose-- the high is simply too powerful. Even this might be excused or ignored as a "victimless" personal choice if it weren't for its large impact on public safety, public encampment growth and public space cooption, environmental degradation, and gang and cartel violence; in Seattle, the resultant attacks on innocent bystanders, fire bombings of rival homeless gangs, heaps of trash and waste leading to plague outbreaks, and the sheer number dead are simply unacceptable.

The fentanyl epidemic has been primarily combatted by well-meaning but ineffective approaches such as harm reduction measures and Housing First policies. While these measures may be appropriate for some drugs or in some circumstances, they are wholly insufficient to address fentanyl addiction, especially since those administering these policies fail to ever enforce additional steps. For example, Housing First is almost always in actuality a Housing Only policy; no requirement for treatment or ending fentanyl use is ever put in place, meaning that fentanyl use is merely relocated from the street to a public housing facility which quickly becomes contaminated by drug smoke and other residue, eventually leaving the facility unable to be occupied. In sum, these policies in practice only enable fentanyl addiction with without any ability to mitigate it.

In my county, law enforcement I've spoken to have said the only way to get people off the streets and into treatment is by either giving homeless addicts a choice of jail or treatment or by making treatment options available within jails. Both of these options were neutered in Washington by our judicial system. First, the state Supreme Court in the Blake decision ruled that law enforcement could no longer arrest people for public drug possession, eliminating the ultimatum option and only allowing officers to tell homeless addicts about treatment availability, which is almost never taken up without the treat of incarceration. This ruling was ultimately modified by the legislature two years later, but is still largely neutered from its pre-Blake state.

This is partially because of the second reason: judges have been systematically releasing those arrested for drug-related crimes faster and faster, to the point where they're back on the street within 24-48 hours. This is a short enough time that an addict can avoid the effects of withdrawal by consuming more of the drug immediately upon release. If addicts can be held in jail for a longer period of time before release, then treatment options become more appealing. My county's jail has several treatment options, including a medication-assisted treatment program, but inmates option need to reach the point of withdrawal before they consider using these programs. For this reason, some cities have been looking into increasing mandatory minimum jail stints upon arrest for drug-related crimes to one week, but this has received pushback from the harm reduction crowd who believe jail time to be intrinsically harmful to those incarcerated, even if it means they can get clean in that period, and that this harm is disparately impactful on "vulnerable communities."

Simply put, the same forces who put drug decriminalization in place fail to understand the psychology and incentives of those whom they enable, leading to unnecessary suffering, death, and mass urban decay. Too much of a "harm reduction" approach actually creates more harm while reallocating it; its proponents have long crossed the pragmatic point where marginal benefit balances marginal cost, spiraling toward higher and higher societal costs in the name of their ideological project.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I used to support birthright citizenship with no restrictions, and I'm not necessarily against it now. However, I highly prefer birthright citizenship with some restrictions.

Recently, I saw a WNBA player (Satou Sabally) who has US citizenship (as well as German and Gambian citizenship). She was born in NYC to a Gambian father and German mother, but they left the United States when she was a toddler, and she grew up in her mother's homeland (Germany). I have nothing against her at all, but she is a German (culturally and nationality-wise). She also represents Germany internationally (obviously).

Satou gets to enjoy the same privileges as a born-and-bred American, despite the fact that she is effectively a foreigner. She attended and played college basketball at the University of Oregon, and because she's a US citizen, she didn't have to go through the same legal processes that other typically foreign students would have to go through. There are people in America who weren't born here but came here as babies or little kids, so America is pretty much the only country they have ever known. Most of those people don't have US citizenship, despite the fact that they are effectively Americans. Meanwhile, Satou Sabally gets to enjoy the benefits of US citizenship. That's just unfair.


In order to avoid stuff like this, I support jus soli with some restrictions. I pretty much agree with the UK. You can become a citizen at birth:

1) If at least one of your parents is a US citizen,

2) You were born in the US, and you have primarily resided in the US until at least your 10th birthday (regardless of your parent's nationality).

Otherwise, you become a citizen through the naturalization process, or in the special case of Dreamers/DACA recipients, you get automatic US citizenship.

[Bacon King]

Yanukovych was only removed from office after he fled the country. The decision to flee the country was entirely his own, nor he was he forced to, that's not true. He had just finished negotiating a political settlement with opposition politicians that would have reformed the constitution to reduce presidential powers and provide for early elections, but which also would not have required Yanukovych to resign. This deal was pushed by the Obama administration, who was not interested in shoving Yanukovych out the door. This deal was accepted by radical street demonstrators despite their extreme skepticism. It had brought the crisis in the capital to an end.

Subsequently, Yanukovych fled to Kharkiv, and then into Russia. Was he forced to do this? I don't know. Was he "forced" to spend early 2014 transporting millions in embezzled cash and stolen valuables out of the country into Russia? Makes you think.

Yanukovych fled the country because his plan for the Lukashenkoization of the Ukrainian government was finished. The constitutional changes that he had accepted meant that he could no longer hope to rule as an autocrat, and there was no doubt that he would be defeated in any early presidential election, especially now that he had lost the support of many in his own party and key oligarchs. Also, he was very likely going to be constitutionally impeached and prosecuted! For what? I don't know, sanctioning the suppression of protestors with bullets? The outright abrogation of procedure in passing the Anti-Protest Laws? Massive and absurd corruption? There were plenty of options. Yanukovych had lost large swathes of the Party of Regions in the Rada, he would not have survived an impeachment proceeding.

Yanukovych did not flee the capital because an armed western-trained mob was about to murder him, he fled because he was on course to be constitutionally removed and legally prosecuted for being a massive criminal. Once he fled the country, removing him from office was merely recognizing a fact which already existed. Obviously it was unanimous, who would vote against it?

[Vice President Christian Man]

I didn't read what Project 2025 is, but I highly doubt it'll cause a genocide.

We all need to stop thinking that the absolute extreme is going to happen with every single policy decision that we disagree with. This goes for both the left and the right.

This is just as wrong as saying that President Biden's agenda will lead to a totalitarian America.

[BigZuck08]

I'm honestly tired of these threads and this entire discussion/debate. How many more times can we have the same arguments about LGBT issues and children? One side is convinced kids are "born this way" and thus have the unquestionable right to identify however they want from the earliest possible age (IMO a harmful relic of the well-intentioned rhetoric from the gay marriage debate which insisted homosexuality is 100% nature over nurture despite that not being at all clear scientifically); the other side believes children don't understand complex issues of sexuality and gender at a young age and can indeed be confused into believing that there is somehow something wrong with them if they don't 100% conform to crude gender stereotypes, which can have harmful effects on their psyche and development.

In my opinion which side is correct is crystal clear. But I also have given up trying to convince the other side, any more than I would try to convince a Muslim they're wrong about Allah and Muhammad. It's a borderline religious matter of faith at this point, this idea of a "gendered soul" or whatever, this idea that somehow people can be "born into the wrong body." There are simply far more important and pressing matters to deal with than trying to persuade people that such an idea does not exactly hold up to scrutiny. The whole thing is a divisive distraction and I for one am just tired of it. My opinion is set, so are those of others, and yelling at each other about the same things over and over again just isn't going to move anybody.

In any case I believe the issue will resolve itself eventually once the medical industry comes under billions of dollars worth of lawsuits for chopping young girls' breasts off and such. This is a medical fad, and one day (probably pretty soon) it will be over. Actual transgender people absolutely exist and are valid, and they'll be the ones left standing when this is all over just like they were before it all began. Confused and misled children swept up in the hysteria will unfortunately have some lifelong consequences to deal with, but I've accepted at this point that nothing is going to stop that; people will have to learn the hard way.

Agree or disagree, you can't deny that Alben put effort into this post.

[Horus]

You don't get a 1 free war crime punch card for having endured historical trauma or terror, nor do you get to inflict collective punishment for even the most heinous of crimes. In Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces repeatedly liberated ISIS strongholds. They were confronted with civilian populations who were in many cases deeply sympathetic to one of the most monstrous groups in human history, a group which had inflicted unspeakable atrocities on them and their countrymen. They still consistently allowed for those civilians to escape the battlefield at great personal risk. I see no reason why Israel ought not to be held to this standard.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Constitutions or laws are merely scraps of  paper without the buyin and understanding of the electorate. The France had the most elaborate Constitutions imaginable during the 1790s and Latin American states works of art. But They were unworkable because experts are the worst people to write laws and policy imaginable. The US Constitution only worked because it was so short and simple.

The more elitist ideas that snuck(Prohibition the closest to a for your own good) didn't work.

If you want elite led governance then you need elite institutions to coerce elected ones. That leaves you at risk if you have ANY intraelite disagreements of losing control. See the United States Supreme Court.

Anyway the attitude towards conservatism is inherently anti-democratic and human as conservatism is the natural state of the vast majority of humanity on the vast majority of issues. Most humans are conservative except on one or two specific issues. People who genuinely support change for its own sake, or who lack am ingrained attachment to the status quo that is merely overridden by overwhelming circumstance are fringe for a reason.

Re the Voice it losing this badly is a sign it was a bad idea. Not in abstract but if that many people opposed it, then it would have been at odds with the elected government charged with implementing it

Sorry--I reject this Affirmative Action nonsense that this family is trying to inflict.  There's more to it than what is being let out.

For the record, my Asian-American daughter (from Georgia) was accepted at UC-Davis, UC-Irvine, and UC-Santa Barbara (ended up going to school in New York).

My Asian-American niece (who lives in California) was accepted just about everywhere, including UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-Irvine, Vanderbilt--and is going to an Ivy League school.

Both girls are very bright and had excellent academic records but they also have additional characteristics that made them quite competitive.

I'm on the admissions committee at a medical school, and we get substantial numbers of Asian-American applicants.  There is never any discussion about their ethnic background to negatively impact an application (though we do try to elevate disadvantaged minorities--when the application is excellent).  And even though it's apples and oranges, there are a lot of similarities between applicants to prestigious undergraduate programs and to medical schools.

I look at this fellow's situation from the outside, and there had to be some issue(s) that caused him to fall very short of his expectations.  I hesitate to speculate.  But for him, it's great that he got a job at Google. 

Awful of course, but 23AndMe also shouldn't be permanently storing this data in the first place.

There are a really large number of uses for really large genetic data-sets, as for rare diseases this might enable us to tease apart very non-obvious sorts of causation; if anything we're soon going to be running into the problem that there literally aren't enough people on Earth for us to continue using some current methods, and this kind of thing has sometimes happened to studies of very small ethnic groups. Point is, there are actually lots of good reasons for data like this to be saved, and -- while it should definitely be anonymized -- in the long run probably people deserve access to some compilation of human genetic data in order to better understand their own characteristics and make good choices for their children.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I think I am a Zionist, but my real opinion is something like 'it is good/praiseworthy/morally right/legitimate for [people] to build a homeland of some sort [far away from where they're currently stuck]', and I think the case of the Jews and Palestine is one example of a broader phenomenon.

Even as someone a couple of generations removed from the passage to the United States - Italian and German Catholic, not Jewish - this resonates with me.

Three out of my four grandparents knew enough about the lives their parents had left just a few years before having children to make all of this clear. And the much higher quality of life in the United States was not just because it was a wealthier, freer, and safer place to live. It was also because they lived in neighborhoods full of similar immigrants, many of them family, who worked together to build ladders into business, politics, and every other institution that didn't outright exclude them.

Any rhetoric that implies that there's something illegitimate about this is unconscionable to me. It's an implied threat to my own right to exist, and that of anyone else descended from similar immigrants, as far as I'm concerned.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Re: NYT/Siena: Trump up 5 out of 6 swing states

I am not going to make grand proclamations about the usefulness of this poll, since it is a year out from the election, but I'm taken by the surprise and denial by many Democrats in this thread when presented with the notion that Joe Biden is, in fact, unpopular.

A while ago, there was a poll on another matter that had something like 75% of the respondents agreeing with a certain proposition. Someone here commented that they couldn't think of another issue that commanded such a large, bipartisan majority, but in fact that's also about the percentage of people who consistently tell pollsters that they think Biden is too old to run again.

I'm not suggesting that this forum needs people who think a certain way or whatever, but it would be useful for many of us to remember who posts here, or even the specific kind of Democrat or liberal who is inclined to post here.

Also- this is what well-written prose looks like

I remain passionate in my conviction that racial minorities remain burdened by the cruel and unjust legacy of slavery, segregation, deportations, conquest and forced resettlement. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that Harvard giving a boost to the children of Nigerian or Spanish immigrants does anything to assist Lakota or 'ADOS' or Puerto Ricans, most of whom will never attend a 4 year college and whose main concern is affording their studies, if they consider it at all. But there is every reason to think that the 'race conscious' admissions systems of elite colleges have, for years, placed a very large proportion of Asian-American students at a severe disadvantage relative to whites.

Even if I benefitted from AA, I am vigorously opposed to elite liberals using 'disadvantaged racial minorities' as meat shields to defend racist admissions systems that cast aspersions on the efforts of Asian-Americans, claiming that they have 'bad personalities because they work hard. The moral injury engendered by such discrimination is profound. Even if the consequences are materially trivial, the damage done to the integrity of our country and trust in our institutions may be severe when we allow universities to practice racial discrimination.

Re: Rapper Cardi B slams Biden for migrant crisis

Honestly, this sums up pretty much how the average American voter is feeling. They turn on the TV every day and see Biden talking about Ukraine for the past year and a half, and now they turn on the TV and see Biden talking about Israel every day. We're not in two wars but we're funding two wars and it seems like those are his priorities.

What the average person doesn't see Biden talking about is America. And they are thinking "you're the president of my country, not the president of Ukraine, not the president of Israel. I'm the one who voted for you and is paying taxes. what about me?"

It's not even the economic conditions or how much money we're actually spending overseas, but more of a feeling that Biden doesn't feel their pain, he doesn't care about them and takes them for granted. And this is contributing to Biden's problems in a way that is heavily underappreciated.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Great explanation of machine state politics that I felt belonged here:

I think an under-discussed factor here is that Kim is running as anti-machine candidate who openly supports abolishing the county line system.  That is a major threat to someone like Norcross.  Not only would it show that you can win in New Jersey without kissing the ring of at least some of the state’s County machine bosses, the county line system is a major part of how the New Jersey machine bosses maintain their iron fisted grip on NJ Democratic politics. 

I was worried Kim shot himself in the foot by coming out for the abolition of the county-line system before the primary and that looks to have been the case.  I mean, if you’re Norcross you’d normally leap at the chance to have a south or even mid-Jersey Senator…b/c he’s more likely to be your creature and it lets you flex the southern NJ/Camden machine’s muscles making you even more relevant.  But if the guy’s whole schtick is “I’m a good guy who is unbought and unbossed, plus I support the elimination of one of the main ways your machine exercises control in primaries” …well…why would someone like George Norcross support such a candidate. 

I think the brief talk of Don Norcross running was really b/c George Norcross initially wasn’t sure if a south-Jersey spoiler was needed to stop Kim.  Honestly, this puts Kim in a bit of a bind.  At this point, he’s the decided underdog against Murphy.  Now he could certainly drop down and run for reelection to the House.  However, it really undercuts his brand - and both makes him look weak and Norcross look even stronger - if he drops out because it’s hopeless without Norcross’ support.  Plus, it irritates pols in NJ-3 who backed Kim, but were also gearing up to run for the open seat.  Seems like a lose-lose for Kim tbh. 

I think this all makes perfect sense from Norcross’ POV.  It is also a great reminder that when looking at the establishment and local machines in states like NY and NJ, their actions are primarily motivated by personal self-interest rather than ideology or regionalism considerations.  When you look at the race through that lens, it would be shocking if Norcross didn’t back Murphy over Kim.

It’s a bit like the Buffalo Mayor’s race where India Walton’s “sin” wasn’t being a left-winger; it was that she successfully primaried the machine choice.  She stood up to the local political machine and that was something the NY Democratic Party could not abide. 

Or take NY-4 in 2022: Laura Gillen was a solid recruit who would make a great Congresswoman for her district.  She won the primary with 62% and the “electable” semi-ConservaDem Keith Corbett came in a distant third with 11%.  And yet Gillen narrowly lost the GE because NY Dem Chair Jay Jacobs did everything he could to make sure the NY Democratic Party undermined her at every turn while actively sabotaging efforts at party unity.  Basically, he clearly wanted D’Esposito to win instead of her and this cycle, he made sure another credible candidate jumped into the primary against Gillen.  Why?  Well even though Corbett was clearly an overhyped candidate with little appeal who Democratic voters resoundingly rejected, he was buddies with Jay Jacobs.  Gillen humiliated Jacobs by winning without him and easily beating his protege on Jacobs’ home turf.  And Jacobs would rather a Republican win that let someone get away with challenging his influence like that.  But I digress…

TL;DR: It makes sense that Norcross is backing Murphy.  Kim is a reformist, anti-machine candidate and Norcross is a south NJ machine boss.  Why would any NJ boss endorse someone who wants to eliminate the county line system when there was another credible candidate who wasn’t calling for the abolition of one of Norcross’ most effective means of asserting power?

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

When I was 15 I rode my bike every day down to the supermarket, through the woods, past the gypsy camp, stopped to jog around the football pitch behind our house and then rode back around through the back roads back home. Sometimes my friends and I would go in the other direction, down to the estuary and the railway line where we could throw stones into the mud or at the trains. In our back garden we had a trampoline. At 15 years old you could keep bouncing for hours on end. If it was raining outside then I would read a book (typically on the French Revolution) or explain to my mother why my latest suspension from school wasn't actually my fault. It helped to be her favourite son but eventually she began to realise that perhaps the teachers weren't out to frame me and I was actually badly behaved. Poor mum. In the evenings our family would typically drink tea and discuss things like space, magnets or dinosaurs or we would play a board game. Risk was a particular favourite, so too was Monopoly. Real life doesn't allow you a get out of jail free. Once we had played our games, drunk our tea and gone to the toilet (tea is a diuretic) we would alight to our bedrooms and fall into peaceful dreams.

Issues like abortion never crossed my mind, I barely used the internet outside of school and the most politics I got involved in was watching the 2015 general election results come in. When we did use the internet it was to look at things like our family tree. We were excited when we were able to trace it right back to William the Conqueror until we realised that nearly every British person is probably related in some way to old Billy Conks.

Life was simple, money wasn't real, TikTok hadn't been invented and even simple things like bread tasted better.

This site isn't really for kids.

Enjoy your childhood now instead of wasting it on Atlas.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

This student has been arrested for stealing an Israeli flag from a campus house.

less than a month before she celebrated murdering babies, she was writing articles about Why Penn should protect its students from colonial backlash, Palestinian and Arab students deserve to feel more safe on campus.  Does she want students to feel safe? nah, she just wants students that look and think like her to feel safe on campus.

Right now, the young left's biggest problem is that their brains short-circuit when there are instances of "minority on minority" bigotry. They're fundamentally unequipped to handle it, and usually respond by either arbitrarily designating one group sufficiently white-adjacent enough that they can rationalize it as "punching up", or by ignoring it altogether.

This is not how I would have worded this but it's true. I'm always seeing people say things like "all oppressive systems intertwine and stand or fall together" (not to sound bronzian, but that's a very close paraphrase), which is utterly absurd if you've studied history, especially the history of countries besides the United States; most oppressive systems within the United States are currently pretty tightly interlinked, but foreign countries (such as, but not limited to, the past) are swarming with cases in which two or more different oppressive systems are actively and violently hostile to one another. Famously so, in many cases. There's a whole world out there where, often, The Oppressors are going at one another hammer and tongs, and you do actually have to either pick a lesser evil or just admit that both are bad.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I posted this in another thread but it's even more relevant here:

Even when I was on campus a decade ago, I don't remember pro-Palestine stuff being everywhere.  But it seems like among the under-25 crowd, being pro-Palestine and anti-Israel is the dogma.  I would imagine if you surveyed kids under 25 it would be like 75% favor Palestine vs. 25% favor Israel (I'm sure these surveys exist) and the split by left/right would be like 90% of the left is pro-Palestine.

I've said many times before that in my opinion, the main thing driving this is that kids today just don't remember what Palestinian violence used to be like in the 90s and 2000s, when Palestinians were bombing school buses, shooting up schools, launching rockets at buildings on a daily basis, kidnapping, torturing, beheading Israeli civilians on a daily basis.  It would be on the news.  Four more Jews in Israel were killed by Palestinian fighters tonight.  Two of them were children.  The woman was gang-raped first.  Palestine filmed it on video and sent it to us.  We're not showing you the video.

And things were worse in the 70s and 80s.  Palestinians were hijacking and blowing up planes.  They kidnapped, tortured and murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich olympics.  They committed acts of terrorism around Europe and in the United States.  If you go back on YouTube and watch the news reports of 9/11, there was speculation on every channel that Palestine was behind the attacks.  Because that was a real possibility that we were used to after decades of multinational Palestinian terrorism.

But now?  Israel crushed Palestine after the intafada.  Their security and intelligence services have dominated Palestine for two decades.  Since deploying the Iron Dome a decade ago, Palestinian rockets have been totally ineffective.  Palestine hasn't been able to blow up a school bus in decades.  They haven't been able to kidnap and slaughter a family in decades.  They certainly haven't been able to project power internationally by hijacking airplanes or shooting up European hotels or anything like that.

So we have an entire generation that's grown up with no memory of Palestinian violence.  No memory of Palestinian terror attacks.  No memory of dead Jews on the news.  They have no context for any of this.  They have no understanding of why things are the way they are.  All they see is Israel doing what it has to do to suppress the violence.  Israel stops and searches Palestinian children -- looks bad out of context!  Of course, Israel does this because Palestine has an extensive history of using children as suicide bombers.  Those of us who are a little older remember this.  But younger generations have no memory of it.  They've never seen a child suicide bomber before.  What they have seen are plenty of images of IDF soldiers pushing children to the ground and searching them for bombs.

Israeli YouTube channel SugarZaza's late 2000s series Ahmed and Salim referenced the (mostly pre-Obama) Palestinian terror tactics GeneralMacArthur described here, as well as several Western/Anglosphere cultural icons of my middle and early high school years. I will not post any of the episodes hosted on the channel here as the show is extremely family-unfriendly, but I strongly recommend it nonetheless.

Here's some other content from SugarZaza I remember posting here at some point (probably pre-pandemic)

[Kamala's side hoe]

Beet on point on how the Biden administration has been pretty Trumpy to a lot of Outsider Left voters

She said that because states’ abortion bans had gone into effect during his presidency, she assumed it was because of him.

Had no idea people this low information even voted.

New York Times reporters have a staggeringly impressive talent for finding the most braindead, uninformed idiots in the country and presenting them as though they are representative of the voters who decide elections. This reminds me a lot of the diner interviews that reporters kept doing from 2017-2021.

This is the best argument for the New York Times' reporting that I've heard in years.

In all seriousness though, it is true that the Biden years have felt more Trumpy than the Trump years. Why? Well, there are multiple reasons.

1) Social justice was still going pretty strong in the Trump years, with #MeToo, #BLM, left-friendly corporate leadership at Twitter, etc. and in many ways it felt like a continuation of Obama's second term on the cultural level, if not governmental. In the Biden years, on the other hand, the backlash to social justice has been strong, and the above-mentioned movements have all gone into decline. The arc of the MCU has been a pretty good proxy for this, remarkably.

2) Trump attempted to damage globalization, but Covid-19 put a much bigger hit on travel and people's lifestyles than Trump's movement ever could. It feels like there has been a permanent rift in the world from before Covid-19 that has disrupted the process of globalization more than Trumpism did, and it has mostly been felt under Biden.

3) The Supreme Court was still the Kennedy Court, and then the Roberts Court, during the Trump years. That means Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, and was affirmative action, much as it was during the decades before Trump. Whereas in the Biden years, and especially the late Biden years, the right-wing Supreme Court rulings on social policy are being felt more and more.

4) Biden has continued many Trump policies and has in many ways become more Trumpy over time. For instance, the Trump immigration policy was seen as racist and extreme during the Trump years, but Biden has embraced Title 42, and now the Wall. While Biden did roll back some Trump immigration policies, the Democrats in general are clearly shifting back to the right on this issue, away from the stance of the 2nd Obama administration. You never hear anyone talk about comprehensive immigration reform/amnesty or even DREAMers anymore.

On China, Biden has continued the Trump trade war and been even more hawkish than Trump with sanctions and export controls. Biden has also been clear to embrace industrial policy and blue collar jobs at home at the expense of trade deals, another quiet victory for Trumpism.

5) Trump continues to loom over the political background and the assumption has always been that he will run again. The Democrats' obsession with Jan. 6 has ironically kept him in the news and made him a marytr figure. He continues to dominate the Republican Party and his ideas and style are increasingly trickling down to lower level figures of the Party. There was recently a Politico article about a group of young Republicans who were creating a database of staffers who believed in Trumpism. Thus his ideology is more entrenched in the GOP under Biden than when he was President.

Most of all, during the Trump years, what Trumpism did get enacted felt like it could have been an aberration, a mistake, a fluke, a freak accident caused by the unique unpopularity of Hillary Clinton or complacency of Democrats, and that if the consistently unpopular Trump could only be defeated, the Democrats would just roll back whatever he did, and the country/world would pick up again where Obama left off. It was even possible to believe that the country was heading in the direction of Bernie Sanders, that his defeat in 2016 was similar to Ronald Reagan's defeat by Gerald Ford in 1976.

The 2018 elections and the rise of the Squad just fed that belief. Just look at all the ultra-leftist proposals of the 2019 primaries. Honestly, I felt like many progressives were not disabused of that notion until election night, 2020. Today, the Squad is clearly recognized as established but marginal.

So in short, Trump's loss in the 2020 election did not mean Trumpism receded. In contrast, it seems more entrenched in politics and has more influence over daily life than ever, and this continues to increase each year.

A low info voter who is opposed to Trumpism and reflexively votes anti-incumbent whenever they feel trends they do not like, may ironically vote for Trump simply due to a vague sense that another change in direction is needed.