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

[Horus]

OSR, I'm afraid no amount of crosstabs will be able to convince me that 14-year-olds should be blown up with missiles. There is no use in trying.

Dule, I respect you and am moderately surprised at this position coming from you, so serious question: do you think that Israel should be prevented from attacking (...given that this will basically certainly lead to renewed power for Hamas, over the people of Gaza most critically) or that countries which obey international law should be forced to value the lives of bystanders as highly as the lives of their own soldiers (...given that this would be an incentive structure highly helpful to countries which don't obey international law)? I wouldn't normally associate your thought patterns as objecting to the conduct of the war.

Anyway, we live in a fallen world and sometimes there are justified wars against Nazi tweens. There is no use denying it; one can only cry and then act.

Here is the best summary of my views on this conflict that I can give.

On 10/6, Israel apparently had no idea that an attack from Hamas was coming. It did not know Hamas' positions or where the missiles would come from. On 10/7, Hamas attacked. Immediately after that attack, Israel conducted airstrikes that they said targeted Hamas compounds, command centers, tunnels, and other strategic targets.

My initial reaction to this was of course pro-Israel, as it should be for anyone seeing Hamas' atrocities on the news. But as these airstrikes continued, I had to ask myself: Am I supposed to believe that in those 48 hours, Israel went from knowing nothing whatsoever about Hamas' bases and plans to suddenly knowing enough to carry out targeted strikes against them?  This was a massive failure of Israeli intelligence under Likud. What is more likely: That those intelligence failures were patched up within a few hours and that enough information was assembled to accurately strike Hamas, or that Netanyahu was being equally sloppy in his response so he could look like he was doing something?

The comments from Israeli government officials over the past month, coupled with the actual results on the ground, have confirmed my suspicion that the latter is the case. If Israel were using our money to go after Hamas surgically, I would not have a problem with its response. But the facts do not indicate that this is the case. Israel has killed over 10,000 civilians in one month. Israeli politicians, media figures, and settlers routinely make comments about how Gaza must be "obliterated" or "depopulated." Pro-Israel protesters in the US have openly and gleefully stated that this gives Israel an opportunity to "kill all Palestinians." Likud cabinet ministers have floated the idea of nuking Gaza. They have called Gaza a "city of evil" with "no innocents." Israeli government officials have suggested that because IDF soldiers supposedly found copies of Mein Kampf in "children's rooms" in Gaza, this means that even Palestinian children are legitimate targets. They have bombed churches, hospitals, mosques, homes, and businesses without issuing any apologies. They ordered the mass evacuation of northern Gaza, and then they bombed the evacuees.

I have known for a long time that Netanyahu was an evil monster, but the tidal wave of genocidal rhetoric currently spewing from the Israeli government is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I'm well aware that supermajorities of Gazans supposedly support Hamas, but given the demographics of the strip, I cannot condone the murder of teenagers who were socialized into antisemitism. It is a basic liberal principle that no matter how vile someone's views are, they should not be killed for them-- hence why I am so disgusted by smoothbrained OSR and his crosstabs on "public opinion" in Gaza. What exactly is the implication behind that data? That we should kill 77% of Palestinians because they support Hamas? That they're all legitimate military targets? That their lives don't matter? If OSR thinks that 77% of Gaza is the moral equivalent of Nazis, then what exactly does he mean when he says Gaza needs to be "denazified?"

I have always supported Israel in the past because I thought the Israelis were still willing to work towards a two-state solution or a more secular, inclusive version of the Israeli state. With Likud in charge, this simply isn't true anymore. Netanyahu has unleashed the settlers on Palestinian land, illegally bulldozing Palestinian businesses and seizing their homes. Now he is planning more land grabs by forcibly depopulating Palestinian territory in response to 10/7. Until Netanyahu is removed from power and Likud is purged from the Israeli government, Israel will be an apartheid state.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I was thinking about this a bit more and I think another huge reason why Millenials and Zoomers tend to be more economically pessimistic is because to them who becomes wealthy feels more arbitrary.

For Boomers, the wealthiest people they knew were likely mutual friends who they were friendly with and/or higher level folks in their industry they might have had respect for or aspired to be like. This likely gave them both a realistic picture of what it's actually like to be wealthy and a belief that it was attainment if they could get to those positions someday.

Today however, due to rise in remote work, companies becoming larger, and fundamental changes in how a lot of these things operate, Millenials and Zoomers may rarely meet people that far above them economically on the economic ladder.

Then on social media, almost all the wealthy people are a dumb Miami party bro who does Crypto and Drop-shipping. If you're someone who is working hard in a 9-5 or actively attending college, that could become demoralizing, especially because it feels like working hard doesn't mean anything.

The reality is most upper-middle-class/wealthy people (like top 10%) live relatively comfortable yet normal lives, even moreso than their Boomer parents. The vast majority went to college and worked jobs like Doctor, Lawyer, or Technology. They also don't feel the need to actively flex on social media. However in the minds of many younger folks, this image of comfort just doesn't exist and is instead drowned out by the extremes. If you presented this top 10% life style as a more realistic goal for younger people, particularly those pursuing college to strive for, I think it would help reduce the pessimism.

Ig another way to think about it is how almost any normal person in an impoverished country like Dominican Republican of the Congo would think any of us live like kings, and that's because their perception of reality is just so heavily skewed. Millenials and Zoomers just have a skewed sense of reality compared to Boomers, and believe they're living worse quality lives when in many cases they're not.

Life in the Dominican Republic (my sympathies to autocorrect victims)-

Props to this Zoomer for keeping it real and calling out the Andrew Tates of the online world.

[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.

Related- don't entirely agree with the Carter comparison but this is objectively a good post.

My theory:

1.) Trump's support in national polls is currently inflated less because of polling issues and more because a lot of Democrats/D-leaners will obviously come home like they always do, making it a closer race in the end — even if not necessarily "close enough" for Biden.

2.) The 'pundit/Atlas demographic' (heavily white, college-ed, more affluent, liberal) is in an even worse position to pick up on a Trump surge than in 2016 because it is particularly strong among non-white working-/middle-class voters this cycle, whereas it was mostly limited to white voters in 2016.

3.) Obama-era narratives about high turnout benefiting Democrats (often in the context of partisan "demographics is destiny" or "voter suppression" discourses) have been disproven — there is no inherent high-turnout advantage for Democrats, and it’s not a coincidence that since 2016, Democrats have consistently fared well in most lower-tunout elections and generally worse the higher the turnout.

4.) While Trump is a very flawed candidate, he still has more appeal to a large portion of the electorate than the Republican Party, whose leaders are desperate to prevent the party's obvious shift away from Reaganism to Buchananism and a more working-class-oriented, isolationist, and anti-'globalist' message. The former remains unappealing even to a lot of voters who Trump gained in 2016 and 2020; hence another reason (besides "lower turnout") for the Republican failure to replicate or expand Trump's gains with those demographics in 2022. Trump at least has the right direction and the image of a strong leader, offering some sense of certainty to people.

5.) "Trumpism without Trump" matched against "independent local Democratic leader" who keeps his distance from Biden on the campaign trail has now worked to the Democrats' advantage since 2022, but it has made people forget just how unpopular Biden actually is. Democrats knew how to handle Biden when he wasn’t on the ballot (running as their "own men"), whereas Republicans mostly didn’t know how to handle Trump, in large part because of Trump's grip on the base, which is desperate for actual leaders and sees no leaders in the national GOP. Those Republicans who did in fact run as their "own men" (Youngkin, GOP governors in 2022) fared very well, even when they were attacked on abortion.

6.) Biden retiring wouldn’t "guarantee" a Democratic victory, but the fact of the matter is that Biden is currently the face of everything wrong in the country and in politics — weak leadership (a problem seriously exacerbated by his age), out-of-touch politicians who don’t see how their policies are hurting people who have to work for rent, wrong priorities that don’t change the status quo, politicians who have been in D.C. for half a century, etc.

Biden is not a leader/strongman and he has no movement — usually, those candidates (Carter, H. W. Bush, Dole, Romney, etc.) can only win in unusually favorable circumstances and don’t last very long, and they virtually never beat candidates who have both the strongman image and a movement. 2020 was somewhat of an exception to this, but there is a reason why Biden underperformed so noticeably that year, and it’s something few people want to talk about because they’re so focused on the binary outcome ("he won", therefore he was a good candidate — same mistake people made with Trump in 2016). The problem for Biden is that unlike in 2020, his favorability numbers are now hardly too different from Trump's and he’s seen as weaker and more partisan than in 2020. He also has no margin for error because his 2020 win was so narrow in the first place and depended on overperformances in R-trending parts of the country. Notice how much of this also applied to Jimmy Carter?

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

The Carters are good people, and I'll pray for them.

One wonders if the reason why Jimmy Carter failed, was because he was too " nice " to be President.

It was more of an issue that he lacked experience and was - despite some success - the wrong guy for that particular time. Gerald Ford was an equally nice guy (his nickname literally was "Mr. Nice Guy") though I believe he would been better equipped to deal with the many challenges of the late 1970s.

Carter was not too "nice" to be President.  He had his nasty side.  George McGovern called him "the biggest p---k in politics" in 1972, and Carter was, in truth, rather nasty in his efforts to stop McGovern from being nominated.  After being nasty to McGovern, only to see McGovern nominated anyway, Carter called Scoop Jackson at 4 am to ask if Scoop would call McGovern and plug him for McGovern's VP.  Robert Kaufman, Jackson's biographer, stated that Jackson could never think of Carter again without a certain revulsion, and McGovern was put off by the attempt as well.

Niceness and Nastiness was not the reason for Carter's troubles as President.  The problem was that Carter was the only true "centrist" to be elected, other than Eisenhower, since WWI.  Carter, on issues, was, on the whole, positioned almost dead center between the bases of each party.  He was not an ideologue, and his liberal positions and postures came in conservative wrappers.

Such a posture was needed for a Democrat to be elected President in 1976.  Carter was looking to run for President in 1976 long before the 1972 convention, and he (correctly) recognized that a Democratic victory in the 1976 Presidential race would require a different kind of Democrat, one that could manage to gain the support of the more conservative elements of the Democratic Party (who were actual conservatives, and not just to the right of the left wing base) while being acceptable to liberals (who received a dose of reality when Nixon won 49 states in 1972).  And Carter was a stunning success here; he won the support of Southern blacks AND Southern conservatives (Eastland, Stennis, Wallace, and every Southern Democrat of consequence openly endorsed Carter).  He won the support of the anti-war Left and the AFL-CIO (no mean feat in 1976).  He did this because after 1972, no one wanted to be responsible for blowing a Presidential election they ought to have won post-Watergate.  This worked out well, in that Carter won the Northeast, the industrial Midwest (save for Illinois, which had problems, locally, with their Democratic Party in 1976), and 10 of 11 Southern states.  It was the last hurrah for the FDR coalition.

But what worked in winning an election did not work in governing.  Because Carter was a "Moderate Hero" as President, he pleased no one.  Liberals were unhappy from Day One, viewing Carter as a placeholder until their God-Prince Ted Kennedy could come on horseback and restore Camelot.  (Ted Kennedy's speech line "The Dream will never die" was as much about that as it was about "progressive ideals".)   Southern conservatives supported him to the extent that they would rather Carter be on the top of the ticket in 1980 than someone else, but he was not warm to them, and he could not count on their votes for some of Carter's liberal initiatives.  Carter had more legislative successes than he gets credit for, but his wins were compromises that pleased nobody.  But what really undid Carter (at least in the South) was his abandonment of a "neocon" position on foreign policy in favor of what Elliott Abrams once called "his own brand of McGovernism".  This is where the image of Carter as "weak" came in.  Carter, after all, was a Jackson supporter, and Jackson was the candidate of the traditional anti-Communist liberals in the Democratic Party (e. g. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Zbignew Brzenski).  Carter's nomination represented a repudiation of the anti-war Left to some, but his governing represented the locking in of a number of anti-war Left positions as part and parcel of the Democratic Party.

Not that Carter was always wrong here.  Carter attempted to strike a balance.  He did attempt to interject Human Rights into the foreign policy discussions, and that was good.  But he allowed himself to be manipulated by some Leftists to do things like push for the ouster of Somoza in Nicaragua, or (even worse) the Shah of Iran.  These sort of leaders were not good people, but their replacements were (A) far worse and (B) more entrenched.  Richard Nixon, for all his faults, was rightly critical of Foreign Policy that "greased the skids for our allies", and Carter's foreign policy included some of that.

This does not change the assessment of Carter as a fundamentally good man.  I do not view Carter as the "failed President" so many do.  I regret my support of Kennedy in 1980 and my abstaining in the Presidential race in 1980.  I believe that had Carter been re-elected, his second term would have been much better than his first.  What I am writing here is an explanation of why things went for Carter as they did (at least in part).  God Bless Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter in their final days. 

[Kamala's side hoe]

Another ode to the underappreciated swing voter for the road

I don't even know why I'm acting like joe bidens strongest soldier atm. sh**t, I wrote in my uncle in 2012, my father in law in 2016, and the only reason I voted for Biden in 2020 was because I thought my wife voted for Trump and I wanted our votes to cancel out lol. I'm up in the air for 2024. Cornel west is most like me politically,  but rfk is a climate guy so I could go either way. I'm only slightly more likely to vote for Biden versus Trump and the only way I would ever vote for Trump was if he was running against hitler.

That all being said, anecdotally, trumps lead everywhere makes little sense to me. I don't wear my politics on my sleeve, and based off my looks, most assume I'm a Maga guy so people of all stripes freely give me their political opinions with me giving little in return. All I keep hearing is how people just plain aren't gonna vote for president if those are the top 2 choices or they are voting 3rd party. I live in an 80 r/ 20 d County so the anecdotes are heavily skewed one way.

I just don't trust polling atm because it doesn't reflect a reality I see..... if the primary polls were more competitive, I could understand the toplines of the general... dems being unhappy with the candidate and showing the party through the primary.... but a whole sale switch after almost every real life election shows otherwise... nah... you all be tripping.

Another tasty anecdote. I work 3 jobs and have since 2017. I have an office job in the construction industry, run a small service based company, and farm a little on the side. Average about 60-75 hrs per week. Other than 2021 in the construction job; bidens presidency has been hands down better for me economically. Not even close honestly. Even my boss, the type who wears a large cross necklace at all times, admits this frequently. He's still absolutely voting Trump but he admits it. The farming industry in our area is absolutely going gang busters right now.... the amount of growth is not something I have seen in my lifetime.

Lastly, I am sick and tired of hearing about the upcoming recession/depression. I have heard from a coworker almost everyday since November 2020 about how the depression is coming, the depression is coming.... it's been 3 years now.... I guess this will be the most anticipated economic depression of all time...don't get me wrong, a depression or recession will surely happen again; they are a staple of capitalism, and one is always right around the corner but this to the point ofincessant mental masturbation calling for a recession all the time.

[jvmh2009]

Another ode to the underappreciated swing voter for the road

I don't even know why I'm acting like joe bidens strongest soldier atm. sh**t, I wrote in my uncle in 2012, my father in law in 2016, and the only reason I voted for Biden in 2020 was because I thought my wife voted for Trump and I wanted our votes to cancel out lol. I'm up in the air for 2024. Cornel west is most like me politically,  but rfk is a climate guy so I could go either way. I'm only slightly more likely to vote for Biden versus Trump and the only way I would ever vote for Trump was if he was running against hitler.

That all being said, anecdotally, trumps lead everywhere makes little sense to me. I don't wear my politics on my sleeve, and based off my looks, most assume I'm a Maga guy so people of all stripes freely give me their political opinions with me giving little in return. All I keep hearing is how people just plain aren't gonna vote for president if those are the top 2 choices or they are voting 3rd party. I live in an 80 r/ 20 d County so the anecdotes are heavily skewed one way.

I just don't trust polling atm because it doesn't reflect a reality I see..... if the primary polls were more competitive, I could understand the toplines of the general... dems being unhappy with the candidate and showing the party through the primary.... but a whole sale switch after almost every real life election shows otherwise... nah... you all be tripping.

Another tasty anecdote. I work 3 jobs and have since 2017. I have an office job in the construction industry, run a small service based company, and farm a little on the side. Average about 60-75 hrs per week. Other than 2021 in the construction job; bidens presidency has been hands down better for me economically. Not even close honestly. Even my boss, the type who wears a large cross necklace at all times, admits this frequently. He's still absolutely voting Trump but he admits it. The farming industry in our area is absolutely going gang busters right now.... the amount of growth is not something I have seen in my lifetime.

Lastly, I am sick and tired of hearing about the upcoming recession/depression. I have heard from a coworker almost everyday since November 2020 about how the depression is coming, the depression is coming.... it's been 3 years now.... I guess this will be the most anticipated economic depression of all time...don't get me wrong, a depression or recession will surely happen again; they are a staple of capitalism, and one is always right around the corner but this to the point ofincessant mental masturbation calling for a recession all the time.

Hey now. Don't be hatin. I am not a swing voter. Just an equal opportunity Democrat and Republican  hater.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The Carters are good people, and I'll pray for them.

One wonders if the reason why Jimmy Carter failed, was because he was too " nice " to be President.

It was more of an issue that he lacked experience and was - despite some success - the wrong guy for that particular time. Gerald Ford was an equally nice guy (his nickname literally was "Mr. Nice Guy") though I believe he would been better equipped to deal with the many challenges of the late 1970s.

Carter was not too "nice" to be President.  He had his nasty side.  George McGovern called him "the biggest p---k in politics" in 1972, and Carter was, in truth, rather nasty in his efforts to stop McGovern from being nominated.  After being nasty to McGovern, only to see McGovern nominated anyway, Carter called Scoop Jackson at 4 am to ask if Scoop would call McGovern and plug him for McGovern's VP.  Robert Kaufman, Jackson's biographer, stated that Jackson could never think of Carter again without a certain revulsion, and McGovern was put off by the attempt as well.

Niceness and Nastiness was not the reason for Carter's troubles as President.  The problem was that Carter was the only true "centrist" to be elected, other than Eisenhower, since WWI.  Carter, on issues, was, on the whole, positioned almost dead center between the bases of each party.  He was not an ideologue, and his liberal positions and postures came in conservative wrappers.

Such a posture was needed for a Democrat to be elected President in 1976.  Carter was looking to run for President in 1976 long before the 1972 convention, and he (correctly) recognized that a Democratic victory in the 1976 Presidential race would require a different kind of Democrat, one that could manage to gain the support of the more conservative elements of the Democratic Party (who were actual conservatives, and not just to the right of the left wing base) while being acceptable to liberals (who received a dose of reality when Nixon won 49 states in 1972).  And Carter was a stunning success here; he won the support of Southern blacks AND Southern conservatives (Eastland, Stennis, Wallace, and every Southern Democrat of consequence openly endorsed Carter).  He won the support of the anti-war Left and the AFL-CIO (no mean feat in 1976).  He did this because after 1972, no one wanted to be responsible for blowing a Presidential election they ought to have won post-Watergate.  This worked out well, in that Carter won the Northeast, the industrial Midwest (save for Illinois, which had problems, locally, with their Democratic Party in 1976), and 10 of 11 Southern states.  It was the last hurrah for the FDR coalition.

But what worked in winning an election did not work in governing.  Because Carter was a "Moderate Hero" as President, he pleased no one.  Liberals were unhappy from Day One, viewing Carter as a placeholder until their God-Prince Ted Kennedy could come on horseback and restore Camelot.  (Ted Kennedy's speech line "The Dream will never die" was as much about that as it was about "progressive ideals".)   Southern conservatives supported him to the extent that they would rather Carter be on the top of the ticket in 1980 than someone else, but he was not warm to them, and he could not count on their votes for some of Carter's liberal initiatives.  Carter had more legislative successes than he gets credit for, but his wins were compromises that pleased nobody.  But what really undid Carter (at least in the South) was his abandonment of a "neocon" position on foreign policy in favor of what Elliott Abrams once called "his own brand of McGovernism".  This is where the image of Carter as "weak" came in.  Carter, after all, was a Jackson supporter, and Jackson was the candidate of the traditional anti-Communist liberals in the Democratic Party (e. g. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Zbignew Brzenski).  Carter's nomination represented a repudiation of the anti-war Left to some, but his governing represented the locking in of a number of anti-war Left positions as part and parcel of the Democratic Party.

Not that Carter was always wrong here.  Carter attempted to strike a balance.  He did attempt to interject Human Rights into the foreign policy discussions, and that was good.  But he allowed himself to be manipulated by some Leftists to do things like push for the ouster of Somoza in Nicaragua, or (even worse) the Shah of Iran.  These sort of leaders were not good people, but their replacements were (A) far worse and (B) more entrenched.  Richard Nixon, for all his faults, was rightly critical of Foreign Policy that "greased the skids for our allies", and Carter's foreign policy included some of that.

This does not change the assessment of Carter as a fundamentally good man.  I do not view Carter as the "failed President" so many do.  I regret my support of Kennedy in 1980 and my abstaining in the Presidential race in 1980.  I believe that had Carter been re-elected, his second term would have been much better than his first.  What I am writing here is an explanation of why things went for Carter as they did (at least in part).  God Bless Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter in their final days.  

We are looking at History thru a Pandemic prism clearly if there was a Pandemic there would of had been no Reagan era income inequality would be at its worst 1968 we had Project and subsidized Housing blks were having 3 kids as well as whites now whites have 3 and blks are having one. 17 M impoverished in 1968 during Nixon and Reagan era, 65M. Impoverished

If we had projects instead of Section 8 blks would be lackluster and not vote now, they don't have it made anymore

[Badger]

Not the usual wall of text level posts, although almost always high quality, as others in this thread, but still worthy of inclusion here in my opinion.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Not the usual wall of text level posts, although almost always high quality, as others in this thread, but still worthy of inclusion here in my opinion.

Speaking of non-wall-of-text posts, this blurb below is a fantastic criticism of the public-facing portion of this community. Happy Holidays to everyone reading!

This forum suffers from an excess of people who speak not to be heard, but to produce a reaction. Scroll through the list of active threads on any of the more active boards and witness the results.

It's unfortunate that anxiety about generational change has become so tied up with discussions of social media. We are about a decade removed from a world in which the assumption that older adults aren't online held much relevance, so the differences that we see in age cohorts have more to do with how they are online.

As far as this forum is concerned, the gradual displacement of election news and discussion with gossip about social media personalities has been distressing to observe over the past decade. With that change has also come a shift away from the norms of an older internet, one where sincere discussions could take place in public. We're too cynical and narcissistic for that now. But all of this is universal, and not the work of any particular generation.

For all of the panic about TikTok, I have never seen a discussion here that directly engages with content from that platform. This is fascinating, because Pew just reported that it is a rapidly growing source of news for the age group to which most active posters here belong. This is at a time of rapid decline for news media on most other platforms. Why aren't we talking about that instead of gawking over viral panics?

[President Johnson]

Dropping a good post from a relatively new user here, who has potential as effort poster.

Fluke in what sense? The 2024 and 2020 elections won't be that similar, apart from having the same candidates. The conditions of each election will be completely different.

Since 2020, we've had rising inflation, the end of Roe v. Wade, multiple foreign wars that the U.S. has involved itself in, crime as a bigger issue, and Biden's health is also much more of an issue compared to 2020.

I do think that this election will almost completely define Biden's historic legacy - either he will be the man who defeated Trump, or the man who failed to stop him from returning. It is also the case that, if he loses, Biden's presidency will be viewed as part of the "Trump Era" rather than its own thing (or potentially as a part of the larger "Obama Era"). So I suppose in that sense, his presidency and election in 2020 will be viewed as more of a fluke if he loses re-election.

[Vice President Christian Man]

Imagine telling Romney, as he's watching Paul Ryan debate Joe Biden in 2012, that he would one day be voting for Joe Biden for President. I'm pretty sure he'd have a stroke.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Here's my concern:

Unlike things like being gay or being a person of a different race or being a woman there are very significant health reasons against being fat.  Being obese has real consequences way beyond some folks occasionally saying mean things or being denied housing by a few assholes.  It is unfortunate there are people out there who think being a jerk is somehow acceptable.  And I for one would never have made the argument that fat people have less of a work ethic than fit people.

With that said where the hell do we draw the line?  Being black by itself doesn't come with an increased likelihood of having heart disease or other negative health outcome.  Neither does being a woman or being gay.  Practically every religious tradition I've looked into discourages things like over eating and encourages "treating your body like a temple".  Being fat in and of itself does not determine your character, your ethics, things like that.  But it DOES bring with it very significant health complications that should not be ignored and which do have a very large cost on society.

This is not a "black and white" issue.  You can believe that fat people deserve basic respect and consideration but also believe that fatness is not something that should be endorsed.  This is the problem I see with this proposal.  Also, while it may be incredibly rude for a landlord to deny someone housing because they're fat there are still a whole host of aesthetic reasons a landlord can deny someone housing or employment.  You can be denied housing because the landlord can't stand youngsters with blue hair.  You can be denied housing because someone thinks your hair is too long.  You can be denied housing simply because the landlord doesn't like your personality.  There are a lot of ways someone can still be a jerk that can't be legislated out by law.  If we have to step in and interfere whenever a POS landlord discriminates against a fat person what's to stop someone from the future from further deciding that other "voluntary lifestyles" that have significant consequences deserve full legal protection?  How would you feel if say someone decided we should reverse course on "smoking bans" and we need anti-discrimination protections for smokers who apply for housing because there are people who discriminate against smokers?

Like come'on man.

[Kamala's side hoe]

That was a good Nate Silver substack piece and Beet gave a good review of it.

Nate Silver wrote an interesting piece on his substack on this topic. The subject was the controversy over the Ivy presidents' failures to denounce calls for genocide of jews but the core problem is the same: liberals and progressives are not the same. Increasingly so.

Why liberalism and leftism are increasingly at odds

And he's absolutely right. The only thing holding the democratic coalition right now is that the MAGA conservative movement is just too repulsive to liberals as an alternative. But the truth of the matter is that progressivism has become a completely incompatible ideology with classical liberalism. People used to mock the horseshoe theory but you'd have to be an idiot to discard it at this point. The view of these progressives on race is pretty much indistinguishable from that of a hardcore segregationist, just from the opposite 'tribe'.

Fascinating article. The two tendencies that Nate talks about -- liberalism and SJLism, can indeed be reconciled, as each has its own separate domain. Liberalism, as Nate defines it, is properly the domain of legal, regulatory, policy, public, and political affairs. Liberalism ought to govern the public "commons" that all the people of this diverse nation inhabit. SJLism is properly the domain of civil society - that is, private voluntary groups that organize together, and affect politics only insofar as lobbying, just as say, the Chamber of Commerce lobbies. But when the lobbying occurs, it does so under the framework of liberalism. In this way, I believe, that people's tendencies towards group identity can be reconciled with the necessity of having a liberal polity to mediate between them.

Liberalism's mistake is often to ignore or overtook people's group identities, rather than to acknowledge that people have such identities by nature, that they are important to people, and to respect them. The liberal must recognize that politics is essentially coalitional by nature -- that people do not vote for you necessarily because they agree with you entirely on ideology, but because you offer them something in their interest and vice versa.

It is somewhat ironic how Nate identifies himself as a liberal in this essay, yet, he acknowledges that the source of his strong emotions about this matter is because he is a liberal Jew -- his group ethno-religious identity. Thus within Nate himself are the two competing tendencies and just as he has to reconcile them within himself by "decoupling", so it is critical for the broader left-liberal coalition to "decouple" these two tendencies and assign each its proper place. This is undoubtedly a constant, and complicated task, but that is because political and social affairs are a complicated matter.

Democratic politicians should absolutely stay away from DEI and redouble their efforts towards material programs that have broad appeal.

This post gets at why attempts by the political right to restrict SJLism will fail. I’m not terribly offended at the concept of a BIPOC-only (or considering who sent the email in this situation, post-1965 immigrant wave-only) holiday party, but yes it’s a very bad look that the email was also sent to people it wasn’t intended for.

[cherry mandarin]

There were two responses to the Great Recession: reject neoliberalism or take it to its logical conclusion, hence why the movement got big in the early-to-mid 2010s. Libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism were attractive ideas to elite aspirant millennials, when they and the "Main Street USA" Tea Party grassroots had a common enemy in big government neoconservatism and Obamacare, and there was a lot of hopeful technological determinism surrounding social media and the tech bros. It's a hard sell now that it's clear that deregulation is the thing making everyone's life worse: the harmful impact of social media has gotten a spotlight and the tech bros have been caught in some highly visible scandals, a lot of their goofier ideas like crypto have been revealed as rugpull scams, climate change and the lack of material prosperity from the "grindset" has popularized ideas of degrowth and anti-work, and social issues, especially trans rights, drove a wedge: either you understand their struggle, and the interlocking matrices of oppression with it, or you see them as a "degenerate" product of that unregulated capitalism. The Individualists: Radicals, Reactionaries, and the Struggle for the Soul of Libertarianism by Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi is worth a read. Of course the Libertarian Party proper has had some internal issues, but the turn of the zeitgeist against their ideas can't be ignored either.

[Mechavada]

And now, a high quality response

things like being gay or being a person of a different race or being a woman

Being obese has real consequences

With that having been said, where the hell should we draw the line? Other attributes don't come with an increased likelihood of having heart disease or other negative health outcome. [Three sentences omitted here] But being fat DOES bring with it very significant health complications that should not be ignored and which do have a very large cost ["on society" omitted]

You can believe that fat people deserve basic respect and consideration, but also believe at the same time that fatness is not something to be endorsed.

There are still a whole host of aesthetic reasons a landlord can deny someone housing or employment. You can be denied housing because the landlord can't stand youngsters with blue hair. Or, you could be denied housing because someone thinks your hair is too long.

There are a lot of ways someone can still be a jerk that can't be legislated out by law.

If we have to step in and intervene whenever a landlord discriminates against a fat person, what's to stop someone in the future from further deciding that other "voluntary lifestyles" with significant consequences deserve full legal protection, too? If someone were to decide that we should overturn smoking bans and implement anti-discrimination protections for smokers, how would you feel then?

Don't like that guy — he feels the need to go through and slightly edit every post he responds to, sometimes in ways that subtly change the meaning but often just needlessly. (The bolded portions of the quotes are language that doesn't appear in your original post.) Very odd habit.

You know what, you're right.  I specifically said that ascribing work ethic to fatness or lack of it is not something I would do.  I also clarified that I don't support bullying fat people.  He completely ignored those points completely and acted like I supported bullying fat people.  I don't.  I just think that there should be some grounds that landlords should have to disqualify people and there do not seem to be enough cases of "fatphobia" in housing to justify an entire law prohibiting said "discrimination".  Also, a lot of the "non-voluntary" obesity that he seems so hung up about is already covered by laws that prohibit discrimination based on disabilty.

So yes you're right, he wanted to make me feel bad.  Which worked for about a couple of hours but now?  No, it just feels like a scummy way to engage in a debate.

[cherry mandarin]

I specifically said that ascribing work ethic (or lack of it) to fatness is not something I would do. He ignored those points completely

In my post, I never mentioned work ethic or alluded to anything like it. I'm curious where you got the impression that I was discussing that at all.

I also clarified that I don't support bullying fat people. He completely ignored those points and acted like I supported bullying fat people. I don't.

How did I "act like" you support bullying fat people? I never once accused you of feeling that way.

I talked about bullying in that post because I saw a lot of posters making light of fat people, in what struck me as extremely rude and insensitive ways. The thread, however, was dozens (now hundreds) of posts long, and I wasn't going to quote every single person just to be able to refer to the bodies of text in their respective messages. Rest assured that I was replying to a number of others (albeit indirectly) on this issue, not you.

Also, a lot of the "non-voluntary" obesity that he seems so hung up about is already covered by laws that prohibit discrimination based on disability.

One of the points I was making in my post was that obesity is rarely "voluntary", though. Sure, people can lose weight in many instances, but the returns are often very limited, and hence they don't consider it to be worth their while. All I'm trying to say is, I don't think fat people should be allowed to get punished for that (by way of being discriminated against).

you're right, he wanted to make me feel bad.

In all honesty, I have no idea where you're getting that impression from. I genuinely tried my best to be civil and polite throughout my post, and I sincerely apologize if I didn't come across that way. It was never my intention to make you feel bad at all.

I saw that you made two posts quoting me that have have since been deleted. I never got the chance to read their contents, but I'm definitely still willing to engage in a substantive (and hopefully productive) conversation or debate over this topic, if you wish.

It just feels like a scummy way to engage in a debate.

If you're dissatisfied with the tone I took or the way I was talking, I kindly invite you to tell me which parts of it you feel like denigrated you in any way, and I will do everything in my power to change my habits of speech avoid addressing you in that way going forward.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I think all the tiktok fear-mongering and foreign propaganda claims are failing to see the whole picture of gen-Z, and that in general most polling has shown gen-Z to be modestly more ignorant generation than previous generations at that age.

But why this this the case? One thing I'm surprised few in the Atlas discussions on this topic have mentioned is learning loss from poorly implemented remote-schooling.

The PISA 2022 international exam results for 15 year olds (not directly measuring 18-29 as in the topic poll, but same trend) have recently been released (link), and show that compared to 2018, mean reading scores in OECD nations have fell 10 points, math scores 15 points, and science scores 2 points. This is on a scale with standard deviation 100 points, but distributional mean shifts have strong affects on the tail end (i.e. proportion of students who test below a threshold can increase multiple fold with small mean shift). The 18-29 cohort is full of students with on average a year loss of high school, college, post-graduate schooling, and/or career experience even if on paper they still have the same credentials, and losing the opportunity to learn important synthesis skills in these settings undoubtedly made a measurable amount of younger adults simply less knowledgeable about the world.

However, the decline of OECD PISA performance actually seems to have started around the year 2010, rather than just recently. This is an area where it seems social media has a significant impact. A deeper look into the results (page 36 here) shows that using digital devices at school more than 1 hour for recreation and more than 5 hours for learning (e.g. fully digital school) is correlated to worse mathematics performance. It also shows that 0 hours for both recreation and learning have very poor results, so assuming proper controls, digital learning (and even short reprieves apparently) have a place in schools. I think it as profoundly ignorant to only focus on tiktok though. Instagram reels content and algorithms are undoubtedly not that different.

I think that arguing about how accurate the specific numbers are is missing the point. Yes, if less than half of young adults are very sure that the Holocaust happened, that’s horrific, but even if that number were 75%, it would still be terrible. We should be rooting out these beliefs no matter the exact percentage of people who subscribe to them. Blaming TikTok is also missing the point, because if people get their news from any type of social media, that’s indicative of a much, much bigger societal problem.

The education system is part of the issue here, as is the recent tendency to see everything in black and white dichotomies (you’re either a helpless oppressed victim of colonization or a guilty powerful colonizer), but I also think that the amount of social isolation, which is partially a product of our beloved individualism feeds into this. If people have no interaction with actual Jewish people (or any ethnic group, for that matter), they’re far more likely to believe hurtful tropes about them. Living in an area with a large number of people from a certain group also doesn’t constitute interaction.

I can say for a fact that the number of antisemitic millennials (on the right and the left) is uncomfortably high. It’s not anything like half of them, but plenty of people I knew in school who I thought were my friends would say some very antisemitic things, and there was one time when a group of my peers and I were about to divide up money, and they physically held me down to prevent me from getting close to the money. I’m sure they thought it was a “joke”, but that’s pretty far to go for a gag. Attitudes among Gen Z could be worse (again, let’s not generalize and say that it’s all young people), but regardless of whether or not we think this poll is accurate, we should be educating young people about the reality of the Holocaust and the fact that history can repeat itself, particularly in a somewhat different way.

[cherry mandarin]

I do think the term "woke" has been disabused of much of its original meaning. Much like terms like "progressive", "egalitarian", "liberal", "politically correct", "social justice", "feminist", etc., it's a term that has undergone a huge metamorphosis in recent years, as its definition gets distorted by ally and opportunist alike. At the risk of sounding, well, woke, the term was originally conjured up among urban black communities to describe the injustices, inequalities and double standards that those communities were facing. Since then, however, it has essentially been appropriated by conservatives as well as liberals, in order to deflect from the issue of actual inequality in favour of self-righteous prejudicial screeds to divide working- and middle-class Americans—all while the truly most powerful and corrupt among us only get more and more powerful with each passing day.

I'd argue that the entirety of the "woke" debate, both from people who gutlessly defend even the worst excesses of it against basic common sense, as well as from people who will not and seemingly cannot shut up about how evil and hypocritical such people are, is basically just a gigantic distraction. True "wokeness" was murdered in its sleep some time ago, by the most craven and opportunistic of our elites. Instead, it has been replaced by an insidious culture-war debate that basically emboldens the social authoritarians in both parties' bases, at the expense of tackling any kind of class inequality. This is precisely why the media goes out of its way to amplify both sides, so that they can try and keep the "woke horseshoe" on, as the most perverted and capricious forces of our economic Serengeti devour us like the lion devours the zebra.

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

This study is a bad-faith effort to generate the headline that baits people to make the most predictable anti-trans declarations. As The Impartial Spectator said, it was an effortless study to produce... partially because it tells us absolutely nothing new. Also: this is a sociology paper. Armstrong and Sullivan are sociologists.

Since the sports literature indicates that gendered roles influence sports performance, in that case, one should expect that gender identity may be associated with sports performance. (2)

Okay, the literature finds this. I suppose something new could be analyzed.

Advocates of gender-identity theory argue that gender identity is typically more important than sex in determining outcomes (1)

Oh. We're doing this kind of research. The smart-ass, "I'm going to debunk [insert strawman here] FOREVER!!!" type.

Our study illustrates the importance of controlling for sex when studying gender non-conforming individuals in the context of sports performance (6)

Yes. This is the incredibly obvious outcome of analyzing "non-binary athletic performance" while only controlling for "natal sex, gender identity, age and the event being raced" (1). Any honest study would look into many, many other obvious possible controls and/or explanatory variables - time on HRT, if any, for instance. Of course, this was an ideological study done with a minimal budget. (The actual budget of the study, I do not know.)

...actually, why do the authors use the term "gender non-conforming" in the conclusion? Those are two very different things. The "gender-critical" movement always makes huge note of how gender nonconformity does not indicate "transness" (which is true)... but then the ideological authors conflate them. Sloppy!

It was instead free, other than being a waste of the authors' time. But considering they did this, if they had not chosen to waste their time doing this, they almost certainly would have wasted their time doing something else, so no real loss there either.

As can be seen, this was very much not a waste of the authors' time. It was incredibly basic, lazy, and dishonest social "science" that can easily be skewed and fed into the anti-trans media bubble.

https://twitter.com/johnarmstrong5/status/1730526130094907852

Color me shocked that someone who Xes drivel like this - and constantly re-Xes notable anti-trans figures (e.g. Maya Forstater, Riley Gaines, Glinner, among many others) - would author a bad-faith study. The re-Xes of Sullivan are no different.

The frustrating thing is that the person who posted the thread won't read this.

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

The future of this issue is about protecting trans kids and kids meaning kids, not even teenagers.

The anti-trans side here is living in the world of 1990 when a grown man like Bruce decides to "become a woman" (all of a sudden).  Conjuring up the image of a man in a dress, the "transsexual" on Jerry Springer.

In the world of 2024, it's the 9 year old child going to school.

this is a much more complex issue but it has been sensationalized by the media for decades.

But there is no choice, because no one would choose it.  Nobody would choose to be trans... why, when you don't have to be?

No, we're living in the world where detransitioners exist and children are being convinced by a few relatives and the internet that they're transgender because their interests are not a hundred percent stereotypical. Which is something some of us are against. The science still isn't even close to done on this subject either.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I can repeat word for word Kevin Costner JFK assassination with Probable cause that Ruby was second gunman.

Gov Connelly said they gonna kill us all by being hit from back by Oswald bullet, the 6 th and fatal shot came from grassy area that hid Ruby or the umbrella man that killed Kennedy, yeah that was Ruby gun.

Ruby said why when he killed Oswald, he knew why, they found a letter claiming Monsters Ruby and Oswald wanted Connelly death a month before DDay

A woman said in a statement to authority that she saw Ruby drive the buses full of rifles with Oswald on the other side of Book Depository and found Ruby along the grassy area when the killing took place


As on Anatomy on fall you can convict on probable not absolutely cause, the woman killed her hubby based on passed argument

[cherry mandarin]

Yes, but 2024 is likely too soon.  As others have noted, this really kicks in when a lot of people born after the 2008 crash become eligible to vote.  There are 2 components to this:

1. Statistically, post-2008 children were very disproportionately born and/or raised in the South.  Between fewer pandemic school closures and abortion restrictions, this is likely to get even more dramatic for post-2018 children.  Regardless of whether national politics shifts Republican, what's more clear is that culturally Southern influence will grow.  This also means the South will come to functionally control K-12 education.  The 2030 census could be an important turning point for this as by most models the South cumulatively gains a medium size state worth of EVs.  There is a world in which this greatly benefits Republicans.  However, it's also possible that Democrats will gradually become more effective at competing in the South as we have seen in GA and VA over the last decade or so.

2. Certain non-Southern megacities are approaching a new equilibrium in which only devoutly religious people get married and have kids in significant numbers.  This could be driving the R trend in NYC and parts of CA.  Given the astronomical Dem margins in these cities most likely it will be a slow generational climb out of the basement, like when R's gradually broke the Solid South after WWII.  However, if NY becomes a competitive state from this, it would be a political earthquake.

3. If the economy falters meaningfully in the late 2020's/early 2030's, there will be a forced choice between cutting social security and medicare or raising taxes significantly on young people to keep it stable.  Democrats seem likely to choose the latter, which could alienate young families.  Parents in particular may be less concerned about old age benefits because they could rely on their children to some degree if necessary.

Put these together and my main takeaway is that today's Democrats have become unsustainably socially liberal for the long run.  However, there's also a considerable risk to R's from Trumpy populism if it alienates enough of the South over time.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Neither of course, but I was listening to a very interesting podcast recently about the evolutionary reasons for why humans developed their disposition towards alcohol. The theory is that by inhibiting the parts of the brain responsible for social caution and the ability to convincingly lie, alcohol historically functioned as a way for humans to build trust and bond with one another. This trust-building was essential for complex society to develop because typical apes aren't capable of engaging in the types of large-scale cooperation humans do. Alcohol was therefore a sort of mental disarmament, which signaled trust on both sides.

However, the alcohol of ancient times was much less potent and also more highly regulated than it is today. Individuals didn't have easy access to it in their homes, and they could only drink it at religious ceremonies or other prescribed social functions where their intake would be controlled by priests or community leaders. Today, our biological enjoyment of alcohol has driven us to chase that endorphin rush by binge-drinking highly alcoholic beverages alone in our homes. Alcoholism is thus a self-destructive perversion of a valid evolutionary trait.

Recent stats on young people drinking less are promising, but of course that's somewhat offset by marijuana consumption. It's funny to me that some Gen Z people call themselves "sober" while smoking weed. I don't partake in either, which might explain why I'm a libertarian who's mistrustful of large groups and social cooperation.

[Vice President Christian Man]

The Democratic Party from 1913-1968 was generally the more interventionist party and the conservative wing of the GOP was generally the more isolationist part of the GOP.

Woodrow Wilson- Intervened in WW1, and pushed for the league of nations to be created after the War while the Republicans were opposed to it and in fact did kill the effort for the US to join the league of nations.

After Wilson you got 12 years of Republicans in the White House where they pretty much pushed through a pretty isolationist policy agenda

FDR- Even prior to Pearl Harbor pushed hard for stuff like Lend Lease when much of the GOP opposed it and prominent Republicans such as Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg were for the US being neutral.

Harry Truman- Helped Create NATO and the Truman Doctrine when again the more conservative wing of the GOP opposed the creation of NATO . Heck in 1952, the only reason Robert Taft did not get the GOP nomination was because Eisenhower ran and Eisenhower's personal popularity allowed him to get the nomination after a tough fight.

JFK- Ran his 1960 campaign on their being a missile gap with the soviets

LBJ- Escalated in Vietnam while Nixon promised to get an "honorable" ending to the war.


Really what made the GOP and particularly the conservative wing of the GOP more hawkish was first the leader of the conservative wing of the party in 1960s was Barry Goldwater which made conservatives more Hawkish. More importantly though was the LBJ 2nd term and particularly the 1968 election broke the Democratic party apart and with it you saw a major schism between the more traditionally hawkish liberals and the increasingly activated anti war left.

This eventually led to the nomination of George McGovern which resulted in Hawkish liberals bolting the Democratic Party to the Republican Party despite not really being a fan of Nixon's Realpolitck FP either but viewing it to be a lesser evil. They would not have to wait long though for a candidate who they liked on Foreign policy, as Ronald Reagan in 1976 would challenge Gerald Ford for the nomination and these hawkish liberals who for decades were Democrats would support his candidacy and pretty much decided to align themselves with his cause as well. This is why they were called Neoconservatives as they were new to the conservative movement and them supporting Reagan helped Reagan come so close in 1976. Then of course after 4 years of Carter and American humiliations abroad, the neocons finally got their moment with the Reagan landslide of 1980 and then would go on to dominate GOP politics for the next 36 years.

The nomination of Trump it seems like did to neocons what the nomination of McGovern did to Hawkish Liberals back in 1972 and get a good amount of them to switch parties and with that you saw a shift in the foreign policy views of the party they joined.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Celebrating MLK Day by shamelessly using this megathread as a personal soapbox. This gets at why I never bothered with the Israel-Gaza or Russia-Ukraine megathreads.

In my experience, the vast majority of people who want a cease-fire are not anti-Semitic. Animus towards Jewish people does not drive their views. They make a distinction between Jewish people and the Israeli state.

It is true, some of these people are anti-Zionist, in the sense that they want a secular, democratic state without any official religious markings in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians can all live together in the "Holy Land" with each group's rights guaranteed, and that such a state would bear the name "Palestine", but even these people are a minority, and what gives the issue real resonance is the centrist moderate group that wants to see a Two-State solution and is unhappy with the amount of Gazan civilian casualties that are currently ongoing, as well as upset that Biden supports Netanyahu even though the latter has obviously no commitment towards a Two-State solution.

The real anti-Semites are on the far right. IMO, scratch a far rightist, and there is a very high chance you will find that they do not consider Jews to be white, but because Jewish people can pass as white, they consider Jews to be "spies" who use their passing to try to undermine white society. Hence why you see people like Elon Musk liking an anti-Semitic tweet. They are being dragged into the far right. These are the real anti-Semites, people who dislike Jews as such.