Hotter, Badder, and Unpopularer Takes

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Most people laugh at me when I tell them the simple fact that KFC is the best chicken on the planet.

They are in the right. Lol

[Badger]

Susan Collins is heavily disfavored in Maine in 2020, and is not part of the path of least resistance for Republicans to hold the US Senate. In addition, its more likely for Trump to win re-election nationally than for Collins to win re-election in Maine.

Agree with all but that last sentence, fwiw. Though I think both of them are goners

[RINO Tom]

Lori Lightfoot is a psychopath and awful mayor, and arguing otherwise at this point is getting intellectually dishonest.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Black people getting killed by cops is the new white girl disappears.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Derrida, Foucault, and allied ~French theorists~ are better understood as figures of the right than of the left.

[DC Al Fine]

The desirability of a place has far more to do with its climate and cuisine than how it votes.

[Santander]

The desirability of a place has far more to do with its climate and cuisine than how it votes.

Replace "how" with "whether", and you'd be correct.

[RINO Tom]

At this point, people peddling hysteria about COVID to prove how *scientific* and *data-driven* they are have become more annoying than people who didn't take it seriously...

... on this same note, if a vaccine is approved and actually easily attainable in, say, January 2021, EVERYTHING should return to normal within a week or two.  Everything.  At that point, it's your responsibility to shelter in place until you can get an appointment to get a vaccine if you are worried about contracting COVID.  While I know full well that there will be lunatics screaming that nothing can return to normal until 70%+ of the population is vaccinated, it will be the responsibility of normal people to ignore them.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

At this point, people peddling hysteria about COVID to prove how *scientific* and *data-driven* they are have become more annoying than people who didn't take it seriously...

... on this same note, if a vaccine is approved and actually easily attainable in, say, January 2021, EVERYTHING should return to normal within a week or two.  Everything.  At that point, it's your responsibility to shelter in place until you can get an appointment to get a vaccine if you are worried about contracting COVID.  While I know full well that there will be lunatics screaming that nothing can return to normal until 70%+ of the population is vaccinated, it will be the responsibility of normal people to ignore them.

Approving a vaccine is just step one. Barely anyone will be able to get it at first since producing and deploying it will take far longer than a week. The first people to get it will likely be healthcare workers and then people in high risk categories. At that point you could argue that things can return to normal, getting all that done in January if that's the same month a vaccine is approved just isn't feasible.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Derrida, Foucault, and allied ~French theorists~ are better understood as figures of the right than of the left.

Elaboration, please.

Somewhat relevant, in undergrad I nurtured a conservative/right-wing interpretation of the Frankfurt School.

[RINO Tom]

At this point, people peddling hysteria about COVID to prove how *scientific* and *data-driven* they are have become more annoying than people who didn't take it seriously...

... on this same note, if a vaccine is approved and actually easily attainable in, say, January 2021, EVERYTHING should return to normal within a week or two.  Everything.  At that point, it's your responsibility to shelter in place until you can get an appointment to get a vaccine if you are worried about contracting COVID.  While I know full well that there will be lunatics screaming that nothing can return to normal until 70%+ of the population is vaccinated, it will be the responsibility of normal people to ignore them.

Approving a vaccine is just step one. Barely anyone will be able to get it at first since producing and deploying it will take far longer than a week. The first people to get it will likely be healthcare workers and then people in high risk categories. At that point you could argue that things can return to normal, getting all that done in January if that's the same month a vaccine is approved just isn't feasible.

We can talk semantics about when "widely accessible" is achieved, but some estimates are that 150 million doses could be available by January.  Once that's the case, there should be zero tolerance for remaining semi-locked down or shut down until some satisfactory percent of the population has gotten it ... stay home if you're worried at that point.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Also, don't several of the most promising vaccines require storage at -70 C or similarly super-cold temperatures? That will make giving them out at CVS, Walgreens, or most GP offices quite difficult, which will delay distribution.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

it's not tasteless to speculate on how a recent event will impact the polls/elections and it's never "too soon", that's exactly what psephology is all about. Imagine if when the Covid outbreak started and someone asked how it would impact the election and got shouted down with "HOW CAN YOU ASK THAT NOW, PEOPLE ARE DYING?!"

(It obviously is if someone implies that a tragic event is good because it would likely help their side but that's usually not what happens when people get shouted down.)

[morgankingsley]

Rise of Skywalker is only the second worst one. Solo still wins on the account that Skywalker at least tried to wrap up a story arc

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Derrida, Foucault, and allied ~French theorists~ are better understood as figures of the right than of the left.

Elaboration, please.

The deliberate turn away from material analysis (sometimes to the point of nihilistic or solipsistic denial of material suffering), the superficially anti-racist analysis combined with the complete disinterest in anti-racist praxis that led to the careers of people like Paul de Man, the fixation on the 60s/70s equivalent of post-woke turboliberal bullsh**t causes like abolishing the age of consent, the vague gestures towards syncretism or third positionism on Derrida's part, the overt support for the Ayatollah Khomeini on Foucault's...I'm not claiming that these were "conservatives" as we typically understand the term, but they were definitely harbingers of neoliberal uselessness in academia and culture-war immaterialism in political activism. I view both of those as spiritually and philosophically right-wing phenomena regardless of their adherents' stances On The Issues.

Somewhat relevant, in undergrad I nurtured a conservative/right-wing interpretation of the Frankfurt School.

Elaboration, please.

[parochial boy]

More of a question than a take, but this seems like the right thread. Is the reason that discussion of economic issues on here is so superficial more because thinking about it, beyond very shallow points like "single payer good" or "debt bad" is just a bit too complex for most people to try and engage in beyond the most cursory way? Or is it because current culture wars political discourse has completely eradicated even thinking about those sorts of things from most people minds?

I'm interested because for such an allegedly left-wing forum it seems like it is very rare for anyone to really express any particularly left-wing economic opinion beyond the, lets be honest, not exactly radical one about healthcare

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

More of a question than a take, but this seems like the right thread. Is the reason that discussion of economic issues on here is so superficial more because thinking about it, beyond very shallow points like "single payer good" or "debt bad" is just a bit too complex for most people to try and engage in beyond the most cursory way? Or is it because current culture wars political discourse has completely eradicated even thinking about those sorts of things from most people minds?

I'm interested because for such an allegedly left-wing forum it seems like it is very rare for anyone to really express any particularly left-wing economic opinion beyond the, lets be honest, not exactly radical one about healthcare

Well this forum is alleged to be pretty liberal/Democratic but I don't really think it's alleged to be particularly left-wing.
Also re: healthcare. EUROPEAN BIAS SPOTTED (of which I am full myself by the way).

More to the point, I think it is a mix of both. On the one hand, I doubt most posters here have the skills or the willingness required to engage seriously with economics and stuff - including yours truly. On the other hand, the current discourse is heavily bent towards fighting culture wars.
To be honest I am not sure that the culture war discourse is particularly less shallow than the economic one.

[parochial boy]

More of a question than a take, but this seems like the right thread. Is the reason that discussion of economic issues on here is so superficial more because thinking about it, beyond very shallow points like "single payer good" or "debt bad" is just a bit too complex for most people to try and engage in beyond the most cursory way? Or is it because current culture wars political discourse has completely eradicated even thinking about those sorts of things from most people minds?

I'm interested because for such an allegedly left-wing forum it seems like it is very rare for anyone to really express any particularly left-wing economic opinion beyond the, lets be honest, not exactly radical one about healthcare

Well this forum is alleged to be pretty liberal/Democratic but I don't really think it's alleged to be particularly left-wing.
Also re: healthcare. EUROPEAN BIAS SPOTTED (of which I am full myself by the way).

More to the point, I think it is a mix of both. On the one hand, I doubt most posters here have the skills or the willingness required to engage seriously with economics and stuff - including yours truly. On the other hand, the current discourse is heavily bent towards fighting culture wars.
To be honest I am not sure that the culture war discourse is particularly less shallow than the economic one.

It's not that cultural issues are shallow, it's more that, well, economic issues are super important. We live in societies that are more unequal than they have been in a century, in where the assumption of ever increasing living standards has been fatally undermined. These are extremely important factors in understanding the world we live in, and don't get anything like the attention they should be getting on here. Especially when, any cursory look at the USGD board will show you a lot of threads full of people getting very angry about things are really rather trivial.

It's not that universal healthcare isn't important either. It's just that well, the experience of the rest of the developed world shows that it both doesn't particularly disrupt how an economy functions and doesn't fundamentally redress the balance of wealth or power. That's what I mean when I say it isn't actually a radical project.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

More of a question than a take, but this seems like the right thread. Is the reason that discussion of economic issues on here is so superficial more because thinking about it, beyond very shallow points like "single payer good" or "debt bad" is just a bit too complex for most people to try and engage in beyond the most cursory way? Or is it because current culture wars political discourse has completely eradicated even thinking about those sorts of things from most people minds?

I'm interested because for such an allegedly left-wing forum it seems like it is very rare for anyone to really express any particularly left-wing economic opinion beyond the, lets be honest, not exactly radical one about healthcare

Well this forum is alleged to be pretty liberal/Democratic but I don't really think it's alleged to be particularly left-wing.
Also re: healthcare. EUROPEAN BIAS SPOTTED (of which I am full myself by the way).

More to the point, I think it is a mix of both. On the one hand, I doubt most posters here have the skills or the willingness required to engage seriously with economics and stuff - including yours truly. On the other hand, the current discourse is heavily bent towards fighting culture wars.
To be honest I am not sure that the culture war discourse is particularly less shallow than the economic one.

It's not that cultural issues are shallow, it's more that, well, economic issues are super important. We live in societies that are more unequal than they have been in a century, in where the assumption of ever increasing living standards has been fatally undermined. These are extremely important factors in understanding the world we live in, and don't get anything like the attention they should be getting on here. Especially when, any cursory look at the USGD board will show you a lot of threads full of people getting very angry about things are really rather trivial.

It's not that universal healthcare isn't important either. It's just that well, the experience of the rest of the developed world shows that it both doesn't particularly disrupt how an economy functions and doesn't fundamentally redress the balance of wealth or power. That's what I mean when I say it isn't actually a radical project.

I agree with most of your post.

As I said, I have a relatively cursory knowledge of many of the economic matters you are referring to, but that's not really because I am invested in fighting the culture wars. We could have a discussion about that, but not here.
There is much useless outrage on the USGD board, but that is another matter.

I also agree about universal healthcare. I initially thought you were referring to the political standpoint about it (which is obviously not the same in the USA and in Western Europe).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I can only speak for myself, but I care very very strongly about economic issues (far more than about most culture war issues) but find cultural issues easier to discuss because my academic and professional background is in the humanities rather than the social sciences. I'd imagine many other leftists on the forum are similar.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Somewhat relevant, in undergrad I nurtured a conservative/right-wing interpretation of the Frankfurt School.

Elaboration, please.

Not particularly innovative or sophisticated, it was an attempt to subvert a left-wing critique to conservative ends. This was done sans a substantial amount of reading in the Frankfurt School and built moreso upon claims by one of my professors combined with a desire to find an ideological way forward in a situation where I had been disillusioned, if not by capitalism itself, then by the current Republican Party's portrayal of capitalism.

On the one hand, reading parts of The One-Dimensional Man, it seemed like pointless whining--if capitalism and labor had, as Marcuse claimed, appeared to have developed a system of stability and mutual benefit, was that not victory? The "end of history", if you will?

On the other hand, I remembered vividly the idea that if instrumental reasoning and capitalism were pursued to their rational ends, one saw the rise of fascism or other anti-democratic movements. Combined with Marx's claim that the logical end of capitalism was social revolution, it seemed to me that the greatest threats to our system of government came from its being brought to its logical conclusion. My smart alack answer was that perhaps we ought to entertain a system that preserved a system of values-based reasoning--that being one upheld by religion and a philosophy of things-good-in-themselves. When I actually got around to reading (part of) Eclipse of Reason, I was surprised how straight-forwardly conservative the claim was that the death of values-based reasoning led to amoral or even immoral ends. This was in fact what it seemed contemporary conservatives had been claiming all along in regards to secularism. The ironic result was a sort of unenthusiastic acceptance of the New Deal-esque spirit of "preserving the system by moderating it".

I've retreated a lot from what I now consider overly-philosophical and unrealistic thinking, for the record. A lot of how I was thinking then also seems to have been impacted by my apparent lack of job prospects, and is perhaps why I'm also very mellow right now.

You can also see some aspect of the arguments referred to above in a post as recent as last year:

One could make the roundabout argument that Weld's economic policies are conservative only so far as they preserve the existing regime of radical change; and as such JBE is the true conservative.

[DC Al Fine]

Atlas is incredibly ignorant of taxation for an ostensibly "high info" forum.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Atlas is incredibly ignorant of taxation for an ostensibly "high info" forum.

I’m so ignorant that I don’t even pay my taxes.

[Boobs]

I am a symbolic parasite. I am the washing machine of knowledge. I am the singularity of thought. I am the most prolific editor of the Lysergic acid diethylamide Wikipedia page. I was the only kid in fifth grade with a mustache.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Atlas is incredibly ignorant of taxation for an ostensibly "high info" forum.

I think the mere understanding of marginal tax brackets seems to qualify as high info in this country. So many people love to bring that up in discussions to sound smart (and in fairness, so many people are always claiming not to want to move into the next tax bracket)