I too had wanted to embrace the idea of a race-indifferent society. But given that our country actually had enough seething racism that people voted for a political agenda of severely harming themselves as long as "those people" would get hurt more, I'd say that the media's traditional policy of trying to mitigate those animalistic urges has now been vindicated as being quite noble.
Yeah I think I both overestimated how "stupid" the establishment was 10y+ ago and underestimated how many that are actually susceptible to tribal incitement.
Yep. I also attribute it to getting older and more conservative. (actually conservative, not this revanchist destructionism cloaking itself in the label "conservative").
Your usage of the word "naive" to describe how you thought of the establishment is weird to me. I was surely naive. And I still don't even really see that as a bad thing (is it not the job of youth to imagine a better world and push us forward?). But I saw the establishment as more suffocating, tired, preaching to the lowest common denominator, puppets of entrenched interests, etc.
> they only mitigate [1] them [animalistic urges] for whites
The article says they only do it for non-whites. By flipping the sense of only [hide descriptions] for non-whites into only [avoid animalistic urges] for whites, you're seemingly dragging in an assumption that every white just naturally harbors racism against other races - basically showing a hand of promoting racism.
And regardless of word choice - as I said given how many people were eager to see our country burn simply so "those people" would get hurt more, it's certainly looking like that "deception" was actually the lesser evil!
The crux of the issue is that while racism might be endemic, or even an unavoidable emergent effect (cf black cops policing black neighborhoods while living in white suburbs), we're able to have society of many people working together to achieve larger goals precisely because we aim to suppress the "natural" animalistic urges. For example, everyone poops as well. And yet we make it a point of keeping it to ourselves, often doing it alone in a different room. And if someone were to come out of the bathroom holding a giant log in their hands proclaiming "I make poop and I'm not ashamed of it!" while everyone else recoils in disgust, it's not because that person is being edgy or otherwise doing something novel or productive.
> The article says they only do it for non-whites.
I think you're misunderstanding it. Let me try to explain with an example. When the attacker is white and the victim is non-white, the headline reads: "White man kills minority!"
When the attacker is non-white and the victim is white: "Man commits killing"
> we aim to suppress the "natural" animalistic urges. For example, everyone poops as well. And yet we make it a point of keeping it to ourselves
It's fascinating how you simply continue on as if this point hadn't been debunked. Again, no, this suppression isn't aimed at "everyone" - it's aimed only at white people, as evidenced by the media downplaying when they are attacked by a member of an outgroup, but eagerly demonizing them when the attacker is white.
And it was effective - while you're spreading the falsehood that the result was some kind of multi-racial harmony, the reality is simply anti-white discrimination - despite having among the highest SAT scores, whites are the most under-represented group in the Ivy League: https://archive.org/details/ivy_league
The cherry on top is people like you telling them that opposing the politics that resulted in their becoming a minority and being driven out of the Ivies (while still getting blamed for taking up too many Ivy spots [1]!) is "voting against their self-interests"!
[1] In addition, 70 percent of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white. [4] This is hardly surprising: historically, the alumni of selective American universities like Harvard have been disproportionately white. [5] Yet, this racial disparity reveals the discrimination underlying legacy admissions that preserves and perpetuates historical inequalities in higher education. - https://www.culawreview.org/journal/legacy-admissions-an-ins...
Those benefits were chiefly lower prices for the manufactured goods. But the Federal Reserve interpreted this as a problem per their mandate to keep CPI going upwards, and created a bunch of new money that went into asset bubbles. So the "benefits" to the average person also included housing unaffordability and the general financialization of everything. Viewed through this lens, it does not seem like any sort of collective societal decision.
It goes deeper than that - the Supreme Council will issue non-binding "guidance" on the "shadow docket", so that when/if the fascists/destructionists [0] lose the Presidency, they can go back to being obstructionists weaponizing high-minded ideals in bad faith. As a libertarian, the way I see it is we can disagree politically on what constitutes constructive solutions, but it's time to unite, stop accepting any of the fascists' nonsense, and take back the fucking government - full support for the one remaining mainstream party that at least nominally represents the interests of the United States, while demanding they themselves stop preemptively appeasing the fascists. The Libertarian, Green, or even new parties can step up as the opposition. Pack the courts with judges that believe in America first and foremost, make DC and PR states to mitigate the fascists' abuse of the Senate, and so on. After we've stopped the hemorrhaging, work on fundamental things like adopting ranked pairs voting instead of this plurality trash.
[0] I'd be willing to call them something else if they picked an honest name for themselves - they are most certainly not "conservatives"
A loss leader isn't a monopolistic practice. They can be related, for example video game consoles can be loss leaders, to build demand for a monopoly on games for that specific console. But that relies on the sticky market effect from a customer owning a particular console, whereas the loss leader on gas has to convince the customer to visit the store every time.
If anything that Alabama law seems a bit questionable. As long as gas stations have card readers where you don't even have to go in the store, converting gas customers to convenience store customers seems like quite the uphill battle to me.
(modulo the surveillance issues of using payment cards)
Last time Trample was in office, the price of oil literally went negative - like lets put this crap back in the ground, we don't need all this energy. Small minded negative sum thinking destroys economic activity. King Krasnov squatting in office past his lease would actually be fantastic for averting carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. Sure we'd be burning more coal, as a proportion. But so much less energy overall as our society devolves. And plenty of free time for people to improvise steam engines, cars that run off of woodgas, and whatnot.
(the real problems being that other countries will continue growing, destructionist policies set things up so that return of economic activity is even more polluting, and a moribund economy makes responding to climate change chaos much harder)
I'm looking forward to seeing some comedy skits about border crossings.
Visitor interrogation room, locked steel door with wire mesh safety glass, multiple large-format pictures of Dear Leader hung up around the room and sitting on desk. Agent inquisitor, grumpy stern face, all decked out in a serious business uniform covered in Partisan trinkets. Candidate tourists, vanilla family with two young boys, still thinking of the border crossing as a quick formality, tired and just looking to get to their hotel at Disneyworld. The kids are already wearing mouse ears.
The inquisitor demands to know if the family has in any anti-American speech or activities. The family goes into detail about their enthusiasm for natural rights and individual liberty as described by the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. As the "woke" foreigners effectively insult Dear Leader's totalitarian regime, the inquisitor gets increasingly angry. But the inquisitor keeps doubling down on the questions trying to find a justification to let the family in in since he and his bosses get large bonuses from Disney for every customer they approve. The clueless family keeps right on describing their love for American Liberty and generally condemning oppressive countries with low freedom, widespread corruption and bribery, corrupt courts that destroy the rule of law, high import taxes that kill industry, strong fickle control over businesses, high import taxes that kill industry, high monetary inflation guts the economy, backwards-thinking educational institutions, etc. The inquisitor continues to get angrier and angrier.
Eventually the inquisitor gets so upset that he breaks down sobbing, explaining that he only joined the Party because his parents kept picking on him for being gay and he had hoped the Party could fix him. He laments that his parents are now in the concentration camp, as he himself turned them in for spreading unrest by complaining about rising prices. The inquisitor asks the family to say hello to his parents passing through on their way to Disney World, as the camp now occupies the entire state of Florida apart from Disney and the occasional retirement resort for Party members. The inquisitor then asks if he can please have a pair of mouse ears, so he can at least feel that innocent joy he used to know for the two minutes before he's dragged away. The father nods to the older boy. The inquisitor dons the mouse ears and a calm resigned expression on his face.
The door bursts open and the supervisor charges in followed by a black bag team. The supervisor hands the older boy a new pair of mouse ears, and exclaims "Enjoy your stay at Disneyworld!". The screen floods to black, starting from the top of the bag.
Have you seen anything that the current regime is doing? Making the country repulsive for longstanding allies and individual visitors, paramilitary gangs assaulting American cities rifling through homes, hefty import taxes to kill what's left of our distributed industry, demanding fealty from longstanding independent institutions. And the list goes on.
The left's criticism generally comes out of a place of wanting to improve our country, however misguided some of their ideas end up being. Meanwhile Trumpism is basically one never ending litany of grievances against the modern United States, in favor of some imagined rosy past based around religious fundamentalism and corporate authoritarianism.
Americans are overwhelmingly against illegal immigration, trans nonsense and coddling criminals. The left thinks everything needs to be destroyed to bring on their utopia. NYC should be interesting test case.
Oh cool, now the US Military gets to do pathetic limp-dick shit like it was Russia. "ha ha we are flying in your airspace. u mad bro? u mad bro? u mad yet bro?".
Can't we just put this guy in a nursing home mocked up as if it's the White House, and tell him all of his orders are being followed to great success? "Yes Dear Leader, China was so cowed by your supremely wise tariffs, today they sent three more gold [colored] statues of you standing on the American flag"
Arguably the US Military has been invited by the legitimate government to do much more than this. Can't really compare to Russia. Unless of course you reject the supposed election results coming from Machado side as a total fraud, but that's seems like kind of a niche opinion.
I support just staying the fuck out rather than being an arbiter of "legitimate government", especially on a continent where a storied history means intervention will be undoubtedly criticized no matter how noble. In fact I recall this exact idea being part of Mister New York Con Artist's campaign (not that I myself was gullible enough to believe him).
> A sawmill is much more efficient than a bunch of individuals chopping wood with axes.
I generally agree with your comment (see my other comment on this article), but I think a big problem with this article is that it doesn't do the work of substantiating things like whether the volunteers in question are actually chopping wood with axes. I would guess that big pile in the picture was made by a volunteer who already owns a firewood business with a firewood processor.
I'm burning wood for primary heat, and I agree with the thrust of the article - despite its poor job of making the case with data or even anecdotes.
There is so much work fundamentally involved in handling firewood. It's much different to be burning wood when you have the resources to make handling it easier, or when you're doing it as a mere option for supplementary heat. For example, as I split (log splitter) or it gets delivered (from someone who owns a firewood processor), I stack it in IBC totes to sit around and season. I then move those with a tractor so they're right next to an outdoor wood boiler. So I basically touch each piece twice, with optionality for whether I am going to make a project of cutting down trees or just pay for it. Or I've got a few friends that get it all delivered, stack their own big wood piles, then move it to a smaller thing to carry it indoors, but only to supplement central heat which they keep lower.
Whereas when you're doing it out of necessity, and trying to conserve even then, there is just so much more human effort that gets used. It does make sense to view it in terms of societal collapse, or at the very least poverty. This fall, I saw a bunch of houses in denser areas - grapple loads delivered to tiny front yards, and they're out there making sense of it with just a chainsaw and hand tools. I presume they were going to burn it this winter, too. That doesn't seem like a good use of anyone's time, effort, or risk appetite.
A good litmus test: what kind of vehicles are people picking the wood from wood banks with? If there are a bunch of people loading their car trunks and whatnot every few days, that's not a good scene. If the same volunteers are delivering truckbeds (and stacking them) to needy older people who had burnt wood their entire life but are having trouble managing it now, that's less dire.
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