PeepinGoodArgs

@PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.com

Check out my digital garden: The Missing Premise.

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PeepinGoodArgs,

Edit: Yes I do a bit of self-cringe when I reread that story.

Why? That’s actually a very good example.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Is it $500K for a 2 bed 2 bath?

PeepinGoodArgs,

https://i.imgur.com/RlyV0kT.png

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PeepinGoodArgs,

“It’s about time the masculine energy in this country is ascendant,” he proclaimed. “I’m not defending what this kid allegedly did. I am defending young men holding up old glory, getting out there in the streets, and saying, we’re not going to take this anymore.”

So, what the hell is he defending then? What exactly about the incident exudes “masculine energy”?

PeepinGoodArgs,

Well, given that Republicans understand progressivism as fascism, fascism as anything Democrats do, anything that Democrats do as everything they (Republicans) don’t like, then yes, that’s exactly what they believe. As such, they can disavow explicit racists and continue to be implicitly racist.

PeepinGoodArgs,

This is really the only strategy and we’ve seen how incredibly effective it has been as the GOP changes into rabid racists.

But better democrats can’t employ exactly the same strategy as their far right insurgent counterparts, because we’re not racists assholes trying to undermine democracy.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Idk about as powerful as gpt 4, but openrouter.ai has a ton of open source models you can use, including gpt 4.

PeepinGoodArgs,

This is the kind of comment that restores my faith in humanity

PeepinGoodArgs,

When I was in the military, there was this saying that I thought was so, so stupid: “Perception is reality.” They said it over and over like it was the most insightful advice they were giving us. Me, being a rational person, was like…that’s fuckin’ dumb. No, it isn’t.

Turns out, being rational is a waste of time. If enough people believe something, it’s functionally true in many cases. (To be clear, not believing in covid killed people, but believing that the medical industrial complex is full of “anti-democratic” technocrats didn’t). It seems that having beliefs completely divorced from reality only matters if reality as a way of reinforcing itself, often forcefully. Otherwise, it’s elephants and turtles all the way down.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Under the initiative, more than 100,000 illegal immigrants will be granted free healthcare under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The so-called “Dreamers” will be able to enroll in the program’s health care system beginning next year.

Who the eff are Dreamers?

From the pro-genocide Anti-Defamation League:

young people impacted by DACA and the DREAM Act are often referred to as “Dreamers.”

The recipients of DACA are young people who have grown up as Americans, identify themselves as Americans, and many speak only English and have no memory of or connection with the country where they were born. Under current immigration law, most of these young people had no way to gain legal residency even though they have lived in the U.S. most of their lives.

Since DACA began, approximately 800,000 people have been approved for the program. To be eligible, applicants had to have arrived in the U.S. before age 16 and lived here since June 15, 2007. They could not have been older than 30 when the Department of Homeland Security enacted the policy in 2012. DACA applicants have to provide evidence they were living in the U.S. at the prescribed times, proof of education and confirmation of their identities. They also had to pass background, fingerprint and other biometric checks that record identifying biological features.

Well, now we know who they are, but ARE THEY LEGAL? That’s the fundamental question in this carnival of marginalization.

No. No, they’re not. But by law, they are protected from deportation, authorized to work and go to school, get a social security number, and some other stuff. And the only reason they’re not legal is because the “We support a legal path to citizenship for immigrants that go through the proper channels” people do not, in fact, support a legal path to citizenship for them, with a bit of help from weak-kneed Democrats.

And now, this article has the audacity to stoke the fears of illegal immigration? Standard Republican politics: Republican solutions for Republican-caused problems.

PeepinGoodArgs,

No, they didn’t. They were given a chance to “protect the innocent”, as they call kids, and decided to betray them anyway.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Abuse for abuse is not a cure.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Exactly. That’s why it’s abusive. It’d be like sending a random conservative to Hungary. Though CPAC attendees may love Hungary, I doubt they’d like to be sent there forcefully when they identify as an American through and through.

PeepinGoodArgs,

It is sending a citizen of that country back to their country.

When you say “their” country, what do you mean?

PeepinGoodArgs,

The only reason I’m a citizen of American is because of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution:

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

That is, the law of the U.S. defines my status as a citizen of the U.S. by virtue of my being born here.

Still, there are https://us.iasservices.org.uk/routes-to-us-citizenship/ to become a citizen of the U.S.

  • by naturalization
  • by marriage
  • through parents
  • through the military

These pathways are all outlined in various laws.

Again, the status of immigrants who are now citizens is determined by law.

I said earlier that “the ‘We support a legal path to citizenship for immigrants that go through the proper channels’ people do not, in fact, support a legal path to citizenship for them”. That is, Republicans generally refused to grant citizenship to immigrants by passing the DREAM Act. In their inability to govern, they did not pass a law.

You make it seem as if citizenship is an inherent characteristic of being born in the U.S. It is not. Repeal the 14th Amendment, and birthright citizenship goes away. Change the immigration laws, and lesser or greater numbers of immigrants can be granted citizenship. You’re right, “They are not citizens of America.” But they could have been (and could be) at the stroke of pen. It is the law that determines citizenship. While I’m both an American citizen and identify as American, dreamers only identify as American. It’s only because of xenophobia that dreamers are not citizens.

PeepinGoodArgs, (edited )

I don’t understand how this can be so powerful, but so many people believe it and vote accordingly. It’s not rational, it is identity, it is tribe.

Who we are and how we see ourselves is extremely powerful. Take me for example: I cultivate a self-identity of an aspiring intellectual. I generally want to be seen as rational, with evidence-based beliefs, and having spent time thinking about my own thinking. I go to great lengths to shore up this identity for myself. This may not make me popular with the ladies, and I may not be able to easily converse with my friends on pop culture topics because I prefer analyzing arguments, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

In contrast, some people want to be seen as loyal. This is irrational to me, but it’s not like being an intellectual with properly weighted beliefs has ever been particularly useful for fitting in. Being loyal means adhering to the norms of the group because it’s your group. Fundamentally, it’s about identity for those that value loyalty and want to be seen as such. They’ll side with their SO even if their SO is wrong to demonstrate that loyalty. They’ll terrorize the out-group, believing themselves virtuous, because being loyal is virtue to them.

Republicans are winning this game. And we’re becoming increasingly tribalistic in the U.S., where loyalty is more valued than a belief in democratic pluralism. What is public transport, public healthcare, unions, expanded medicaid, access to abortion, etc, in the face of belonging, being valued as a member of a greater community? The latter is existential; the former, just policy.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Yes! I’ve been on this journey!

Thomas Sowell’s bibliography is easily the best starting place. Just pick something and have at it. As a prominent conservative economist, his books actually make good arguments. It takes actual effort to deconstruct his arguments and identify where he’s wrong. He’s widely and highly respected in conservative communities and tackles a lot of the common cultural war issues.

Then there’s granddaddies Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek. Also economists, they were directly impacted by the Cold War, and make intellectual cases that capitalism is the only economic system that leads to real individual freedom. And they also try to prove why the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and every lesser species of it undermines liberty. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom are staples.

Castigated by modern conservatives because they’re not serious about anything, sociology’s Emile Durkheim is a cornerstone of the discipline. I’ve never read it, but his book *Suicide *concerns individuals within community and the institutions of it. He talks about a type of suicide derived from moral disorder and lack of clarity, anomic suicide.

One book that I found incredibly insightful was Yuval Levin’s The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. This book is genuinely fair to both sides, and it shows the historical roots of conservatism and its relation to the French Revolution, when the right and the left as political stances first became a thing.

PeepinGoodArgs,

For Gingrich, you can read his memo Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Yeah, that’s what they do and say.

PeepinGoodArgs,

While I don’t disagree exactly, the way he puts his arguments is far better than Shapiro. Reading or listening to Sowell is a lesson in uncovering sophisticated conservative arguments. It took me a while to understand how Sowell reasoned, so that’s why I include him and think he’s a great example of conservative thinkers.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Mises’ Socialism and the economic calculation problem threw me for a loop for a while. It really rocked my preference for socialism at the time. Then I realized modern corporations with modern computing power are doing exactly what Mises says a theoretical central planner can’t do.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Oh, you wanted that, too? Shoot, I’ll save you some trouble:

That’s all I got off the top of my head. I used to have RSS feeds of all of these organizations, but reading their headlines was infuriating. It was like a shot of hate every time they popped up. So, if I’m looking for arguments, I know where to go, otherwise, out of sight out of mind.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Gaza’s population is uniquely unfit to thrive in a pluralistic population.

This from a newspaper with the antidemocratic ideology of the modern American right. The real concern is having to add more pluralism to squash for the former president, current criminal defendant.

PeepinGoodArgs,

Many of them are spent blissfully on many other things, thankfully.

PeepinGoodArgs,

So, dark pluralism is just the assertion that there are no universal truths?

Talk about cowardice…

It should be obvious why nothing can be built from that premise.

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