Rod Dreher is given as an example of a respectable RWer in the
comments!? Dude talks about trans people like they’re an invading army
of Uruk-Hai.
Off topic, but Chapo Trap House does readings of Rod Dreher articles.
Here’s a recent
one about cow vaginas, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and getting cucked
by your wife’s exorcist. It’s pretty great.
>Nathan J Robinson – totally devoid of compassion for or understanding of his outgroup, and regularly whines about how little charity they show him while showing even less himself, but does make an effort to set out his ideas for a hostile audience.
>Rod Dreher of the American Conservative – polite, compassionate, bigotted, hypocritical, is not always as honest in his characterisation of and engagement with hostile ideas as he should be, but sometimes tries to be.
The absolute living fuck!?
Ross Douthat. It is popular in liberal circles tor really hate him
for his traditionalist Catholicism. Most people like to present him as a
stupid misogynist reactionary. First, I think that arguing that Douthat
or anybody else is stupid because they came to different conclusions
than you did is very arrogant.
Surely this is a poe. No one’s actually this level of smug
centrist.
Nathan J Robinson – totally devoid of compassion for or understanding
of his outgroup, and regularly whines about how little charity they show
him while showing even less himself, but does make an effort to set out
his ideas for a hostile audience.
The weirdest part about that is that NJR is unusually good at being charitable to his outgroup (his recent novella-length article about Sam Harris takes care to present his arguments fairly and in full, for example). It's also *really* hard to see him as the bad guy in his recent dustup with Scott, when [Scott acted like a dick first](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8hnmnb/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_may_7_2018/dyr9hq4/).
But of course; all that "Principle of Charity!" stuff is horseshit and accusations of uncharitability are almost always made in bad faith. It's what you say when someone has made an argument that makes you look bad, regardless of how true it is.
> The weirdest part about that is that NJR is unusually good at being charitable to his outgroup (his recent novella-length article about Sam Harris takes care to present his arguments fairly and in full, for example).
And yet it still wasn’t good enough for a lot of r_samharris 🤦♂️
What are you supposed to do with the principle of charity when you genuinely think your opponents are fucking morons? Like, what happens when you do your best to dispassionately analyse a situation and find yourself forced to the conclusion that the people on the other side really are just irredeemable dipshits?
[Ozy is of course totally neutral and has zero reason to be biased in his favor.](https://cptsdcarlosdevil.tumblr.com/post/159401183408/i-met-david-friedman-at-the-ssc-meetup-he-is-a)
[Zero reason at all](https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/against-motte-and-bailey/#comment-9797)
See, this is a good thread, because if you post a reactionary you
disagree with, that means that you’re supporting that reactionary which
is bad, but if you post a non-reactionary who you disagree with, that
means you’re disagreeing with a non-reactionary so you’re supporting
reactionaries which is bad.
Anyway, I’m excited to see the kind of ideological coalition that
Tolkien, Adam Smith, and Zoe Quinn could all be said to be members
of.
does “reactionaries” in this context refer to neo-reactionaries, or
just edgelords? The only name I recognize is David Friedman, bc one of
my professors went to college with him and said he had an enormously
inflated ego.
This post title seems to imply that Ozy is not a leftist, or maybe
insufficiently leftist. I will charitably assume IneffectiveEgoist
hasn’t read much Thing of Things. Also why would you assume they’d want
to appear more leftist than they are with their rationalist audience
that tends to be skeptical of leftism? That is a lot of error and
incoherence for a two-sentence post.
Just got banned from that blog for being a “tankie”. So much for
being compassionate towards those you disagree with, as soon as I named
certain inspirations (that I disagree with!) I get these political sneer
words hurled at me. I post on these places to engage in dialogue with
those far to the right of me, and all I get in return for my hard work
is my posts scrubbed from history. Not very charitable at all.
Ok, I'll bite: Don't you proudly identify as "tankie"?
I mean, of course most people here use that word as a sneer. But I thought it was similar to how some people use "gay" as a slur, and a lot of people own it and proudly self-identify as "gay" (well, in that case the chronology was the other way).
I do use "tankie" as a slur, both in general and directed at you personally, but I honestly thought you owned that description.
I own the slur because I'm not a totally self-serious person. I can laugh at the insults. What's bothersome is that people who are apparently committed to impartiality, being charitable, steelmanning, etc, etc. will throw around mindkilling insults like "tankie" as soon as you express an opinion that is outside of what's acceptable to American liberals. "Tankie", originally an insult used by socialists against other socialists and in reference to a very specific stance on one particular event, has turned into a sneer word that liberals use against *any* socialist who defends *any form of existing communism*.
>"Tankie", originally an insult used by socialists against other socialists and in reference to a very specific stance on one particular event, has turned into a sneer word that liberals use against any socialist who defends any form of existing communism.
You make a really good point here. Thank you for the explanation!
I shall henceforth insult you as "Stalin apologist scum" instead of "tankie", from one socialist to another ;)
You were not banned for listing Trotsky as a person you disagree with who made some good points. You were banned for saying that the Cultural Revolution was mostly good.
I have literally zero interest in engaging with people who think that crimes against humanity were good. I do not want to engage with your horrible fucking beliefs in a charitable manner. My blog is *gleefully* exclusive of people who think that crimes against humanity are good. I apply this in an unbiased and nonpartisan fashion: whether you're apologizing for the Holodomor, helicopter rides, apartheid, the Rape of Nanking, or Guantanamo Bay, you can expect to be banned.
If you want charity from me, don't say that torture is okay. It's that simple.
Wow, this was easy to dig up:
https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2016/11/02/thing-of-things-ballot-endorsements/
**Looks like you endorsed a war criminal for President!** Whoops! Maybe you shouldn't pretend to be so self-righteous. A small list of Hillary Clinton's crimes I can think of off the top of my head:
-Destroying Libya, [including publicly celebrating the rape, torture and extrajudicial killing of Brother Qaddafi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlz3-OzcExI)
-[Fueling corruption and forcing peasants off their land in Haiti](https://africasacountry.com/2015/07/hillary-haiti/)
-[Advocating for increased US destruction of Syria, even admitting that her plan would "kill a lot of Syrians"](https://theintercept.com/2016/10/10/in-secret-goldman-sachs-speech-hillary-clinton-admitted-no-fly-zone-would-kill-a-lot-of-syrians/)
-Voting for the war in Iraq. I don't think I even have to link a source for this one, I'm sure you already know what a disaster it's been.
Despite all this you happily endorsed one of the world's worst war criminals for US president! Something tells me your mock horror at me being a communist comes from a place of reflexive US nationalism rather than a charitable reading of the facts.
Did you vote for Hillary Clinton? If so, your virtue-signaling about being "gleefully exclusive of people who think that crimes against humanity are good" is hilariously hypocritical.
Ozy was clearly not excited about Clinton's foreign policy. She literally said that Clinton will "probably... manage to avoid destroying anything important." I don't read that blog, but discussion of the badness and wrongness of Clinton's foreign policy would probably be readily accepted.
> Ozy was clearly not excited about Clinton's foreign policy. She literally said that Clinton will "probably... manage to avoid destroying anything important."
The quote you quoted prove the reverse: that Ozy don't think victims of war crimes are part of "anything important".
Maybe - she could've meant anything from "won't start WWIII" to "won't hurt anyone I personally care about." It's vague phrasing, and I interpreted it as the former. Either way, my point stands: she's clearly not excited about Clinton's foreign policy.
A more aggressive Syria policy absolutely could have started WW3 and you know it.
Also, the Cultural Revolution didn't hurt anyone I cared about so I'm not sure why I'm banned yet the Clinton apologists aren't.
I think it's very unlikely that a more aggressive Syria policy could have caused WW3. Plus, we're talking about a world in which the alternative was Donald Trump! He hasn't caused WW3 *yet*, but before 2017 a lot of people I know considered him more likely to cause massive destruction than Clinton - who was, at least, a known quantity.
More centrally, I'm deeply intrigued to hear about why you don't care about anyone hurt by the Cultural Revolution.
You're talking about taking a more aggressive policy against Syria, whose government is allied with Russia. If you can think of a single action more likely to ignite WW3 (short of nuking Beijing or something) then I'd like to hear it. Clinton was indeed a known quantity, and was well-known as a warmonger, as my links show.
More centrally, I'm deeply intrigued to hear about why Ozy doesn't care about hurt Syrians, Libyans, Haitians, etc.
Plus, since we're talking about Cultural revolution, we're talking about a world in which the alternative was Deng Xiaoping. A lot of people considered him more likely to cause massive destruction than Mao - who was, at least, a known quantity.
Be more imaginative! There are a lot of actions the US could take that are *way* more likely to ignite a world war, than pursuing a moderately more aggressive strategy in an already war-torn region. What about mobilizing in reaction to Russia's excursions in the Ukraine? What about a pre-emptive strike on North Korea?
I don't think I'd characterize Clinton as a warmonger. Not if she learned her lessons from the Iraq War and the Libyan Civil War - mistakes which I believe she's admitted to. There's a difference between a hawk (which she is) and an out-and-out warmonger.
You're dodging my question. Did you mean it when you said you didn't care about the tens of millions of people that were persecuted in the Cultural Revolution?
> Ozy doesn't care about hurt Syrians...
Only if you read her in the most uncharitable way possible. If someone says that Clinton probably won't destroy anything too important (in a context in which they probably mean "the world") it takes *very* twisted logic to assume that that person just doesn't give a fuck about Syrians.
> Deng Xiaoping
The false equivalency here should be obvious. Xiaoping was a *moderate*. Mao *caused the Great Leap Forward*, which *also killed millions of people*. Mao:Xiaoping::Trump:Clinton, not the other way around.
By the way, *do* you support Trump over Clinton? Because it sounds like you do.
>What about a pre-emptive strike on North Korea?
Clinton was also a bigger hawk on North Korea, e.g.:
https://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-too-friendly-north-korea-465617
>mistakes which I believe she's admitted to.
Where did she do that? She was actively war mongering in the US presidential debate, calling for no-fly zones over Syria:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/25/hillary-clinton-syria-no-fly-zones-russia-us-war
>If someone says that Clinton probably won't destroy anything too important (in a context in which they probably mean "the world") it takes very twisted logic to assume that that person just doesn't give a fuck about Syrians.
I don't see how that's a twisted logic. Clinton engages in war monger over Syria, admitting that her plans will kill a lot of Syrians. Ozy then says that Clinton wont ruin "anything too important". How is it twisted for me to assume Ozy thinks Syria is not important?
I prefer Deng over Trump OR Clinton btw. But of course Mao is the best.
A bigger hawk? [You sure?](https://www.cfr.org/interactives/campaign2016/?i=north-korea)
> Trump wrote in 2000 that he would preemptively strike North Korea if it continued to pursue nuclear weapons technology: “I would let Pyongyang know in no uncertain terms that it can either get out of the nuclear arms race or expect a rebuke similar to the one Ronald Reagan delivered to Muammar al-Qaddafi in 1986.”
Your link wasn't referring to pre-emptive strikes, but to Clinton's fear that Trump would be a pushover on NK (if didn't turn out to be the worst warmonger-president in American history).
> actively war mongering
Mongering no-fly zones - a benign policy if implemented properly - isn't the same as mongering war.
> "anything too important"
As I've been trying to argue for the entire comment thread, Ozy probably meant this in a relative sense, not an absolute sense. More war in Syria, while tragic, isn't on the same scale as what Ozy's referring to.
> I prefer Deng
Fascinating, but that's not the question I asked you. The question - as presented not only to you, but to every American voter in 2016 - was, do you prefer Trump or Clinton? If Trump, then you're hopeless. If Clinton, then you shouldn't be criticizing Ozy for endorsing her.
Still waiting on a clarification on whether or not you care about the millions of innocent victims of the Cultural Revolution.
Sure, that's what he said in 2000. If you can find what Clinton said in 2000 about North Korea I'll accept the comparison. However, in 2016 it was clear that Clinton was the much bigger warhawk.
>Mongering no-fly zones - a benign policy if implemented properly - isn't the same as mongering war.
"Benign" - tell that to the people of Libya.
>More war in Syria, while tragic, isn't on the same scale as what Ozy's referring to.
Seems like a pretty massive scale to me. Some fascinating apologetics on your part.
>Fascinating, but that's not the question I asked you. The question - as presented not only to you, but to every American voter in 2016 -do you prefer Trump or Clinton? If Trump, then you're hopeless. If Clinton, then you shouldn't be criticizing Ozy for endorsing her.
I wouldn't vote for either and I do not endorse either. I would have voted for a communist, or if there were no communist parties on the ballot, simply not voted.
>Still waiting on a clarification on whether or not you care about the millions of innocent victims of the Cultural Revolution.
If Ozy doesn't care about American imperialism in the middle east why should I care what happens in China?
> Sure, that's what he said in 2000.
It shows he's open to the idea, and that he's not bounded by the reigns of common sense. Clinton may have been more hawkish than Trump *in the moment*, but that doesn't mean he'll change his mind (especially if he's further influenced by neocons).
> tell that to the people of Libya
The intervention wasn't caused by a no-fly zone, it was caused by your "Brother Qaddafi" bombing his civilians. The international community decided that a no-fly zone was a good step to take in preventing him from using his air force. He kept attacking his civilians, so he was deposed. In retrospect, it was a mistake, but making that mistake doesn't necessarily mean you were negligent. And it definitely doesn't mean that no-fly zones were a bad idea.
> seems like a pretty massive scale
Do you have selective dyslexia? *World War III*, which is *what Ozy was referring to*, isn't on the same scale as *the war in Syria*. By orders of magnitude.
> I wouldn't vote for either
If you believe that they'd be *equally* bad for the country, then sure, vote for a Communist. (If you're not in a swing state, do this too! Whatever floats your boat!) But since Trump is a lot worse than Clinton would be, and if you don't live in a swing state, voting for Clinton would have a much greater positive effect than would voting third party.
> If Ozy doesn't care about American imperialism in the middle east why should I care what happens in China?
Because you're a moral individual.
> Do you have selective dyslexia? World War III, which is what Ozy was referring to, isn't on the same scale as the war in Syria. By orders of magnitude.
Ramping up intervention in Syria could have easily caused WW3.
> In retrospect, it was a mistake
Weird, Marxists like myself knew it was a mistake even at the time.
>If you want charity from me, don't say that torture is okay. It's that simple.
Point me to where I said "torture is ok". Weird how empiricism goes out the door as soon as you want to censor left-wing opinions.
To a reasonable observer, supporting the Cultural Revolution is either erasing 400k - 10mm deaths (similar to a Holocaust denier) or saying that the death and trauma and violence were a good thing, given the resulting income redistribution. Maybe your conspiracy theories are true and the Cultural Revolution was an unalloyed good - but it's your job to make that case to people, and you've gotta do that in a place that's okay with discussing these kinds of theories (theories which, again, run the risk of excusing genocide if they're false). Ozy's blog is *quite* obviously not that kind of place. Just like not every subreddit can be a debate-a-rationalist-about-rationalism funfest, so too must some spaces remain unoccupied by tankie partisans raring for debate.
>Ozy's blog is quite obviously not that kind of place.
Not a place for empiricism, then? Just a place to echo chamber capitalist lies about Mao and to endorse genocidal westerners like Hillary Clinton?
SneerClub's whole shtick is that tolerating every would-be empiricist equally isn't a good thing. It results in an environment where every crank with an internet connection is free to shoehorn in their pet conspiracy theory into conversations that they shouldn't be in... eventually, maybe, leaving the place with a political skew like the CW thread.
Yes, tolerating every crank would-be empiricist equally is a bad thing. That's why banning genocidal Clinton apologists like Ozy and yourself is a good thing. Go practice your pet conspiracy theories about Mao being bad elsewhere.
I didn't say that torture was ok, I said that the Cultural Revolution was mostly good. So much for "charity". Presumably anyone who said that Obama was "mostly good" would be banned from your blog since Guantanamo bay operated under his regime? Not to mention the Kunduz hospital strike, the destruction of Libya, the coup in Honduras and many other human rights abuses.
What's your opinion of the collapse of the USSR? The restoration of capitalism in the former USSR was one of the worst health crises of the 20th century, surely any person who supported the collapse of the USSR would be banned from your blog?
Or are you just a massive hypocrite who bans people for believing that communism is good while you ignore the abuses of capitalism? Capitalism involves the expropriation of surplus value from the global proletariat and is inherently exploitative. Any person who says that capitalism is mostly ok should be banned from your blog under your own standards.
> Capitalism involves the expropriation of surplus value from the global proletariat and is inherently exploitative.
Communism, as practiced by real humans, also involves massive expropriation of surplus value from the proletariat and is inherently exploitative. Only it's the bureaucracy that controls the Communist state that is doing the expropriation.
Yes, the bureaucracy re-apportions value to important things such as education and health. I don't think I would call that exploitation because the class relation is not the same. "From each according to ability, to each according to need" and all that. Obviously that's a more rational way to plan society compared to endless growth for the sake of it and our hard work going towards a capitalists' cigar fund.
> the bureaucracy re-apportions value to important things such as
Such as the [extermination of sparrows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign), [reversal of rivers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal), constructing [hundreds of thousands of useless bunkers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania), mindlessly [copying the Space Shuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme) and of course never neglecting their own luxurious dachas.
Not to mention the suffering and deaths caused by all the purges.
**Four Pests Campaign**
The Four Pests Campaign, also known as the Great Sparrow Campaign (Chinese: 打麻雀运动; pinyin: Dǎ Máquè Yùndòng) and the Kill a Sparrow Campaign (Chinese: 消灭麻雀运动; pinyin: Xiāomiè Máquè Yùndòng), was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows resulted in severe ecological imbalance, prompting Mao to end the campaign against sparrows and redirect the focus to bed bugs.
***
**Northern river reversal**
The Northern river reversal or Siberian river reversal was an ambitious project to divert the flow of the Northern rivers in the Soviet Union, which "uselessly" drain into the Arctic Ocean, southwards towards the populated agricultural areas of Central Asia, which lack water.Research and planning work on the project started in the 1930s and was carried out on a large scale in the 1960s through the early 1980s. The controversial project was abandoned in 1986, primarily for environmental reasons, without much actual construction work ever done.
***
**Bunkers in Albania**
The concrete bunkers of Albania are a ubiquitous sight in the country, with an average of 5.7 bunkers for every square kilometre. The bunkers (Albanian: bunkerët) were built during the communist government of Enver Hoxha from the 1960s to the 1980s; by 1983 a total of 173,371 concrete bunkers had been constructed around the country.Hoxha's programme of "bunkerisation" resulted in the construction of bunkers in every corner of the then People's Socialist Republic of Albania, ranging from mountain passes to city streets. They were never used for their intended purpose during the years that Hoxha governed. The cost of constructing them was a drain on Albania's resources, diverting them away from more pressing needs, such as dealing with the country's housing shortage and poor roads.
***
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> Capitalism involves the expropriation of surplus value from the global proletariat and is inherently exploitative.
Communism, as practiced by real humans, also involves massive expropriation of surplus value from the proletariat and is inherently exploitative. Only it's the bureaucracy that controls the Communist state that is doing the expropriation.
> Capitalism involves the expropriation of surplus value from the global proletariat and is inherently exploitative.
Communism, as practiced by real humans, also involves massive expropriation of surplus value from the proletariat and is inherently exploitative. Only it's the bureaucracy that controls the Communist state that is doing the expropriation.
> Capitalism involves the expropriation of surplus value from the global proletariat and is inherently exploitative.
Communism, as practiced by real humans, also involves massive expropriation of surplus value from the proletariat and is inherently exploitative. Only it's the bureaucracy that controls the Communist state that is doing the expropriation.
Rod Dreher is given as an example of a respectable RWer in the comments!? Dude talks about trans people like they’re an invading army of Uruk-Hai.
Off topic, but Chapo Trap House does readings of Rod Dreher articles. Here’s a recent one about cow vaginas, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and getting cucked by your wife’s exorcist. It’s pretty great.
Surely this is a poe. No one’s actually this level of smug centrist.
That’s that Steelmanning you guys are so good at.
No Jim’s Blog shout out? ;(
This guy? Oh yeah, he’s just oozing compassion.
See, this is a good thread, because if you post a reactionary you disagree with, that means that you’re supporting that reactionary which is bad, but if you post a non-reactionary who you disagree with, that means you’re disagreeing with a non-reactionary so you’re supporting reactionaries which is bad.
Anyway, I’m excited to see the kind of ideological coalition that Tolkien, Adam Smith, and Zoe Quinn could all be said to be members of.
does “reactionaries” in this context refer to neo-reactionaries, or just edgelords? The only name I recognize is David Friedman, bc one of my professors went to college with him and said he had an enormously inflated ego.
This post title seems to imply that Ozy is not a leftist, or maybe insufficiently leftist. I will charitably assume IneffectiveEgoist hasn’t read much Thing of Things. Also why would you assume they’d want to appear more leftist than they are with their rationalist audience that tends to be skeptical of leftism? That is a lot of error and incoherence for a two-sentence post.
Just got banned from that blog for being a “tankie”. So much for being compassionate towards those you disagree with, as soon as I named certain inspirations (that I disagree with!) I get these political sneer words hurled at me. I post on these places to engage in dialogue with those far to the right of me, and all I get in return for my hard work is my posts scrubbed from history. Not very charitable at all.