TheSanSabaSongbird

@TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id

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TheSanSabaSongbird,

They’ve become increasingly common in recent years. I don’t think there’s as much of an aversion as you appear to imagine.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

That’s my understanding. I always understood “Great Britain” to refer to the entire island composed of England, Scotland and Wales. Maybe I’m wrong or there are certain use exceptions?

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Just a slight correction; something like 60 percent of modern Israelis are Mizrahi, meaning they are from the Middle East and have no European ancestry or connection to Europe. Ethnically they are very similar to the Palestinians and if you put them together in a mixed group, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell them apart based on appearance alone.

There’s also no reason to think that Mizrahi Jews aren’t largely descended from the ancient Jewish population since wherever they’ve lived in the Middle East, they’ve never been fully integrated and have always been pretty insular. Most scholars think that the same is true to a lesser extent of Ashkenazi Jews as well, though obviously they have a lot more European ancestry.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

I think a lot of people are in denial about who and what Hamas is.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Maybe not now, but that’s not the point. The point is that we’re all human beings and what history shows us again and again is that as a species we are capable of talking ourselves into group-level insanity.

There’s nothing about history that should lead anyone to imagine that the capacity for group-insanity is somehow unique to any so-called “race” or national identity.

If you really want to argue that Americans are somehow uniquely subject to such things, you then have to account for the fact that a plurality of Americans are directly descended from European ancestry which in turn means that any difference has to be cultural as opposed to some kind of genetic quality innate to Americans.

The upshot here is not that the US is somehow unique, but is rather that the US is precisely what happens when Europeans take over a brand new continent peopled by civilizations that lack the technology and microbiology to resist.

Again, this idea of yours, that Americans are somehow unique or special, is patently absurd given what we know of history.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Not very bright, are you?

TheSanSabaSongbird,

This is a stupid canard. Obviously the US has centrists relative to its own domestic politics, and obviously that’s what the idiot above is referring to.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Right here motherfucker.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

We vote by mail in my state. I love it. Me and The Wife sit down at the kitchen table and fill out our ballots together and then pop them into the mail and that’s it. Granted, I live in a solidly blue state so my presidential vote basically doesn’t matter anyway.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

He’s had meetings with Heritage on how to implement the plan. They are already in the process of lining up his appointees so that they can hit the ground running. You are badly misinformed as to how far this has already gone.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

And your point is?

Simply trotting that out as a truth tells us nothing about how you propose to build a modern system that respects how we’ve evolved as a species.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Save yourself the trouble; free will as we normally conceive of it is entirely an illusion.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

There’s a blast from the past. I used Telnet as an undergrad back in the 90s.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Small scale hunting and gathering societies are universally egalitarian because it’s impossible for any one person to accumulate significant wealth or to control resources. The way members of such societies gain influence therefore is through virtue and personal merit. This is the social system that we evolved to live in over hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s why we still haven’t figured out an equally amenable replacement in the mere ten thousand years since we adopted agriculture.

That said, for better or worse, agriculture is a trap, and once we adopted it, there was never any going back, so we have no choice but to keep trying with what we have.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

The truth is that pretty much everything about the western US starts with California and then spreads back out. This is because, due to the gold rush, California was settled and made a state first, while the rest of the western states remained “territories” and only achieved statehood much later as they too became more heavily settled.

Basically, the settlement pattern of the western states is backwards after about 1852 or thereabouts, with the California and the west coast filling in first, and the interior states filling in later.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

I mean, southwest Colorado was part of the Dust Bowl. Culturally it’s definitely part of the Great Plains area. I would argue that eastern Wyoming and Montana are as well. They have more in common with the Dakotas than they do with the Rockies.

I still wouldn’t consider it the Midwest, but at least there’s a tenuous thread of logic to the idea.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

It very much depends on what you mean when you say “the spirit of it,” which I think you have to admit, is open to a lot of interpretation.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Read a US history book on the westward expansion and it will all make perfect sense. Hint; it might have something to do with older names remaining in use up until the current day.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

More evidence, if any was needed, that advertising works. The entire product is built on marketing a self-image to those who for whatever reason aren’t perceptive enough to see how they’ve been manipulated by the advertising industry.

I’m somewhat guilty of it myself when it comes to outdoors activities that I’m passionate about like climbing and hiking and backpacking and snowboarding. I know a lot of it is overpriced bullshit that I don’t actually need, but sometimes I’m like “here, just take my money, I must have that fancy new piece of gear or equipment!” At least I’m aware of it though.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

They were originally made so that a woman could ride a bicycle while wearing a dress or skirt.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

I was thinking more of “Blood Meridian,” but it’s definitely true that “The Road” tackles a lot of similar themes albeit on a more personal and isolated scale.

I think “No Country” also is a continuation of said themes, with Anton Chigur as a sort of modern incarnation of The Judge. He must own everything. Nothing can be allowed to exist or happen save by his dispensation.

He is an amoral archon, as is life and the universe itself. He is offended only by those who refuse to acknowledge and countenance the cruel and arbitrary nature of reality itself.

Decisions and random facts of chance have permanent consequences, none of which can or should be escapable. It’s offensive to The Judge/Anton Chigur that anyone might imagine otherwise.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Bullshit. Fascism is by definition antithetical to classical liberalism.

TheSanSabaSongbird,

Nonsense. There is no returning to small-scale egalitarian societies. Large-scale societies are a trap; once you embrace them, you can never go back apart from in extreme isolation. Spend even 5 minutes thinking seriously about it and you will see why it’s a pipe dream.

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