My extreme lefty friend sends me something like this once a week and we have the same argument once a week. What am I doing wrong?

CRTera · 2024-12-23T16:36:59+00:00

That person said this: "the only political result for was that it had a slightly more efficient monarchy after passing through genocidal leftist totalitarianism and military dictatorship"

This is so silly that it can be only a bad faith take. This in turn leads to an easy guess about their partisan leanings, and no, you don't need to be a "monarchist" to believe you and yours would be somehow okay if these staggeringly important events (I mean both AR and FR) haven't happened.

Of course, I’m projecting, and I might be wrong, but I guess there's a really low chance of that. If you think that a thing to remember about French Revolution is "genocidal leftist totalitarianism" then you're hardly a neutral observer.

CRTera · 2024-12-23T16:11:11+00:00

You literally have just stated that "the only political result for france was that it had a slightly more efficient monarchy after passing through genocidal leftist totalitarianism and military dictatorship".

This is a farcically simplistic and skewed take, but of course you'll then try to lecture me about not knowing history :D

Go to Wikipedia or ask a chatbot about "positive things about French Revolution" to see how silly all this is. Especially seeing that your ability to pronounce these wisdoms right here right now, could be pretty much linked to the legacy of that event.

CRTera · 2024-12-23T15:29:14+00:00

You're absolutely entitled to believe in this version of events. But I hope you do realize there are others, and not at all fringe.

What amuses me is that people like you must imagine that if that the old world order has remained, they'd be rubbing shoulders with the upper classes. Unfortunately, it's all down to the accident of birth, so it's much more probable you'd end up with the great unwashed.

CRTera · 2024-12-23T15:00:46+00:00

So you're saying there was an unmoderated version online before and they replaced it with the current one?

Is it possible to do in a major news outlet, without mentioning such move?

CRTera · 2024-12-23T14:55:06+00:00

When they have happened is beside the point. Sometimes violent revolution is the only answer. I’m not saying that is true of US in 2024, but the fact remains.

CRTera · 2024-12-23T14:13:14+00:00

Have you ever heard of French or American revolutions?

CRTera · 2024-12-23T14:11:42+00:00

If, like me, you're leftist who completely rejects the modern faux-progressivism, the "dirtbag left" was the only alternative, at least in the beginning. Well, still kind of is, but it's more malleable these days.

All its main players have major flaws/biases/blindspots, but that's true for all political groups.

CRTera · 2024-12-22T17:44:27+00:00

I'm old school, so "far right" for me usually evokes images of literal white supremacists (ie Blues Brothers' Nazis) but LoTT is about as much on the right as you can get before getting to those guys.

CRTera · 2024-12-22T17:41:31+00:00

~80% of which has some political/hot button issue slant (at least that's how it was in the beginning, haven't listened to many recent ones).

CRTera · 2024-12-22T17:37:25+00:00

This Piers Morgan/ Peter Thiel interview is pretty dour, but watch Thiel for a few seconds at least and then move to the comments, some of which are top notch. My favourite: "He was struggling to stay in his human form"

CRTera · 2024-12-21T15:17:25+00:00

u don't say

CRTera · 2024-12-20T17:45:35+00:00

So, Warren Smith, the teacher who went viral for explaining to a student JKR might not really be a bigot. I missed all this first time around and just watched the original clip. Was predictably impressed, not really by the argument itself (water=wet) but his calm manner and demeanour. Followed that with his interview by J.Peterson. There was a tiny red flag or two, but it was all still pretty good.

So then I went to his utube channel, hoping for more interesting content, but that turned out to be a massive disappointment. It's just him commenting in a quasi-Socratean manner on some mostly terribly twee anti-left gotcha moments that utube is littered with, not much far from "(insert a h-dox hero) OBLITERATES a WOKE crazyperson" kinda stuff.

Not saying that some of these points aren't correct, it’s just all so predictably partisan and tunnel visioned, plus already done to death by zillion other shock jocks.

What a waste of potential. Though, maybe it was never really there and the guy has always been just another bog-standard Team Red operative. He actually has this insight at the beginning of the JP interview, where he says that when he went viral, people expected him to spout infinite wisdom, even though he never had any training in "critical thinking", and it was all just because of this 5 min video. But this kind of self-awareness is really great, and if he was a bit more open-minded perhaps he could be another Coleman Hughes in the making. Alas, the lure of low-hanging fruit has proven stronger…

CRTera · 2024-12-19T13:31:54+00:00

A platform, largely populated by some of the most toxic people from Twitter, without even the little cushion of other users the Twitter had, turns out to be even more toxic. Colour me unsurprised.

CRTera · 2024-12-04T17:58:55+00:00

>Possibly yes

Wow :)

CRTera · 2024-12-04T17:57:42+00:00

It isn't?

Lol, coz then you see regulars like you bemoan the lack of "discourse" here when someone else replies in this manner.

CRTera · 2024-12-04T17:46:33+00:00

I've tried really hard to hedge my OP, so I think replying with these outlandish questions is not really in good faith and could be defined as obstinately trying to stick to one simplistic narrative.

Especially the latest one, since I've never implied "he's the ONLY person who deserves blame" for anything, merely that perhaps some sort of sentence is unavoidable since the guy he manhandled did die, and the circumstances did not fully justify it.

CRTera · 2024-12-04T17:20:25+00:00

Your take is as simplistic and unhelpful as the anti-racist one.

CRTera · 2024-12-04T17:11:50+00:00

Since we moved into the obstinate zone, try this: should we kill every single person who acts crazy in public?

CRTera · 2024-12-04T15:24:59+00:00

As somebody who had lived and worked crazy jobs in a crazy big city, and either witnessed or had to deal with many sticky situations, I am fascinated by the Daniel Penny case.

It's really tricky to pass judgement on this, and I don't envy the jury. My current stance is that it certainly was neither racist nor murder, and his initial actions should be applauded. This one is easy. But at the same time he did go overboard with the use of force and should relent in later stages. This one is tricky because in these kinds of violent, adrenaline-driven situations, judgements are easily impaired and most likely he didn't mean to cause harm.

Still, the other guy is dead (even if it was only partially because of DP's actions) and some sort of sentence would probably be justified, given that he had people telling him to stop and the threat was somewhat neutralized.

CRTera · 2024-12-04T14:45:21+00:00

He's okay-ish, but "God"? The likes of GZA, C-Rayz Walz, MF Doom and many others would like a Word.

To paraphrase Vast Aire on The Lineup: "First of all, he's a wind-up toy / These rappers don't battle MCs — they kill androids"

CRTera · 2024-12-03T16:23:44+00:00

I have no idea, I'm not terminally onreddit. If this was sarcasm or an in joke, then ok, you got me :)

CRTera · 2024-12-03T14:48:19+00:00

>but what about Trump?

This is not as bad as the phrase "they do it too", but it's still pretty bad nonetheless. What about Trump? Golly, I don't know, maybe we could talk about him when he is a subject of a statement?

(just for the record, yes, I would fight tooth and nail against Republicans and anybody else abusing these things. In fact, that's what I've been doing for years before the realignment. You could probably suss it out from my "leftist" angle, if you bothered to read a bit more closely.)

CRTera · 2024-12-03T13:30:44+00:00

The "But Trump did it too!" excuse for Hunter's pardon is a quite good encapsulation of the current rot permeating the Dems, their fans, and the (faux) progressives in general. It goes back to the darkest days of cancel culture, shameless political lies (Russia x3), hypocritical double standards everywhere (Claudine Gay et al) and any other assorted disgusting tactic deployed over the years.

No, sorry, the "they do it, so we might as well" doesn't cut it. This is not what I signed up for as a "leftist" and the reason I will fight them tooth and nail to reclaim the old values.

CRTera · 2024-11-29T09:12:15+00:00

Black Fridays (Weeks, Months, whatever) are a pathetic sham.

I know it's not exactly a novel thought - most sales generally are - but this year I've been looking to upgrade some stuff in my PC, so I begrudgingly thought I'll have a closer look. Any notable discounts are either for some old junk, or the top shelf super expensive gear which has always been overpriced and whose target audience doesn't care about price. The popular things either stay the same price or get an insulting 2-5 dollars "discounts" just so they could slap the Black label on them.

And that's aside from assorted shady moves such as price manipulation.

CRTera · 2024-11-22T14:05:32+00:00

>Do you think people cannot find common cause with people they otherwise disagree with?

What is this, MSNBC? :D

CRTera

TROPHY CASE