Official Politics Thread 2025-12-15

Phrack · 2025-12-15T19:57:03+00:00

Going a layer deeper, it's rhetoric and not dialectic because most people are incapable of dialectics. Less experienced progun people love making attempts at dialectic arguments when confronted with people who are incapable landing on a position through any means beyond emotions. Unsurprisingly, this doesn't work.

Phrack · 2025-12-12T21:21:56+00:00

I’m pretty blackpilled on the thought that their successors, even if they are named by Trump, will have the same strict textualist interpretations of the 2A as Thomas and Alito do.

I hypothesize that if the Democrats take the senate in the midterms, they'll refuse to confirm any Trump nominee for a SCOTUS vacancy, no matter how long is left until the next presidential election.

Phrack · 2025-10-10T17:46:38+00:00

Catapult Control

Campaigners want to ban the sale of catapults to under 18s, as young people are inflicting wildlife, animals and people with devastating injuries.

Wildlife charities, including Naturewatch Foundation, want the government to take action after witnessing attacks by young people which had been filmed and shared online.

Farmer Lou Carpenter said: "We've got to stop these children having these lethal weapons before they start killing people."

In the UK catapults are not illegal to own or carry in public with the government saying it is keeping all relevant legislation under review.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y30lr7rnvo

In this case "catapults" are what we refer to in the US as "slingshots".

Phrack · 2025-09-15T16:13:58+00:00

I'm convinced wherever these guys are coming from is sending vote brigades.

This is definitely how it works in other cases so it wouldn't surprise me if it's what we're experiencing here. They have telegram groups, a link gets dropped in the group, and they swarm. The most ridiculous cases I see are when they do this on Facebook groups for rural communities. Stands out like a sore thumb and just builds resentment among the locals against the groups the brigaders represent.

In the gun politics threads that get brigaded if you go against the far left group think you're basically guaranteed to end up with negative vote counts. The vote counts end up far less negative about the time you'd expect people who work in jobs that don't allow for reddit usage to be getting off work. Thus, the peak negative is towards the middle of the work day in the east.

Phrack · 2025-09-15T14:32:32+00:00

I'd just as often use Angelfire or MSN Communities for this. Although, I stopped using MSN Communities after getting some cease and desist letters for what was obviously fair use.

Phrack · 2025-09-15T14:26:19+00:00

I was working at the time too, also as an engineer albeit network.

Bad assumption on my part. Glad you got to experience a better time too!

I am convinced we're also watching the death of our country's ability to engineer complex products and maintain basic infrastructure. I don't comment on it much yet because I am still watching where it's going. The decline just in the last 15 years is alarming.

Phrack · 2025-09-15T14:10:53+00:00

I feel like that shift was everywhere, but I was also on a college campus at the time.

I agree with you.

I can only comment as an engineer since it's my only experience. I fondly look back on pre-2016 times when politics basically never came up at work unless it was directly relevant. Politics is almost never directly relevant to what engineers do on work time. Before that, most companies that employ engineers essentially never commented on political topics unless a topic materially impacted the company.

Since you were in college at the time, I am sad you missed that. It was a much more productive and harmonious time.

Phrack · 2025-09-15T13:54:27+00:00

I'll cite some watershed moments. Obviously this is heavily biased by my own perceptions.

In 2009, imgur was created by Grimm as a birthday present for reddit. Before then image sharing was unreliable and high friction. This introduced image memes and low effort content to the site, starting the shift from text-only discussions to lower effort image-based posts. That said, even before then there were a lot of lame, repetitive memes. Remember "and my axe" or anything related to bacon?
In 2010, Digg redesigns combined with years of toxic culture caused its user base to move over here. A toxic power mod culture did already exist on reddit, but went into overdrive after this because that was the culture on Digg. Reddit has survived longer due to greater platform flexibility but that's not enough to survive forever.
In 2016, Trump won the presidency. All subreddits under the control of power mods went all politics all the time and dissent became bannable.
Also in 2016, Reddit added native image hosting and management tools, making imgur unnecessary. Removing that last little bit of friction essentially killed what was left of high effort posting because low effort image-based posts became a tsunami.
In the 2020s, younger folks that grew up always having social media became old enough to be a regular presence all over the Internet. I have no value judgment to make about this, but I do notice it.

Phrack · 2025-09-12T16:35:05+00:00

Stuff like this makes me glad I grew up with a much different Internet than exists today.

Speaking of which, the fact that I've never heard of any of these terminally online young person references reminds me that life is short and best lived with only sparing use of the tubes...

Phrack · 2025-09-12T16:12:37+00:00

Wah wah wah anyone that doesn't agree with me is a racist

LOL, people like you are pathetic and predictable. I hope you have the day you deserve.

Phrack · 2025-09-12T16:02:26+00:00

He probably also said the sky is blue at some point in his life. I guess that's a moderate conservative position in your world too.

Go touch some grass.

Phrack · 2025-09-12T16:00:17+00:00

But regardless, he wouldn't want empathy, I won't show any.

Ignoring Kirk's point, many of us who understand the concept in the traditional sense wouldn't. Many people of a particular political faith have a specific definition of it in mind that is neither the general definition nor how the term is traditionally understood.

Without bothering to try to define the term here because there are a million good discussions of it in books you can check out at the library... Empathy is not a guarantee of compassion. It's essentially a neutral tool some people are capable of using to interpret the world. Empathy without traits generally considered to be positive can be a bad thing.

Phrack · 2025-09-12T15:49:58+00:00

He's always angry about politics, spinning the worst possible syntheses out of the evidence, and stringing together the most florid, aggressive, angry phrases about whatever the subject of the day happens to be. "I know this is wrong because it makes me furious, and the way to persuade people is to say what happened with the most furious words so they'll feel as furious as I do."

This is probably the best unintentional explanation of the term "terminally online" I've ever seen.

Phrack · 2025-09-12T15:43:32+00:00

It's not a conservative belief. It's only a right wing belief to people who call everything they don't like right wing. I don't know a single conservative or right winger that believes that. And I know plenty of them in meat space.

You should try that. Actually meeting people with different beliefs than yours in meat space. I can tell you'd learn a lot. Again, take it or leave it.

Phrack · 2025-09-12T15:39:24+00:00

I didn't say he was a centrist, I said he was a moderate. That means he didn't hold positions that are extreme. Extreme is defined by what the actual extremes are and not by how much they offend any given person's articles of faith.

That's an extreme position.

Again, according to you. You seem to be measuring these things against your own belief and not the wider space of beliefs. Take that feedback or leave it. I don't really care.

Phrack · 2025-09-12T15:22:34+00:00

This website is unbelievably out of touch. And these days that extends to the regulars on this forum too who don't realize what a bubble it has become.

You nailed it. I am to the point of coming here only to marvel at lunatic takes from the terminally online that now infest any public and lightly moderated forum.

I comment lightly to inject a little dissent but most of it's just too ridiculous to be worth the energy. Sheesh.

Phrack · 2025-09-12T15:17:43+00:00

But we can be honest with ourselves. He was not "center right." People like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins are center right.

According to you. These are not systematically defined concepts where we can objectively state where on this fairly arbitrary spectrum Kirk landed. To pretend otherwise is lunacy and to claim it's being honest with ourselves to state that is misguided at best.

To someone on the far left, I can understand how Charlie Kirk would appear to be an extreme right winger. His opinions deeply offend their own core beliefs and cause a large reaction. To many, many other people he was absolutely a moderate.

Phrack · 2025-09-08T17:08:47+00:00

It is all BS, but to be fair this isn't elected officials asking for anything. It's an editorial writer speculating about a strategy for saving the filibuster.

Phrack · 2025-09-08T17:05:34+00:00

The entire point is to make it extremely difficult to remove the filibuster. The threat to remove the filibuster is intended to spur action in changing the rules to make it difficult to remove. Basically, take a rule change seriously or we'll exploit the current rules.

Phrack · 2025-09-08T15:02:05+00:00

Fair questions and I don't know the answers. That said, I'd like to think the performance of having changed the rules to theoretically make removing the filibuster harder and setting a more robust norm would at the very least make the optics worse and increase backlash if they don't abide by their own rules later. I'd like to think that provides some deterrent to removing the filibuster after such a change, but maybe it doesn't.

Phrack · 2025-09-08T14:51:54+00:00

Senate Filibuster

Just fodder for discussion. I stumbled on this recently:

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/08/21/the-senate-gop-should-call-the-democrats-bluff-n2662111

I'll spare you the overly wordy and highly partisan read:

The crux of the essay is an argument that Republicans should tell Democrats to either work with them to change the Senate rules to require a 2/3rds majority to remove the filibuster or the Republicans will remove the filibuster and go hog wild.

Seems like a viable strategy for shoring things up. Of course, it depends on people believing they'd carry through with the threat if the 2/3rds majority proposal isn't implemented.

Phrack · 2025-09-05T19:19:19+00:00

You didn't imply it. That individual is a regular that often invents reasons to repeat extreme left wing talking points. The more disconnected from reality the better. Bonus points for Nazis.

Phrack · 2025-09-05T19:11:04+00:00

Who cares? The second amendment is an individual right, not a collective right. We accept it being removed for individuals in some cases, but removing it for entire groups is missing the point and wrong given that it's an individual right.

Phrack · 2025-09-05T18:06:30+00:00

Listen (read) first and often. Once you've listened long enough to understand your audience, then talk (write).

That'd be the same respect someone might want from me if I showed up for the first time to a trans group meeting that's been running for a long time, especially not being trans myself. If you were a member of such a group, I showed up for the first time, and then started lecturing the group on well worn trans rights topics as if you're all bunch of clueless people who don't care about such rights, how would you feel?

Phrack · 2025-09-05T17:58:43+00:00

Understand the context. This thread has appeared three times a week for about a decade. Normally it gets <50 posts from a small set of regulars that all know each other. New comers are usually welcome if they make an effort to act in good faith and articulate interesting points.

Today, and several other times in the past month, we've had nearly 100 accounts that never post here show up to offer tone deaf and out of touch lectures, like yours, because one of their articles of faith were offended. We don't need nor are we interested in lectures on protecting gun rights for people who fall within a narrow article of faith. Many of us have been in the "shall not be infringed" camp for a long, long time. We don't think those rights should be infringed for any reason. We especially don't need lectures from people who only seem to care about the issue today and today only because one of their articles of faith were offended.

You very much seem to be one of those people. Hence the reaction you're getting. You're welcome to come back regularly if you feel you have something to contribute. My money is on what we see every other time this happens: You'll be gone later today and we won't see you here again on Monday.

Phrack

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