The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Antonio the Sixth]

By popular demand.

Here's the latest contribution from our new Dear Leader:

The idea of "spam posting" isn't just posting a lot, it's posting low quality content, insults and generally derailing threads. EHarding had a way of doing that to threads - probably because he posted so much that it was impossible to be ignored, given that even if eharding is on an ignore list they will probably still see a ton of quoted posts by him. In fact, I'd say there is a good chance that when eharding comes off his ban he'll pop into this thread, fire off about a thousand posts and make himself the center of the universe again.

It's probably hard to see when it is only a handful of people doing it, but imagine if a quarter or more of this site's active posters were eharding spam poster types? I have little doubt that many of the actual decent posters here would eventually stop posting because every thread turns into or starts out as low quality garbage. It's easy to dismiss him and say "just ignore," but the fact is is that those types of posters are toxic for a forum like this, and waiting until the problem reaches critical mass seems foolish. That he seems to have a history of getting banned from other places for similar reasons I feel backs up my point at least somewhat here.

I think eharding's views are divorced from reality and in some cases disgusting, but that's not really why I think he deserved action. His problem is his delivery (spam/etc) of his views, not the views themselves. ApatheticAustrian may post a lot (though not as much), but he doesn't fit any of this criteria at all, imo.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I will say i am unsettled by the demands by American liberals to make abortion legal at any time for any reason. It's just weird - it's not like there is a huge horde of psycho women that declare they want abortion at 8 and a half months for fun - third trimester abortions are only for medical reasons so there is really no reason to even leave the potential for non-viable late abortions open.

Basically the pro choice side don't focus enough on a universal  and cheap access to early abortions (ignoring that many rural areas now have no clinics at all). That's the most important issue - if the left was forced to swallow waiting restrictions AND mandatory counselling AND a twenty week ban AND ultrasounds I'd consider it a worthy deal if you managed to get the GOP to agree that a first trimester abortion is a right.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Reposted from the old thread:

Entirely leaving aside the fact that a great many people are simply slightly but noticeably less intelligent than average and that these people deserve to have safe and meaningful lives too, I've become increasingly curious as to how many computer programmers and IT people folks think society actually needs or can support.

It's important to note that the tech industry has a wide range of jobs, and the improvement of integrated development environments make basic programming much easier by automating low-level systems programming tasks like memory management and pointer handling, so overall ability needed to program is decreasing as time goes on, so accessibility may not be as big of an issue as it might seem for the profession.

It's absolutely fascinating how neoliberals these days don't even have to preach on the glorious virtues of The Market anymore, because they have been so thoroughly immersed in their creed that they can't even comprehend why anyone would not view it as the only possible mechanism for making social decisions. Truly a textbook case in the study of ideologies.

Already you should start thinking about splitting potential labour supply of programmers into two groups: those who have no training and need training to reach competency, and those who have the ability to attain competency, but are really investing in their signal so they get the best programming job.

When the OP's talking points get raised, it's almost always considered by the latter category - college majors or adult professionals who, to keep up with their income expectations, can't just learn how to code but need to do it well. But, even if this ends up being most of the potential programmer supply, it's still a small chunk of the US labor force.

The irony though is that plenty of people think they're really aiming the talking point at the former category, those who need training to reach competency.

Let's get real - you can talk about "accessibility" of programming all you want, but for someone who couldn't get past Algebra II more than a decade ago, on the margin programming training is not a good choice. And it's a scar on the U.S. that there are plenty of people like who I described there.

If I were actually trying to give good job advice to people in the former category, I would say very little which they or the market doesn't already know - the fastest growing industry in the U.S. if not the developed world is nursing.

Personal Care Assistants alone account for more employees than all programmers and software developers in the US combined, according to the BLS. This one group excludes all the other nurses and caretakers employed in hospitals, jails, clinics, etc.

I've already written why I think coding can be of value to students who want to learn it, but I remember when I was in grade two or three in 1977 or 1978 and we had a substitute teacher and there were, for some reason, a bunch of punch cards strewn about part of the school grounds (I believe around the bike racks) and one of the students took one of the punch cards in with them asked the teacher what they were, and the teacher replied "they're punch cards for computers.  We should be teaching you about them and how to use them with computers because you'll be using them when you grow up."

Let me frame the question by analogy. In particular let me ask this question in 1945: How many auto mechanics does society actually need?

In 1903 the Ford Motor Company was founded and in 1908 they released the mass produced Model-T. 40 years later, after WWII, the automobile exploded in use creating the suburban culture of the late 20th century. Auto mechanics was a standard high school class by the 1960's, and even if one wasn't going to be a professional, a large fraction of the population understood how to perform a number of basic auto mechanical tasks.

In 1975 Microsoft was founded and in 1981 they released MS-DOS for widespread use in the new IBM-PC. Almost 40 years later, computer use has exploded and defines culture in the early 21st century. Computer science courses are becoming common in high school as states work to define what that curriculum should mean. Extending the analogy then, I would expect that like auto mechanics a generation after WWII, in the 2030's and 40's we will see a large fraction of the population knowing how to perform basic coding tasks, even if they aren't at the level of a professional.

If you look at the actual market for higher education, you would see that people looking to be retrained from the bottom up don't listen to any of the persuasion. [...] More people want to get a Masters in Education than all the aspiring engineers and programmers combined, despite the attack on teachers' unions and the average-below average hourly wage including overtime.

I also repeat my claim in the previous post that everybody has learned through market signals that nursing is the highest-growing industry, and are training appropriately.

The point here is that the market for higher education adjusts far more quickly than the discourse surrounding higher education. If anything, the question of "making honest choices about what society must orient around" seems better left to the market than to academia or punditry, both of which are rigidly hierarchical.

That doesn't mean the current market for higher education is perfect by any means. What I'm saying is just that, of the problems facing higher education, whether the system is churning out enough programmers is not a major concern in my opinion. A much better question would be: "if we're making honest choices about which industries should grow in the U.S., should we be allowing all these new realtors?"

To expand on that, programmer fetishism isn't a new feature of US education policy: I would trace the tradition of politicians throwing money to make technological education go the way they want to all the way back to Sputnik. Instead of trying to achieve education goals by lobbying and flattering these politicians' sensibilities, you should let philanthropy keep a few private schools alive or create a regulated private student loan market.

I guess the plus side of people shilling for ~coding lessons~ as a panacea for Middle America's labor market woes is that people can, in principle, do coding anywhere that has internet access, so one doesn't, in principle, have to desperately scramble to make it into one of a few hip-'n'-happening metropoles the way one does with certain other "new economy" jobs.

Selections from Nathan's "How many computer programmers does society actually need?" thread on the Economics board. It's one of my favorite forum conversations from the past several years, although it becomes an extremely frustrating read at points. Antonio's comment is best read as a chaser after plowing through Gustaf's tendentiousness.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The fear of an SNP effectively puppeteering a Labour government to get an "unfair advantage" for Scotland was one of the key reasons for Labour's defeat in 2015 - there's a reasons the Tories used the message constantly; because it was a fantastic scare message that diffused down to even low-info voters. Not that the SNP would care - why would they, when they had kept their ideal bogeymen in Westminster to rail against? Which is why I dislike the movement so much - my idea of a left is a group of broad people of different backgrounds that are united for the betterment of all its constituent parts. The SNP tosses that strategy out of the window by creating artificial divisions and resentment between peoplein the service of creating yet another 19th century abstraction (a nation-state) in a time when global unity is needed more than ever.

And the worst part of it is that it all comes steeped in tremendous hypocrisy. Not just the oh so leftist utopia that in its most likely form would be a corporate haven petrostate on a race to the bottom. Not just the desperate attempts to have their cake and eat it to in regards to American style flag-waving (an activity that sadly is becoming ever more popular in British life all over, more evidence to my theory that the PTB  view Northern Ireland as an ideal model for the rest of us to follow) by the vague "civic nationalism" descriptor. Not even the "Austria-as-first-victim"-esque narrative it spins, in which Scotland was some sort of disenfranchised, underprivileged colony rather than being a willing partner in the crimes of the British Empire. NO, what really gets me is the pointlessness of it all. Like Brexit, it merely serves as a distraction from the tangible in the service of chasing symbols and inflaming sectarian division.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Is it no longer frowned upon to post yourself into these threads?

That wasn't the purpose. The purpose was to get this thread going and finally bury the old thread that keeps coming back from the dead.

Anyway, my apologies.

[Antonio the Sixth]

A rare sensible post on an issue where both sides tend to sound ridiculous.

My thoughts is that as black women's natural hair is unfairly stigmatised by Eurocentric dress codes, one would think it would be helpful for the cause to have Afro-style hairstyles adopted by other races; thereby forcing employers hands (like how the gluten-free trend helped the genuinely gluten intolerant by increasing the range of gluten-free products)? I can appreciate why many blacks may roll their eyes at the racial equivalent of slumming it; but at the end of the day I find it hard to get really riled up about the issue - and  worse it becomes a self-defeating tool, in that it trivialises the rest of the sj agenda by its oddness.

There is a very disturbingly ethnonationliast undercurrent to a lot of this debate, in both its proponents and its opponents. Sad how the elite plays us off each other so easily.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Huh, fair enough.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I know this thread is already filled with Crabcake posts but...

As ever certain responses to this thread are highly troubling. I am a leftist at one level, because I believe that empathy is one of the most valuable traits a person can have. That we can look at a young man in prison for theft or a dropout pregnant teen or an immigrant being deported away from his adopted home due to petty bureaucracy and say "this person made mistakes, but part of the reason was a rotten system that would have swept me up too if I had been in their shoes".  With that in mind, I find it baffling that i should turn this trait off for people whose main sin is voting for Donald Trump.

I would also add that I think it is a useless exercise to sectarianise poverty, but I assume it'll fall on deaf ears

[Antonio the Sixth]

What does "false" mean under the circumstances? Whether God exists or not has little to no relevance to the question of whether the majority of people in society accept certain moral claims as valid. The existence of God is irrelevant to the question of whether or not each specific piece of Biblical law is worth preserving or not.

There's a fantastic story in the Talmud in which two rabbis are arguing over a specific point of law when God Himself comes in to tell them what He originally meant, and the rabbis chastise Him and tell Him that his role in the legislative process ended with the creation of the laws and that it's up to them, the rabbis, to figure out what the law means now.  It drives home the point that, regardless of the original provenance of a principle of religious law, once it is law, it belongs to humans, not God, and humans can interpret it and do what they wish with it.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I honestly can't think of any politician or political movement that doesn't involve identity politics - broad Marxist appeals to class, the civic liberal tradition dominant in America since the founders, all nationalist thought, agrarian populism and even simple appeals to common humanity all rely on people forging political alliances with other individuals on the basis that they have similar problems. In that respect, we cannot blame the simple fact that the democrats peddle identity politics, because so do their opponents. However as somebody else noted, the issue is the democrats failed to be successful with their brand of identity politics.

I think one of the biggest problems is the democrats like to bifurcate their coalition far too much. The GOP's message is crafted by a mixture of dimwits and sociopaths, but the common identity it appeals to is simple: the American people, under attack by a consortium of nefarious forces. You may say "But via subtext is that the GOP were clearly appealing to a narrow white Christian male demographic!". But that's the thing: the GOP leaves it in the subtext. That's just how political messaging works. A lot of urban Great Society programs were clearly aimed at African Americans, but LBJ didn't announce a War on Black Poverty. Likewise, Reagan's denunciations of welfare queens was widely considered a dogwhistle, but he also left the radicalised aspect of such rhetoric in the subtext. In 2016, the democrats forgot about subtext. Issues were sorted into helpful boxes (ah, African Americans are interested in police reform, Hispanics in immigration, middle class suburban dwellers in Hillary's experience, young women in abortion etc). The democratic coalition was less of merging together of people for some great cause, more of a grabbag of disparate strands calculated to reach a magic 270. The rise in data journalism and degeneration of political journalism compounded these problems. It is not hard to see why somebody watching CNN or any other 24 hour news dross would come away with a perfect understanding of the democrats strategy for getting into office and their expected numbers with each race and educated level, and literally nothing about what she planned to do once in office. And that comes back to the subtext problem: for a while, democrats have been shedding white uneducated voters. This in itself is not fatal, but for no reason at all, the Democrats decided to elevate this to text in 2016, by proudly stating they were an irrelevant part of the coalition. Because the adjective "uneducated" comes across as an insult, and it was normally made in such smug terms anyway; it's no real wonder why the group abandoned the democrats en mass, either to Abstention or to Trump's maw. Even republicans don't literally say "who cares about black voters anyway lol!"

Worse, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of how low-turnout voters work. If you are interested in abortion, you almost certainly will turnout because normally the opponent will irritate and scare you so much you'll vote your side by default. Look at the behaviour of the pro-life movement in 2016, which swing behind possibly the least religious man to ever receive the republican nomination. All they needed was the deal that trump would commit to their cause, and they showed up in great numbers. That's not to say that democrats need to abandon or even moderate their position on abortion, just awknowledge that it is a background issue for most voters who are more interested in their own day to day lives. If you are an activist, you will join the dots. But by and large, a low turnout or swing voter is not politically conscience whatever their identity, and are more interested in more kitchen table issues than "issues". The fall in black turnout despite the democratic focus on BLM is not really discussed enough. It seems to me that Denocrats clearly thought the issue was some whizz bang technique to keep turnout at Obama levels, but clearly BLM (a movement I sympathise with) and its reforms were not seen as such by black voters, especially in rural areas. (Talking of Obama, the way he was treated by the Hillary campaign - as a mere gotv force in black areas, really highlights the problem in democrats viewing their base as too fragmented. The great skill of Obama is that he was able to talk past the fragments and work the democratic base into a common identity, which was lost in 2016 in the data onslaught).

[Antonio the Sixth]

Surely a pretty key part of being left wing would be trying to understand why someone would have come to a place in their life where they had given up trying to find work?

I mean, in any case, it is quite funny that all of the people who "yack yack yack welfare scroungers" and all that just so happens to know a plethora of people who just want to not work and live off the dole or whatever.

I'm privileged af, but I come from a pretty small town, and I know enough people from all sorts of class backgrounds, from the proverbial WWC son of a bus driver to the kids of Moroccan immigrants; and I can tell you that none of them wants to just waste their life away on unemployment benefits. People just aren't like that, unless something that has happened to them that would make them give up.

It's quite important, you know, to treat people with dignity. Especially in an economic and social model that we live in these days that basically doesn't give a crap about you unless you meet the right set of criteria to "succeed".

[Antonio the Sixth]

... That proves nothing, except that you guys almost certainly never visited Ohio. Neither have I, for the record, but at least I don't proclaim to know the future political orientation of a state based on one Presidential election and a couple of out-of-context maps.

Ohio wasn't some massive swing towards Trump; Clinton hemorrhaged former Obama supporters, due to a variety of reasons. Let's take a look at turnout in the state from the 2012 and 2016 Presidential Elections. Overall, 54,387 fewer people voted in 2016 than 2012.

5,590,934 - 5,536,547 = -54,387

Now, look at the change in raw numbers from Obama to Clinton and from Romney to Trump. There were 433,540 fewer people who voted for the Democrat in 2016 than 2012, but only 179,569 more that voted for the Republican.

2,827,709 - 2,394,169 = -433,540
2,661,437 - 2,841,006 = +179,569

So, where did voter turnout drop the most?

Cuyahoga County (Cleveland): 645,262 - 608,879 = -36,383
Summit County (Akron): 268,358 - 260,346 = -8,012
Stark County (Canton): 181,746 - 176,165 = -5,581
Mahoning County (Youngstown): 121,584 - 115,971 = -5,613
Lucas County (Toledo): 210,621 - 198,830 = -11,791
Montgomery County (Dayton): 266,707 - 259,876 = -6,831
Hamilton County (Cincinnati): 418,894 - 409,109 = -9,785

What really happened in these counties?

Cuyahoga County
447,273 (Obama) - 398,276 (Clinton) = -48,997
190,660 (Romney) - 184,212 (Trump) = -6,448

Summit County
153,041 (Obama) - 134,256 (Clinton) = -18,785
111,001 (Romney) - 112,026 (Trump) = +1,025

Stark County
89,432 (Obama) - 68,146 (Clinton) = -21,286
88,581 (Romney) - 98,388 (Trump) = +9,807

Mahoning County
77,059 (Obama) - 57,381 (Clinton) = -19,678
42,641 (Romney) - 53,616 (Trump) = +10,975

Lucas County
136,616 (Obama) - 110,833 (Clinton) = -25,783
69,940 (Romney) - 75,698 (Romney) = +5,758

Montgomery County
137,139 (Obama) - 122,016 (Clinton) = -15,123
124,841 (Romney) - 123,909 (Trump) = -932

Hamilton County
219,927 (Obama) - 215,719 (Clinton) = -4,208
193,326 (Romney) - 173,665 (Trump) = -19,661

In counties where the Democrats lost the most voters, there wasn't a significant shift towards the Republicans. Voters simply went third party or, more often, stayed home.

It's also important to note that even though Trump won Ohio with a higher percentage of the vote than Bush in 2004 (51.31% for Trump, 50.81% for Bush), Trump didn't even reach Bush's raw vote totals (2,841,006 for Trump, 2,859,768 for Bush). And, this is not due to population decline in the state, since Ohio's population was 11,353,140 at the 2000 census and 11,613,423 in 2015.

Voter turnout in Ohio since 2000...

2000: 4,705,457 (2,186,190 = Gore | 2,351,209 = Bush)
2004: 5,627,908 (2,741,167 = Kerry | 2,859,768 = Bush)
2008: 5,721,831 (2,940,044 = Obama | 2,677,820 = McCain)
2012: 5,590,934 (2,827,709 = Obama | 2,661,437 = Romney)
2016: 5,536,547 (2,394,169 = Clinton | 2,841,006 = Trump)

Basically, Trump experienced a decent increase in votes over Romney, but Clinton experienced a dramatic decline over Obama - especially from his 2008 peak, and even from Kerry's results. There's nothing to indicate that (a) there were a significant number of Obama-Trump voters and (b) the next Democrat cannot recreate the results that Obama received simply by turning out the vote. Even if Trump held all of his voters, if the next Democrat could slightly increase Obama's 2012 numbers, the Democrat would win.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wow, I guess this is FL-SEN 2016 all over again. An empty suit/moderate heroing contest. While I do think Sinema would end up voting with the Democrats more often than not (whereas McSally would be a loyal Trump foot soldier), it’s pathetic how Democrats feel like they have to race to the center even in swing states, while Republicans have no shame about running in swing states as though they’re running to represent Wyoming.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Newly moved to the West Coast (albeit not California), I get the impression that the way in which liberals try to deal with poverty on the state and local level is fatally flawed. For example take the homeless situation in Portland for example, I get bombarded with campaigns to pass bond issues to "deal with" the problem by enacting a government program, yet no effort is made at all to alleviate the structural problems that result in such extreme problems with homelessness in the first place: the high cost of living, restrictive zoning laws, land use policies, NIMBYism, tolerant drug culture, the state lottery, etc. Oregon is willing to pay lip service to the problem of poverty, and indeed runs massive campaigns upon it, but completely unwilling to even seriously consider the sort of lifestyle changes needed to address the structural causes of poverty.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Posted this on another forum, decided to add it here as well:

It's a bit unfortunate in some respects that the IHRA definitions have become central to this mess, because it opens things up to bad faith barrack-room lawyering. The point isn't to impose a strict and inflexible code For All Time and to suggest unpersoning anyone who could be argued to break it if you squint, but to provide a framework through which effective and prompt action can be taken. Campaigners on this issue often prefer - at least when this is possible - for action to be educational rather than punitive, as they typically regard antisemitism as being at heart a form of malicious ignorance, one that can be countered by education.

One of the problems with antisemitism (one of the reasons why it is an unusual and unusually pernicious form of racism: most other kinds are pretty clear cut even to the most casual of observers) is that antisemites have always been very good at obfuscation and distraction, much of which turns swiftly into victim blaming: antisemitism, even in its mildest forms, tends to operate according to a very nasty form of circular logic. A detailed list of potential antisemitic arguments and tropes is thus essential: this is the point of the IHRA definitions. These definitions can, of course, be quite easily augmented and contextualised without watering them down in the slightest. This is what should have been done in Labour's case: it wouldn't have been hard and it wouldn't have been controversial - especially if it had been paired with something else Labour desperately needs, namely a transparent and comparatively independent disciplinary process.

Three further comments:

1. The present firestorm around Corbyn was triggered by an online post that had nothing to do with Israel (i.e. the mural). Berger's alarmed complaints were actually picked up pretty late by the media. Even some of the more damaging episodes from Corbyn's past that have recently emerged were unearthed not by journalists, but a left-wing anti-Corbyn academic. Of course some in the media are exploiting this for political ends, but that's how politics works: you aim at the weak spots of your opponents. Liberal/left attacks on (for instance) Trump's conduct political aspect are a case in point.
2. Even Jews philosophically opposed to Zionism will generally be a little unnerved at aggressive criticism of 'Israel' spoken or written in a certain tone and utilising certain tropes and arguments. Particularly when it comes out of nowhere, especially when it's clear aimed 'at' them. I'm a little surprised that this needs pointing out.
3. Antisemitic attitudes remain quite widespread in British society and are in no way restricted to the Left, of course. To pick just a few examples: The Daily Telegraph ran an antisemitic headline recently, Private Eye continues to publish antisemitic content and cartoons and Nigel Farage now regularly makes overtly and openly antisemitic comments. There has also been a growth of a certain sort of strange 'racial' conception of Muslims in recent years that often tips over into pretty disturbing territory. All of this is serious and needs dealing with (I mean if you are a good Civic Liberal who wishes for constructive political discourse, that is - I guess if you aren't you probably won't care), but it will not do to bring this up as a means of defence of distraction - doing so is not just cynical but stupid as it works to discredit all criticism of racism and retards any concerted attempt to do anything about any of these problems.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't really care what Trevor Noah says about anything, though, given what the report says it's not really seemly to complain about. (Incidentally, this from the onion does what Noah is aiming for far better than him) What happened in Pennsylvania is appalling but not shocking, that it's not shocking is itself appalling.

The sex abuse scandals have, understandably, generated an enormous number and variety of responses. Save for Bill Donahue of the grandly titled Catholic League, no one has attempted any form of denial or minimisation. This is good, I guess, though as with so many complex tragedies, there is something rather unedifying about the glee with which certain conservatives have used it to attack gay priests, atheists use it to attack religion, liberals use it to attack the bishops. There is always an agenda. This is not of necessity a bad thing, an agenda is the only way to fix this, and in fact I agree with the liberals and honestly sympathise with the atheists, but it does lend an unedifying taste to the discourse.

Why, then? It is easier to rule out reasons than to come up with convincing ones. We know the crisis peaked in australia in the 50s, before the sexual revolution. We know that gay priests are not any more likely to molest than straight ones (though boys are far more likely to be the victims, probably because priests are far more likely to have access to them). We know that since 2002 there's been almost no molestation by catholic priests, so the unnaturalness of celibacy can hardly be blamed.

We know that wherever there are children there are paedophiles, we know that the vast majority of institutions will cover it up. We've seen this sort of stuff happen in schools and hospitals, scout patrols and sports teams, care homes and choirs. But it does seem worse in the church.

Shua says that this may just be down to the church being more scrutinised, and this is possible. If you wanted to imagine the type of institutional paedophilia story that would cause a media storm then it's hard to think of a better fit than the Catholic Church. It is instantly recognisable around the world, rather than just some local school or choir. It's social influence is profound. And, where it turns out that it has been covering up for abusers, it, given how often it pontificates on morals in general and sex in particular, is flagrantly hypocritical.

But it is also true, that if you wanted to design an institution which would perpetuate and cover up for child abuse on an industrial scale, than you would have struggled to create a better fit than the Catholic Church of 40 or 50 years ago. You have the culture of clericalism that means that priests are borderline worshiped in their communities. You have a system of education for priests that takes them in seminarians at a very young age and teaches them that they are special. You have a bishop who controls the entire life of everyone who works under him, who can, if he chooses silence anyone who raises any doubts. You have an institution that is loved by millions and feared by most of the rest. You have access not just to altar boys but to schools and hospitals and clubs.

There has been a lot of justifiable anger from all sides to Bill Donahue and his take on this latest chapter in the scandal. So it's perhaps ironic that, on a factual basis, he's basically right. The vast majority of priests have no accusation against them and there is no longer an institutional problem of abuse of children (whether that's because of new guidelines or because no one trusts priests with their children is hard to say). But this of course, misses the point quite spectacularly.

The fact is the people who were in charge during the bad old days are still either in charge themselves (like Wuerl), or in a comfortable retirement. Moreover, the new blood who are not culpable for the sins of their predecessors, regarding shuffling clergy, are just as unwilling to hold investigations, to apologise from the heart and not from a PR firm, and compensate victims. Like so many other areas of public life now, there are almost no profiles in courage.

The scandal is not the same as that of 2002. It's no longer about the ongoing abuse of children, it's about the hierarchy being completely unwilling to be properly penitent, both personally and institutionally.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Sooo, I'm just going to throw this out there, but the reason "the right to be believed" was a big part of the past few years is because in a lot of cases of sexual assault / rape, there is no other evidence. This stuff tends to happen away from people, away from cameras, away for all of that. And even in cases of rape where evidence may exist, not all women report it immediately for a whole host of legitimate reasons. I get that people want more to go on, but in many cases, there won't be. And I'd be careful saying "well then that's sad but it's not enough," because you're essentially writing off a massive number of cases of sexual abuse then. Even without hard evidence, other available information should take on a higher meaning - such as who they told and when.

So I'm sorry, but in these cases, her word is all you have. The fact that she told people about this in counseling way back in 2012 is critical here. Kavanaugh wasn't really on the public's radar then, so there is no reason for her to do that unless there is truth to this. But so far from conservatives, this doesn't seem to matter?

[Antonio the Sixth]

It really is disgusting, isn't it? I haven't had such little faith in the moderating team since the 2015 episode. We had a nice little upswing in trust with the upgrades and with only isolated incidents by specific moderators, but now there is a dark energy present. Remember when transparency became a priority to win back the faith of the community? Whatever happened to that?

A timeout was not totally unwarranted and certain posts maybe could be deleted. Heck, I will even withhold judgement on a temporary ban for our dear friend without knowing every fact (though I will vehemently oppose this "solution" to deal with a forum institution). However, with no announcement or explanation, it eliminated any chance for serious forum outrage. I guess this is just lessons learned from opebo.

What is the 2015 incident

Throughout 2015 there were a series of incidents that caused successive waves of people to lose faith in the moderation of the forum, which paralleled the rise of AAD as an alternative over the course of that year.

1. February - The banning of Napoleon
2. Early 2015 - The locking of the update
3. June - The wrongful banning of four posters as socks - followed by their unbanning once their facebook's proved they were real people.
4. Mid July - A mod got appointed, then got banned, after which the poster he had been going after "self-banned" out of guilt
5. Mid to late July - The mod cave got hacked.

Ah yes, the locking of the update.  I too remember when a bunch of posters complained after the mods locked an attention-whoring megathread started by a morbidly obese, intellectually challenged individual who may or may not have had some sort of psychological/mental issues (assuming the whole thing wasn’t just a hoax by BushOklahoma) because it deprived them of the chance to continue encouraging his self-destructive behavior so they could keep using him as their own personal circus freak and laugh every time he inevitably made an even bigger mess of his life.  Clearly the mods were the ones in the wrong

As for Napoleon, he was a sock created by Hamilton, one of the more infamous recurring sock masters from days of Atlas past.  The Napoleon sock, I should add, was also quite a vindictive persona which Hamilton used to make some pretty nasty personal attacks.  In fact, there was generally much rejoicing all around when he was banned, so I’m not sure who would have lost faith in the mods simply because they banned a disruptive and rather nasty sock account. 

Regarding the mod who got banned, I hope you don’t mean BushOklahoma because he only became a mod after some folks thought it would be funny to make him a mod, so they attempted to manufacture a conflict so he could then “resolve it.”  BushOklahoma was indeed briefly made a mod - admittedly a pretty astounding case of bad judgement by whoever decided to let him be one - and was ultimately removed for good reason.  BushOklahoma eventually got deservedly banned.  I mean, I’d argue it’s not a great idea to have someone on Atlas who tried to use the forum to pitch financial scams to other posters (IIRC BushOklahoma tried to get folks to invest in an obvious pyramid scheme), but that’s just me

At first I thought you were referring to Inks, but he was never banned and JerryArkansas still posts on Atlas (I believe he got in an argument with Sawx a couple months ago, in fact).

As for the ModLeaks, a subsequently banned poster by the name of Tweed maliciously manipulated BK - who was a mod at the time - into sharing his password.  Tweed then - unbeknownst to BK IIRC - used the password to enter the guy’s account and then proceeded to post a bunch of stuff from the modcave for sh!ts and giggles.  Once again, clearly the mod team were the real villains here  

As I recall, the general sentiment was less one of loss of faith in the mods and more 1) a bunch of folks implicitly going “OMG what did the mods say about me?  Hey!  They’re not even talking about me?  Well, I guess this was a dud; I was promised juicy gossip ;” and 2) “that was a really sh!ty thing Tweed did to BK!”  I could be misremembering b/c it was a while ago, but I believe that was how most reacted.

Also, AAD hasn’t had a real “rise” since it can’t stand on its own two feet.  It is effectively a leech that would wither and die were Atlas to shut down for some reason b/c it depends on Atlas for members.  I briefly checked out AAD early on and de-registered b/c it seemed to be largely a collection folks complaining about how Atlasia was killing their efforts to get a higher daily post count on AAD than Atlas, a bunch of banned posters (including some Nazis) saying horrible stuff with impunity due to Hockeydude’s “anything goes” moderation policy despite one guy getting banned there for, if memory serves, calling Hockeydude an idiot or something to that effect (b/c clearly that’s much worse than what folks like Enzige or Libertas posted ), liberals “ironically” supporting Trump for President (not so funny in hindsight), and threads reserved for things like discussion of BRTD’s obsession with something called Sneakers O’Toole. 

To be fair, there were some good posters who now mainly post there like Oakvale and Gully Foyle, but not enough to outweigh the site’s negative qualities.  There was some good political discussion, but it was also a massive echo chamber.  Granted, I deregistered a long time ago, so it definitely could have gotten better since, but at least initially, it was really strong evidence in support of having a very active, hands-on mod team.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Electability is a lie, a manipulation built to prevent us from seeing the clear truth of how politics actually works. If it was not something people thought about, people would select the candidate that appeals to them well, and that candidate, via virtue of being appealing like that, would in the end win via the actually being really electable because they could convince people to vote for them the best compared to the alternatives.

But... instead we get this second guessing nonsense and insistences that so and so is best for what ever reasons we want to argue for as defining electability. Instead of, you know, people just letting the appeal of the candidates answer the question via the primary election.

Man... I am so done with the term electability. There's a reason I did a youtube video about how its nonsense. And will do so again before the year is up.

Excellent post, yeah.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This is not a high-quality post. Please stop spamming.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Came here to post that.

[Antonio the Sixth]

One thing I will say though is imo the best Bourbon kings were Henri IV and Louis XIII. I think both were much better than Louis XIV, who I think is one of the most overrated kings in French history

Agreed, I think Louis XIII is quite underrated and was better than Le Roi Soleil a lot of ways. Maybe Richelieu deserves most of the credit, but the King's policy vis-à-vis Germany and Spain was masterful. By intervening in the Thirty Years' War at just the right time, France dealt a crushing blow to the Habsburgs and became the preeminent power in Europe. Cardinal Mazarin continued this expert diplomacy, nurturing close relationships with the Protestant princes of the Empire and seeing out a victorious end to the Franco-Spanish War. When Louis XIV began his personal rule in 1661, France was in a supremely powerful position thanks to the hard work of his predecessors.

And how did Louis choose to use that power? He pissed it all away by getting into unnecessary and expensive wars and alienating all his neighbors. The careful diplomacy of Mazarin in creating the anti-Habsburg League of the Rhine was shattered in a single swoop by Louis' unprovoked invasion of the Spanish Netherlands, and with it centuries of French diplomacy which had successfully kept Germany divided. This quote from International Politics and Warfare in the Age of Louis XIV and Peter the Great stands out to me: "Louis XIV succeeded in alienating most of the Germanies and did more than Emperor Leopold to bring about German unity." From then on, wars against Austria would be Reichskriege against all Germany, as the whole Empire united against French aggression. This was most evident in the Nine Years' War, which Louis envisioned as a short war of intimidation but instead became a long and bloody stalemate due to the unexpected resolve of the Germans. The Sun King then tried and failed to dislodge the German princes from the Imperial cause through an inept mix of threats and subsidies, an effort which lacked any of the finesse of Cardinals Mazarin or Richelieu. 

That's not to say Louis' foreign policy was a complete failure. The Franco-Dutch War was for the most part a military success, but it also had the unintended side effect of bringing William of Orange to power in the Netherlands. Be that as it may, it is undeniable that between Nijmegen and the Truce of Ratisbon France was at the absolute height of its power and influence, and for that if nothing else the Sun King deserves some credit. But then, as in all things, Louis decided to blow that too, in what was probably the single greatest blunder of his entire reign: the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. By the stroke of a pen, the process of German alienation which had begun some 20 years earlier was finally completed. Louis' last ally in the Empire, Brandenburg-Prussia, deserted him for the Dutch immediately afterward and welcomed tens of thousands of economically valuable Huguenot refugees into its borders. Others fled to England, where the revocation and the Protestant anxiety it created helped cause the Glorious Revolution. This was another disastrous development for the Sun King, as it brought England into the Grand Alliance and to war with France. After 1685 there was no longer any doubt who was the great menace of Protestant Europe, the tyrant aspiring for universal monarchy, the bloodthirsty warmonger: it was not the King of Spain or the Habsburg Emperor as in times past, but the "most Christian Turk" of France.

All that said, I still prefer him over his Habsburg enemies because I'm a huge Francophile, I love the French Baroque, and the religious intolerance in Spain and Austria toward non-Catholics was even worse than in France (Turenne was a Huguenot for God's sake!). For me reading about Louis' reign is kind of like watching a bad sports team you love. They keep making bad play after bad play until they eventually blow the whole game, and the fact you're a big fan makes it that much more infuriating.

TL;DR: Watch this video by the great MoFreedomFoundation; he makes a similar but less detailed argument.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Short snappy posts are not what this thread is for. F**k off please.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Short snappy posts are not what this thread is for. F**k off please.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

There's literally a different thread for one-liners. Just spend half a minute browsing this board and you'll find it.