Linky Friday: Print & Predators

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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109 Responses

  1. LeeEsq says:

    Ci1: These lawyers can’t go to court in California unless licensed there though.

    Ci3: The standard of living is subjective though. A person who doesn’t want a big house and a big lawn but does want the culture and goods the city could offer isn’t going to find the standard of living higher.

    Ci4: Conservative urbanism is probably always going to be on the fringe of conservative ideology in the United States. Most American conservatives have decided that urbanism is inherently anti-conservative since at least the end of World War II if not much earlier as the article points out. To the standard American conservatives, Americans should live in the country or at least in a single family home with a big yard.

    Ed5: Neurodiversity and neurotypical are ill-defined words that I see thrown around a lot on the Internet. According to wikipedia, neurotypical isn’t even a word that psychologists and psychologists use but slang in the autistic community for people without autism. This makes people in the autistic community, the neurodiverse. This makes both neurodiversity and neurotypical political correct terms in that they are both trying to find polite ways to refer to certain people. I find it rich that a person using political correct terms is arguing for his or her right to be non-political correct.

    In so much that neurotypical mean average or normal under this definition, I really don’t think that people obsessed with campus speech codes, virtue signaling, and social justice count as typical people.

    Me2: It would be nice to know what the BBC’s purpose is. Most non-American countries have BBC like media services and like the BBC, the often operate more like an American commercial network than PBS because they have to appeal to a broad audience. I’m not sure why the BBC is getting signaled out for criticism except for being the most well-known one.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to LeeEsq says:

      “These lawyers can’t go to court in California unless licensed there though.”

      A question about bar certification – if you’re involved in Federal cases (which my understanding these are, mostly patent cases), do you need a state license for the venue in which the federal case is being heard?Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to Kolohe says:

        Its a tricky question and the answer is it depends. Anybody admitted to the practice of law anywhere in the United States may practice in front of any Immigration Court, USCIS office, or Social Security Court anywhere in the United States. There is a separate patent bar that you need to pass in order to be a patent lawyer in the United States but I assume that passing it enables you to practice patent law anywhere in the United States.

        Any lawyer admitted anywhere in the United States can also practice in front of any Circuit Court of Appeals if an admitted lawyer will vouch for them. If somebody was willing to sponsor me, I could be admitted to practice in front of the 7th or 8th Circuits even though I only have a New York License. District Courts must be applied for individually and I think you need to be a member of the relevant state bar but IIRC. In New York, the Southern and Eastern Districts allow you to apply for admission to them at the same time.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to LeeEsq says:

          There is a lot of migration between CA & TX, so TX may have a healthy supply of lawyers who were admitted to the CA bar.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to LeeEsq says:

          The link is broken. Assuming that it’s supposed to point to this Houston Chronicle story, it’s a patent law firm. There are lots of big multi-state outfits doing patent law. Years ago, when I did work that generated patent stuff, I was often on the phone with the law firm in Detroit that handled the patent work for the Denver-based company where I worked. From time to time, a group of the Detroit lawyers flew out to Denver for face-to-face meetings with management and the inventors.Report

        • PD Shaw in reply to LeeEsq says:

          In Illinois, one doesn’t need to be a member of the Illinois bar to practice in one of its district courts. One needs to be admitted to practice in one state (or D.C.), provide a certificate of good standing from its body, pay a $231 fee, and have an attorney already admitted move for your admission, vouching for your moral character (its a form to be signed). Since I’m looking at local rules, I assume they vary by state.

          Traditionally, though corporations borrowed attorneys from private law firms when they had need for some specialty for their in-house work, not necessarily for court appearances. (My sense from the article is that the patent lawyers here are doing litigation, but I don’t know)Report

          • Will H. in reply to PD Shaw says:

            From what I have heard, Illinois was changing that to where an out-of-state attorney would be required to procure Illinois co-counsel, ostensibly to advise them of procedure.
            Really, not much difference I can see procedurally. Illinois is really strict about notice requirements, and has separate chancery courts, but there’s not much else.
            Also, fact-pleading.Report

    • Kimmi in reply to LeeEsq says:

      Ed5,
      Writing these “speech codes” is an exercise in stupidity in the first place.

      We’re to the point where honest confusion about someone’s desired gender affiliation gets you screamed at on the street (and in small towns, too). I mean, dude, the person is silver and wears a Raggedy Ann red wig and is six foot tall. If in slacks, is it really so wrong to address said person as sir? At least the first time?

      But, hell, I’m writing this on a site that has decided that a normal (non medical) word for the transsexual (or autogynephillic) is a slur.

      I mean, for the love of fucking god, I do NOT expect people to put a trigger warning on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia because it’s got That Fucking Door Noise (and yes, they put it in there Just To Troll. And no, you don’t need a trigger warning just because it causes PTSD flashbacks. It’s a Fucking Door Noise).Report

  2. LeeEsq says:

    Me1: You can also look at the R. Kelly story as the hip-hop equivalent of the Baby Groupies of the 1970s like Sable Star. This isn’t the first time a big named celebrity and musician used his fame to do some really immoral things.Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    W2 – North Korea nuked up so it wouldn’t become Iraq. But Libya de-WMD’d so it also wouldn’t become Iraq. (a last chapter to the story that the author yada yada’s over)

    The lesson to world thus was made clear.Report

  4. fillyjonk says:

    W1: I see things like that and I just think “Humanity* delenda est

    I know this kind of thing has always gone on, but that doesn’t help.

    (*sorry. I don’t know enough Latin to know the correct form here so I’ll just use English.Report

  5. Kolohe says:

    W3 – the risk is real, but we’re already seeing a greater risk in Kashmir, between two countries also with nukes and even greater enmity .Report

    • Kimmi in reply to Kolohe says:

      K,
      We fixed that. At the beginning, Paki and India had the equivalent of eniacs running their nukes.
      With a 5 minute window of “fire or you won’t ever be able to”
      (Please remember, America and Russia had about 30 minutes, and the “did you guys just…” question was triggered multiple times, often by birds).Report

  6. Kolohe says:

    W5 – for a professional diplomat, Combs isn’t coming across very well. From his telling, the staff at the Soviet embassy come across as soft, whiny, and overentitled – oh, it’s ‘tiresome’ that you had to clean the urinals every day?

    Boo Hoo you poor babies.

    This is only a little over 5 years since an entire diplomatic mission was taken hostage for like 400 plus days. And these dips in Russia are complaining about having to clean up after themselves?Report

  7. Oscar Gordon says:

    Ed1 If Bug really wants to shoot for an Ivy, we will support him, but both of us are graduates of a State School & neither of us have found a significant difference in the quality of our education compared to an Ivy. So we’ll encourage a state School for him.Report

    • Richard Hershberger in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      My impression is that there are certain fields of endeavor where an Ivy degree matters. Some of these fields are highly lucrative. Others are less lucrative, but have other benefits. I have a relative who recently took a Ph.D. in musicology, which means an intended career in the academy. Ordinarily, the sensible response to a doctorate in musicology is to giggle uncontrollably, but in this case it is from Harvard. I am very curious to see how this plays out.Report

      • CJColucci in reply to Richard Hershberger says:

        My impression is similar, and I think it is most apparent in fields where you don’t have good objective measures of quality and where you start your career — or if you start it at all — is more a function of connections and networks. A bright undergraduate who wants to be a journalist (some would say that’s a contradiction) and a handful of clippings has a much better shot if those clippings appeared in the Harvard Crimson or the Yale Daily News because he or she knows people who know people. Someone in the sciences, not so much.
        If your field generally requires graduate education, where you got your undergraduate degree doesn’t matter that much, within reason. The admissions offices at the elite graduate programs know that X State or some small regional liberal arts college is good, and if you have a sterling record there you’ll beat out a middling Ivy undergrad.
        But then the quality/connections-network issue repeats itself. A new Ph.D. in a hard science can point to real, measurable indicia of quality. A kid fresh out of law school can’t. Is a middling Columbia Law graduate better than a Brooklyn Law Review editor? I don’t know and neither do the BigLaw hiring partners. But guess who gets the easiest shot at what are regarded as the best jobs?Report

    • fillyjonk in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      A recommendation, if I may: a smaller school that doesn’t rely heavily on TA labor for the intro level classes. Or, start at a smaller place where you know the credits will transfer, then go to the “name” school for upper level classes.

      I know this is advice older than the legendary grand-dad’s underwear, but….I wanted to go to a Public Ivy and did, and in retrospect, would have been better off at a smaller school.

      Of course, by the time Bug is old enough, we may just have gone to neural transplants/robots took all the jobs and everyone gets UBI/some other option.

      but as someone who teaches at a small regional school and does her darned best to give the students the best education I possibly can – I like to speak up for small schools.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      I’ve long considered a similar approach, with the added wrinkle that if they wanted to go out of state (and I do think there is value in traveling away from home for college), I’d encourage them to move to the desired state, establish residence while working or doing something else worthwhile, and then applying to school. “Gap years” are common in Europe and I think they can have real value.Report

      • Gabriel Conroy in reply to Kazzy says:

        Speaking only for myself, a gap year would have been a bad idea for me. I probably (or at least possibly) would have been drawn too much into my job (fast food) and would have been too tempted to go the shift manager to assistant manager route instead of going to college. That would have been a poor fit for me but still something I might have done.

        I also really needed to leave my parents by that time in my life. My parents were good people, but I needed to strike out on my own and under a gap year I wouldn’t have been able to do that. (However, under a gap year where one moves to another state, as you suggest, that would have been possible.)

        I should also say–and this sounds weird–I’m not sure I would have known *how* to do a gap year. I wouldn’t have known that it would be okay to go back to my former teachers and ask them for letters of rec even though I was no longer a student, for example. And also, I didn’t quite know how to find college applications. Most of that probably seems laughable to the others here (and it’s kind of laughable to me, now)–and if I had had the will to do it, I would’ve found out how to do things without too much trouble–but no one in my immediate family had gone to college or knew the process, so they couldn’t help me. And I might have opted on my own for the easier-in-the-short-term path of not trying. And I say this as someone who was pretty close to the top of my class, did well on most of my AP exams, and really liked school. [ETA: “really liked” is an understatement. I was passionate about learning and about things like history, literature, and foreign languages.]

        Again, that’s only me. Others’ mileage may vary. I just have an idea of the choices I probably would have made, and they wouldn’t have been good ones for me. This is just speculation against a counter-factual, but I suspect that if I hadn’t gone straight out of high school, I might never have gone.Report

  8. Saul Degraw says:

    Ci2: Standard of living is relative here. I want access to places like the Brooklyn Academy of Music or CalPerformances, not a large house and yard.

    Ed1: I’ve been thinking about intelligence recently and there might be different kinds here. There is the kind of Intelligence that lets someone just thrive in a system for financial/personal gain and this would seem to be the kind of intelligence that the author dislikes. These are the kids who just study hard, get good grades, go to an Ivy-league or equivalent and then get the top-level Consulting, Banking, Tech, Law, Business jobs, etc. Then there is a more out there type when intelligence causes you to question the system. The second group can often have a rougher time of it economically but do just as well in school and still go to the Ivies.

    I suppose the response of the first group would be what’s the point in questioning the system?

    Ed5: I think Lee’s points are salient here. I don’t think the Free Speech issue is quite as bad as the critics say and a lot of these essays read to me as shock about getting pushback for using bigoted and offensive statements towards minorities. “What do you mean I can’t accuse my Jewish classmates of controlling the media and finance in a ‘joking’ tone anymore?” seems to be the real issue.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Ed5: That wasn’t exactly the point I’m making but close enough. My main point was that the really vigorous defenders of Social Justice type speech aren’t really that neurotypical, in the sense of having an ordinary, average mind either because ordinary, average people don’t spend that much time thinking about these issues one way or another.Report

    • Kimmi in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Ed5: have you seen Chris-chan’s “I am looking for a boyfriend-free girl” sign?
      I do, in fact, find it hilarious that these free speech codes can be wielded to completely eliminate entire schools of art from the curriculum. Shit, that would be a fucking hilarious troll.
      (Yes, I really, really badly want to do this)
      “You can’t display this art! It’s anti-Semitic!”
      “But, you’re saying that we can’t even teach an entire country’s art?”
      “Yup! The teaching of it in that country has inherited biases, and I can show it to you in the artwork itself.”

      Now the fun part: Name the country.Report

    • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I’m kind of agreement with Kimmi here. The SJ types require more than just common decency but saying the right things in the right way in all circumstances. They turn simple politeness into a cudgel they can attack you with.Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I think part of the argument around “standard of living” is that increased cost of living in certain cities may eat up whatever salary increases you see compared to other areas, and possibly then some. So you won’t be able to afford to take advantage of what the city has to offer because the $10K raise you got to work in the city was quickly eaten up by a $1K/month increase in basic living expenses.Report

  9. Kolohe says:

    Ci7- to get my daily allowance of tu quoque, the Catholic Herald should remember that medieval Gothic churches were the Brutalitism of their day – i.e. specifically designed to *not* be ‘human scale’.Report

  10. LeeEsq says:

    Ci7 is something that I partially agree with. Most modern architecture really isn’t the problem even though it might not be to people tastes. What was the problem was that designing a city that’s convenient for driving but also dense enough to be walkable and pedestrian and transit friendly seems impossible. Car friendly cities requires wide roads, high ways that cut through neighborhoods, and a very generous amount of parking. All of these things really make medium to high density places where you can take transit or walk around difficult to pull off.Report

    • Dan d in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      It would be much easier to take the MSM seriously here if they didn’t also produce propaganda pieces claiming that we need more immigration to solve the labor shortage

      While there is supposedly a labor shortage hitting California farmers agricultural metros in California have the nation’s highest unemployment rates.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dan d says:

        There is a labor shortage, people are refusing to work.Report

        • Joe Sal in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          Are we still at 39 states that it is more profitable to be on welfare than have a $8/hr job?

          What I am saying is there may not be a refusal to work, just a rationalization of a sort.Report

      • Michael Cain in reply to Dan d says:

        Many/most of those ag jobs are physically demanding and performed under harsh conditions. It is unlikely that I (to pick an example) could handle them.Report

        • Dan d in reply to Michael Cain says:

          Are they worse than coal mining? Employers can also make them less harsh, for example the meat packing industry has backslide in both pay and working conditions in the past 30 years as it has returned to immigrants as a souse of labor.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dan d says:

            What exactly are you arguing here, @dan-d ?Report

            • Dan d in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              That immigration allows employers to get away with crappy pay and working conditions.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to Dan d says:

                This assumes that immigrant workers are basically scabs and don’t care about pay and working conditions. This isn’t true though. Immigrants workers in the United States were long on the for front of protesting and striking for pay and better working conditions. During the 19th century, nativists arguing for immigration quotas did so because immigrants were really involved in unionizing and radical politics like socialism or anarchism. This trend continue into the 20th century. Hispanic immigrants are heavily involved with the SEIU and other labor organizations.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

                Can’t we assume that immigrant workers are basically scabs and more pleased with their pay/working conditions in the US than with what is available back home?Report

              • Dan d in reply to LeeEsq says:

                It is possible for immigrants to be involved in union activism and for the presence of larges numbers of immigrants to drive down pay at the same time.Report

              • notme in reply to Dan d says:

                You mean illegals are driving unskilled wages down? That’s unpossible.Report

        • Troublesome Frog in reply to Michael Cain says:

          Pay enough and you’ll find people to pick your fruit. If this keeps up, I’m sure that’s what will happen. A tiny increase in the price of produce will support an increase in picker wages and the food will be picked.

          Realistically, even if picking strawberries is very slow work, how much human touch time does picking a strawberry take? Even at $45 an hour, how much per basket of strawberries is that?

          We’ll live.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to Troublesome Frog says:

            From what I remember of ag markets, the problem isn’t that the farmers don’t want to pay more, it’s they almost can’t, or are horribly afraid to, because the buyers won’t pay more for the produce just because the farmers costs went up.Report

            • PD Shaw in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              Argentine strawberries are good.

              What you’re suggesting is that the labor for hand-picked ag products is not worth that much. If its not worth that much, I don’t know why we would want to subsidize it with waivers of labor laws (LA Times reported half of immigrant farmworkers crossed illegally). It certainly does not ameliorate wage inequality. The alternatives are increased mechanization and greenhouse production.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to PD Shaw says:

                Well, no, I’m not suggesting that. I don’t think.

                What I am saying is that farmers have a strong incentive to suppress wages as much as possible to keep costs down because the market for produce is not as neat as people like to imagine (it’s almost always a buyers market, rather than a sellers).

                We subsidize it with waivers of labor laws because somebody is opposed to the idea of the price of produce reflecting reality, and those somebodies have political influence.Report

              • PD Shaw in reply to PD Shaw says:

                Well, I understood you as saying that the payable wage was constrained by the consumer. In agriculture that turns a lot on the availability of substitutes. I can either buy this fruit from the U.S. or Mexico, I can either buy this fruit or a different one.

                Unless there is a specific soil or climate limitation, the only advantage the U.S. can bring to global markets is using capital investment to increase productivity. We cannot win the race to the bottom by maintaining total labor compensation at third-world levels, and we cannot expect people to pay double the price for produce than what is available from imports.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to PD Shaw says:

                we cannot expect people to pay double the price for produce than what is available from imports.

                Call it organic, pain-free, and sun-grown without aluminum nitride ceramics.Report

              • PD Shaw in reply to Jaybird says:

                Technology will make food so cheap, that only the rich will pay for food bundled with virtue.Report

              • aaron david in reply to PD Shaw says:

                Your destroying the Farm to Fork movement!Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to PD Shaw says:

                Except your farmers in Argentina can not sell direct to US grocery stores. The sell to produce distributors, who in turn sell to grocery stores, and who mark-up the imported produce until it’s in the ball park of other sources (or above that, if it has a greater demand). And I can not easily buy from said farmers.

                In the states, about the closest a farmer can get to selling direct to a consumer is to either run their own store front, or join a Farmer’s Market, or cultivate relationships with local stores. Joining a farm co-op can help with leveraging distributors.

                And that’s before we even talk about the various regulations and subsidies and whatnot that control the prices even further.

                It’s a big ugly mess.Report

              • And isn’t this a big template for your typical SIlicon Valley tech setup — replace all of the middlemen between producer and end user with yourself? IIRC this has been attempted for groceries a lot with little tangible success. Blue Apron, for instance, just laid off a quarter of its workforce. Amazon is starting to approach the process with auto-repeat for certain products, but for perishables like fruit and vegetables, that’s going to be really hard to get scheduled in advance because the logistics of moving food that will rot if left warehoused or in transit for too long are fairly demanding. The things Amazon is having success at moving to consumers are non-perishable goods.Report

              • Kimmi in reply to Burt Likko says:

                Burt,
                My friend who started a “Make your own Meals” thing as performance art had to cancel it when he started making money hand over fist. (apparently that wasn’t part of the business plan)Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              @troublesome-frog @oscar-gordon

              I don’t know enough about agriculture to say but the article makes it clear that this problem goes beyond farm labor to pick fruits and veggies and also plagues the construction and other industries.

              Fruits and vegetables might be one thing but it seems to me that for something like roofing, a company should be able to tell customers “We have a labor shortage and need to pay more to get workers. So we can either charge you X to cover this cost or not do the job at all. Which do you pick?”

              But this isn’t happening and it seems many employers are still in the idea that the wage for work X should be iron-bound regardless of the laws of supply and demand.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Oh no, I agree, if employers can’t find workers and they haven’t started offering more money, I have no sympathy.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Just to be clear here, who are these agri american producers in competition with, and what are those other countries paying?Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Joe Sal says:

                For fruits and veggies, the competition is everything from Mexico south to Chile, depending on the produce and the season. In 2015, Mexican ag workers in Baja California had a two-month strike seeking a hike to $13 per day, plus better enforcement of overtime laws.Report

              • Joe Sal in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Now it looks like $13 Baja faces competition from lower wage regions of Mexico.

                My point is, we put these farmers out of business not because of their ability/capability to be competitive with other producers, but because we demand minimum wages in the local markets far beyond what they are competing against.

                The farmers aren’t suffering because of their own poor efficiencies in capital formation, but barriers placed socially on capital formation.

                Not saying anything here about morality or right and wrong, just a awareness that there is a barrier to capital formation due to social constructs for the american farmer that do not exist in it’s competition.

                Can anyone claim a comparative advantage(plus shipping costs) of other locations over the US when that barrier is removed?Report

              • Troublesome Frog in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                In every other market, that negotiation is implicit in the price. The price of construction already goes up and down, mostly based on swings in demand, but labor is just another supply side factor. Construction prices go up and we do a little less construction overall, but that’s about it.Report

              • Dan d in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                So maybee the MSM should refrain from claiming that we need more immigration to solve the Labor Shortage. How many members of the media have nannys and housecleaners? Maybee that has something to do with the way they report, Matthew Yglesias has said that immigration is good because it allows him to hire household help.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Dan d says:

                OK, NOW I understand your point!Report

            • Troublesome Frog in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              We used to pay a substantially larger percentage of our incomes for food. If the price goes up the tiny amount it costs to pay pickers slightly more, I doubt the strawberry market will collapse.Report

  11. Kimmi says:

    Ed5: So, um, you’re quoting a Professor guy who George is quoting as saying that that Google Memo is fair and accurate representation of the science involved.
    Is this because you think that trolls make good linkbait, or is there some other reason?

    [Please note: this is not nearly as egregious as quoting a date-rapist, which someone else has done on this site].Report

  12. veronica d says:

    Ed5 — Oh hogwash. Neurodiversity is not a free pass to spout any racist or sexist nonsense that crosses your mind.Report

  13. Dan d says:

    I want to provide an example of how high SES liberals rig the economy in their favor against the proles.

    Pepsi to lay off 80 to 100, blames soda tax

    McDonald’s, Walgreens, 7-Eleven hit with lawsuits over Cook County soda pop tax

    The Byzantine Soda tax throes blue collar workers out of their jobs but scumbag lawyers get rich off the lawsuits that it creates.Report

  14. Dan d says:

    So apparently Charles Murray tweet positively about a Megan McCardle column reflects poorly on her.

    https://twitter.com/edroso/status/896081468677435394
    https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/896081744012623872Report

  15. Ed2 [quitting PHD programs because they’re bad for mental health]:

    According to a study in Research Policy from earlier this year, rates of psychological distress and symptoms of mental illness are twice as likely to occur among PhD students as the rest of the “highly educated general population.” Specifically, one in two PhD students surveyed experienced symptoms of psychological distress, while one in three is at heightened risk for developing psychiatric illnesses, especially anxiety and/or depression. [link omitted]

    I haven’t read the study, but I’d be interested to know if those “rates” have at least as much to do with the fact (if it is a fact) that graduate students have more access to mental health care than non-graduate students?

    one friend of mine quipped that “mental illness is to grad students as black lung was to Victorian coal miners.” Another who left our PhD program two years in told me that he “didn’t realize how miserable school made him until [he] was out,” and I thought about that sentence almost every day until I quit the program myself earlier this year.

    No, no, no! Black lung was much worse.

    Look, I’m not against quit-lit. I might write a piece myself some day. I’m not against discouraging people from making the mistake of getting a humanities PHD. I’m not against reminding grad students that they do have the option to quit. I’m still bitter about my decision to get a PHD. (Still, I benefited in some ways, and even if I hadn’t, it was my decision.)

    But as bad as it can be, it’s a much better fate than a lot of others suffer. Dear PHD students: You’re not peculiarly oppressed!Report

  16. Kolohe says:

    you know who else drive their motor vehicles in an unsafe manner?Report

    • notme in reply to Kolohe says:

      A member of the Kennedy family?Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:

      Divorce or War.Report

      • Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:

        So far, both this and the helicopter appear to be actual accidents. Still, there’s the question of whether/when the political classes in some number of states might say, “We’re not willing to fund Reconstruction 3.0.”Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to Jaybird says:

        Why do you think that divorce is even possible? The general theory behind the divorce or war settlement is that Red America, Trump’s America, or whatever you want to call it will gladly accept a peaceful separation from Blue America or Clinton’s America if they were allowed to do as they please within their borders. There isn’t a lot of evidence for this from my perspective. At least a minority or even a plurality of them seem to want to impose their vision for the United States on the entire United States.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq says:

          Why do you think that divorce is even possible?

          I actually think that divorce is inevitable.

          What I am wondering is if it happens before the war (and, thus, might actually go so far as to prevent the war) or if it happens after the war (with substantially more than 600,000 fewer people).

          I’m hoping that it’s even possible because of that >600,000 number.

          But you may be right. That might be a pipe dream.Report

          • Aaron David in reply to Jaybird says:

            I don’t think there is going to be either a divorce or a war. Rather, a paradigm shift. A realignment, if you will.

            That is what I am reading in the Trump/Bernie tea leaves.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Aaron David says:

              Americans are fat. So that will help us avoid a war, maybe.

              I don’t see many other reasons to get my hopes up.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

                The main thing that I am expecting in the short term is repurposed statements made about Muslim Extremists in the days following 9/11 and/or the 2nd Intifada.

                You know, stuff like “not all domestic terrorists are alt-right Nazis, but all alt-right Nazis are domestic terrorists” and “An extremist right-winger will run over you with his car. A moderate right-winger will hope that an extremist right-winger will run you over.”

                Stuff like that.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to LeeEsq says:

          You’re not thinking this through as a project to convince the political class in 38 states to decide an exit amendment is in their interest. What it takes will vary from state to state.

          Assume, for the sake of argument, that what Alabama’s political class wants is a Baptist theocracy, no votes for blacks, and they don’t care at all about whether California makes investments in the state. In Arizona, OTOH, the Mormons are a thing (and it hasn’t been that long since the Baptists were denouncing them as a cult), blacks aren’t even the second largest minority, and they care very, very much about California investments. If California wants to leave, Arizona is already more than half-way there.Report

          • George Turner in reply to Michael Cain says:

            Democrats are only in full control (governor and both houses) in six states: Hawaii, California, Oregon, Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Hawaii, California, and Oregon could form a potential block, but the others aren’t viable on their own.Report

            • Well, I’ve always asserted that if a partition occurs, it will be into a small number of large pieces, not lots of small pieces. A corollary of that is the issues driving a successful partition will probably not be the ones that people are howling about today (or at least not entirely those issues). I point at issues/patterns/trends in the West that are suggestive: water, energy, public lands, differences in how government works compared to most of the non-West (ie, ballot initiatives, the fourth branch of government), and more.

              Taking the liberty of putting words in @jaybird ‘s mouth (fingers?), while he and I may both say “divorce”, the issues where he brings it up are unworkable as a basis for a partition.Report

  17. Kaleberg says:

    Re: Ed1

    For god’s sake, that article is about Yale. Yale has been like that since at last the early 20th century. It has always had great students, but it has always been noted for cranking out conformist bankers. Sure, there are Yalies who have fought the system, but the sensible ones transfer to Harvard or even Princeton which are wild and crazy places in comparison.

    The marvel at most of the Ivies and a few top technical schools is that the kids do what other kids at other schools can barely do, and they do it at a walk. It lets the faculty skip over the basics and get miles ahead.Report

  18. Kolohe says:

    Jaybird:
    Divorce or War.

    These people don’t want a divorce. They want a marriage where they are the only ones with a say.

    They can either cease wanting that, or War will be chosen for them.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:

      Fair enough.

      Somewhere, Chernyshevsky is laughing.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

        I remembered something.

        A million years ago, before the election, I came up with a formula for whether or not Trump would win:

        There is a number.

        I suppose the formula is something like this:

        A + (B/Z)

        A is the number of Significant Events in the USA. Stuff like riots in cities, police officers killed in particularly horrible ways, terrorist attacks (or events that present similarly to terrorist attacks.

        B is the number of these things that happen in Europe.

        Z is some number that I don’t know what it is but it’s probably between 2 and 5 given that crazy stuff that happens in Europe is important… but it’s not *AS* important as the stuff that happens on US soil.

        If that number hits some number (let’s call it “T”), then Trump will win the election. If that number is lower than T, Hillary will win.

        There’s a similar formula for there being a Democratic wave next November. Whatever the number is for there being a Democratic wave in 2018 is a number much lower than T.Report

    • KenB in reply to Kolohe says:

      They want a marriage where they are the only ones with a say.

      Assuming the “they” is white supremacists, I find this an odd thing to assert. Let’s say a bunch of white supremacists tried to have just one town in the entire country that they could run according to their own values, discriminate to their heart’s content — including the town government, town stores, town housing & apartments, etc. Would the rest of the country allow this? Pretty obviously not — they’d run afoul of countless anti-discrimination laws, and lawyers and activists would have them under a microscope. Obviously they’d also have a hard time dealing with the perfectly legal but constant protests and boycotts.

      Maybe several decades ago you could say that only their side wanted to tell everyone else what to do, but in 2017 that’s pretty obviously not true.Report

  19. Brent F says:

    Its been strongly argued here and in other places that Nazi’s are really a bred of left-wing socialists.

    Look at who they came out with in “Unite the Right” rally. Neo-Nazi’s know their potential friends, allies and coalition partners are right-wing extremists with racist views.

    It was the same for the real Nazi’s, as the American knockoffs. The Nazi’s themselves knew where they belonged and acted on it. Claiming they are secret leftist has long been completely bogus.Report

    • George Turner in reply to Brent F says:

      Do you know how clueless American Nazis are? They’re basically like Satanists, in it to be edgy.

      But the uniting of national socialism, which is staunchly anti-capitalist, with the KKK, which was all for the rights of rich, ultra-capitalist plantations to own slaves, show the vast failures of the leftist progressives.

      Progressives are all about the divisions of identity politics, and kept dividing people up until the left screams at each other over gender, race, abortion, lesbians, trans, trans Hispanic lesbians, illegal alien trans Hispanic lesbians, and gay Muslims for sharia. They’re all about division, and that’s how they lost over a thousand legislative seats, a slew of governorships, and all three branches of the federal government.

      In contrast, The ultra-capitalist KKK has made common cause with national socialists, the emphasis on socialist. How can this be? Because they are all about coming together and comprising to get something done. Sure, the KKK believes in owning slaves, but under National Socialism they wouldn’t have to buy their own slaves. Their slaves would be provided for them by the state, just as Nazis provided slaves to various armaments industries during the war. Thus the KKK is seeking free slaves, and since they won’t have any money invested in their slaves, and since the Nazis don’t really care if the KKK killed slaves who get out of line, the discipline can be much tighter.

      Now of course it’s bad enough that the KKK wants slaves, as this makes them lazy. But now they’re not even wanting to put in the effort to buy them. They want free government slaves. Now that’s really, really lazy. What they’re doing will lead to the destruction of the white man’s will to work, his initiative, his drive. Blacks, Mexicans, and Jews will be the only productive people around, while white folks will sit around saying “Darn it Sharlene, we need to get our congressman to assign us more slaves so you don’t have to keep fetching my beer when I’m out there supervising!”Report

      • Brent F in reply to George Turner says:

        Yes, Nazi’s finding allies with other racist right-wingers is completely the result of American progressives. That’s why they coalitioned with the notoriously socialistic DVNP, offspring of those famous Marxist parties, the German Conservative Party and the German Fatherland party. Then they were put into power by those devious old socialists, Hindenberg and von Papen.Report

      • Kimmi in reply to George Turner says:

        George,
        Fuck off. You don’t need to worry about running into genuine American Nazis.Report

  20. Michael Cain says:

    Ci4: My own perception is that both so-called conservative urbanism and the current incarnation of Richard Florida have the same goal: lots of modest cities of 50,000 or so people with a single central core. Florida’s would be more crowded (more apartments, more public transit), but the general scale is the same. I find it interesting that for most of my life, I’ve lived in places where that type of city has never existed, and is unlikely to ever exist.Report