It would have been better to leak directly to the government. If it he wanted the public to see it he could have leaked it directly to the public. It's the 21st century.
I raise an eyebrow and speak, nervous of the down vote I just received But does it really? there is no explicit reference to academia vs industry, which is a fair game. Im just saying the presentation is superfluous.
I always found "wave function collapse" to be a terribly overcomplicated name for a pretty intuitive concept. The first paragraph does a good job explaining the term, but still I wonder how many people stray away from such things when the name alone is overwhelming.
I prefer the name given in mathematical optimization, which is Constraints Satisfaction Problems; instead of using an imprecise physics metaphor, it gets a descriptive logical term of what's going on.
In CSPs, each cell is a 'decision variable' with a 'domain' of values, which get pruned by 'constraints' that propagate to values invalidated by the decisions made in the connected variables, until the whole 'problem' gets into either a solution which 'satisfies' all the constraints, or a contradictory state where a variable's domain is empty, causing the algorithm to backtrack.
CSPs have the advantage of having clear and efficient methods to go back to a previous state and keep exploring every alternate possibility, rather than having to restart from the beginning. The article hints at that possibility ('saving checkpoints' or'reverse the collapsing of a cell'); there's a whole field of study dedicated on the best ways to do that on a large scale for very general problems.
Boris the brave coined the term "Constraint Based Tile Generators" (CBTG) [0], which is a specialization of the more general CSPs to this particular domain.
Personally, I find CSPs overly general and mired in esoteric, byzantine terminology. It's a large cognitive load to put on people to run through the glossary of terms just to talk about the problem set up. I don't think the quantum mechanic analogy is great but I can see it being much more intuitive than the obscure language of CSPs.
Surely the 'solving' part of CSPs may be obscure, but the basic concept can be readily explained with the metaphor of crosswords and sudoku (both are very direct instances of CSPs); there's not much obscurity to that. In fact, the article resorts to that same metaphor to explain with precision what the 'waveform' metaphor couldn't.
Of course terminology for CSPs will get confusing when you get to represent them mathematically; but that happens to anything that you turn into math. The core concept is quite familiar and intuitive.
There was a very similar discussion on lobsters the other day. You might be interested in reading it.
In general, I agree with the idea that writing everything yourself results in a higher quantity of low quality software with security issues and bugs, as well as a waste of developers' time. That said, clearly supply chain attacks are a very real threat that needs to be addressed. I just don't think eliminating package managers is a good solution.
I think I'm having a hard time understanding the value of this piece. Is carefully reading the code you're writing/working on not the default? How on Earth do you write code without understanding what it does?
There's a lot of both negativity and positivity here. I think both are warranted and important. I'm not generally a fan of Musk and think most of his ventures are overhyped. I also understand that Neuralink committed a series of horrific acts against macaques to develop this device and they ought to be investigated and have what they did shown to the public for scrutiny.
That said, as someone who has undergone screening for a neurodegenerative disease (thankfully I tested negative), I'm fairly confident in saying that it's an awful thing to experience and any technology that can provide more autonomy is invaluable. When I had to confront the possibility that I might have MS or ALS, I literally said "Neuralink probably shouldn't have killed those monkeys but, fuck it, they're already dead so they better hurry up. I don't want to live like that."
I hope we can develop further treatments more ethically and in a way that doesn't result in dystopian brain adverts of course, but even this level of technology is miraculous.
It was surprising to me just how many of the banned books have immense literary value. The Color Purple, The Handmaid's Tale, The Kite Runner, etc. aren't random books that may be a little obscene, they're literary classics. In my opinion this is what makes it obvious that these bans were made in bad faith.
There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.
The people supporting this political wave tend to be extremely triumphalist in their personal religious zeal, unwilling to make compromises, and are iconoclastic and disrespectful to most outside their in-group.
Much like other iconoclasts and zealots, they rely on the pluralistic principle of toleration to force the paradox of tolerance to bend their way.
It's shame - pluralism is much more invigorating and no one forces lifestyles they disagree with onto dominionists.
> There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.
Reading your comment, I feel like the word religion is misleading. You see the same dynamic in how progressive political ideology, despite it not having to do with a god, has been introduced into many layers of government and other institutions. All the things said here can be demonstrated for the religious right but also the non religious left. It’s less about religion in my opinions, and more about how politics is about winning by controlling institutions instead of supporting individual freedoms.
I challenge you to make a point-for-point, truly apples-to-apples comparison.
Fundamentally, there are a lot of Republican policies which attempt to force Christianity or at least Christian morals down our throats, whether it be forcing women to have children, or posting the ten commandments in schools and government buildings, banning pornography, or preventing gay marriage.
I'm rather curious what Democrat policies are equivalent in your mind that would make you try and "both sides" this. And I mean actual passed or proposed policies -- not just bullshit you see from Hollywood and other media.
Should successful policy examples be a prerequisite for observations of similarities? Must the government necessarily be involved?
At minimum I feel like cancel culture ought to count.
What would the application of your test to the Chinese Cultural Revolution look like? That's a genuine question - I really am curious what your reasoning would be.
> You see the same dynamic in how progressive political ideology
No, this is incorrect.
The cold reality is that the adherents pushing Dominionism push an unsustainable ideology, such that they would rather throw the US into religious-based fascism rather than recognize that when people are free they don't typically choose to live the precepts the adherents wants.
That seems less an observation about the dynamics and more about particular aspects of the targeted end state. As such I don't feel such a confident claim of non-correctness is justified.
Even then, the statement "they don't typically choose to live the precepts the adherents wants" seems to apply in equal measure. The core issue here is that both major groups have ideologies that seek to impose on others.
I'll also note that your response of "no these two things are obviously different and one is not okay while the other is" is shared by the opposition. When you agree with the behaviors being imposed and the justifications for doing so it becomes difficult to understand why anyone would object.
> they don't typically choose to live the precepts the adherents wants
A bit reductionist, but critically, and because you asked for clarity, Dominionists want to force others to stop doing what they don't like even though it has no impact on their life.
Easily understood if you look at the standard of medical care for many miscarriages. They are abortions.
Today in the US, abortion is mostly illegal in many states, and people have died due to liability and uncertainty that would otherwise not have died should the standard of care been followed. This is before you consider the harassment of women after receiving care.
Yet, Dominionists want it banned because their theology changed with political winds conveniently in the 1970s and they now feel strongly, even more so than your feelings-based opinion that the factual claim of non correctness is unjustified despite clear justification, that life is absolutely defined as a zygote. This is before we consider that they are also equally unwilling to help children post-birth or to adopt sound economic policies to encourage household and family formation.
Tell me, what polity or power is forcing Dominionists to receive abortions unwillingly?
Or is it that they forget that their rights end at my nose?
---------------------------------------
> I'll also note that your response of "no these two things are obviously different and one is not okay while the other is" is shared by the opposition. When you agree with the behaviors being imposed and the justifications for doing so it becomes difficult to understand why anyone would object.
You know, I hear conservatives say this all the time, but me being an old school minarchist Libertarian, I just want people to leave each other alone.
I'll note that now several times in this discussion you implicitly assert that anyone contrary to Dominionism is "progressive" (strawman designation by rightwing propaganda for outgroup, or actual political group, hard to say), and that if a specific behavior is called out, well, there must be some behavior the other party feels should be imposed on them.
No one cares about someone worshiping at their house of worship and engaging in their rituals. Not a bit. But come in and force someone else to hold their particular social club in high regard in order to engage in commerce, education, or careers? That's what Dominionists want. And it's an egregious violation of everything the US stands for to everyone outside the Dominionist camp.
------
Now, please specify what progressive philosophy or policy planks that you think Dominionists find so unappealing that they'd be willing to sacrifice the freedoms so many US service members have died for, and how that is _imposed_ on said Dominionists?
If they are, or consider themselves, libertarian they are royal libertarians (not georgists) and therefore "might makes right" and "live free" means violence. A belief in "four legs good, two legs better".
There is a lot of evidence that engaging emotionally with literature will shift people's values. In a way that engaging with intellectual ideas does not.
These are not just literary classics, they carry a specific culture forward. People whose values are threatened by that culture need to not engage with them. They do so by finding things to be offended by in the books. In many cases the offence is perfectly genuine. It is caused by cognitive dissonance, and not cynical manipulation.
That doesn't make it less frustrating. But understanding why people have trouble with these works helps build empathy for them. And empathy is necessary to present your points in a way that is persuasive to their views. Yelling in anger at them is easy. Actually changing their minds is far harder. And it does require trying to understand.
Well, it's both. You need to ban book bans so that you can have the conversation in the first place, but you also need to change people's mind so that book bans never come up in the first place. It's a guardrail, and ideally we're not leaning on the guardrail
You have to change their minds about what legitimates a ban, and about these specific things they don’t like not having the necessary legitimation. And that’s not an easy change, it needs to be grounded emotionally.
They aren’t banning anything. You can still freely buy any of those books. They’re just changing what content public libraries spend money on. Not really much different from states deciding school curriculum.
Sorry for the vocabulary here but this is bullshit. The people submitting the banned books here have stated multiple times they have never read most/all the books they have asked for banning and are being driven by lists built by political entities like Moms for America.
There is no genuine offense here, they don't even know what the books are about other than someone saying "its LGBT". It is just cynical manipulation and hate.
Yes. All that they know about these books is propaganda leading to outrage, and a protection that keeps their world-view from being exposed to contrary ideas.
As I said, their identity is such that they need to avoid engaging with these works to maintain it.
That doesn't mean that their outrage isn't genuine.
While I can understand the side that you are coming from. One of the biggest failures I have seen from my friends is demonizing anyone that may have voted for tump and these people, and refusing to have a conversation. Immediately labeling them as racist for example (which I don't think is necessarily untrue for many of them, but when we know there are black people that voted for Trump that argument as a blanket statement gets harder to make).
I strongly believe that for many people just doing this is causing them to dig into their heels and instead of examining themselves they are pushed to being on the defensive trying to say they are not racist, homophobic, sexist, whatever. Which is not getting us anywhere and is just making both sides angrier.
There are the extremes, people that have the power that are pushing things like this. But then there are the manipulated. Those that are being told lies and being encouraged to vote a certain why because they simply are only seeing part of the picture. Maybe they don't have exposure to the world. Whatever.
While I do respect someone's right to protect their own mental health and not want to engage in a conversation with many of these people, these conversations do need to happen. I truly believe that the majority of people are nowhere near as vile as those in power right now are. So we need to understand why they are enabling them.
That being said...
It is a very fine line. Too much empathy can lead to them thinking that this is ok, there does need to be some force in a push back against what is happening right now. Pushing back on the misinformation that is causing many people to hold these views.
So yes we can try to understand where these views are coming from without giving them weight as being valid.
I can totally understand that they are being manipulated. I still have no interest in trying to de-program them. Cut them off, and let them live with their choices. They'll either figure it out eventually, or they won't.
People who are trying to harm my friends and family don't deserve any of my time and effort.
I completely respect a personal choice of doing that, I mean I don't particularly want to engage with many of them either. Especially not when I can expect that I am going to likely be called a particular F word (I am a gay man).
My biggest issue is not the lack of contact, it is the demonizing. Using blanket terms like "if you voted for trump your racist, homophobic, sexist, etc" when I just simply don't think that is a valid blanket statement and is really just a "feel good" statement for us to justify not hearing why they might have done something.
I do think that we are actively pushing them to be more extreme with blanket statements like this and it isn't not actually helping.
We can keep calling them names all we want but the fact is they are still voters that are enabling what we all have to deal with. Either we acknowledge that or we just keep repeating the same pattern we have been repeating since at least the 70's. A little bit of progress followed by a regression.
It's a prisoner's dilemma, or tragedy of the commons, or whatever-scenario-where-the-best-plan-is-coordinated-action-but-it's-difficult-for-individuals-to-do-so. Yeah a gay man shouldn't have to go to court to defend his marriage, but society's made up of individuals and their actions, and somebody's got to perform that action
They might not deserve it, but they will take rather more of your time and effort if you don't try to exert it until after ICE is breaking down doors and disappearing your friends and family without due process.
I agree. I had this argument here previously, that I supposedly "owe" it to "the other side" to listen to their arguments (in this case on abortion).
No, I don't. Not when the other side just openly uses lies (that they know to be lies) like "post-birth abortion" to argue their cause.
They're not discussing things in even a modicum of good faith. Saying that I have some moral imperative to engage with them as if they are is horseshit.
>No, I don't. Not when the other side just openly uses lies (that they know to be lies) like "post-birth abortion" to argue their cause.
Absolutely. Although I'd point out that in many states that overwhelmingly voted for Trump, those on the "other side" (you know, our fellow Americans), often by large majorities, rejected abortion bans in their states after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
So it's not really as cut and dried as you make it out to be. Yes, there are absolutely those who despise the idea of the agency of women, and there are absolutely those who exploit that for monetary and political gain.
But a majority of Americans don't and even many of those who aren't on board could be persuaded to a live and let live position.
Politics is, after all, "the art of the possible." If we just demonize and "other" anyone who doesn't specifically agree with us, then nothing is possible -- only dysfunction and hate. That's not a world I want to live in.
Authoritarianism, whether Nazism, Soviet Communism, or French Revolutionary Government, is the belief that some group knows best and everyone else should allow them to make decisions, and that furthermore incorrect beliefs should be stamped out. Not engaging with authoritarian beliefs only reinforces the belief that they're correct and everyone else is wrong; after all, from their perspective nobody's ever proved them wrong.
Related to that though is the fact that authoritarianism has slowly become more prevalent over the past few decades, and it's easier than ever for people to get into cliques and echo chambers that never challenge their beliefs. That's resulted in a decrease in skills in truly changing people's minds about things, since in an echo chamber it's easier to just kick out anyone who disagrees, and if you're kicked out it's easier to just create your own echo chamber that espouses your belief than to convince people in the other echo chamber. This naturally leads to authoritarianism where an echo chamber believes that they're right and everyone else's incorrect opinions should be suppressed. When that community pops out of their echo chamber and tries to change everyone else's beliefs, it's only natural for people to respond with the best way they've learned how: refuse to engage.
I absolutely understand the desire not to engage with Nazis. But, ignoring Nazis is definitionally not going to do anything to fix the root of the problem
> Authoritarianism, whether Nazism, Soviet Communism, or French Revolutionary Governmentr any
or any monarchy, or any theocracy, or any oligarchy.
I understand why you cite Nazism, or Soviet communism (or Mao Communism), but the French Revolutionary Government lasted less than 3 years, was at war with half of europe because their King decided to declare war for no reason, and had to find who fed intel to half their enemies (and even when the King's letters to his brother in law describing eastern troops movement were discovered, 10% of the parliament voted against his destitution and 40% against killing him for treachery). I'd say that they stopped the violence and decided to free all slaves once the war ended should be a point in their favor.
I do grant that it is very hard. Just as it is hard to have a rational conversation with a cult member. But the fact that it is hard doesn't mean that it isn't worth trying.
You can't possibly complain that any ideals you stand for get suppressed then, surely?
You are refusing democratic process and arguing that media deems people unable to partake in it. This is not even Nazi ideology, this goes way, way beyond Nazism in terms of authoritarianism.
With all due respect, this is gibberish. Refusing to engage a nazi in conversation is hardly suppressing them in any way, shape, or form. Nor is it refusing any kind of "democratic process." It's also preferable you don't yell fire in a crowded theater or bomb on an airplane.
To me, it's disheartening to see this sort of knee-jerk reaction to the grandparent posting (and to see that post be down-voted). What btilly wrote is not a defense, it's reasonable and, more importantly, practical advice in combating tyranny. Moreover, IMO, if you actually want to reduce or put an end to tyranny, you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy. Empathy is not agreement, it's not sympathy, it is understanding. Screaming at others that they're bad people will not change anything. If anything, IMO, it causes them to dig their heels and makes change harder.
It is rare for that message to be delivered to either side, for the simple reason that the reaction to it tends to be bad. It comes as no surprise that you would have never seen such messages delivered to conservatives if you don't spend a lot of time in places where this might happen.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJX28l54YxE for an hour-long interview between a well-known conservative Christian and a liberal atheist exactly on the topic of the importance of having conservative Christians treating those they disagree with with empathy.
> It is rare for that message to be delivered to either side,
Not true, I see it constantly deployed to the not-right-wing side. Constantly and pretty much everywhere where left of center and center mix.
> It comes as no surprise that you would have never seen such messages delivered to conservatives if you don't spend a lot of time in places where this might happen.
I did read conservative writings, forums and what not. It is indeed rare in that space. Center is simply not invested in telling conservatives to have empathy as much as they are invested in promoting empathy toward conservatives.
> for the simple reason that the reaction to it tends to be bad.
I do agree that overall in aggregate it is increasingly clear it was bad advice. And the one sided application did not helped.
No need to have empathy for anyone who doesn't have empathy for others.
I mean, didn't Elon just finish saying that empathy is the problem?
Also,
>you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy.
Um, what we used to call that in the Marines, was "intel". Not "empathy". And that designation of the information you outlined made us surprisingly effective at combating opponents.
I know. Inappropriate since this is not a military issue.
>> you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy.
> Um, what we used to call that in the Marines, was "intel". Not "empathy". And that designation of the information you outlined made us surprisingly effective at combating opponents.
This is the important part. Understanding "the root causes for the desires of your opponents" is not empathy. It's understanding something.
Empathy is a relating to anothers plight. If you only understand it then there is nothing to cause pause before using that understanding to your advantage. It's a core part manipulation and deception. If the only thing that happened with that understanding is seeing what you can get from it or that there is nothing you want there or have use for, then that doesn't really help bring two sides together.
Having the ability to relate to this understanding of another is when empathy happens. It's the empathy that gives one pause long enough to see there are other options that are not zero-sum.
> No need to have empathy for anyone who doesn't have empathy for others.
Disagree. Just because someone else can not relate -- now -- does not mean they can not later. I personally don't care for tit-for-tat games, thats simply a race to the bottom. Boundaries are the things missing here; one can have empathy for another that does not have it for them, that doesn't mean you also have to have a bleeding heart for them and let them walk all over you.
You can have radical empathy with somebody while standing against and fighting every single thing they stand for. Indeed empathy /helps/ you fight better, because you can begin to fight root causes rather than fighting symptoms, and help people heal rather than just shouting them down.
You as an individual are not required to do this if you don't want to, but if a movement wants to be successful then a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success.
Indeed. But demanding empathy as the only valid a counter-strategy is, which is what the GP was doing. Appeasement doesn't work if your opponent isn't following the rulebook.
From my point of view, you don't reason with immature children, you give them a time-out. You don't hand them weapons of mass destruction.
The sort of understanding the GP is promoting doesn't have to be used empathetically.
It can also be used on bad faith actors by giving you better avenues of winning over the audience - which is the only real point of continuing a conversation with one.
Correct: but giving them a thousand timeouts doesn't help, if you still need to give the thousand-and-first. It mitigates the immediate problem, but it also ties up your resources. Eliminating the problem at its root, if that's possible, is a more effective strategy: if we can take away the ability for the real bad actors to get loyal followers, by learning how to change those followers' minds, they won't have anywhere near as much power.
Exactly. The distal cause is that the Compromise of 1877 halted an unfinished Reconstruction. What I'm calling for is simple - the natural and final conclusion of Reconstruction. It might be 148 years late, but it's the antidote to the disease.
We live in a democracy. In a democracy, you don't get to deny people the vote simply because you view them as children. And, sadly, these "children" have around half the votes.
If you are personally not capable of attempting empathy, that's fair. As I said, it is frustrating and hard. But a political culture where nobody attempts empathy is what has allowed grifters playing up the resulting culture war to gain political power, and put themselves in a position to aim for a dictatorship. If everyone keeps doing the same old, same old, the totalitarian outcome is guaranteed.
I'll make this concrete. Right now, many in Trump's base are dissatisfied with the handling of the Epstein affair. As much as you may disagree with a random Republican, the odds are that your differences are not as important right now than winding up united against the idea of an authoritarian pedophile running the country. But if the only emotion that they get is anger about all of the areas where there is disagreement, they won't have anywhere to go but back to Trump.
Re-read the comment that you replied to, and find out where I said the same thing.
Most of these would-be book-banners do not actually want to create a totalitarian state. They honestly believe that they live in a democracy that was hijacked in 2020. They are being walked into accepting dictatorship on the principle that you have to fight fire with fire. When you meet them with fire, you're confirming the world-views that make them useful tools for Trump and co.
> a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success
A great salesperson I learned from would often say something like "don't fight the resistance, join the resistance" with the implication that one must see through the other party's eyes before you can have a chance to really affect them. One must make them feel heard and understood rather than fought against.
We live in a democracy. If the majority does something stupid, you have to convince them to stop doing that stupid thing. This means understanding how they came to do the stupid thing to begin with.
But the GP didn't even identify the enemy correctly, so all that effort would be wasted. The people they're describing are mere tools, only required because of the existing democratic processes in the country. The enemy are the (insert your favourite label here) at the top of the media and political landscape pulling the strings. And I guarantee you, they aren't quite so bothered by the imagery in those books as they are bothered by freedom of thought in general. They are bothered by people that dare to speak truth to power. They are not bothered by appeasement strategies such as we people trying to understand the other people they've pitted against us.
The actual enemy only has power because useful fools are willing to follow them. Treating those useful fools as enemies is a key part of the dynamic that grants the actual enemy power.
I am advocating learning how to talk with those useful fools, and assist them in finding paths away from being the power base for the actual enemy.
I understand where you're coming from. But I also think that you're wasting a lot of effort in talking to those useful fools while they're still drinking from the social media and faux news firehose. And that's by design -- you are meant to expend your energy on that asymmetric (and in my view unwinnable) battle, so that you leave the actual policymakers alone.
(sidenote: I said "tools", as in they're disposable means to an end. I'm not sure if you called them fools because you misread my comment or you switched to that term to try and placate me).
edit: actually, I think that my sidenote goes to the core of our disagreement. In your view, there are 77M battles to fight and if you manage to win just a few percent of those to your side, things can be stopped. In my view, 95% of those voters no longer matter. The party is now in power and has full control over all branches of government and media. There is no way they will relinquish power over such a minor technical detail as an election. They only need a few million jackboots to maintain the status quo, the rest is disposable.
>Did the people pursuing these bans consider having empathy with the people who value these books, and try to understand why they value them?
>Stop defending tyranny.
I think you miss GP's point. It's not that they support such book bans or the ideology that encourages that and other anti-democratic (small 'd') nastiness. Rather it's the old saw that 'you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (balsamic vinegar excepted).'
While there are many who are callous, cruel pieces of shit, there are more who live (without their knowledge or consent -- cf. rural broadcast media landscape, online bubbles, etc.) in an "information" environment that promotes such stuff as "godly" and "American" and "freedom", when that's not even close to the truth.
Which is clear from the book bans, the ridiculous "anchor babies" trope, the Democrats are all communists and on and on and on.
Yes, folks who actively foment this stuff and cynically (or even genuinely) fight to reduce liberty need to be resisted. Strongly and loudly.
But if you adopt those folks' "othering" tactics, you devalue everyone who doesn't specifically agree with you and everything you believe as evil and unredeemable, you remove a key opportunity for education, positive experience and persuasion.
Will that work for everyone? Absolutely not. But we don't need everyone, just the ones who are honest and fair-minded. And those can certainly be those who disagree with you.
If you exclude the radical reactionaries, bigots and cynical scum who seek to profit from promoting such ideas, the majority of all of us agree about much more than we disagree.
Perhaps that's something we all should ruminate on.
It’s… just the common name for this way of getting things done (as far as I know at least). Propose something preposterous, so drama ensues and it gets watered down, but in the end you still get more than you would’ve otherwise.
I believe the term got popular around the time Trump got his wall by saying he was going to make Mexico pay for it. Suddenly nobody questioned the sanity of building a wall anymore, the entire narrative was about whether or not he’d get Mexico to pay.
They're offensive because they conflict with the ideals of modern conservative leadership: education is bad, hope is bad, kindness is bad. You can't encourage obedience without snuffing out the idea of dissent.
Republicans have been transparent that they want to dehumanize brown people, women and other minorities. They've been transparent about their desires to censor media. They've been transparent about their disdain for access to education. Don't look at these things in vacuum. It's a systemic approach. They've long lost the benefit of the doubt; bad faith is to be assumed.
> They've been transparent about their desires to censor media.
100% agree, but what's frustrating is that "the left" are not much better. We get things like the rewriting[1] of Roald Dahl's books based on the feedback from "sensitivity readers".
I don't really know who to vote for to stop stuff like this. No political party seems to be on the side of a principled defence of freedom of speech. Instead it's always about censoring your opponents and their ideas while you're in power.
Note one massive difference: nobody was trying to make a law that Dahl’s books be sanitized or running around to libraries and getting his books banned. That was a publisher taking unilateral action changing works they own (for better or worse). I see a massive difference between the two things.
Additionally, a lot of the language was very out of date with racists and discriminatory undertones so parents had stopped buying the books. It was driven by the market because if they didn't adjust the content to adhere to what parents expect in children's literature today the stories and moral lessons would be lost to the dustbin of history and merely interesting historical artifacts.
I would regularly see stories on Reddit where someone was gifted one of the more borderline Dahl novels and they binned it rather than giving it their child. I'm sure their internal metrics were painting a similar picture.
That's bad for business. It wasn't change for social justice. It was change or watch your IP die and everyone involved still wanted the money.
The problem with censorship is in general never about any specific application of it, but rather the principle. When censorship becomes culturally acceptable, self censorship and political polarization follows as a natural consequence.
The massive difference between government censorship and private cooperation censorship is unlikely to effect how people feel and react to it.
This argument strikes me as fairly textbook "whataboutism."
TFA shows a clear and present case of a particular action taken by one political faction. Your argument, that the opposing faction is equivalent to a greater or lesser degree and would follow the same course of action, rests entirely on a hypothetical; it isn't supported by any concrete evidence or cited examples.
I'm certainly not asserting that any one faction/party holds a monopoly on moral high-ground, just highlighting that this kind of argument is frequently used as a tactic to deflect discussion away from ground truth considerations and shift the debate towards (artificially) neutral conditions.
I certainly don't think it qualifies as whataboutism. I'm neither preaching inaction nor attempting to refute any prior claims. Neither do I attempt to claim a broad general equivalence.
It seems to me that you are disregarding the context? From up thread:
> No political party seems to be on the side of a principled defence of freedom of speech.
I did cite an example, at least indirectly, when I mentioned other countries. Consider the online speech measures in the UK as but one example. Not the same political party to be sure but the underlying ideology is shared. The only significant difference (IMO) is the presence or absence of first amendment protections.
What is far left in US? From what you are saying i got impression there is only far right and far left in US to vote. I am not from US but that doesn't seem right.
> I don't doubt for a second that the far left would create such laws if they could.
I mean, they could as much as the fringe actors this article is about. I'm not sure what you think is stopping them from going for it in the same fashion.
As already mentioned, the support for it appearing somewhat less uniform as far as I can tell. Plus I would expect the knowledge that it will be swiftly struck down to discourage efforts.
Of course I would have expected the second point to apply to the GOP as well, yet here we are, so clearly my world model has some inaccuracies in this regard.
TIL that giving book buyers the choice between the classic uncensored version of a book and a revised version of a book with blatant antisemitism removed, a choice provided by a book publisher, is an example of the Democrats being almost as bad as Republicans.
Don't forget one is state censorship and other is independent private entity that (in the land of the free) can do absolutely what it wants if it holds the copyright.
> 100% agree, but what's frustrating is that "the left" are not much better. We get things like the rewriting[1] of Roald Dahl's books based on the feedback from "sensitivity readers".
You realize that's significantly better, right? Like at least two orders of magnitude better?
In one case, the copyright holder of Roald Dahl's books decided to censor (incorrectly, I agree) their own books which they own the copyright to. That's a private organization doing a stupid thing, making their own content worse. A private organization censoring their own words. No elected officials or persons appointed by elected officials were involved.
In the other case, the government is unilaterally deciding to withhold information from the public. The government is censoring other people's words.
You realize how that's not even remotely similar, right? "The left" is way better on this one.
Without commenting on what's better or worse, note that the copyright holders are not censoring their own words. They're censoring the words of someone who died decades ago in books that are several generations old, and it's the government that says no one else is allowed to publish the originals. Granting exclusive rights to publish and modify the works several generations after they were written is government censorship. In this case the censored books become completely illegal to publish as well rather than simply unavailable in government libraries.
(Feel free to substitute the situation with Dr Seuss books if Dahl isn't a fit because that organization also publishes originals, but even if the originals were still available, derived works are also censored)
Anything not aligned and christened by the MAGA movement is considered left/woke/Democratic Party/etc. which means it's bad until they change their minds and adopt it, if they ever do.
Surely the Dahl's family censoring their own books is on progressives, and it's equally as bad as Republicans trying to overthrow an election, send the troops after protesters, build concentration camps on national territory, ban books, revoke women's rights to abortion, revoke civil rights...
It does matter and it is not a minor detail that the left is acting to help people and the right is acting to hurt people. You can always disagree with what the left does, but the left and the right are nowhere near equivalent in the big picture that actually matters.
It's not indicative of a "broken world view" at all. There are already laws against defamation, running afoul of those would lead to your speech being censored to help the victim of defamation, for example. This logic can be extended with care.
That apparent problem goes away once you recognize that you’re using the word “censor” incorrectly in one case to draw a false equivalency. In the case of the right-wing behaviour discussed here, “censor” is the correct word because the term refers to an official use of power to prevent something considered politically incorrect or obscene from being available even though the publisher, librarians, and reader all thought they should be accessible.
In the case of the Dahl revisions, there is no official power being used to suppress individual preference. The publisher decided they wanted better sales for an older item, realized that things like anti-Semitism were unappealing to modern audiences, and created a new edition of their own property. Every part of that process was entirely voluntary and nobody’s purchased property is affected in any way – quite unlike the right-wing telling libraries to remove books with significant literary value which their patrons want to read.
Yeah, both parties are becoming more authoritarian. IMO the solution is a different voting system than first-past-the-post that allows multiple parties to exist to force different political factions to interact with each other and compromise. But until then though I'm going to vote for the lesser of two evils, since under FPTP not voting at all would not be acting against the greater of two evils.
Evidence for the Republican party becoming more authoritarian:
- attempted illegal book bans
- suppression of right to protest and free speech on university campuses with lawfare
- US citizens being black bagged and deported to foreign concentration camps without due process and against court rulings
- deploying the army to the states unconstitutionally
- continued gerrymandering over the ruling of state supreme courts (Ohio)
Evidence for the Democratic party becoming more extreme:
- ... I'm struggling to think of an example, maybe you hold that prosecution of violent insurrectionists and their ring leader, the current president, was political extremism and authoritarian, but one would be so far detached from the reality-inhabiting community if so I don't know what to tell you.
I've been saying since Clinton when it started to become clear, that liberals and conservatives will eventually kill the ideals of this Republic. (And not only the ideals expressed in the First.) They've been chipping away for long enough that they now believe it is safe for them to chop.
These people are all dangerous in the extreme. It's just that the conservatives have unmasked themselves and displayed the extreme danger they represent to our ideals in the US in a far more open fashion than liberals.
I might have given a shred of charitability to you if you said "far more open fashion than the left." but the fact that you said "liberals" tells me I shouldn't take your political perspective seriously
So “I would take your politics seriously if it aligned with mine”? I am afraid that whole point of politics is finding compromise with people who you don't agree.
It’s more about good versus bad faith: you can compromise with people who are willing to be honest, but that isn’t possible when someone is redefining terms or contradicting all available evidence to make their position work. That commenter was conflating two very different sets of activities to smear liberals, implying that they somehow know someone else’s true intention even though that contrasts with their actions and public statements.
"If you're in a grossly generic way referring to hispanics, african americans, Indian Americans and many distinct and complex others"
-> Exactly. It refers to all of them.
It isn't a secret that white nationalist, kkk, are Republican, and have been at least since the 80's.
So as venn diagrams go, there are not many KKK in the Democratic party, and they are in the Republican party, so... who's ideas do you think align the most?
I think lending credence to the idea that their politics are nuanced and complex is disingenuous. If you are going to make the claim that there is nuance, at least provide an example.
I’m sorry but singling out the “brown people” comment is a bit of a straw man in this case, as a “brown” person it kind of is really that simple. There really isn’t anything else to it, it is literally about the colour of the skin. Does it reduce countless cultures and experiences to nothing? Yes. But that’s sort of the point isn’t it.
> A surprising number of people from these and other groups support conservative causes too.
Plenty of people (including the vast majority of Republican voters) vote against their interests, yes. Whether it's single issue voting, misinformation, or a variety of causes, "some X vote for this group" does not mean that the overall group does not hate or work against X.
Republicans pass tax cuts which increase the burden on the poor and the middle class for the benefits of the ultrarich (not the majority of their voters).
They destroy government programs that benefit the majority of the population - health care, antitrust enforcement, free tax filing, environmental protections, tax audits of rich tax cheats.
They oppose any programs which provide benefits to the public - broadband standards, net neutrality, social services, cybersecurity, weather satellites, libraries, public schools, so many more.
The vast majority of their voters are hurt by these policies and are quite literally voting against their interests.
ASOF now, your comment is no longer flagged, and I just upvoted it, so maybe it will recover.
I wouldn't underestimate the role of bots, or bot assisted socks, rather than the HN community. You last sentence just sounds like sour grapes in this context.
> What a simplistic take on a much more nuanced set of issues and ideas than that from the Republicans and conservatives in general. "brown people"? What the hell does that generic, i'd say even coddlingly racist, label means specifically mean?
It's cut and dry. Plain racism, broadly and slowly applied. Don't try to notice, they hate that.
> All that said, this list of books proposed for bans is a laughable idiocy from people who really need to get their heads out of their asses.
Ah yes, the foolish "state policy don't matter because you can get it somewhere else". Treating the issue lightly, is part of the problem. Now there's 1 less source BY POLICY and the noose tightens. Weaponizing policy is something politicians are prone to do.
I don't buy the whole "it's not illegal, just buy it from a bookstore yourself if it's banned from the library" argument after what happened with Steam and payment processors. What's next? "Just buy these books from a physical bookstore (not online) that is cash only because payment processors have booted the store off their platforms. Also, only old/used editions are available because publishers are afraid to print new runs. But it's not illegal so stop crying"
The latter often leverages the former to work around having to legislate things that are unpopular or unconstitutional. A great example is government agencies buying data from data brokers or the Twitter files where the government leaned on Twitter to downrank "wrong" ideas. With the proliferation of powerful near-monopolies - especially in tech - "the market" has little way to work around these kinds of problems, especially in the short term.
I guess my point is that both are dangerous to freedom, and ideally the government would do something to curtail corporate censorship instead of encouraging it. That's the whole idea of a "common carrier"[1].
I am not equating the two, I am pointing out the flaw in the logic of viewing each in isolation and rationalizing. Excusing state-level book bans in libraries with "you can just buy it yourself with your money instead" clearly ignores what has been happening in the private sector.
While I agree that no one should have their identity defined by their ethnicity, that does not describe many of these books. Perhaps none, it's presumptuous to say that an author writing about oppression wants to increase divisiveness.
Beyond that, there is no shortage of people in favor of book bans that absolutely believe in ethnically-defined identity.
If you’re in a room full of white people and you’re reading a book about Chinese railroad workers, then you’re correct that’s not divisive. If you add some asian kids, and then treat the Asian kids indistinguishable from the white kids—everyone is a modern american reading about history—that’s also not divisive.
But what you have in schools today is an additional layer on top of that, where the non-white kids are treated differently than the white kids. The non-white kids are encouraged in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to identify with the oppressed people in the books in a way the white aren’t. At my kids school, they have racially segregated “affinity” groups to facilitate this. My daughter was invited to the weekly “black girl magic” lunch once a month (because I guess that’s the math for a half white half south asian kid). I know that sounds like something I just made up but it’s absolutely true.
This is because academics and authors who write this stuff really do believe in racial identity and solidarity. Specifically, they generalize african american racial identity and solidarity and politics to all non-whites. If you walk into a book reading for some of this stuff, you’ll find way more people promoting “brown people” ethnic identity and solidarity than you will find people promoting “white people” ethnic identity and solidarity at a Trump rally. The vast majority of both white and “brown” Trump supporters just want to go back to the 1990s where we didn’t “talk about race.”
It's not an ideal situation for sure. Some want their heritage to be their identity. Some do not. Academia tries to accommodate both. Meanwhile we are slowly trying to fix the lingering effects of centuries of injustice where solidarity is one of the few tools to fight people in power who want to return to unjust times.
I'm not sure the best option is to vote for the country club guy whose public statements strongly indicate reports of his private statements on race are accurate. The guy who has kept Stephen Miller around for a decade and talked the proud boys into being the armed second wave of Jan 6. Then pardoned them.
Speaking for myself, even if Trump is somehow the shining light of a post-discrimination society (after failing to do so in his first term), it can't possibly offset the damage he wants to do the economy, consumer protection, and national security.
> My daughter was invited to the weekly “black girl magic” lunch once a month (because I guess that’s the math for a half white half south asian kid).
> This is because academics and authors who write this stuff really do believe in racial identity and solidarity.
Beverly Bond, who holds the trademark, was an influencer avant la lettre. She wanted to make a brand—looks line like a clothing line, followed by a TV show, then a podcast.
I get that it’s tempting to blame everything on radical leftist academics or whatever but that’s not what happened here. This is simply capitalism.
Most people who aren't radical Leftists aren't going to agree with you that radical Leftists aren't primarily responsible for the experience described by Rayiner just because a personal profit motive was involved in addition to the ideological motive.
You might believe that if an ideological Leftist motive can be kept separate from motives of personal enrichment, then it cannot do significant harm. But most US voters would disagree with you about that: they believe that it can be harmful to believe that there is an oppressive structure at the center of American society if in fact there is not an oppressive structure at the center of American society.
When people say “radical leftists caused my gout” or “fascists gave me arthritis” I think they should stop for a second and consider where lies the proximate cause of their inconvenience, instead of clinging to convenient, if emotionally satisfying, myths.
I don’t think the issue is radical leftist academics. For the most part, it’s overly empathetic normie liberals who feel distress when they hear what the radical leftists are saying and lack discernment to sort through what minority kids really need to succeed.
> The non-white kids are encouraged in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to identify with the oppressed people in the books in a way the white aren’t.
Well, um, yeah. That's because white people just aren't oppressed.
Its the same way I don't identify with feminist literature. I can read it, understand it, enjoy it - but I can never fully relate, because I'm not a woman and the way I experience the patriachy will always be different.
Of course black people identify with or relate more to something like the color purple. That doesn't mean the color purple is racist.
The same way I evaluate my doctor to be doing a good job - trust.
Your experience in life will always represent a tiny tiny fraction of one percent of all experiences. If you require a "see it to believe it" approach, you will live and die closed-minded.
That does not mean I need to blindly trust feminists, however.
I don't trust my doctor, or any doctor. I do my own research and if anything seems fishy I get a second opinion.
but then, maybe I can trust a statistically relevant sample of doctor on the basis they are objectively and scientifically trained, regulated and liable?
I truly cannot fathom how anybody can listen to Trump talk for more than 5 minutes and read more than one of his moronic truth social posts and his constant lies and then still be a supporter.
Is your example here a bit oblique to the point? I see this more of a failing of the people to properly appreciate and discuss/process the contents of the book, and as well as, in my opinion, socially overcompensating for the diversity in the room?
I definitely see your point around a lot of people trying to be so inclusive, they end up being somewhat racist. But I see this more of a lack of proper cultural empathy/education -- go figure, Dunning-Kruger is everywhere all the time. But as you said,
> This law is about what books are in public libraries.
So why would we ban the books, rather than encourage reading them and having the more meaningful discussions focusing on heritage rather than identity?
As a slightly more abstract aside, identity anything to me is a slippery slope because it will always automatically encourage one to make assumptions; it's a mental shortcut to say Person A == Person B iff PersonA.identity == PersonB.identity. Given that education is hard, learning is hard, and life is hard, I think we need to at least emphathize and appreciate that teachers and the the education system in general need to often fall back on these sorts of mental shortcuts. But that's we need to really invoke our right, privilege, and duty of grassroots participation. Why not walk into that book club that's overcompensating and help them learn what is making you uncomfortable? You might be surprised at how ignorant they were of their own mistakes and that they're willing to learn from your perspective.
> I definitely see your point around a lot of people trying to be so inclusive, they end up being somewhat racist.
But it’s not inclusiveness at all, it’s a caste system. In academic liberal spaces, non-whites are not “included” on the same terms as whites. We are bucketed into a separate caste subject to different standards and expectations. And that caste system plays out in routine social interactions, because white people afraid of being called “racist” will not treat you the same.
Calling it “heritage” instead of identity doesn’t change anything. Your average second-generation non-white American has weak ties to any non-american society. My kids have no meaningful ties to Bangladeshi society, only superficial ones. They can’t, and they wouldn’t even like it if they did. So the only outcome of talking to them about their “heritage” would be to encourage them to see themselves differently from their peers based on connections that are at best superficial.
As to your point about “banning”—we’re not banning the book club. This law is about school libraries. People are voting for what kind of ideas their children are socialized into, which is one of the fundamental rights as a parent.
> People are voting for what kind of ideas their children are socialized into, which is one of the fundamental rights as a parent.
Wait, I thought you were all about how Western society has gone too far in the direction of individual rights?
And assuming your "fundamental rights as a parent" premise (purely for the sake of argument): The rest of us have a pretty-compelling interest in how each other's kids — our future fellow adults — are being raised.
I agree the community has a strong interest in how children are socialized. That’s exactly what’s happening here: Florida voters have exercised their power over government schools to vindicate the community’s right to decide how children should be socialized.
You’re also proving my point about why it’s so critical to strictly control who is allowed into your community. Once people are allowed into the community, they get to participate in deciding how the community collectively socializes children. That means communities have a strong interest in excluding people who aren’t like minded.
> You’re also proving my point about why it’s so critical to strictly control who is allowed into your community.
"Strictly control[led]" is a line-drawing function — and needs to remember that life is a movie, not a snapshot, and so patience is needed. EDIT: Growing a society seems not unlike raising children: Society needs kids to grow into adults, and sometimes that means gritting your teeth and being patient ....
Example: Many of my own immigrant ancestors, those on the non-Aryan branches of our family tree, probably wouldn't have been let in under today's MAGA criteria. (Even my German-immigrant ancestors faced hostility from the "real Americans.") Yet each successive generation in this country has done just a bit better, thank you very much.
Example: In this morning's home-delivery Times, Cardinal Dolan is quoted as recalling about the decades-long progress of the Irish migration to America — who were definitely considered ubermenschen by many American nativists of the time:
<quote>
“He [19th-century Archbishop John Hughes] was frustrated about raising money,” remarked [Cardinal] Dolan, who wore Hughes’ pectoral cross on a cord around his neck as he described the new artistic addition. “He said, ‘This cathedral will be built on the pennies of immigrants.’”
Dolan noted that by contrast, raising $3 million to underwrite the creation, installation, lighting and conservation of the Cvijanovic mural took less than a day — paid for, he added with a chuckle, by “the big checks of the grandchildren of the immigrants.”
</quote>
(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added; my first-generation Irish-American grandmother told of seeing signs here and there: No Irish need apply.)
I can’t quite read this without feeling there some significant over-generalizations and assumptions being made. My experience with people of various races, cultures, and backgrounds has not exhibited any unilateral caste system mentality. I’ve spent plenty of time in academia and, while it certainly has issues, has not been quite so dystopian.
In the end, if we’re just comparing anecdata, this isn’t going to be productive.
JD Vance had a comment about his Appalachian ancestors who “built this country with their bare hands.” Find a white person to say something similar in one of your liberal places. Then find a black or mexican american person to say something similar. You know what the reaction would be even if you’ve never experienced it first hand. That’s the caste system: among other things, ethnic identity is condemned for one caste, while being lauded in the other caste.
There’s dozens of other examples, of course. Admissions, hiring, and promotions are often subject to explicit or implicit racial considerations. It’s naive to believe that the same people who are required by institutional policies to think about your skin color when they hired you or admitted you or when they decided to promote you or give your a research grant aren’t thinking about it in daily interactions as well.
I hear what you're saying, and agree with large parts of it. Ethnic background shouldn't override individual autonomy. But...
> The vast majority of both white and “brown” Trump supporters just want to go back to the 1990s where we didn’t “talk about race.”
... there's certainly a chunk of Trump supporters who would like to go back to the 40s and 50s version of US "not talking about race" (or the 1910s for not talking about women).
It'd be nice if the reasonable people from both parties could ignore their extremist wings, get to together, and realize they have more in common than different.
>... there's certainly a chunk of Trump supporters who would like to go back to the 40s and 50s version of US "not talking about race" (or the 1910s for not talking about women).
Actually, it's back to 1868[0] at least that they'd like[1] (rolling back birthright citizenship) to go.
> there's certainly a chunk of Trump supporters who would like to go back to the 40s and 50s version of US "not talking about race" (or the 1910s for not talking about women).
This is a relatively small number in comparison to the chunk of Harris supporters who would call color blindness “racist.” In my own experience, “brown” ethno-narcissism and ethnic tribalism is more accepted, and even encouraged, among liberals than white ethno-nationalism is tolerated among conservatives.
This is a result of the political incentives of the respective parties. Republicans don’t need white nationalism, they can win when minorities are assimilated into the what the dominant Anglo-American culture (what the left might call “multiracial whiteness”). That’s basically what’s happened in Florida: Hispanics retain their culture in the way Irish and Italian Americans do, but don’t have a strong ethnic identity that is politically motivating.
Republican's don't need white nationalism, and it undoubtedly hurts them on the whole, which is why it's surprising they continue to let those voices speak for them.
E.g. it's hard to get more racist than Stephen Miller, but I suppose that's normalized when you're on Jeff Sessions' staff.
White nationalists are people who dislike Usha Vance because she’s Indian. Stephen Miller is an ordinary nationalist who wants to slow down immigration enough so that everyone assimilates into Anglo-American culture and norms, instead of of changing U.S. culture.
Let me ask you this: you acknowledge that India is different from Vermont, right? And you acknowledge that ethnic enclaves of recent Indian immigrants (say in New York), are culturally different from Vermont? Is there any way in your world view for someone to say that they think the culture of Vermont is better, and they oppose immigration that would change the culture and make it more like India (or Latin America)?
Put differently, what could a non-racist version of Stephen Miller do while seeking to maintain the Anglo-American character of the U.S.? Or do you think that race and culture are so intertwined that non-racism requires us to accept Vermont becoming more like India or Latin America?
Stephen Miller is an ordinary nationalist who wants to slow down immigration enough so that everyone assimilated into Anglo-American culture and norms, instead of of changing U.S. culture.
Those articles are all sourced from the same SPLC hit piece, and are laundering someone’s accusations of “racism” without defining the term, or engaging in guilt by association.
The folks at SPLC are cultural relativists. They think culture is just superficial things like food, and doesn’t contribute to material circumstances. The only reason India or Mexico are poorer and more disorderly, in their view, is oppression from whites. In that worldview, any opposition to immigration can only be based on skin-color “racism.” Is that your view?
Each of those articles is sourced from the same SPLC hit piece, and SPLC embraces cultural relativism.
I’m curious why you won’t answer my question. Does non-racism, in your view, require people to accept immigration that changes America’s culture? Is there a non-racist lane for people who want Vermont or Salt Lake City to remain culturally Anglo-American (regardless of ethnicity)?
This whole line of reasoning is underpinned by such a fundamentally dim view of American[1] culture that it's hard to believe you and others who espouse it think yourselves its advocates. The unique, defining feature of our culture is precisely its ability to incorporate every other, and reproduce itself among them and their children.
The consistent lane you're looking for is "let come those that will. give them all the freedoms and all the burdens of being American, and that's what they'll become. The character of our places might change, as they have in the past and as they will again in the future, but they will be no less American as long as they're full of people seeking liberty, justice, and the opportunity to better themselves and their families."
[1] and it is _American_ culture, not Anglo-American.
> The unique, defining feature of our culture is precisely its ability to incorporate every other, and reproduce itself among them and their children.
First, you're conflating America's effectiveness in Anglicizing immigrants with absorbing foreign cultures, which has happened surprisingly little. Our national institutions remain quite Anglo, even though there's pockets of different cultures all over the country.
Second, most good things about American culture trace back to its Anglo roots: https://scholarworks.brandeis.edu/esploro/outputs/book/Albio.... Legalism, orderliness, disposition towards freedom and free markets, entrepreneurialism, egalitarianism, etc.
Areas where we've seen cultural change have been negative. For example, one thing we've lost is the WASP austerity. I know some older folks from New England who grew up learning that "food is for fuel, not enjoyment." Amazing! It's a downgrade that we lost that!
> and it is _American_ culture, not Anglo-American.
No, it's Anglo-American culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tINJhf1Zs1Q&t=618s. The Anglo countries remain incredibly similar to each other culturally and economically despite the U.S. breaking off from England almost 250 years ago. America is different from England in many ways, but in more or less the same ways it was always different from England.
All immigration changes culture. And the United States is probably the best proof of that that you could possibly wish for. Anglo-American culture is a very tiny slice of American culture. Your position is essentially statist: you want the world to stay the way you found it. But the world evolves and it does so on a timescale that that is noticeable on a single human life span. Like that whole groups of people have to sit at the back of the bus (if they're allowed on in the first place), write books on how to survive while driving in certain parts of the country and like that they suddenly have rights. And the countries they were forcibly imported from had cultures noticeably different from the one where the Anglo-American (and Dutch, and German and other countries besides) owners (or so they claimed) people came from.
If you want to emigrate to a place that is static then you will quickly find out that you can't, not really. Switzerland has been trying to do this since forever and is failing badly at it, other experiments in the same direction have led to civil wars and ugly offshoots like apartheid. You either accept that any immigration at all will change culture or you will have to drastically reduce your exposure to the world around you to maintain the illusion.
Capital loves immigration: it provides for cheap labor. That's the end of your static culture. And good thing too.
> And the United States is probably the best proof of that that you could possibly wish for. Anglo-American culture is a very tiny slice of American culture.
On one hand, this isn't true. At the national level, our laws and institutions are still predominantly Anglo, because all the Dutch, Germans, Irish, and to a lesser extent, Italians and Eastern Europeans, assimilated into that culture. On the other hand, the places where that is the least true, like Chicago and New York City, only underscore my point. Governance in those cities is terrible because much of the political bandwidth is consumed on issues of fairness and redistribution between groups that are at odds with each other instead of building subway lines or cleaning the streets.
> Your position is essentially statist: you want the world to stay the way you found it
Not at all, I want to iterate on the culture that produced the United States, instead of doing a massive "git pull" from the cultures that produced India or Mexico. If you worked at Google, would you hire tens of thousands of Kodak or GE lifers en bloc? Of course not.
> You either accept that any immigration at all will change culture or you will have to drastically reduce your exposure to the world around you to maintain the illusion.
If that’s the choice, I’d choose the latter.
But I don’t quite agree with the dichotomy. Our H1B cap is just 65,000 people. If you spread them around the country, we could maintain an economic edge while minimizing foreign influence. High-skill immigrants who came to the U.S. pre-H1B, and ended up by the handful in small town america here there was a nuclear research lab or whatever ended up highly assimilated.
> Capital loves immigration: it provides for cheap labor. That's the end of your static culture. And good thing too.
Putting aside that this reads like a right-wing parody of WEF talking points, do you really believe that the result of these changes will make American culture more orderly, efficient, functional, and democratic than say Massachusetts in 1950? (Or your own homeland of the Netherlands prior to its experiment with mass immigration?)
Ask the native Americans whether or not this isn't true.
> Not at all, I want to iterate on the culture that produced the United States
That culture is built on violence, slavery, racism and oppression. Iterating on it seems to have brought out its worst elements rather than its best elements. Half the country, including you, voted for a caricature of what a decent human being should be like as president. And you are now 200 days into an assault on your economy and freedoms and you still refuse to see what the end game looks like. That culture? The 1950's are not coming back. And that's not a bad thing.
> Our H1B cap is just 65,000 people.
That's just one form of immigration, why stop there? What about refugees? Oh, right, the USA is good at waging war but then ignores the refugees that inevitably are created, that's for the rest of the world. Handy, being a continent sized country an ocean away.
> If you spread them around the country, we could maintain an economic edge while minimizing foreign influence.
Foreign influence is minimized by limiting the use of money in politics which is an easy avenue into the heart of the political system. Immigrants - as a rule - do not have the vote.
> High-skill immigrants who came to the U.S. pre-H1B, and ended up by the handful in small town america here there was a nuclear research lab or whatever ended up highly assimilated.
Small town America is a lot more racist than you think. They didn't so much end up assimilated, they ended up scared to go out of their houses. If you think you are assimilated and that small town America is accepting and nice you should try to live in the places with < 10,000 inhabitants where the White Master Race is the dominant majority. You'll see - very quickly - how they look at you.
Your USA experience is for the most part informed by living in the larger cities. I've spent a lot of time in rural America (~ a year in total) , easy for me to do since I'm white. What people say in private is hair raising, and really opened my eyes to how deeply embedded racism is in the United States.
> do you really believe that the result of these changes will make American culture more orderly, efficient, functional, and democratic than say Massachusetts in 1950?
I don't know about that. But I also don't think that the current political mainstream in the United States cares about orderly, efficient, functional, and democratic elements of the USA unless it benefits the 'in-group' to the exclusion of everybody else.
This whole discussion reminds me of a guy sitting on a branch cutting the live side with a saw while sitting on the dead side. All of those elements that you wish for have been put in place against massive pressure from the people that you support. And they'd love to go back to Massachusetts, 1950. But without you, and your kids. Your wife is - probably - safe. But you can bet that ICE showing up at your door - or your parents, for that matter - at 4 am is going to be very bad news. And they won't care who you voted for either.
As for that 'Dutch Experiment': it isn't limited to the Netherlands, and by and large the Surinam immigrants have disappeared into background noise on account of their relatively low numbers. But when they first came here (just before Surinam became independent) there was a lot of outcry about this. Now, so many years later there is still a fairly large number of people that identify as such here, most of them live in the three big cities, because of small town racism.
The predominantly Turkish and Moroccan immigrants have set up their own regional presence, some of them have held very strongly to their original identity and stepping into their homes is like stepping into a time/space displacement machine. But they - as a rule - are friendly, incredibly hard working and because they value family a lot more than the original inhabitants and their offspring tend to do, have a fantastic social network around them. Again, due to racism and very overt discrimination their kids have - for some fraction anyway - grown up frustrated. They see all this wealth around them and the skin color based ceiling is so strong that only very few of them manage to break through. The end result of this is that a fraction of them rather than being 'kept in their place' by the whites here - who think these people will never be successful and who deserve to work in crap jobs no matter how intelligent or capable they are. It will take many generations until this has reduced, but there is some - very slow - progress over time. I see more and more people with such backgrounds in positions of influence and some power and wealth and they are the beacons that the next generation will hopefully set course by. It will take many more decades until they are no longer pushed down as a group, and, unfortunately, they are not usually helping and neither are their parents. Intermarriage is rare, which would be one way to reduce the barriers between the various groups.
Romanians, Poles and other people from Eastern Europe have moved here in fairly large numbers. As a rule they are doing fine, even though the newspapers love to magnify the few cases where they are involved in legal or traffic issues.
Syrians and other refugees have not integrated well at all. They have been here only a very short time and are slowly displacing the older immigrant groups for the lowest income jobs. I've had very little interaction with them. But the various asylum seeker places that are dotted across the country are best compared with open air prisons where our bureaucratic engine driven by overt hatred tries to discourage them from staying here. There are far better ways of dealing with this but unfortunately my vote is only just as heavy as that of the racists. It will be decades more before these people too have made this place our home.
Ukrainians, who are here in surprisingly large numbers have integrated in record time. They have learned the language and have assimilated very quickly, to the point that you have to have an ear for it to spot them. They are everywhere and they seem to love it here. It helps that their culture and ours was already closely parallel, besides the Orthodox Church component which quite a few still formally subscribe to (religion, in NL, was on the way out until immigrants brought it back).
You're (arguably correctly) nit-picking OP's choice of the phrase "brown people." We can debate whether it makes sense to lump "brown people" together or not for the purpose of describing Republicans' attitudes toward human rights, but it would probably be more accurate to just reword OP's statement in more general terms: "Republicans have been transparent that they want to dehumanize out-groups." The point would still stand, and we avoid the distraction of whether "brown people" exist as a distinct group.
I would argue that most Republicans don't give a flying fuck what race someone is, and doesn't feel it should make a difference in terms of political opinion or approach to solving issues. All the struggle sessions in the world won't actually change or fix anything other than to foster divide that has only increased in the past couple decades. A lot of it straight out of communist doctrine in order to tear down society.
This isn't to say that racism doesn't exist, but it's not nearly as big as most make it out to be, and there's far more anti-white hate than there is white racism today. White racism is absolutely outcast as a rule today and the typical Republican wants and has nothing to do with it.
To your first point, I'll just say this isn't the first time in history various groups of people (however you want to group them) have by a wide margin voted for a politician who is actually antagonistic towards them. This behavior seems to rhyme all throughout history.
Weird to have to define dehumanization but OK. Dehumanization is to deprive people of their positive human qualities. We're about to get political so this is likely way off topic at this point.
A common, recurring theme in Republican "culture war" rhetoric and policy is to carve out and target various groups (however they/we want to define that group), ignore those groups' positive qualities, amplify their negative qualities, and portray those groups as "lesser humans than us," ultimately for the purpose of depriving them of rights/freedoms/wealth/livelihoods/etc. Evidence of this target -> dehumanize -> disenfranchise cycle abounds. If we can't agree on at least that baseline, then there's probably no productive way to proceed with a discussion.
Yes, the other side divides and groups people, too, and we might not like that. But I'd argue it's for the purpose of uplifting already-vulnerable groups rather than knocking them down. I'd love to live in a world where nobody does this grouping, but we're obviously not there yet.
> I'd love to live in a world where nobody does this grouping, but we're obviously not there yet.
The only way to get there is to go there.
I remember back when I was a kid and realized anti-discrimination was the feel-good message hiding the real message to continue discriminating but now with the correct standards. I sat all day wondering what people 100 years from today would think of our current standards. I reasoned they'll be as forgiving to us as we are to people from 100 years ago.
The person from 1925 would argue they're better than someone from 1825. Ok, sure, but that doesn't make Jim Crow a good thing.
The contemporary standards on how to discriminate will always be justified in the contemporary social context. That's how the cycle perpetuates. The only way to get to the world where nobody does the grouping is to live that life as much as possible today.
> Evidence of this target -> dehumanize -> disenfranchise cycle abounds. If we can't agree on at least that baseline, then there's probably no productive way to proceed with a discussion.
We don’t agree on this. Republican efforts are focused on preserving the dominant American culture and norms, which we think are good. At least in the race context, what engenders backlash is not minorities having rights, but them coming together to assert distinct interests as a group to seek changes in the dominant culture.
> Yes, the other side divides and groups people, too, and we might not like that. But I'd argue it's for the purpose of uplifting vulnerable groups rather than knocking them down.
We agree on this. But I would submit that intent matters less than effect. For one thing, these “vulnerable groups” are less vulnerable than assumed. For example, Hispanics are economically assimilating with whites at about the same rate as Italians or Irish.
For another, the well-intentioned divisiveness itself harms minorities. Ethnic identity and solidarity is a toxic force minority communities. It hinders economic and social assimilation, and empowers bad actors within the community. I want to live in a community where, if a Bangladeshi commits a crime, the other Bangladeshis have more solidarity with the white police who come to arrest the criminal than with their co-ethnic. I think this is one reason why even poor Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in America have so much better economic mobility than their counterparts in Europe or Canada.
I'd like to see more group identity and solidarity along economic class lines than ethnic/racial lines. It feels like this is where the real war is happening, and the racial, ethnic and nationality blamed problems are distractions and mere first order derivatives of the actual problem which is unequal economic power.
Unfortunately, neither side seems to be acknowledging or addressing that problem.
> The problem with that rephrasing is that OP certainly meant to include hispanics (who are the largest group of “brown people”) in the country
OP didn't say anything about non-white Hispanics and other non-white people as a group. He is not suggesting anything about a group identity there. He is simply stating the fact that Trump treats them differently because Trump sees them as a group, including removing books and history about these people.
Do we need the government to write a law and ban the color purple, and similar, from being taught in second grade? I am not a fan of the government doing that level of micromanagement in most circumstances.
Are you okay putting Penthouse magazine (or similar) in elementary schools?
I'm guessing you aren't... people have to draw lines somewhere on this. There's a difference between restricting by age, making available to all and actually assigning material to children. Not all materials are appropriate for elementary school libraries. And I'm not even talking about The Color Purple specifically.
Also, none of this stops a parent from buying a book for their children they feel is appropriate for their child.
> Are you okay putting Penthouse magazine (or similar) in elementary schools?
I think the law that the judge is ruling on here does not effect a ban of penthouse or similar material in elementary schools. The preexisting laws already had that kind of material banned in elementary schools.
Can you clarify what the difference between policy or law is at a given level?
Not everyone agrees as to where the line is for "common sense" and will definitely push boundaries beyond what a community would generally agree to. Laws at a higher level are just "common sense" codified.
There is so much in life that is deferred to someones best judgement that if we stopped just to annotate and attempt to codify all these 100 such actions each person in positions of power or authority might take a given workday, it would take a century.
Not all mountain out of molehill arguments need to be engaged with I think is the broader lesson we need for our times.
If I understand, you're saying that you support banning common literary books in libraries? And likely so do most of Florida constituents, even Asians and Hispanic?
But I'm not able to square that with what you said about ethnic identity.
Your confusion follows from your premise that this is about “banning.” This is about what books are made available to kids in school libraries. It’s a response to a trend in education, which has embraced teaching non-white kids to embrace ethnic identity and think of themselves as oppressed.
Florida Hispanics see these trends as well, and one reason they overwhelmingly supported DeSantis for re-election is that’s not the worldview they want their own kids to have. They don’t want their kids to think of themselves as “Hispanic” (which is an artificial political construct anyway) and have teachers assign them books about how Hispanics are “marginalized.”
> Your confusion follows from your premise that this is about “banning.” This is about what books are made available to kids in school libraries
Maybe I'm wrong, I didn't look into the details. But it appeared to be a ban to me.
If all they did was say: "these are the books that must be made available at school libraries"
That would be very different, and we wouldn't be talking about a ban.
But if they specifically targeted certain books (who might have not even been at all the school libraries to begin with), and said here are the books that are not allowed to be made available... I mean, that's called a ban.
I support your desire to make sure your kids feel at home and are able to, like everyone else, consider themselves American. I'm from an immigrant family, and it bothers me when people ask "what am I", I'm American, and they're always like... Come on! What are you really? And it's like, dude, you're also 'not really" American, you're German, you're British, etc. Except we're all really American, born and raised.
So I'm with you on that point, and the "born and raise" part, yes it means you should be raised the same as well, raised American.
Where I'll have to disagree with you, is that the books made available and the school curriculum isn't about any of this. It should focus on education, kids shouldn't be dumb, they need to learn history and it's effects, they should engage with hard topics and real problems, they should be exposed to well reasoned and intelligent diverse opinions from all sides, etc. You don't achieve that by selectively banning books whose narrative you personally don't like.
If you came at me complaining that the current selection of books and curriculum goes against that, that it's pigeonholing kids into "brown" and "not brown", and so on, I'd be like, damn right that's a problem, and I'd put forward the same argument I'm making now for why it's an issue that needs addressed.
But like I said, banning books just feels like pigeonholing and propaganda the same that you're trying to avoid just someone else's agenda.
Any which words we choose about it, we're still talking about a government mandate which books are not ok to read. I don't doubt your personal experiences, but the leap to blacklisting literature is a huge one and doesn't follow logically at all.
While this is a ground one should tread most carefully, surely you can see the historical precedents?
Again, this is about school libraries. You can’t retreat to the libertarian bailey. Educating and socializing children necessarily requires the government to pick a viewpoint. Especially against the backdrop of librarians, who are certainly have embraced a particular viewpoint and are pushing it on kids.
You're talking about the guy and party that believe slavery was a good job training program. FFS, this isn't hard - they don't even bother with the dog whistles any more!
No offense, there’s conservatives who want to ban books because they understand the value of literature and education… you’re not it, you should try reading the books they’re trying to ban, because it’s you they’re trying to keep away from reading those books.
> Trump won over 40% of asians and nearly 50% of hispanics last year.
I can't find a single exit poll that says Trump won over 40% of the Asian American vote.
> I hate the idea that my kids would think that they have more in common with another ethnic Bangladeshi in Queens than she does with a random person in Appalachia.
Nobody is claiming otherwise. They're only saying that on the narrow topic of racism, Trump and many (though certainly not all) of his supporters will treat your daughter differently than they do a random light-skinned Appalachian.
Your point about hypothetical racist Trump supporters is wrong for two different reasons. First, I’ve been to Appalachia, and my wife is from rural Oregon, and nobody has ever treated me differently. My brother in law (part black, part Samoan, looks like the Rock) went to a Trump rally and Marjorie Taylor Green came to him to introduce herself. In practice, the people who draw attention to my skin color in embarrassing and demeaning ways are white liberals.
Second, building a “brown people” identity around the possibility that someone will occasionally treat you differently is bizarre. I don’t claim that my experience as a brown guy (who has spent a lot of time in the rural south and rural west coast) is universal. But if my family and I haven’t noticed it, that suggests a ceiling on how pervasive it could be. It’s positively grotesque to encourage kids to construct an identity that doesn’t reflect them as individuals, because someone, somewhere, might occasionally treat them differently based on skin color.
You sound like you're old enough to have lived through the aftermath of 9/11, I'm glad to hear you didn't experience any racism due to your skin color.
There was no “aftermath of 9/11.” I was in high school after 9/11 and went to college in the south (which was full of white guys from Georgia/Alabama/Tennessee) when we went to war in Iraq.
For you there wasn't, and like you said earlier, there's no representative "brown person" experience. I have first-hand experience that's the definitely included an aftermath, one person stopped wearing hijab after being taunted, another started going by "Mo", and yet another - who's not even muslim - started dyeing her hair a color much lighter that its natural color to better pass as white.
You’re just proving my point. Three thousand americans were killed in an attack by Muslims and that’s all that happened. If that had happened in India there would have been ethnic cleansing.
Your country did gleefully kill millions of innocent brown people in response to 9/11, it's just that they mostly lived in the middle east. You've apparently dehumanized them to the point where their deaths just… slipped your mind.
Your "extensive" Pew analysis has error bars of +/- 10% for the Asian groups and certainly doesn't show "over 40%" but something that rounds to 40%. Other exit polls all show less than 40%.
It's great that you haven't experienced racial discrimination. This hasn't been the experience of people applying for housing at Trump properties.
> In practice, the people who draw attention to my skin color in embarrassing and demeaning ways are white liberals.
Explain to me how putting up Confederate monuments is so we don't "erase history" but removing historical notes about Native Americans, not mentioning a holiday celebrating freedom for all Americans except to disparage it, and removing information about Trump's impeachment is not. I'd like to understand any other explanation than that Trump and his supporters don't see Native Americans or black Americans as "real" Americans, which is what people mean when they use the word "dehumanizing." Is there any other way to explain it than by using skin color? That is why "white liberals" (why are you bringing their skin color into it) bring it up — the only reasonable explanation involves skin color. Nobody in this thread is suggesting that anybody build an identity around it.
> Your "extensive" Pew analysis has error bars of +/- 10% for the Asian groups and certainly doesn't show "over 40%" but something that rounds to 40%. Other exit polls all show less than 40%
That means it could be 50%. “Exit” polls in general aren’t reliable, especially with the mail in voting. Pew isn’t an exit poll, it uses massive surveys. That’s consistent with other data points. Blue Rose Research found that Trump probably narrowly won naturalized citizens: https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2.... Most of those folks are hispanic or asian.
Another data point: lots of majority asian precincts in new york and new jersey flipped to Trump. Trump outright won Flushing, Queens. Jamaica, which has a heavy Bangladeshi population, shifted from D+83 to D+31 (which would mean roughly 35% Trump).
A cursory search didn't really reveal this breakdown in the handful of articles I looked at. There is mention that black turnout was a bit lower than other racial groups though. Without specifics, most likely carried more black men than previous elections, while losing with more black women. This seems to be the overall trend in general regarding Republican and Democrat voting from what I've observed.
> These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity
Funnily enough, that's exactly what "obscene" means in popular parlance. On the other hand, the legal standard for what should be considered obscene is so inherently uncertain and varies so much across time and place that it's just meaningless to say anything that purports to be definitive about that.
No, it isn't. The modern standard of obscenity in US federal law, the "Miller test," derives from a 1973 Supreme Court ruling in the eponymous Miller v. California.
I realize you're referring to some universal abstract theoretical concept of obscenity that doesn't apply or exist. The one I describe does, and I think that makes it more useful here.
I'm frankly surprised that kids read books at all. With video games and smartphones and all this attention-draining junk, I would like to see how many books are actually read per 100 kids per month. I would be surprised if it even runs into the double digits.
Flood the zone with christofascist, orthodoxy propaganda in almost every public and private distribution channel people interact with since birth, and no compliant rule-followers will dare to read those "filthy", "un-Christian" books. The problem of opposition will be reduced to a small cadre of intelligent and curious people who dare to question approved ideas.. they are usually the first to be lined up against the wall when totalitarian regimes come to power. At some point in the past, I would've been half joking, but this doesn't seem so unfathomable anymore.
To put it plainly, this attitude is probably the main reason reading books is sometimes labelled as an elitist poser passtime.
Kids will enjoy reading books that are genuinely good, but they need to care about the subject in the first place and they'll come for more on their own term. Focusing on the numbers ("X books per months") or denigrating the other things they also enjoy solely based on the format will just signal no shit is given about the actual content.
Most good books are subversive towards the goals of education. I couldn't believe when they unironically asked me to read "Pedegogy of the Oppressed" and than tried to give grades on it.
Trying to give grades to kids for Oscar Wilde's work is fully against the spirit of his thinking. Trying to grade kids for a whole lot of modern "classics" also goes against the spirit of their thinking. Joyce was too busy writing horny smut to be a supporter of literary analysis of his work.
But more seriously, most young adult fiction is pretty low quality. I cringe pretty hard when I look back at what that genre had us reading at the time. Percy Jackson and Eoin Colfer are poster children for the millennial brain rot that ended our collective love of YAF. We are a far cry from the high point it hit under the excellent writing of a certain Brian Jacques
I got an A for reading Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. I turned out ok, I read proper historians writing about horrific events, and my writing abilities are above average.
Properly defining how we educate children is tough.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you seem unfamiliar with Wilde's work or his stated position on criticism - i.e. that only critical faculty enables any artistic creation at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Critic_as_Artist
Joyce's penchant for scatology in no way diminishes his canon's suitability for engagement via critical theory. If anything, the poststructuralist interdisciplinary approach is as natural a bedfellow for the interpretation of Ulysses of Finnegan's Wake as one could hope for.
To demean Eoin Colfer is another interesting hill to die on (Darren Shan?). Benny and Omar is a fantastic debut novel and a great introduction to class and cultural distinctions in the Islamic world as viewed through the eyes of a surly western teenager. The Artemis Fowl debut as well is a perfectly inoffensive fresh IP with an interesting take on putting a cyberpunk spin on Irish Mythology - although marred somewhat by an appalling cinematic adaptation.
To then cite Brian Jacques as a high-point, ploughing a furrow as he does in the foothills of mid-brow K-12 readership, only suggests to me somebody completely unfamiliar with the canons of Terry Pratchett or Philip Pullman. In any case, you seem to be conflating Young Adult Fantasy with the rich and well populated canon of Young Adult Fiction.
It's possible that the worst of these bans were done in strategic bad faith in partnership with the plaintiffs: to provide standing and legal cause for the plaintiffs to sue.
There may have been bans made that were reasonable but politically one-sided (perhaps an illustrated kamasutra, just to give an example), and the strategy to re-establish them was a sort of reverse motte-and-bailey -- get things that are far more innocent banned in a bid to sue and reverse all bans.
Nothing specific. But generally, recent politics makes me believe that any "possible" version of events is an acceptable hypothesis to consider, no matter how egregious (and I mean this regardless of someone's political leaning).
Those with any form of power in very large measure (money, fame, political power, influence) ought not to be trusted implicitly.
Kind of a nothing story if everything has been replaced. My car could make it to 1.2M km too if I replaced the engine every time it gave out. Seems like a huge time and money sink for no good reason. Not to judge the man for having a hobby of course, let him have fun, but the news article is misleading.
I know a guy down south (i.e. no rust) who's got comparable milage across his personal "fleet" of '99 Town and Country minivans that he's been running since the 00s. Kinda hard to put a mil on any one of them when he's only one guy but whatever. I know another guy who's got >500k on a Jetta that he runs on waste motor oil from his job and removed all the seats from because utility vehicle.
Nobody will ever write a story about them because "hur hur hur, well kept Toyota" is considered admirable and bending a crashed Town and Country back into shape because you're invested in the platform and learning the ins and outs of diesel combustion the hard way so you can use "free" fuel are considered trashy.
Toyota gave the guy a new truck so they could study the one he had.
As a Toyota fan boy myself (still driving a 2000 4Runner into the ground), those 2000s builds were such a great era of engineering. That being said, I think they’ve lost a step over the last decade (don’t get my started on the new v4/v6 turbo blocks they’re building…).
We shall see. Undoubtedly much of this order will be challenged by some pretty powerful institutions and lawyers. Unfortunately, my confidence in the supreme court to uphold the fairest or least destructive interpretation of the law is at an all time low.
I know someone who lost their job in the recent cuts. They worked for a nonprofit funded by the government, and the funding was eliminated. It was challenged in court, and the government lost. They were ordered to restore funding. The person in charge of the funding just... didn’t pay. Legal or not, the money remained in the government’s accounts rather than the nonprofit’s, and the nonprofit shut down.
Until we have actual penalties for the people in charge, it doesn’t even matter whether the courts uphold this stuff or not.
