The Cement of Society Is... • Hacker News Board

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#151

Post by bleepblorp » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

throwaways885 wrote: post #118

bleepblorp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservative perceptions of their opponents have very little basis in reality as most of what conservatives perceive regarding their opponents is projection intended to deflect from their own misbehavior. Conservative messaging is driven almost exclusively by fabricated outrage for which there is no non-conservative equivalent; non-conservative messaging is driven by outrage over actual conservative behavior. Non-con…

> There is such a thing as objective reality and the history of the past forty years of conservative politics is a history of conservatives abandoning objective reality in favor of delusions they find comforting. Again, "the other side" has the exact same concerns about your tribe.

Again, just because conservatives (or anyone else) strongly believes something does not make it true.

Take the conservative position on climate change, for instance, which over the past forty years has degenerated from 'there's not enough of a consensus to act' through 'it's happening but it's not human caused' to 'the science is a Chinese conspiracy theory to destroy America.'

Also note the increasing fondness of senior Republican figures, from Trump downwards, for Q-anon and it's associated conspiracy theories. Notably, there's no Democratic Q-anon equivalent of any statute.

Finally, while in office, Trump has told upwards of 20,000 lies regarding objective facts[0]. There's no equivalent lie count for Obama, Biden, or any other prominent non-conservative in very large part because they, unlike prominent conservatives, accept that objective reality exists and see their duty as finding a way to cope with it.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/13/president...

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#152

Post by lootsauce » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:48 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #23

aaron695 wrote: post #14

Religion is an interesting one. It's certainly a cement. It's easy to see the negatives really hard to see the positives but they will be huge, it's so ingrained it will have shaped everything. We will perhaps never know if it was a net gain or not.

> It's easy to see the negatives really hard to see the positives but they will be huge, it's so ingrained it will have shaped everything. We will perhaps never know if it was a net gain or not. Perhaps for you, but in any case, "religion" is not a single thing and not all religions are equal. Besides, every society has a religion. Every person has a faith. In the US, it is liberalism. In the Soviet Union, it was the…

Faith, I would argue includes the urge toward something on a deep/spiritual/fundamental level that you may certainly have doubts of and even contrary evidence for. I would posit that it is in the face of such doubt that faith is exercised the most. The faculty is as much one of hope in something because you know something else points to it being true in the absence of easy confirmation. Being certain of something a-priori naturally requires little faith thereafter. There are practical goods that flow from from faith that certainly bolster that sense that it is good and thus it is true. So I would not discount the value of these practical goods as motivator for faith nor would I treat that as an indictment thereof.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#153

Post by bb611 » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #139

bleepblorp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservative perceptions of their opponents have very little basis in reality as most of what conservatives perceive regarding their opponents is projection intended to deflect from their own misbehavior. Conservative messaging is driven almost exclusively by fabricated outrage for which there is no non-conservative equivalent; non-conservative messaging is driven by outrage over actual conservative behavior. Non-con…

At first I downvoted you. Then I realized that this is a stupid way to have a discussion, so here's my reply instead. I would love to see a specific example of "conservative fabricated outrage". Not because I haven't seen any in my life, but to align our understandings of the fabricated outage. The most recent one is probably that with a new supreme court judge nomination. Here's what I managed to find out: - accordi…

I'll leave GP to answer the outrage comments, but I think the rest reasonably calls out for perspective.

Merrick Garland wasn't just not confirmed, his nomination was ignored for 9.5 months. As you point out, it's not uncommon for opposition party senates to turn down supreme court nominees, as is their due. It is, however, extremely rare for them not to hear those nominations at all, and Garland's nomination timeline stands out for its longevity.

Out of 163 nominations, only 11 have lapsed (from your wiki link, which lists an incorrect count in the summary). Reverse chronological order of the most recent 5:

- Garland (2016): 293 days. Opposition senate.

- John Marshall Harlan II (1954): 27 days in lapsed nomination + 49 days for confirmation. Ally senate, confirmed by opposition senate.

- Pierce Butler (1922): 14 days lapsed nomination + 16 days for confirmation. Ally senate.

- William Hornblower (1893): 45 days lapsed + 41 days to reject confirmation. Ally senate.

- Stanley Matthers (1881): 36 days lapsed + 59 days to confirm. Opposition senate, confirmed by split senate.

The point being that there is essentially no historical precedent for this behavior, to the point that we need to look 135 years in the past simply to find any example of an opposition senate delaying a candidate's nomination. Even then, Garland is the supreme court nominee with the most time under nomination in US congressional history by a factor of more than 2.

> over the history of USA 29 times supreme court judges were nominated in election year

This doesn't really do justice to the history here, 1/4 of those nominations happened in a single year due to conflict between President Tyler and the Whig party, and an overlapping 1/4 were withdrawals. The last ~170 years of supreme court nominees have been pretty uninteresting and undramatic.

- Garland (2016): lapsed. Ally senate.

- Fortas (1968): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Thornberry (1968) withdrawn because the seat was no longer available, due to some musical chairs replacing Chief Justice Earl Warren. Ally Senate.

- Murphy (1940): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Cardozo (1932): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Clarke (1916): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Brandeis (1916): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Pitney (1912): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Shiras (1892): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Fuller (1888): confimed. Opposition senate.

- Woods (1880): confirmed. Opposition senate.

- Hunt (1872): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Chase (1864): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Bradford (1852): lapsed. Opposition senate.

- 7 various nominations (1844): none confirmed. Opposition senate.

- Crittenden (1828): postponed i.e. rejected. Opposition senate.

- Johnson (1804): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Ellsworth (1796): confirmed. Washington was president and rejected party politics, but the Federalists were friendly with him, so ally senate.

- Chase (1796): confirmed. Ally senate.

- Cushing (1796): confirmed. Ally senate.

I think there's plenty of evidence that Garland's nomination fight radically rocked the boat in US national politics, and we're likely to see similar boat rocking over the next few years as Democrats are pushed harder to abuse the limits of their power in order to improve their leverage on Republicans.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#154

Post by bleepblorp » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #139

bleepblorp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservative perceptions of their opponents have very little basis in reality as most of what conservatives perceive regarding their opponents is projection intended to deflect from their own misbehavior. Conservative messaging is driven almost exclusively by fabricated outrage for which there is no non-conservative equivalent; non-conservative messaging is driven by outrage over actual conservative behavior. Non-con…

At first I downvoted you. Then I realized that this is a stupid way to have a discussion, so here's my reply instead. I would love to see a specific example of "conservative fabricated outrage". Not because I haven't seen any in my life, but to align our understandings of the fabricated outage. The most recent one is probably that with a new supreme court judge nomination. Here's what I managed to find out: - accordi…

The quip I threw out regarding 'tan suits and arugula' was not random; both were outrage incidents manufactured by conservative media in relation to President Obama.

Conservatives manufactured a moral panic over how Obama was unfit for office because he wore a tan suit in public and how he was out of touch with 'real Americans' because he ate arugula.

In contrast, most non-conservatives are disgusted at Trump because of his cruelty towards others, his failure to address COVID-19, the fact that violated democratic norms to put himself in office, and the fact that he is taking steps to rig the 2020 election in his favor.

The kind of scandals that conservatives created around Obama (such as tan suits and arugula) are not equivalent to the actual scandals that surround Trump.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#155

Post by scottlocklin » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

chownie wrote: post #131

scottlocklin wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd appreciate a few examples of them behaving in such a manner as knowingly lying about how deadly a disease is and then having large crowded .... Lol are you shitting me? Didn't you notice the mobs of leftist chuckleheads, erm, I mean "anti-racism activists" burning the cities down over the last couple of months, complete with excuses for why it's not REALLY a covid transmission problem, and, like business owners…

Why did you ellipse before the word "indoors"? > The fact of the matter is, the right was more correct than the left when it comes to Covid; it's mostly a nothingburger unless you're over 70. Even the CDC says so at this point[0]. This is assuming that the only negative outcome of COVID is death, but that isn't the case. People come out of COVID with long term health complications such as lung scarring which may affe…

Yeah, you know what; the flu has long term health complications as well. Ask me how I know this: I got the flu in 2014 and still have health complications from it -probably will until I eventually drop dead. It's a bummer, but that's life. I also don't demand we shut down civilization and destroy the economic lives and mental health of hundreds of millions to prevent spread of the flu, though it would have been nice if the plague doctor sitting next to me on the airliner didn't sneeze on my eyeball.

The "long term health complications" thing is, until someone comes up with an actual count rather than terror scare stories in trash news, mostly a figment of people's lurid imaginations. Just like the early reports of world-ending infection fatality rates.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#156

Post by bleepblorp » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

bb611 wrote: post #153

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first I downvoted you. Then I realized that this is a stupid way to have a discussion, so here's my reply instead. I would love to see a specific example of "conservative fabricated outrage". Not because I haven't seen any in my life, but to align our understandings of the fabricated outage. The most recent one is probably that with a new supreme court judge nomination. Here's what I managed to find out: - accordi…

I'll leave GP to answer the outrage comments, but I think the rest reasonably calls out for perspective. Merrick Garland wasn't just not confirmed, his nomination was ignored for 9.5 months. As you point out, it's not uncommon for opposition party senates to turn down supreme court nominees, as is their due. It is, however, extremely rare for them not to hear those nominations at all, and Garland's nomination timelin…

It's not accurate to imply that upcoming crises over USSC nominations will be the result of a Democratic power grab.

More intense fights over control of the USSC will happen because the differential population growth between the states and the rigid allocation of Senate seats means that the USSC is being filled without benefit of the democratic consent of a majority of the American population.

The fact that the USSC is being filled with judges who are hostile to the social values and economic interests of the majority compounds the problem.

Political strife over USSC nominations is not a partisan problem but rather a function of the fact that the US constitution, by design, allows the reactionary minority to dominate the majority. The constitution gives the reactionary 40% the legal right to rule the majority, but this does not mean the majority is under any obligation to meekly accept this.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#157

Post by nlitened » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:14 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #149

nlitened wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really if the car is running on a treadmill installed by a foreign government.

I covered that. "The surface you're driving on" in this case would be the belt of the treadmill.

Ok you’re right. But you haven’t covered the case when the speedometer is lying :)

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#158

Post by AlexTWithBeard » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

bleepblorp wrote: post #156

bb611 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll leave GP to answer the outrage comments, but I think the rest reasonably calls out for perspective. Merrick Garland wasn't just not confirmed, his nomination was ignored for 9.5 months. As you point out, it's not uncommon for opposition party senates to turn down supreme court nominees, as is their due. It is, however, extremely rare for them not to hear those nominations at all, and Garland's nomination timelin…

It's not accurate to imply that upcoming crises over USSC nominations will be the result of a Democratic power grab. More intense fights over control of the USSC will happen because the differential population growth between the states and the rigid allocation of Senate seats means that the USSC is being filled without benefit of the democratic consent of a majority of the American population. The fact that the USSC…

(putting my hard hat on)

I am not sure the consent of majority or for the perceived benefit of majority is the right way to go.

What if the majority of the class votes that Jenny now must go to all school events wearing nothing but stockings and lingerie?

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#159

Post by klyrs » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

nlitened wrote: post #157

klyrs wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I covered that. "The surface you're driving on" in this case would be the belt of the treadmill.

Ok you’re right. But you haven’t covered the case when the speedometer is lying :)

"Lying" or miscalibrated? Because I did mention calibration. My speedometer is the mechanical sort, because I drive an old beater. It's incapable of complex deception. If I was paranoid, I could easily verify that the cable is connected to the gearbox appropriately, and trace it up to my instrument panel in about 20 minutes.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#160

Post by bleepblorp » Thu, Sep 24, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #158

bleepblorp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not accurate to imply that upcoming crises over USSC nominations will be the result of a Democratic power grab. More intense fights over control of the USSC will happen because the differential population growth between the states and the rigid allocation of Senate seats means that the USSC is being filled without benefit of the democratic consent of a majority of the American population. The fact that the USSC…

(putting my hard hat on) I am not sure the consent of majority or for the perceived benefit of majority is the right way to go. What if the majority of the class votes that Jenny now must go to all school events wearing nothing but stockings and lingerie?

That's an arguable point; indeed it has been argued since at least Plato. No hard hat required as far as I'm concerned.

Excessive public representation can cause poor outcomes, (hard hat on) such as the governance problems in California caused by ballot initiatives. Letting the public write policy does not seem to lead to good outcomes in most circumstances.

However, representative democracy which combines the requirement that leaders secure consent of the governed with with normalized protections for individual rights seems to be the best system of governance humanity can come up with. Leaders, like employees, tend to do a better job if they can be fired for doing a bad job, and that is what the need for majority democratic consent provides. Protections for individual rights reduces the risk of individuals being harmed by mob rule, such as would be the case in the dress code problem in your post.

Indeed, most of the democratic world combines these principles to good effect. The US is an outlier among nominally democratic countries as it is governed without the consent of the majority.

Political systems that allow for governance without the consent of the majority allow rulers to act with impunity towards the majority and, as such have a very long history of abusing the majority. The kind of people who rise to the top of such systems tend not to be the kind of altruistic people who will govern in the interests of the public, and without any requirement for democratic consent they absolutely will not govern in the interests of the public. Indifference to majority needs, persecution, or even genocide, often follows.

Quite frankly, this is the situation the US has blundered into. Over the past few decades the US has gradually shifted from a polity where broad consent of the governed was essential into a situation where the constitutionally empowered minority (represented by the Republican party) has become increasingly abusive towards majority interests. Under Trump, the minority is now pursuing a platform specifically designed to antagonize--or even persecute--the majority. Fights over USSC nominations are just a part of this.

This isn't a good place for a country to be, especially as a large portion of the American ruling minority population is very pleased by the prospect of persecuting the majority.