Political Roundtable Part XXX

[Pointgod]

John McWhorter making the argument for socioeconomic affirmative action rather than race-based affirmative action. I've thought that makes sense for some time. https://nyti.ms/3IDpywG

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Affirmative action is not a problem to people other than racist, entitled losers.

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Do you know who John McWhorter is?

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Yea I’m very familiar with John McWhorter, the linguistics professor who opines on subjects outside his expertise. I find his arguments pretty vapid, he’s the definition of enlightened centrist, who often “well actualies” the difference between Facists and anyone left of Joe Manchin. And just because he’s not racist himself, doesn’t mean racists don’t use him to legitimize their lame beliefs about affirmative action.

[Pointgod]

Harvard facing a case before the Supreme Court regarding their admission policies towards Asian students. It’s Time for an Honest Conversation About Affirmative Action https://nyti.ms/3gkhTaB

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This is nothing more than a Conservative right wing scam to enforce their white identity politics and deny opportunities to those they deem unworthy. Sadly they’ve roped some Asian students into this garbage. Just like what happened when the right wing started with CRT, then moved into banning books about the Holocaust, they’ll turn on Asians too once they’re done using them.

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Also fun fact

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It's amazing how they just "roped" some Asian students into this. Not at all condescending on your part. As for legacy admissions, I am against them.

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No it’s not condescending at all. It’s literally the same lawyer who tried to sue a University’s with a white girl, now using the same tactic with Asian students. Just like the case with Abigail Fisher, there are way more “unqualified” white students who got into Harvard than black and Latino students. Somehow the Asian students want to target the students of colour instead of the larger number of unqualified white students.

Ending the holistic applications are is going to help way more white students than it does Asian students which again was always the goal. I’ll repeat again, this will not have the result that these students expect. The main beneficiaries will be lawyers who will now have a ton of cases from similar losers who blame black and Latino students because of their entitlement.

[Benjammin]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/opinion/affirmative-action.html

He's also against legacy admissions advantages which most people (unless you're a legacy) would agree.

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[dckingsfan]

NYC has a great Covid dashboard. They are mostly through their omicron wave so the data can be analyzed for realistic trends. Lots of good news about vaccines and about the lower severity of omicron.

Here is the peak hospitalization rates per 100k:
Unvaccinated 764
Vaccinated 33

I am surprised by how effective the vaccines are looking versus omicron right now. The initial data was not nearly this optimistic.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily

[pancakes3]

1) you can't gripe about passing bills because it takes 2 to tango
2) you can gripe about incrementalism vs. substantive change, but that doesn't override the argument that at least dems are inching towards the right outcome while giving republicans a pass for running towards the wrong outcome
3) you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater in lumping in centrist dems with progressive dems whereas republicans are uniformly awful - even the "moderates" like Romney.

also note that arguing about the effectiveness of the dem party and the inner machinations, this is a political debate with merit.

however, i don't subscribe to TGW's writing off of republicans, or not wasting his breath on them. ignoring them allows them to operate with impugnity. saying the obvious stuff out loud is necessary.

[verbal8]

NYC has a great Covid dashboard. They are mostly through their omicron wave so the data can be analyzed for realistic trends. Lots of good news about vaccines and about the lower severity of omicron.

Here is the peak hospitalization rates per 100k:
Unvaccinated 764
Vaccinated 33

I am surprised by how effective the vaccines are looking versus omicron right now. The initial data was not nearly this optimistic.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page#daily

In general the adult vaccination rates(other than Kyrie Irving) in NYC are very good. However the numbers for 85+ are really surprisingly low - 63% full vaccinated.

[Zonkerbl]

I think if you believe capitalism is a disease that is destroying the planet and our collective sanity then you can't honestly support either party, they are both all in on capitalism. I suspect the large majority of people in this country intuitively understand that to be true, even if they don't articulate it that way. Republicans represent the top 10% of wealthy business owners and Democrats represent the top 10% of academic grinders, the two groups who are the only ones who benefit from capitalism, everyone else has to beg for scraps from their table and it's galling. I've said this before but I'm starting to ...

I went for a walk along the Anacostia yesterday morning and I was remembering how I used to tell my students at Indiana University how important it was to get an education, that you, I mean I didn't say it in so many words, but you basically didn't have a chance without one. I used to think getting an education was so you could be a better person, but now I wonder if it was just to prepare you to be ground up in the guts of late-stage capitalism. Is it good advice? Telling kids to get an education?

[I_Like_Dirt]

I think if you believe capitalism is a disease that is destroying the planet and our collective sanity then you can't honestly support either party, they are both all in on capitalism. I suspect the large majority of people in this country intuitively understand that to be true, even if they don't articulate it that way. Republicans represent the top 10% of wealthy business owners and Democrats represent the top 10% of academic grinders, the two groups who are the only ones who benefit from capitalism, everyone else has to beg for scraps from their table and it's galling. I've said this before but I'm starting to ...

I went for a walk along the Anacostia yesterday morning and I was remembering how I used to tell my students at Indiana University how important it was to get an education, that you, I mean I didn't say it in so many words, but you basically didn't have a chance without one. I used to think getting an education was so you could be a better person, but now I wonder if it was just to prepare you to be ground up in the guts of late-stage capitalism. Is it good advice? Telling kids to get an education?

Telling kids to get an education is good advice. Telling kids to mortgage their futures beyond any and all recovery in the name of education is bad advice. People giving the advice to get an education generally didn't realize just how bad education was going to get and how quickly so I tend to cut them some slack. Even now, this would be fixable with some heavy handed action that would hurt the wealthy and gut schools that keep the poor out by financial barriers (what's left of the middle class usually hates that second part).

As it is, I also think capitalism is long gone at this point. Adam Smith would be appalled right now (check out some of his stances on big landlords). It's supposed to balance economic greed with heavy government regulation and competition. We don't have capitalism anymore. We have corporatism. Instead of competing with each other, the psychopathic, greedy people who pursue money and power at all costs, consequences be damned, have figured out they're better off banding together to strip away all the regulations rather than competing against each other and they've done it by getting people addicted to putting costs on credit in ways they don't understand, like environmental degradation, or making it worse or others somehow so that everyone ultimately loses except the wealthy.

[Zonkerbl]

I think if you believe capitalism is a disease that is destroying the planet and our collective sanity then you can't honestly support either party, they are both all in on capitalism. I suspect the large majority of people in this country intuitively understand that to be true, even if they don't articulate it that way. Republicans represent the top 10% of wealthy business owners and Democrats represent the top 10% of academic grinders, the two groups who are the only ones who benefit from capitalism, everyone else has to beg for scraps from their table and it's galling. I've said this before but I'm starting to ...

I went for a walk along the Anacostia yesterday morning and I was remembering how I used to tell my students at Indiana University how important it was to get an education, that you, I mean I didn't say it in so many words, but you basically didn't have a chance without one. I used to think getting an education was so you could be a better person, but now I wonder if it was just to prepare you to be ground up in the guts of late-stage capitalism. Is it good advice? Telling kids to get an education?

Telling kids to get an education is good advice. Telling kids to mortgage their futures beyond any and all recovery in the name of education is bad advice. People giving the advice to get an education generally didn't realize just how bad education was going to get and how quickly so I tend to cut them some slack. Even now, this would be fixable with some heavy handed action that would hurt the wealthy and gut schools that keep the poor out by financial barriers (what's left of the middle class usually hates that second part).

As it is, I also think capitalism is long gone at this point. Adam Smith would be appalled right now (check out some of his stances on big landlords). It's supposed to balance economic greed with heavy government regulation and competition. We don't have capitalism anymore. We have corporatism. Instead of competing with each other, the psychopathic, greedy people who pursue money and power at all costs, consequences be damned, have figured out they're better off banding together to strip away all the regulations rather than competing against each other and they've done it by getting people addicted to putting costs on credit in ways they don't understand, like environmental degradation, or making it worse or others somehow so that everyone ultimately loses except the wealthy.

To put it differently, everything Marx predicted would happen 150 years ago is finally coming true - not the "the people will inevitably rise up in revolution" part, but the "the capital owning class will raise barriers to entry so that they can continue to extract value from the working class". It started with Reagan, and now we're seeing what the kids call "late stage capitalism" - wild income inequality, enormous barriers to investing in your own human capital, the ultra-wealthy using propaganda to set one set of poor people against another, so that they can keep calling the shots, etc. etc.. It's capitalism, but it's a capitalist dystopia.

We live in post scarcity world. We have all the food, clothing, shelter, healthcare that anyone needs. It's a technological miracle. And yet there's still poverty, because the ultra wealthy won't let us transition to a post-scarcity reality.

[I_Like_Dirt]

I think if you believe capitalism is a disease that is destroying the planet and our collective sanity then you can't honestly support either party, they are both all in on capitalism. I suspect the large majority of people in this country intuitively understand that to be true, even if they don't articulate it that way. Republicans represent the top 10% of wealthy business owners and Democrats represent the top 10% of academic grinders, the two groups who are the only ones who benefit from capitalism, everyone else has to beg for scraps from their table and it's galling. I've said this before but I'm starting to ...

I went for a walk along the Anacostia yesterday morning and I was remembering how I used to tell my students at Indiana University how important it was to get an education, that you, I mean I didn't say it in so many words, but you basically didn't have a chance without one. I used to think getting an education was so you could be a better person, but now I wonder if it was just to prepare you to be ground up in the guts of late-stage capitalism. Is it good advice? Telling kids to get an education?

Telling kids to get an education is good advice. Telling kids to mortgage their futures beyond any and all recovery in the name of education is bad advice. People giving the advice to get an education generally didn't realize just how bad education was going to get and how quickly so I tend to cut them some slack. Even now, this would be fixable with some heavy handed action that would hurt the wealthy and gut schools that keep the poor out by financial barriers (what's left of the middle class usually hates that second part).

As it is, I also think capitalism is long gone at this point. Adam Smith would be appalled right now (check out some of his stances on big landlords). It's supposed to balance economic greed with heavy government regulation and competition. We don't have capitalism anymore. We have corporatism. Instead of competing with each other, the psychopathic, greedy people who pursue money and power at all costs, consequences be damned, have figured out they're better off banding together to strip away all the regulations rather than competing against each other and they've done it by getting people addicted to putting costs on credit in ways they don't understand, like environmental degradation, or making it worse or others somehow so that everyone ultimately loses except the wealthy.

To put it differently, everything Marx predicted would happen 150 years ago is finally coming true - not the "the people will inevitably rise up in revolution" part, but the "the capital owning class will raise barriers to entry so that they can continue to extract value from the working class". It started with Reagan, and now we're seeing what the kids call "late stage capitalism" - wild income inequality, enormous barriers to investing in your own human capital, the ultra-wealthy using propaganda to set one set of poor people against another, so that they can keep calling the shots, etc. etc.. It's capitalism, but it's a capitalist dystopia.

We live in post scarcity world. We have all the food, clothing, shelter, healthcare that anyone needs. It's a technological miracle. And yet there's still poverty, because the ultra wealthy won't let us transition to a post-scarcity reality.

Absolutely. The catch with Marx is that he didn't actually resolve the issue at hand either. The greediest, most self-centered and most ruthless (while hiding that ruthlessness behind a veil of some sort - see shifting production overseas where labor standards aren't a real thing) tend to be the most motivated and as such disproportionately rise to the top.

What Marx essentially proposed was a new form of human evolution - I actually think Star Trek the Next Generation did it better but that's just me. It doesn't really matter what the system looks like so much as we get a stronger collectivist attitude which includes not just everyone else alive today, but also those that haven't been born yet. That's a huge hurdle for when we have suburbanites who have already generally insulated themselves from the bigger societal issues who still won't vote progressive, instead opting to try for more insulation rather than resolving the problems so they don't have to fear them.

[Zonkerbl]

Yeah Marx was much better at observing problems with the current system than proposing workable solutions. There are solutions that make capitalism work better, but what is the solution to capitalism?

[TGW]

This is banana republic levels of ridiculousness:

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[Pointgod]

I think if you believe capitalism is a disease that is destroying the planet and our collective sanity then you can't honestly support either party, they are both all in on capitalism. I suspect the large majority of people in this country intuitively understand that to be true, even if they don't articulate it that way. Republicans represent the top 10% of wealthy business owners and Democrats represent the top 10% of academic grinders, the two groups who are the only ones who benefit from capitalism, everyone else has to beg for scraps from their table and it's galling. I've said this before but I'm starting to ...

I went for a walk along the Anacostia yesterday morning and I was remembering how I used to tell my students at Indiana University how important it was to get an education, that you, I mean I didn't say it in so many words, but you basically didn't have a chance without one. I used to think getting an education was so you could be a better person, but now I wonder if it was just to prepare you to be ground up in the guts of late-stage capitalism. Is it good advice? Telling kids to get an education?

I don’t know why Americans act like they’re the only capitalistic country and free market country in the world. There are several examples of capitalistic countries that have met their climate goals, reduced income inequality and have a number of social safety nets. The problem with the U.S. is that it practices crony capitalism and legalized bribery in the form of lobbying and dark money. Getting rid of that is one way to address the issues, but the other issues are that public service should actually be serving the public, not making side deals and securing favourable connections for when you’re out of office.

And the problem with TGW’s analysis is that he acts like Democrats are a monolith. His talking points are straight from Jimmy Dore, Kyle Kulinski, Breaking Points and all the clowns that try to paint both parties as the same. The Democratic Party is the definition of a big tent, I reject the premise that they’re only for academics and big tech. You can’t claim that people like Bernie, Sherrod Brown, Katie Porter are the same as Republicans. Where have Republicans wanted to reform the tax code, or ever been pro worker rights, or cut child poverty in half? The problem is that people expect instant results and instead of voting in better politicians (**** Joe Manchin and Cinema) they give up and let Republicans win (cough Virginia) and then when things get bad want Democrats to clean up the mess, but never take proactive action and keep Republicans from getting into power.

[Zonkerbl]

I think if you believe capitalism is a disease that is destroying the planet and our collective sanity then you can't honestly support either party, they are both all in on capitalism. I suspect the large majority of people in this country intuitively understand that to be true, even if they don't articulate it that way. Republicans represent the top 10% of wealthy business owners and Democrats represent the top 10% of academic grinders, the two groups who are the only ones who benefit from capitalism, everyone else has to beg for scraps from their table and it's galling. I've said this before but I'm starting to ...

I went for a walk along the Anacostia yesterday morning and I was remembering how I used to tell my students at Indiana University how important it was to get an education, that you, I mean I didn't say it in so many words, but you basically didn't have a chance without one. I used to think getting an education was so you could be a better person, but now I wonder if it was just to prepare you to be ground up in the guts of late-stage capitalism. Is it good advice? Telling kids to get an education?

I don’t know why Americans act like they’re the only capitalistic country and free market country in the world. There are several examples of capitalistic countries that have met their climate goals, reduced income inequality and have a number of social safety nets. The problem with the U.S. is that it practices crony capitalism and legalized bribery in the form of lobbying and dark money. Getting rid of that is one way to address the issues, but the other issues are that public service should actually be serving the public, not making side deals and securing favourable connections for when you’re out of office.

And the problem with TGW’s analysis is that he acts like Democrats are a monolith. His talking points are straight from Jimmy Dore, Kyle Kulinski, Breaking Points and all the clowns that try to paint both parties as the same. The Democratic Party is the definition of a big tent, I reject the premise that they’re only for academics and big tech. You can’t claim that people like Bernie, Sherrod Brown, Katie Porter are the same as Republicans. Where have Republicans wanted to reform the tax code, or ever been pro worker rights, or cut child poverty in half? The problem is that people expect instant results and instead of voting in better politicians (**** Joe Manchin and Cinema) they give up and let Republicans win (cough Virginia) and then when things get bad want Democrats to clean up the mess, but never take proactive action and keep Republicans from getting into power.

We don't have a centuries long history of periodic peasant uprisings and it shows

[dobrojim]

Finished reading The Sum of Us (Heather McGhee) last night. Good book.
It somehow manages to be at least a little hopeful by the end.

So my focus now shifts to Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown, a gift from my daughter.

Here's something that Youngkin should, but probably wont, take to heart.

from page 62 in a section called "Places we go when it's beyond us"
Awe, wonder, confusion, curiosity, interest, surprise

re confusion

In an article in Fast Company, Mary Slaughter and David Rock with the NeuroLeadership
Institute write, " To be effective, learning needs to be effortful. That's not to say anything
that makes learning easier is counterproductive-- or that all unpleasant learning is effective.
The key here is desirable difficulty. The same way you feel a muscle 'burn' when it's
being strengthened, the brain needs to feel some discomfort when it's learning. Your mind
might hurt for a while -- but that's a good thing." Comfortable learning environments
rarely lead to deep learning.

That last sentence is a philosophy that those involved in this White backlash to
accurate history in education ought to take to heart.

[Wizardspride]

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[Zonkerbl]

I don't know how to verify this statistically. Anyone know how to get detailed competitive swimming times?

I think your average trans female athlete/swimmer/wrestler/whatever is going to 1) be a mediocre athlete on average and also 2) once the drugs start working properly will not have any physical advantage other than perhaps being tall

There is basically zero chance that even the best trans swimmer in the world would be able to beat an olympic quality cis female swimmer. Maybe at lower levels of competition, maybe early on in the transition, but generally speaking this is a non issue.

I think there is that one runner who naturally has a lot of testosterone but that's not a trans person, that's an extraordinarily gifted person. They didn't disqualify Michael Jordan for being able to jump higher than everyone else. We celebrated it.

Edit: Caster Semenya

[doclinkin]

I don't know how to verify this statistically. Anyone know how to get detailed competitive swimming times?

I think your average trans female athlete/swimmer/wrestler/whatever is going to 1) be a mediocre athlete on average and also 2) once the drugs start working properly will not have any physical advantage other than perhaps being tall

There is basically zero chance that even the best trans swimmer in the world would be able to beat an olympic quality cis female swimmer. Maybe at lower levels of competition, maybe early on in the transition, but generally speaking this is a non issue.

Trans college swimmer crushing records:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/01/10/lia-thomas-penn-transgender-swimmer/

[Pointgod]

I think if you believe capitalism is a disease that is destroying the planet and our collective sanity then you can't honestly support either party, they are both all in on capitalism. I suspect the large majority of people in this country intuitively understand that to be true, even if they don't articulate it that way. Republicans represent the top 10% of wealthy business owners and Democrats represent the top 10% of academic grinders, the two groups who are the only ones who benefit from capitalism, everyone else has to beg for scraps from their table and it's galling. I've said this before but I'm starting to ...

I went for a walk along the Anacostia yesterday morning and I was remembering how I used to tell my students at Indiana University how important it was to get an education, that you, I mean I didn't say it in so many words, but you basically didn't have a chance without one. I used to think getting an education was so you could be a better person, but now I wonder if it was just to prepare you to be ground up in the guts of late-stage capitalism. Is it good advice? Telling kids to get an education?

I don’t know why Americans act like they’re the only capitalistic country and free market country in the world. There are several examples of capitalistic countries that have met their climate goals, reduced income inequality and have a number of social safety nets. The problem with the U.S. is that it practices crony capitalism and legalized bribery in the form of lobbying and dark money. Getting rid of that is one way to address the issues, but the other issues are that public service should actually be serving the public, not making side deals and securing favourable connections for when you’re out of office.

And the problem with TGW’s analysis is that he acts like Democrats are a monolith. His talking points are straight from Jimmy Dore, Kyle Kulinski, Breaking Points and all the clowns that try to paint both parties as the same. The Democratic Party is the definition of a big tent, I reject the premise that they’re only for academics and big tech. You can’t claim that people like Bernie, Sherrod Brown, Katie Porter are the same as Republicans. Where have Republicans wanted to reform the tax code, or ever been pro worker rights, or cut child poverty in half? The problem is that people expect instant results and instead of voting in better politicians (**** Joe Manchin and Cinema) they give up and let Republicans win (cough Virginia) and then when things get bad want Democrats to clean up the mess, but never take proactive action and keep Republicans from getting into power.

We don't have a centuries long history of periodic peasant uprisings and it shows

Maybe it’s because human beings learned that a constant cycle of uprisings and violence does not generally leave people off better in the long run. Any system that replaced capitalism would eventually also succumb to the same revolution and it rarely makes it better for the people on the bottom. It’s not that I don’t believe a collectivist ideology couldn’t work, it’s just that for it to work would require a selfless, benelovent dictator which to my knowledge has never existed in history.

[Wizardspride]

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