Comment by 082349872349872
5 years ago
I agree that online virtual bullying mobs[1] are only a few steps[2] away from offline physical lynching mobs. Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24798617 for my thoughts on how to filter for authoritarian followers of whatever political persuasion.
How can "would score high" and "accepting of divergences from their beliefs" not be disjoint?
As far as I can tell, the author is not advocating to "cure" people for not voting his way, he's advocating to "cure" people who are tempted to use the bullet box instead of the ballot box[3] to make him live their way. I'm pretty sure classical liberals, being live and let live, would score very low on this test.
Thanks for reassuring me about Dreher and Evola[4], I was introduced to them via HN, so I have no idea how widespread their thought may be offline. Agree that Toole was writing a parody version of the question of political or theoretic lives which was treated in a serious manner by Boethius in Consolation of Philosophy and Hesse in The Glass Bead Game. I wouldn't be surprised if Dr. Talc (a substance useful when changing diapers?) didn't also have elements of self mockery.
[1] did I forget to mention that apparently former CPSU members scored highly on RWA? Examples of questions I think left wing authoritarian followers might score highly on in the current context: 1, 5, 7, 17, 19, 22. Maybe for the current times the author, who notes in the first chapter that in the early twenty-first century the times of quoting Chairman Mao were long over, ought to ask about the appropriate use of Madame Guillotine?
[2] In the context of online cancellation mobs, moving from "harassment" through "punish", "maim", and "torture", on to "liquidate". To me it seems the easiest way to address mob cancellation is to only allow termination for cause, but even that wouldn't have saved the NYT editor (who had published Cotton's OpEd sight unseen).
[3] bullet box metaphor lifted from an FBI indictment. For my sanity, I should stop reading those things. (but they're horribly fascinating: over here people bring rifles to the range, not to demos.)
[4] I get Ubuntu from Evola because he's always rabbiting on about the atomisation of modernity. I'm not sure quite what he's for, as he seems to take it for granted his readers already do, but given the expressed love of hierarchy, I think he's big on social relations:
Left wing ubuntu: symmetric, transitive, and reflexive
Right wing ubuntu: antisymmetric, transitive, and reflexive
not to mention keeping relations up not only with those alive today but also with those of our Tradition.
>How can "would score high" and "accepting of divergences from their beliefs" not be disjoint?
Simple: the scale, as I keep saying, is total bullshit. Someone's opinion on nudism or sexual dimorphism doesn't influence their day to day behavior or tendency to throw people out of helicopters in the way the author of the scale thinks they do. Hell; the Nazis were pro-nudist and an awful lot of them were screechingly gay (and all of them accepting of their screechingly gay comrades) ... in the 1920s and 30s, when that sort of thing was a lot less popular.
(a) which question has anything to do with sexual dimorphism?
(b) someone who is always clothed in company themselves but doesn't mind if others are sky-clad in private gatherings (such as a classical liberal, an economic conservative, or a normal republican) would answer +4 to:
Given that I believe private nudity is legal in the US[1], why should anyone respond otherwise, unless unaccepting of divergence from their beliefs?
(As for Nazis, what references do you have? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge#... shows the stereotypical pink triangles. For nudity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikörperkultur is a general german thing, not particularly Nazi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives#SA_le... was 1934.)
[1] based on my twentieth century experiences in US hot tubs and springs.
Q. how many californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. (rot13) Abar, pnyvsbeavnaf fperj va ubg ghof.
Ernst Röhm was the 2nd most important nazi before the night of the long knives and was an out homosexual[0]. The gayness of the nazis was a source of jokes and criticisms from the beginning. The pro-homosexual bias of fascists are so obvious, there are even books, generally by religious people, which assert, with considerable evidence, that fascism was entirely a homosexual phenomenon. This sort of thing doesn't fit the preposterous bias of the book you quote, which again is simply a list of the prejudices of the authors; more or less, the prejudices of late 20th century shitlibbery, against traditional christian people.
As for nazi nudity: go watch the movie "Olympiad." Or ... hell, just look at photos of the era[1]. A good fraction of them were neopagans as well; they probably invented the phrase "sky-clad."
>Given that I believe private nudity is legal in the US, why should anyone respond otherwise, unless unaccepting of divergence from their beliefs?
Are you joking? There are lots of things which are legal but which people might not be all together comfortable with. For example: gambling, smoking, eating live shellfish, having unprotected sex with 100s of people, going to Church on Sundays (I guarantee you there are people who see something wrong with this), remaining a virgin until you're married (ditto), getting falling down drunk, eating only vegetables: the list is endless. Nudism certainly falls into the category of something all kinds of people might not be all together comfortable with; both authoritarian and non-authoritarian; and in this case both American right wing and left wing people. Do you think Susan Fowler would have been happy if Uber had done its corporate retreats and a nudist camp? Don't tell me it's "inappropriate" -because if "there is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps" -how can it possibly be inappropriate to hang out with your colleagues with your junk hanging out?
[0]https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/.pr...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturism_in_Germany
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