Dude, who even knows.
Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 14 notes
Sex With Teenagers: The Next Generation
Okay, I’ve been saying for a while that the next turn of the culture will involve a revalorization of 70s-esque intergenerational sex with teenagers. And you’ve been like “konty, but how? we’ve so strongly stigmatized that!” and I just shrugged
Well, as time passes it becomes clear that is the mechanism, that we’ve encoded it with such stigma that people who came by after those 70s find it irresistible to appropriate for their own ends, try to pull too much weight with it, and have it all fall through.
Like, at this point in almost-2023, what is your first impression if I tell you someone is going off about pedophiles and groomers? Is it of “antis” saying something dumb and philistine, or is it of rightists saying something incredibly dumb intended to license violence in service of making society worse? Or just straight QAnon?
As that keeps up the reaction by anyone sensible will be to tune that out and take it as a mark of foul idiocy, which will come to include concern with things even 1998 might accept as constituting pedophilia or grooming.
When I get anons like this I just roll my eyes these days,
“Nice go-to smear. Would be a shame if someone were to… encode it with low-status valences”
So.
Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 7 notes
So, I think I have my bearings again post-election.
- In the culture arena, the 2010s-born commanding heights snot-left is shattered and turns on each other, Twitter as on-sides platform being disrupted is a big part
- They might be able to wring some backup there from DC, maybe 2 or 3 years from corporate America before they read the writing on the wall
- The Dems’ midterm Win! leaves them more or less where they were, getting a 51st senate seat gives them committee majorities so stuff comes to the floor quicker & easier, by itself the Senate confirms judges and like the GOP under Trump they do that singlemindedly, getting nearly as many in as Trump, albeit with the very best seats no longer open for filling
- The legislative uppity Dems either settle in for more service to the oldsters or mount an insurgency that either just gets slapped down or gets a few token wins to mask being slapped down
- The GOP in Congress is the same unstable mess it was, just now an unstably infighting one
- In particular they won’t manage to get out of the Dems’ way as they fight amongst themselves, and will give them things to unite against
- Biden pushes some economic stuff which fair, Reagan–Trump kept moving right even under Clinton and at least hardly left under Obama
- DeSantis displaces Trump before the primaries start
- The Supremes start to dismantle workplace/civil rights/(overlap) law
- Russia’s pullback from Ukrainian territory just conserves lives and materiel as it switches focus to “break NATO”. It at least chips it. Putin’s cultivated a militant “civil society” that pushes right as third parties, it gets a bit out of his control but the CIA can’t well build them up to take over
- States are firmly red or blue, and the blue ones get used as the best vehicle for liberalism just like the red ones. This makes life a bit insufferable with the cultural tide holding 3-5 years longer there, the bond market gets them in the end tho
I’ll come back to this tomorrow
Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 199 notes
If conservatives get a lock on the Supreme Court it would represent the culmination of multi-generational movements to undo its capture by progressivism since either 1937 (for the economic conservatives, the “switch in time that saved nine”) or the 1960s (for the sociocultural conservatives, the Warren Court)
But that does set it apart from other 2020 narratives of bills coming due or corruption through decay – the oil companies didn’t particularly want harsher weather, the law-and-order types didn’t want a backlash.
Social media companies wanted engagement thus ad revenue, not this public sphere. Unitary executive supporters wanted a civil service that acts like presidential elections mean something, not this pandemic.
But the Court, a lot of people for a long time wanted exactly this and put a lot of effort into it. Same as conservative media cultivating a more rightist electorate.
I mean, they wanted a more conservative Court, they put effort into building a judicial apparatus, they got it.
They wanted a more conservative electorate, they put effort into convincing them and they got it.
They wanted a more conservative legislature so they consolidated in the Republican Party, converted Southern Democrats, built up in statehouses, Newt Gingrich in the 80s, a Republican majority under Clinton, something like a conservative one under Obama…
Like all along, the “the current year” stuff, it’s now “it’s 2020, we can’t have a reactionary moment now!” And the response is “yeah, it’s 2020, we just finished our long march through the institutions, capturing them according to established procedures (as modified by established meta-procedures), this is exactly when we earned a reactionary moment!”
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When I got Darwin I had been looking for a Toyota 22R(E) pickup for a while, because I heard they’re reliable, simple to maintain and rugged - historically, the platform of choice for “technical” improvised combat vehicles.
Really was kind of getting up there though. I forgot what 80s vehicles were like - no power steering, power windows, airbags, cup holders, spare space in the cab… also the mechanics that specialized in them are calling it a life, just as after 30+ years the metal-on-metal parts were wearing and loosening.
But it was such bulletproof low maintenance though, is there anything equivalent today? I see lists like “the Corolla only costs $700/yr!” and no, I don’t mean cheap maintenance, I mean low maintenance. You only needed to change the oil regularly, the other fluids, tires, brake pads, and spark plugs occasionally, timing chain and tensioner every 100,000 miles, rebuild the engine head every 200,000, that was it.
The Tacoma? A Jeep? A Subaru? One of those #VanLife Euro commercial chassis? Hold out for electric? Bother looking for an imported Hilux? Look for an extended-cab with options from ‘94, last year for the 22R?
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Pleasantville (1998)’s message of “glad white people don’t feel the need to uphold the ‘50s anymore, that was tedious” was a better summation of the 90s than they knew
Post reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 46 notes
This is Not Normal: Selected Structural Anomalies in US Federal Politics, 1980-2000
(one-off ruptures, as distinct from bottom-turtle “power flows from the barrel of a gun” stuff or norm changes like the regularization of the filibuster, the end of earmarks or the decline of deference in Supreme Court confirmations from Bork on.)
Hinckley Shooting (1981)
69 days into his presidency, Ronald Reagan is shot in the lung. The shooting is seen in the lineage of “national hero” assassinations from Kennedy (1963) to King (1968) to Lennon (1980) which contributed to the sense of no “successful” presidency since Eisenhower
Taken to a public ER, prompt medical attention saves the jocular Reagan, breaking the streak in a visceral display of his “Morning in America” pledge to remoralize the country through sunny optimism.
Iran-Contra Affair (1985-1987)
Following Watergate, the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and the “Watergate babies” wave election of 1974, Congress moved to limit the power and autonomy of the executive, particularly over military and security services.
High-profile actions included the Church Committee and passage of the War Powers Act as legitimating rituals, but much leverage was made of Congress’ “power of the purse”, with a legitimating tradition back to the Magna Carta. The Impoundment Control Act removed Presidential volition in spending appropriated funds, which allowed the President to tack into the wind of Congressional opinion and was a major source of leverage over individual legislators.
(there were unsuccessful attempts to restore an equivalent in the 90s as the “line-item veto”)
More specific acts like the Boland and Clark Amendments, which prohibited aid to resistance groups in Angola and Nicaragua, moved to undercut executive desires to pursue Cold War proxy wars. During this period the Democrats were considered to have a lock on Congress while Republican strength was in the presidency and right-aligned theorists considered these Congressional acts improper trespasses on the President’s sovereign power over foreign policy.
The administration of Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) is remembered for a foreign policy that upheld not only the letter but the spirit of this new constraint and was considered a failure by anti-communists and large branches of the deep state for it.
In this climate, elements of the Reagan administration with at least the noninterference of POTUS himself end-ran the laws, supporting a forceful anti-communist posture. Figures up to the SecDef were indicted (and later pardoned by George H W Bush), but Congress could not generate the political will for impeachment and lacked any further enforcement mechanism. Congressional checks on the President became increasingly vestigial, retained as the pro forma AUMF.
Base Realignment and Closure (1988-)
Victorious in the Cold War, the United States was left with an unnecessarily large military footprint.
Military units, installations and the programs that supplied them had long been the subject of Congressional pork and logrolling at the margins, in a power politics system ill-suited to executing major shifts in a coherent way.
Accordingly, the regular process of appropriation-by-negotiation was circumvented in favor of appointing a commission of experts to make en bloc recommendations for the drawdown then ratified by legislators.
Ross Perot (1992)
A third-party Presidential candidate takes almost 19% of votes, the strongest ever third-party showing not by an ex-President.
Federal government shutdown (1995-6)
A power struggle between Democratic President Bill Clinton and a Congress under unified Republican control for the first time since the 1950s, the two sides could not agree to a budget and the federal government suspended “non-essential” operations for 4 total weeks. With the executive more united than a Congress still developing “responsible party government” parliamentary discipline, the Republicans yielded, though similar actions were attempted under the Obama administration with greater party coherence.
Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (1998)
a nationwide parategulatory regime over tobacco is established through settlement between leading companies and 46 state attorneys general.
The regime, which in ways resembled irregular-but-precedented systems like utility franchising and workman’s comp, was constructed this way rather than through Congress, the formally legitimate venue for interstate compacts, to circumvent friendly legislators from tobacco-growing constituencies or elected in open elections with industry support who might be expected to defend industry interests.
Bill Clinton impeachment (1999)
After recapturing both chambers of Congress in the Republican Revolution of 1996, the GOP was eager to assert its power against the Democratic executive (see shutdown, above).
A series of investigations were launched into President Bill Clinton, originally focusing on ethics in the operation of his political machine as Arkansas governor, expanding into any area thought to be a political vulnerability.
Eventually the second-ever impeachment of a US President was launched over the proximate issue of perjury under law regarding a sexual affair with a petty staffer, a matter that had come collateral to prior investigations.
The impeachment ended, like that of Andrew Johnson, in acquittal. (Nixon resigned in anticipation of a successful impeachment).
The act of Republicans to issue impeachment over matters tangential to government and of Democrats to vote for acquittal in the face of evidence were reciprocally considered norm-breaking in pursuit of power.
Bush v. Gore (2000)
coming down to a close and ambiguous result in Florida, the victor of the Presidential election of 2000 remained unclear for weeks after the vote and it became apparent that contested interpretations of election law would decide the winner.
In an unprecedented and non-precedent decision, the Supreme Court usurped the issue from lower courts and election boards to effectively decide the election in favor of Republican George W Bush, on a 5-4 court split that closely tracked the parties responsible for Justices’ appointments.
Photo reblogged from Kontextmaschine with 410 notes
This is a trainwreck on so many levels
OH SHIT
IT’S BEEN A PUTIN CONSPIRACY ALL ALONG
ALL OF IT