General Discussion

When Trump was reelected, there was gushing over “transactionalism”.

This is a fusion I have seen sincd around 2009 (I definitely tie this to parasitic technology companies like Facebook and Google encroaching into every sector from publicly funded science to medicine to presumably other sectors. A creepy guy called Alex Pentland was trashed by Shoshana Zuboff a bunch and she nailed him.).

The 2024 election did not surprise me. I found it so fatuous in 2016 etc when people would keep parroting the superficial stuff Zuckerberg, Pichai, Vance, Megyn Kelly etc would say, while bts this genuinely undemocratic and corrupt machine was operating.
It strained my relationship with the lab that inducted me into this.

The discourses in these societies are so stupid and as a DUer pointed out upthread, it really has this GoTeam crap. It is two different crappy dynamics.
You are not helping anyone from the left when you cannot acknowledge that women’s rights and the environment getting thrown away so only a specific type of left is allowed; a Go Team support of Epstein survivors but narrowly to take down Trump, but still ignoring why one supports them and attacking women when it is this guy.


You gotta have a consistent enlightenment worldview which is the only way out of something arbitrary and tribal where affordability okay, but stealthily kicking out women’s rights and the environment and promoting natalism. Or this centrist establishment bs. Let alone the gop.

Its really like tribal warlord thing. A rape! Was it my team?!!!! Omg those poor women! Oh the our guys. Yeah those women are lying..


I do not understand how people like this think.
Yeah we all have to cooperate.

And okay even I consider this purity:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/05/can-the-love-of-menswear-be-justified-in-a-time-of-global-crisis

I love Current Affairs, but that’s so typical left..I have such things too, but I try to hide them so centrists cannot shove me out.

I actually really like that author. He wrote one of the most insightful pieces I have seen in the last few years articulating stuff I could not:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/there-are-many-threats-to-humanity.-a-low-birth-rate-isnt-one-of-them

Which is why I that other piece is excellent to use as a sample of where even I go..okay see this is purity.

Because I am finding terms like nuance, grey area, purity etc exploited in contexts that are outrageously sleazy.

Like this:

https://www.science.org/content/article/meet-three-scientists-who-said-no-epstein

Why didn’t Agus just tell Epstein why he was unwilling to meet?

It is being a “moralist” to not consider Epstein just outside anything that can reasonably be considered civilized society?

Between the type of left I have an affinity for like Sam going on about menswear and this Agus guy, at many times this whole human society venture has just seemed doomed..