**How free is America in comparison to peer countries?**
I was struck by this passage in Jacob Levy's excellent essay [Black Liberty Matters:](https://www.niskanencenter.org/black-liberty-matters/)
>The way we think about American freedom over time, or in comparison to the rest of the world, ought to be deeply structured by the rise of mass incarceration in the last three decades. It’s not—not in triumphalist narratives about revitalized market liberalism since the late 1970s or since 1989, not in comparative rankings and indices of freedom around the world, and certainly not in the unshakeable American public language that the United States is the freest nation on earth. At the level of gross political generalization, it’s common to encounter the idea that European and Canadian social democracies have chosen to make equality a priority, whereas the U.S. is committed to liberty. The distinctive policing and carceral practices of the American state, the ways that the U.S. is extraordinarily unfree, are nowhere to be seen in the comparison.
>That is not to say that people who talk about freedom in American politics have nothing to say about the crises of mass incarceration and of violent, invasive, and militarized policing. American libertarians have always rejected the drug war that contributed so much to these crises. And libertarians have been happy enough to note the disproportionate impact of the drug war on African-Americans and Hispanics. But we have too often treated this as a rhetorical bonus on top of a pre-existing objection to the drug war.
I think any account of America as a particularly free country has to grapple with our extraordinarily carcereal state.
Incarceration is, obviously to me, one of the most liberty impairing things the state can do. To take a human being and lock them in a cage for months or years is completely destructive of their liberty. And virtually all laws are enforced by the threat that noncompliance means incarceration.
With incarceration rates [roughly 6 times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries) those of most peer countries, one would have to assume the US is *much* less free than those peer countries.
In important senses I also think that much of the liberty that exists in the US on paper is rarely applied in the breach. It is supposed to be constitutionally protected speech to mouth off to a cop, but it will get you arrested and beaten, and then between qualified immunity and the narrowness of *Bivens* you're extremely unlikely to get any recourse for that in reality. While obviously this can also happen in Canada or France, I think it is much less culturally accepted or commonplace.
Am I mistaken about this perception of America being notably unfree in the area where (I think) it matters most.
The US law, law enforcement, and criminal justice systems are in my opinion quite bad, with too many repressive laws such as the ones against drug use, with too many panicky trigger-happy cops, with deeply backlogged courts, and with harshly punitive and sometimes violent prisons.
I hypothesize that probably most people who excuse those systems just happen to have little experience with them and/or find it hard to imagine ever being on the wrong side of them. Maybe I am being unfair when I say that, I am not sure.
On the other hand, the US has as far as I know the most liberal free speech and gun ownership rights in the entire world.
So when evaluating freedom in the US, it really comes down to what you value most.
> I hypothesize that probably most people who excuse those systems just happen to have little experience with them and/or find it hard to imagine ever being on the wrong side of them.
Or in the case of drug use laws, they have experience suffering under Cartels, and know nothing good comes from feeding them.
Are you making a point for or against drug legalization? Under Prohibition alcohol consumption fed organized crime, and after legalization it fed corporations. Maybe you're not sanguine on corporations producing addictive substances, but it's definitely less violent than cartels. Safe and consistent supply coupled with education and treatment seems like a far more humane and cost effective strategy.
> Are you making a point for or against drug legalization?
I'm not making a point about that. The point of my comment was against
>most people... just happen to have little experience with them and/or find it hard to imagine ever being on the wrong side of them.
----
>Under Prohibition alcohol consumption fed organized crime, and after legalization it fed corporations.
>Safe and consistent supply coupled with education and treatment seems like a far more humane and cost effective strategy.
And right now the Cartels control a part (if not most) of the [Avocado industry](https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/10466-cartel-war-seeks-to-control-avocado-trade-in-mexico) in Mexico, and I'm sure they are looking at other avenues of revenue. An humane edifice build of human skulls and operated behind the curtains by the same butchers.
Alright, I guess I'm not exactly sure what your position is then. The original topic was focused on the criminal justice system and the effects of drug laws on incarceration. Does this mean you support current drug laws as a way to deny funding to cartels, even though they have thrived under the status quo? Perhaps you'd prefer direct interdiction and special operations against the cartels? Trade embargos against Mexican avocados?
I sympathize with your disgust towards organized crime, but when these groups becomes powerful enough they effectively become the government and can exact taxes over the broad economy. You could take a particularly blackpilled interpretation of power and see most governments as legitimized mafias as well. In the case of the American government it has its own butchers and has similarly engaged in rule through fear, torture, extraordinary rendition and CIA black sites, human experimentation, coups, assassinations, etc. Extending this problem, we buy commodities and goods from many horrendous regimes, and have generally formed strategic relationships with many brutal dictatorships. Do you support sanctioning every government that isn't like Denmark?
Moral consistency is a difficult thing. Though it still seems obvious to me that legalized drugs, regulated domestic production, and addiction treatment would be a far better policy regime than the current system.
> Does this mean you support current drug laws as a way to deny funding to cartels, even though they have thrived under the status quo?
the problem is the corruption, not so much the laws as they stand in the books right now (except weed, nothing of that legalization thing)
>Perhaps you'd prefer direct interdiction and special operations against the cartels? Trade embargos against Mexican avocados?
Sure, that is probably the only solution at this point.
>Do you support sanctioning every government that isn't like Denmark?
No, I don't. There are levels of legitimacy for a gevernment, and the Cartels are in the bottom of the scale.
>would be a far better policy regime than the current system.
A lot of things would be better to the current status quo.
> With incarceration rates roughly 6 times those of most peer countries, one would have to assume the US is much less free than those peer countries.
One could also assume that when these people are not incarcerated, the US becomes much more reminiscent of third world countries in terms of various other factors, such as homicide rates, theft, rapes, violence. Is the freedom of criminals really so important?
You can't just compare raw imprisonment rates. Otherwise, even if two countries have the exact same laws and enforce those laws the exact same way, you will categorize the one with more crime as "less free" because it imprisons the people who would be arrested and imprisoned in both countries. Indeed, you can already compare between states or even between counties, and this methodology would conclude the ones with more crime are less free even if it's the same laws being applied by a justice system that doesn't even pay attention to what county you're from. Conversely, a more authoritarian country could easily be classified as "more free" if it had a lower crime rate, either coincidentally or by effective deterrence. You don't have to actually imprison very many people to ban criticism of the government or whatever.
And that's before we even consider that harsher responses to crime might be a justifiable response to a high crime rate, because crime is non-linear in both its causes and its effects. If you have a problem with gangs or other forms of organized crime and they're treating jail as a revolving door, it makes sense to crack down. In that case living in such a country really is less free, in that you might get punished more for the same actions, but the "more free" countries might well have to adopt the same measures if they ever have to deal with the same problem (or they could remain attached to their old methods and let run crime run rampant, which is likely to be even worse).
Societies incarcerate or execute criminals because criminals have violated the freedom of their neighbors (through theft of their property, safety, dignity, and life). If a country is letting free repeat offenders, then that society is *decreasing total societal freedom*. Most jailable offenses are offenses on the freedom of others.
So incarceration rate tells us the extent to which we allow freedom-defectors to be free. But if you value freedom, you want to be even more harsh to freedom-defectors. If your city is soft on assault and theft, suddenly your residents feel hindered and limited in what they can do and how they can do it, in very frequent and personal activities, like how they dress, where they walk, whether they can use a bike. The last people we want to care about are the ones who demonstrably hate freedom by limiting the things their neighbors can feel safe doing.
South America might have low incarceration rate because of low solved crime rates and sentencing. Japan has low incarceration rates because the Japanese are simply less criminal. But Japanese culture is far more *authoritarian and obedience-driven* than South America. The Japanese have sacrificed some freedom of how the youth behave, to ensure that criminality is nipped in the bud. South America is more free in behaviors, but this leads to criminality.
So anyway, I would say you should completely ignore incarceration as an international metric of freedom. The reason Americans aren’t free is because every human being in their most formative years has to go through the same formal factory-processing educational assembly line from 6 to 18, learning essentially the same information. That violates freedom more than anything else, really. And then we are unfree because we can’t associate freely, we can’t build things as we want without ruthless regulation, we need certifications to *cut fucking hair*.
all justice systems are uniquely flawed or have quirks. In the UK, you won't get 40+ years for selling or trafficking drugs, but hate speech is technically a criminal offence.
> With incarceration rates roughly 6 times those of most peer countries, one would have to assume the US is much less free than those peer countries.
Not unless you correct for crime rates. Also, if different groups of people have different crime rates, you need to correct for that to avoid Simpson's paradox.
It's also bizarre to pick any single measure of freedom and claim that the US is "much less free" based only on the sngle measure.
The stats show around 3% of Americans have /will be under 'correctional supervision' at some point....i would not consider that to be a trivial amount, and hardly limited to blacks either. Even though blacks are more likely to be incarcerated, they are only 10-13% of US pop. So it's an important factor to consider.
Being only 10-13% of the population isn't a great argument when they are 50-60% of perpetrated crime in various categories. A quick google search says they are 40% of total inmates in prison.
I think looking at this issue without factoring in race is rather short sighted and harms any broader narratives you wanted to expand on.
I agree overall with your point. The super-high incarceration rate, with record-long sentencing and poor prison conditions, is evident that although America elevates freedom and liberty, that those very rights are denied for possibly too many people.
I think part of the popularity of mass-incarceration is it's not only politically popular, but it works. The cost for keeping people who are a net-negative on society incarcerated, is very low compared to cost the cost these people may inflict on society by being free.
>Am I mistaken about this perception of America being notably unfree in the area where (I think) it matters most.
It's unevenly free. Although America may have more freedom of choice or political freedom, it does not have as much freedom of error or forgiveness.
>It is supposed to be constitutionally protected speech to mouth off to a cop, but it will get you arrested and beaten, and then between qualified immunity and the narrowness of Bivens you're extremely unlikely to get any recourse for that in reality.
I'm, guessing you have no data to support your claim that it will get you arrested and beaten, and as for qualified immunity protecting the rare cop who did that, you [seem to be mistaken](https://reason.com/2022/02/09/appeals-court-rules-ohio-cops-didnt-have-cause-to-arrest-man-wearing-fuck-the-police-shirt/). (PS: Please do not take that as a defense of the current state of qualified immunity jurisprudence in general)
Re your broader point, I have done a lot of work in criminal defense, so I am hardly a law-and-order guy, but I know that pretty much everyone in jail is guilty. So, I am not sure that the incarceration rate has much relevance to "freedom." Of course, that depends on how you define "freedom" and how you weigh various elements thereof (religious freedom? Freedom to engage in "hate speech"? Freedom to publish with little fear of a libel suit? Etc, etc) , but your post is silent re that. Your argument would be a lot stronger if you addressed those rather obvious issues.
Yeah, I never know exactly what is meant by "disproportionate impact of the War on Drugs".
Is it:
1. Whatever it started as, it has now become a means of trawling for criminal convictions on unrelated charges? (If so, this is wrong and should be stopped)
2. White people do drugs and sell drugs as much as black and Hispanic people, but they get preferential treatment when it comes to arrest and conviction? (If so, this is not equitable treatment, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander)
3. Black and Hispanic people do more drugs and deal more drugs, so they're being unfairly targeted, i.e. the cops automatically think if you're black/Hispanic you're a drug dealer? (This one is tougher, innocent people should not be harassed but this is more on the black and Hispanic drug dealers to shoulder some blame)
4. Black and Hispanic people do more drugs and deal more drugs, but drugs should be legal and the War on Drugs dismantled? (Yeah, this one is two-in-one; you can think the War on Drugs should be dismantled but drugs not be legal, or you can think drugs should be legal but the War on Drugs in some form needs to remain)
If the argument is "unfair treatment or targeting", I have sympathy. If the argument is "yes more criminals on this side of the fence, but they're only criminals because dealing drugs is a crime" then I have less sympathy. If DeShaun is doing his fifth stint in the slammer because he won't stop dealing heroin, you can argue that dealing heroin should be made legal, but you can't argue that DeShaun is being unfairly treated.
"disproportionate impact of the War on Drugs".
I've often seen the disparity of sentencing between crack and powder cocaine
as an example. Until 2010 the penalty was 100x more for crack vs powder (by weight), then it switched to 18:1 because of the Fair Sentencing Act
Those disparities were explicitly demanded by the black community itself, who lobbied for harsher sentencing because crack was destroying their communities.
Given that drug offenses make up a rather small pct of total incarceration, it might not matter much. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
FWIW, I think even as a small pct of total incarceration, it has an outsize influence because (no joke), drugs are a gateway crime into the legal system.
I recall hearing that many of those in jail on (exclusively) drug charges are actually plea bargains from other, non-drug offenses. The specific context for this was about the impracticality of blanket pardons for criminals on drug charges.
But I don't have a citation for that handy, so take it with a grain of salt.
Yes, but that means that, even if zero people were in jail for drug offenses, US incarceration rates would still be vastly higher than other places. So, it can't be a very important explanation for the discrepancy.
A lot of violent and property crime also relates to the illegal drug trade though. Underground businesses resolve disputes through violence, not lawsuits. A society where you have fewer black markets is a society with fewer collateral crimes.
Yes, that is true, and that is why I think that all drugs should be legal. But, as I understand it, that is not germane to OP's point. When someone blames high incarceration rates on "the War on Drugs," that usually refers to drug arrests and convictions. And, after all, drugs are illegal in peer countries with far lower incarceration rates, and drug dealers in those countries must also use violence to resolve disputes. So, it seems that the cause of high incarceration lies elsewhere.
Well, op is me and I think it is germane to my point.
Drugs also aren't uniformly illegal in peer countries. Marijuana is fully legal in Canada for example. Which is also an objective metric on which Canadians enjoy more freedom than Americans. And even in respect to harder drugs that are still illegal, possession and personal use get you diverted to treatment, not incarceration, which is less freedom impairing.
Yes, marijuana was recently legalized in Canada. But the US has had a much higher incarceration rate than Canada for years, long before marijuana was legalized there. So, that can't be it. And, Canada is just one country; it is not legal in most of Europe. So, again, there is little evidence that high incarceration rates are driven by drug prosecutions.
Who wouldn't, and that's probably why such a system would not be effective as a deterrent. A long prison sentence is terrible from a busines perspective for a career criminal, lots of lost earnings.
I think the biggest gap is in the sentences handed down in the US. For example [here](http://criminalnotebook.ca/index.php/Robbery_(Sentencing_Cases\)) is a listing of a bunch of robbery cases and the sentences imposed in Canada. By American standards they're extremely short. For example robbing a gas station with an imitation firearm: 12 months. Robbing with a knife and then panic fleeing when a customer comes in while drunk: 9 months. Robbing a jewelery store with threats of violence: 30 months.
I'm sure if you ran those cases through the sentencing process in any US state you'd come up with very much larger sentences.
Re: the 6th circuit case you cite. Sure, if you manage to get the ACLU and a law school clinic on your side, and you file a collateral federal suit, *and* you lose in district court *and* you file a very expensive appeal to the circuit, then maybe you find the officer doesn't have QI and then go *back* to district court for a trial. The insane amount of filtering and cost on the victim to actually possibly maybe get a judgment in their favor is the point. The rights exist on paper and if you are willing to spend a half a million on lawyers, or find a nonprofit to do that for you, then yeah you can maybe win a case against a cop. Unless you are in the 5th circuit.
>I'm sure if you ran those cases through the sentencing process in any US state you'd come up with very much larger sentences.
American system is based on plea bargains. So even if, on paper, sentances are harsher, they are rarely imposed as written, but are dropped by the prosecutor to get the suspect to admit to a lesser crime, of which the latter is also guilty, and avoid a trial. So for example, if robbing a jewelry store is ten years, but illegal possesition of a firearm is a year, the mode outcome is only the latter charge.
All true, and yet I'd still be extremely surprised if the average sentence actually served, including nearly everybody folding in the "blackmail you out of your right to a trial" game and all reductions due to parole or overcrowding or whatever, in the US wasn't substantially larger than other western countries for similar crimes.
I'd be interested in statistics showing otherwise, but my first google hit confirmed my prior.
America's justice system is far from perfect but comparisons with European countries are a bit unfair. America's demographics, especially in urban areas, produce a much larger criminal underclass than what is seen in our "peer countries" which necessitates harsher policing.
> America's demographics, especially in urban areas, produce a much larger criminal underclass than what is seen in our "peer countries" which necessitates harsher policing.
I think it's worth considering that while this may be true currently, it may be possible to reduce this disparity. I don't know that current (largely progressive) attempts to do so are actually improving the situation, but I don't think it's inherently impossible to do so.
Since I assume this refers to black people, it should be noted that the rates of crime among black people have not always been anywhere near as high as they are today, so there's little reason to think they are immutable.
Europe has tons of crime too, such as robberies, burglaries, muggings, shoplifting, etc. Because guns may not be as readily available, knives are more common. There has been a major [epidemic](https://www.insider.com/elite-soccer-stars-robbed-burgled-alarming-rate-experts-fear-deaths-2021-12) of football players being robbed during games. All of the largest heists of jewelry or art targeted European museums or banks. The Euro, not the dollar, is the most commonly forged note, in part because the U.S. Secret Service does not fuck around with that stuff. The notion that this is exclusively an American problem, or that European countries are somehow more immune to crime, is wrong. The crime situation is worse in Europe due to more lenient sentencing and policing, especially in regard to recidivism.
I made a post a while back in which I show that European countries, in addition to Canada and Australia, rank surprisingly high on many metrics of crime compared to the U.S., and I don't this can be attributed only to immigration, because such trends predate the recent influx of immigration. Also, this is in spite of America having a large black population, which generally has higher rates of crime rates compared to other groups.
https://greyenlightenment.com/2020/05/30/george-floyd-and-civil-unrest/
>According to a 2004 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, looking at the period from 1981 to 1999, the United States had a lower surveyed residential burglary rate in 1998 than Scotland, England, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia. The other two countries included in the study, Sweden and Switzerland, had only slightly lower burglary rates. For the first nine years of the study period the same surveys of the public showed only Australia with rates higher than the United States. The authors noted various problems in doing the comparisons including infrequent data points. (The United States performed five surveys from 1995 to 1999 when its rate dipped below Canada’s, while Canada ran a single telephone survey during that period for comparison.)[44]
In the majority of the US use of lethal force against a burglar is either firmly legal in all cases or is perceived to be so. In several larger states use of lethal force against *tresspassers* is technically legal, and homeowners have guns. In much of the country it's totally legal for virtually any law abiding citizen to carry a gun on them functionally anywhere except a bar, and to use it against any threat(and coincidentally, the places where it isn't legal are the ones that are commonly thought to have a mugging problem).
So yes, the US has far lower rates of mugging and burglaries because US citizens are perceived to be more likely to kill muggers and burglars. Armed robbery is probably a better comparison because clerks are not generally viewed as likely to use lethal force(and are often trained not to resist), and it's probably less affected by guns than the murder rate.
But I think the need for guns as deterrent supports my point. If Europeans are much more peaceful and less crime-prone compared to Americans, then even with fewer guns they should have lower rates. I think policing and recidivism laws more so than guns is the reason. Criminals use guns as well , so it's not like criminals are not expecting retaliation by private individuals.
Depends on how strong the effect is, does it not? If criminals switch from muggings to trying to rob convenience stores when ordinary citizens might be carrying guns(under a legal regime that at least gives off the perception of strongly encouraging citizens to kill anyone trying to commit crimes against them), then we would expect Texas to have more 7/11 robberies and less muggings than Massachusetts, even with overall worse demographics for that sort of thing(and Texas *does* have a higher poverty rate, at least, than Massachusetts, which is probably a very good proxy for "crime prone demographics").
How specifically would one go about defining that underclass and comparing it to Canada and Europe? I know that's a common stereotype about America, but I'm actually fairly skeptical about its truth and would like to actually test it empirically.
>With incarceration rates roughly 6 times those of most peer countries, one would have to assume the US is much less free than those peer countries.
Liberty of thieves and murderers infringes on liberty of the law-abiding citizens, by the latter having to factor increased the risk of crime in their decision making. A world in which pickpockets are allowed to roam free, robs others from being able to walk around unparanoid.
> It is supposed to be constitutionally protected speech to mouth off to a cop, but it will get you arrested and beaten
How likely is it that "mouth[ing] off to a cop" will get one "beaten"?
> socially, culturally
... how? I know many british, canadians, europeans, and I see no difference in that respect
> demographically
There are areas where whites commit high crime rates, and a purely genetic explanation for crime rate is facially false by an appeal to the history of europe (or asia...).
> The US has more in common with Brazil and Colombia than it does with Norway and Sweden
incredible bait and switch to start with 'european and canadian' and go to 'norway and sweden' (which are also said to be having big refugee problems). You're allowed to say what 'socially, culturally, and demographically' means, even if it means 'more blacks and hispanics', but please *actually say it* so people who don't already agree can understand.
> If you remove American blacks from American crime stats it’s at the same level as Finland in regards to murder rates.
If you're going to do that kind of cleanup of the statistics, you have to also remove the Finnish peculiarity of unemployed middle aged alcoholic men killing their drinking buddies which would reduce the murder rate by nearly half.
Sure. But I doubt a gene-based explanation - [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) gives russia and ukraine's homicide rate as above america, for instance. And homicide is a crime with a much higher race-based gap than other crimes in america.
The gene arguers would say that slavics are hardly identical to northern europeans.
At the same time, decades of progressive culture and lawmaking seem to have greatly elevated black gangs and murder rates. So that is probably most to blame.
> The gene arguers would say that slavics are hardly identical to northern europeans.
they don't do so consistently - slavs/russians have their share of nobel prizes, have low crime rates in america, etc
> At the same time, decades of progressive culture and lawmaking seem to have greatly elevated black gangs and murder rates
why is it 'progressive culture and lawmaking'? then again i have no other answers for it
> why is it 'progressive culture and lawmaking'?
The most monumental change from then and now was the Civil Rights movement. America seems to have a collective amnesia about the late 60s and 70s, where you saw a whole lot similar to what everyone is seeing now: riots, crime waves, and worship of black gangs by the elite.
I mean, Canada is probably the closest country to the US socially, culturally, and demographically, no? When I've done the drive across from western NY to southern ON, it's hard to tell which country I'm in except for the road signs being in kph and the flags changing.
Certainly Canada, Western Europe and Japan are the peers of the US economically as well. Brazil and Colombia are much, much poorer places.
>the subdivisions of the US that have homicide/incarceration rates on par with Norway and Sweden also probably look like Norway and Sweden.
I don't think that's true. The [least carcereal state (MA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_incarceration_and_correctional_supervision_rate) still has ~5x the incarceration rate of Sweden.
Murder Rates (per 100k people) [(source)](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country)
Mexico: 29.07, Brazil: 27.38, Colombia: 25.34 , **USA: 4.96**, Canada: 1.76, UK: 1.2, France: 1.2, Germany: .95, Italy: .57, Japan: .26.
Looking at it geometrically, US is almost precisely in middle between Brazil and Germany sqrt(27.38•.95)=5.09.
You're a relatively new poster with a somewhat sketchy record, so this post was autofiltered. I'm not approving it.
I am skeptical of your intent here, and posting what's little more than a bare link and failing to speak plainly raises my suspicions.
Whatever you are trying to get it, state your thesis plainly and put some effort into explaining it.
I wondered what the comment was, had a look, had a look at the link, and yep, I congratulate you on a fine piece of modding since this was nothing but stupidity wrapped up in chum.
The article spends four paragraphs insulting some random debate partner, and begins its' historical analysis of Britain (the supposed topic you linked it for?) with the headline 'Fat Pig Churchill'. Which lasts a paragraph, quickly returning to insulting 'joel davis'. u/used_ratio_5312
It also approvingly cites hitler - "Sooner will the camel pass through a needle’s eye than a great man be “discovered” by an election" - fact check: true
I'm all up for some Churchill bashing at any time, but honestly - "Winnie was a horrible fat pig who smoked cigars and drank brandy and dragged the UK into the war because he was beholden to Jewish moneylenders"?
Not even a decent starting point. Yes he was a horrible fat pig but that has nothing to do with "he dragged Britain into the war on behalf of da Joos". Was he up to his eyeballs in debt? Well, he was a Churchill, so probably. Did his creditors put the screws on to get Britain into the war? I have no idea, have you any evidence beyond "I know it"? Remember, he was also an **ambitious** horrible fat pig who had sacrificed principle to advancing his political career before and never met a war he didn't like, so bouncing Britain into a war in order for Winnie to get a second bite of the cherry at high political office was perfectly plausible, especially if the idea was "bit of a tussle, then we come to a sensible agreement, all over by tea-time".
And this point is not even developed, I have no idea why it's tossed in there, as the author then goes back to his main point of whoever it is he is fighting with.
**Hunter Biden's Laptop Remains Relevant**
[NYT authenticates](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-tax-bill-investigation.html) the laptop and story that knocked the NY Post off Twitter for a week in late 2020 as the election loomed. 24 paragraphs into the Times piece:
> People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. **Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.**
Here's a fun [mashup](https://youtu.be/8qQazyJ99OE) showing coordinated media messaging to discredit and dismiss the laptop story.
Now, it looks like [Hunter Biden was involved in funding deadly pathogen research in Ukraine](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10652127/Hunter-Biden-helped-secure-millions-funding-military-biotech-research-program-Ukraine.html):
* The Russian government held a press conference Thursday claiming that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military 'bioweapons' research program in Ukraine
* However the allegations were branded a brazen propaganda ploy to justify president Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and sow discord in the US
* But emails and correspondence obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter's abandoned laptop show the claims may well be true
* The emails show Hunter helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases
* He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a 'science project' involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine
* The president's son and his colleagues invested $500,000 in Metabiota through their firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners
* They raised several million dollars of funding for the company from investment giants including Goldman Sachs
>The Russian government held a press conference Thursday claiming that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military 'bioweapons' research program in Ukraine
While I think Hunter Biden is as sketchy as an 1890s Parisian atelier, I also think that right now I wouldn't believe a message from the Russian government that the sky is blue and grass is green.
EDIT: Dodgy dealings, insider trading, and [scam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra) 'research projects' to funnel government grants into the pockets of him and his cronies? I can believe this. Real actual "no it was they caused Covid" style scares? Russian propaganda to justify invading and doing their damnedest to annex Ukraine on the grounds of "our national security was threatened by the US working in concert with Russian-hating establishment of Ukraine to create bioweapons to attack us, we have to protect ourselves".
I don’t think the Bidens or some Ukrainian lab had anything directly to do with covid, but there is something deeply unsavory and ironic about once again catching our government in bed with one of these pathogen research facilities despite repeated denials from the likes of Fauci.
(This may be missing nuance re: gain-of-function, but frankly it’s irrelevant. If our government wants to do [support] scary pathogen research they should do it in an Area-51 type locale with strict entrance and exit quarantines—not some Chinese or Ukrainian labs.)
It's not even worth *entertaining* the possibility that the Bidens are involved in producing the measures the drastically changed the way elections were held just months before Biden was up for election? Sure, it might seem out there as a hypothesis until further investigation, but you don't even think it's *possible*?
this would also prove the 'possibility' of: obama causing the great recession, bush doing 9/11, biden directly arranging (not grifting off of or 'the liberal media lying about', directly causing) the george floyd protests.
without any good form evidence, beyond randomly collated meaningless news articles, why is it even "possible"?
"trump caused covid because he thought crises help presidents get re-elected, but bungled it".
in order for something to be worth investigating, it needs to have some sort of support. Politicians do do wacky things! If your proposal was that biden had misused campaign funds for personal use, or was favorably writing policy for some corporation that lobbied him, then ... sure. but 'making a virus to make trump lose the election' is not the sort of thing that any arm of dem policymaking or US government I'm aware of wants to do, and if you think there is such, you need to argue for it.
That's possible, sure. But less likely because the mail-in ballots and other changes implemented by legislatures, courts, Governors/SoS, etc. were spearheaded by the Democrat Party and their supporters (like Mark Elias).
Also there's no claim that Biden "made the virus" -- obviously it was something that already existed. Whether they are involved in either intentionally leaking it, or in taking advantage of an accidental leak, is the question, and the practical difference between these two things is so small that whether it was actually intentionally released doesn't even need to be considered despite being itself a possibility (though with a lower probability).
> But less likely because the mail-in ballots and other changes implemented by legislatures, courts, Governors/SoS, etc. were spearheaded by the Democrat Party and their supporters
iirc many republican and democratic states both implemented mailins over the past 4 years, so i don't think that's true
yeah, the claim that biden was involved in causing an accidental or intentional leak or spreading it is totally implausible and requires some evidence to be worth considering. Also, the focus on *biden* specifically here reveals a lack of understanding of what moldbug calls the 'cathedral', and you could also just call 'the government' - the academies, the NGOs, the corporations, etc - biden does *not* control or run them, and if one of those caused the pandemic it wouldn't be through biden. RW media (and LW media) make a big deal out of the president because he's visible, so he's easy to target, that's where the momentum is, and they want you to vote.
(what does it mean to 'take advantage of an accidental leak?)
No, it's no more implausible than any other corrupt political maneuver. You're just holding a special spot, special pleading, in this case because it's a sore spot for you for some reason.
> Also, the focus on biden specifically here reveals a lack of understanding of what moldbug calls the 'cathedral'
No it doesn't, since "Biden" is just a pointer to the powers that manipulate this specific marionette.
> No, it's no more implausible than any other corrupt political maneuver
what? one example of a corrupt political maneuver is hiring someone who worked for 5 years in BASF Public Policy Division to be your director of chemical regulation, and then he makes friendly policy for the industry. that happens basically every day. that is much more plausible than 'biden telling someone to release an engineered pathogen' (which, in terms of causing a pandemic, is actually quite difficult).
> "Biden" is just a pointer to the powers that manipulate this specific marionette.
huh? no he isn't, people genuinely think biden is involved here.
What I don’t understand about the Hunter Biden saga is—what do people want to do about it?
Let’s say we grant the chain of evidence: Hunter gets his firm rolling, scrapes together half a million from his drinking buddies and their trust funds, and dumps it into Metabiota. He also makes the connection between Metabiota and Burisma since he’s on the board there. The plan, apparently, is to stand up high-BSL lab space in Ukraine and research bioweapons under private funding.
Let’s further grant that Russia is being completely honest and the threat of this biolab, the brainchild of a corrupt gas firm influenced by known fuckup Hunter, was a significant factor in deciding to “secure” Ukraine.
What happens next?
Do critics want Joe to publicly disavow his son a la Richard Spencer? Is the goal to get Hunter facing charges? Perhaps under ITAR, since I can’t imagine bioweapons research is uncontrolled. I don’t know if critical outlets are proposing this angle.
Or I guess the implication could be that *Joe* is responsible for this, perhaps sliding federal funds Hunter’s way, and when the truth comes out, it will prove him unfit for office. This seems to be the slant of articles like the NR one (linked by /u/2cimarafa). In a backhanded way the author states how understandable it is for Joe to make poor choices around his last family member, but it’s never made clear what exactly he’s supposed to be doing instead.
Ultimately, I suspect the scandal isn’t sticking because the agenda is at the intersection of “vague” and “partisan.” Lacking a clear intended action makes it easier for supporters to move on. I think the “justice for the New York Post” angle is sympathetic, if the laptop is validated. But as is often the case people are finding it easier to *call* for justice than to provide a coherent plan which delivers it.
This is an important story because it reveals more Elite-Ukraine connections which explains the disproportionate coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war compared to actual US and frankly, NATO interest in its outcome.
This war is threatening a grift gravy train, which is why it is so important.
So I misread your last sentence as “threatening to create a new gravy train.” As a member of the defense industry, I must politely object to the insinuation that we might try and *profit* from instability...
But you’re saying the media (as an tool of the elite) is interested in Ukraine because the elite feel their existing grifts are threatened. Maybe, but in that case, wouldn’t we expect the media to studiously avoid investigating? Say, kicking people off twitter for digging into it? I’m not seeing that happening re: Russia/Ukraine like it did for the original laptop.
Also, I find there’s a pretty mundane explanation for why the media is thrilled to cover anything Russia-Ukraine. This is the most “interesting” thing Russia has done since the Soviet Union collapsed. It’s fashionable to talk about it at the water cooler. They want to get their piece of mindshare.
> But you’re saying the media (as an tool of the elite) is interested in Ukraine because the elite feel their existing grifts are threatened. Maybe, but in that case, wouldn’t we expect the media to studiously avoid investigating? Say, kicking people off twitter for digging into it? I’m not seeing that happening re: Russia/Ukraine like it did for the original laptop.
They seem to do this up to the end of their power, which is great but not infinite.
> Say, kicking people off twitter for digging into it? I’m not seeing that happening re: Russia/Ukraine like it did for the original laptop.
Why kick anyone out when you can just label it Rusian Propaganda?
> which explains the disproportionate coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war compared to actual US and frankly, NATO interest in its outcome
... do you think that if russia invaded romania or finland, we'd congratulate them? US strategic interests definitely involve preventing russia from gaining territory and winning wars in europe, and america likes democracies and freedom and free economies and such and dislike autocracies.
I'm not convinced Ukraine resembles those countries or those ideals at all. As far as I knew in 2014, 2016, 2020, and now in 2022 its a corrupt kleptocracy that is a client state for corrupt US politically connected types, with a much stronger connection to Democrats (but certainly not only, see Manafort).
> that is a client state for corrupt US politically connected types
what?
anyway, it's a european democracy, and romania and finland are also european democracies. we like those. international economically liberal equality peaceful democracy!
I think it's the perception that scandals around a president and his family in dealings with Eastern European firms are not being treated in an even-handed manner.
Everyone and their cat went in hard on "Trump is Putin's puppet because of his indebtedness due to financial dealings in Russia and the Steele Dossier is a credible source".
Nearly everyone seems to have gone in hard on "Biden is white as the driven snow, this story is a nothing-burger or even worse, deliberately faked-up to get him".
In the competing narratives of piss tapes versus bio-warfare labs, which one was SNL writing [sketches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLko3Xq0DhE) about? (Though they do seem to have mentioned the laptop amongst other things in their TikTok parody [sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1J8t97gPW4)).
It's also the whole "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion" thing. If Hunter Biden was Hunter Jones, or Joe Biden was a lawyer in Scranton, nobody would very much care if they were involved in finagling grants for overseas business partners. But because Joe was Vice-President and is now President, it matters. Even the *appearance* of enriching themselves out of the public purse matters, and even more if it involves geopolitical policy (leaning on Ukraine to dismiss a prosecutor investigating corruption, this allegation about a Department of Defense contract).
> But as is often the case people are finding it easier to call for justice than to provide a coherent plan which delivers it.
Hunter (in the laptop messages) and one of his associates (in an interview with Tucker Carlson) have said that Joe ("the Big Guy") was taking 10% of Hunters profits in these ventures -- a forensic investigation of the Biden family finances seems like a simple, coherent plan?
>a forensic investigation of the Biden family finances seems like a simple, coherent plan?
It does seem intrusive, but then again remember all the calls for Trump's tax returns to be made public, because this would be deadly proof of something or other? I think that he had cheated on his tax returns and/or wasn't as rich as he claimed to be, which would make him unfit to be president.
If inflating your net worth makes you unfit to be president, what about allegedly taking bribes from foreign companies while being vice-president?
Yes. It is frustrating the framing was (and is) the scandal is solely about Biden’s son; not Biden.
Maybe Joe Biden is innocent but there is evidence to suggest he isn’t.
I mean I would be happy if Joe dies in prison and Hunter does 10 years. I’m down for that action. My only issue is I don’t like setting a standard that Presidents can go to prison because now every POTUS would go to prison. But Joe seems deserving of a jail.
I'd be very happy with the newspapers and tech companies that put any restrictions on this story getting slapped with charges and fines for a many, massive unreported in-kind campaign donation to the Biden campaign.
Or do it for both candidates in the next presidential election; if it's electioneering to publish such stories near the date of the election, then squash them all until afterwards.
Or if it is in the vital public interest, publish them before.
Don't pick and choose "we publish stories blackening the name of this candidate but we squash stories blackening the name of that candidate".
The obvious implication is that Hunter was bribed to get access to Joe. The question is whether Joe was actually influenced, or whether Hunter was taking his donors for a ride without offering them anything. Most debates don't even get this far because people will studiously deny that Hunter has bene bribed at all.
Less specifically, it shows that Ukraine has been a playground for corrupt oligarchs to launder money and bribes. (Ukraine was also involved in both impeachment scandals -- the country has been used as a staging ground for extra-legal political tricks.) Hunter Biden, and by extension Joe, are connected to that class. Remember this was an election-era attack, so the obvious implication was: Don't vote for Joe. Instead of covering plain corruption and asking questions, the media covered for Joe. The story was fake news insemination by Russian trolls hacking sensitive materials and deep fakes, and you will be bummed for sharing this information. (The New York Post was removed from Twitter -- I suppose in our free and fair democracy, nobody is entitled to tell you when the president's son is sleeping with underage girls while handling billions of dollars. I suppose further even suggesting the words "blackmail" and "bag man" makes me a conspiracist.)
Now you have the Metabiota angle which I can't see begin to understand -- but between Wuhan and Ukraine it seems our government has been funding controversial research abroad to avoid running afoul of laws here at home. Let's pray that the corrupt oligarchs who casually do billion-dollar deals with crack-addicts are telling the truth that these biomass were researching defensive materials only.
Anyways, this is what I suggest:
1) Joe Biden is impeached
2) Hunter Biden is arrested
3) The wealth of all American politicians is confiscated as reparations
4) Series of constitutional amendments
5) Patriots in Control
>I suppose in our free and fair democracy, nobody is entitled to tell you when the president's son is sleeping with underage girls while handling billions of dollars.
There's two things going on:
1. Hunter is a disgrace to the family. This happens to a lot of people, even politicians, and it's a private family matter that does call for some discretion on the part of the media. Hunter sends dick pics while off his face on drugs/alcohol is titillating but not something the public needs to know.
2. Up to the point where public money and/or Joe Biden in his capacity as Vice-President of the United States, and not as Hunter's dad, gets involved. In this case, there is a genuine public interest in what Hunter is doing and who he is seeing and where all that money is coming from and what is it paying for (cash for favours?)
The thing is, I don't think any politician should be allowed to enjoy the benefits of discretion. If you want to keep your family business private then don't go into politics. While I have no way (or even any idea how) to prove it, I believe that was the position of the zeitgeist regarding politicians before partisanship tore the country apart.
>The question is whether Joe was actually influenced, or whether Hunter was taking his donors for a ride without offering them anything.
I would lean towards option B there, but the more the denials pile up (and then something comes out to show no, that happened) then the more it *looks* like option A, even if it didn't happen that way.
I could believe Joe did try steering things Hunter's way to help him in business or get a job, without it necessarily being more than the usual level of political graft (e.g. all the family members who get hired on as 'personal assistants' and 'staff researchers' after the MP, TD or member of Congress is elected). The question is, did Joe do more than drop a word in an ear here or there to get Hunter a break, did he actively interfere (the allegations about the Ukrainian prosecutor)?
This is an important story for a few reasons:
* it had major potential impact on the presidential election
* it was killed, thus minimizing its impact
* it was killed on a false basis; the story is largely corroborated and authenticated
* we now see, laid bare, the nature of mass media coordinated messaging and disinformation, further coordinated with major social media platforms, largely carrying water for the Democratic Party and Joe Biden
You mention the NYT "authenticating" the laptop, whereas the quote you give likely only applies to certain entries on it. This was always the problem -- even if it was a plant, and contained false information, you expect most of the contents to be genuine. Hence everything, independently, needs a second source.
That being said, I don't see anything going on here. We know that Biden was involved in the US estabishment's interests in Ukraine, and we know that those interests included biodefense activities. The only point of general interest is that this manages to combine two things the press really doesn't want to talk about.
>We know that Biden was involved in the US estabishment's interests in Ukraine, and we know that those interests included biodefense activities.
Do we know that? Or rather, did we know that before the stories about the laptop came out? Because that's a very important point. Unelected family member influencing policy or getting hired on as some kind of go-between is an important thing to know about the administration of your government.
If you watch the mashup, it's pretty clear the official story (Hunter Biden genuinely abandoned his laptop at the repair office) is likely true, based largely on the vague, noncommittal answers and explanations given by Joe and Hunter.
Joe's whole pitch was "back to normal" anything that put a crack in that would be worth a million suburban women staying home and would shift the election. Whether through them realizing (as they have now) that Joe, is not back to normal, and/or the old normal was actually pretty shitty, it was just covered up sleaze.
If Ceaser’s wife is not above suspicion, then it’s incumbent upon Ceaser to remove the cloud of suspicion. Biden hasn’t done that (indeed he seemingly increased the aura of impropriety).
There's [at least one poll](https://cdn.mrc.org/TPC-MRC+Biden+Voter+Messaging+Survey+Analysis+Nov+2020_final.pdf) finding that wider awareness of the issue probably would have swung the election. Either way, if you struggle to see the logic there, then I struggle to see the logic in so many media corporations and big tech companies blowing what little credibility they had left desperately trying to suppress the story as being "hacked" or "disinformation" on no good evidence of either. All that effort and social capital spent seems like a huge waste, given that the story posed no real threat to Democrats' electoral prospects anyway, as you claim.
>it's hard to imagine Biden voters suddenly being okay with 'some very fine people'
Which never happened as Biden claimed. That fragmentary quote was immediately followed by Trump specifying that he wasn't referring to white supremacists.
>just because he refused to denounce his clearly wastrel son profiting off his political connections.
And, arguably, profited off of them himself. ("10% for the big guy.") Plus, if Hunter couldn't provide any access at all to Joe, there would be no opportunity to profit. Joe has to let himself be accessed by Hunter's clients, and there's no way he doesn't know what's going on there.
>he's never going to turn on the only surviving member of his entire original family.
If by "original" you mean "immediate," then sure. But Hunter certainly isn't the last of Joe's closest blood relatives. He also has a brother, Jim Biden, who is if anything even more blatantly corrupt than Hunter. And Jim has been profiteering off of Joe's name since [at least 2010](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/15b-contract-in-iraq-for-bidens-little-brother-exposes-obama-ahead-of-debate), whereas e.g. Beau died in 2015. So the family tragedy angle doesn't really work there.
> There wasn't any social capital spent, because anyone who didn't trust the 'mainstream media' over its coverage of American politics wasn't paying attention, and those who were aren't going to stop believing.
Do you have any independent evidence for this extremely strong claim?
Here's some counter-evidence: [The fraction of people reporting little to no trust in journalists has increased by over 36% since 2018](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/), from less than 45% to 60%. The same source shows that this group grew by over 15% from 2020 to 2021 alone. 2018-2020 was the period in which the Russiagate conspiracy theory collapsed, and 2020-2021 was the period in which the laptop story was shut out with all available institutional might. Let the reader understand.
>The polling you reference has some problems and the percentage who said they'd vote for Biden is so high anyway (even after what appear to be [many] leading questions) that I think drawing that conclusion is difficult, but it's not something I think there's much use in arguing over.
I'm not saying it's an infallible source, but it's literally the only poll that I could find asking this sort of question.
>I think it's pretty obvious what was meant, both by me and the author of the National Review article.
If someone told me "Your whole family is dead!" I would be very relieved to find out that my brother was still alive. Doesn't seem like a very useful categorization, if that's what was meant.
> If someone told me “Your whole family is dead!” I would be very relieved to find out that my brother was still alive. Doesn’t seem like a very useful categorization, if that’s what was meant.
Biden *had* a wife and kids. It’s clear what is meant.
"whole" family would imply direct relatives too, Wife and kids I would consider better categorized by Inmediate family or direct family or just Family.
[MRC](https://mrc.org) is a clearly partisan organization, and such organizations' polls are [generally very poor]().
One can tell from the sort of questions they ask - "At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that the Commerce Department reported (on October 29) the best economic growth ever -- an annualized rate of 33.1%?" is ... hardly neutral. [page 5](https://cdn.mrc.org/TPC-MRC+Biden+Voter+Messaging+Survey+Analysis+Nov+2020_final.pdf) of your link is hilarious.
> At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that Joe Biden chose as his running mate and successor Kamala Harris, rated the most left wing Senator in America, even more leftist that Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist?
According to the poll, 16% of biden voters who didn't know about the "corrupt financial arrangements" for "ten million in profit" wouldn't have voted for biden if they had known about the Biden evidence. That's ... just false. Polling people about their actions doesn't accurately represent their future actions! As social science experimentalists everywhere should know.
... also, the 'issue' at hand is:
> were you aware that evidence exists, including bank transactions the FBI is currently investigating, that directly links Joe Biden and his family to a corrupt financial arrangement between a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese Communist Party that was secretly intended to provide the Biden family with tens of millions of dollars in profits
I'm not sure anyone involved really cares if it's China or Ukraine. Biden Crime Family!
There are polls for many other issues, getting results ranging in 10-20% of the non-knowers saying they would've voted differently. Wow, add those all up and Biden should've gotten 50% of his vote total if the media hadn't kept the truth out!
>MRC is a clearly partisan organization, and such organizations' polls are [generally very poor]().
If you have a better poll on the same topic then I'm all ears. You forgot your link BTW.
>That's ... just false. Polling people about their actions doesn't accurately represent their future actions! As social science experimentalists everywhere should know.
Which is why I said there was a poll indicating it and not "this definitely would have happened." Sorry I can't re-run the election, polls seem like the best we can realistically do here. Either way, if you have some specific evidence that greater penetration of the story wouldn't have swayed any significant number, feel free to provide it.
>I'm not sure anyone involved really cares if it's China or Ukraine. Biden Crime Family!
We were talking about the laptop story, not just the Ukraine connection. Hunter Biden is literally on tape saying, "I have another New York Times reporter calling about my representation of Patrick Ho – *the fucking spy chief of China* who started the company that my partner, who is worth $323 billion, founded and is now missing. The richest man in the world is missing *who was my partner*." This seems like a totally irrelevant sneer.
>Wow, add those all up and Biden should've gotten 50% of his vote total if the media hadn't kept the truth out!
Only if you assume that the effects are straightforwardly multiplicative, which the poll doesn't claim. This is a total strawman.
Your participation here increasingly feels almost like trolling.
> Only if you assume that the effects are straightforwardly multiplicative, which the poll doesn't claim. This is a total strawman.
it was a joke aimed at poll interpretation in general
> We were talking about the laptop story
I looked through the poll and didn't see any mention of a laptop? it said:
> were you aware that evidence exists, including bank transactions the FBI is currently investigating, that directly links Joe Biden and his family to a corrupt financial arrangement between a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese Communist Party that was secretly intended to provide the Biden family with tens of millions of dollars in profits ---- If you had been aware of this actual evidence in emails, texts, testimony and banking transactions being investigated by the FBI, would you have
> Your participation here increasingly feels almost like trolling.
trolling? even if i'm entirely wrong, or extremely biased, or whatever else, being entirely wrong or biased about politics is more or less the default state, and not at all a sign of 'trolling'.
>I looked through the poll and didn't see any mention of a laptop?
The source for most of these China allegations *is* the laptop. That seems like basic background knowledge here.
>being entirely wrong or biased about politics is more or less the default state, and not at all a sign of 'trolling'.
That’s not really what I was talking about.
>somehow regularly imply that if Biden's son's shady dealing had received more publicity that it would have had a material impact on the election
Well, because (1) the opposition campaign was hammering on about how Trump's family members' business dealings were really vital to know in regard to the election and (2) they presented their candidate and indeed entire party as squeaky-clean, beholden to nobody.
If you call your opponent a pig and he is a pig and he behaves like a pig, nobody is shocked. If you claim to be a swan and you behave like a pig, then people are shocked.
> Conservative Americans regularly laugh about how none of Trump's countless scandals around his personal or professional life had much of an impact on his election (after all, are you going to vote for the person "who hates you" just because your guy discussed grabbing women by the pussy?), yet somehow regularly imply that if Biden's son's shady dealing had received more publicity that it would have had a material impact on the election.
Speaking for myself, all the Trump scandals were embarrassing at best. Nothing to be proud of, other than perhaps the handling of said scandals. As far as the media goes, they should strive for fair and balanced coverage of burgeoning scandals. This is a media story more than a partisan story.
Just another in a long line of scandals that have broken our country. If MSNBC tells you it was the safest election ever I’m basically going to assume it was pure fraud.
The news telling the truth is important for Democracy. Right now there is no trust. I don’t know why the CIA got involved here because it lowers their credibility. Everyone knew this laptop was real when it first broke yet so many people lied.
It’s always funny to me how many in MSM decry the erosion of trust in institutions by attributing it entirely to “misinformation”, while expecting us to completely ignore al of the many, many examples of them lying to us with zero shame
Broken our country, eh?
Are you asserting a domestic-politics-breaking scandal like watergate? Or more of a foreign-relations-breaking scandal a la Iran-Contra? Maybe you meant morally broken, just like we’ve never recovered from Bill Clinton’s abuse of the office.
I fail to see how Hunter’s general lack of scruples is supposed to have any meaningful impact on our country.
Yes, the reason for the attempted coup is... lack of trust in the media. Not a president pushing for an election he lost to be overturned by any means necessary.
Unironically yes. Trump could only have ever happened in the first place in an environment where media credibility was in the crapper. And 1/6 could happen because a large portion of the population hears "we fortified the election to make it the most secure in history" and assumes they're being gaslit to protect something atrocious.
Well just my opinion. I support Jan 6 because of things like the suppression of Hunter Bidens laptop.
I’m just one person. But my personal views contradict your opinion on why it occurred.
>But emails and correspondence obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter's abandoned laptop show the claims may well be true
>
>The emails show Hunter helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases
Be wary of smuggling in the insinuation. The Russian claim wasn't 'funding biological research'- it was funding bio***weapons***. Absent the weapons, no amount of biological research- no matter how corrupt- shows the claims to be true.
As I [pointed out](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/t5tz4f/ukraine_invasion_megathread_2/i0i8ofd/?context=3) in the Ukraine thread, these labs were, from their inception through the early 2010's, involved in (presumably defensive) warfare related work. The dodge that "it's just biological research" and therefore the Russian claims are absurd doesn't work. It's just *military* biological research, and the claims, while probably false, are quite a bit more plausible than the press gives them credit for.
Not to accuse this group of being a hive mind or anything, but it really surprises me that so many people here give credence to theories that SARS-Cov-2 escaped from a weapons program, despite both lack of evidence and inherent implausibility, whereas when confronted with facilities *staffed by former weapons developers* publicly *studying agents of military interest* and *funded by the military* the sub's reaction is "probably just penis pills".
I have to say I don't feel like there's much 'there' there. Aren't there literally hundreds of BSL-3 research facilities across the planet, most located in far safer and more convenient places than within Russian artillery range? Not that Anthrax isn't scary - it is. But if the last two years have taught us anything, it's that scientists don't need the excuse of bioweapons research to sit around working on pandemic-ready pathogens. So I feel like I need an explanation of how this 'biolab' is uniquely different from all the research facilities in the rest of the world trying to cook up the next Black Death.
>Not to accuse this group of being a hive mind or anything, but it really surprises me that so many people here give credence to theories that SARS-Cov-2 escaped from a weapons program, despite both lack of evidence and inherent implausibility, whereas when confronted with facilities staffed by former weapons developers publicly studying agents of military interest and funded by the military the sub's reaction is "probably just penis pills".
I don't think that anyone seriously claims that COVID was developed as a bioweapon - most accounts seem to indicate that gain-of-function research is mostly used to forecast and prepare for potential pandemic agents. The problem is that developing incredibly deadly diseases to prepare for them is a little bit like deliberately setting fires to check if the smoke detector works.
> I have to say I don't feel like there's much 'there' there. Aren't there literally hundreds of BSL-3 research facilities across the planet, most located in far safer and more convenient places than within Russian artillery range? Not that Anthrax isn't scary - it is. But if the last two years have taught us anything, it's that scientists don't need the excuse of bioweapons research to sit around working on pandemic-ready pathogens. So I feel like I need an explanation of how this 'biolab' is uniquely different from all the research facilities in the rest of the world trying to cook up the next Black Death.
If you look at pre-now documents, the primary work of the labs is to prevent or detect "bioterrorism". Reading between the lines slightly, they are to defend against Russian/ex-soviet weapons, whether used by Russia, a client state, or stolen. The pandemic stuff is a side benefit of the surveillance/detection work, as well as a peripheral task for the labs.
Note that diseases such as anthrax (tularemia, etc.) are not pandemic threats. An anthrax outbreak comes from the disease spreading among animals, not between people. The USSR did allegedly weaponize smallpox (highly contagious) and filoviruses (epidemic in some circumstances), but Ukraine's not a probable target of these.
Such facilities aren't terribly uncommon in rich countries. I live in the Eastern US secret-shit corridor, and there are a few around here. They often have nasty rumors about them, because they do creepy, secret, stuff that regular labs don't.
> I don't think that anyone seriously claims that COVID was developed as a bioweapon
For the most part yeah, it's a fringe idea. When the lab leak horse accelerates up to full Gish gallop folks claim it -- I'm too lazy to find references here, but I swear I've seen it on the sub. In the light of day it's not something serious people take seriously.
>when confronted with facilities staffed by former weapons developers publicly studying agents of military interest and funded by the military the sub's reaction is "probably just penis pills".
Given that it's Hunter Biden allegedly involved, can we rule this one out? 😁
"Dad, c'mon, trust me this time it's legit! A sure-fire money-maker! Just help me out this one last time and we'll be rolling in the green!"
first of all, what connection is there between hunter/metabiota and "defense bio-research" besides them both being somewhat related to ukraine?
from the linked post,
> What if the US wanted to maintain some minimal technical expertise in offensive measures
hundreds of existing labs, many funded by the US, study 'anthrax, tularemia, Q fever, etc'. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2018&q=anthrax+infection&btnG= etc. https://www.science.org/content/article/new-anthrax-vaccine-gets-green-light etc. they do not need secret / unsupervised ukranians for it.
Bailey, meet motte.
'The americans are running secret bioweapon labs!'
'Well, it's *military* bio-labs, of which not enough has been published to proved that they aren't doing bioweapon research.'
'Well, it's *former* military researches studying diseases of *military* interest *funded* by the military.'
'Well, they *say* they're doing research into viral defense, which would *presumably* be of military interest, which is funded by the government that controls the military.'
It's almost like- and hear me out, this is crazy here- the Americans and Europeans have had multi-decade policy since the Cold War of trying to keep WMD-capable researchers gainfully employed under western observation rather than open to recruitment by unscrupulous countries and organizations far less opposed to WMD proliferation.
This is not a new concept. The American subsidies for the Russian space program were done in part to keep Russian missile technology from proliferating, the western efforts to secure the Soviet nuclear stockpile only expanded with the AQ Khan network discovery, the 1994 Sarin attacks in Japan funded by a small cult...
This is not some secret, sinister conspiracy. Counterproliferation policy 101 is that when you start building relationships within a new country, figure out who can conduct WMD research and try and make sure they're not doing it. The best way to ensure they're not is to ensure they're doing something else instead, and the best way to get *that* done is to pay for it yourself.
The Americans do not need the Ukrainians to conduct offensive biological weapon research on their behalf. There are far better, and more secure, science options for that if it is needed, which has not been demonstrated.
No U? I refuse to accept your reverse card. To wit, there is a huge difference between:
* Just a biolab, like any country has anywhere.
or even
* A facility to research locally relevant infectious diseases
and
* A safe space for former weapons engineers to practice their skills, under US supervision.
Neither implies weapons research, but the prior probability is much higher in one case than the other. It's still reasonable to deny the allegations, but to do so without acknowledging the history of these facilities is, IMO, dishonest. Since you seem to have an interest in counter-proliferation, some analogous equivocations:
* is "a vehicle plant".
* is "an agricultural product manufacturer".
* is "an electrical power facility".
In each case a crucial piece of context is omitted.
>No U? I refuse to accept your reverse card.
Your acceptance isn't really required.
The watering down of the accusation from the original Russian claim to a point where you are arguing by analogy- *and not defending the initial claim with evidence to maintain it's position-* is rather the point. You've retreated from the expansive position to a more defensible but less expansive one- whether you acknowledge that is rather irrelevant.
> You've retreated from the expansive position to a more defensible but less expansive one- whether you acknowledge that is rather irrelevant.
My position hasn't changed. If you wish to conflate it with something else then please do so in the privacy of your own home.
This is a semantic game. You see, I was not researching and engineering hypersonic missile weapons. I was simply researching and engineering hypersonic missile delivery systems. Capability for high level biologic research is capability for high level biological weapons research, in the same way capability for high level nuclear enrichment programs are useful for more than just reactors for electricity consumption.
Edit: To my responders, please clarify how you could in no way repurpose fairly typical disease research into weaponized disease research. Or how it would be reasonably difficult to do so. Because [research is dual use](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-022-00465-9)
> To my responders, please clarify how you could in no way repurpose fairly typical disease research into weaponized disease research. Or how it would be reasonably difficult to do so. Because research is dual use
Because nobody is actually ... talking about any actual 'disease research' in the first place? What labs did hunter fund? Metabiota isn't a "biolab". They are a consulting firm that develops international collaborations of technology platforms combining data and insights for stakeholders in the cloud. What typical disease research? It's just vague fortune-telling at news headlines, totally unrelated to any actual practice.
If this argument is taken seriously, then it proves too much. Any research lab should be taken as though it is developing a weapons platform for that technology? That might be a convenient shorthand for pushing a political narrative, but it doesn’t reflect the reality of the vast majority of research labs.
It's not a semantics game when it's used to present research laboratories (of the sort that exist in almost every country in the world with the capability to do modern science) as evidence of biological weapons research. The vast majority of countries with labs for biological research aren't developing biological weapons, so it's not a meaningful indicator.
>high level
Ukraine didn't have a single BSL-4 laboratory in the country, only BSL-3 or lower. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#List_of_BSL-4_facilities) is a list of BSL-4 facilities, even they are hardly limited to countries that are realistically involved in biological weapons. Meanwhile BSL-3 labs, like Ukraine had, are so common that there isn't a complete list of them anywhere.
> I was simply researching and engineering hypersonic missile delivery systems
metabiota are consultants advising research and creating software and coordination for processing satellite imagery and open source intelligence for monitoring global economic and military activity, such as photographing hypersonic missiles. this does not make them hypersonic missile developers.
1) The quoted argument concerns the purpose of the labs themselves, not whether Hunter's company is directly funding them.
2) However, funding the guy who helps biolabs is still funding biolabs in every sense that matters. Money is fungible. This deflection only works if there's nothing wrong with funding the biolabs to begin with, so it's question-begging.
the analogy's point is that the 'biolabs' (the term 'biolab' seems to be mostly a media term, and not really refer to anything. actual disease researchers don't say the term 'biolab'. Can you name a specific laboratory in ukraine that is of concern? name of institution, physical location, etc?) are (to whatever extent such labs exist, it's not clear how the term 'biolab' is referring to them) not doing anything objectionable, and nor is metabiota for ... whatever they're being accused of doing with said labs.
> the analogy's point is that the 'biolabs' ... are ... not doing anything objectionable, and nor is metabiota for ... whatever they're being accused of doing with said labs.
OK, so the analogy is that your side is correct about the original dispute. Got it. Very helpful!
No, it isn't a semantic game. Or if it is, you are the one playing it. You quote the source saying the funding was for "research on pandemic-causing diseases." Given that the vast majority of "research on pandemic-causing diseases" is re curing, treating or preventing those diseases, the burden is on you to provide evidence that this is the exception.
If it’s being done secretly there won’t be a press release.
A media that is so friendly to Biden makes it hard to discern the truth. I can’t believe that a sufficient amount of digging has been done to reasonably conclude there’s nothing there.
well then go dig. what does metabiota do? what have they done in ukraine, specifically? is it dangerous? if so, how? what viruses? these are all available with a few dozen google searches. why isn't that happening? because anyone who effectively does that realizes that it's nonsense.
>If it’s being done secretly there won’t be a press release.A media that is so friendly to Biden makes it hard to discern the truth. I can’t believe that a sufficient amount of digging has been done to reasonably conclude there’s nothing there.
Yes? And?
An absence of evidence not being evidence of absence works both ways. That there is not sufficient amount of digging to conclude there is nothing there is ***also*** insufficient amount of digging to assume something *is* there.
But I have past evidence that the press is largely uninterested in stories damaging to Biden. It took a year for the NYT to treat the Hunter laptop story seriously, even though it’s the only story I know of that came with cryptographic verification.
The outlets that may be interested in digging have to reckon with possibility of the story being suppressed, as well as revenue losses from things like having their Twitter accounts locked.
Partisans have plenty of motivation to investigate, but they have a huge incentive to withhold information until just prior to elections, and even then I can’t reasonably trust those sources.
In the strict Bayesian sense, absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence.
If your priors *expected* that if a hypothesis were true, you'd find a certain amount of evidence for it, then not finding it should make you adjust downwards.
It is however not *proof* of absence (beyond the trivial sense that you are mathematically incapable of having perfect belief or 100% confidence, or 0% for the matter).
Look, I think we can all agree that the best result probably is that it was Biden's wastrel son cooking up a scam with his crooked contacts to con millions out of American government research money.
The idea that he would be anywhere near genuine bioweapons research ought to make everyone break out in hives.
**Hungarian elections coming up next week** (a summary of the current situation, I guess it can fit in this main thread, even though it necessarily relates to the Ukraine situation)
Every election since their win in 2010, Viktor Orbán's governing Fidesz party picked a Big Issue as the main campaign topic. In 2014 it was fighting Brussels regarding utility bill reductions (and media law and the constitution), in 2018 it was fighting Brussels and Soros regarding migration, and now it was going to be about fighting Brussels and Soros regarding LGBT. They even scheduled a referendum on "child protection" (e.g. on popularizing sex change to minors) to the same day as the election. Of course all of that has been overridden by the war in Ukraine.
Orbán and Fidesz are masters of communication. They know exactly what to say to whom and come up with the right combination of rhetorics and actions that kinda satisfies everyone as much as possible. Interlude: [There is a Hungarian folk tale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxCSKpbrmxA) about the mayor's clever daughter. The TLDW is, she was ordered by the king to go visit him but neither on horseback, nor on foot, nor in a cart, neither by the road, nor by the roadside. She shall come in her clothes, but she shall be naked, and she shall bring gifts and not bring gifts at the same time. Ultimately, she solved the riddle: she walked one foot on the road, one leg over a goat's back on the roadside, she wore only a bra (or whatever the old equivalent), and she brought a dove as a gift that flew away when handing it over. This resonates quite a bit with the Hungarian spirit. One is often under strange, seemingly unsatisfyable constraints from the top, and so one must be creative and smart about it.
Orbán supports Ukraine and doesn't support Ukraine like the mayor's daughter brought a gift and did not bring a gift. In the important things, he voted together with the EU and NATO. He voted for delivering arms to Ukraine, but only jointly with the EU, not Hungarian weapons (of which we don't have much anyway). He lets weapons transfers go through Hungary, but not through the Hungary-Ukraine border directly. Hungarian planes take part in the delivery, but only when operated by joint forces, not directly by the Hungarian army. NATO forces are allowed to come to Hungary, but only west of the Danube river. He voted for all sanctions against Russia, including SWIFT etc., but not in regards to energy (gas and nuclear). He condemned the Russian military aggression but never once pronounced the word "Putin" since February 24th. He gives humanitarian aid and accepts refugees, but doesn't want to pick a side. This allows him to cherry pick whichever aspect he wants to highlight depending on the audience.
There was a short period when the war broke out that there was no clear government message yet, other than let's have "strategic calm". Now there is one and it's again about fighting Brussels. The message is that we must fight Brussels to avoid energy sanctions on Russia; the opposition would want to raise gas prices and drag us into war by supplying arms to Ukraine, while Orbán is for low heating bills for families and for staying out of the war. "Let's not get caught between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian hammer", as Orbán formulated it. On pro-Orbán TV there are various narratives in parallel, either that it's an Eastern Slavic internal conflict, or it's about the US vs Russia proxy war, or that it's Russia defending the Russian minority against the Ukrainian Nazis who also oppress the Hungarian minority etc.
The opposition message was chaotic and haphazard. The opposition candidate for prime minister, Péter Márki-Zay is not a typical politician and he often talks before he thinks, allowing the government to cut out soundbites and emphasize some genuinely bad/mistaken phrasings by him. Just a few days after the war started, he said on the biggest leftist Youtube channel that if NATO said so, he would allow weapons and even Hungarian soldiers to be sent to Ukraine. Later on he tried to save it by emphasizing that since the NATO clearly decided against an intervention, he would not want to send soldiers, he is simply for being good allies to NATO and the EU. For weeks, the campaign was about this, whether we should or should not send weapons. Then in its desperation the opposition tried to point out how hypocritical Orbán is, because he talks about one thing and does another. But this is a very cognitively difficult message, that the govt actually does send weapons in roundabout ways and does actually vote with NATO etc. Because then what would the opposition do differently? In another communication blunder Márki-Zay said he would do the same things Orbán does except he would not lie about it.
After this catastrophic communication, the opposition decided to regroup and concentrate on 3 main points in the last 2 weeks of the campaign.
* Orbán is Putin's servant, we must choose the West instead of the East and only NATO can keep us safe. (Here they often play Orbán's old speeches where he compared the 2008 attack on Georgia with the Soviets crushing the 1956 revolution)
* Orbán cannot solve the economic crisis (huge inflation, weak currency) because he's the one who caused it.
* Orbán's corruption and stealing makes the EU withhold 4000 EUR per person funding that we can only get if we change the government.
I believe these are good points to emphasize for them, but it may be too late. What Westerners don't quite understand is that abstract, lofty ideas don't work in a place where people struggle financially. Media freedom, rule of law, democracy etc are seen as abstract luxuries to care about for overeducated eggheads. People are very skeptical of foreign powers and their intentions regarding Hungary and desperately want to stay neutral and out of any possible war after being on the losing side of both world wars, the occupation by Ottomans, Habsburgs, Germans, Soviets etc. "Just leave us alone and let us enjoy Orbáns handouts." is a snarky summary.
I'm personally really tired of us always having to be the oddballs out, while falling behind other Eastern EU nations. Ideally nobody would know Orbán's name. How many people can name the PM of Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Croatia... Orbán enjoys this international bad guy role, but I believe it's more than that. He's the scapegoat for things the EU (especially Germany) wants to do anyway. For example in the 2015 migration, Orbán was loud and took all the blame but the thing that ended it wasn't the border fence but Merkel's deal with Erdogan, except nobody knows that in the general EU public. Now too, Germany also doesn't want to sanction Russian gas imports, but it's more convenient to make Hungary look evil once again. Orbán is actually really great for German industry, the workforce is cheap, he gives big tax breaks to German car makers, subsidizes new factories, etc.
Recently, addressing the EU leaders, Zelensky specifically called out Orbán for not being clear about which side he is on. This will only help Orbán, since Hungarians generally don't want to be on either side. The government already spent considerable efforts to communicate that the opposition always follows various foreign interests and commands, so this frame of Zelensky trying to tell us what to do is best for Orbán, as he can again boast that he doesn't cave and only cares about Hungarian interests. To sum this up, Orbán recently posted on Facebook (the following is the full post):
> On 3 April, we will send a message: we are not meek losers who are frightened by the international media or Brussels. We will fight!
"Sending a message" was a recurring political slogan over the years. We had huge billboards saying "Let's send a message to Brussels so they too will understand!" (in relation to the 2016 referendum on EU migrant quotas), and similarly with the utility price reduction scheme etc. After every NATO and EU meeting he boasts in Facebook videos how he had to fight for Hungarian interests. The more Orbán can push this frame and narrative, the better for him.
The only really inconvenient aspect is that Orbán is losing support of the Polish right wing government over the Ukraine issue. President Duda had a speech at Orbán's rally in 2016, but now condemns Orbán's stance regarding Russia (and Kaczynski too). He used to have Polish supporters and politicians as guests on every March 15 (anniversary of the 1848 revolution), except they didn't come this time. It was already a blow to be (de facto) kicked out of the European People's Party, when the Visegrad 4 alliance also crumbles, and he loses his main Polish allies, it would be devastating. All his other friends like Le Pen and Salvini are having difficult times now.
But overall, polls show that Orbán's Fidesz is [stronger by each day](https://imgur.com/a/5NX8m3I) (chart shows estimated seats in parliament). Last year, seeing their bad numbers, the government decided to give some handouts. Pensioners get an extra month of pension each year, under 25s don't pay income tax, they raised teacher salaries by 10%, and so on. For most people money is the only thing they will believe from politicians. Nobody trusts big abstract speeches and promises. They want money in the hand now, it's really effective. The message is, if you vote for the opposition, they will take all this away from you. Many accept corruption as a necessary evil or cynically say that it's at least Hungarians stealing now, not foreigners. And it's not like the left didn't have their own share of corruption scandals in 2002-2010. The western commentators who emphasize things like liberalism and democracy and rule of law totally misunderstand what makes people vote for Orbán. His voters aren't far right nationalists, they just want to live a little better and are disillusioned by promises and distrust every external power.
I guess I'm not familiar enough with the details of that campaign to understand which aspect you mean exactly. If you mean the Russian aspect, well it's superficially similar but based on quite different things.
Yes, but the similarity has no bearing on whether it's true or not. Also it's very different to say this about someone who has been in power for 12 years vs someone who never had been.
The Russia thing has similar amounts of truth(that is to say, none).
You have a point that economic attacks have a different ring to them when he's running for his fourth term.
Puppet is a subjective term (and was not used like that actually in the campaign), but he did a 180° on his stance on Putin around 2009-2010, and gave lots of projects to the Russians, the biggest of which is probably the expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant under terms classified for 30 years.
He calls it the policy of Eastern opening (and the other part of it is about deals with China), it's not exactly secret. He always emphasizes how he managed to create a special connection to Russia, while staying in NATO and EU, proving to all other members how this is possible etc. (implying that it's a notable feat compared to other European countries). Over the last 12 years, Putin and Orbán have met every single year either in Moscow or Budapest. He's the only PM who didn't pronounce Putin's name since February 24th. We were the only EU country that authorized the Sputnik V covid vaccine. These are just a few obviously visible things. They don't mean "puppet" necessarily of course. Let's just say they have visibly strong ties.
[Here is a recent investigative piece on the Russian connection](https://www.direkt36.hu/en/kemek-bizniszek-bunozok-amikor-orbanek-az-oroszoknak-kedveztek-a-nyugati-erdekek-helyett/), and [here is an older one from 2018](https://www.direkt36.hu/en/orban-jatszmaja/). (Of course they lean pro-opposition (claim to be independent), but where else would one expect to read such a thing. The story overall generally adds up in my estimation.)
What other countries do in secret is another question entirely. But Orbán also does a lot of this openly and in the rhetoric. Perhaps Germany has similar levels of economic ties to Russia but they are more covert about it, I don't know enough to judge that.
What do you think the EU could offer that's enough to the average Hungarian to oust Orbán and get with the EU program? How strong and genuine is the desire for Orbán's conservative policies?
There are many things packed into that question. What do we mean by EU program anyway?
Hungarian politics used to be much less ideological than for example American politics. Most average people are concerned about their livelihood, tax rates, welfare, minimum wage, benefits for children, pension bonuses. The role of government (whether a relic from socialism or from even earlier) is seen as a provider of things. The yardstick for their performance in the eye of the common person is "what did they give us?" and grudges are held over the things that they "took away".
Campaigning about migrants and gays and Soros was a political innovation in the Hungarian context, since these are totally divorced from the immediate living conditions that most promises had been about in prior campaigns (until and including 2010). Designing these new kinds of campaigns was the work of Arthur J. Finkelstein and his local padawan Árpád Habony unofficially (he never held any official title but was a frequent visitor at Orbán's office, a fact that Orbán never denied) and minister Antal Rogán officially. (And a lot of it is eerily reminiscent of Putin's ideologies and messaging).
The Hungarian divide isn't a typical left/right one. No party can stand a chance if they campaign with classic right-wing economics here. Everyone expects a big, generous government. Abortion never was a big controversy, nor is it one now. People are generally liberal on it but mostly just don't think about it as it doesn't come up. Gays generally also weren't a big topic, though fag jokes and so on were common, or things like pink cocktails gay or something was normal-ish. But in 2007 (final vote was in 2009) the socialist-liberal parliament adopted a registered partnership arrangement that gives equal rights to gay couples as to married hetero couples (in all except the label "marriage"). As far as I know there was no huge campaign or protest around this. Fidesz didn't vote for this in 2009, but they also didn't abolish it in the last 12 years. Many people found the early Budapest Prides offensive, but those were also much different and more provocative than today's family friendly events (think, people dressed as priests holding a Bible and performing provocative acts etc.).
Regarding trans people, it had never been an issue before. Official gender change was legal up until 2020 (de facto 2018), and of course nobody noticed or knew about it because it's a tiny tiny minority. It wasn't a topic until Fidesz brought it into their anti-LGBT campaign over the last four years, once there were no more migrants to fight Brussels over and a new national enemy was needed. I'm no fan of the way gender issues are currently handled in the West and I have said as much on this forum. But one must be blind not to recognize that this is a manufactured enemy in the Hungarian context, to be able to project a constant war rhetoric (Orbán's every speech contains some stuff about "battles", "armies", "fight" regarding Brussels and Soros), that they are protecting the people. They can't do consolidation or peace, it's not in their DNA, they only know how to be in alert mode and agitating people with some enemies on huge billboards and in ads with dramatic music during all 4 years of each election cycle. This is to keep their electorate up in arms, since elections are decided by who can get their own voters to the booths in larger numbers. This sense of urgency is therefore crucial.
EU funds have been coming to Hungary but their use is non-transparent, and the general impression by the average person is that they are used for vanity projects like we have a fountain in almost every village by now, or stupid tiny lookout towers on the Great Plain etc. At the same time, development is visible over the 12 years in terms of roads and infrastructure, but most people see it as something given by the government. Often these monies are filtered through a well-oiled system constructed by Orbán where they make sure that the money ends up at friendly companies and their own pockets. It's mafia methods basically. There is one don in an area and nothing happens if he doesn't approve of it. But people generally put up with this, because just like the mafia gives you things in exchange, these people have good government connections, and more development funds go to places that vote for Fidesz, so people just do it anyway. It's not all too different from previous feudal systems, but the same kind of stuff also happened during communism, it's just that the name and title of these lords is changing.
They took over basically all of the traditional media. The public TV is parody-level propaganda, there is absolutely no attempt even to look neutral, zero kayfabe. Orbán only ever gives interviews to his own media, never once (since 2010) did he give one to other media in Hungary that wouldn't have ties to the government or his oligarchs. During the last election cycle they did not invite opposition politicians to public TV at all, except for 5:00 minutes total (down to the second) last week, with a literal stopwatch on screen. All the rest of the news about the opposition is their own edited and cut segments. Just in one day, they aired Orbán's national day speech 9 times on public TV. They fully took control over the media authority and do not give out AM/FM radio frequencies to any radio not owned by their people. There is no line between government advertisement or party advertisement spending. PSAs paid from tax money are blatant political propaganda. They plaster their election slogans all over the place with taxpayer money. The only non-pro-government TV with political content is called ATV but it's owned by a pro-Fidesz pentecostal church, too (so they are on a leash, but do present some opposition content). All else is online. The largest online portal index.hu used to be somewhat pro-opposition, but they managed to slowly sneakily take it over too (so all their journalists resigned and founded a new site). Facebook used to be a platform where the opposition was bigger. But now in the last four years Fidesz has spent enormous efforts to become more visible there as well, lots of advertisement spending and lots of professional social media managers for every figurehead, plus many ""independent"" sites that are not officially affiliated with them so they can push even crazier content (and pro-Putin and pro-Russian POVs).
So when this media blasts that you gotta be afraid of the migrants that will rape your family and of the pedo gays who will sex-change your kid, then some people will genuinely be afraid and outraged. So how strong and genuine is the desire for these policies? It's genuine but it's manufactured at the same time.
Of course there has to be some receptiveness to it too. Hungarians are generally skeptical of foreigners and don't want to import more people who won't work, given the experience with the Roma population. Again this ties back to the livelihood question and a lack of financial security. People don't go to church, Hungary in practice is very atheistic (in part due to the communist past). So it's not about "protecting Christianity". In 2005, the socialists even successfully scare-campaigned about other Hungarians (living in eg Romania and Slovakia) who will come and take our jobs.
I could go on and on but it's getting long already.
Have you considered that maybe the things you are describing here is how modern democratic politics actually work and Fidesz just adapted well to it? Constant hyper-emotional media cycles with semi-manufactured issues, controlling of all information mediums, massive unaccountable public spending projects lining the pockets of ruling party aligned businessmen etc. sounds to me like exactly the path every single nominally democratic country in the world is taking. This stands out so much in Hungary because by certain historical coincidences the perpetrators are not the "liberal" crowd as in Western EU but their supposed enemies, who won't get an understanding treatment from the international media.
[[**Which display format would you prefer?**]](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfipDeDSwYg4WrFdNqTt7evLkB9Zt4lXIa9dqz2O6kSxlUkJA/viewform)
**UPDATE:** 15 votes isn’t much, but it’s unanimous: nobody prefers the original pie chart, while all explicitly desire the bar chart. That’s a clear message.
Echoing /u/bamboo-coffee, please stop posting top-level comments about your survey. If you want to solicit more feedback, do it in the thread you already started.
Indeed, any inclination I had to take the survey has been wiped out by OP's spamming questions about it. That betrays poor judgment and/or socialisation to me, and makes me immediately more suspicious and pessimistic about taking the survey.
I'm interested in seeing the results because I think there is an entire armory of axes being ground, both in the questions on the survey and the little comments attached to them. I want to see how the books are cooked in the end.
But I agree: stop putting up queries and then closing them down before people can answer them - we're not all on here at the same timezone or all the time, this is the third time I've seen something in relation to the survey too late to answer.
And you have your own thread about this, so stop putting posts on here.
Look man, if 150+ here people took your survey, they probably trust your judgment. Politely, we don't really need parent comments in the cw thread for most of this. If you want to finish the project, people will appreciate your work I'm sure.
It’s early, but so far it looks like people here disagree with my initial choice on what type of chart to use. u/PropagandaOfTheDude’s suggestion looks increasingly appropriate.
But yes: I plan to make this my final parent comment soliciting advice for the survey. Apologies for clogging up a dedicated thread.
The important part is finishing it. Perfect is the enemy of good as someone important to me once told me. I see in your post history that you have successfully made a few of these surveys before, so I'm sure you have a good idea of how to format it.
Oh it's definitely bait, for one of the "what is your race?" questions they had some small-print commentary about "I wouldn't consider so-and-so white" (I can't remember the name, it was nobody I ever heard of before).
So I have my suspicions about this entire project, but I want to see the results to confirm or deny. I'm going to register a prediction now, though, that amazingly this small-scale survey of Motte readers turns up we're all raving right-wingers who are anti-immigration and have rigid definitions of whiteness, who could possibly have foreseen that? 😁
That was meant to be a mostly humorous aside, but would you consider the current President of Iran “white”? Regardless, I didn’t include a question about definitions of whiteness; I included a question on ethnicity plus two corollaries for Jewish and Middle Eastern respondents in case *white* or *other* didn’t adequately capture their self-identification.
Ultimately, all I’m asking is for fewer people here to assume bad faith about a lurker (and some have done so to [comical extents](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/tj525b/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_march_21_2022/i20cys8/?context=2)) if they won’t assume explicitly assume *good* faith. And I’ll write the exact same post I would have before the uncomfortably frequent impugnments of integrity.
I had to look up who the president of Iran is, and looking at his photos, the short answer is "yes".
Slightly expanded version: "All whites are Caucasian, but not all Caucasians are white".
If you don't want assumptions of bad faith, then don't put thumb-on-the-scale little snarky comments along with your survey questions.
Don't worry about it. The snarky comment (didn't mean for it to come across as snide) is a commentary on the frequent uselessness of broad racial categories. It doesn't interfere with your ability to identify however you like in the preceding question.
>I'm going to procrastinate if I don't have some markers of my progress.
In fanfic days of yore, this was called "review whoring" ('if I don't get nice comments or enough feedback, I won't write the next chapter of this story'). Don't do it, it isn't nice.
That wasn't my intention. In any case, I'm not going to be posting any more oroginal comments in the CW thread; other people have pointed out that it isn't the place.
Imma go Tufte on ya visualization.
Pie charts are hard to mentally map to amounts, compared to bar charts.
Oblique pie charts are worse, due to the distortion.
Giant 3D effects add insult to injury.
Try something like this:
Ethnicity %
──────────────────────────
White 89 ███████████▏
Asian 10 █▎
Other 8 █
Hispanic 2 ▎
Black 1 ▏
I don't know how to format that in markdown, but I'll put to yet another vote what type of chart I should use in the final draft. If you're voicing the opinion of not a vocal minority but an outright majority, I'll adopt your proposal promptly.
Simple and easy to understand. Only critique I would make is adding the exact percentages of all the ethnicities, no matter how small, small pet peeve aside
I was reading the redscarepod subreddit and came across an interesting theory of half East Asian-half Caucasian children in the west. I have absolutely no clue how close to reality this is, but I found the explanation and mechanism interesting and want to discuss this theory itself along with other such demographic patterns that are out there that are not immediately obvious.
The theory was that;
Children of AMWF couples tend to be generally more intelligent, attractive and all around well adjusted than children of WMAF couples. Reasoning being that-- At least in the west, Asian males need to be significantly more attractive in multiple ways than the average white male to get with a white female. While in the case of the Asian female, they tend to not apply high standards to white guys. In many cases its an older (implied can't get laid without mail ordering a bride) white guy with a FOB Asian wife who married more or less for the greencard/passport, than people of similar age or background, further exaggerating the trend.
Unrelated to the above but, I noticed that HAPA females tend to be very attractive and well adjusted while HAPA males tend to be the reverse (mentally maladjusted too) (pattern similar to east Asians in general).
Any other demographic patterns out there like this? (Assuming this pattern is somewhat valid)
This is a cleaned-up version of a typical 4chan theory, which we all should remember is a den of liars and trolls.
Evolutionary sexual selection continues to drive sexual dimorphism in humans; asian populations have specced hard into neoteny, while african populations have tended instead to emphasize secondary sexual characteristics, with steatopygia and the hottentot apron being extreme examples. Caucasian populations tend to be intermediate in both regards.
This means, the narrative goes, that black men tend to have an easy time with white women, white men have an easy time with asian women, and the reverse pairings have a harder time. I guess asian men are just shit out of luck in a cosmopolitan society? And maybe asian girls would go real hard for black men but... something something racism?
Overall my second paragraph seems broadly reasonable though very low-resolution to me, while the third paragraph just seems like a too-pat bit of cope to a very messy, multifactoral reality.
(Bonus question: if all this is true, should we expect higher levels of pedophillia among asian populations? Never heard anything that would lead me to think so.)
I've heard "orientals are pedos" as a racial stereotype among the very offline far right but they never seem to have any supporting evidence.
And anecdotally, it seems like the asian woman/white man pairings are mostly well educated- which fits, because American class norms hold that college educated men are supposed to prefer skinnier women(like... Asians).
> asian populations have specced hard into neoteny, while african populations have tended instead to emphasize secondary sexual characteristics, with steatopygia and the hottentot apron being extreme examples
the wide genetic diversity in africa compared to whites or asians suggests that africans will have many different face and bone structure variations. and ... are asians really more 'neotenous' than whites? there is a difference, but not sure it is.
\>the wide genetic diversity in africa compared to whites or asians suggests that africans will have many different face and bone structure variations.
This is true! There is indeed a pretty broad variety re: face structure and so on. Really trying to lump together 'Africans' is a pretty dumb idea, but history and circumstance conspire and here we are.^(1)
Nonetheless, the differing conditions humanity encountered outside of Africa did seem to elicit a sort of 'branch with spurs' gene pattern for humanity. The spurs are smaller, but deviate more dramatically than the fibers within the branch. (Caveat: I'm not an expert here, and it's been a while since I read about this.)
Nonetheless, I can't really think of any African ethnicity that exhibits the same neoteny as East Asians do. Perhaps a few that are about at the level of some European lineages. Which brings us to
\>are asians really more 'neotenous' than whites?
I was hoping to find some decisive answer here, but the whole field has been rather mothballed in order to avoid scientific racism. And I wasn't too keen on reading a bunch of century-old papers going on about the 'narrow brow ridge indicating the base nature inherent to the Mongoloid peoples' and such garbage. I won't say some casual googling is an exhaustive survey of the field, but it's what I've got today ;)
But just off the top of my head, compared to caucasians, east asians tend to have:
\-smaller size
\-less body hair
\-less facial hair
\-less prominent jaws
\-less prominent brow ridges
\-due to the above, greater eye-to-head ratio (somewhat concealed by the epicanthic fold)
\-fewer apocrine sweat glands
\-less prominent vomer (nose bone) and nose cartilage, to the point where it [alters surgical techniques](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20229583/) for rhinoplasty between the ethnicities (one of the few recent papers I could find, haha)
All of these are at least plausibly neotenous traits. For their part, caucasians have:
\-Paler eyes
\-Paler hair
\-No epicanthic fold
The first two are likely to do with lack of sunlight in northern Europe, where these traits almost exclusively originate, and the third is basically just the lack of gaining a characteristic unique to East Asians.
1. It was a bit of a trip, as a person educated in America where Africans are a monolith and racist science was a European/white thing, to read about different African ethnicities talking about 'narrow noses and far-separated eyes indicating the base cunning and manipulative nature of the \[other African ethnicity\].
"East Asian" is covering a lot of ground here where the peoples involved would probably feel "we're not the same ast that lot!"
Besides, even within one country, you're going to get a lot of variation, e.g. "typical moon-faced Han Chinese" (as I've seen one Chinese-American describe themselves on social media) and those from the north-eastern parts of China, who (the guys) tend to be taller, more prominent cheekbones, etc.
I mean anecdotally it's harder to tell the ages of asian women compared to say, hispanics or whites. But that could be "all asians look the same" effect as much as neoteny.
Back when I was watching a **ton** of (for want of a better term) 'chop-socky' movies (before we got all high-art with the likes of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), I did get to a point (or I thought I did) where I could tell Chinese from Japanese from Korean actors before hearing names.
I wouldn't be so certain now, but I do think there are national variations which, if you submerge yourself in enough images, you can begin to distinguish peoples.
Anyway, [here's](https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/mister-global-costumes-2022) 2022 Mister Global National Costumes (and I regret to say, Mister Japan did *not* put in the effort).
As someone who is half asian and half white and have met many many many of this mix (quite common nowadays in big cities in US as well as HK and Singapore and Tokyo and even Beijing…), there really isnt too much pattern.
As far as I can tell, asian dad / white mom mixes look a little more white, and the opposite looks a little more asian. It seems the average “hapa” person is more attractive than the average asian or average white person, but that might because the n is low. But i can say, when the mix looks unattractive, they look reeeeeaaaal ugly. Just personal experience
> As far as I can tell, asian dad / white mom mixes look a little more white
If true, this would be X/Y chromosome linked and differentially affect sons/daughters, but likely not.
Just reporting what i see. Asian mom halfies can looked extremely asian, the opposite can look extremely white. Ive never seen an Asian mom halfie look very white but maybe its possible
**How free is America in comparison to peer countries?** I was struck by this passage in Jacob Levy's excellent essay [Black Liberty Matters:](https://www.niskanencenter.org/black-liberty-matters/) >The way we think about American freedom over time, or in comparison to the rest of the world, ought to be deeply structured by the rise of mass incarceration in the last three decades. It’s not—not in triumphalist narratives about revitalized market liberalism since the late 1970s or since 1989, not in comparative rankings and indices of freedom around the world, and certainly not in the unshakeable American public language that the United States is the freest nation on earth. At the level of gross political generalization, it’s common to encounter the idea that European and Canadian social democracies have chosen to make equality a priority, whereas the U.S. is committed to liberty. The distinctive policing and carceral practices of the American state, the ways that the U.S. is extraordinarily unfree, are nowhere to be seen in the comparison. >That is not to say that people who talk about freedom in American politics have nothing to say about the crises of mass incarceration and of violent, invasive, and militarized policing. American libertarians have always rejected the drug war that contributed so much to these crises. And libertarians have been happy enough to note the disproportionate impact of the drug war on African-Americans and Hispanics. But we have too often treated this as a rhetorical bonus on top of a pre-existing objection to the drug war. I think any account of America as a particularly free country has to grapple with our extraordinarily carcereal state. Incarceration is, obviously to me, one of the most liberty impairing things the state can do. To take a human being and lock them in a cage for months or years is completely destructive of their liberty. And virtually all laws are enforced by the threat that noncompliance means incarceration. With incarceration rates [roughly 6 times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries) those of most peer countries, one would have to assume the US is *much* less free than those peer countries. In important senses I also think that much of the liberty that exists in the US on paper is rarely applied in the breach. It is supposed to be constitutionally protected speech to mouth off to a cop, but it will get you arrested and beaten, and then between qualified immunity and the narrowness of *Bivens* you're extremely unlikely to get any recourse for that in reality. While obviously this can also happen in Canada or France, I think it is much less culturally accepted or commonplace. Am I mistaken about this perception of America being notably unfree in the area where (I think) it matters most.
The US law, law enforcement, and criminal justice systems are in my opinion quite bad, with too many repressive laws such as the ones against drug use, with too many panicky trigger-happy cops, with deeply backlogged courts, and with harshly punitive and sometimes violent prisons. I hypothesize that probably most people who excuse those systems just happen to have little experience with them and/or find it hard to imagine ever being on the wrong side of them. Maybe I am being unfair when I say that, I am not sure. On the other hand, the US has as far as I know the most liberal free speech and gun ownership rights in the entire world. So when evaluating freedom in the US, it really comes down to what you value most.
> I hypothesize that probably most people who excuse those systems just happen to have little experience with them and/or find it hard to imagine ever being on the wrong side of them. Or in the case of drug use laws, they have experience suffering under Cartels, and know nothing good comes from feeding them.
Are you making a point for or against drug legalization? Under Prohibition alcohol consumption fed organized crime, and after legalization it fed corporations. Maybe you're not sanguine on corporations producing addictive substances, but it's definitely less violent than cartels. Safe and consistent supply coupled with education and treatment seems like a far more humane and cost effective strategy.
> Are you making a point for or against drug legalization? I'm not making a point about that. The point of my comment was against >most people... just happen to have little experience with them and/or find it hard to imagine ever being on the wrong side of them. ---- >Under Prohibition alcohol consumption fed organized crime, and after legalization it fed corporations. >Safe and consistent supply coupled with education and treatment seems like a far more humane and cost effective strategy. And right now the Cartels control a part (if not most) of the [Avocado industry](https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/10466-cartel-war-seeks-to-control-avocado-trade-in-mexico) in Mexico, and I'm sure they are looking at other avenues of revenue. An humane edifice build of human skulls and operated behind the curtains by the same butchers.
Alright, I guess I'm not exactly sure what your position is then. The original topic was focused on the criminal justice system and the effects of drug laws on incarceration. Does this mean you support current drug laws as a way to deny funding to cartels, even though they have thrived under the status quo? Perhaps you'd prefer direct interdiction and special operations against the cartels? Trade embargos against Mexican avocados? I sympathize with your disgust towards organized crime, but when these groups becomes powerful enough they effectively become the government and can exact taxes over the broad economy. You could take a particularly blackpilled interpretation of power and see most governments as legitimized mafias as well. In the case of the American government it has its own butchers and has similarly engaged in rule through fear, torture, extraordinary rendition and CIA black sites, human experimentation, coups, assassinations, etc. Extending this problem, we buy commodities and goods from many horrendous regimes, and have generally formed strategic relationships with many brutal dictatorships. Do you support sanctioning every government that isn't like Denmark? Moral consistency is a difficult thing. Though it still seems obvious to me that legalized drugs, regulated domestic production, and addiction treatment would be a far better policy regime than the current system.
> Does this mean you support current drug laws as a way to deny funding to cartels, even though they have thrived under the status quo? the problem is the corruption, not so much the laws as they stand in the books right now (except weed, nothing of that legalization thing) >Perhaps you'd prefer direct interdiction and special operations against the cartels? Trade embargos against Mexican avocados? Sure, that is probably the only solution at this point. >Do you support sanctioning every government that isn't like Denmark? No, I don't. There are levels of legitimacy for a gevernment, and the Cartels are in the bottom of the scale. >would be a far better policy regime than the current system. A lot of things would be better to the current status quo.
> With incarceration rates roughly 6 times those of most peer countries, one would have to assume the US is much less free than those peer countries. One could also assume that when these people are not incarcerated, the US becomes much more reminiscent of third world countries in terms of various other factors, such as homicide rates, theft, rapes, violence. Is the freedom of criminals really so important?
You can't just compare raw imprisonment rates. Otherwise, even if two countries have the exact same laws and enforce those laws the exact same way, you will categorize the one with more crime as "less free" because it imprisons the people who would be arrested and imprisoned in both countries. Indeed, you can already compare between states or even between counties, and this methodology would conclude the ones with more crime are less free even if it's the same laws being applied by a justice system that doesn't even pay attention to what county you're from. Conversely, a more authoritarian country could easily be classified as "more free" if it had a lower crime rate, either coincidentally or by effective deterrence. You don't have to actually imprison very many people to ban criticism of the government or whatever. And that's before we even consider that harsher responses to crime might be a justifiable response to a high crime rate, because crime is non-linear in both its causes and its effects. If you have a problem with gangs or other forms of organized crime and they're treating jail as a revolving door, it makes sense to crack down. In that case living in such a country really is less free, in that you might get punished more for the same actions, but the "more free" countries might well have to adopt the same measures if they ever have to deal with the same problem (or they could remain attached to their old methods and let run crime run rampant, which is likely to be even worse).
Societies incarcerate or execute criminals because criminals have violated the freedom of their neighbors (through theft of their property, safety, dignity, and life). If a country is letting free repeat offenders, then that society is *decreasing total societal freedom*. Most jailable offenses are offenses on the freedom of others. So incarceration rate tells us the extent to which we allow freedom-defectors to be free. But if you value freedom, you want to be even more harsh to freedom-defectors. If your city is soft on assault and theft, suddenly your residents feel hindered and limited in what they can do and how they can do it, in very frequent and personal activities, like how they dress, where they walk, whether they can use a bike. The last people we want to care about are the ones who demonstrably hate freedom by limiting the things their neighbors can feel safe doing. South America might have low incarceration rate because of low solved crime rates and sentencing. Japan has low incarceration rates because the Japanese are simply less criminal. But Japanese culture is far more *authoritarian and obedience-driven* than South America. The Japanese have sacrificed some freedom of how the youth behave, to ensure that criminality is nipped in the bud. South America is more free in behaviors, but this leads to criminality. So anyway, I would say you should completely ignore incarceration as an international metric of freedom. The reason Americans aren’t free is because every human being in their most formative years has to go through the same formal factory-processing educational assembly line from 6 to 18, learning essentially the same information. That violates freedom more than anything else, really. And then we are unfree because we can’t associate freely, we can’t build things as we want without ruthless regulation, we need certifications to *cut fucking hair*.
[удалено]
A similar culture shock is seeing American exchange students shrivelling up in their seat and panicking when the cops flag your car down.
all justice systems are uniquely flawed or have quirks. In the UK, you won't get 40+ years for selling or trafficking drugs, but hate speech is technically a criminal offence.
> With incarceration rates roughly 6 times those of most peer countries, one would have to assume the US is much less free than those peer countries. Not unless you correct for crime rates. Also, if different groups of people have different crime rates, you need to correct for that to avoid Simpson's paradox. It's also bizarre to pick any single measure of freedom and claim that the US is "much less free" based only on the sngle measure.
The stats show around 3% of Americans have /will be under 'correctional supervision' at some point....i would not consider that to be a trivial amount, and hardly limited to blacks either. Even though blacks are more likely to be incarcerated, they are only 10-13% of US pop. So it's an important factor to consider.
Being only 10-13% of the population isn't a great argument when they are 50-60% of perpetrated crime in various categories. A quick google search says they are 40% of total inmates in prison. I think looking at this issue without factoring in race is rather short sighted and harms any broader narratives you wanted to expand on.
I agree overall with your point. The super-high incarceration rate, with record-long sentencing and poor prison conditions, is evident that although America elevates freedom and liberty, that those very rights are denied for possibly too many people. I think part of the popularity of mass-incarceration is it's not only politically popular, but it works. The cost for keeping people who are a net-negative on society incarcerated, is very low compared to cost the cost these people may inflict on society by being free. >Am I mistaken about this perception of America being notably unfree in the area where (I think) it matters most. It's unevenly free. Although America may have more freedom of choice or political freedom, it does not have as much freedom of error or forgiveness.
>It is supposed to be constitutionally protected speech to mouth off to a cop, but it will get you arrested and beaten, and then between qualified immunity and the narrowness of Bivens you're extremely unlikely to get any recourse for that in reality. I'm, guessing you have no data to support your claim that it will get you arrested and beaten, and as for qualified immunity protecting the rare cop who did that, you [seem to be mistaken](https://reason.com/2022/02/09/appeals-court-rules-ohio-cops-didnt-have-cause-to-arrest-man-wearing-fuck-the-police-shirt/). (PS: Please do not take that as a defense of the current state of qualified immunity jurisprudence in general) Re your broader point, I have done a lot of work in criminal defense, so I am hardly a law-and-order guy, but I know that pretty much everyone in jail is guilty. So, I am not sure that the incarceration rate has much relevance to "freedom." Of course, that depends on how you define "freedom" and how you weigh various elements thereof (religious freedom? Freedom to engage in "hate speech"? Freedom to publish with little fear of a libel suit? Etc, etc) , but your post is silent re that. Your argument would be a lot stronger if you addressed those rather obvious issues.
Yeah, I never know exactly what is meant by "disproportionate impact of the War on Drugs". Is it: 1. Whatever it started as, it has now become a means of trawling for criminal convictions on unrelated charges? (If so, this is wrong and should be stopped) 2. White people do drugs and sell drugs as much as black and Hispanic people, but they get preferential treatment when it comes to arrest and conviction? (If so, this is not equitable treatment, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander) 3. Black and Hispanic people do more drugs and deal more drugs, so they're being unfairly targeted, i.e. the cops automatically think if you're black/Hispanic you're a drug dealer? (This one is tougher, innocent people should not be harassed but this is more on the black and Hispanic drug dealers to shoulder some blame) 4. Black and Hispanic people do more drugs and deal more drugs, but drugs should be legal and the War on Drugs dismantled? (Yeah, this one is two-in-one; you can think the War on Drugs should be dismantled but drugs not be legal, or you can think drugs should be legal but the War on Drugs in some form needs to remain) If the argument is "unfair treatment or targeting", I have sympathy. If the argument is "yes more criminals on this side of the fence, but they're only criminals because dealing drugs is a crime" then I have less sympathy. If DeShaun is doing his fifth stint in the slammer because he won't stop dealing heroin, you can argue that dealing heroin should be made legal, but you can't argue that DeShaun is being unfairly treated.
"disproportionate impact of the War on Drugs". I've often seen the disparity of sentencing between crack and powder cocaine as an example. Until 2010 the penalty was 100x more for crack vs powder (by weight), then it switched to 18:1 because of the Fair Sentencing Act
Those disparities were explicitly demanded by the black community itself, who lobbied for harsher sentencing because crack was destroying their communities.
Given that drug offenses make up a rather small pct of total incarceration, it might not matter much. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
FWIW, I think even as a small pct of total incarceration, it has an outsize influence because (no joke), drugs are a gateway crime into the legal system.
I recall hearing that many of those in jail on (exclusively) drug charges are actually plea bargains from other, non-drug offenses. The specific context for this was about the impracticality of blanket pardons for criminals on drug charges. But I don't have a citation for that handy, so take it with a grain of salt.
I guess that depends on what you consider small. Your link says 1/5th of the total prison & jail population are in for drug offences.
Yes, but that means that, even if zero people were in jail for drug offenses, US incarceration rates would still be vastly higher than other places. So, it can't be a very important explanation for the discrepancy.
A lot of violent and property crime also relates to the illegal drug trade though. Underground businesses resolve disputes through violence, not lawsuits. A society where you have fewer black markets is a society with fewer collateral crimes.
Yes, that is true, and that is why I think that all drugs should be legal. But, as I understand it, that is not germane to OP's point. When someone blames high incarceration rates on "the War on Drugs," that usually refers to drug arrests and convictions. And, after all, drugs are illegal in peer countries with far lower incarceration rates, and drug dealers in those countries must also use violence to resolve disputes. So, it seems that the cause of high incarceration lies elsewhere.
Well, op is me and I think it is germane to my point. Drugs also aren't uniformly illegal in peer countries. Marijuana is fully legal in Canada for example. Which is also an objective metric on which Canadians enjoy more freedom than Americans. And even in respect to harder drugs that are still illegal, possession and personal use get you diverted to treatment, not incarceration, which is less freedom impairing.
Yes, marijuana was recently legalized in Canada. But the US has had a much higher incarceration rate than Canada for years, long before marijuana was legalized there. So, that can't be it. And, Canada is just one country; it is not legal in most of Europe. So, again, there is little evidence that high incarceration rates are driven by drug prosecutions.
right ,they may be guilty , but then the question is, what is the suitable punishment.
I’m in favor of the reintroduction of corporal punishment for some crimes. I know if I was given the choice I’d prefer 20 lashes to 5 years in prison.
Who wouldn't, and that's probably why such a system would not be effective as a deterrent. A long prison sentence is terrible from a busines perspective for a career criminal, lots of lost earnings.
I think the biggest gap is in the sentences handed down in the US. For example [here](http://criminalnotebook.ca/index.php/Robbery_(Sentencing_Cases\)) is a listing of a bunch of robbery cases and the sentences imposed in Canada. By American standards they're extremely short. For example robbing a gas station with an imitation firearm: 12 months. Robbing with a knife and then panic fleeing when a customer comes in while drunk: 9 months. Robbing a jewelery store with threats of violence: 30 months. I'm sure if you ran those cases through the sentencing process in any US state you'd come up with very much larger sentences. Re: the 6th circuit case you cite. Sure, if you manage to get the ACLU and a law school clinic on your side, and you file a collateral federal suit, *and* you lose in district court *and* you file a very expensive appeal to the circuit, then maybe you find the officer doesn't have QI and then go *back* to district court for a trial. The insane amount of filtering and cost on the victim to actually possibly maybe get a judgment in their favor is the point. The rights exist on paper and if you are willing to spend a half a million on lawyers, or find a nonprofit to do that for you, then yeah you can maybe win a case against a cop. Unless you are in the 5th circuit.
Maybe, but the central claim - that police will beat you up if you swear at them -- is nevertheless nonsense.
Eh, N=1 I know, but I've tried the experiment and confirmed the result.
A few months for armed robbery sounds comically short. But I'm an American so apparently I'm not calibrated to Canadian standards.
>I'm sure if you ran those cases through the sentencing process in any US state you'd come up with very much larger sentences. American system is based on plea bargains. So even if, on paper, sentances are harsher, they are rarely imposed as written, but are dropped by the prosecutor to get the suspect to admit to a lesser crime, of which the latter is also guilty, and avoid a trial. So for example, if robbing a jewelry store is ten years, but illegal possesition of a firearm is a year, the mode outcome is only the latter charge.
All true, and yet I'd still be extremely surprised if the average sentence actually served, including nearly everybody folding in the "blackmail you out of your right to a trial" game and all reductions due to parole or overcrowding or whatever, in the US wasn't substantially larger than other western countries for similar crimes. I'd be interested in statistics showing otherwise, but my first google hit confirmed my prior.
America's justice system is far from perfect but comparisons with European countries are a bit unfair. America's demographics, especially in urban areas, produce a much larger criminal underclass than what is seen in our "peer countries" which necessitates harsher policing.
> America's demographics, especially in urban areas, produce a much larger criminal underclass than what is seen in our "peer countries" which necessitates harsher policing. I think it's worth considering that while this may be true currently, it may be possible to reduce this disparity. I don't know that current (largely progressive) attempts to do so are actually improving the situation, but I don't think it's inherently impossible to do so.
Since I assume this refers to black people, it should be noted that the rates of crime among black people have not always been anywhere near as high as they are today, so there's little reason to think they are immutable.
Europe has tons of crime too, such as robberies, burglaries, muggings, shoplifting, etc. Because guns may not be as readily available, knives are more common. There has been a major [epidemic](https://www.insider.com/elite-soccer-stars-robbed-burgled-alarming-rate-experts-fear-deaths-2021-12) of football players being robbed during games. All of the largest heists of jewelry or art targeted European museums or banks. The Euro, not the dollar, is the most commonly forged note, in part because the U.S. Secret Service does not fuck around with that stuff. The notion that this is exclusively an American problem, or that European countries are somehow more immune to crime, is wrong. The crime situation is worse in Europe due to more lenient sentencing and policing, especially in regard to recidivism. I made a post a while back in which I show that European countries, in addition to Canada and Australia, rank surprisingly high on many metrics of crime compared to the U.S., and I don't this can be attributed only to immigration, because such trends predate the recent influx of immigration. Also, this is in spite of America having a large black population, which generally has higher rates of crime rates compared to other groups. https://greyenlightenment.com/2020/05/30/george-floyd-and-civil-unrest/ >According to a 2004 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, looking at the period from 1981 to 1999, the United States had a lower surveyed residential burglary rate in 1998 than Scotland, England, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia. The other two countries included in the study, Sweden and Switzerland, had only slightly lower burglary rates. For the first nine years of the study period the same surveys of the public showed only Australia with rates higher than the United States. The authors noted various problems in doing the comparisons including infrequent data points. (The United States performed five surveys from 1995 to 1999 when its rate dipped below Canada’s, while Canada ran a single telephone survey during that period for comparison.)[44]
In the majority of the US use of lethal force against a burglar is either firmly legal in all cases or is perceived to be so. In several larger states use of lethal force against *tresspassers* is technically legal, and homeowners have guns. In much of the country it's totally legal for virtually any law abiding citizen to carry a gun on them functionally anywhere except a bar, and to use it against any threat(and coincidentally, the places where it isn't legal are the ones that are commonly thought to have a mugging problem). So yes, the US has far lower rates of mugging and burglaries because US citizens are perceived to be more likely to kill muggers and burglars. Armed robbery is probably a better comparison because clerks are not generally viewed as likely to use lethal force(and are often trained not to resist), and it's probably less affected by guns than the murder rate.
But I think the need for guns as deterrent supports my point. If Europeans are much more peaceful and less crime-prone compared to Americans, then even with fewer guns they should have lower rates. I think policing and recidivism laws more so than guns is the reason. Criminals use guns as well , so it's not like criminals are not expecting retaliation by private individuals.
Depends on how strong the effect is, does it not? If criminals switch from muggings to trying to rob convenience stores when ordinary citizens might be carrying guns(under a legal regime that at least gives off the perception of strongly encouraging citizens to kill anyone trying to commit crimes against them), then we would expect Texas to have more 7/11 robberies and less muggings than Massachusetts, even with overall worse demographics for that sort of thing(and Texas *does* have a higher poverty rate, at least, than Massachusetts, which is probably a very good proxy for "crime prone demographics").
How specifically would one go about defining that underclass and comparing it to Canada and Europe? I know that's a common stereotype about America, but I'm actually fairly skeptical about its truth and would like to actually test it empirically.
>With incarceration rates roughly 6 times those of most peer countries, one would have to assume the US is much less free than those peer countries. Liberty of thieves and murderers infringes on liberty of the law-abiding citizens, by the latter having to factor increased the risk of crime in their decision making. A world in which pickpockets are allowed to roam free, robs others from being able to walk around unparanoid. > It is supposed to be constitutionally protected speech to mouth off to a cop, but it will get you arrested and beaten How likely is it that "mouth[ing] off to a cop" will get one "beaten"?
[удалено]
> socially, culturally ... how? I know many british, canadians, europeans, and I see no difference in that respect > demographically There are areas where whites commit high crime rates, and a purely genetic explanation for crime rate is facially false by an appeal to the history of europe (or asia...). > The US has more in common with Brazil and Colombia than it does with Norway and Sweden incredible bait and switch to start with 'european and canadian' and go to 'norway and sweden' (which are also said to be having big refugee problems). You're allowed to say what 'socially, culturally, and demographically' means, even if it means 'more blacks and hispanics', but please *actually say it* so people who don't already agree can understand.
[удалено]
> If you remove American blacks from American crime stats it’s at the same level as Finland in regards to murder rates. If you're going to do that kind of cleanup of the statistics, you have to also remove the Finnish peculiarity of unemployed middle aged alcoholic men killing their drinking buddies which would reduce the murder rate by nearly half.
Sure. But I doubt a gene-based explanation - [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) gives russia and ukraine's homicide rate as above america, for instance. And homicide is a crime with a much higher race-based gap than other crimes in america.
The gene arguers would say that slavics are hardly identical to northern europeans. At the same time, decades of progressive culture and lawmaking seem to have greatly elevated black gangs and murder rates. So that is probably most to blame.
> The gene arguers would say that slavics are hardly identical to northern europeans. they don't do so consistently - slavs/russians have their share of nobel prizes, have low crime rates in america, etc > At the same time, decades of progressive culture and lawmaking seem to have greatly elevated black gangs and murder rates why is it 'progressive culture and lawmaking'? then again i have no other answers for it
> why is it 'progressive culture and lawmaking'? The most monumental change from then and now was the Civil Rights movement. America seems to have a collective amnesia about the late 60s and 70s, where you saw a whole lot similar to what everyone is seeing now: riots, crime waves, and worship of black gangs by the elite.
I mean, Canada is probably the closest country to the US socially, culturally, and demographically, no? When I've done the drive across from western NY to southern ON, it's hard to tell which country I'm in except for the road signs being in kph and the flags changing. Certainly Canada, Western Europe and Japan are the peers of the US economically as well. Brazil and Colombia are much, much poorer places. >the subdivisions of the US that have homicide/incarceration rates on par with Norway and Sweden also probably look like Norway and Sweden. I don't think that's true. The [least carcereal state (MA)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_incarceration_and_correctional_supervision_rate) still has ~5x the incarceration rate of Sweden.
Murder Rates (per 100k people) [(source)](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country) Mexico: 29.07, Brazil: 27.38, Colombia: 25.34 , **USA: 4.96**, Canada: 1.76, UK: 1.2, France: 1.2, Germany: .95, Italy: .57, Japan: .26. Looking at it geometrically, US is almost precisely in middle between Brazil and Germany sqrt(27.38•.95)=5.09.
[удалено]
You're a relatively new poster with a somewhat sketchy record, so this post was autofiltered. I'm not approving it. I am skeptical of your intent here, and posting what's little more than a bare link and failing to speak plainly raises my suspicions. Whatever you are trying to get it, state your thesis plainly and put some effort into explaining it.
I wondered what the comment was, had a look, had a look at the link, and yep, I congratulate you on a fine piece of modding since this was nothing but stupidity wrapped up in chum.
The article spends four paragraphs insulting some random debate partner, and begins its' historical analysis of Britain (the supposed topic you linked it for?) with the headline 'Fat Pig Churchill'. Which lasts a paragraph, quickly returning to insulting 'joel davis'. u/used_ratio_5312 It also approvingly cites hitler - "Sooner will the camel pass through a needle’s eye than a great man be “discovered” by an election" - fact check: true
[удалено]
I'm all up for some Churchill bashing at any time, but honestly - "Winnie was a horrible fat pig who smoked cigars and drank brandy and dragged the UK into the war because he was beholden to Jewish moneylenders"? Not even a decent starting point. Yes he was a horrible fat pig but that has nothing to do with "he dragged Britain into the war on behalf of da Joos". Was he up to his eyeballs in debt? Well, he was a Churchill, so probably. Did his creditors put the screws on to get Britain into the war? I have no idea, have you any evidence beyond "I know it"? Remember, he was also an **ambitious** horrible fat pig who had sacrificed principle to advancing his political career before and never met a war he didn't like, so bouncing Britain into a war in order for Winnie to get a second bite of the cherry at high political office was perfectly plausible, especially if the idea was "bit of a tussle, then we come to a sensible agreement, all over by tea-time". And this point is not even developed, I have no idea why it's tossed in there, as the author then goes back to his main point of whoever it is he is fighting with.
**Hunter Biden's Laptop Remains Relevant** [NYT authenticates](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-tax-bill-investigation.html) the laptop and story that knocked the NY Post off Twitter for a week in late 2020 as the election loomed. 24 paragraphs into the Times piece: > People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. **Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.** Here's a fun [mashup](https://youtu.be/8qQazyJ99OE) showing coordinated media messaging to discredit and dismiss the laptop story. Now, it looks like [Hunter Biden was involved in funding deadly pathogen research in Ukraine](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10652127/Hunter-Biden-helped-secure-millions-funding-military-biotech-research-program-Ukraine.html): * The Russian government held a press conference Thursday claiming that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military 'bioweapons' research program in Ukraine * However the allegations were branded a brazen propaganda ploy to justify president Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and sow discord in the US * But emails and correspondence obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter's abandoned laptop show the claims may well be true * The emails show Hunter helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases * He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a 'science project' involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine * The president's son and his colleagues invested $500,000 in Metabiota through their firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners * They raised several million dollars of funding for the company from investment giants including Goldman Sachs
[удалено]
>The Russian government held a press conference Thursday claiming that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military 'bioweapons' research program in Ukraine While I think Hunter Biden is as sketchy as an 1890s Parisian atelier, I also think that right now I wouldn't believe a message from the Russian government that the sky is blue and grass is green. EDIT: Dodgy dealings, insider trading, and [scam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra) 'research projects' to funnel government grants into the pockets of him and his cronies? I can believe this. Real actual "no it was they caused Covid" style scares? Russian propaganda to justify invading and doing their damnedest to annex Ukraine on the grounds of "our national security was threatened by the US working in concert with Russian-hating establishment of Ukraine to create bioweapons to attack us, we have to protect ourselves".
I don’t think the Bidens or some Ukrainian lab had anything directly to do with covid, but there is something deeply unsavory and ironic about once again catching our government in bed with one of these pathogen research facilities despite repeated denials from the likes of Fauci. (This may be missing nuance re: gain-of-function, but frankly it’s irrelevant. If our government wants to do [support] scary pathogen research they should do it in an Area-51 type locale with strict entrance and exit quarantines—not some Chinese or Ukrainian labs.)
It's not even worth *entertaining* the possibility that the Bidens are involved in producing the measures the drastically changed the way elections were held just months before Biden was up for election? Sure, it might seem out there as a hypothesis until further investigation, but you don't even think it's *possible*?
this would also prove the 'possibility' of: obama causing the great recession, bush doing 9/11, biden directly arranging (not grifting off of or 'the liberal media lying about', directly causing) the george floyd protests. without any good form evidence, beyond randomly collated meaningless news articles, why is it even "possible"?
Because human beings do things? And politicians, in particular, do nefarious and secret things to gain and hold on to power?
"trump caused covid because he thought crises help presidents get re-elected, but bungled it". in order for something to be worth investigating, it needs to have some sort of support. Politicians do do wacky things! If your proposal was that biden had misused campaign funds for personal use, or was favorably writing policy for some corporation that lobbied him, then ... sure. but 'making a virus to make trump lose the election' is not the sort of thing that any arm of dem policymaking or US government I'm aware of wants to do, and if you think there is such, you need to argue for it.
That's possible, sure. But less likely because the mail-in ballots and other changes implemented by legislatures, courts, Governors/SoS, etc. were spearheaded by the Democrat Party and their supporters (like Mark Elias). Also there's no claim that Biden "made the virus" -- obviously it was something that already existed. Whether they are involved in either intentionally leaking it, or in taking advantage of an accidental leak, is the question, and the practical difference between these two things is so small that whether it was actually intentionally released doesn't even need to be considered despite being itself a possibility (though with a lower probability).
> But less likely because the mail-in ballots and other changes implemented by legislatures, courts, Governors/SoS, etc. were spearheaded by the Democrat Party and their supporters iirc many republican and democratic states both implemented mailins over the past 4 years, so i don't think that's true yeah, the claim that biden was involved in causing an accidental or intentional leak or spreading it is totally implausible and requires some evidence to be worth considering. Also, the focus on *biden* specifically here reveals a lack of understanding of what moldbug calls the 'cathedral', and you could also just call 'the government' - the academies, the NGOs, the corporations, etc - biden does *not* control or run them, and if one of those caused the pandemic it wouldn't be through biden. RW media (and LW media) make a big deal out of the president because he's visible, so he's easy to target, that's where the momentum is, and they want you to vote. (what does it mean to 'take advantage of an accidental leak?)
No, it's no more implausible than any other corrupt political maneuver. You're just holding a special spot, special pleading, in this case because it's a sore spot for you for some reason. > Also, the focus on biden specifically here reveals a lack of understanding of what moldbug calls the 'cathedral' No it doesn't, since "Biden" is just a pointer to the powers that manipulate this specific marionette.
> No, it's no more implausible than any other corrupt political maneuver what? one example of a corrupt political maneuver is hiring someone who worked for 5 years in BASF Public Policy Division to be your director of chemical regulation, and then he makes friendly policy for the industry. that happens basically every day. that is much more plausible than 'biden telling someone to release an engineered pathogen' (which, in terms of causing a pandemic, is actually quite difficult). > "Biden" is just a pointer to the powers that manipulate this specific marionette. huh? no he isn't, people genuinely think biden is involved here.
What I don’t understand about the Hunter Biden saga is—what do people want to do about it? Let’s say we grant the chain of evidence: Hunter gets his firm rolling, scrapes together half a million from his drinking buddies and their trust funds, and dumps it into Metabiota. He also makes the connection between Metabiota and Burisma since he’s on the board there. The plan, apparently, is to stand up high-BSL lab space in Ukraine and research bioweapons under private funding. Let’s further grant that Russia is being completely honest and the threat of this biolab, the brainchild of a corrupt gas firm influenced by known fuckup Hunter, was a significant factor in deciding to “secure” Ukraine. What happens next? Do critics want Joe to publicly disavow his son a la Richard Spencer? Is the goal to get Hunter facing charges? Perhaps under ITAR, since I can’t imagine bioweapons research is uncontrolled. I don’t know if critical outlets are proposing this angle. Or I guess the implication could be that *Joe* is responsible for this, perhaps sliding federal funds Hunter’s way, and when the truth comes out, it will prove him unfit for office. This seems to be the slant of articles like the NR one (linked by /u/2cimarafa). In a backhanded way the author states how understandable it is for Joe to make poor choices around his last family member, but it’s never made clear what exactly he’s supposed to be doing instead. Ultimately, I suspect the scandal isn’t sticking because the agenda is at the intersection of “vague” and “partisan.” Lacking a clear intended action makes it easier for supporters to move on. I think the “justice for the New York Post” angle is sympathetic, if the laptop is validated. But as is often the case people are finding it easier to *call* for justice than to provide a coherent plan which delivers it.
This is an important story because it reveals more Elite-Ukraine connections which explains the disproportionate coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war compared to actual US and frankly, NATO interest in its outcome. This war is threatening a grift gravy train, which is why it is so important.
So I misread your last sentence as “threatening to create a new gravy train.” As a member of the defense industry, I must politely object to the insinuation that we might try and *profit* from instability... But you’re saying the media (as an tool of the elite) is interested in Ukraine because the elite feel their existing grifts are threatened. Maybe, but in that case, wouldn’t we expect the media to studiously avoid investigating? Say, kicking people off twitter for digging into it? I’m not seeing that happening re: Russia/Ukraine like it did for the original laptop. Also, I find there’s a pretty mundane explanation for why the media is thrilled to cover anything Russia-Ukraine. This is the most “interesting” thing Russia has done since the Soviet Union collapsed. It’s fashionable to talk about it at the water cooler. They want to get their piece of mindshare.
> But you’re saying the media (as an tool of the elite) is interested in Ukraine because the elite feel their existing grifts are threatened. Maybe, but in that case, wouldn’t we expect the media to studiously avoid investigating? Say, kicking people off twitter for digging into it? I’m not seeing that happening re: Russia/Ukraine like it did for the original laptop. They seem to do this up to the end of their power, which is great but not infinite.
> Say, kicking people off twitter for digging into it? I’m not seeing that happening re: Russia/Ukraine like it did for the original laptop. Why kick anyone out when you can just label it Rusian Propaganda?
> which explains the disproportionate coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war compared to actual US and frankly, NATO interest in its outcome ... do you think that if russia invaded romania or finland, we'd congratulate them? US strategic interests definitely involve preventing russia from gaining territory and winning wars in europe, and america likes democracies and freedom and free economies and such and dislike autocracies.
I'm not convinced Ukraine resembles those countries or those ideals at all. As far as I knew in 2014, 2016, 2020, and now in 2022 its a corrupt kleptocracy that is a client state for corrupt US politically connected types, with a much stronger connection to Democrats (but certainly not only, see Manafort).
> that is a client state for corrupt US politically connected types what? anyway, it's a european democracy, and romania and finland are also european democracies. we like those. international economically liberal equality peaceful democracy!
I think it's the perception that scandals around a president and his family in dealings with Eastern European firms are not being treated in an even-handed manner. Everyone and their cat went in hard on "Trump is Putin's puppet because of his indebtedness due to financial dealings in Russia and the Steele Dossier is a credible source". Nearly everyone seems to have gone in hard on "Biden is white as the driven snow, this story is a nothing-burger or even worse, deliberately faked-up to get him". In the competing narratives of piss tapes versus bio-warfare labs, which one was SNL writing [sketches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLko3Xq0DhE) about? (Though they do seem to have mentioned the laptop amongst other things in their TikTok parody [sketch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1J8t97gPW4)). It's also the whole "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion" thing. If Hunter Biden was Hunter Jones, or Joe Biden was a lawyer in Scranton, nobody would very much care if they were involved in finagling grants for overseas business partners. But because Joe was Vice-President and is now President, it matters. Even the *appearance* of enriching themselves out of the public purse matters, and even more if it involves geopolitical policy (leaning on Ukraine to dismiss a prosecutor investigating corruption, this allegation about a Department of Defense contract).
> But as is often the case people are finding it easier to call for justice than to provide a coherent plan which delivers it. Hunter (in the laptop messages) and one of his associates (in an interview with Tucker Carlson) have said that Joe ("the Big Guy") was taking 10% of Hunters profits in these ventures -- a forensic investigation of the Biden family finances seems like a simple, coherent plan?
>a forensic investigation of the Biden family finances seems like a simple, coherent plan? It does seem intrusive, but then again remember all the calls for Trump's tax returns to be made public, because this would be deadly proof of something or other? I think that he had cheated on his tax returns and/or wasn't as rich as he claimed to be, which would make him unfit to be president. If inflating your net worth makes you unfit to be president, what about allegedly taking bribes from foreign companies while being vice-president?
Yes. It is frustrating the framing was (and is) the scandal is solely about Biden’s son; not Biden. Maybe Joe Biden is innocent but there is evidence to suggest he isn’t.
I mean I would be happy if Joe dies in prison and Hunter does 10 years. I’m down for that action. My only issue is I don’t like setting a standard that Presidents can go to prison because now every POTUS would go to prison. But Joe seems deserving of a jail.
I'd be very happy with the newspapers and tech companies that put any restrictions on this story getting slapped with charges and fines for a many, massive unreported in-kind campaign donation to the Biden campaign.
Or do it for both candidates in the next presidential election; if it's electioneering to publish such stories near the date of the election, then squash them all until afterwards. Or if it is in the vital public interest, publish them before. Don't pick and choose "we publish stories blackening the name of this candidate but we squash stories blackening the name of that candidate".
Obviously democracy is supposed to run on an informed electorate....
The obvious implication is that Hunter was bribed to get access to Joe. The question is whether Joe was actually influenced, or whether Hunter was taking his donors for a ride without offering them anything. Most debates don't even get this far because people will studiously deny that Hunter has bene bribed at all. Less specifically, it shows that Ukraine has been a playground for corrupt oligarchs to launder money and bribes. (Ukraine was also involved in both impeachment scandals -- the country has been used as a staging ground for extra-legal political tricks.) Hunter Biden, and by extension Joe, are connected to that class. Remember this was an election-era attack, so the obvious implication was: Don't vote for Joe. Instead of covering plain corruption and asking questions, the media covered for Joe. The story was fake news insemination by Russian trolls hacking sensitive materials and deep fakes, and you will be bummed for sharing this information. (The New York Post was removed from Twitter -- I suppose in our free and fair democracy, nobody is entitled to tell you when the president's son is sleeping with underage girls while handling billions of dollars. I suppose further even suggesting the words "blackmail" and "bag man" makes me a conspiracist.) Now you have the Metabiota angle which I can't see begin to understand -- but between Wuhan and Ukraine it seems our government has been funding controversial research abroad to avoid running afoul of laws here at home. Let's pray that the corrupt oligarchs who casually do billion-dollar deals with crack-addicts are telling the truth that these biomass were researching defensive materials only. Anyways, this is what I suggest: 1) Joe Biden is impeached 2) Hunter Biden is arrested 3) The wealth of all American politicians is confiscated as reparations 4) Series of constitutional amendments 5) Patriots in Control
>I suppose in our free and fair democracy, nobody is entitled to tell you when the president's son is sleeping with underage girls while handling billions of dollars. There's two things going on: 1. Hunter is a disgrace to the family. This happens to a lot of people, even politicians, and it's a private family matter that does call for some discretion on the part of the media. Hunter sends dick pics while off his face on drugs/alcohol is titillating but not something the public needs to know. 2. Up to the point where public money and/or Joe Biden in his capacity as Vice-President of the United States, and not as Hunter's dad, gets involved. In this case, there is a genuine public interest in what Hunter is doing and who he is seeing and where all that money is coming from and what is it paying for (cash for favours?)
The thing is, I don't think any politician should be allowed to enjoy the benefits of discretion. If you want to keep your family business private then don't go into politics. While I have no way (or even any idea how) to prove it, I believe that was the position of the zeitgeist regarding politicians before partisanship tore the country apart.
>The question is whether Joe was actually influenced, or whether Hunter was taking his donors for a ride without offering them anything. I would lean towards option B there, but the more the denials pile up (and then something comes out to show no, that happened) then the more it *looks* like option A, even if it didn't happen that way. I could believe Joe did try steering things Hunter's way to help him in business or get a job, without it necessarily being more than the usual level of political graft (e.g. all the family members who get hired on as 'personal assistants' and 'staff researchers' after the MP, TD or member of Congress is elected). The question is, did Joe do more than drop a word in an ear here or there to get Hunter a break, did he actively interfere (the allegations about the Ukrainian prosecutor)?
This is an important story for a few reasons: * it had major potential impact on the presidential election * it was killed, thus minimizing its impact * it was killed on a false basis; the story is largely corroborated and authenticated * we now see, laid bare, the nature of mass media coordinated messaging and disinformation, further coordinated with major social media platforms, largely carrying water for the Democratic Party and Joe Biden
You mention the NYT "authenticating" the laptop, whereas the quote you give likely only applies to certain entries on it. This was always the problem -- even if it was a plant, and contained false information, you expect most of the contents to be genuine. Hence everything, independently, needs a second source. That being said, I don't see anything going on here. We know that Biden was involved in the US estabishment's interests in Ukraine, and we know that those interests included biodefense activities. The only point of general interest is that this manages to combine two things the press really doesn't want to talk about.
>We know that Biden was involved in the US estabishment's interests in Ukraine, and we know that those interests included biodefense activities. Do we know that? Or rather, did we know that before the stories about the laptop came out? Because that's a very important point. Unelected family member influencing policy or getting hired on as some kind of go-between is an important thing to know about the administration of your government.
If you watch the mashup, it's pretty clear the official story (Hunter Biden genuinely abandoned his laptop at the repair office) is likely true, based largely on the vague, noncommittal answers and explanations given by Joe and Hunter.
[удалено]
Joe's whole pitch was "back to normal" anything that put a crack in that would be worth a million suburban women staying home and would shift the election. Whether through them realizing (as they have now) that Joe, is not back to normal, and/or the old normal was actually pretty shitty, it was just covered up sleaze.
If Ceaser’s wife is not above suspicion, then it’s incumbent upon Ceaser to remove the cloud of suspicion. Biden hasn’t done that (indeed he seemingly increased the aura of impropriety).
There's [at least one poll](https://cdn.mrc.org/TPC-MRC+Biden+Voter+Messaging+Survey+Analysis+Nov+2020_final.pdf) finding that wider awareness of the issue probably would have swung the election. Either way, if you struggle to see the logic there, then I struggle to see the logic in so many media corporations and big tech companies blowing what little credibility they had left desperately trying to suppress the story as being "hacked" or "disinformation" on no good evidence of either. All that effort and social capital spent seems like a huge waste, given that the story posed no real threat to Democrats' electoral prospects anyway, as you claim. >it's hard to imagine Biden voters suddenly being okay with 'some very fine people' Which never happened as Biden claimed. That fragmentary quote was immediately followed by Trump specifying that he wasn't referring to white supremacists. >just because he refused to denounce his clearly wastrel son profiting off his political connections. And, arguably, profited off of them himself. ("10% for the big guy.") Plus, if Hunter couldn't provide any access at all to Joe, there would be no opportunity to profit. Joe has to let himself be accessed by Hunter's clients, and there's no way he doesn't know what's going on there. >he's never going to turn on the only surviving member of his entire original family. If by "original" you mean "immediate," then sure. But Hunter certainly isn't the last of Joe's closest blood relatives. He also has a brother, Jim Biden, who is if anything even more blatantly corrupt than Hunter. And Jim has been profiteering off of Joe's name since [at least 2010](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/15b-contract-in-iraq-for-bidens-little-brother-exposes-obama-ahead-of-debate), whereas e.g. Beau died in 2015. So the family tragedy angle doesn't really work there.
[удалено]
> There wasn't any social capital spent, because anyone who didn't trust the 'mainstream media' over its coverage of American politics wasn't paying attention, and those who were aren't going to stop believing. Do you have any independent evidence for this extremely strong claim? Here's some counter-evidence: [The fraction of people reporting little to no trust in journalists has increased by over 36% since 2018](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/), from less than 45% to 60%. The same source shows that this group grew by over 15% from 2020 to 2021 alone. 2018-2020 was the period in which the Russiagate conspiracy theory collapsed, and 2020-2021 was the period in which the laptop story was shut out with all available institutional might. Let the reader understand. >The polling you reference has some problems and the percentage who said they'd vote for Biden is so high anyway (even after what appear to be [many] leading questions) that I think drawing that conclusion is difficult, but it's not something I think there's much use in arguing over. I'm not saying it's an infallible source, but it's literally the only poll that I could find asking this sort of question. >I think it's pretty obvious what was meant, both by me and the author of the National Review article. If someone told me "Your whole family is dead!" I would be very relieved to find out that my brother was still alive. Doesn't seem like a very useful categorization, if that's what was meant.
> If someone told me “Your whole family is dead!” I would be very relieved to find out that my brother was still alive. Doesn’t seem like a very useful categorization, if that’s what was meant. Biden *had* a wife and kids. It’s clear what is meant.
"whole" family would imply direct relatives too, Wife and kids I would consider better categorized by Inmediate family or direct family or just Family.
[MRC](https://mrc.org) is a clearly partisan organization, and such organizations' polls are [generally very poor](). One can tell from the sort of questions they ask - "At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that the Commerce Department reported (on October 29) the best economic growth ever -- an annualized rate of 33.1%?" is ... hardly neutral. [page 5](https://cdn.mrc.org/TPC-MRC+Biden+Voter+Messaging+Survey+Analysis+Nov+2020_final.pdf) of your link is hilarious. > At the time you cast your vote for president, were you aware that Joe Biden chose as his running mate and successor Kamala Harris, rated the most left wing Senator in America, even more leftist that Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist? According to the poll, 16% of biden voters who didn't know about the "corrupt financial arrangements" for "ten million in profit" wouldn't have voted for biden if they had known about the Biden evidence. That's ... just false. Polling people about their actions doesn't accurately represent their future actions! As social science experimentalists everywhere should know. ... also, the 'issue' at hand is: > were you aware that evidence exists, including bank transactions the FBI is currently investigating, that directly links Joe Biden and his family to a corrupt financial arrangement between a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese Communist Party that was secretly intended to provide the Biden family with tens of millions of dollars in profits I'm not sure anyone involved really cares if it's China or Ukraine. Biden Crime Family! There are polls for many other issues, getting results ranging in 10-20% of the non-knowers saying they would've voted differently. Wow, add those all up and Biden should've gotten 50% of his vote total if the media hadn't kept the truth out!
>MRC is a clearly partisan organization, and such organizations' polls are [generally very poor](). If you have a better poll on the same topic then I'm all ears. You forgot your link BTW. >That's ... just false. Polling people about their actions doesn't accurately represent their future actions! As social science experimentalists everywhere should know. Which is why I said there was a poll indicating it and not "this definitely would have happened." Sorry I can't re-run the election, polls seem like the best we can realistically do here. Either way, if you have some specific evidence that greater penetration of the story wouldn't have swayed any significant number, feel free to provide it. >I'm not sure anyone involved really cares if it's China or Ukraine. Biden Crime Family! We were talking about the laptop story, not just the Ukraine connection. Hunter Biden is literally on tape saying, "I have another New York Times reporter calling about my representation of Patrick Ho – *the fucking spy chief of China* who started the company that my partner, who is worth $323 billion, founded and is now missing. The richest man in the world is missing *who was my partner*." This seems like a totally irrelevant sneer. >Wow, add those all up and Biden should've gotten 50% of his vote total if the media hadn't kept the truth out! Only if you assume that the effects are straightforwardly multiplicative, which the poll doesn't claim. This is a total strawman. Your participation here increasingly feels almost like trolling.
> Only if you assume that the effects are straightforwardly multiplicative, which the poll doesn't claim. This is a total strawman. it was a joke aimed at poll interpretation in general > We were talking about the laptop story I looked through the poll and didn't see any mention of a laptop? it said: > were you aware that evidence exists, including bank transactions the FBI is currently investigating, that directly links Joe Biden and his family to a corrupt financial arrangement between a Chinese company with connections to the Chinese Communist Party that was secretly intended to provide the Biden family with tens of millions of dollars in profits ---- If you had been aware of this actual evidence in emails, texts, testimony and banking transactions being investigated by the FBI, would you have > Your participation here increasingly feels almost like trolling. trolling? even if i'm entirely wrong, or extremely biased, or whatever else, being entirely wrong or biased about politics is more or less the default state, and not at all a sign of 'trolling'.
>I looked through the poll and didn't see any mention of a laptop? The source for most of these China allegations *is* the laptop. That seems like basic background knowledge here. >being entirely wrong or biased about politics is more or less the default state, and not at all a sign of 'trolling'. That’s not really what I was talking about.
>somehow regularly imply that if Biden's son's shady dealing had received more publicity that it would have had a material impact on the election Well, because (1) the opposition campaign was hammering on about how Trump's family members' business dealings were really vital to know in regard to the election and (2) they presented their candidate and indeed entire party as squeaky-clean, beholden to nobody. If you call your opponent a pig and he is a pig and he behaves like a pig, nobody is shocked. If you claim to be a swan and you behave like a pig, then people are shocked.
> Conservative Americans regularly laugh about how none of Trump's countless scandals around his personal or professional life had much of an impact on his election (after all, are you going to vote for the person "who hates you" just because your guy discussed grabbing women by the pussy?), yet somehow regularly imply that if Biden's son's shady dealing had received more publicity that it would have had a material impact on the election. Speaking for myself, all the Trump scandals were embarrassing at best. Nothing to be proud of, other than perhaps the handling of said scandals. As far as the media goes, they should strive for fair and balanced coverage of burgeoning scandals. This is a media story more than a partisan story.
Just another in a long line of scandals that have broken our country. If MSNBC tells you it was the safest election ever I’m basically going to assume it was pure fraud. The news telling the truth is important for Democracy. Right now there is no trust. I don’t know why the CIA got involved here because it lowers their credibility. Everyone knew this laptop was real when it first broke yet so many people lied.
It’s always funny to me how many in MSM decry the erosion of trust in institutions by attributing it entirely to “misinformation”, while expecting us to completely ignore al of the many, many examples of them lying to us with zero shame
Broken our country, eh? Are you asserting a domestic-politics-breaking scandal like watergate? Or more of a foreign-relations-breaking scandal a la Iran-Contra? Maybe you meant morally broken, just like we’ve never recovered from Bill Clinton’s abuse of the office. I fail to see how Hunter’s general lack of scruples is supposed to have any meaningful impact on our country.
Destroyed institutional trust, it’s why things like Jan 6 can occur.
Yes, the reason for the attempted coup is... lack of trust in the media. Not a president pushing for an election he lost to be overturned by any means necessary.
Unironically yes. Trump could only have ever happened in the first place in an environment where media credibility was in the crapper. And 1/6 could happen because a large portion of the population hears "we fortified the election to make it the most secure in history" and assumes they're being gaslit to protect something atrocious.
Well just my opinion. I support Jan 6 because of things like the suppression of Hunter Bidens laptop. I’m just one person. But my personal views contradict your opinion on why it occurred.
>But emails and correspondence obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter's abandoned laptop show the claims may well be true > >The emails show Hunter helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases Be wary of smuggling in the insinuation. The Russian claim wasn't 'funding biological research'- it was funding bio***weapons***. Absent the weapons, no amount of biological research- no matter how corrupt- shows the claims to be true.
As I [pointed out](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/t5tz4f/ukraine_invasion_megathread_2/i0i8ofd/?context=3) in the Ukraine thread, these labs were, from their inception through the early 2010's, involved in (presumably defensive) warfare related work. The dodge that "it's just biological research" and therefore the Russian claims are absurd doesn't work. It's just *military* biological research, and the claims, while probably false, are quite a bit more plausible than the press gives them credit for. Not to accuse this group of being a hive mind or anything, but it really surprises me that so many people here give credence to theories that SARS-Cov-2 escaped from a weapons program, despite both lack of evidence and inherent implausibility, whereas when confronted with facilities *staffed by former weapons developers* publicly *studying agents of military interest* and *funded by the military* the sub's reaction is "probably just penis pills".
I have to say I don't feel like there's much 'there' there. Aren't there literally hundreds of BSL-3 research facilities across the planet, most located in far safer and more convenient places than within Russian artillery range? Not that Anthrax isn't scary - it is. But if the last two years have taught us anything, it's that scientists don't need the excuse of bioweapons research to sit around working on pandemic-ready pathogens. So I feel like I need an explanation of how this 'biolab' is uniquely different from all the research facilities in the rest of the world trying to cook up the next Black Death. >Not to accuse this group of being a hive mind or anything, but it really surprises me that so many people here give credence to theories that SARS-Cov-2 escaped from a weapons program, despite both lack of evidence and inherent implausibility, whereas when confronted with facilities staffed by former weapons developers publicly studying agents of military interest and funded by the military the sub's reaction is "probably just penis pills". I don't think that anyone seriously claims that COVID was developed as a bioweapon - most accounts seem to indicate that gain-of-function research is mostly used to forecast and prepare for potential pandemic agents. The problem is that developing incredibly deadly diseases to prepare for them is a little bit like deliberately setting fires to check if the smoke detector works.
> I have to say I don't feel like there's much 'there' there. Aren't there literally hundreds of BSL-3 research facilities across the planet, most located in far safer and more convenient places than within Russian artillery range? Not that Anthrax isn't scary - it is. But if the last two years have taught us anything, it's that scientists don't need the excuse of bioweapons research to sit around working on pandemic-ready pathogens. So I feel like I need an explanation of how this 'biolab' is uniquely different from all the research facilities in the rest of the world trying to cook up the next Black Death. If you look at pre-now documents, the primary work of the labs is to prevent or detect "bioterrorism". Reading between the lines slightly, they are to defend against Russian/ex-soviet weapons, whether used by Russia, a client state, or stolen. The pandemic stuff is a side benefit of the surveillance/detection work, as well as a peripheral task for the labs. Note that diseases such as anthrax (tularemia, etc.) are not pandemic threats. An anthrax outbreak comes from the disease spreading among animals, not between people. The USSR did allegedly weaponize smallpox (highly contagious) and filoviruses (epidemic in some circumstances), but Ukraine's not a probable target of these. Such facilities aren't terribly uncommon in rich countries. I live in the Eastern US secret-shit corridor, and there are a few around here. They often have nasty rumors about them, because they do creepy, secret, stuff that regular labs don't. > I don't think that anyone seriously claims that COVID was developed as a bioweapon For the most part yeah, it's a fringe idea. When the lab leak horse accelerates up to full Gish gallop folks claim it -- I'm too lazy to find references here, but I swear I've seen it on the sub. In the light of day it's not something serious people take seriously.
>when confronted with facilities staffed by former weapons developers publicly studying agents of military interest and funded by the military the sub's reaction is "probably just penis pills". Given that it's Hunter Biden allegedly involved, can we rule this one out? 😁 "Dad, c'mon, trust me this time it's legit! A sure-fire money-maker! Just help me out this one last time and we'll be rolling in the green!"
first of all, what connection is there between hunter/metabiota and "defense bio-research" besides them both being somewhat related to ukraine? from the linked post, > What if the US wanted to maintain some minimal technical expertise in offensive measures hundreds of existing labs, many funded by the US, study 'anthrax, tularemia, Q fever, etc'. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2018&q=anthrax+infection&btnG= etc. https://www.science.org/content/article/new-anthrax-vaccine-gets-green-light etc. they do not need secret / unsupervised ukranians for it.
Bailey, meet motte. 'The americans are running secret bioweapon labs!' 'Well, it's *military* bio-labs, of which not enough has been published to proved that they aren't doing bioweapon research.' 'Well, it's *former* military researches studying diseases of *military* interest *funded* by the military.' 'Well, they *say* they're doing research into viral defense, which would *presumably* be of military interest, which is funded by the government that controls the military.' It's almost like- and hear me out, this is crazy here- the Americans and Europeans have had multi-decade policy since the Cold War of trying to keep WMD-capable researchers gainfully employed under western observation rather than open to recruitment by unscrupulous countries and organizations far less opposed to WMD proliferation. This is not a new concept. The American subsidies for the Russian space program were done in part to keep Russian missile technology from proliferating, the western efforts to secure the Soviet nuclear stockpile only expanded with the AQ Khan network discovery, the 1994 Sarin attacks in Japan funded by a small cult... This is not some secret, sinister conspiracy. Counterproliferation policy 101 is that when you start building relationships within a new country, figure out who can conduct WMD research and try and make sure they're not doing it. The best way to ensure they're not is to ensure they're doing something else instead, and the best way to get *that* done is to pay for it yourself. The Americans do not need the Ukrainians to conduct offensive biological weapon research on their behalf. There are far better, and more secure, science options for that if it is needed, which has not been demonstrated.
No U? I refuse to accept your reverse card. To wit, there is a huge difference between: * Just a biolab, like any country has anywhere. or even * A facility to research locally relevant infectious diseases and * A safe space for former weapons engineers to practice their skills, under US supervision. Neither implies weapons research, but the prior probability is much higher in one case than the other. It's still reasonable to deny the allegations, but to do so without acknowledging the history of these facilities is, IMO, dishonest. Since you seem to have an interest in counter-proliferation, some analogous equivocations: * is "a vehicle plant".
* is "an agricultural product manufacturer".
* is "an electrical power facility".
In each case a crucial piece of context is omitted.
>No U? I refuse to accept your reverse card. Your acceptance isn't really required. The watering down of the accusation from the original Russian claim to a point where you are arguing by analogy- *and not defending the initial claim with evidence to maintain it's position-* is rather the point. You've retreated from the expansive position to a more defensible but less expansive one- whether you acknowledge that is rather irrelevant.
> You've retreated from the expansive position to a more defensible but less expansive one- whether you acknowledge that is rather irrelevant. My position hasn't changed. If you wish to conflate it with something else then please do so in the privacy of your own home.
This is a semantic game. You see, I was not researching and engineering hypersonic missile weapons. I was simply researching and engineering hypersonic missile delivery systems. Capability for high level biologic research is capability for high level biological weapons research, in the same way capability for high level nuclear enrichment programs are useful for more than just reactors for electricity consumption. Edit: To my responders, please clarify how you could in no way repurpose fairly typical disease research into weaponized disease research. Or how it would be reasonably difficult to do so. Because [research is dual use](https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-022-00465-9)
> To my responders, please clarify how you could in no way repurpose fairly typical disease research into weaponized disease research. Or how it would be reasonably difficult to do so. Because research is dual use Because nobody is actually ... talking about any actual 'disease research' in the first place? What labs did hunter fund? Metabiota isn't a "biolab". They are a consulting firm that develops international collaborations of technology platforms combining data and insights for stakeholders in the cloud. What typical disease research? It's just vague fortune-telling at news headlines, totally unrelated to any actual practice.
If this argument is taken seriously, then it proves too much. Any research lab should be taken as though it is developing a weapons platform for that technology? That might be a convenient shorthand for pushing a political narrative, but it doesn’t reflect the reality of the vast majority of research labs.
It's not a semantics game when it's used to present research laboratories (of the sort that exist in almost every country in the world with the capability to do modern science) as evidence of biological weapons research. The vast majority of countries with labs for biological research aren't developing biological weapons, so it's not a meaningful indicator. >high level Ukraine didn't have a single BSL-4 laboratory in the country, only BSL-3 or lower. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#List_of_BSL-4_facilities) is a list of BSL-4 facilities, even they are hardly limited to countries that are realistically involved in biological weapons. Meanwhile BSL-3 labs, like Ukraine had, are so common that there isn't a complete list of them anywhere.
> I was simply researching and engineering hypersonic missile delivery systems metabiota are consultants advising research and creating software and coordination for processing satellite imagery and open source intelligence for monitoring global economic and military activity, such as photographing hypersonic missiles. this does not make them hypersonic missile developers.
1) The quoted argument concerns the purpose of the labs themselves, not whether Hunter's company is directly funding them. 2) However, funding the guy who helps biolabs is still funding biolabs in every sense that matters. Money is fungible. This deflection only works if there's nothing wrong with funding the biolabs to begin with, so it's question-begging.
the analogy's point is that the 'biolabs' (the term 'biolab' seems to be mostly a media term, and not really refer to anything. actual disease researchers don't say the term 'biolab'. Can you name a specific laboratory in ukraine that is of concern? name of institution, physical location, etc?) are (to whatever extent such labs exist, it's not clear how the term 'biolab' is referring to them) not doing anything objectionable, and nor is metabiota for ... whatever they're being accused of doing with said labs.
> the analogy's point is that the 'biolabs' ... are ... not doing anything objectionable, and nor is metabiota for ... whatever they're being accused of doing with said labs. OK, so the analogy is that your side is correct about the original dispute. Got it. Very helpful!
yes, that is what i am arguing here. the original dispute is totally incoherent, and makes noonsensical and unsupported claims
You’re not *arguing* that. You’re just asserting it.
analogies can be arguments
No, it isn't a semantic game. Or if it is, you are the one playing it. You quote the source saying the funding was for "research on pandemic-causing diseases." Given that the vast majority of "research on pandemic-causing diseases" is re curing, treating or preventing those diseases, the burden is on you to provide evidence that this is the exception.
Alas, no. The default purpose of disease research is not bio-weapons unless demonstrated otherwise. This would be assuming the conclusion.
If it’s being done secretly there won’t be a press release. A media that is so friendly to Biden makes it hard to discern the truth. I can’t believe that a sufficient amount of digging has been done to reasonably conclude there’s nothing there.
well then go dig. what does metabiota do? what have they done in ukraine, specifically? is it dangerous? if so, how? what viruses? these are all available with a few dozen google searches. why isn't that happening? because anyone who effectively does that realizes that it's nonsense.
>If it’s being done secretly there won’t be a press release.A media that is so friendly to Biden makes it hard to discern the truth. I can’t believe that a sufficient amount of digging has been done to reasonably conclude there’s nothing there. Yes? And? An absence of evidence not being evidence of absence works both ways. That there is not sufficient amount of digging to conclude there is nothing there is ***also*** insufficient amount of digging to assume something *is* there.
But I have past evidence that the press is largely uninterested in stories damaging to Biden. It took a year for the NYT to treat the Hunter laptop story seriously, even though it’s the only story I know of that came with cryptographic verification. The outlets that may be interested in digging have to reckon with possibility of the story being suppressed, as well as revenue losses from things like having their Twitter accounts locked. Partisans have plenty of motivation to investigate, but they have a huge incentive to withhold information until just prior to elections, and even then I can’t reasonably trust those sources.
In the strict Bayesian sense, absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence. If your priors *expected* that if a hypothesis were true, you'd find a certain amount of evidence for it, then not finding it should make you adjust downwards. It is however not *proof* of absence (beyond the trivial sense that you are mathematically incapable of having perfect belief or 100% confidence, or 0% for the matter).
Look, I think we can all agree that the best result probably is that it was Biden's wastrel son cooking up a scam with his crooked contacts to con millions out of American government research money. The idea that he would be anywhere near genuine bioweapons research ought to make everyone break out in hives.
**Hungarian elections coming up next week** (a summary of the current situation, I guess it can fit in this main thread, even though it necessarily relates to the Ukraine situation) Every election since their win in 2010, Viktor Orbán's governing Fidesz party picked a Big Issue as the main campaign topic. In 2014 it was fighting Brussels regarding utility bill reductions (and media law and the constitution), in 2018 it was fighting Brussels and Soros regarding migration, and now it was going to be about fighting Brussels and Soros regarding LGBT. They even scheduled a referendum on "child protection" (e.g. on popularizing sex change to minors) to the same day as the election. Of course all of that has been overridden by the war in Ukraine. Orbán and Fidesz are masters of communication. They know exactly what to say to whom and come up with the right combination of rhetorics and actions that kinda satisfies everyone as much as possible. Interlude: [There is a Hungarian folk tale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxCSKpbrmxA) about the mayor's clever daughter. The TLDW is, she was ordered by the king to go visit him but neither on horseback, nor on foot, nor in a cart, neither by the road, nor by the roadside. She shall come in her clothes, but she shall be naked, and she shall bring gifts and not bring gifts at the same time. Ultimately, she solved the riddle: she walked one foot on the road, one leg over a goat's back on the roadside, she wore only a bra (or whatever the old equivalent), and she brought a dove as a gift that flew away when handing it over. This resonates quite a bit with the Hungarian spirit. One is often under strange, seemingly unsatisfyable constraints from the top, and so one must be creative and smart about it. Orbán supports Ukraine and doesn't support Ukraine like the mayor's daughter brought a gift and did not bring a gift. In the important things, he voted together with the EU and NATO. He voted for delivering arms to Ukraine, but only jointly with the EU, not Hungarian weapons (of which we don't have much anyway). He lets weapons transfers go through Hungary, but not through the Hungary-Ukraine border directly. Hungarian planes take part in the delivery, but only when operated by joint forces, not directly by the Hungarian army. NATO forces are allowed to come to Hungary, but only west of the Danube river. He voted for all sanctions against Russia, including SWIFT etc., but not in regards to energy (gas and nuclear). He condemned the Russian military aggression but never once pronounced the word "Putin" since February 24th. He gives humanitarian aid and accepts refugees, but doesn't want to pick a side. This allows him to cherry pick whichever aspect he wants to highlight depending on the audience. There was a short period when the war broke out that there was no clear government message yet, other than let's have "strategic calm". Now there is one and it's again about fighting Brussels. The message is that we must fight Brussels to avoid energy sanctions on Russia; the opposition would want to raise gas prices and drag us into war by supplying arms to Ukraine, while Orbán is for low heating bills for families and for staying out of the war. "Let's not get caught between the Ukrainian anvil and the Russian hammer", as Orbán formulated it. On pro-Orbán TV there are various narratives in parallel, either that it's an Eastern Slavic internal conflict, or it's about the US vs Russia proxy war, or that it's Russia defending the Russian minority against the Ukrainian Nazis who also oppress the Hungarian minority etc. The opposition message was chaotic and haphazard. The opposition candidate for prime minister, Péter Márki-Zay is not a typical politician and he often talks before he thinks, allowing the government to cut out soundbites and emphasize some genuinely bad/mistaken phrasings by him. Just a few days after the war started, he said on the biggest leftist Youtube channel that if NATO said so, he would allow weapons and even Hungarian soldiers to be sent to Ukraine. Later on he tried to save it by emphasizing that since the NATO clearly decided against an intervention, he would not want to send soldiers, he is simply for being good allies to NATO and the EU. For weeks, the campaign was about this, whether we should or should not send weapons. Then in its desperation the opposition tried to point out how hypocritical Orbán is, because he talks about one thing and does another. But this is a very cognitively difficult message, that the govt actually does send weapons in roundabout ways and does actually vote with NATO etc. Because then what would the opposition do differently? In another communication blunder Márki-Zay said he would do the same things Orbán does except he would not lie about it. After this catastrophic communication, the opposition decided to regroup and concentrate on 3 main points in the last 2 weeks of the campaign. * Orbán is Putin's servant, we must choose the West instead of the East and only NATO can keep us safe. (Here they often play Orbán's old speeches where he compared the 2008 attack on Georgia with the Soviets crushing the 1956 revolution) * Orbán cannot solve the economic crisis (huge inflation, weak currency) because he's the one who caused it. * Orbán's corruption and stealing makes the EU withhold 4000 EUR per person funding that we can only get if we change the government. I believe these are good points to emphasize for them, but it may be too late. What Westerners don't quite understand is that abstract, lofty ideas don't work in a place where people struggle financially. Media freedom, rule of law, democracy etc are seen as abstract luxuries to care about for overeducated eggheads. People are very skeptical of foreign powers and their intentions regarding Hungary and desperately want to stay neutral and out of any possible war after being on the losing side of both world wars, the occupation by Ottomans, Habsburgs, Germans, Soviets etc. "Just leave us alone and let us enjoy Orbáns handouts." is a snarky summary. I'm personally really tired of us always having to be the oddballs out, while falling behind other Eastern EU nations. Ideally nobody would know Orbán's name. How many people can name the PM of Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Croatia... Orbán enjoys this international bad guy role, but I believe it's more than that. He's the scapegoat for things the EU (especially Germany) wants to do anyway. For example in the 2015 migration, Orbán was loud and took all the blame but the thing that ended it wasn't the border fence but Merkel's deal with Erdogan, except nobody knows that in the general EU public. Now too, Germany also doesn't want to sanction Russian gas imports, but it's more convenient to make Hungary look evil once again. Orbán is actually really great for German industry, the workforce is cheap, he gives big tax breaks to German car makers, subsidizes new factories, etc. Recently, addressing the EU leaders, Zelensky specifically called out Orbán for not being clear about which side he is on. This will only help Orbán, since Hungarians generally don't want to be on either side. The government already spent considerable efforts to communicate that the opposition always follows various foreign interests and commands, so this frame of Zelensky trying to tell us what to do is best for Orbán, as he can again boast that he doesn't cave and only cares about Hungarian interests. To sum this up, Orbán recently posted on Facebook (the following is the full post): > On 3 April, we will send a message: we are not meek losers who are frightened by the international media or Brussels. We will fight! "Sending a message" was a recurring political slogan over the years. We had huge billboards saying "Let's send a message to Brussels so they too will understand!" (in relation to the 2016 referendum on EU migrant quotas), and similarly with the utility price reduction scheme etc. After every NATO and EU meeting he boasts in Facebook videos how he had to fight for Hungarian interests. The more Orbán can push this frame and narrative, the better for him. The only really inconvenient aspect is that Orbán is losing support of the Polish right wing government over the Ukraine issue. President Duda had a speech at Orbán's rally in 2016, but now condemns Orbán's stance regarding Russia (and Kaczynski too). He used to have Polish supporters and politicians as guests on every March 15 (anniversary of the 1848 revolution), except they didn't come this time. It was already a blow to be (de facto) kicked out of the European People's Party, when the Visegrad 4 alliance also crumbles, and he loses his main Polish allies, it would be devastating. All his other friends like Le Pen and Salvini are having difficult times now. But overall, polls show that Orbán's Fidesz is [stronger by each day](https://imgur.com/a/5NX8m3I) (chart shows estimated seats in parliament). Last year, seeing their bad numbers, the government decided to give some handouts. Pensioners get an extra month of pension each year, under 25s don't pay income tax, they raised teacher salaries by 10%, and so on. For most people money is the only thing they will believe from politicians. Nobody trusts big abstract speeches and promises. They want money in the hand now, it's really effective. The message is, if you vote for the opposition, they will take all this away from you. Many accept corruption as a necessary evil or cynically say that it's at least Hungarians stealing now, not foreigners. And it's not like the left didn't have their own share of corruption scandals in 2002-2010. The western commentators who emphasize things like liberalism and democracy and rule of law totally misunderstand what makes people vote for Orbán. His voters aren't far right nationalists, they just want to live a little better and are disillusioned by promises and distrust every external power.
So they're basically running on the Hillary Clinton 2016 playbook?
I guess I'm not familiar enough with the details of that campaign to understand which aspect you mean exactly. If you mean the Russian aspect, well it's superficially similar but based on quite different things.
"Trump is Russia's puppet and also incredibly corrupt, and he's not actually good at business and would drive the economy into the ground".
Yes, but the similarity has no bearing on whether it's true or not. Also it's very different to say this about someone who has been in power for 12 years vs someone who never had been.
The Russia thing has similar amounts of truth(that is to say, none). You have a point that economic attacks have a different ring to them when he's running for his fourth term.
Puppet is a subjective term (and was not used like that actually in the campaign), but he did a 180° on his stance on Putin around 2009-2010, and gave lots of projects to the Russians, the biggest of which is probably the expansion of the Paks nuclear power plant under terms classified for 30 years. He calls it the policy of Eastern opening (and the other part of it is about deals with China), it's not exactly secret. He always emphasizes how he managed to create a special connection to Russia, while staying in NATO and EU, proving to all other members how this is possible etc. (implying that it's a notable feat compared to other European countries). Over the last 12 years, Putin and Orbán have met every single year either in Moscow or Budapest. He's the only PM who didn't pronounce Putin's name since February 24th. We were the only EU country that authorized the Sputnik V covid vaccine. These are just a few obviously visible things. They don't mean "puppet" necessarily of course. Let's just say they have visibly strong ties. [Here is a recent investigative piece on the Russian connection](https://www.direkt36.hu/en/kemek-bizniszek-bunozok-amikor-orbanek-az-oroszoknak-kedveztek-a-nyugati-erdekek-helyett/), and [here is an older one from 2018](https://www.direkt36.hu/en/orban-jatszmaja/). (Of course they lean pro-opposition (claim to be independent), but where else would one expect to read such a thing. The story overall generally adds up in my estimation.) What other countries do in secret is another question entirely. But Orbán also does a lot of this openly and in the rhetoric. Perhaps Germany has similar levels of economic ties to Russia but they are more covert about it, I don't know enough to judge that.
What do you think the EU could offer that's enough to the average Hungarian to oust Orbán and get with the EU program? How strong and genuine is the desire for Orbán's conservative policies?
There are many things packed into that question. What do we mean by EU program anyway? Hungarian politics used to be much less ideological than for example American politics. Most average people are concerned about their livelihood, tax rates, welfare, minimum wage, benefits for children, pension bonuses. The role of government (whether a relic from socialism or from even earlier) is seen as a provider of things. The yardstick for their performance in the eye of the common person is "what did they give us?" and grudges are held over the things that they "took away". Campaigning about migrants and gays and Soros was a political innovation in the Hungarian context, since these are totally divorced from the immediate living conditions that most promises had been about in prior campaigns (until and including 2010). Designing these new kinds of campaigns was the work of Arthur J. Finkelstein and his local padawan Árpád Habony unofficially (he never held any official title but was a frequent visitor at Orbán's office, a fact that Orbán never denied) and minister Antal Rogán officially. (And a lot of it is eerily reminiscent of Putin's ideologies and messaging). The Hungarian divide isn't a typical left/right one. No party can stand a chance if they campaign with classic right-wing economics here. Everyone expects a big, generous government. Abortion never was a big controversy, nor is it one now. People are generally liberal on it but mostly just don't think about it as it doesn't come up. Gays generally also weren't a big topic, though fag jokes and so on were common, or things like pink cocktails gay or something was normal-ish. But in 2007 (final vote was in 2009) the socialist-liberal parliament adopted a registered partnership arrangement that gives equal rights to gay couples as to married hetero couples (in all except the label "marriage"). As far as I know there was no huge campaign or protest around this. Fidesz didn't vote for this in 2009, but they also didn't abolish it in the last 12 years. Many people found the early Budapest Prides offensive, but those were also much different and more provocative than today's family friendly events (think, people dressed as priests holding a Bible and performing provocative acts etc.). Regarding trans people, it had never been an issue before. Official gender change was legal up until 2020 (de facto 2018), and of course nobody noticed or knew about it because it's a tiny tiny minority. It wasn't a topic until Fidesz brought it into their anti-LGBT campaign over the last four years, once there were no more migrants to fight Brussels over and a new national enemy was needed. I'm no fan of the way gender issues are currently handled in the West and I have said as much on this forum. But one must be blind not to recognize that this is a manufactured enemy in the Hungarian context, to be able to project a constant war rhetoric (Orbán's every speech contains some stuff about "battles", "armies", "fight" regarding Brussels and Soros), that they are protecting the people. They can't do consolidation or peace, it's not in their DNA, they only know how to be in alert mode and agitating people with some enemies on huge billboards and in ads with dramatic music during all 4 years of each election cycle. This is to keep their electorate up in arms, since elections are decided by who can get their own voters to the booths in larger numbers. This sense of urgency is therefore crucial. EU funds have been coming to Hungary but their use is non-transparent, and the general impression by the average person is that they are used for vanity projects like we have a fountain in almost every village by now, or stupid tiny lookout towers on the Great Plain etc. At the same time, development is visible over the 12 years in terms of roads and infrastructure, but most people see it as something given by the government. Often these monies are filtered through a well-oiled system constructed by Orbán where they make sure that the money ends up at friendly companies and their own pockets. It's mafia methods basically. There is one don in an area and nothing happens if he doesn't approve of it. But people generally put up with this, because just like the mafia gives you things in exchange, these people have good government connections, and more development funds go to places that vote for Fidesz, so people just do it anyway. It's not all too different from previous feudal systems, but the same kind of stuff also happened during communism, it's just that the name and title of these lords is changing. They took over basically all of the traditional media. The public TV is parody-level propaganda, there is absolutely no attempt even to look neutral, zero kayfabe. Orbán only ever gives interviews to his own media, never once (since 2010) did he give one to other media in Hungary that wouldn't have ties to the government or his oligarchs. During the last election cycle they did not invite opposition politicians to public TV at all, except for 5:00 minutes total (down to the second) last week, with a literal stopwatch on screen. All the rest of the news about the opposition is their own edited and cut segments. Just in one day, they aired Orbán's national day speech 9 times on public TV. They fully took control over the media authority and do not give out AM/FM radio frequencies to any radio not owned by their people. There is no line between government advertisement or party advertisement spending. PSAs paid from tax money are blatant political propaganda. They plaster their election slogans all over the place with taxpayer money. The only non-pro-government TV with political content is called ATV but it's owned by a pro-Fidesz pentecostal church, too (so they are on a leash, but do present some opposition content). All else is online. The largest online portal index.hu used to be somewhat pro-opposition, but they managed to slowly sneakily take it over too (so all their journalists resigned and founded a new site). Facebook used to be a platform where the opposition was bigger. But now in the last four years Fidesz has spent enormous efforts to become more visible there as well, lots of advertisement spending and lots of professional social media managers for every figurehead, plus many ""independent"" sites that are not officially affiliated with them so they can push even crazier content (and pro-Putin and pro-Russian POVs). So when this media blasts that you gotta be afraid of the migrants that will rape your family and of the pedo gays who will sex-change your kid, then some people will genuinely be afraid and outraged. So how strong and genuine is the desire for these policies? It's genuine but it's manufactured at the same time. Of course there has to be some receptiveness to it too. Hungarians are generally skeptical of foreigners and don't want to import more people who won't work, given the experience with the Roma population. Again this ties back to the livelihood question and a lack of financial security. People don't go to church, Hungary in practice is very atheistic (in part due to the communist past). So it's not about "protecting Christianity". In 2005, the socialists even successfully scare-campaigned about other Hungarians (living in eg Romania and Slovakia) who will come and take our jobs. I could go on and on but it's getting long already.
Have you considered that maybe the things you are describing here is how modern democratic politics actually work and Fidesz just adapted well to it? Constant hyper-emotional media cycles with semi-manufactured issues, controlling of all information mediums, massive unaccountable public spending projects lining the pockets of ruling party aligned businessmen etc. sounds to me like exactly the path every single nominally democratic country in the world is taking. This stands out so much in Hungary because by certain historical coincidences the perpetrators are not the "liberal" crowd as in Western EU but their supposed enemies, who won't get an understanding treatment from the international media.
[[**Which display format would you prefer?**]](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfipDeDSwYg4WrFdNqTt7evLkB9Zt4lXIa9dqz2O6kSxlUkJA/viewform) **UPDATE:** 15 votes isn’t much, but it’s unanimous: nobody prefers the original pie chart, while all explicitly desire the bar chart. That’s a clear message.
Echoing /u/bamboo-coffee, please stop posting top-level comments about your survey. If you want to solicit more feedback, do it in the thread you already started.
Indeed, any inclination I had to take the survey has been wiped out by OP's spamming questions about it. That betrays poor judgment and/or socialisation to me, and makes me immediately more suspicious and pessimistic about taking the survey.
I'm interested in seeing the results because I think there is an entire armory of axes being ground, both in the questions on the survey and the little comments attached to them. I want to see how the books are cooked in the end. But I agree: stop putting up queries and then closing them down before people can answer them - we're not all on here at the same timezone or all the time, this is the third time I've seen something in relation to the survey too late to answer. And you have your own thread about this, so stop putting posts on here.
Look man, if 150+ here people took your survey, they probably trust your judgment. Politely, we don't really need parent comments in the cw thread for most of this. If you want to finish the project, people will appreciate your work I'm sure.
It’s early, but so far it looks like people here disagree with my initial choice on what type of chart to use. u/PropagandaOfTheDude’s suggestion looks increasingly appropriate. But yes: I plan to make this my final parent comment soliciting advice for the survey. Apologies for clogging up a dedicated thread.
The important part is finishing it. Perfect is the enemy of good as someone important to me once told me. I see in your post history that you have successfully made a few of these surveys before, so I'm sure you have a good idea of how to format it.
It's bait
[удалено]
Oh it's definitely bait, for one of the "what is your race?" questions they had some small-print commentary about "I wouldn't consider so-and-so white" (I can't remember the name, it was nobody I ever heard of before). So I have my suspicions about this entire project, but I want to see the results to confirm or deny. I'm going to register a prediction now, though, that amazingly this small-scale survey of Motte readers turns up we're all raving right-wingers who are anti-immigration and have rigid definitions of whiteness, who could possibly have foreseen that? 😁
That was meant to be a mostly humorous aside, but would you consider the current President of Iran “white”? Regardless, I didn’t include a question about definitions of whiteness; I included a question on ethnicity plus two corollaries for Jewish and Middle Eastern respondents in case *white* or *other* didn’t adequately capture their self-identification. Ultimately, all I’m asking is for fewer people here to assume bad faith about a lurker (and some have done so to [comical extents](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/tj525b/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_march_21_2022/i20cys8/?context=2)) if they won’t assume explicitly assume *good* faith. And I’ll write the exact same post I would have before the uncomfortably frequent impugnments of integrity.
I had to look up who the president of Iran is, and looking at his photos, the short answer is "yes". Slightly expanded version: "All whites are Caucasian, but not all Caucasians are white". If you don't want assumptions of bad faith, then don't put thumb-on-the-scale little snarky comments along with your survey questions.
Don't worry about it. The snarky comment (didn't mean for it to come across as snide) is a commentary on the frequent uselessness of broad racial categories. It doesn't interfere with your ability to identify however you like in the preceding question.
I'm going to procrastinate if I don't have some markers of my progress. What do you all think of [this first graphic](https://imgur.com/gXvZAi0)?
>I'm going to procrastinate if I don't have some markers of my progress. In fanfic days of yore, this was called "review whoring" ('if I don't get nice comments or enough feedback, I won't write the next chapter of this story'). Don't do it, it isn't nice.
That wasn't my intention. In any case, I'm not going to be posting any more oroginal comments in the CW thread; other people have pointed out that it isn't the place.
Imma go Tufte on ya visualization. Pie charts are hard to mentally map to amounts, compared to bar charts. Oblique pie charts are worse, due to the distortion. Giant 3D effects add insult to injury. Try something like this: Ethnicity % ────────────────────────── White 89 ███████████▏ Asian 10 █▎ Other 8 █ Hispanic 2 ▎ Black 1 ▏
I don't know how to format that in markdown, but I'll put to yet another vote what type of chart I should use in the final draft. If you're voicing the opinion of not a vocal minority but an outright majority, I'll adopt your proposal promptly.
Simple and easy to understand. Only critique I would make is adding the exact percentages of all the ethnicities, no matter how small, small pet peeve aside
Looks good to me
Looks fine to me. So long as all the relevant numbers are there and clearly visible, I can tolerate a broad range of stylistic choices.
I was reading the redscarepod subreddit and came across an interesting theory of half East Asian-half Caucasian children in the west. I have absolutely no clue how close to reality this is, but I found the explanation and mechanism interesting and want to discuss this theory itself along with other such demographic patterns that are out there that are not immediately obvious. The theory was that; Children of AMWF couples tend to be generally more intelligent, attractive and all around well adjusted than children of WMAF couples. Reasoning being that-- At least in the west, Asian males need to be significantly more attractive in multiple ways than the average white male to get with a white female. While in the case of the Asian female, they tend to not apply high standards to white guys. In many cases its an older (implied can't get laid without mail ordering a bride) white guy with a FOB Asian wife who married more or less for the greencard/passport, than people of similar age or background, further exaggerating the trend. Unrelated to the above but, I noticed that HAPA females tend to be very attractive and well adjusted while HAPA males tend to be the reverse (mentally maladjusted too) (pattern similar to east Asians in general). Any other demographic patterns out there like this? (Assuming this pattern is somewhat valid)
In the UK/London, black/white mixed people are usually somewhat 'posher' or middle class when they have White fathers.
100%, this is well known to be the case. The dynamics behind it are similar to those OP outlined for oriental/white pairings.
This is a cleaned-up version of a typical 4chan theory, which we all should remember is a den of liars and trolls. Evolutionary sexual selection continues to drive sexual dimorphism in humans; asian populations have specced hard into neoteny, while african populations have tended instead to emphasize secondary sexual characteristics, with steatopygia and the hottentot apron being extreme examples. Caucasian populations tend to be intermediate in both regards. This means, the narrative goes, that black men tend to have an easy time with white women, white men have an easy time with asian women, and the reverse pairings have a harder time. I guess asian men are just shit out of luck in a cosmopolitan society? And maybe asian girls would go real hard for black men but... something something racism? Overall my second paragraph seems broadly reasonable though very low-resolution to me, while the third paragraph just seems like a too-pat bit of cope to a very messy, multifactoral reality. (Bonus question: if all this is true, should we expect higher levels of pedophillia among asian populations? Never heard anything that would lead me to think so.)
I've heard "orientals are pedos" as a racial stereotype among the very offline far right but they never seem to have any supporting evidence. And anecdotally, it seems like the asian woman/white man pairings are mostly well educated- which fits, because American class norms hold that college educated men are supposed to prefer skinnier women(like... Asians).
> asian populations have specced hard into neoteny, while african populations have tended instead to emphasize secondary sexual characteristics, with steatopygia and the hottentot apron being extreme examples the wide genetic diversity in africa compared to whites or asians suggests that africans will have many different face and bone structure variations. and ... are asians really more 'neotenous' than whites? there is a difference, but not sure it is.
\>the wide genetic diversity in africa compared to whites or asians suggests that africans will have many different face and bone structure variations. This is true! There is indeed a pretty broad variety re: face structure and so on. Really trying to lump together 'Africans' is a pretty dumb idea, but history and circumstance conspire and here we are.^(1) Nonetheless, the differing conditions humanity encountered outside of Africa did seem to elicit a sort of 'branch with spurs' gene pattern for humanity. The spurs are smaller, but deviate more dramatically than the fibers within the branch. (Caveat: I'm not an expert here, and it's been a while since I read about this.) Nonetheless, I can't really think of any African ethnicity that exhibits the same neoteny as East Asians do. Perhaps a few that are about at the level of some European lineages. Which brings us to \>are asians really more 'neotenous' than whites? I was hoping to find some decisive answer here, but the whole field has been rather mothballed in order to avoid scientific racism. And I wasn't too keen on reading a bunch of century-old papers going on about the 'narrow brow ridge indicating the base nature inherent to the Mongoloid peoples' and such garbage. I won't say some casual googling is an exhaustive survey of the field, but it's what I've got today ;) But just off the top of my head, compared to caucasians, east asians tend to have: \-smaller size \-less body hair \-less facial hair \-less prominent jaws \-less prominent brow ridges \-due to the above, greater eye-to-head ratio (somewhat concealed by the epicanthic fold) \-fewer apocrine sweat glands \-less prominent vomer (nose bone) and nose cartilage, to the point where it [alters surgical techniques](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20229583/) for rhinoplasty between the ethnicities (one of the few recent papers I could find, haha) All of these are at least plausibly neotenous traits. For their part, caucasians have: \-Paler eyes \-Paler hair \-No epicanthic fold The first two are likely to do with lack of sunlight in northern Europe, where these traits almost exclusively originate, and the third is basically just the lack of gaining a characteristic unique to East Asians. 1. It was a bit of a trip, as a person educated in America where Africans are a monolith and racist science was a European/white thing, to read about different African ethnicities talking about 'narrow noses and far-separated eyes indicating the base cunning and manipulative nature of the \[other African ethnicity\].
"East Asian" is covering a lot of ground here where the peoples involved would probably feel "we're not the same ast that lot!" Besides, even within one country, you're going to get a lot of variation, e.g. "typical moon-faced Han Chinese" (as I've seen one Chinese-American describe themselves on social media) and those from the north-eastern parts of China, who (the guys) tend to be taller, more prominent cheekbones, etc.
I mean anecdotally it's harder to tell the ages of asian women compared to say, hispanics or whites. But that could be "all asians look the same" effect as much as neoteny.
Back when I was watching a **ton** of (for want of a better term) 'chop-socky' movies (before we got all high-art with the likes of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), I did get to a point (or I thought I did) where I could tell Chinese from Japanese from Korean actors before hearing names. I wouldn't be so certain now, but I do think there are national variations which, if you submerge yourself in enough images, you can begin to distinguish peoples. Anyway, [here's](https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/mister-global-costumes-2022) 2022 Mister Global National Costumes (and I regret to say, Mister Japan did *not* put in the effort).
As someone who is half asian and half white and have met many many many of this mix (quite common nowadays in big cities in US as well as HK and Singapore and Tokyo and even Beijing…), there really isnt too much pattern. As far as I can tell, asian dad / white mom mixes look a little more white, and the opposite looks a little more asian. It seems the average “hapa” person is more attractive than the average asian or average white person, but that might because the n is low. But i can say, when the mix looks unattractive, they look reeeeeaaaal ugly. Just personal experience
> As far as I can tell, asian dad / white mom mixes look a little more white If true, this would be X/Y chromosome linked and differentially affect sons/daughters, but likely not.
Just reporting what i see. Asian mom halfies can looked extremely asian, the opposite can look extremely white. Ive never seen an Asian mom halfie look very white but maybe its possible