ryan cooperthis lady seems genuinely stupid https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-rules-according-to-pamela-paul
she's also a huge fuckin liar https://slate.com/business/2023/02/jk-rowling-pamela-paul-new-york-times-trans-coverage.html
Jason Braatz
mtsw@ryanlcooper people say you get more "conservative" as you age and one thing that's definitely happened to me is I've become more traditional about the value of integrity and honesty in revealing people's character. Being flagrantly dishonest turns out to be a very reliable marker of being awful in myriad other ways
@mtsw I feel similarly. a strong social norm of plain common decency is underrated imo. of course the least likely place you'll find that today is in the conservative movement
@ryanlcooper yup. not just indecent but anti-decent. the movement actively valorizes assole behavior and holds those who act decently in contempt.
riffle@mtsw @ryanlcooper except if someone says something negative (even if true) about their clique members. Doing so is an atrocity.
josh buermannScreaming invectives at women seeking prenatal care at Planned Parenthood while bemoaning the incivility of the left for protesting outside the homes of judges making it impossible to seek that care is family values.
Clinical Rawlsian@mtsw @ryanlcooper Something I've been ruminating a lot about recently is how many of the problems we currently face stem from a collective turn away from the idea of public virtue – particularly among our elites. At all levels, our leaders have abandoned values such as honesty, forthrightness, compassion, and courage in favor of savviness, cunning, self-interest, and power for the sake of power.
@MadMadMadMadRN @mtsw I've really come around on George Washington for this reason. guy who leads a revolution, doesn't seize dictatorial power, and instead sets up a norm of peacefully stepping down is *extremely* rare
Asymptosis@ryanlcooper @MadMadMadMadRN @mtsw
At least for his second term, Washington actively didn't want the job.
Been sayin' forever, anyone who wants a political position shouldn't be trusted with it. I just haven't figured out how to draft our leaders, required service...
@ryanlcooper @mtsw Another quick example of someone who exhibited civic / public virtue (because I just came across it recently and I want more people to know about): Chiune Sugihara.
Chiune Sugihara was the Japanese Imperial Consul to Lithuania in 1939. Following Germany's invasion of Poland, thousands of Jews and other Polish citizens fled to Lithuania. These refugees required diplomatic visas before they could cross international borders and escape to safety in the US or Canada.
@ryanlcooper @mtsw Without clear instructions from Tokyo, Sugihara granted 10-day visas to Japan to hundreds of refugees. After Siguhara issued some 1800 visas, Tokyo finally responded to Sugihara's cables and advised him to stop issuing visas. He ignored these instructions and continued to issue visas even after the Consul closed.
@ryanlcooper @mtsw . After the Japanese Consul closed, Sugihara continued to stamp visas in his hotel room and even on the train as he was leaving the city. Eyewitnesses say that as his train left the station, Sugihara tossed the visa stamp out of the window, leading some Jewish refugees to stamp fake visas.
@MadMadMadMadRN @mtsw people can surprise you!
@ryanlcooper @mtsw To me, Sugihara represents a type of civic virtue that's the polar opposite of the profound cowardice, ambition, and selfishness embodied by so many of today's elites. To take an example from one of your recent YouTube videos, could you ever imagine Timothy Geithner putting his career and possibly his life at risk to help powerless refugees escape persecution? It makes me laugh just to type it.
Patrick FessenbeckerBroke: Ethics are subjective and relative to social and historical conditions, the only thing that matters is letting people do whatever they want
Woke: huh, it turns out it's really hard to be brave without also being honest and kind, maybe the virtues really are unified
Bespoke: turns out that following the golden rule actually lets you be yourself and honesty is the root of integrity, who'd have thought
Big Worker@mtsw @ryanlcooper you get more conservative in terms of caring more about the things conservatives pretend to care about, just not the things modern conservative politics is actually at all about
@Big_Worker @ryanlcooper yes exactly