The problem here is Gessen uses Zhukov's words to bash Donald Trump, but neglects to mention that Zhukov is a right-winger who supports Trump, and the Tea Party. He's also anti-feminist & new yorker readers would feel differently if they knew these things. It's disingenuous.
Probably in the broad category of “feminism is untouchable, even when it is inconsistent with women's rights”. It's a direct copy of a tweet though, so maybe a different person.
If you're quoting someone you should indicate that. If you're quoting Bryan MacDonald well I think you should validate it pretty carefully. And if you are Bryan MacDonald...well I'm not surprised how you turned out Bryan.
Well, there is a video where Zhukov tells that he doesn't agree with principle of collective responsibility advocated by _some_ feminists. Calling him anti-feminist after that is kind of big jump, isn't it?
-- Jordan Peterson is essentially correct in most of things he says.
-- Current left wing is all about collective identity (such as "straight white man"), and there is no such thing as "collective identity".
-- This is absolutely unacceptable for me, and I do not believe in patriarchy at all.
Basically, he is your run of the mill right-winger with libertarian bent, nothing special about him, but his anti-feminist stance is pretty clear. I think that he and Ben Shapiro will find common ground in a minute.
I'm not sure how you get "right winger" out of someone who doesn't believe in identity politics.
I'm basically a socialist christian who voted for Trump (but will go Bernie next time), but I'm not into equality of outcome between social segments. Am I supposed to be right wing because I don't subscribe to liberal attempts at equality of outcome (between socially delineated groups)?
I have never seen a mainstream liberal to push "equality of outcome" ideas. I have seen liberals push for detailed understanding of what leads to different outcomes and for "equality of opportunity". And I have seen only far right people bring up the notion of "equality of outcome", usually as a strawman as above.
And yes, being against the government helping with upward social mobility (the only way I can rephrase what you described, but I sincerely hope you will correct me if I misunderstood) is certainly part of modern American right wing politics.
> I have never seen a mainstream liberal to push "equality of outcome" ideas
These are in the wording of initiatives across multiple US states with broad enough support to pass (eg California Senate Bill 826). The mainstream term is affirmative action; a proportional equality of outcome.
If you havent seen mainstream liberal eoo, I can only assume that it is due to willful ignorance.
Modern "affirmative action" is not about "equality of outcome" - that would be a silly and unsustainable model. Most of the efforts in that direction are about "ensure there are women and PoC at the interview" and "blind the interview", not about hiring people based on gender or race without consideration of their abilities.
To your particular example, see section 1.c and 1.g for research on the usefulness of their mandate. I personally feel that more research is necessary to understand these effects, I can even agree with someone saying that these efforts are a silly and unpractical bandaid. But instituting a rigid rule against measurable biases is not "equality of outcome", it is very much "equality of opportunity" (nobody would hire an incompetent woman as a board member if that is what worries you)
You disregarded most of my comment: The whole point is that you can have affirmative action without different standards. Affirmative action, when done properly, is about ensuring you have diverse candidates for the job, the rest comes naturally without lowering the standards.
It should be obvious, if you are a supporter of democracy, that the right to free speech, expression and the right to not be dragged out of your house in the middle of the night and sent off to the Siberian gulags should be indispensable in any developed society today. All of these values form the foundational core from which a healthy society can thrive and grow and love (according to his definition of it in the article). Yet all of these qualities are sorely void in the Russian state today. In their place is a corrupt apparatus put in place by Putin and his underlings, with the intent of efficiently plundering and exploiting the country's assets for their own personal gain. Any resistance to this on going robbery are put down by a brutal, organized network of thugs with the full backing of "the state". This klepocratic system have the Russian people locked into a vice grip while their futures and their childrens futures are slowly bled out of them like blood from a giant leech. The young man decided to take a stand against this system, to speak out against their blatant corruption, fully accepting that he might lose some of the brightest years of his life locked up in a Russian jail cell. And what's even more impressive to me is that his resistance may very well be for naught, besides adding a name to a long list of dissidents that have been imprisoned/murdered for daring to speak out against the regime. Even being fully aware of these facts, he has chosen to stand for something that he believe is worth fighting for, consequence be damned. This act had taken more courage than anything that I've ever done in my entire life, combined.
And yet your take away from this article is he's a Jordan Peterson fan. Fucking LMAO.
I was just saying that collaboration with RT is a big red flag. Talking about tweet itself it's definitely not correct at least in anti-feminist part. Also whole tweet intention is kind of ad hominem, original article discussed Zhukov's speech and his sentence, not his personality.
It comes from the consistent history of the factually incorrect propaganda reporting, with direct funding from the state budget. The very same state that dictates convictions to judges for political prisoners upon a phone call from the state administration.
Turns out even people who work for Russia Today tell the truth sometimes (if they were consistently lying they would be telling the truth after all:).
I have watched Zhukovs videos before he got arrested, he self identifies as a libertarian, supports Trump as a lesser evil compared to Sanders and Warren, and likes Jordan Peterson. Because of this Russian twitter was abuzz today with feminists arguing whether it was ok to support him. So the article indeed misrepresents his views.
It's also par for the course for Gessen. She's extremely biased, and she doesn't even try to hide it. There's no nuance whatsoever in what she writes, it's all black and white for her. I'm not sure why she still calls herself a "jornalist".
His statement, however, looks like something a US conservative would largely agree with: decries identity (in his words "atomization") politics (which Gessen largely supports), calls to strengthen traditional families (which Gessen opposes), calls for individual responsibility, etc. For the record: I don't know about his "anti-feminist" views, but I agree with what he says in that particular statement.
It's directly applicable to the US as well - people are pretty much at war with each other here, and at least half the population is quite willing to give up their liberty for taxpayer funded government handouts. Having grown up in the USSR, I know where this particular road ends.
There's one bit of context that people in the US will miss: the Soviet legacy. Back then people relied on the government for _everything_ and had little to no individual responsibility for anything. You worked for peanuts and by Western standards lived in poverty, but a lot of the stuff was "free" and you didn't have to worry about your future - it was largely predetermined.
A large, older chunk of Russian population still lives like that and has futile expectations that the government will solve whatever problems they might have. The government stopped doing that some 30 years ago, but they don't know any better. I think this, and the extreme level of corruption, is why the GDP of Russia is less than that of Texas. IMO for a country with such insane wealth of natural resources, and a pretty decent education system this is shameful.
The whole 'government doing anything is a slippery slope to socialism' is such a worn cliche. It's much more likely that having a large, disadvantaged population thats cut off from class mobility or basic life necessities is what encourages people to start dragging landowners into the streets.
There's a reason why the Great Depression led to a number of relief programs - the threat of a soviet-style communist uprising was pretty high.
There also were some pretty great "relief programs" in the USSR at the time, where millions of people were relieved of their food and left to die of starvation. A government powerful enough to give you everything is also necessarily powerful enough to take everything.
And "class mobility" is a 100% capitalist concept. Under communism there's no "upper class" to be mobile to.
As of 2018, the US is experiencing the lowest poverty rate in history (considerably lower than e.g. UK, Germany, and France), and record low unemployment as well.
Repeating things doesn’t make them true. People aren’t asking for the government to do everything, they’re asking for affordable healthcare and education
But that's not what the government can actually deliver. All the government can really do is take money from one set of people under threat of violence, and give it to another set of people. That's it. It's a parasite. It doesn't produce anything. If you believe in the law of conservation of energy, adding government to any process will only make it less efficient. See e.g. US student loans and what that did to college tuition.
Governments obviously do more than what your absurd statement implies. They are democratically controlled veichles of power. One of the things they do is some measure of redistribution of wealth, attempting to counter the capitalist tendency for wealth concentration.
Bizarre references to "conservation of energy" (?) aside, you can simply look empirically. Places with low social and economic inequality are factually better places to live.
So are you saying that because Zhukov is, you claim, a right-winger, that means that his criticisms of Russia are wrong, and that Russia is actually a pretty good place?
Oh, and by the way, I don't know if Zhukov actually is a right winger, but Putin definitely is.
No, I just find it amusing that Masha Gessen is praising some person, who, if relocated to USA while keeping his political views intact, will instantly become alt-right monster and God knows what else (see Covington kids case).
The question of how good or bad Russia is, is a million times more important than an amusing observation about a particular journalist. So let me ask you again, what do you think of it?
> So are you saying that because Zhukov is, you claim, a right-winger, that means that his criticisms of Russia are wrong, and that Russia is actually a pretty good place?
There is no causal connection between the OP's message and this assumption. The initial argument is that the journalist interpreted the Zhukov’s letter and his (right-wing libertarian) views in accordance with her political (left-wing and anti-Trump) views.
edit: Putin is authoritarian right-wing, which has nothing to do with Zhukov's libertarianism. As follows at least from his indictment.
Sad that someone who is so pro-liberty thinks that Zhukov doesn't deserve liberty because he's a right-winger. I don't know what to make of something like that.
I found the speech very interesting, and the columnist’s attempt to twist it into relevance about his own hobbyhorse of US politics to be very boring.
Russian politics is very interesting on its own, and we hear far too little about it (whilst also hearing far too much about US politics). The analogies between the two are extremely weak and generally uninformative; saying “my opponent is like Putin” carries no more information than “my opponent is a big poop face”.
Russian politics? There are no such things since late nineties.
Whatever "opposition" is left in Russia today, is no more real than the token opposition to the CPSU that legally existed in the Soviet Union.
There is a long held Russian political tradition that long proceeded the creation of the Union: they pick the weakest enemy, the weakest opposition camp, and then surround them with spies, puppets, and then purposely let them show everybody their helpless, futile struggle.
In comparison, all credible opponents to the CPSU was dealt with in the swiftest way, without even a token trial. They either met their demise from KGB's signature potato trucks, or simply "disappeared" Latin American style.
The same was with modern Russia. The last credible, real opposition to MAFIA—KGB chimera was the Primakov-Lebed group. Lebed died in a helicopter crash, and Primakov, you know it. At the same time, KGB plotters didn't care the slightest about formal liberal opposition, because they knew that they were complete jokes, incapable of killing a fly.
Nor Primakov, nor Lebed were even remotely "liberal." That fabled "Russian liberal opposition" only existed in the imagination of Western "Kremlinologists." Those "non-violent resistance" clowns brought demise not only on themselves, but all and everybody else who was capable of standing against resurgent KGB. Their last chance assassinating Putin expired right around 2005-2006, and you know what those clowns did back then? They said "we need to bring Putin to Hague...," few month later a wave of assassinations rolled over Russia
It's always been interesting to watch that despite a lot of common similarities, politics took a different turn in Ukraine. While Ukrainians regularly run their politicians out of office, the same doesn't happen in Russia.
That's probably why Ukraine's per-capita GDP is about one third that of Russia (itself a pretty poor country) - each new cohort of politicians has to rob the country blind again and again, and they have to do it quick before they are chased out of the office. In Russia everyone knows Putin and his cronies aren't going anywhere until Putin croaks, and dude seems to be in good health for the time being.
Politicking aside, I wish all the leaders in all the countries of the world held such ideals as this man.
There's a lot to absorb, but the rising alcohol and domestic abuse due to despair is something that's increasing in my country too: oz. Mental health issues are skyrocketing. Our politicians ignore what we ask for, but propagandize what they think we need based on their corruption, while actively suppressing liberty. The middle class is almost gone...
... and we're widely regarded as being called the lucky country. By comparison to many less fortunate others we still are.
It is far more. It is an indictment of Australia as an incurious (yet hardy) nation run by incurious people. It still adequately captures the state of our modern leadership.
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."[1]
Edit: Also as an aside, the quote originally didn't have anything to do with resources, though in modern times it makes sense to make that link.
"When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits."
I’ve always thought that the author of that phrase showed a fundamental misunderstanding of what ought to make a country prosperous. He seems to think it’s surprising that Australia’s success has come from the bottom up (millions of individuals acting in accordance with basically-sensible cultural norms) rather than top down (imposed by the will of some great leader).
But societal success always comes from the bottom up, and great cultures come from evolution, not intelligent design.
May the reins of political power in our country continue to exist in the hands of uncreative intellectual non-entities and suburban solicitors. When Great Men with Big Ideas get into power it always seems to result in a disaster.
I personally think it's more of a give-and-take or feedback loop. Sometimes you need leaders who recognise strong ideas and run with them.
I think a clear recent example (regardless of personal opinion) is the whole gay marriage debacle. The majority of the population wanted it but no leader had the guts to be the one to do it. The closest we got was wasting money on a plebiscite, spending $80 million to basically ask "are you really sure you want this?". I don't mind being more directly involved in democracy, but we never have such plebiscites for other issues. They didn't have the courage to go ahead without covering their backsides.
Anyway, back to the quote, if we're going to anthropomorphise Australia then the impression I get is that we are the rich kid who grew up with all the advantages bestowed upon us by Mother Britain but we never really learned to fend for ourselves as independent adults. We can't coast forever.
Funny you should mention that. Keeping Australians 'Relaxed and Comfortable' was John Howard's election pitch from a famous interview in 1996 and that legacy of "keep coasting, don't rock the boat why take a risk..." Has pretty much defined politics in this country ever since.
> Politicking aside, I wish all the leaders in all the countries if the world held such ideals as this man.
> There's a lot to absorb, but the rising alcohol and domestic abuse due to despair is something that's increasing in my country too: oz. Mental health issues are skyrocketing. Our politicians ignore what we ask for, but propagandize what they think we need based on their corruption, while actively suppressing liberty. The middle class is almost gone...
Man, there is a gigantic rightist resurgence all across the world, if you did not notice that.
The consequences of that will be the biggest challenge to our generation, and possibly even outlast us.
If you don't want our children's generation being haunted by the mess our generation let rightists to do, start doing something about it other than talking about it.
Americans are yet to taste all horrors of rightism, and don't know how deep is an abyss they are about to step in.
You will see a good example of what you are up to if you take a look on the worse half of Latin American countries with multi-generational rightist, oligarchic elites.
By all definitions, they are doing terrible, and this is why you should work hard for your country not to become like one of them
So ending illegal immigration, reducing taxation and government overreach, reemphasizing personal responsibility, recognizing the threat of China...
These things are not going to "haunt" our children's generation. Not stopping the Leftists from ravaging the economy and society more than they already have will haunt our children.
I live in a post-Soviet country that has many of the issues described in the statement too. We have the highest suicide rate in Europe (after Russia), and basically everyone knows of at least a handful of people who have died either directly or indirectly due to alcohol.
Earlier this year my father-in-law died due to alcohol. He had been out drinking and the next morning his family found him asleep on the floor downstairs. They assumed he was just drunk (he was still breathing at this point) so left him, and when they came back in the evening he was still there, but no longer breathing. His death was put down to heart failure as he had known heart problems (no post-mortem was done), but if it wasn't for the alcohol something would have been done. So even the statistics that associate deaths due to alcohol are too low.
Last year the government brought in laws to limit the hours alcohol could be sold in shops (8pm Monday - Saturday and 3pm on Sunday and holidays) and the drinking age was raised to 20, and of course it was met with plenty of public outcry. Most people refuse to admit that alcohol is such a big problem for socieity, even when it is staring them in the face.
In Russia, there is no judicial system. Courts are simply rubber stamps for Putin run mafia, they do the bidding of the boss. So if repressive machine wants to crush someone, it would do it without hesitation, using hundreds of anti-social "laws" passed by the fascist Duma (parliament), that does the bidding of the same boss.
Basically courts do nothing in practice, just pass "judgements" that are handed to them by the "investigators" or whoever relays the mafia command to them. And if the boss decides that public would react too much to the court case, the "judges" might suddenly become more lenient.
> Courts are simply rubber stamps for Putin run mafia
You will see that in US too. Just watch Gorsuch and Kavanaugh do their masters bidding on issues like tax returns.
The irony is pretty rich here, because Masha would be happy to see an identically situated American (ie, a libertarian with a flag of violent resistance to state tyranny expressing concern about demographic changes and attempting to form non-state mutual support networks) suffer a number of legal and extralegal consequences.
> libertarian with a flag of violent resistance to state tyranny
Perhaps you meant non-violent, because the whole court case that government was trying to fabricate was an attempt to accuse him in calls to violent protest, which was not true.
I spent a small part of my life studying Russian language and history, as other family members have done with other cultures (or lived in them, etc etc).
And regardless of where else we will agree or disagree, when anyone can sincerely talk like this young man did about love (meaning caring for others as much as for oneself) and personal responsibility (actually doing something about it, all of which I relate closely with honesty and the Golden Rule), I automatically think: "I would probably like knowing this person, and almost certainly we could enjoy working together on some worthwhile things."
That is a political (or whatever) "tribe", as some say, that I would like to belong to.
This guy's father worked for Russian government space agency, trained to be a cosmonaut. Now he's in the court watching the same government prosecute his son for political youtube videos. It is a disturbing sign when authorities press baseless charges against children of people who served their country their whole life.
"It is a disturbing sign when authorities press baseless charges against children of people who served their country their whole life."
The baseless charges are disturbing but if they have done something wrong it's also disturbing to NOT press charges against children of people who served their country their whole life. Which happens quite a bit.
I had followed this case closely. Initially they accused a boy with directing crowds during Moscow protests on July 27, there was a video evidence. He was arrested and put into jail. Meanwhile prosecutors admitted that the guy on the video is not him. They let him go, he spent over a month in jail for no reason. They dropped initial charges but instead of begging his pardon, they brought totally different, unrelated charges of his blog content being extremist. While I agree your statement in general, in this particular case it all looks very thin and biased.
>It is a disturbing sign when authorities press baseless charges against children of people who served their country their whole life.
Don't get me wrong, tribalism happens in all systems (e.g. if you're immediate family of a local cop it's often a free pass to DUI in many parts of the US) but not prosecuting because his dad was "one of us" is even worse than prosecuting in the first place.
If they're gonna be tyrannical I'd at least like to see them be consistent rather than give people with ties to the state a free pass as happens in so many cases.
"I will endeavor to take joy in having this chance—the chance to be tested in the name of values I hold dear. In the end, Your Honor, the more frightening my future, the broader the smile with which I look at it. Thank you.”
I would say his courage comes from his conviction that he is right in his beliefs. There have been many individuals and groups that have endured state oppression with the same attitude of bliss because of their resolute belief that what they are doing is right.
If paid trolls were to work on hn, they would be unlikely to work in the middle of night. So the lack of people defending Putin and his cronies is not remarkable.
It is indeed unfortunate that there is no discussion about the other people who were arrested at the same protests with Zhukov, and who got 2-3 years for things like throwing plastic bottle towards policemen or touching the helmet, but i don't believe that's because some commenters are trying to divert attention. The article is poorly writen, and i believe Zhukov himself would have made similar comments.
"who got 2-3 years for things like throwing plastic bottle towards policemen"
You might be in for the whole lot of surprise on what similar act performed in the US can get you into. I encourage you to google "assaulting police officer". And what actually constitutes an "assault".
Putins press secretary Peskov would be happy to know that you confirm his views about USA.
I encourage you to share stories about things analogous to handling of Moscow protests happening in USA. And also to tell why something unreasonable happening in USA should be the standard for all other countries. (Disclaimer i am neither from Russia nor from USA).
"Putins press secretary Peskov would be happy to know that you confirm his views about USA."
Why would I give a flying f..k about what Peskov has to say? You might like the same food as Pinochet did. Does it say anything about you?
"Disclaimer i am neither from Russia nor from USA"
Same thing again. Why would I give a hoot about where are you from?
As for stories about how the US handles protests: I was writing about particular case of altercation with the police. You are free to make extensive research on your wider subject yourself.
> Why would I give a flying f..k about what Peskov has to say
Because exactly this was a widely discussed question when Peskov said that the Russian police was too lenient and in US one could be killed for throwing a bottle.
The research Russian internet did, said that indeed you may get shot if you throw a bottle at policemen one on one when policemen demands from you to stand still, but never such thing have happened during protests and even people throwing stones do not get multiple years of prison. So the line of question you used, is an attempt to manipulate with facts and lie.
> Same thing again. Why would I give a hoot about where are you from?
it is relevant, because if you were not assuming i am from US, why would you tell what is happening in US, in a totally different situation?
"Because exactly this was a widely discussed question when Peskov..."
I assume you spend your days tracking what is happening in Russia. I do not. Please forgive my ignorance. I am quite literally way more concerned about what is happening in my own backyard as things are definitely turning south in regards to freedoms. In regards to a subject - I just pointed out that using "jailed for throwing things at police" is very weak argument, at least in my opinion.
As for the rest, you seem to have an agenda here. Sorry but I am not interested in participating. Ciao
Of course i have an agenda, like most people i can't sleep if someone is wrong on the internet https://xkcd.com/386/ :)
Unfortunately writing late at night, and not being careful isn't the best way to convey ideas to adversarial audience, so i got my deserved downvotes, but maybe next time i'll be more successful.
It's also interesting how every thread involving russia, china, etc, someone always comments about trolls but doesn't provide specifics. It seems like a naked attempt at poisoning the well so that one side is prematurely smeared and only one side gets to speak. But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Which comment are you referring to? Specifics would be nice.
I wonder if the New Yorker writer realizes this brave young man is for the most part quoting the evil, alt-right, misogynistic, transphobic Jordan Peterson. And whether he would have republished the speech if he did. /s
Like what? I am fairly familiar with his work, could you point out what you found problematic? Peterson talks mainly about personal responsibility as the only way to meaning in a life that is mostly suffering. Clearly this young man was influenced by that message.
Sometimes you need a martyr to make people realize the fuckery happening around them.
For example, from Occupied France during WWII...
On 5 December 1940, Bonsergent was convicted by a German military court of insulting the Wehrmacht as he insisted on taking full responsibility, saying he wanted to show the French what sort of people the Germans were and he was shot on 23 December 1940.[50]
The execution of Bonsergent, a man guilty only of being a witness to an incident that was in itself only very trivial brought home to many of the French the precise nature of the "New Order in Europe".
This is what is so interesting about it to me. If I were Snowden, I would have been suicidal or at least extremely depressed seeing how I basically threw away my life without the public caring at all (were there any long term changes? Does the average global citizen care about government spying? Were the responsible government officials brought to justice?).
If no one cares about your sacrifice, then what's the point of making the sacrifice in the first place? I know this is a very negative point of view looking at the world, but it's something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about as I grow up (maybe it's a normal thing you realise when you're starting to change into a realist from an idealist as you mature).
At the very least, privacy practices have evolved dramatically since Snowden affair. Everyone uses end-to-end encryption now, a website without https is now eyebrows-raising. So while government spying probably didn't reduce, there is a lot less they can do now.
I agree there have been improvements in the right direction, but if you were in Snowden's shoes, would you be satisfied with these improvements compared to the sacrifices you've made and continue to make? Why did he have to throw away a normal, comfortable life with good pay for constant anxiety and uncertainty to expose something to the citizens of the world - when the citizens of the world don't even want to stop watching Netflix to do something about this issue?
To me, an important aspect of Snowden's revelations was to confirm that many "conspiracy theories" were actually fact.
To understand events, I like to examine different groups' motivations. What would be in their interest? For government, wanting to maintain control and power over its citizens, especially citizens with power, money, and influence, monitoring all conversations is obviously in their interest. Hiding this monitoring is also in their interest. So of course, they do both. It seems very obvious, but without Snowden's evidence, it's very easy to label this as "tin foil hat" conspiracy theory: "Of course the government is not monitoring everyone's phone calls. They could never keep that a secret for so long!" But as we have found out via Snowden, they actually can keep secrets for a very long time.
So an important aspect of his disclosure to me is to make it less easy to label something as conspiracy theory or being a paranoid nut job, just because there is no evidence to support a "wild" claim - yet.
Bilal Abdul Kareem (born Darrell Lamont Phelps) is an American journalist and war correspondent covering the Syrian Civil War.[1][2][3] He has worked with CNN,[4] and produces the YouTube channel On the Ground News TV (OGN TV).[2] He believes that he has been placed on the U.S. kill list.[5][6][7][8] He claims to have survived five drone assassination attempts by the U.S. military, which killed random civilians that were present nearby, including two attacks on vehicles he was traveling in, including one where the car he was sitting in was blown up by a missile shot from a drone.[9][10]
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadhttps://twitter.com/27khv/status/1203785706860109830
-- Jordan Peterson is essentially correct in most of things he says.
-- Current left wing is all about collective identity (such as "straight white man"), and there is no such thing as "collective identity".
-- This is absolutely unacceptable for me, and I do not believe in patriarchy at all.
Basically, he is your run of the mill right-winger with libertarian bent, nothing special about him, but his anti-feminist stance is pretty clear. I think that he and Ben Shapiro will find common ground in a minute.
I'm basically a socialist christian who voted for Trump (but will go Bernie next time), but I'm not into equality of outcome between social segments. Am I supposed to be right wing because I don't subscribe to liberal attempts at equality of outcome (between socially delineated groups)?
And yes, being against the government helping with upward social mobility (the only way I can rephrase what you described, but I sincerely hope you will correct me if I misunderstood) is certainly part of modern American right wing politics.
These are in the wording of initiatives across multiple US states with broad enough support to pass (eg California Senate Bill 826). The mainstream term is affirmative action; a proportional equality of outcome.
If you havent seen mainstream liberal eoo, I can only assume that it is due to willful ignorance.
To your particular example, see section 1.c and 1.g for research on the usefulness of their mandate. I personally feel that more research is necessary to understand these effects, I can even agree with someone saying that these efforts are a silly and unpractical bandaid. But instituting a rigid rule against measurable biases is not "equality of outcome", it is very much "equality of opportunity" (nobody would hire an incompetent woman as a board member if that is what worries you)
Yes it is. Creating orthogonal standards to meet, in order to axjieve a quota is for the purpose of eoo, within a series of (future) outcomes.
> The whole point is that you can have affirmative action without different standards
No. Measuring diversity (for some value of) requires a new standard (sometimes called a rule or requirement or some other deflection), minimum.
And yet your take away from this article is he's a Jordan Peterson fan. Fucking LMAO.
- Zhukov is not actually a Tea Party Trump supporter and the tweet is made up, or
- Zhukov is all these things but it would not in fact be relevant to New Yorker readers, or
- Zhukov is all these things, but the facts should be ignored because they are coming from an unapproved source?
How come?
I have watched Zhukovs videos before he got arrested, he self identifies as a libertarian, supports Trump as a lesser evil compared to Sanders and Warren, and likes Jordan Peterson. Because of this Russian twitter was abuzz today with feminists arguing whether it was ok to support him. So the article indeed misrepresents his views.
His statement, however, looks like something a US conservative would largely agree with: decries identity (in his words "atomization") politics (which Gessen largely supports), calls to strengthen traditional families (which Gessen opposes), calls for individual responsibility, etc. For the record: I don't know about his "anti-feminist" views, but I agree with what he says in that particular statement.
It's directly applicable to the US as well - people are pretty much at war with each other here, and at least half the population is quite willing to give up their liberty for taxpayer funded government handouts. Having grown up in the USSR, I know where this particular road ends.
There's one bit of context that people in the US will miss: the Soviet legacy. Back then people relied on the government for _everything_ and had little to no individual responsibility for anything. You worked for peanuts and by Western standards lived in poverty, but a lot of the stuff was "free" and you didn't have to worry about your future - it was largely predetermined.
A large, older chunk of Russian population still lives like that and has futile expectations that the government will solve whatever problems they might have. The government stopped doing that some 30 years ago, but they don't know any better. I think this, and the extreme level of corruption, is why the GDP of Russia is less than that of Texas. IMO for a country with such insane wealth of natural resources, and a pretty decent education system this is shameful.
There's a reason why the Great Depression led to a number of relief programs - the threat of a soviet-style communist uprising was pretty high.
And "class mobility" is a 100% capitalist concept. Under communism there's no "upper class" to be mobile to.
As of 2018, the US is experiencing the lowest poverty rate in history (considerably lower than e.g. UK, Germany, and France), and record low unemployment as well.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/10/us-povert...
Bizarre references to "conservation of energy" (?) aside, you can simply look empirically. Places with low social and economic inequality are factually better places to live.
Oh, and by the way, I don't know if Zhukov actually is a right winger, but Putin definitely is.
Funny how these things work.
There is no causal connection between the OP's message and this assumption. The initial argument is that the journalist interpreted the Zhukov’s letter and his (right-wing libertarian) views in accordance with her political (left-wing and anti-Trump) views.
edit: Putin is authoritarian right-wing, which has nothing to do with Zhukov's libertarianism. As follows at least from his indictment.
Russian politics is very interesting on its own, and we hear far too little about it (whilst also hearing far too much about US politics). The analogies between the two are extremely weak and generally uninformative; saying “my opponent is like Putin” carries no more information than “my opponent is a big poop face”.
Whatever "opposition" is left in Russia today, is no more real than the token opposition to the CPSU that legally existed in the Soviet Union.
There is a long held Russian political tradition that long proceeded the creation of the Union: they pick the weakest enemy, the weakest opposition camp, and then surround them with spies, puppets, and then purposely let them show everybody their helpless, futile struggle.
In comparison, all credible opponents to the CPSU was dealt with in the swiftest way, without even a token trial. They either met their demise from KGB's signature potato trucks, or simply "disappeared" Latin American style.
The same was with modern Russia. The last credible, real opposition to MAFIA—KGB chimera was the Primakov-Lebed group. Lebed died in a helicopter crash, and Primakov, you know it. At the same time, KGB plotters didn't care the slightest about formal liberal opposition, because they knew that they were complete jokes, incapable of killing a fly.
Nor Primakov, nor Lebed were even remotely "liberal." That fabled "Russian liberal opposition" only existed in the imagination of Western "Kremlinologists." Those "non-violent resistance" clowns brought demise not only on themselves, but all and everybody else who was capable of standing against resurgent KGB. Their last chance assassinating Putin expired right around 2005-2006, and you know what those clowns did back then? They said "we need to bring Putin to Hague...," few month later a wave of assassinations rolled over Russia
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
One of the worst comments I've ever read on HN.
Also the word 'interesting' has to be the weakest adjective in the English language. It conveys no information.
There's a lot to absorb, but the rising alcohol and domestic abuse due to despair is something that's increasing in my country too: oz. Mental health issues are skyrocketing. Our politicians ignore what we ask for, but propagandize what they think we need based on their corruption, while actively suppressing liberty. The middle class is almost gone...
... and we're widely regarded as being called the lucky country. By comparison to many less fortunate others we still are.
Edit: typos
The term was originally intended as a criticism not a compliment.
"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."[1]
Edit: Also as an aside, the quote originally didn't have anything to do with resources, though in modern times it makes sense to make that link.
"When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia, I said: 'Australia is a lucky country run by second rate people who share its luck.' I didn't mean that it had a lot of material resources … I had in mind the idea of Australia as a [British] derived society whose prosperity in the great age of manufacturing came from the luck of its historical origins … In the lucky style we have never 'earned' our democracy. We simply went along with some British habits."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country
It also still describes the apathy of the population.
But societal success always comes from the bottom up, and great cultures come from evolution, not intelligent design.
May the reins of political power in our country continue to exist in the hands of uncreative intellectual non-entities and suburban solicitors. When Great Men with Big Ideas get into power it always seems to result in a disaster.
I think a clear recent example (regardless of personal opinion) is the whole gay marriage debacle. The majority of the population wanted it but no leader had the guts to be the one to do it. The closest we got was wasting money on a plebiscite, spending $80 million to basically ask "are you really sure you want this?". I don't mind being more directly involved in democracy, but we never have such plebiscites for other issues. They didn't have the courage to go ahead without covering their backsides.
Anyway, back to the quote, if we're going to anthropomorphise Australia then the impression I get is that we are the rich kid who grew up with all the advantages bestowed upon us by Mother Britain but we never really learned to fend for ourselves as independent adults. We can't coast forever.
Funny you should mention that. Keeping Australians 'Relaxed and Comfortable' was John Howard's election pitch from a famous interview in 1996 and that legacy of "keep coasting, don't rock the boat why take a risk..." Has pretty much defined politics in this country ever since.
> There's a lot to absorb, but the rising alcohol and domestic abuse due to despair is something that's increasing in my country too: oz. Mental health issues are skyrocketing. Our politicians ignore what we ask for, but propagandize what they think we need based on their corruption, while actively suppressing liberty. The middle class is almost gone...
Man, there is a gigantic rightist resurgence all across the world, if you did not notice that.
The consequences of that will be the biggest challenge to our generation, and possibly even outlast us.
If you don't want our children's generation being haunted by the mess our generation let rightists to do, start doing something about it other than talking about it.
Americans are yet to taste all horrors of rightism, and don't know how deep is an abyss they are about to step in.
You will see a good example of what you are up to if you take a look on the worse half of Latin American countries with multi-generational rightist, oligarchic elites.
By all definitions, they are doing terrible, and this is why you should work hard for your country not to become like one of them
So ending illegal immigration, reducing taxation and government overreach, reemphasizing personal responsibility, recognizing the threat of China...
These things are not going to "haunt" our children's generation. Not stopping the Leftists from ravaging the economy and society more than they already have will haunt our children.
Earlier this year my father-in-law died due to alcohol. He had been out drinking and the next morning his family found him asleep on the floor downstairs. They assumed he was just drunk (he was still breathing at this point) so left him, and when they came back in the evening he was still there, but no longer breathing. His death was put down to heart failure as he had known heart problems (no post-mortem was done), but if it wasn't for the alcohol something would have been done. So even the statistics that associate deaths due to alcohol are too low.
Last year the government brought in laws to limit the hours alcohol could be sold in shops (8pm Monday - Saturday and 3pm on Sunday and holidays) and the drinking age was raised to 20, and of course it was met with plenty of public outcry. Most people refuse to admit that alcohol is such a big problem for socieity, even when it is staring them in the face.
Basically courts do nothing in practice, just pass "judgements" that are handed to them by the "investigators" or whoever relays the mafia command to them. And if the boss decides that public would react too much to the court case, the "judges" might suddenly become more lenient.
Perhaps you meant non-violent, because the whole court case that government was trying to fabricate was an attempt to accuse him in calls to violent protest, which was not true.
And regardless of where else we will agree or disagree, when anyone can sincerely talk like this young man did about love (meaning caring for others as much as for oneself) and personal responsibility (actually doing something about it, all of which I relate closely with honesty and the Golden Rule), I automatically think: "I would probably like knowing this person, and almost certainly we could enjoy working together on some worthwhile things."
That is a political (or whatever) "tribe", as some say, that I would like to belong to.
As opposed to baseless charges against an ordinary citizen being ok?
The baseless charges are disturbing but if they have done something wrong it's also disturbing to NOT press charges against children of people who served their country their whole life. Which happens quite a bit.
Don't get me wrong, tribalism happens in all systems (e.g. if you're immediate family of a local cop it's often a free pass to DUI in many parts of the US) but not prosecuting because his dad was "one of us" is even worse than prosecuting in the first place.
If they're gonna be tyrannical I'd at least like to see them be consistent rather than give people with ties to the state a free pass as happens in so many cases.
Outstanding courage.
It is indeed unfortunate that there is no discussion about the other people who were arrested at the same protests with Zhukov, and who got 2-3 years for things like throwing plastic bottle towards policemen or touching the helmet, but i don't believe that's because some commenters are trying to divert attention. The article is poorly writen, and i believe Zhukov himself would have made similar comments.
You might be in for the whole lot of surprise on what similar act performed in the US can get you into. I encourage you to google "assaulting police officer". And what actually constitutes an "assault".
I encourage you to share stories about things analogous to handling of Moscow protests happening in USA. And also to tell why something unreasonable happening in USA should be the standard for all other countries. (Disclaimer i am neither from Russia nor from USA).
Why would I give a flying f..k about what Peskov has to say? You might like the same food as Pinochet did. Does it say anything about you?
"Disclaimer i am neither from Russia nor from USA"
Same thing again. Why would I give a hoot about where are you from?
As for stories about how the US handles protests: I was writing about particular case of altercation with the police. You are free to make extensive research on your wider subject yourself.
Because exactly this was a widely discussed question when Peskov said that the Russian police was too lenient and in US one could be killed for throwing a bottle.
The research Russian internet did, said that indeed you may get shot if you throw a bottle at policemen one on one when policemen demands from you to stand still, but never such thing have happened during protests and even people throwing stones do not get multiple years of prison. So the line of question you used, is an attempt to manipulate with facts and lie.
> Same thing again. Why would I give a hoot about where are you from?
it is relevant, because if you were not assuming i am from US, why would you tell what is happening in US, in a totally different situation?
I assume you spend your days tracking what is happening in Russia. I do not. Please forgive my ignorance. I am quite literally way more concerned about what is happening in my own backyard as things are definitely turning south in regards to freedoms. In regards to a subject - I just pointed out that using "jailed for throwing things at police" is very weak argument, at least in my opinion.
As for the rest, you seem to have an agenda here. Sorry but I am not interested in participating. Ciao
Unfortunately writing late at night, and not being careful isn't the best way to convey ideas to adversarial audience, so i got my deserved downvotes, but maybe next time i'll be more successful.
For example, from Occupied France during WWII...
On 5 December 1940, Bonsergent was convicted by a German military court of insulting the Wehrmacht as he insisted on taking full responsibility, saying he wanted to show the French what sort of people the Germans were and he was shot on 23 December 1940.[50]
The execution of Bonsergent, a man guilty only of being a witness to an incident that was in itself only very trivial brought home to many of the French the precise nature of the "New Order in Europe".
wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Resistance
If no one cares about your sacrifice, then what's the point of making the sacrifice in the first place? I know this is a very negative point of view looking at the world, but it's something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about as I grow up (maybe it's a normal thing you realise when you're starting to change into a realist from an idealist as you mature).
To understand events, I like to examine different groups' motivations. What would be in their interest? For government, wanting to maintain control and power over its citizens, especially citizens with power, money, and influence, monitoring all conversations is obviously in their interest. Hiding this monitoring is also in their interest. So of course, they do both. It seems very obvious, but without Snowden's evidence, it's very easy to label this as "tin foil hat" conspiracy theory: "Of course the government is not monitoring everyone's phone calls. They could never keep that a secret for so long!" But as we have found out via Snowden, they actually can keep secrets for a very long time.
So an important aspect of his disclosure to me is to make it less easy to label something as conspiracy theory or being a paranoid nut job, just because there is no evidence to support a "wild" claim - yet.
https://eng-pussy-riot.livejournal.com/4602.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-syria-drones-kill...
In Russia they put you on trial.
From the Wikipedia link on the American YouTuber:
Bilal Abdul Kareem (born Darrell Lamont Phelps) is an American journalist and war correspondent covering the Syrian Civil War.[1][2][3] He has worked with CNN,[4] and produces the YouTube channel On the Ground News TV (OGN TV).[2] He believes that he has been placed on the U.S. kill list.[5][6][7][8] He claims to have survived five drone assassination attempts by the U.S. military, which killed random civilians that were present nearby, including two attacks on vehicles he was traveling in, including one where the car he was sitting in was blown up by a missile shot from a drone.[9][10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilal_Abdul_Kareem
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/journalist-bilal-abdul-ka...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/apr/09/pressandpublis...