I admit I probably write about pickup-artist-turned-alt-right-opinion-haver Heartiste a bit more often than he merits. But his combination of furious bigotry and purple prose is irresistible.
Consider his brilliant new plan to defeat Hillary Clinton by impugning the masculinity of her male supporters.
“All politics is gonadal,” he declares in a post on his blog today.
Given this reality, the most effective political persuasion techniques are those that evoke the ancient rhythms of the sexual market.
Rhythms?
Heartiste ‘s favorite “persuasion technique?” Calling people names in order to make them feel bad about themselves. In this particular case, he hopes to make Hillary’s male supporters so ashamed of their alleged betahood that they can’t bring themselves to actually vote.
[I]f sufficiently shamed and ostracized by effective [counterpropaganda] that leverages the power of anxiety over one’s sexual market status, many nominal males who plan to vote for Inmate Hillary can be dissuaded from exercising their right to notarize the featherweight class of their shrunken scrotes.
Yeah, I don’t know why he writes like that.
Much as virulent homophobia can force gays into the closet, Heartiste suggests, shaming male Hillary supporters as “manginas” will keep them from going to the polls.
Just as a healthy and strong society with rock-ribbed shitlord norms can keep gays far enough in the closet that their petri dish flamboyance doesn’t creep out the kids, so can a fearless embrace of immutable and omnipotent sexual market law — and the exploitation thereof — cow mincing betaboys from pulling the lever for thec*nt.
In case you’re having a little trouble parsing the end of that sentence — I had to reread it several times myself — he’s using “cow” as a verb. “Cow-mincing” isn’t a real thing, though perhaps it should be.
Also, thec*nt (with its “u” uncensored) is Heartiste’s favorite nickname for Hillary, though you probably figured that out already.
You may be wondering how exactly Heartiste’s brilliant new strategy differs from the traditional alt-right strategy of calling everyone “cucks.”
For one thing, it uses a greater number of words, castigating Hillary’s male fans as “nominal males,” “mincing betaboys,” and “f*ggy Millennial manlets with incipient bitch tits.” Obviously this is TOTALLY DIFFERENT than just calling them “cucks.”
Heartiste also suggests that his fans make use of a helpful visual aid in their efforts to shame the aforementioned “mincing betaboys” into non-voting. Namely. this little meme here.
The picture at the top of the meme is, as you’ve probably gathered, a still from Mad Max: Fury Road.
I’m guessing Heartiste has not seen the film.
@Handsome Jack
…By looking at what actually happens when various economic policies are implemented? Obviously there’s some complex maths involved in actually checking that, but the principle is pretty straightforward.
@Jack:
That’s a great gif. I apologise for nothing but I adore the gif.
The way that you would test economics is the same way that we test astrophysics. We can’t create stars or planets any more than we can run experiments on economies, and you’re right that things which are true for small things may not be true for large ones. However, what we can do is to observe partially-known systems and make predictions about them. If our theories are right then as we discover more about the system, our predictions will turn out right. If our predictions are wrong then our theory must need to be revisited. Over time and with enough data, this allows us to hone our theories.
Does that make sense?
@Dalillama:
Well, Ludwig von Mises can go and take a seat in the “intellectually dishonest people who can shut the fuck up” corner. I had heard that he was worthy of contempt, but that quote is remarkable.
I mean, I did bring up communism for a reason–we have small scale communes that work on communism just fine and then we had Soviet Russia which fell apart and now we have China which is…yeah. Billions of people, millions dead, only a few happy–not great. (And I feel I’m picking on communism here as I’m a fucked-over cog of the capitalistic regime but, like, it’s just the first economic model I thought of off hand.)
But there’s still other, untested models of economics out there. I mean, if all we needed to do was look at people’s policies and histories, why would we need economic models in the first place? And how do you test the unused economic models? The ones we’ve just made up?
IDK, I know shit about economics and the scientific method, so I’m talking out of my ass, but I’m just genuinely unsure how you can test something like that thoroughly and properly (especially experimental models) without it taking decades upon decades and millions of people possible getting fucked over.
Yeah, but, like, again, how can you do that without fucking over possibly millions of lives? I mean, sure, people will likely sign over their lives and the lives of their family to be apart of a test, but still.
Like, I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it seems really impractical, especially since we only have, like, one planet, several billion people, a few thousand countries and only so much resources to figure this shit out with.
@Dali
I wanna stress this. It’s likely functionally impossible to rigorously analyze, for example, social democracy from scratch. Too big, too many moving parts. What you can do is look at individual policies or facets of it
To continue the natural science comparison, a theory is a collection of related observations not an observation in and of itself. Quantum mechanics wasn’t proven all at once. Individual experiments and equations supported each other over time. Also, you don’t go in tryna invent a theory. You follow the evidence. The biggest problem I see with economics as a field is that it incentivizes grand theorycrafting to the detriment of more modest research
Don’t tell me that capitalism/feudalism/anarchism/etc works. Tell me which policies and principles lead to what outcome under what circumstances. We can get to the broader framework later
Isn’t Von Mises the one that was really impressed with Pinochet?
@WWTH
No, he died just about when Pinochet came to power. His protege Rothbard loved the hell out of Pinochet though, and so did Friedman and the Chicago School.
@Handsome Jack
Goddamit, do I have to explain again that Stalinism is NOT FUCKING COMMUNISM, because it’s a TOTALITARIAN GOVERNMENT OWNING EVERYTHING, which is literally the opposite of fucking communism? Because I swear I’ve written that one half a dozen times on this blog in the last 6 months.
I must’ve been thinking about Rothbard. I try to avoid libertarian “thinkers” so I mix them up sometimes. I’ve yet to find libertarian writing that’s anything other than long winded and boring.
I’m a 24 year old high school graduate with no secondary education. The last time I took an economics class was in 2011 and it concentrated on capitalism which I didn’t fail, I assure you. I don’t read every comment or every comment section on this website, I certainly don’t remember them all, and this is the first conversation on economics I can remember, uh, “contributing” to.
With that in mind, you don’t need to educate me on anything. You don’t need to explain to me anything. Just because I asked questions doesn’t mean you have to answer them, especially if you think it’s a waste of your time or you feel you’ve explained it enough before. You can ignore me and I won’t feel bad about it, I assure you, especially if it’s a question that upsets you or makes you angry in anyway.
I’m sorry I confused communism and Stalinism. I’m clearly in over my head here, so I’ll be bowing out now. I’ve been stepping on too many toes here recently.
@Dali
C’mon, don’t snap at Jack. They didn’t deserve that. Not cool…
On the one hand, I’m as happy to write off Leninism as a ruinous deviation from socialist ideals as anyone. On the other hand, all the biggest, longest-lasting and generally most prominent examples of governments calling themselves communist and stating their goals to be the advancement of communism have been right villains, so, well, much as it pains me to say it, if that’s not what communism meant before, it probably is now.
Jack, you didn’t do anything wrong.
I’m a bit late, so apologies, but had to say:
@Jack of Handsome-ness and best gifs,
Please don’t bow out – or not for long, anyway? We’ll miss you too much! I don’t know about anyone else, but I haven’t seen you stepping on toes at all.
1) I don’t care if I did or didn’t do anything wrong, 2) I’m bowing out of this thread, which I should maybe have clarified I guess, and 3) I’m just not in the right headspace right now and I’m not trying to be a victim or self flagilate which I felt I might have been doing and it seems I did because now you guys are doing that sympathy stuff and it’s making me feel I’ve made Dali is in the wrong when, no, Dali is NOT in the wrong, 4) but I was being serious about all those things I said and they apply to whatever I say because, like, it’s the internet, whatever, some questions aren’t worth answering, 5) Dali can “snap” at whoever she wants for whatever reason, myself included, and finally 6) just ignore me and talk about economic stuff because while I’m not gonna post in this thread anymore doesn’t mean I’m not gonna read it. I’m stupid and need education and it’s free here.
@ handsome jack
No you’re not; don’t ever think that. You write some great stuff here.
Economics is like magic and prayer.
Believe all you want, but don’t bet the ranch on it.
Because it’s all academic theories. Little ‘T’ theories. Best guesses, gussied up with charts and diagrams to impress the rubes.
Like other Social Sciences, Economics is a squishy mixture of observation, second guessing and intellectual fencing.
Never, never take it as gospel.
S’okay, Handsome Jack.
You learn by asking. Besides, all economics theories, from Maoism to Randism, fall somewhere on a bell curve.
It’s anyone’s best guess, and is closer to magic than math.
@jack, I feel about as dumb as you say you feel, pretty often ’round here <3 I understand your reaction.
Social sciences are not a squishy mixture of observation, second guessing and intellectual fencing. Social science is science, and the alternative to having social sciences is to leave huge swaths of our environment unexamined and unstudied.
@Jack
I didn’t mean to say you were stupid, farthest thing from it, and I’m terribly sorry I came off that way. You post a lot of very incisive stuff.
Leninism and its various derivatives, especially Stalinism and Maoism, are a particular sore point for me, and it’s one that’s been hit a lot this election season, so I’m kinda hair-triggered. And also just really pissy lately.
@PoM
^QfT
Okay, Imma post one more time because, people, this isn’t economics.You all fail reading comprehension. Why don’t you tear into Robyn Blanpied and their terrible observation of social sciences instead of giving me unneeded sympathy?
@Dali
You didn’t. Just because I said I’m stupid doesn’t mean I thought you said I’m stupid. I am keenly aware when people call me stupid, which you didn’t.
I figured, which is one reason I’m not talking about it anymore. People don’t “snap” at people for no reason. Besides, I don’t understand fundamental points of economics (the difference between Stalinism and communism for instance), so I don’t have the ability to ask the right questions. Besides, I’m stressed out about the election as well, and this talk of “emperical economics” is, like, “well, I guess we’ll have a pretty good test for a failing economy in the next four goddamn years if Trump wins”. I’m not a fan of gambling with people’s lives. I hope that makes sense.
Also, for real, not gonna comment on this thread anymore, goddamn, you people.
@Robyn Blanpied
No, they really really don’t. Which is to say that arguably everything between Maoism and Randism does, but that’s because both are aristocracy under different names. (Yes, I know that’s a political system, but economics is inseparable from politics. ) Both hold, essentially, that wealth should all be in the hands of a small elite, by virtue of their supposed superiority to the commoners.
Keynes has loads of maths backing him up. So has Piketty, and Chang, and quite a lot of other economists. The thing is, the maths all say that too much concentration of wealth screws the economy, and the people in whom all the wealth is concentrated don’t like that answer and keep funding economists who say things they do like and ignore the maths. Much like the same people spend a lot of money to claim that there’s debate about climate change. The problem isn’t that the answers can’t be found, it’s that powerful people don’t like them.
@Jack
Since you’re still reading 🙂
Most definitely. See, the thing about empirical economics is that a whole lot of policies have been tried, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere, so when those policies are discussed, it’s totally possible to look and say, e.g., ‘hey look at all these places that have tried single-payer healthcare systems. See how they spend less money and have better health than places without?’ or ‘wow, when we implement workplace safety regulations, fewer people are injured or killed on the job, we should look into more of those’ or the like. Conversely, we can see from history that cutting pensions increases poverty, especially among the elderly, so that’s a bad idea. Etc.
A lot of people, on the left and on the right, have done a lot to obfuscate the difference; and if I believed in such a place as hell, I’d wish every last one of them into it. The short answer is that communism, as an economic system, favours worker-owned cooperatives, rather than hierarchical models where the boss decides and everyone else does. Whether the boss in question is a capitalist* or a commissar is of little moment. Lenin decided that people weren’t becoming communists fast enough, and the answer was for better people (i.e. him and his friends) to take over and shoot everyone who argued with them. And then that they should run things until everyone else was fit (in their opinion) to actually implement communism. Which, of course, led to forming a totalitarian state where anyone who question the party line was disappeared or shot. And, funny enough, they never did get around to giving anyone else a say. So they ended up with something basically equivalent to the reign of Ivan the Terrible, only with different titles.
*In this case meaning ‘person who controls a large amount of capital’, not ‘person who favours a capitalist economic system’, although the former are almost always also the latter.
@Jack:
You are not stupid. You may not know as much as some people do in their areas of speciality, but I’ve interacted with you for a while now and you’re definitely not stupid. Every question I’ve ever seen you ask has been a valid one.
If you want to leave the thread then that’s your call, but I would find this community a poorer place if you weren’t here to ask questions, and this thread is no different.
@Robyn Blanpied:
The social sciences most assuredly are sciences. Let me run slowly through this for people who aren’t familiar with science.
What is a science? The philosopher Carl Popper studied this question, and concluded the following: a science is something where a) there is an objective truth, and b) we use real-world data to tell whether an idea is right or not. This is called the Popperian model of science.
Using the Popperian model, we can see that psychology is a science, because every time they have an idea they run experiments to check whether it’s true or not. The same is true for other social sciences.
When you say that social sciences are “all academic theories… little ‘T’ theories… best guesses, gussied up with charts and diagrams… a squishy mixture of observation, second guessing“, you are speaking the truth, and not just about social sciences. Every science is like this. Observation and best guesses are all we ever have and all we have ever had; and they are enough.
For some reason, Heartiste’s name calling only reinforces my determination to never ever ever support anyone like Trump.