POTF 39 - Nominations

[Lord Thesaurian]

POTF is about recognising the very best posts, the best arguments and discourse in the D&D, and appropriately rewarding it.

You shall progressively earn these medals once you achieve enough wins, but first you must be nominated in threads such as this one. And it works like this.

Post of the Fortnight - Rules

-Each user can nominate up to 2 posts per round, and the only valid form of nomination is by quoting with a link as shown below the chosen post in the PotF thread designated for it.

Looking forward to getting this kicked off for real!

-Each 15 days there will be a new Nomination thread put up, and all the posts written during this period are considered eligible, if properly nominated. Exception are posts who are somewhat breaking the ToS; upon being acted by Moderation, they are always considered uneligible.

- Remember: It is possible to nominate up to 2 posts each round of the competition; it is also possible to change a nomination anytime before the actual round of nominations ends.

- There will be two competitions held every month, with a period for nominations followed by a period of voting. The submitted posts can be discussed in a dedicated space.

- Only posts that have not participated in a previous poll and that have been published in the current period of given time in any section of the D&D area may be nominated.

- The authors of the nominated post will be informed so they can withdraw the candidacy if that is their wish.

- The maximum number of participating posts in the final vote will be ten. If more than ten nominations are submitted, seconded nominations will take priority. After seconded nominations are considered, earliest nominations will take priority. If the number of posts submitted to the contest is less than ten, the organizing committee may nominate posts if it considers it appropriate.

-The members of the committee will never nominate a post belonging to one of them, but the rest of the users can nominate their posts (organizers posts), and vice versa.

-In the event of a tie, both posts will be awarded and both posters will receive rep and 1 competition point.

- Public or private messages asking for a vote for a candidate post are forbidden. Violators (and their posts) may not participate in the running contest.

- People are expected to consider the quality and structure of the post itself, more than the content of the same. While it's certainly impossible to completely split the two aspects when making our own opinion on a post, it remains intended, as also explained in the Competition Commentary Thread, that commenting and discussing on the content rather than on the form/structure of the post is considered off-topic for the purpose of this competition. You are free to nominate and vote for whatever reason you want, but what happens in public has to strictly follow up with the competition rules.

A nominated post should:

1. Be focused and relevant to the topic(s) being discussed.
2. Demonstrate a well-developed, insightful and nuanced understanding of the topic(s) it is discussing.
3. Be logically coherent, well organized and communicate its points effectively.
4. Support its contentions with verifiable evidence, either in the form of links or references.
5. Not be deliberately vexatious to other users.

Good luck everyone!

[Flinn]

So in your opinion do you think the disk can be comfortably dated to the Bronze Age, or is everything in the OP basically on shaky ground and worth disputing?

I think it's fair to say nothing has been confirmed.

Pernicka et al’s argument is that the totality of the evidence taken together all points to a Bronze age date, but the totality of the evidence is a number of plausible assumptions made by them (disputed by others) which are unsupported by even a single scientific fact. For example, they argue that the Sky Disk and the other artifacts all had soil residue on them consistent with the find site according to the looters. Others disagree, but okay, even if it’s true, that doesn’t tell us anything about the date. It also doesn’t even necessarily mean all the artifacts came from the same site, just that they got soil on them at some point consistent with the site. The gold residue in the ground is better evidence that the disk came from that site, but then we don’t know what other artifacts the looters may have found there that they got away with, and again, it tells us nothing about the date.

They write:

This overview was triggered by a recently published claim that it is more likely that the Sky Disc was not part of the Nebra hoard and, based on stylistic arguments, should be dated to the Iron Age.

And they really were triggered judging by how much they discussed their feelings about it. For example:

What is more irritating is the fact that Gebhard and Krause modified the original figure without mentioning this modification in their figure caption.

And…

It rankles that Gebhard and Krause do not discuss the Pleiades at all because they are present on the sword blade of Allach, according to Peter Kurzmann’s statement.

Other than the alleged association with other artifacts, this is all they have to rely on for dating the disk:

Although the composition of metal artefacts cannot be used for precise dating, there are nevertheless certain recognisable trends, like the tendency from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age of increasingly adding lead to bronze.

I would amend that to “For the most part, the composition of metal artefacts cannot be used to date their manufacture”. This is a rather unique artifact, how does its composition compare to other artifacts of its type? Yeah, I wouldn’t know either. And in any case, it’s not uncommon to find items of the same type in the exact same stratum within a meter of each other, each composed of a somewhat different alloy.

Even typological dating of artifacts is uncertain without stratigraphic anchors. For example, there is a type of Achaemenid Period arrowhead that was very common all over the Persian Empire, but then it fell out of use about a century into the Hellenistic Period. And yet, it somehow reappeared in a stratigraphically very well-dated stockpile of weapons from the Bar Kochba revolt. We can assume that maybe the rebels found old weapons to reuse, or maybe they made molds of the old weapons and copied them, but what we can’t assume is that the other artifacts in the stratum date to the Achaemenid Period.

In any case, I found Gebhard and Krause’s arguments equally uncompelling, in that they are fine, just that after reading both papers, I don’t have any strong opinion as to when the Sky Disk dates to. Anyway, here is a PDF of that paper if anyone is interested. Although, trigger warning: it has been known to rankle and irritate.

[Abdülmecid I]

But terrorism is an extreme source of distrust, prejudices, etc, because it is much more expected from human beings than to not just slaughter others for retarded reasons; with a culturally traceable source. This is hurtful, humiliating and extremely disappointing! If it is then confirmed by how Muslims for example are defending the actions of extremists, it is even disturbing and causing real insecurity regarding further Muslim immigration.

Traceable from all Monotheisms, one of which is claimed to be the foundation of western society.

Have you ever met middle-class Muslims in hardcore Islamic countries? It is never about immigration itself, but immigration of poor people into a country with social welfare but zero hope for the low-skilled to build any future, where their existence is seen as entirely negative and their culture despicable. To live like that is worse than having no life at all.

PS: and we had discussions where poor people are considered more moral, ha!

Someone posted this in another thread, you can see how Muslim immigration fare in US:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Malaysians, Pakistanis, Indonesians and Bangladeshi - you see those rich immigrants in US throwing away their life for religious nonsense, starting patrols to slap women or calling for Sharia laws?

If either of you delete my smileys in the quotes again, this conversation is over. Capisce?

…

For someone who claims that I’m bringing up red herrings like it’s going out of style, you have been a little evasive yourself. I’ve made my case and brought many sources that provide evidence that you do not seem to dispute. If Lady Justice is blind, why does our law enforcement and criminal justice system see race? That is the heart of my argument and has been from the beginning, and you just ignored it when I directly asked why you think that could possibly be. So I’ll ask again: why do you think it is?

Historic racism is a relevant topic in its own right. It does not prove the existence of contemporary systemic racism, which, despite the length of this exchange, is still yet to be evidenced.

You only claim that it’s yet to be evidenced because you didn’t read my sources. I know this because I just found out that several of them had broken links and no one bothered to mention it.

The point (which was an argumentative deflection) has been addressed. There is no value in discussing it further.

And yet here we are. I agree that there is not anymore value, but only because you’ve added none. You see, when someone makes a counter to an argument you make, and then you just repeat yourself, it doesn’t go anywhere because it’s not very convincing. As a tip for you in the future, one way to inject some value would be to address the response made to your original argument.

The same questions are likely to be met with the same responses.

The negative connotations associated with the words under scrutiny are evidenced by their definitions, synonyms and typical use. This is particularly true in the field of social justice where such terminology is explicitly used to denounce alleged oppressor classes. The acknowledgement that this language is being used to criticize (i.e. express alleged faults) confirms that this is understood.

A specific example:

In a 1989 article entitled "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack", the woman often credited with pioneering the mythology of white privilege, Peggy McIntosh, accused white Americans (based solely on conjecture) of being subconsciously “oppressive”, in the possession of “unearned assets” (a description you denied) and “subtly trained to perpetrate…acts of violence against people of colour”. She went on to insist that white Americans be held “newly accountable” for these transgressions and denounced the “myth of meritocracy”.

All of these claims are false (the author does not attempt to provide any supporting evidence) and/or racially derogatory. They are the product, not of academically rigorous research, but of an ideological obsession with alleged identity hierarchies.



The terms having originated in academia serves only to illustrate that the tacit denigration of certain groups according to post-modern dogma (critical theory) is institutionalized (see the above example). Were it the case that these ideas were being propagated solely by powerless fringe actors (e.g. those behind the IOTBW campaign), this conversation would not be taking place.



Particular identities are uniformly denigrated. Others are uniformly shielded. Whether an identity is disparaged or shielded is typically contingent upon its place in a speculative grievance hierarchy. That identities are layered (or “intersect”) is irrelevant to this point. An accusation of toxic masculinity directed toward an African American man is not a denigration of his race (i.e. the shielded identity); an accusation of white privilege directed toward a female is not a denigration of femininity (i.e. the shielded identity).

The language of toxicity, fragility and/or privilege is never used to characterize these shielded identities (i.e. “blackness”, femininity, homosexuality, Muslimness etc.) precisely because the lexicon is understood to be hyper-critical. This is despite the fact that aspects of these shielded identities, when viewed in particular contexts, meet liberal academia’s own standards for toxicity, fragility and/or privilege.



Majority concerns are of no relevance; power is vested in the few, not the many. The aforementioned reference to Proposition 19 illustrates that even in the bluest of states under one-party, supermajority governance (CA), new-fangled attitudes toward racial justice which are fashionable among the liberal elite remain deeply unpopular with the electorate.

Notwithstanding, there is clear evidence that the vernacular of the liberal political class is being systematized, often in violation of the Constitution.

I think that the point of “The Invisible Knapsack” is to weigh its merits through self-reflection, not that I’m surprised that that idea went over your head. The list she made was one of her own experience, so your apparent skepticism at the idea that a female professional born in the 1930s encountered quiet sexism and racism is a little odd to me. The whole point of the essay is that things like race or gender can matter in quiet, unspoken, and unmeasurable ways, so I’m not sure what you want from her in terms of proof. Maybe a formula or something?

The whole way you are casting these terms like toxic masculinity as being unconstitutional – or even authoritarian – makes no sense to me, but I guess that talking point is becoming more normalized for some reason. Any credit that you get for not using the phrase “cultural Marxism” so far is effectively cancelled out by saying that the so-called liberal vernacular is even approaching a violation of the U.S. Constitution. I don’t know how to address that accusation because I don’t even understand what it’s supposed to mean. Anyway, doesn’t the fact that terms like those are being created and discussed in academic circles mean that the ideas are being crafted with more thought behind it and are meant to have explanatory power? Or is it just me?

The purpose behind such phrases is to point out the little unconscious leftovers of the fact that a relatively exclusive and particular group of rich, straight, white, Christian men controlled the money and lawmaking of America and crafted policies that were actively detrimental to others. How demographically similar or different you are to that kind of historically powerful person is subject to a lot of discussion for how that government or the broader American culture around it still informally treats people differently today. The point has never that white women are white, it’s that even though they are white, they are also women. So when you criticize the protection of what you call the shielded identity – minorities, I guess – I can’t help but think … duh? And that’s bad? But even then, how is it meant to denigrate anyone? I mean, have you ever even been in a conversation with actual leftists about these topics, or do you just watch sjw cringe compilation videos and listen to conservatives whine about liberals or whatever?

I mean, if your main problem here is that there are people who will use these words for self-aggrandizing purposes, that are dismissive of white men in any of their suffering, or are just generally losing sight of our shared humanity, then I agree. I think that is wrong. But that is nothing more than individuals saying hurtful things, so why blame the words themselves as the problem? Why throw out the baby with the bath water like that?

Let me put it this way: I am someone who consumes and takes part in discussions of what you have been describing as intersectionality nonsense and the PC crap that is destroying America or whatever the leftists are up to this time. Do I come across to you as denigrating entire demographics? Do I do all those other horrible things you say happen when people talk about “toxic masculinity”? Am I being intentionally disruptive and undermining the political discourse just like the people who crafted IOTBW?

The census data (which is extensive but incomplete) illustrates the wealth and educational disparities between subcategories of white Americans.

The white American subgroup of European ancestry with the highest median household income ($100,856) was Australian Americans (whose income was still less than Indian ($126,705) and Taiwanese Americans ($102, 405))¹. The white American subgroup of European ancestry (supposing the exclusion of Latin American groups) with the lowest median household income ($56,290) was German Pennsylvanian Americans².

For the white subgroups of Middle Eastern ancestry, Iranian and Israeli Americans had the highest median household incomes ($87,288 and $81,901 respectively) whilst Iraqi Americans had the lowest ($48,315)³. Median household income across all listed Arabic groups was $64,739⁴, which is equivalent to the national average of $65, 712⁵.

Well, the Pennsylvania Dutch have a large concentration of the plain folk Anabaptist traditions such as the Amish, Old Order Mennonites, and so on. They have a religious renunciation of wealth and status in pursuit of simple living that lowers their average education (Wisconsin v Yoder, anyone?) and income of the Pennsylvania Dutch. So while they are indeed a distinct subgroup of white people, how similar is an alternative lifestyle motivated by their religious beliefs to the situation of say, Hmong-Americans? Hmong-Americans have high levels of poverty and high school dropouts, but it’s hardly the same choices with the same reasons as the Amish.

While Middle Easterners do tend to have above average income, this is mostly because they are recent arrivals to America in historical terms (same with Australian-Americans). Already-successful people have an easier time migrating to the United States, which is something I’ve already talked about in previous posts. But groups like Iranian-Americans are also one of several ethnic groups that have a complicated history in terms of racial classification. This gets into the thing I mentioned in a previous post, how the entire concept of white people is indistinct. There was a time when Caucasians were distinguished by their skull instead of their skin tone, which is not something we really do these days. It’s almost as if race is socially constructed concept....

The Naturalization Act of 1790 had a provision that only “free white persons” could be naturalized that was not fully done away with until 1952. This was obviously meant to restrict blacks imported as slaves and American Indians from being citizens, but by the start of the twentieth century they were more non-European immigrants arriving in America whose race was not clear from a legal perspective. Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Japanese immigrants all brought legal cases arguing with mixed success that they were white. White by Law by Ian Haney Lopez is a good read on this subject, and how the courts took a “common knowledge” understanding of what a white person was in the 1920s. Hopefully, I’m not being too controversial in pointing out that the common knowledge understanding of race for the average American in the ‘20s was on the racist and nativist side. A case like Ozawa v United States can seem very strange to us now, but it’s an important lesson that despite the pseudoscience over the centuries, the concept of race has always been sociological and not biological. The fact that race is a social construct and the difference between being having Middle Eastern ancestry instead of European ancestry in America today means that is fair to question how white Middle Easterners are based on the history of the term and the associations we have with it today.

Even though many Middle Eastern ethnicities have light skin and are considered white by the U.S. census, the history of discrimination as immigrants and the contemporary effects of being associated with Islam muddies how applicable it really is. There is a similar situation with Hispanic whites as well. Odd as it sounds, whether Jewish and Middle Eastern people are white can be challenged because they aren’t really considered proper white people by the ones who care the most about whiteness: professional racists. According to a lot of racists, the Middle East simply doesn’t measure up as white. The Jews don’t measure up as white. Nativism, antisemitism, and anti-Muslimism are embedded in contemporary American white nationalist movements, which I think is a serious hole in the idea of using such a broad racial classification. There is an idea of whiteness in America that does not include light-skinned Hispanics, Middle Easterners, or Jews. I’m not really sure if the data you have provided so far really makes the point that you seem to be trying to make.

Correct. The claim that bias could be an explanation for inconsistent reasoning does not imply that it is/was.

Don’t bs me with this prevaricating nonsense, that’s exactly what it implies. You were speculating out loud that I might be biased against whites. I guess it’s kind of funny, because I thought leftists were the ones who called everyone they disagreed with a racist.

Both of the accusations made here are false (and are peculiarly unrelated to the comment to which they are a response).

C’mon, you think I wouldn’t notice how awfully convenient it is that you have this conviction that you never actually risk expressing? For someone who wants to fight poverty and improve welfare so badly, you sure write a lot more words criticizing people who say that there is systemic racism in America than you do on how much you want to fight poverty. As I recall, you started this spat with me because you didn’t like my explanation to Heathen Hammer for why people dislike the slogan “all lives matter”.

I think it’s obvious where your priorities really are.

[Lord Thesaurian]

So a republic is defined by doing its business (Res) more or less in, and with the public (publica). In an antique sense any state can be described as a Republic, (even monarchies) so long as it has a constitution.

More specifically (and usually) they are participatory states but this can include elective monarchies so the HRE probably qualifies as a form of republic under both these definitions). More famously the Polish Commonwealth with its weird Sejm, easily vetoed rent-a-kings etc was a royal republic at times.

In the 19th century "republic" (full of natural justice but also aggression) and "hereditary monarchy" (corrupt and despotic) were considered antonyms, reflecting eras of Roman history (monarchy, republic, monarchy) but up close the eras are a little less clear: Augustus "saved the Republic", Republics spawned Emperors (almost organically it seems) and monarchies could be rather constitutional (aka "Rule Britannia"). In this case the definition of Republic as "the rule of law" is opposed to personal or arbitrary rule (despotism etc).

Electoral colleges were in a way a feature of the Roman system: various assemblies and colleges did double duty in that role. The Pontifex and his colleagues chose the Rex Sacrorum (so their system retained a "King"), the senate choosing a Dictator, the Consuls by one of the assemblies (I think the military one?) etc etc.

IIRC the Venetians used an elaborate system of designated electoral colleges, supposedly to guard against corruption and ensure broad responsibility. The exact process was bafflingly complex, and the ill defined power of the Doge means this famous republic barely qualifies as "open government". The Dutch Republic was a constant tension between the de facto Orange monarchy (amounting to a Polish style rent-a-king arrangement, more or less) and the theoretic Republican elected governments (the electorates including delegates of subordinate elected bodies).

Funnily enough the ancient Venetian system expired died its inglorious death (chip traded to the Hapsburgs by Consul Napoleon) only a few decades after the US was founded. Likewise the old Union of the Netherlands (self destructed in favour of the new model French System) and the HRE (euthanised by the Kaiser und Koenig) died their deaths shortly afterwards.

To sum up, the matter is a bit murky but Electoral Colleges are a common feature of sexy famous Republics like Rome and Venice which were surely at the front of the minds of the Founders of the US. They must also have been thinking of the Netherlands given the strong recent example as well as direct ties but it never seems to come up. Likewise there are Dutch fingerprints all over the UK constitution which no one ever seems to talk about. In Westminster systems, the prime Minister is a quasi replacement monarch, to whom the puppet Monarch must listen, and who de facto has sidelined the real head of parliament, the Speaker.

On reflection the President as Stadtholder is a curiously apposite metaphor, to my admittedly very poor knowledge of the subject.

Otherwise Electoral colleges are not a necessary or sufficient element of a republic. Election can be direct (as at Athens), as can execution. However they are a common feature of republics both as "representative" (not despotic) and anti-monarchic.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

I almost feel like there's an element of society having to go through this period of discovering a new societal equilibrium. New norms have to be tested and pushed to breaking point to find the appropriate societal balance.

Society was once heavily biased, both legally and culturally against non-white-male identity groups. In order for society to change from this paradigm, a new balance that is acceptable to the broadest coalition of identities has to be found. Changing laws addresses the legal aspect of historic biases, but it doesn't directly address the cultural aspect. Feelings of righteous dominance, or of victimisation don't just go away because a piece of paper is signed. They stay with people for life. This can only be addressed over a longer time periods as new members of the broad coalition of formerly-biased-against identities grows up to feel included, and those who grew and developed in a dominant demographic adjust their cognitive world view towards equality. My father still jokes about women in a way that isn't funny to anyone that isn't a white man even though he has started taking on formerly female roles within the household. Cultural change takes time.

Because we're talking about emotional states and feelings of individual acceptance in individual circumstances, the end point of this process can not be arbitrarily assigned or prescribed - and certainly it cant be by people who fit the formerly dominant identity group - it has to be tested again and again over generations as the formerly dominant identity group comes to accept their equality, and as the long term consequences of former biases are chipped away at.

For us, we are so close in time from a period when non-white-males were both legally and culturally biased against, testing cultural norms is an ongoing process. As the saying goes... You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, and you have to break a few egos to reshape culture. From the perspective of those people in formerly-biased-against identity groups, that bias has meant in the past that they were unable to reach the potential level of competence that is required to compete equally in a workplace, again, not just legally, but culturally. Addressing the cultural part of this bias takes a long time and as those formerly-biased-against groups gain competence, they're going to become increasingly aware of their systemic handicap. So ironically, the closer we get to equilibrium, the more acute the historic biases will seem, even as they are actually falling away. This does mean that people who used to belong to a dominant demographic will also feel increasing relative victimhood, as they perceive those who they used to have subconscious privilege over put more and more pressure on them. As formerly-biased-against identity groups get closer and closer in competence to the former dominants, in some few cases that sense of new victimhood will be justified, and some who would have succeeded in life through privilege, will now no longer be relatively competent enough to succeed, and will fail. But a new equilibrium will eventually establish.