I AM NOT ADVOCATING VIOLENCE NOR JUSTIFYING IT.

In the wake of the Onion's routine release of their "No Way To Prevent This" article, people like to blame the perpetrator's action on mental illness. That is, some sort of mental instability was the primary cause of a mass shooting. Logically, if that is true, then without that mental instability, the mass shooting wouldn't have happened, the person would have...done something else.

But this is bullshit.

There is a science behind why people commit violence. Why We Snap points out several "triggers":

• Life-or Limb
• Insult
• Family
• Environment
• Mate
• Order in society
• Resources
• Tribe
• Stopped

It's completely reasonable to kill a person in self-defense. Almost no one denies this. That is the primary justification for the proliferation of guns in American society. This is not a mental illness.

At home, 72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94% of the victims of these murder suicides are female. There are a lot of reasons why men hurt and murder women, but fragile male egos that treat women as inferior and interpret their actions as insulting and as challenging to a man's masculinity is an entire trope. And yet, the gender essentialism of traditional masculinity isn't treated as mentally ill (or even just plain wrong).

Tucker Carlson was renowned for his supposed truth-telling about how the order of American society is being threatened by an invasion of immigrants. Trump did the same thing. A reasonable conclusion, then, is that the El Paso mass shooter was merely defending his beloved nation against this invasion of immigrants, whom he just so happens to hate because they threaten the order of society.

Similarly, the Nashville Christian academy shooter was trans. For many of us, transgenderism isn't a mental illness, and thus not a cause of excessive violence in and of itself. However, coupled with the antagonistic relationship between traditional Christianity and transgenderism, several of the triggers that don't assume mental illness make sense.

And, of course, tribe...oh boy! As American polarization increases among the electorate, the salience of tribes increases. Only like a week ago, GOP lawmakers that didn't support Jim Jordan's nomination for House Speaker were sent death threats over the phone. If you don't vote for their guy, they'll fuck you up! (But non-violently...listen to the clip). Being protective and supportive of people like you isn't considered a mental illlness.

Again, I don't believe any of this violence is justified, nor am I advocating for it. (I cannot stress that enough). My argument is that there are seemingly rational reasons to engage in violence in the moment. So, rather than scapegoating the mentally ill, maybe, just maybe, we should look to why it seemed like a rational decision for a mass shooter to kill a bunch of people. What was their motivation? What problem were they trying to solve? And why did excessive violence seem like a good way to solve the problem?

I believe this is a much better approach to any shooting or violence in general than the allowing an immediate pivot to mental illness as the causal factor.

This article looks at three different cases by the Supreme Court, two already decided and an upcoming decision, that have the potential to remake or undo the "administrative state", as conservatives like to call it.

Effectively, the Supreme Court is mandating that Congress legislate only in the way it authorizes.

(I didn't see any rules against purely text posts to stimulate discussion. But if this is against the rules, please let me know)

Some discussion if you're unaware.

...conclude that “shifting priorities” about family, careers, and how to allocate one’s time and resources is the most likely explanation for the dramatic reduction in rates of childbearing seen among more recent cohorts of young adults. We have not found compelling data support for more readily observed (and potentially altered) policy or economic factors, like the price of childcare or rent.

So, is this a problem to you at all? If it is, then how would you address it? If it isn't, is this a problem that can be addressed along with addressing what you believe is the greater problem? How?

The philosophical architects of liberalism made an exception for savages, people too backwards to appreciate liberty. Socialism made exceptions for the bourgeois, people too attached to their ownership of the means of production to be beyond saving. Conservatism is built upon the idea that some people are better than others.

There's always an exception. And somehow, that exception always becomes the norm, we enter into a state of exception. There's savages everywhere! The bourgeois control everything! Equality! It's time to kill people.

In no uncertain terms, ~~fuck that~~ no. If people believe asinine things, they (as a person, not as a holder of asinine beliefs) should be respected nonetheless. Classic Aristotle quote:

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it

Refusing to entertain, "respect', or consider beliefs that you think are astoundingly stupid and wrong is basically an internal admission of being intellectually weak or a coward. Take your pick. Differences in how people see the world exist and that doesn't automatically preclude collaboration and cooperation. In fact, it makes finding the best path to some goal far less likely to end in ruin.

From here:

If we’re going to engage in the deliberative model, we’d have to begin by rejecting that notion that only our position is legitimate; we’d have to value the inclusion of diverse points of view. The deliberative model says that we should take on the extraordinarily difficult task of arguing together, looking for policies that make everyone at least a little unhappy, but that are in the long-term best interest of everyone, or, at the very least, the long-term better interest of everyone.

That is, it's in our collective best interest to respect everyone without exception. I suppose it's hard if you're just intellectual weak, but don't choose to be a coward. Respect other people.

And if you're like, "Well, what about the interests of Nazis?!", then read the second sentence of the title. But if you think that means appeasing them, then read the article linked by the word 'here' above.

Edit: This was a really useful exercise. Thanks, y'all!

This is an unbiased history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most in the U.S. are almost universally against Palestinian violence against Israel and somehow never explicitly critical of Israeli violence against Palestinians. But the left, the real left, is unabashedly supportive of Palestine. And the first paragraph of the background is why:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back to the end of the nineteenth century. In 1947, the United Nations adopted Resolution 181, known as the Partition Plan, which sought to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was created, sparking the first Arab-Israeli War. The war ended in 1949 with Israel’s victory, but 750,000 Palestinians were displaced, and the territory was divided into 3 parts: the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip.

How do you square support for Israel as a state when it's merely an extension of British colonialism, and when Israel seems to actively seek to deny Palestinians any form of autonomy as a policy? Not to mention the numbers of dead on both side after each conflict...

I'm posting this in Conservative because Discourse Magazine is produced by The Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a conservative think thank.

It's always fascinating to me when reactionary institutions produce pieces like this.

In her new book “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves,” Alexandra Hudson makes the case that these trends are real and disturbing. But she argues that addressing the merger of politics and entertainment and the politicization of the quotidian doesn’t require big, elite-driven social change. Rather, it begins with each of us—and daily decisions we make about how we relate to others.

I found this song a few weeks ago and listen to it often because I enjoy the singer. But the lyrics remind me of this community so much. The whole song is what what bell hooks termed 'acts of soul murder'.

Therapist John Bradshaw explains the splitting that takes place when a child learns that the way he organically feels is not acceptable. In response to this lesson that his true self is inappropriate and wrong, the boy learns to don a false self. Bradshaw explains, “The feeling that I have done something wrong, that I really don’t know what it is, that there’s something terribly wrong with my very being, leads to a sense of utter hopelessness. This hopelessness is the deepest cut of the mystified state. It means there is no possibility for me as I am; there is no way I can matter or be worthy of anyone’s love as long as I remain myself. I must find a way to be someone else—someone who is lovable. Someone who is not me.”

---

Lyrics:

I see a boy with a big guitar
And though he can't quite reach the notes
Still he sings with all his heart
The saddest words he knows

There's a weakness behind his eyes
He's supposed to never show
I can see how hard he tries
To let it all go

Hold it back, keep it in, let it die
Son, have you ever seen a real man cry?
I promise you the world will never ever really understand

Another tear goes up in flames
And the sadness leaves him burning
But it's hard to fight the shame
So a tear goes up in flames

I see a man with a crooked smile
It's like he's too afraid to feel
And so the wound he tries to hide
Just won't let him heal

Brush it off
You do whatever it takes
No one wants to see a strong man break
It's easier to love a man
Who never ever really made mistakes

The boy grows up
And he writes one more song
The most heartfelt song that he's ever sung
And it sets him free
To let his biggest hero die young

Another tear goes up in flames
And the sadness leaves him burning
But it's hard to fight the shame
So a tear goes up in flames

Another tear goes up in flames
And the sadness leaves him burning
But it's hard to fight the shame
So a tear goes up in flames

A final tear goes up in flames
All the sadness had him learning
He doesn't have to fight the shame
A final tear goes up in flames

Lina Khan vs. Jeff Bezos: This Is Big Tech’s Real Cage Match

by David Streitfeld

The chair of the Federal Trade Commission wants to disrupt Amazon, whose founder built a trillion-dollar firm by disrupting retail. Two black-and-white photographs are displayed parallel to one another against a blue border, with Jeff Bezos on the left and Lina Khan on the right. The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, pitting the agency’s chair, Lina Khan, against the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, in a long-awaited confrontation.Credit...Photographs by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press; Tom Brenner for The New York Times

David Streitfeld

David Streitfeld has written about Amazon since it was a fledgling Seattle bookseller.

Sept. 27, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

Jeff Bezos made his fortune with one truly big idea: What if a retailer did everything possible to make customers happy?

His forcefully nurtured creation, Amazon, sold as many items as possible as cheaply as possible and delivered them as quickly as possible. The result is that $40 out of every $100 spent online in the United States goes to Amazon and Mr. Bezos is worth $150 billion.

Lina Khan made her reputation with a very different idea: What if pleasing the customer was not enough?

Low prices, she argued in a 95-page examination of Amazon in the Yale Law Journal, can mask behavior that stifles competition and undermines society. Published in 2017 while she was still a law student, it is already one of the most consequential academic papers of modern times.

These two very different philosophies, each pushed by an outsider unafraid of taking risks, at last have their much-anticipated confrontation. The Federal Trade Commission, now run by Ms. Khan after her stunning rise from policy wonk to policy player, on Tuesday filed suit against Amazon in federal court in Seattle. The suit accused Amazon of being a monopolist that used unfair and illegal tactics to maintain its power. Amazon said the suit was “wrong on the facts and the law.”

Mr. Bezos, 59, is no longer in charge of Amazon on a day-to-day basis. He surrendered the chief executive reins to Andy Jassy two years ago. But make no mistake: Mr. Bezos is Amazon’s executive chair and owns more of the company than anyone else. It is his innovations, carried out over more than 20 years, that Ms. Khan is challenging. The F.T.C. complaint quotes him repeatedly.

Silicon Valley spent the summer transfixed by the prospect of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg literally fighting each other, despite the odds of this actually happening being near zero. Ms. Khan and Mr. Bezos are, however, the real thing — a courtroom clash that could have implications far beyond Amazon’s 1.5 million employees, 300 million customers and $1.3 trillion valuation.

If Ms. Khan’s arguments hold sway, the competitive landscape for tech companies will look very different going forward. Big antitrust cases tend to have that effect. The government achieved only a muddled victory in its pursuit of Microsoft 25 years ago. Yet that still had enough force to distract and weaken a much-feared software empire, allowing 1,000 start-ups to bloom, including Amazon.

It’s due largely to Ms. Khan, 34, that imposing major changes on the retailer is even thinkable. After spending a few days interviewing her and those around her for a profile in 2018, I thought she understood Mr. Bezos because she was so much like him. Very few people can see possibilities unseen by others and successfully work toward them for years, getting others to join along the way. But these were attributes they both shared.

“How does change happen in history?” asked Stacy Mitchell, an early Khan ally who is co-executive director at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a research and advocacy group that promotes local power to fight corporations. “Lina has captured imaginations in a way that has enabled the reform movement to engage a wider set of people.”

Ms. Khan and Mr. Bezos were even similar in their silence. For years, every article about Amazon featured the line “Amazon declined to comment,” another form of control. Ms. Khan likewise never willingly surrendered to me a piece of personal data, even if it was inconsequential.

Amazon and the F.T.C. declined to comment for this article.

Mr. Bezos’ unlikely saga long ago entered the realm of myth. He spent his childhood summers on his grandfather’s West Texas ranch, wanted to be a theoretical physicist but became a Wall Street analyst instead. He had no retailing background. He was interested in ideas, not things.

Amazon was not the first online store — it wasn’t even the first online bookstore. It spent lots of money foolishly and drove many employees mercilessly. The whole enterprise nearly failed in the dot-com crash in the early 2000s. But the media was fascinated by it, customers liked it, and that gave Mr. Bezos room to run.

A former Amazon engineer once memorably described Mr. Bezos as making “ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.” A company that puts “attendance reminder” signs in bathroom stalls telling warehouse workers they will be “reviewed for termination” if they screw up their time keeping is a company with overwhelming ambition.

Reformers are just like entrepreneurs: They too are fighting against reality, trying to carve out space for their vision of how things could be better. Ms. Khan’s journey to confronting Amazon in federal court is in some ways an even less likely tale than Mr. Bezos’s. And so, like Mr. Bezos in the early years of Amazon, she has become a figure of fascination.

The daughter of Pakistani immigrants by way of London, Ms. Khan had the natural instincts of a good journalist. At Williams College, where she worked on the school paper, a friend described her as especially interested in understanding power, particularly the way it conceals itself to seize more power. She was in her late 20s when she wrote her paper on Amazon — about Mr. Bezos’s age when he quit his Wall Street job to drive with his wife at the time, MacKenzie Scott, west to Seattle and his destiny.

Antitrust law was the traditional tool used to rein in companies that became too powerful. Antitrust played a major role in the 1890s, marking the beginning of the Progressive Era, and again in the 1930s under the New Deal. But by the early 1980s, antitrust was at a low ebb. The so-called consumer welfare standard reduced antitrust down to one issue: the price customers paid. If prices were low, there was no problem.

The Microsoft case was important and influential, but it was very much an aberration. In the early years of this century, the prevailing laissez-faire philosophy allowed not just Amazon but other start-ups to rise much quicker than they might otherwise have. Facebook and Google charged users nothing, and were allowed to acquire their way to dominance. Six of the eight most valuable U.S. companies are tech companies — seven if you consider Tesla a tech firm.

Government was slow; Silicon Valley was fast. The marketplace would decide the fate of corporate empires. By 2015, when Ms. Khan was entering law school, hardly anyone was interested in promoting competition through government intervention. Criminal justice reform, environmental law, immigration — those were the topics that appealed to students. She chose antitrust, practically alone.

Anyone with a radical idea in Washington faces so many obstacles that it is not surprising it happens so rarely. When Ms. Khan was nominated to be chair of the F.T.C. in 2021, Amazon complained that she was biased.

“She has on numerous occasions argued that Amazon is guilty of antitrust violations and should be broken up,” the company wrote in a 25-page petition to have Ms. Khan recused from any judgment on it.

The logic: If you are critical of a company, you can’t be allowed anywhere near it as a regulator. Ms. Khan survived this challenge but it was only the first. To go against the live-and-let-live attitude of many bureaucrats, a relentless determination is required.

A hostile media is another hurdle. Dozens of Wall Street Journal editorials, opinion essays and letters to the editor have criticized Ms. Khan over the last two years. They called for Congress to investigate her, argued she didn’t understand that monopolies were actually good and accused her of letting people die by blocking a drug company merger.

Then there is the lobbying. Amazon spent $10 million in the first half of this year, five times the 2013 level. It gave money to hundreds of trade associations and nonprofits in 2022, some of which issue pro-Amazon reports without publicizing their funding. Under the “know your enemy” philosophy, Amazon has also been staffing up with Ms. Khan’s former F.T.C. colleagues.

Getting to court offers little relief. Well-steeped in decades of the consumer welfare standard, judges are not particularly encouraging to Ms. Khan’s arguments. Cases against Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and more recently Microsoft have faltered. The Amazon case incorporates aspects of the consumer welfare standard, which might make it more palatable in court.

It’s a formidable amount of opposition. Even some of her ideological foes are impressed that Ms. Khan is nevertheless having such an impact. By sheer force of intellect, she is opening up a conversation about how companies are allowed to behave.

“Five years ago, you would have been laughed out of the room if you challenged the consumer welfare standard,” said Konstantin Medvedovsky, a former antitrust attorney who is now a hedge fund analyst. “Now serious people make that argument at major conferences and are taken seriously. That’s Lina’s triumph.”

Mr. Medvedovsky is not very sympathetic to Ms. Khan’s enforcement agenda. He was one of the critics who derided the reform movement as “hipster” antitrust. Still, he said, “It’s hard not to be somewhat in awe.”

Back in 1983, Gordon Getty — then the richest American — was worth about 75,000 times the net worth of the median American. But by 2019, Jeff Bezos — the new number one — was worth an astonishing 2 million times the American median net worth. This, my friends, is what we call filthy rich.

You can get any graduate degree, masters or Ph.D. in whatever you want. What do you choose?