alec_lee

Father, Husband, Veteran, Musician, Nerd

[Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo]

Four analogies for a country:

1. The nationalist right views it as a family or community. So applying the same bar to citizens as to outsiders is nonsensical, because the country is of, by, and for its citizens.

2. The tech right views it as a company: you should bring in only the people who will benefit it. But this view is ultimately empty, because it doesn’t tell you what the interests of a country actually are. Hence the tech right (who are usually positive-sum thinkers) keep falling back on zero-sum concepts like “being competitive” or “winning against China” to justify their preferred policies. (Yarvin makes the “country as corporation” analogy particularly explicit.)

3. The tech left views it as a charity. To them, wanting others not to receive what you’re been given is hypocritical. This view is also empty, because it doesn’t tell you where the windfall actually comes from—and once you start to talk about the benefits of culture, ethics, institutions, etc, it becomes clear that citizens (and their ancestors) *built* that windfall rather than just being given it.

4. The woke left views it as a cancer: something that is aggressive and parasitic by its very nature. Countries are inherently violent (in asserting their borders) and exclusionary (of non-citizens) and therefore shouldn’t exist (or at least shouldn’t be allowed to police their borders, which is effectively the same thing). A charitable read is that this is a trauma reaction to the holocaust and colonialism—but regardless, it has become so deeply anti-civilization that it seems descriptively accurate to call it evil and insane.

Paul’s tweet below most directly corresponds to the tech left bucket. Unfortunately people in that bucket are rarely willing to push back on the core tenets of the woke left, and so end up aiding and abetting them. As one example, he’s surely smart enough to recognize that his tweet makes no sense to people who view country as an extension of family. But acknowledging that is a slippery slope towards legitimizing ethnonationalism, so he pretends to not understand the pushback.

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@jgreenhall IMO, the concern is not the literate mind so much as the discerning mind.

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@FiddlersGreenCO SQUEEZEINDENVER doesn't work

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@MattPirkowski @jgreenhall @balajis Doesn’t that presume that the infrastructure exists to develop it in place? Even if we can identify the talent, which I’d consider a questionable assumption, could we even develop it regionally given foreseeable resources?

[Tone Asylum @ToneAsylum]

Crazy about gear? Visit the asylum. https://t.co/PTw0oBcgsI

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@amenmoto Depends on where the good people are in the organization. I had a job with really nice people but my management was not included in that demographic. That place made me miserable.

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@snorman1776 @theblaze Better question is when was the last fair GENERAL ELECTION for Republicans?

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

Bill Maher Just Took a Flamethrower to Woke Democrats and Their Anti-American Base

“Less than 1 in 4 Democrats under 30 say they’re proud to be an American. Fifty-four percent say they’re embarrassed by it. Embarrassed like America is your mom picking you up at school? You’re embarrassed to be an American?”

“Well, guess what? The feeling’s mutual because you have no perspective.”

Maher didn’t stop there. He called out progressive rallies where the American flag is disrespected—and the Palestinian flag is cheered instead.

“At an AOC Bernie Sanders rally in Idaho last month, someone threw a Palestinian flag over an American flag and the crowd erupted in approval.”

“What should have happened after that is one of the adults on stage should have told their young, loyal followers, this is not a symbol of freedom. This is [American flag].”

Then came a warning to Democrats about where their base is headed.

“Problem is the energy of the party is with the young, and the young are with the terrorists. That’s not good. So talk to your children and remind them you don’t really want to live like your heroes in Hamas. All the shit you do all day, it was all made in America.”

“Your smartphone, your Grubhub, your freedom to bitch about America. That’s all American stuff. You tell your phone you want a milkshake and a guy brings it to your house, please. You couldn’t survive a week living in Intifadaville.”

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

I didn't realize what he meant by "focused on MS-13" until he tried to bring that gang banger back from El Salvador.

[Senator Chris Van Hollen @ChrisVanHollen]

@ICEgov Shame on President Trump for tearing apart hardworking immigrant families. We should be focused on MS-13, not scholarship winners.

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@amenmoto Welcome to Gattaca

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@JosephFordCotto Yes. Yes it is.

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@CNviolations She’ll come running back after seeing her tax bill there

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

Bro may have gone to Harvard but he never learned to park

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@TheOnlyDSC She might have higher testosterone levels than Jimmy Kimmel

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@RavenNole @VigilantFox Not unless he gets the superdelegates to back him

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@DefiantLs As Dr Evil so eloquently put it, “There’s nothing more pathetic than an aging hipster”

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@ResisttheMS Who's the xenophobe now?

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@amenmoto True. In fact, shielding people from uncomfortable discussions makes them even less resilient. If you haven't read The Coddling, I highly recommend it.
https://t.co/vStATmJv8Q

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@DeAngelisCorey @redsteeze GOP needs to publish the list of 45. I have to believe that there aren’t 23 states where those senators would be comfortable getting called out for their vote.

[alec_lee @alec_lee]

@Isegoria Seems to me that for about a century now, "Cold War" has become the standard state without active hostilities.