General Politics the second: But what is politics?

[Farm Boy]

Yeah, a matter of what hierarchies. A subordinate expertise is one thing. Like in a cooperative time-sensitive match or... hunt, I guess, there can be a pre-agreed shot caller to defer to in the heat of the moment. Other opinions and tracks are subordinate within its realm*. That's a hierarchy. Giving him the food when you're done or him having sexual access to your sister might also be a hierarchy, but it's a hella different one.

Refusing to mask because the doctors "don't know **** anyway and just want to control us" is rejection of one type of hierarchy in favor of interpreting a different, plausible, hierarchy. Still dumb, in that instance.

*as far as compulsion goes, if you're on a basketball team, or a hunt, and one consistently rejects the pre-agreed subordinate arrangement it's pretty normal to be removed from the cooperative unit. The group needs to decide if the inconsistant cooperator is a net gain, or net negative. They can easily be a net negative, and they may simply be replaced with somebody who is less of an ass. A domineering team captain, for that matter, too.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Hierarchies, far from being a logical extension of this dynamic, seem to pervert it: they lock certain people into a position of high status regardless of their merit, regardless of how little sense it makes for other people to defer to them,

I think the above should read: "Humans tend to pervert hierarchies...." Hierarchies are a neutral structure we create and then often pervert to the desires of those at the top.

 

[Samson]

Hierarchies are a neutral structure

They do not look neutral when you are looking at them from the bottom.

 

[Birdjaguar]

They do not look neutral when you are looking at them from the bottom.

If the humans at the top have created a structure to retain power and wealth, I would expect so.

 

[Samson]

If the humans at the top have created a structure to retain power and wealth, I would expect so.

Has there ever been a political hierarchy when that was not the case?

 

[Farm Boy]

Are unions apolitical? They seem to function mostly ok, some of the time.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Has there ever been a political hierarchy when that was not the case?

So we are talking only political hierarchies now? The Shakers had utopian, religious communities that were also political. I think their hierarchies were pretty egalitarian.

 

[Samson]

Pakistan bans airing of Imran Khan speeches, suspends TV channel

kistan’s media regulator has banned television channels from broadcasting speeches and news conferences by Imran Khan, accusing the former prime minister of attacking the state’s institutions and promoting hatred.

The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) imposed the ban late on Sunday after Khan gave a speech in the eastern city of Lahore, where he alleged that former army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa was behind his removal from power in April last year.

The cricketer-turned-politician made the speech after police from the capital Islamabad made an attempt to arrest him in a corruption case. Khan, who denies the charges, evaded the arrest.

In its notification, the PEMRA said Khan was “levelling baseless allegations and spreading hate speech through his provocative statements against state institutions and officers which is prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order and is likely to disturb public peace and tranquillity”.

This was the third time the PEMRA has banned TV channels from airing Khan’s statements since he lost the premiership and started holding mass rallies to demand immediate national elections.

Nearly two hours after the ban, the media regulator also suspended the licence of ARY News, a private news channel, for broadcasting Khan’s Lahore speech.

The PEMRA said the news channel – considered sympathetic to Khan – violated its order. But an ARY official rejected the allegation.

“The PEMRA statement came after 8pm and almost all the channels ran clippings of Imran Khan’s speech in their 9pm bulletins. However, the regulatory authority suspended only our licence,” the ARY official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera.

 

[Kyriakos]

There is a suspicious silence regarding what the freight train which recently collided with a passenger train in this country, killing tens of people, had been carrying. Some sources claim it was military cargo, destined to be sent to Ukraine. The issue there isn't that it'd be sent to Ukraine, but that it was kept secret due to how unpopular it is. And if so, it will become a lot more serious, given the secrecy/urgency to cover would have helped cause the accident.
Supposedly the Eu has asked to be involved in the investigations - mentioning that as a possible positive, btw, since this government is beyond corrupt and incompetent too.

 

[Snowygerry]

Are unions apolitical? They seem to function mostly ok, some of the time.

Of course not - we have socialist unions, liberal unions, catholic unions and independent unions, the labour union is a political tool par excellence.

 

[Lexicus]

By God, I'm watching the HELP committee hearing on union organizing right now and these Republican witnesses are such lying swine. The first one wasn't as bad, a Trump NLRB appointee bragging about "process improvements" at the NLRB that reduced their load of outstanding cases, but as someone working in the labor movement at that time the process improvements they made seemed to consist of ignoring the facts of cases to make pro-employer rulings. Easy to process cases more quickly when you do that.

The second guy, Mix or something, chair of some national Right to Work legal group, much worse, much more of a liar. Talking about how federal labor law "compels association" with unions, which is utter nonsense, because if you don't want to join a union you don't have to get a job at a union shop! It's no more accurate to say that my current employer is violating my constitutional right to choose not to wear a necktie.

 

[Arakhor]

If Federal law did require you to join a union, that blowhard wouldn't hardly have a job trying to deunionise people, now would he?

 

[Lexicus]

If Federal law did require you to join a union, that blowhard wouldn't hardly have a job trying to deunionise people, now would he?

He's referring to "closed shop" which is allowed by the NLRA. It means that when a workplace is organized the contract can provide that anyone coming to work there has to join the union as a condition of employment. A number of states have "right to work laws" than ban this provision from contracts.

It's hypocrisy all the way down. Conservatives normally are in favor of contractual freedom but here's an exception to that.

In a larger sense it's a nonsense because these same conservatives will say that the right of exit from a job is the remedy for anything an employer might require of an employee. Don't like your employer's dress code? Get another job!
It's quite telling that there are basically two exceptions to this conservative logic: the "right" to benefit from a union contract without paying union dues and the "right" ro be super racist.

 

[Kyriakos]

Imagine being such a moron that you think it's a good idea to just lie to people in England, as if it won't become known what you said. At around 3.45, he says without any shame, that the underground railway in Thessalonike is "up and running".
Would have been hillarious, if not so insulting. Not, it's not up and running. It hasn't even started to work.

 

[Arwon]

Hi here's some politics for ya, straight from Ahmedabad

 

[Hygro]

I think the Democrat leaning are kinda sad that his lustre is fading. Favorite Democrat Republican president ever, in my lifetime. Hehe! Can't even keep the buggers out of the R primaries, they love him so much! Isle crossing at its finest. Honorable moderates...

It's alright, Republican Nominee Marjorie Greene is going to be way more fun.

 

[Farm Boy]

Just can't wait. Dickhead patrol activate!

 

[Traitorfish]

I think the above should read: "Humans tend to pervert hierarchies...." Hierarchies are a neutral structure we create and then often pervert to the desires of those at the top.

I don't think we can attribute this tendency to bad actors at the top, I think it's built into the logic of hierarchical organisation. The hierarchy has to sustain itself moment to moment in order to function, if people did not maintain consistent relations of dominance and subordination then it wouldn't be a hierarchy, it would just be a series of isolated interactions. The machine doesn't work if the parts just fly off without notice. So if the first priority of the hierarchical organisation is to reproduce the hierarchical relationships that comprise it, there's going to be a tendency to subordinate merit or competence to those hierarchical relationships, to sustain people in positions of dominance in those positions even if they no longer merit that position, rather than to allow the hierarchy to become unstable.

In practice, of course, hierarchies may be more or less meritocratic and more or less rational, and the hierarchy can also depend on these qualities to reproduce themselves. An army in the field is one of the most bluntly hierarchical institutions we could imagine, orders must be obeyed without question, but everyone involved is working on the assumption that the people giving orders are competent to give then, and will give sensible orders that won't get everyone killed; when that trust breaks down, the army breaks down. Not every hierarchy is a senseless tyranny. But these other qualities are in a sense outside of the pure logic of the hierarchy, supporting it but not essential to it, because the participants are not making active judgements about what instructions to follow or information to accept based solely on merit or rationality, but rather using those as criteria to establish their willingness to buy-into a hierarchical relationship. The soldiers may refuse to follow an incompetent officer because their willingness to buy-into the hierarchical relationship has fallen below whatever necessary point, but they certainly won't follow a competent man who has no rank and therefore no authority to command in the first place, regardless of his merit to do so. He must be an officer first and a competent man second; this contrasts with a non-hierarchical structure (and allows a pretty direct continuation of the analogy) where in a war-leader must be competent first, and whatever office he holds is merely an honorary recognition of his competence, a confirmation that he is generally recognised as competence and therefore a good man to follow, but not conveying any right to command or obligation to obey.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Ah, yes, call them all groomers as you enjoy your child porn.

Man Who Spray-Painted ‘Groomer’ On Libraries Caught With Child Porn, Police Say

Authorities became suspicious when they searched the home of Charles Sutherland and found a child-sized doll.

www.huffpost.com

 

[Lexicus]

Ah, yes, call them all groomers as you enjoy your child porn.

Man Who Spray-Painted ‘Groomer’ On Libraries Caught With Child Porn, Police Say

Authorities became suspicious when they searched the home of Charles Sutherland and found a child-sized doll.

www.huffpost.com

The Iron Law of Right-Wing Projection strikes down another sinner