Messages

I wouldn't choose to live in Hungary, however that's they way they decided to live.

It's up to them to choose to live differently insofar as they are able if they wish to.

Why are you talking about me in the third person, mate?

I choose to live in Hungary, and this is most certainly not the way Hungarians chose to live. Government is infested with high-functioning sociopathic criminals. Seeing as the first thing they did after coming into power on the back of a successful populist campaign but most of all solid, nationwide dissatisfaction with the previous government (who were a bunch of corrupt losers, but nothing like the present cunts) was rewrite electoral law to ensure they get elected the next time, bought out or pushed out most of the media and spend massive amounts on lies and propaganda, I think it is fair to say that this is no longer a place where the majority decides the rules: unbridled greed for money and for power is the motivating force here.

Sorry about that. I didn't know that's where you lived?

er... the fact that my examples were all Hungarian laws... never mind... nice of you to care, but don't be sorry: living dangerously in a fledling dictatorship is my idea of fun!

What do people there think of Orban? (not saying you're not  a "people")

Why do you ask? He has a minority that support him strongly: many of them are now vassals of his clan and simply support him out of fear for their livelihoods, while the rest are people who are stupid enough to be taken in by his extremely primitive xenophobic, chauvinistic propaganda. There is I think now a strong current of displeasure in the extremely passive and largely quite poor majority who don't even vote. There's a chance Mr Orbán's 'regime' will end spectacularly and abruptly in the next few years. The sad thing is, there isn't anyone even remotely qualified to head this country who's actually interested in the job. The single very small party in Parliament with anything like a reasonable programme has around 1.5 percent of the popular vote

This puts an article I read earlier today in a terrifying new light. Drawing parallels between Trump and the current Hungarian government under Orban.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/

The parallels seem sound too. I disagree with some of the points the writer makes (namely that Trumpism isn't quite fascism -- no, but neither was any other fascist government save Mussolini's, as per Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism...) but the parallels are good, the conclusions are good, it's well written as far as I can tell.

Normally I'd say "...but let's not threadjack", but this thread seems to be going nowhere worthwhile unless xerosubaru starts making a hilarious fool of himself in public.

preview edit: And there he goes! What happened to this?

The misogyny, homophobia and whole-scale restriction of the rights women and LGBT's in these countries with these cultures presents a real threat which has to be acknowledged.

We need to protect ourselves from evul cultures! Unless they're only harming those filthy poor folks what steal from our gubment and leeech off of the societies, then it's okay.

Yeah. We've had our mini-Trump for seven years now. Sad, but true.

I wouldn't choose to live in Hungary, however that's they way they decided to live.

It's up to them to choose to live differently insofar as they are able if they wish to.

Why are you talking about me in the third person, mate?

I choose to live in Hungary, and this is most certainly not the way Hungarians chose to live. Government is infested with high-functioning sociopathic criminals. Seeing as the first thing they did after coming into power on the back of a successful populist campaign but most of all solid, nationwide dissatisfaction with the previous government (who were a bunch of corrupt losers, but nothing like the present cunts) was rewrite electoral law to ensure they get elected the next time, bought out or pushed out most of the media and spend massive amounts on lies and propaganda, I think it is fair to say that this is no longer a place where the majority decides the rules: unbridled greed for money and for power is the motivating force here.

I'm not sure what's wrong with equal treatment under the law.

Nothing wrong with it. I wish some polity would try it one these days. But, as a matter of fact, the actual laws also matter, as kind people have been trying to explain to you.

Specifically, which statutes?

Specifically, which polity?

But, assuming your answer is any: Hungary, for instance, has completely revamped its criminal code. Personal debt is now (with some limitations) inheritable. Totally unjust. And you are required by law to contribute specific amounts of money to your parents' upkeep, should they be unable to fend for themselves. Totally unjust.

This is how you get serfdom.

Exactly, that's a depressingly astute observation. We also have forced labour for the poor now: if you have no income, your only option is to participate in the "Public Works Programme", doing physical labour, often pointless or on some local potentate's property, in return for a monthly allowance of about 120 dollars. Since the government dropped the age limit of compulsory education from 18 to 16, some 40 thousand youngsters have joined the ranks (in a country of about ten million!).

I may be wrong in the head, but I hated those post systems from the start. So, following the lead of some article I saw, some three years ago now I stopped using 'like' buttons on FB. If I like something enough to want to share this with the world, I write a comment. I also switched my newsfeed to 'newest' and I keep switching it back whenever, for no apparent reason, it switches itself back to 'most popular', and every two or three months go through the five-minute tedium of deleting all my accumulated advertising preferences. I also never answer any questions the behemoth asks me. My newsfeed has improved. Being on FB reminds me of being a tiny parasite on a massive creature with an altogether different agenda. Also, of my adolescent days of surviving in a shit school. I was going there every day, certainly not for the reasons the institution thought I ought to be going for, but I did. It beat getting into the fight with my parents and the law, and there was cool things to be done there - though they had little to do with the institution's explicit agenda. Ultimately, I think FB needs to go. But until a social network that doesn't feed on its members comes along that beats FB on structure (wouldn't be all that difficult, I sometimes think), it's here to stay.

I'm not sure what's wrong with equal treatment under the law.

Nothing wrong with it. I wish some polity would try it one these days. But, as a matter of fact, the actual laws also matter, as kind people have been trying to explain to you.

Specifically, which statutes?

Specifically, which polity?

But, assuming your answer is any: Hungary, for instance, has completely revamped its criminal code. Personal debt is now (with some limitations) inheritable. Totally unjust. And you are required by law to contribute specific amounts of money to your parents' upkeep, should they be unable to fend for themselves. Totally unjust.

I'm not sure what's wrong with equal treatment under the law.

Nothing wrong with it. I wish some polity would try it one these days. But, as a matter of fact, the actual laws also matter, as kind people have been trying to explain to you.

The government of my country (which is newspeak, meaning the bunch of robbers who have quartered he government business here) has first signed a contract with Putin to borrow a huge amount of money for 30 years, which they will then give back to the Russians in return for their building a new nuclear power station of questionable design... then they passed a law that made all the documentation of the deal state secrets for 30 years. They are also subsiding Hollywood with the tax money they collect primarily from the huddled masses, under a so-called "reverse VAT support" scheme,which means productions brought here not only don't pay VAT, they can the amount of VAT they would normally have to pay as a grant from the Hungarian government... And over the past 7 years, they replaced numerous social security payments with "tax discounts" - which means the poorest, with little taxable income, get nothing.

Hello old new guy 

If you said that to me, hi. If you didn't, then please ignore this comment.

He was talking to Faust.

I just greeted him.

He was talking to Hoopla.

Oh. Okay. My mistake.

Signalling is ubiquitous, but I think its character and function (and frequency and intensity) changes quite radically when people move from the tribal life, spent mostly in the company of primary group members, to the modern way of conducting various transactions with strangers and slight acquaintances whose background is largely unknown. You can see the penny drop in any reasonably intelligent and alert child when they start attending an institution.

I think Zizek would probably claim that the particular contortions of identity-display that the western (or, increasingly, global) middle class engages in is driven by their deep-seated denial of the increasingly obvious fact that there is something downright wrong with the system, something that will not be made to go away by cosmetic action or "programs".

As for the relationship between the two concepts, signalling was clearly in place a long time before anything like privilege could really take off (except for the fairly simple power structure of the extended family-horde), probably since the time the first monkey learned to lie. We even taught dogs to lie. But certain characteristics of the type of the somewhat bizarre signalling that gets done these days may have their origin in the fundamentally fucked up power relationships of people on Earth.

He was talking to Faust.

I just greeted him.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_folks

This fallacious appeal is adjacent to claiming non-privileged status, however apt. There are benefits to claiming it, be it membership in a class unjustly persecuted, freedom fighter, the list goes on.

As far as the phrase 'through the lense of' I mean using a system of reference, jargon, principles, and/or ideology to characterize, define, explore, or explain a situation, environment or phenomenon. For example,  literary analysis. There are a variety of lenses through which a given piece can be evaluated i.e. Marxist, Feminist, Discordian, Christian, Freudian and so on.

So my point about evaluating signaling in terms of privilege was to say the value of that type of evaluation is somewhat limited. Not to say valueless or meaningless, just limited. There'll have to be a lot more robust dialogue and understanding and theory regarding privilege.

So would I be correct in interpreting this as the point that privilege and signalling are in a dialectical relationship, and hence neither is fully sufficient to explain the other? I could go with that. You could say that the ability and the capacity to signal ('having a voice', or 'being literate', 'being educated', 'having free time not occupied by producing the bare essentials')  is a major, essential form of privilege in itself.

Hi, old guy!

Hey, Mr. LMNO!