The Testing Chat III: The Time of Great Chatting

[Flagg]

Don't forget that tribal courts also have ridiculous sentencing restrictions, something like a limit of up to 3 years in prison for basically anything.

And that's just the modern incarnation, it's something that's existed for centuries. For a long time even if it was technically illegal, Indians weren't allowed to testify in court or accuse white men of criminal acts, so it was basically impossible for them to be punished at all.

Anyway, the reason I said the new version of the Violence Against Women Act might help is because it's supposed to correct these problems and also give tribal courts the ability to prosecute non-Indians for crimes they commit on tribal lands. Republicans were, of course, heavily opposed to the new version of the bill partly because they think tribal courts can't be trusted to provide a fair trial to a white man.

Can they? I mean I honestly don't know. I know that non-tribal courts are racist as all hell.

[Losonti Tokash]

They sure are! But I don't think we'd ever see Republicans argue Indians shouldn't be prosecuted by US courts because they can't be trusted to provide Indians a fair trial.

[Flagg]

We would if Obama was for it.

[Gands]

This is basically why I quit that thread as soon as Rogue started in with "they're all dead, so who cares." I get so angry about it I can't discuss it rationally and I'd just yell and make myself look nuts.

Periodically Rogue decides to reassert his AMERICA credentials. It never ceases to amuse.

I just want to jump in and go all Godwin on that. "Rogue, should the Nazis have been allowed to keep towns they depopulated?" But I know it will accomplish absolutely nothing.

[Straha]

This is basically why I quit that thread as soon as Rogue started in with "they're all dead, so who cares." I get so angry about it I can't discuss it rationally and I'd just yell and make myself look nuts.

If you think that's bad you should read his coliseum thread where he basically says, IIRC, "The natives did it to each other so the white man was justified doing it to the natives."

[Bakustra]

This is basically why I quit that thread as soon as Rogue started in with "they're all dead, so who cares." I get so angry about it I can't discuss it rationally and I'd just yell and make myself look nuts.

If you think that's bad you should read his coliseum thread where he basically says, IIRC, "The natives did it to each other so the white man was justified doing it to the natives."

I reject the notion that the discovery doctrine is at all relevant. If a past generation stealing land is basis for illegitimacy, then the Native Americans in question had no better claim to the land in the first place, since the native tribes had been pushing each other off of various territories in North America for thousands of years prior to the arrival of European settlers. If that is your argument, then no one has claim to any territory on this planet, since that has in fact been the modus operandi of humanity for all of history. This, I believe, makes the issue moot even if we accept that premise, which brings us back to whether or not the Confederacy was morally worthy of the destruction and subjugation visited upon it by the Union as the only useful measure of the question.

It was too furious, and slays too many men.

[Losonti Tokash]

[Straha]

Yeah. Wow.

[Bakustra]

I tried to count all the wrong and stupid things but I kept thinking "One does not sell the land the people walk on" and that's probably the single best response- just throw out non-exclusive notions of property in succint phrasing.

Also, I have an anthropological background of one archaeology class and I know for a fact that people don't conduct ethnic cleansing or genocide as a routine activity, and didn't in the past.

[Straha]

I just read through his posts in that debate. He's a stupid turd but at least he's consistent.

[Bakustra]

I just read through his posts in that debate. He's a stupid turd but at least he's consistent.

Every so often I read through that and appreciate you a little more and have a good laugh at him trying to insult Foucault.

[Straha]

"Biopower?" What the fuck is this, the Matrix?

[Losonti Tokash]

I don't think he even read it, considering his response to Straha citing Foucault is literally "In what way is the history of sexuality, of all things, related to the discussion at hand?"

Holy shit:

The Confederacy, being a government formed for the express purpose of keeping men in bondage, was inherently morally illegitimate and deserving of destruction by anyone who cared to bring it.

I wish we had :ironicat:

[Gands]

I don't want to sound like a mee-tooer, but Straha needs some sort of award.

*high five*

[Jung]

So I was randomly browsing through SDN's archives and came to that "SDN in the sea of time" thread, that was a blast from the past

It was just...

An extended discussion about acquiring women as if they're some kind of natural resource

Combined with casually planning around the fact our presence will probably cause a huge plague that will kill like half the world

And hilarious White Future Man's Burden power fantasies about conquering ancient Egypt*

The worst part is I was participating in that shit

I like to think this is a measure of how I have matured and become a better person over the last 2-3 years

* Which kind of tickles my writing bone, actually - it would actually be kind of interesting to write about how that would actually go, a bunch of arrogant nerds trying to ram the Enlightenment down the throats of a Pharonic society, thinking they're some kind of saviors while actually acting like a violent kleptocracy, but not even being good at it because they're too far in White Man's Burden mode to realize and admit what they've truly become. Maybe with an epilogue afterward showing how stupid and pointless and futile the whole exercise was - say, 200 years we see deposition of the last descendant of the invaders, who is a thoroughly Egyptianized Pharoah, and who's deposing represents basically just a standard change of dynasties, and basically what has visibly changed is the soldiers have simple firearms. Might make an interesting exploration of the psychological dynamics of paternalistic colonialism.

[Straha]

I don't want to sound like a mee-tooer, but Straha needs some sort of award.

*high five*

I am literally red-cheeked with embarassment. Shucks.

[RyanThunder]

A thread.

Alright, all nations ever are illegitimate.

Now, to work out thousands of years of human history so we can figure out who actually owns what.

[Questor]

Yeah, I've got to echo Gands. While I might disagree with you on an emotional level (I'm too Catholic to not associate guilt and penitence at a deep level), you're making great arguments and explanations.

I'm so tired of cheap black/white zero sum issues. This issue deserves a lot of exploration from a number of perspectives. My first question is: what does the UK get out of having those islands? What does Argentina? As far as I'm aware, viable resource extraction is limited to fishing, as the area sucks for oil, despite the belief that there is a lot of hydrocarbons in the area. Even if the UK were able to perform extraction of oil, processing would almost certainly be done at Argentine facilities. It's not like the UK has a primary resource extraction economy anyway.

[adr]

Now, to work out thousands of years of human history so we can figure out who actually owns what.

property is theft

[Aaron]

And headlight wipers are aspirational.

[RyanThunder]

So, how do we go about convincing all nations ever to disband?

Do we also have to convince nations that no longer exist to disband? That may be difficult.

[Oxymoron]

I don't know how you could convince them, but I may have an idea as to how to jumpstart the movement...



Or alternatively...



Your pick

[adr]

So, how do we go about convincing all nations ever to disband?

Kill them all. God will know her own.

[RogueIce]

This better than Oxy's ideas:

[Oxymoron]

Different kinds of incompetence