Thread by @lymanstoneky

this is some very absurd whataboutism since, yes, you should absolutely be made at these companies, and thus are perfectly justified in being irritated at the american athletes choosing blood over creed.

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1491073864147030017

choosing the allegiance of race nationalism over and against the allegiance of civic nationalism is an embarrassment, and its what china is urging chinese people around the world to do.

"you're just overseas chinese, you're still chinese, you're still connected to us, you're one of us, you should be loyal to us"

but why, when you were raised and reared elsewhere? when the country that gave you life and liberty was something else?

respect and honor the culture and traditions yes, sure: but china's propaganda that ethnic chinese owe the chinese state some kind of fealty or deference is straight from the nazi playbook and we should be saying as much, and communicating that to the athletes involved.

Best part of this tweet is the guy who literally thinks "blood is thicker than water" means the opposite of what it actually means.

https://twitter.com/fbfsubstack/status/1491114883706134528

"Blood is thicker than water" is short for "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb," and has the meaning, "creed or ideology is a stronger bond than kinship or family."

But hey, when your critics are illiterates...

But anyways yes the CCP are Nazis.

lol ccp shills very irritated in my mentions

cry more

A number of the CCP-shillers are upset that I pointed out the misuse of "blood is thicker than water." They claim that in fact my read of it is mistaken. This turns out to be an interesting etymological problem!

If you read Wikipedia, it claims, rather curiously, that the proverb originates from the maritime saying, "kin-blood is not spoiled by water" which pretty obviously means that men on long voyages are no less part of the family.

Wikipedia also claims that "For naturally blood will be of kind / Drawn-to blood, where he may it find" is the same proverb, which, lol, it doesn't even mention water?

And neither of these refer to thickness?

The modern version doesn't appear until the late 1600s and isn't popularized until the 1800s. But in virtually all those cases, it refer to *not forgetting distant people*. That is, it's almost always dudes on boats far from home not forgetting the people back home.

The earliest American usage is apparently during a naval expedition in China. Some Brits were taking fire and needed American support. America was neutral, but the American commander intervened anyways and bailed out the Brits.

He explained that "blood is thicker than water." This is the first case I can find specifically describing *loyalty*.

But here's the thing. He didn't mean "me and the Brits are blood." He had verbally promised the British the day before that he would help!

So this early American usage means, "literal distance over water will not prevent me from fulfilling my covenants."

Virtually all the early uses are about *literal water*.

Okay, but then we have a different view, the one I espoused, "blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb." This is coming from Jewish sources. We also have a related Arab proverb "blood is thicker than milk" which means basically, chosen family > brothers.

So what this looks like to me is that the relative thickness of liquids is fertile ground for making proverbs, apparently.

So we have essentially identical proverbs, "blood is thicker than water." One means something like "remember distant family" or maybe "distance does not negate commitments and loyalty." The other means "chosen family is closer than kin."

By some strange twist of history, the modern usage is neither of this. "Blood is thicker than water" now popularly has come to mean "Biological relatedness is the supreme kind of relationship."

This is not what *either* lineage of the proverb meant. But because moderns are mostly dumb and don't care about tradition, that's what it has come to mean.

But since I am an antiquarian in most things in life, I think this is a dumb read of the proverb.

Using "blood is thicker than water" to mean "distance does not veto commitments" is valid. Using it to mean "ties of choice and agreement are stronger than kinship" is valid. Using it to mean "blood ties are supreme" is modernizing nonsense.

Anyways, this was a fun digression. Now I'm blocking lots of profane, anti-Semitic, and otherwise wildly racist responses, which is the usual result when a thread is QT'd by certain accounts.

Also, there are some other sources online pointing to Gaelic origin in the mid-1700s: those sources have two problems. 1) they're extremely late and appear to have already had wide understanding, 2) the critics clearly misunderstand the Biblical precedent

Some of the commentators regard it as facially absurd that Biblical "friend" as in "friend who sticks closer than a brother" could be swapped for "blood." They see this as absurd.

But there's a long tradition of reading norms around kinsman-redeemer or blood-redeemer here.

So it seems like what's going on here is 1) online commentators assuming that the *origin* of a phrase must necessarily be *its first English language publication* and 2) those commentators being completely unfamiliar with any Biblical or Semitic scholarship.

Both assumptions are ridiculous. Phrases likely originate *long* before first publication, and first usage in a given language is not necessarily the origin point, and as noted above, it's likely this is a phrase with multiple competing origins.

Also let me note: my actual purpose here is it takes me about 30 minutes to generate this #content, and now 50 Nazis will spend 30 minutes *each* getting mad about it, which means I'm burning more of their time than they are of mine. I won't be engaging in good faith debate here

even ejmr is in on the action!

im just waiting for my code to run!

oh man, i said i'd waste 30 minutes from 50 nazis, but i did so much better: i got the zero-brain crowd looped in!

so much of their time squandered on me, an ironclad bastion of trollish invulnerability zerohedge.com/news/2022-02-0…