Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
Disabled Alaskan Monarchist doomer
User ID: 2666
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2mo ago
So, there's a recurring criticism I see in many spaces regarding various right-wing projects in building parallel institutions, alternative ideological frames to that of the left, cultural resilience, and so on (ranging from critics of "Benedict Option" strategies, to Neema Parvini when talking about why "American nationalism" does not and cannot exist), which is that the thing in question is "a LARP," or "LARP-y," or something similar. Which is to say that it is "performative," that the actions aren't backed by some sort of deep-down "genuine" belief.
To which I say: so what?
First, whence this idea that the "deep-down" internal mindset of a person is more important than the actions themselves? Do a person's deeds carry so little weight, compared to their mental state when doing them?
But more importantly, isn't this how anyone gets started with something? I mean, a lot of the examples that come to my mind are things that I'm only familiar with second-hand, but I'll try to explain.
I'm old enough that back in the first few grades of elementary school, they made us stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day. I think back on us as first graders, doing that. Were we actually earnestly pledging our undying allegiance to the Republic and its flag? We didn't even understand all the words we were saying. We were just reciting what we were told to recite, the way we were taught to recite it, because we didn't want to get in trouble. It was all fake, all performative, all "a LARP."
Those of you who grew up religious, did you really understand every hymn you sang, every element of each ritual you participated in, from the very first time you did it? Or was there at least some "going through the motions" and mimicking your elders, with true understanding coming later?
In one of the replies to that Twitter post on the "homeschool prom" linked late last thread, someone described school dances as "a LARP" of the actual 'courtship' scene/process. Well, how else do people learn?
One common criticism of Pascal's Wager is that, even if you buy the argument, it only serves to persuade you that you should believe God exists, and there's a clear gap between thinking "I should believe God exists" and thinking "God exists." I mention it, because Pascal himself addressed this point shortly after introducing the Wager. And his answer is LARPing. Once you're convinced you should believe in God, then start acting as if He exists. "LARP" as a person who believes in God. If you do it thoroughly enough for long enough, Pascal argues, you'll start to actually believe it.
I've seen similar arguments in everything from job interview advice to dating advice — picture the person you want to be, and then act as they would, even if it's "all pretend."
It all comes down to the same classic piece of advice: "fake it till you make it." And what is the "fake it" stage, if not "LARP-y"? If not "performative" and, well, fake?
The reason given for this strategy is that it rarely stays fake forever. Maintaining a performative pretense, saying and doing one thing all while constantly going "this is silly, this is stupid, this is fake, this isn't me, I don't believe any of this" in your head is hard (at least for non-sociopaths). It's why governments have made citizens recite propaganda slogans over and over, why they made us say the Pledge of Allegiance over and over — because many times, it doesn't stay fake, doesn't stay merely performative. Again, it's fake it till you make it.
And even if an individual never "makes it," never achieves real belief no matter how long they perfectly maintain "the LARP"? Well, when we're talking about a long-term project involving a significant number of people, you have to consider future generations. Which gets to a concept mentioned here on the Motte before: generational loss of hypocrisy. Even if the first generation never get rid of their inner "this is so fake" thoughts… well, the next generations — whether that's new recruits, or their literal children — can't see those inner thoughts, only the outer "act." The LARP will not be multi-generational. To quote @WhiningCoil again:
I'm reminded of some joke about the difference between a cult and a religion. A cult is all made up by people. In a religion, all those people are dead.
So, to sum up, the accusation that a project of this sort is "LARP-y" is kind of irrelevant. Yes, it'll be LARP-y to start with; it kind of has to be. That's how things work. It's a phase — a necessary phase in the process of becoming something more, and if the people involved stay determined enough, and keep it up long enough, that phase will pass, and it will become something more.
Fake it till you make it.
(I'm hoping this isn't too incoherent, and isn't too low effort for a top-level post.)
How does one find purpose/meaning? That is, what gives you a "reason to get out of the bed in the morning"? Particularly when "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" seem particularly aimed your way.
(More specifically, with neither the usual standbys of "faith and family," and while being too anhedonic for hedonism?)
Edit: to put it more simply, how do I find a reason to keep struggling through another 30+ years of miserable, pointless, futile existence, rather than just skipping to the end?
I, for one, think that everyone who talks about how this means a surefire Trump win is seriously underestimating our media institutions' skills at narrative management.
I mean, beyond the people claiming this was a false flag — our Reichstag fire, even — there seems to me to be an increasing prevalence of "frontlash" arguments: that this means it has only become more important than ever to keep Trump out of the White House, to protect the many innocent people who will be hurt by Trump (and his violent, bigoted supporters) when he lashes out violently in Putin-esque vengeance against anyone and everyone he happens to perceive as an enemy the moment he retakes power.
Edit: I also find quite rich the narrative that this indicates Trump is a threat to himself, because it was "his rhetoric and manipulation of people's emotions in a dangerous way" that caused this, and that if the shooter was left-wing, then he only did it because of "crazy right wingers killing their imagined enemies" thanks to Trump causes people on the left "who have been told they are an enemy" to feel like they have no choice but to "attack their enemy in kind."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
Given the (pretty good, IMHO) case Michael Lind lays out in this Tablet piece about how demographic trends still strongly favor utter dominance by the Democratic Party, what can people on the right do, then? Note, I'm not asking what the Republican party does, which is move left to capture moderate voters so to remain electorally viable (per the median voter theorem and Duverger's law); I'm asking what voters who care about the policies that would thus be abandoned, as opposed to the "politics as sports" folks who are happy just so long as "their team" beats the other guy.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
On disparate impact, prejudice, American civil rights law, and academic vs. lay definitions of words.
(Or, why HBD won’t save you.)
This is an adaptation of a couple of long replies I made to a mutual on Tumblr, relevant to some recent arguments made here. Specifically, how sophisticated academic and legal arguments can differ from the version that trickles out through journalism and politics into the general population, and how people misunderstand the post-Griggs “disparate impact” regime (further cemented by the 1991 civil rights act), which is at once less ridiculous and yet more extreme in its implications than many of its critics think.
I saw someone here recently characterize said doctrine as the idea that “if a process produces disparate impact, then someone somewhere must have done something discriminatory.” But this itself can mean very different things depending on how one defines “something discriminatory.” Are we referring to treating individuals differently, or to treating groups differently? At one end, you get a kind of unfalsifiable “blood libel” reminiscent of classic antisemitic tropes about Jewish “elite overrepresentation,” and at the other, you get a tautology.
A major of the problem is essentially a conflict over definitions; that too many people mean too many different things when they use terms like “racism.” So I’m going to go ahead and do the thing around these parts of “tabooing” the term to start with. Instead, I’m going to talk about two distinct things. First, there’s “invidious discrimination.” That is, discrimination motivated by racial prejudice and stereotypes — treating individuals differently due to their race (judging by “color of their skin” rather than “content of their character,” as it were); what most ordinary people, especially those on the center right or the older left, are thinking of when they think of “racism.” Then there’s “disparate impact” — the existence of statistical differences between racial and ethnic group outcomes.
The standard criticism of Griggs v Duke Power is that it came to the ridiculous conclusion that disparate impact is itself presumptively evidence of invidious discrimination by someone, somewhere, in the hiring process until proven otherwise. Not too long ago, I saw someone (I think it was on Tumblr) who argued that yes, this would be a stupid thing for a court to conclude… but that this is not, in fact, what the court found in that case. Instead, they essentially deferred (as the courts usually do) to the EEOC’s own understanding of their mission. And what was that? Remember, they are the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Well, what does equal opportunity mean in the context of employment? The answer the EEOC came to is, essentially, that “equal opportunity” means you are equally likely to be hired, which means that the rate at which a racial or ethnic group gets hired should be roughly in proportion to their prevalence in society. That is, anything which makes blacks less likely to be hired constitutes a lack of equal opportunity. That using an IQ test results in disparate impact is itself the problem. It doesn’t matter why. it doesn’t matter that the employer has no discriminatory intent. It doesn’t matter whether or not the makers of the IQ test had any racist stereotypes or ideas about blacks, conscious or unconscious. It could well be because blacks just have lower IQs. That last is not an excuse for hiring blacks less, it is simply an explanation as to how and why IQ tests deny blacks equal employment opportunity. All that matters, for the purpose of civil rights law, is that if it causes a minority group to be less likely to be hired on average, it is presumptively forbidden (unless proven absolutely essential).
To go back to “something discriminatory,” the argument is that a thing is racially discriminatory if it produces statistically distinct outcomes for different racial groups — that is, it gives rise to disparate impact. As I said before, with this definition, “if a process produces disparate impact, then someone somewhere must have done something discriminatory” becomes a tautological statement.
This is very much in line with the academic consensus. Ibram X. Kendi makes it quite clear in his glossaries, when he defines racism and anti-racism in terms of racial equity and racial inequity, which he in turn essentially defines in terms of disparate impact. That is, “anti-racism” is anything which narrows or eliminates disparate impact. And anything that doesn’t — that is, not only things which increase disparate impact, but anything that maintains it — is racist. Invidious discrimination is, ultimately, irrelevant.
Back when I used to do some math and physics blogging on Wordpress over a decade ago, I’d occasionally get crank comments about some piece of jargon which also has a different meaning in colloquial usage, and how consequently, physicists or mathematicians are “using the word wrong” and need to stop. I don’t quite recall the math examples (except that one was in group theory), but for physics, the most memorable example was the angry comments holding forth the position that “you can’t taste quarks” therefore speaking of “flavors” of quarks is wrong, and physicists must stop. I’m pretty sure there are also words whose usage as legal terms differ in important ways from the layman’s ordinary usage.
No, the experts are not going to change their established terminology to assuage the linguistic prescriptivism of random cranks asserting the absolute supremacy of lay definitions.
To an ordinary person for whom the term “racism” refers primarily to invidious discrimination and prejudice, statements like “colorblind racism” and “you can be prejudiced against white people, but can’t be racist against them” (I remember someone giving a quote to this effect from the show “Dear White People”) make no sense. Which implies that those making such statement are using a different definition (particularly the latter statement). If instead, you define “racism” as meaning disparate impact, then those become quite straightforward, even obvious. Does “colorblindness” reduce or maintain differences in racial outcomes? Note that ignoring a thing seldom makes it go away. Does issuing covid vaccines on racial lines increase or decrease the white-black gap in health outcomes? (This last example remains perhaps the biggest “red flag” issue for my mutual.) Does openly discriminating against whites, asians, and jews (my mutuals go-to acronym here is JAW, in contrast to BIPOC) make the aggregate outcome differences between them and BIPOC bigger or smaller?
As one can see from the likes of Kendi, this latter is the academic definition, the term as used by the technical “experts” in the field. Further, if you buy the argument about Griggs, it’s also the legal definition — the definition used by the people who enforce civil rights law and policies “against racism.” And just like with quark flavors, you, the random layman, are not going to get them to change. Yes, one can argue that the term “racism” carries serous moral and legal weight in the way “flavor” does not, that definitional mismatch about such an emotionally-loaded term allows way too much “strategic equivocation” and other such games to let pass, and that a rectification of names is needed, but even then one shouldn’t expect the lay definition of the masses to win out over the elite definition.
One can also assert that the original intent of the civil rights law that created this system was to eliminate invidious discrimination, not to eliminate disparate impact, but this is disputed. (For example, Tim Wise does so here: “No, Precious, No One “Changed” the Meaning of Racism.”) In particular, there was a narrative in the early days that held that disparate impact was fully downstream from invidious discrimination, thus allowing the conflation of the two definitions of “racism.” If one did care more about ending disparate impact itself, well, then banning invidious discrimination was still the way to go about solving it. Except, of course, it was becoming clear by the time of Griggs that this didn’t hold. That eliminating Jim Crow and making things “colorblind” wouldn’t fully close the gaps. Hence the definition split.
(IIRC, it was @Hoffmeister25, either here or at the old place, who said that, in his experience as a white left-winger talking to blacks about these sorts of issues, American blacks were indeed mostly this latter set. That, to the extent they signed on to “colorblindness,” it was because they thought it would fully solve the outcome gap — which was always what they really cared about — and once it became clear that it wouldn’t do that, they increasingly moved on in search of something that would.)
I believe it is in Stamped from the Beginning that Kendi specifically addresses and rejects this narrative. Racist ideas do not produce racist institutions, he has argued, but instead it’s the other way around. Our institutions result in disparate outcomes between races — have done so since the first blacks arrived in any notable numbers in Western societies (hence “from the beginning”) — and people come up with ideas to explain it, and when those ideas propose that the “problem” to be “fixed” lies somewhere with the underperforming minorities themselves, rather than the system, those are racist ideas.
Earlier in the original Tumblr thread, the other party said the following:
Arguments that, for instance, fit people and fat people should have the same lifespan, so we should redirect healthcare spending from fit people to fat people until they both live the same average lifespan, would mean reducing the total lifespan lived for a net loss in life-years.
…
For instance, to take the weight example, supporters might be open to “make everyone take a class about how fit people and fat people should have the same outcomes,” or, “redirect healthcare funding from fit people to fat people until lifespans equalize,” but wouldn’t be open to “invent ozempic”.
That’s pretty strange, isn’t it? Trying to equalize lifespan on the back end, resulting in a net loss of life-years, is way more oppressive than inventing a new diet pill.
This is where that example, and the Ozempic analogy comes in. Because that method of addressing different life outcomes between “thin” and “fat” treats obesity as the thing to be fixed, not that the obese have different outcomes. Sure, this might be okay to hold in the case of something like obesity — but even then, note my past comments, here and here, on Carleton University's Fady Shanouda attacking said medication as "fatphobia”, even "the elimination of fat bodies”, and “that treatments for "the so-called obesity epidemic" were "steeped in fat-hatred.”” But for people like Kendi, it’s never okay in the case of racial groups.
It’s like the stupid “positive action/self-esteem” shit we got in elementary school, about how “you’re fine just the way you are" (even back then, I knew that I was in some way broken and defective). It doesn’t matter if you think the “problem” is inborn, or cultural (the classic black conservative ‘stop listening to the rap music, get married and adopt bourgeois norms’ position), it’s still a racist idea if it holds that underperforming groups aren’t “fine just the way they are.”
Years ago, left-wing mixed-race HBD blogger Jayman was making pretty much the same argument, even as he asserted that the outcome gaps were almost entirely genetic. It’s the duty of society, he argued, to perpetually redistribute from the genetic “haves” to the genetic “have-nots” along racial lines, until racial equity is achieved. Genetic engineering to fix those genetic have nots — even of the IVF with genetic screening kind — is “Nazi stuff.” (My mutual is very bullish on these technologies.) Crime rate differences between races are because blacks are genetically predisposed to crime… and therefore it’s not their fault, and the solution is to punish blacks less often and less harshly for the same criminal acts as whites, until their fraction of the prison population matches their fraction of the general population. Yes, it means white people accepting continuing victimization by black criminals — at one point in HBDChick’s comments section, Jayman described the contemporary situation as a “one-sided race war” by blacks against JAWs… and then asserted that “a two-sided war is always worse” than a one-sided war.
Other writings of his in a similar vein point to a couple of analogies — mine, not his. First, the classic injunction that a man must never hit a woman… even if she’s hitting him, first. He can try to gently restrain her, but otherwise, he’s obligated to stand there and take it… because he’s stronger and she’s weaker. Even more extreme, but also more broadly accepted: if you’re an adult, and a small child throwing a tantrum is pounding on your leg with their tiny fists, you definitely aren’t allowed to “hit them back,” no matter what. You stand there and take it because you can take it, and hitting back would do far, far more damage. Cue classic “when white people riot” meme with pictures of the Third Reich. BIPOC, due to their ‘genetic disprivilege,’ can’t do as much damage as JAWs can, and JAWs can also collectively *absorb( more attacks thanks to their ‘genetic privilege.’ Thus, they have a duty to “stand there and take it” with regards to racialized wealth redistribution, racialized vaccine distribution, or random subway shovings, and just as any adult man who “hits back” against a woman or a child is a brute, any white person who won’t simply accept this sort of thing as the price of their superior genes is a racist Klansman Nazi who will be dealt with accordingly. The goal is, as with Kendi, to ensure statistically equal outcomes for racial groups as they currently exist, and anyone who opposes that is racist.
Now, plenty of people have called for changes to current civil rights law to address this definitional issue and change things “back” to fighting invidious discrimination rather than fighting disparate impact. But the proposals won’t work, because they tend to miss how we got here. I think it was Chris Rufo who, while holding up Nixon of all people as the example to follow, called for the creation of a new Federal task force to track down and punish “anti-white discrimination” in the institutions. Given the nature of how people are hired for Federal bureaucracies, the nature of our credential-issuing institutions, and such, just who will end up running said institution in the long run?
I also recall reading recently about a British think-tank created in the wake of the Rotherham scandal to specifically address Islamic radicalization and lack of assimilation. Why were they being brought up? Because their most recent action was to release a book list with a warning of ‘if someone you know is reading these books, they may be on the path of radicalization to becoming a white supremacist.’ The list included works by Orwell, CS Lewis, and a book on the Rotherham scandal. So this institution, despite its founding mission, has decided that the real problem they need to fight is ‘Islamophobic white supremacy’ amongst the native British population.
Personnel is policy. The same thing applies with attempts to “repeal and replace” civil rights law to “get back” (again, see Tim Wise) to the lay “racism=discrimination” definition and away from the academic “racism=disparate impact” definition. Laws are but words on a page unless they’re enforced. And no matter how much we might say “this time when we say ‘fighting discrimination’ we really mean fighting discrimination, including against white people, not “disparate impact,”’ so long as the people who interpret and enforce it are the same bunch as we have now — who all belong to the same academic consensus understanding as to what what “racism” is and what their mission to fight it means — you’re going to keep getting the same results as we do now. And there is no (peaceful, legal) mechanism to replace that personnel.
Now, why does this matter? The answer to that question seems to be ‘because we (for certain elite values of “we”) have come to recognize (i.e. have decided) that it is our biggest issue and highest moral priority as a society, in keeping with the fundamental value of Equality, and, perhaps more importantly, have enshrined this into our law. And why have our elites chosen to define “racism” this way? Well, first there’s all the cynical, power-seeking and power-maintaining reasons for doing so. But even that tends to give way under “generational loss of hypocrisy.” To quote @WhiningCoil:
I’m reminded of some joke about the difference between a cult and a religion. A cult is all made up by people. In a religion, all those people are dead. We’re coming up on generations that have only known demoralization propaganda, and who’s parents have only known demoralization propaganda. Whatever kayfabe social signaling hating cis white males, normal women, or wholesome white families used to mean, the people uncritically consuming it and signal boosting it now don’t understand it’s only supposed to be insincere virtue signaling. They’re ready to start pogroms now.
Thus, many of them probably actually believe it. Why? Well, because, as noted above, it’s what they and all their peers were taught (without “getting the joke” as it were), and it’s what their peer groups enforce as the moral consensus. But also because it fits with Haidt’s “moral foundations.” For people whose moral foundations are based primarily around the “fairness” axis, with the “care/harm” axis as the only other one in their worldview, appeals to “equity” will always have the strongest effect. (See also Moldbug’s “Puritan hypothesis.”)
One may or may not be familiar with the ultimatum game? (If not, I’d recommend take a moment to read about it.) Even though, in terms of one’s personal outcomes, it’s always rationally preferred to take a non-zero split no matter how unfair, most human beings are indeed willing to pay a price in lost opportunity to “punish” a (positive-sum) outcome they find too “unfair.” And, per Haidt, some people are far more sensitive to “unfairness” than others Some people would reject a $51/$49 split. Some might reject a $501/$499 split.
It’s why appeals to aggregate well-being — like in the fatness example, about how redistributing healthcare to equalize lifespans for fit-vs-fat (as opposed to treating the latter with Ozempic) will lead to a net loss of aggregate life-years — tend not to work. Because plenty of people care more about the relative distribution than the absolute aggregate. They see equitable destitution as morally preferable to fabulous prosperity even slightly unequally distributed. In their view, making people worse off in absolute terms is good if it also makes them more equal. This is a matter of terminal goals and moral axioms.
This also appeals to one of humanity’s worst tendencies: envy. Not just wanting what other people have (and you don’t have), but resenting those who have more than you. If your primary drive is that nobody ever have more than you do, then views centering “equity” like this allow you to portray your envy and resentment as moral virtue, which makes those views more attractive than alternatives that don’t.
I hope this helps clarify why the whole “HBD as counter to disparate impact” argument won’t really work. Even if you convince people “blacks have genetically lower average IQs,” or whatever, then you’ve only just explained why IQ tests are racist — because blacks deserve to be hired at proportional rates despite the lower average IQ. And so on. Under the currently-dominant framework of our society, it doesn’t matter how much biology contributes, if any, to current inequality, it is still our legal and moral duty to change “the system” in whatever ways necessary to produce equitable outcomes despite it. The established institutions of our society — government, academia, media, NGOs, etc. — are filled top-to-bottom with true believers who hold this as a terminal value, and it’s not going away until they all do (which is a problem, because there’s no voting them out).
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
It goes almost without saying that, if Trump were elected in 2024, he could have the authority to fire Jack Smith and derail both this case and the documents case in Florida.
Does it, though? Because I, for one, am not sure about that at all. Because, first, does a president have the authority to fire an A.U.S.A like Smith on paper? Second, even if a president does have that power in theory, well, how DC is supposed to work on paper and how it actually works are two distinct things, so is this a power the president has in reality, or merely on some musty old piece of paper nobody who matters cares about? (I here link this marginally relevant Substack piece from our dear @KulakRevolt.)
Third, and perhaps most important, even if a president has such a firing power in general, one could easily argue that in this situation Trump would not, because allowing him to use said otherwise-legitimate authority "to fire Jack Smith and derail both this case and the documents case in Florida" against him would so fatally-undermine basic justice and the rule of law that the very survival of Our Democracy demands the suspension of said authority until the cases are resolved, and that it be incumbent upon all to #Resist any attempt by Trump to remove Smith.
My personal expectation is that none of these things are going to matter — the system is going to find some way to push past all these roadblocks and keep these cases going.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
he can fire everyone involved he can get his hands on
Again, I dispute this. If he says John Q. Bureaucrat is fired, but the rest of DC says Mr. Bureaucrat isn't fired; they still work with Mr. Bureaucrat when he comes into the office; payroll still issues Mr. Bureaucrat his paycheck; and they have the guy Trump appointed to replace John hauled out of the building and arrested for trespassing, because he doesn't work there, since the job he claims to hold is actually still held by Mr. Bureaucrat; and anyone who tries to remove Mr. Bureaucrat on orders from Trump gets arrested themselves by the FBI for attempting to obstruct a federal employee in the exercise of his duties, because Mr. Bureaucrat is still a federal employee… then has John Q. Bureaucrat really been fired?
he can declassify any and all documents involved
And if everyone ignores him, and keeps treating them as classified anyway?
he could order the entire classification system revoked
And if everyone ignores him, and keeps acting as if the system is still in place?
If Congress is on his side, they can open investigations into the investigators
With what people? Who are they going to order to carry out these investigations? What if those people ignore that order? Or side with those they're "investigating" against Trump and Congress?
they can defund the offices involved.
Government "shutdowns," where nothing shuts down and the executive branch continued to spend and disburse funds without the constitutionally-mandated Congressional authorization, say otherwise. What happens when Congress "defunds" the offices, and Treasury just ignores them and keeps issuing the offices their funds as before?
but I find it very unlikely that Trump's enemies will really push (escalate) a Constitutional crisis
Why not? I don't understand why everyone seems to think a "Constitutional crisis" would be any kind of big deal. What would change, really?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
3mo ago
Moving this here (rather late) on suggestion of the mods, with some added expansion:
Does anyone else see the way various people on the American left, particularly left leaning media, have been doubling down on "Trump is Hitler," "Harris ran a flawless campaign," "the voters are just sexist, racist, stupid, and evil," and so on, and that they shouldn't change policies to win over voters, except maybe by moving even further leftward (again, I'm on Tumblr, so I get plenty of this from ordinary D voters coming across my dash; there's also the Youtubers seen in this video for one) as part of an overall "strategy" by the left that strongly parallels the behaviors in recent years of "woke Hollywood" and game studios? That is, use identity politics as a tool to paint critics and opponents as bigots ('you don't hate our all-female reboot because it's a soulless cash grab with lousy writing and acting, you're just a sexist', 'you didn't vote for Kamala only because you hate blacks and/or women,' etc). "Schrödinger's critics": your opposition is just a few unimportant bigots who don't represent the audience/electorate and don't really matter; but when your movie/game/candidate flops, it's because of the immense power those same opponents have over the viewers/players/voters. The problem is that too many people are listening to fringe voices (whether that's YouTube movie critics, video game reviewers on Twitch, or 'purveyors of right wing misinformation' like Fox News and x.com), instead of professional, establishment movie critics/game journalists/political commentators; and we need to figure out how to mute those fringe voices. Taking your established fanbase/demographics for granted, and excoriate them if their support starts to wane ('how can you call yourself a Tolkien fan and not watch Rings of Power?' 'Sure, the Democrat party's policies do nothing for you, but you have to vote blue no matter who anyway' [a position I've seen left-wing YouTubers state in response to the election]).
Sure, the idea that "the customer is always right" — even if you append the qualifier "…in matters of taste" — is one that the "creative industries" have always struggled with. The purity of one's artistic vision versus "selling out" in order to make a living is a perennial tension. And similarly with electoral politics. Parties abandoning all principles in naked pursuit of the median voter turns electoral politics into a modern spectator sport, with the parties reduced to different colored jerseys with different mascots, and all that matters is that "your" team win the next game. ("Who will win the trophy this year, Team Elephant, or Team Donkey?") But, on the other hand, if a party wants to actually accomplish things in line with those principles, they have to win elections. Movie studios need to have people pay to watch their movies, so they can afford to make more, or else they'll go out of business.
In short, that you, the filmmaker/game studio/Democratic party, don't answer to your audience/voters, the audience/voters answer to you. You do not have to earn their dollars/votes, you are entitled to them, and if they aren't buying what you're selling, then they're wrong, and the strategy is to lecture them on what horrible bigots they are until they start watching your movie/playing your game/voting Democrat. And calling anyone who disagrees with you a fascist. (That "Unfortunately, this decision affects the wrong people" bit is wild coming from those making the decision in question — as if they have no agency over this decision, but it is instead somehow just a natural consequence somehow emerging automatically.) As Jim put it: "Doing an audit of federal government expenditures is the death of democracy, and doing a customer survey is openly fascist."
Even shorter: it's treating that Simpsons bit with Principal Skinner that's become a meme — "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong." — as a marketing/campaign strategy.
Maybe you added that last bit as a joke,
Nope. I've been looking at responses like the comments at this Reddit thread. Bits like:
What upsets me is his rage that he projects... where if you disagree then you are literally labeled by him explicitly as a treasonous enemy of America, which itself is so unamerican and dangerous to the country.
He has made this country more dangerous and fractured by the day ever since he started his political rhetoric way back against Obama.
He creates the situation that makes politics dangerous in America, whether it is crazy right wingers killing their imagined enemies or bringing out crazy left wingers who have been told they are an enemy so they feel like they have to attack their enemy in kind.
and:
Amazing, the Republicans, who have developed a list of 350 political opponents that they believe should be incarcerated and/or put to death, and assert they have the right to be violent to achieve their goals of overthrowing our government, have the nerve to complain of political violence tonight. 😡
and:
I wonder if this will be my generations Reichstag fire. Now more than ever he needs to be kept out of the White House so he can’t take his anger out on opponents
and:
The right is already blaming democrats. Marjorie Trailer Park Greene is blaming democrats and the media.
She’s linking criticism of Trump to instigating this attack.
If Trump wins and it looks like he will, he will definitely try to go after all media that doesn’t praise him. He will do exactly what putin does.
and:
Trump will say Biden tried to kill him and if he doesn’t, Fox News will to try to win the election. These people are horrible.
and:
America the democracy is done. Nobody who isnt a white Christian will be safe
and:
I hope Biden’s team really tightens up their security. There are enough crazies in MAGA to believe he’s behind this and retaliate.
That's the whole "frontlash" idea — the real issue is all the innocent people who will be hurt by the likely "backlash". To quote a 2016 tweet from the late Norm Macdonald satirizing this view (in the context of Islamic terror attacks):
What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?
The problem, says this narrative, isn't that someone tried to kill Trump, it's all the horrible things he and Republicans are going to do to innocent people when they lash out blindly in retaliation.
Edit: add on this bit of sarcasm:
Okay, so who’s gonna talk them down from making a dictatorship? We all know that republicans are totally reasonable and don’t justify mass shootings at all, or claim climate change isn’t real, or try to involve religion in school, or try to discriminate, or control people’s bodies.
Yeah, we should just let them go on. It’s not like I want to live on a planet that isn’t on fire.
I’m sure that the people who downvote me aren’t complete bigots who want their Glorious Leader in power. I’m sure they respect women and minorities and think that the corporations SHOULD have massive power over their livelihood. I’m sure that most of America isn’t diseased by the republicans and want to completely overthrow democracy. I’m sure they don’t ignore the most obvious points about how republicans are making the world a worse place. Because they’re nice and friendly and totally don’t want to resurrect the Nazi Regime
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
6mo ago
How to deal with demotivation around feeling too old? That is, the persistent feeling that there's no point in starting anything to try to develop a skill, complete a large project, or make an effort toward a large life-improvement goal, because before I can get anywhere meaningful enough to justify the effort, I'll be dead — there's just not enough time left in my life to get anything of note done, so all that's left is to sit down and pass the time waiting to die.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
What's the argument that fighting and losing leads to worse outcomes than not fighting and losing?
Should Hirohito have surrendered before Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (Do you think Japan should have continued to fight on further?) The war was already lost well before that point; all continuing to fight did was get even more Japanese killed.
which is useful for coordinating further escalation
This would require a Red Tribe capable of coordinating, rather than being downright allergic to it. (This is a point David Z. Hines has been making for years now.) These are my friends, my family, my neighbors I'm talking about. They're never going to do anything. They'll grumble, and mutter about "2nd amendment solutions," but they'll bow down and comply. Let somebody else take the risk of resisting Federal tyranny. And don't come around expecting them to join up with you — they don't take no orders from nobody, y'hear?
About a year ago, I did some reading about historical counterinsurgency methods, particularly Rome. And, contra to Princess Leia's comment to Tarkin, crackdowns usually didn't generate greater resistance, they generated submission. When they did lead to "further escalation," it was generally only a single cycle — Rome's second crackdown usually got the job done. The only exception, with multiple cycles of escalation, was the Jews — and look how that turned out:
The Bar Kokhba Revolt had catastrophic consequences for the Jewish population in Judaea, with profound loss of life, extensive forced displacements, and widespread enslavement. The scale of suffering surpassed even the aftermath of the First Jewish–Roman War, leaving central Judea in a state of desolation.
…
According to a study by Applebaum, the rebellion led to the destruction of two-thirds of the Jewish population in Judaea. In his account of the revolt, Roman historian Cassius Dio (c. 155–235) wrote that:
"50 of their most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. 580,000 men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out, Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
8mo ago
So, as is usual, my approaching birthday (the day after the election) is worsening my depression — reminding me of how little I've accomplished, how much of my life I've wasted, how many things it's too late for me to try to turn around. (All of which just increase the frequency of wondering why not just skip to the end, since at this point those remaining years won't change anything.)
I'm on meds, I see a therapist regularly, and I'm spending more time under my SAD light (because winter in Alaska). Any other suggestions?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
10mo ago
When it comes to the building of "parallel institutions" as a political strategy, what would a monarchist parallel institution in a modern, democratic society look like (other than either a 24/7 ren faire or a mafia syndicate)?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
5mo ago
On the power of the purse and control of the Treasury.
I’ve seen a few articles and videos going around, referencing and linking or exerpting the various left-wing people (mostly women) on “short video” social media filming themselves crying about how they can’t sleep because they’re up all night with the thoughts of how their children are about to starve because Trump is taking their EBT and Social Security away; followed by a debunking of this — complete with links to/excerpts of the press conference addressing this mistaken view, and how these sorts of domestic benefits are unaffected by any funding halts President Trump has ordered so far — and how these people have worked themselves up due to believing scaremongering from voices on the left. But I’ve come to wonder whether this is just about riling up these sort of easily-misled people… or if it’s about laying groundwork for a fight over the Treasury Department.
I’ve repeatedly held (here and elsewhere), whenever someone has talked about “defunding the left,” that it would actually be very hard to do, because for all that the constitution gives Congress “the power of the purse,” in reality all the checks are actually written and issued by the unelected bureaucrats at Treasury, as seen in every “government shutdown.” So what if Congress orders some left-wing institution defunded… and Treasury just keeps writing the checks anyway? I’ve argued that they can, and maybe even will, just defy Congress, because who can stop them?
Well, on the one hand, we’re seeing that permanent bureaucrats are less “unfireable” than I thought. On the other, we have this tweet from Musk on how independent people at the Treasury act:
The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups.
They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.
Not even once.
So, again, what if Treasury officers keep issuing checks after being told to stop? Or, in an alternate scenario that brings things back around to my first paragraph, they start engaging in the sort of malicious compliance we’ve already seen elsewhere (like the “No DEI? Guess we have to stop teaching about the Tuskegee Airmen!” bit)? If they talk about how, since they can’t tell who’s been really fired by Trump and who hasn’t, and thus who they should or shouldn’t issue paychecks to, they’re going to err on the side of caution and halt all federal employees’ paychecks (are ICE agents going to be deporting people for free?). Or how if Trump’s talking about abolishing the IRS, that means they need to put an immediate stop to issuing anyone’s income tax refunds. Or how they’re so confused trying to figure out what is and isn’t funded by Trump’s rushed, poorly-written executive orders, they’re just going to halt all Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, EBT, etc. until things get “straightened out.”
Because what are Trump, Musk, and company going to do, fire them all? Because this is where Scott’s “Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats” really comes into play. The more people at Treasury you fire, the fewer are left to process and issue all the funds that need issued, the more everyone’s paychecks and Social Security and Medicare and EBT and tax refunds get delayed.
So, will the Treasury #Resist? Can they be reined in, or does their control over the cash spigot so many depend upon give them too much power?
Are their any non-religious organizations whose members take vows oaths of celibacy, a la the Night's Watch or the Maesters from ASOIAF?
(I'm pretty sure the answer is "no," but I'd like to double-check my bases so I can be more certain in replying as such the next time someone "advises" me to "go join the Night's Watch" or similar.)
(Edited per @FiveHourMarathon's fine pedantry.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
On fakes and faking:
There are a few interesting patterns I’ve seen regarding discourse around certain things being “fake,” or that certain people are “faking” or have “faked” something, wherein one finds distinct claims being either accidentally mistaken or deliberately conflated. And while there are definite culture war examples — sometimes in multiple areas — my initial examples are going to be less so.
[1.] “Person X is faking (very real) condition Y” versus “Condition Y is fake”:
A notable fictional example is in the South Park episode “Le Petit Tourette,” wherein Cartman fakes having Tourette syndrome to get away with randomly swearing. To quote from the Wikipedia summary:
Kyle Broflovski quickly deduces that Cartman is faking; Cartman admits the truth to him but continues to enjoy the deception. When Kyle complains to Principal Victoria, a visiting representative from a TS foundation misinterprets his statement as an allegation that all people with TS are faking. Kyle is sent to a meeting of a local support group for children with the disorder, who explain that they truly cannot control their various tics and outbursts.
[2.] “Condition X is fake; those who claim to have it are perfectly fine” versus “Condition X is fake; those who claim to have it actually suffer from Condition Y”:
Here, my example is Morgellons. I remember one memorable comment online from a doctor (back when I first encountered this particular internet rabbit-hole), responding to one “Morgellons” sufferer’s claim that doctors ‘refuse to give them a diagnosis,’ that no, doctors have been giving them a diagnosis, the same diagnosis, over and over: delusional parasitosis.
[3.] “The video/book is fake, as in staged” vs. “The video/book is fake, as in nonexistent”:
Here, examples of the first are any “mockumentary” or “found footage” movie — i.e. “The Blair Witch Project” is fake. This is the sort of claim that moon-landing conspiracy theories make. The second example, in comparison, is saying that something is fake like the way “Goncharov” is a fake movie — it doesn’t actually exist, and anyone who claims to have watched it is lying (in the case of “Goncharov,” as part of the game/fun.) Generally, what I see here in terms of ambiguity/equivocation is someone making a claim of the second type which people then “debunk” as if they had made the first type of claim.
Thoughts?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
11mo ago
So, when it comes to ways to meet new people and get experience "talking to strangers," I've more than once been pointed to bars as a place for striking up conversations with people you don't know. And yet, I've been to the local bar a few times (despite my very limited budget and medical reasons for not drinking), and not once in the hours I've spent there have I seen anyone strike up a conversation with anyone else. Just a bunch of older men sitting alone, drinking and watching sports.
The same is true with the "bar" portion of the local restaurants that serve alcohol and have "bar seating." For that matter, I don't think I've seen a conversation start in a restaurant that wasn't among a pre-existing group.
So, is this just me? Just a product of the sort of places I frequent (for certain not-terribly-frequent values of "frequent") given my poverty? A product of Anchorage, Alaska being a particularly antisocial place? Or was the advice not all that great? Are there some better places?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
I don't know what on earth makes you think you are disgusting and hypocritical for wanting a relationship now.
…
I cannot even fathom how you arrived at the conclusion that the desire to be in a romantic relationship is only legitimate conditional on having achieved XYZ, and is otherwise disgusting or hypocritical.
…
please tell me, in plain language, why you think the fact that you want to be in a romantic relationship makes you a disgusting hypocrite.
I believe Skookum does so here:
Like, the basic premise of the Hock cashes out to "if you're an unattractive person/dude, whether it's because fugly or autistic or physically disabled or whatever, your partners are probably gonna find you disgusting. So you're asking for an awful lot there from your partner, arguably for no good goddamn reason. You kind of suck and are hypocritical if you're not down to freely choose to suffer like a motherfucker for no good reason - you're asking the same of your partner."
TVTropes has multiple tropes ("And Now You Must Marry Me," "I Have You Now, My Pretty" "Scarpia Ultimatum, etc." full of examples across centuries of stories about the suffering of women submitting to the attentions of a man to whom she's not attracted — or even just under the threat of such. How is it not at least somewhat hypocritical, how does it not speak of entitlement, to expect a woman to voluntarily submit to such misery, and not be willing to voluntarily submit oneself to a comparable level of suffering? If not "the Hock," what can match the ordeal a woman undergoes, being in a romantic relationship with someone she finds repellent?
unlike you, who's so uniquely loathsome and contemptible that he ought to be euthanized unless he can Prove his Worth by etc.. To which all I can say is - bullshit.
What about that is bullshit, and what is your evidentiary basis for saying so?
As somewhat similar, from back in 2017 on SSC:
Kevin C. says:
…
I recall once reading, if not here then somewhere in the “rationalsphere”, someone, as an idle proposal, putting forth that with regards to this dynamic, one might consider comparison to domesticated livestock, and how we handle those males who aren’t in the minority that will be doing the breeding. That rather than leave large numbers of individuals tormented by a drive they cannot fulfill, we, as a mercy, take steps to remove or ameleorate the drive.
…
vV_Vv says:
…
It’s not too hard to imagine a not-so-distant future where any boy who isn’t a hyper-masculine Chad from a young age will be pushed, possibly with the help of hormones and surgical scalpels, to live his life as some sort of “queer” identity which does not involve having sex with women. And if the statistics are to be believed, we know that many of these men will eventually end up “taking the exit” anyway.
And further on the livestock analogy, when it comes to chickens — as opposed to cattle, sheep, etc. — the solution is indeed the culling of most male chicks.
So why not at least offer some sort of analogous "relief" for those human males facing a similar life of suffering under such unmet drives? Why not respect the self-determination of individuals to address such an irremediable condition by providing them assistance in attaining a dignified exit from an undignified existence?
And on what grounds do you say that the likes of Skookum aren't "ought to be euthanized"?
I'd point out that in most "primitive" cultures, girls become women — full adult members of the community — automatically at menarche, while boys have to "earn" their manhood through rites of initiation — difficult, usually painful rites. And it was indeed possible to fail said initiations.
I recall once reading a thread on Tumblr talking about how the prevalence of "third genders" wasn't nearly the support for modern transgender and nonbinary identities that some like to argue it is, by going into depth on the Polynesian example, laying out the details and pointing out that the closest modern counterpart isn't "trans-woman" or "non-binary," but a formalized, institutionalized version of "prison bitch." And that often, many who ended up in such roles were indeed those boys who failed to "become men" — that these societies did indeed have a "gender binary," just that instead of "man" and "woman," it's "man" and "non-man," with some biological males falling into the latter category by failure to earn membership in the former.
Sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive. Women are precious, men are expendable. Women attain full personhood, membership in the tribe, the concern of others, automatically. Males have to earn the privilege of being a person, through their deeds and contribution to the tribe, to women and children. We must earn the care and compassion of society — and those who fail don't matter; those who fail are expendable, disposable. So, in times of modern plenty, and when women have more options outside of marriage and "settling," why not dispose of at least the worst of disposable males, or at least assist them in disposing of themselves?
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
One way in which I see a second Trump term being significantly different from the first one is that he's not going to be shy around things like this.
This assumes there's actually things he can do "around things like this." I've made my case before as to why a second Trump term won't be significantly different from the first, because whatever his powers on musty old parchments nobody cares about, the President is a figurehead who only has as much authority as the Permanent Bureaucracy allows him.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
The words on paper have a certain power in the sense that if they are disobeyed too blatantly, we cross into this interesting circumstance that people call "constitutional crisis", and then anything can happen.
I don't see how it could have any outcome other than the 2 million plus executive bureaucrats finally making their reduction of merely-elected officials to entirely-powerless figureheads?
Had he a supportive enough congress to not overturn his orders and pass laws to codify the details that are needed, a President that would want to purge the executive totally could
How so? If the executive bureaucracy is ignoring Trump, why wouldn't they ignore a Trump-aligned Congress too?
Does anyone have any recommendations for sci-fi works involving population decline? I ask because most late 20th century — and even early 21st century — works I'm familiar with assume continual population growth, and frequently an overpopulation crisis. (Even the grimiest dystopian cyberpunk seems to take for granted that people will somehow keep popping out kids, enough to more than replace all the people getting gunned down by megacorp hit squads or torn apart by psychotic cyborgs.)
The only exceptions I can think of are works involving sudden plagues of infertility (Handmaid's Tale, Children of Men) or are Japanese (Yokohama Shopping Log). Anything else out there?
Edit: I'm talking less the "post-apocalyptic" genre, where the collapse has already occurred and the focus is rebuilding, but during the decline — particularly a slower one like Yokohama Shopping Log.
I was asking why he himself thinks that he's disgusting for merely wanting to be in a relationship.
I don't recall him ever saying that he's disgusting for wanting a relationship, only that he's hypocritical for wanting a relationship while being disgusting (because ugly, awkward, etc.).
it would be very surprising indeed if literally every woman in the entire world would be disgusted by Skookum as he currently exists.
I'm reminded here of the They Might Be Giants song "Ana Ng," which explores the underlying horror of the "one true soulmate" concept via the singer wondering what if his "soulmate" is a woman living on the other side of the world whom he will certainly never meet.
The relevant set isn't "every woman in the entire world," it's the set of single women likely to be in a position for Skookum to ask out, which is at least a few orders of magnitude smaller.
And why would you find it surprising with this smaller set? I mean, I get there are broad cultural narratives about "someone for everyone" and "plenty of fish in the sea," but as far as I can tell, that's all they are — unsupported cultural narratives, absorbed and perpetuated mostly unquestioned. And while I wouldn't assume a consensus in these parts around the evidentiary value of pure cultural consensus, I wouldn't expect most here to rate it particularly high.
I was asking why he himself thinks that he's disgusting for merely wanting to be in a relationship.
Not to speak for Skookum, but that's not how I read his arguments; the "disgusting" part isn't due to "merely wanting to be in a relationship," it's prior to that.
If he thinks that he's disgusting because he wants a relationship even though he hasn't "earned the right" to want one by proving his masculinity
Again not speaking for Skookum, but it seems to me that you're continuing to misread him, and getting things backwards — his "disgustingness" is not an effect but a cause. It's not that he's disgusting for "wanting a relationship" without having "proved his masculinity," it's that because he is exceptionally disgusting that he has to "prove his masculinity," or else be a hypocrite for refusing to suffer as much as a woman would suffer from a relationship with someone as disgusting as him.
well, that implies that the vast majority of modern men are disgusting, as most of us haven't fought in a war or gone hiking in Alaska or etc..
That would be the implication of what you've said, but, again, that's not what I read him as saying. It's not "men who don't do this are disgusting," it's "those men (number not specified) who are disgusting need to do this, to 'offset' the suffering they expect others to endure by tolerating their repulsive presence."
If Skookum literally believes that any man who wants to be in a relationship without having proved his masculinity is "disgusting" and "hypocritical", I wish he would just come out and say "I am disgusting and hypocritical for wanting a relationship, and so are most of you"
And, again, I'd say the reason he doesn't "just come out and say" that latter is because he's not arguing the former. It's not "disgusting and hypocritical for wanting a relationship," it's "hypocritical for wanting a relationship when disgusting." Again, the "disgusting" part is prior to the "desire" part, not an effect of it.
To summarize my interpretation here:
-
Being in a relationship with a man she find unattractive causes a woman suffering.
-
Some men are so unattractive and unlovable that practically any relationship he'll ever have with a woman will fall under (1). Therefore,
-
When one of this (quite possibly small) set of men desires a relationship with a woman, he is thus desiring that she voluntary choose said suffering; and
-
Asking someone to voluntarily choose to suffer for you benefit is hypocritical and entitled if you are not willing to similarly voluntarily choose to undergo comparable suffering.
-
He is a member of this (again, quite possibly small) set.
Note, this is not the argument that you've been attributing to him. It does not imply that most men fall into this "repulsive, unloveable" set, nor that one falls into this set because one hasn't undergone the Hock, or whatever, merely that this applies to the (again, number not specified) men who do.
And I get that you seem to disagree with (2) and/or (5). But can you at least follow the argument?
Any criteria of "the worst of the disposable males" which includes him would probably include you.
Indeed it would, and should. I've been telling people for years that my ideal society would almost certainly have me executed.
Edit — Addendum: All that said, I'd still prefer he doesn't do his suicidal stunt in the state I live in, because it doesn't matter how much he repeats "don't look for me," if he goes missing, the state will send out people to find him (or his corpse), which will cost money, when we have a crappy economy and serious budget woes. (Hence my "why not just put people like us out of our misery?" take.)
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
7mo ago
Online, it's hard to tell to what degree all the cataclysmic tweets and videos from leftists melting down hysterically and screaming that we're going to enter an era of plantation slavery and the Handmaid's Tale are nutpicking (the reason LibsOfTikTok is so popular is that Millenials and Zoomers so freely provide so much content) and to what degree they reflect a genuine widespread sentiment.
I know that Tumblr is very far from a representative sample, but the histrionic posts coming across my dash thanks to the #politics tag have been plentiful enough to exceed mere "nutpicking."
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1yr ago
Because Congress decides who gets the money and because these organizations exist because Congress makes them exist through laws. You can't ignore your way out of a shutdown.
Every time their was a so-called "shutdown," I still got my SSI checks direct-deposit from the Federal government despite said "shutdown" and the unconstitutionality — again, mere words on a musty old parchment by dead slave-owning white men — of spending without House authorization.
Congress does not themselves write the checks, people in the executive do — like, as you note, the Treasury. So when Congress declares something "defunded," and the Treasury just ignores them and keeps sending the checks out anyway, no CIA gunmen needed, what then?
"Constitutional crisis" and so on, but so what? Nobody in DC really cares about that dead letter, nor have they for probably a century now, so what if this is made (more) explicit? The FBI, ATF, and other ordinary law enforcement will be enough to crush any — inevitably disorganized, sporadic, and aimless — "resistance" or "rebellion" from the citizenry.
I find myself increasingly perplexed by the people who think a second Trump term would be any kind of a big deal; that there’s anything he’d be able to do in a second term he wasn’t able to do in the first. It’s primarily in fellow right-wingers that I find this attitude most vexing, but it also holds to a lesser degree for the people on the left who hyperbolically opine in outlets like Newsweek and The Economist about how a second Trump term would “end democracy” and “poses the biggest danger to the world.”
Really, it’s not even about Trump for me, either. I don’t really see how a DeSantis or a Ramaswamy presidency would amount to anything either. What can they possibly accomplish, except four years of utterly futile attempts at action that are completely #Resisted by the permanent bureaucracy? Giving “orders” to “subordinates” that prove as efficacious as Knut the Great’s famous command to the tides?
I hear about how the president can do this or that, according to some words on paper, and I ask “but can he, really?” Mere words on paper have no power themselves, and near as I can tell, the people in DC haven’t really cared about them for most of a century now, nor is there any real mechanism for enforcing them.
If I, a random nobody, come into your workplace and announce that you’re fired, of course you still have your job. Security will still let you in when you show up each day, you can still log in and out of whatever, your coworkers will treat you the same, and you’ll still keep getting paid. Now, suppose your boss announces that you’re fired… but everyone else there treats that the same as the first case? You still show up, you still do the work, you still get paid. Are you really fired, then?
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