Goodguy
3mo ago
I expect actual reform to happen simply because if there's one thing that politicians on both sides of the aisle can unanimously agree on, it's that they don't want to get shot.
This video makes the shooting cop look pretty bad. Not just because he shot her, since she really could have done some major damage with the water. But because the cops did not just leave the room and/or the house as soon as one of them first became worried about the possibility of her using the water, at which point the distance between the cops and her was great enough that there was no way she could have reached them. After all, she was no threat to any bystanders, so leaving the house and then trying to re-engage her in a different way a bit later would not have caused any problems. The decision by the cop is kind of understandable how quickly everything happened, but it is pretty obviously sub-optimal given other options they could have taken. Instead of withdrawing, the cop actually moved closer to her, which is what put in him in range of her possibly using the water against them. The cop saying "you better not, I swear to god I'll fucking shoot you right in your fucking face" is also a bad look.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Yep, given Biden's age when he took office plus the fact that Kamala is the VP and so would have a good chance of eventually running for President even if Biden was younger, Republicans should have started devoting massive resources to building effective anti-Kamala messaging as soon as her and Biden took office. As we now see, it is not safe for them to rely on Kamala's terrible primary performance and just write her off. Her being a woman, a prosecutor, and to some extent even her being an occasionally awkward public speaker all play different in the context of her running against Trump than in the context of a primary race against other Democrats. Her being a woman plays different because Trump has a history of sexual assault accusations. Her being a prosecutor plays different because the Republicans like to act like the law-and-order party. Her being an occasionally awkward public speaker plays different because Trump himself has a weird and unorthodox, though obviously very effective, speaking style.
Goodguy
3mo ago
Progressivism doesn't really have an iron grip on institutions. It has an iron grip on a subset of institutions. For example, academia and Hollywood. Probably also large parts of the federal bureaucracy. But it doesn't have an iron grip on presidential administrations, Congress, the Supreme Court, law enforcement, the military, the national intelligence agencies, or even the news media.
I started to feel better about the current state of political discourse when I realized that probably a large fraction of the online political discourse is created by astroturf campaigns, not by people arguing in good faith. This is probably part of the reason why one sees so many online accounts make stupid arguments that fall apart after just an instant of thinking. It is not just because there are many stupid people, it is also because, since there are many stupid people, astroturfers have an incentive to craft the kind of simple, catchy arguments that appeal strongly to emotions even if they do not hold up to rational analysis.
Besides astroturfing, another issue is that actual organic online political discourse on both sides is dominated by people who sit online for hours a day making political content. And people like that are not representative of the overall US population. I think that on average, they are less mentally stable and more prone to wild irrational theories. After all, you're probably more likely to spend hours a day writing about politics if you actually think* that Project 2025 will put gay people in concentration camps or if you think that the Democratic Party is a front for a cabal of pedophiles who communicate by talking about pizza than if you think that no matter who wins, it doesn't really matter that much. It also goes the other way. Being constantly exposed to other mentally unstable people's political arguments online can have a radicalizing effect, especially if one gets caught in an echo chamber.
*Or if you have LARPed yourself into almost-thinking it, into enjoying it as an exciting fantasy while perhaps not truly believing it in the depths of your mind. Which I think is probably true of many people.
I think that Trump might be in a bit of trouble because many voters are probably tired of politics discussion being dominated by him for almost 10 years except for a brief interruption during Biden's first couple of years in office, and Kamala seems shiny and new in comparison to both him and Biden. Kamala can also be pretty articulate and well-spoken when she needs to be, and while she has some off-putting mannerisms, watching her doesn't have as much of a "nails on chalkboard" effect as watching Hillary Clinton.
The Democrats have been doing a pretty good job of putting a pause on the kind of radical culture warring that turns many people off from them. Instead they are focusing on things like abortion, Trump's age, 1/6, and the fact that Trump is technically a criminal. Those are all fields in which they have a good chance of winning the battle for public opinion in swing states.
There are still months before the election, and the Democrats could easily fuck things up. But their chances seem much better right now than they did a week ago. The Republicans need to develop a strong anti-Kamala message and they need to do it ASAP if they want to win.
One way or another, it will be a close election that is decided by a few states.
The only top-level-ish comment I feel like making at the moment is that both Reddit and X are insane right now when it comes to politics, even more than usual. For X of course part of it is the algorithm showing me highly charged politics stuff based on my previous choices, but still. Both platforms seem to be overrun by some combination of delusional, hysterical partisans on both sides of the political spectrum, astroturfers paid by one or the other side, astroturfing bots, and fervid conspiracy theorists who do not understand how basic reality and politics work.
Reddit is mainly overrun by "If Trump wins, the orange traitorous insurrectionist Putin agent failed businessman will put all the LGBTQ people in camps and bring about Christofascist dictatorship" types of posts.
X is overrun by a variety of wild shrill nonsense... or, most charitably, rampant poorly-argued speculation... such as "The Democrats killed Biden and are hiding it", "Biden hasn't been told that he's been dropped out against his will", "The Dems pressuring Biden to drop out is equivalent to a coup", "The Trump shooting was a false flag done by the Republicans", "Kamala is not African-American because her father is Jamaican", "Trump should resign because he is the oldest candidate in history (haha I'm only saying it because you said it about Biden)", "Biden dropped out because he was behind the Trump assassination plot and it failed", "The New York Times is a right-wing organization that is responsible for forcing Biden out", and so on.
Reddit has been delusional and probably compromised for years. I had high hopes for X, but in practice, while I think that it's better than Reddit, it seems to be at the mercy of political campaigns that drown out organic discussion.
It's all kind of amusing, but tiresome, to expose myself to such a high level of inanity, insanity, and astroturfing. But I seem to be addicted to it on some level.
Goodguy
4mo ago
Notice that the little COVID bump is bigger than the bumps under any of the three arrows showing the "Severe Flu Waves". It's just that the general level of deaths per capita was higher in the 70s and 80s, not that the flu waves were worse than COVID.
Goodguy
4mo ago
It was on the level of flu outbreaks in 1970s.
Give an example of such a flu outbreak in the 1970s.
Goodguy
4mo ago
It's the worst pandemic in the US since the Spanish Flu even in per-capita terms.
Goodguy
4mo ago
We might just be seeing different Twitter posts because of the algorithm, from what I am seeing it seems to me that the people who were against removing Biden yesterday are largely now grumbling about how their guy got unfairly forced to quit, not celebrating him leaving.
Goodguy
4mo ago
He knows. If you watch his last few press appearances, he's slow and he loses track of his thoughts frequently but he's clearly not so far gone that he wouldn't notice if people dropped him out of the race without consulting him.
Goodguy
4mo ago
In the US, COVID was the most deadly pandemic since the Spanish flu of more than 100 years ago. That makes it an outlier in my book.
Goodguy
4mo ago
If you watch Biden's press conference from a couple weeks ago, it's clear that despite his physical and mental decline, he is not so far gone that he wouldn't be able to get word out to the press that people around him were releasing unauthorized announcements about his re-election campaign. He forgets what he is talking about, mis-speaks, and is generally not quick on his feet, but he is not completely detached from reality.
Goodguy
4mo ago
This has no bearing at all on Messi's greatness, because that must be judged relatively to all other soccer players, but as a tangent, I can never get into soccer because to me it seems to be fundamentally broken. Penalty kicks have way too much influence on game results. A penalty kick has an ~80% chance of going in, in games that end about 2-2 on average, and about one in four games have at least one penalty kick.
It would be like if the NBA had a type of foul such that at least one of this type was awarded about once in four games, and the resulting free throw was worth 50 points if the player shooting the free throw made it.
It just makes soccer really hard to watch for me, I keep getting into soccer games and enjoying them but then when there's a penalty kick it just sucks all the excitement out of it and makes me feel like "why did I just spend all that time watching this?".
Goodguy
4mo ago
This list was not created by one person or a small group, it was created based on a vote of more than 70000 people. In a vote of tens of thousands of people, people are going to vote for all kinds of reasons that do not necessarily have to do with pure athletic dominance.
Goodguy
4mo ago
Watching that video of his classmate being interviewed just gave me the impression that Crooks hated politicians in general.
Since I myself hate Biden and Trump equally, I can very much sympathize with his viewpoint.
A very simple explanation for why Crooks targeted Trump rather than some other politician is that the two most prominent politicians in the US are Biden and Trump, and Trump is much easier to target than Biden because Trump constantly does outdoor appearances whereas Biden mostly stays hidden away.
Trump does way more outdoors events, and events in general, than the average President-tier politician. Having to protect Trump, who both constantly does outdoor rallies and has fewer resources assigned to him than an actual President would, yet is also is one of the most hated US politicians of all time, is probably just really tough for the Secret Service. I can't think of any Presidential candidate or President other than Trump in recent memory who keeps traveling around the country constantly giving outdoor speeches. I think it's plausible that the Secret Service is just out of their depth, they are set up to guard an Obama or Biden type who mostly stays in DC or gives speeches at indoors venues, but they are not set up to effectively guard a Trump.
I consider both the left and the right to be equally despicable, so the idea of the right wielding cancel culture annoys me as much as the idea of the left wielding cancel culture. At the end of the day, getting some retail worker fired because she verbally supports killing a politician, but is obviously not actually planning an assassination attempt or anything close to it, is just as bad as getting some retail worker fired because he said an ethnic slur or made a joke about trans people but is not actually doing anything harmful to anyone.
No matter which side does it, there is an ugliness to it. One can see that the canceller is motivated by anger, bloodlust, and sadism, not by any beautiful or noble feelings.
If every American who has ever wished death on a political opponent were to be be fired, I suspect that the economy would collapse. If every person on The Motte who has ever wished death on a political opponent were to stop posting, this place would likely be desolate.
Cancel culture does not reliably work on the rich and powerful. There is a level of fame and wealth which makes a person impossible to cancel for speech alone. Cancel culture that targets people's speech only works on the economically vulnerable. The principle is similar to how a lightly armed insurgent might decide to target a big gathering of the other tribe's ordinary civilians instead of attacking their military bases or the mansions of their rich, which are protected by private security. It is most effective against the people who have the least political power. It bounces off the truly powerful, the only exception being when elites borrow elements from the commoners' cancel culture to use as weapons in their intra-elite fighting - but even when that happens, it is the elites who win. Trump almost certainly isn't going to give you a bag of gold for cancelling somebody who called for his assassination. Jay-Z almost certainly isn't going to sign you to his label for cancelling somebody who used a racial slur. When you wake up the next morning, you'll still have the same house and the same job, unless you are one of the few who can turn being a culture warrior into a steady income - but even that occupation is precarious unless you are one of the very few who make it to true prominence in the attention economy.
Ordinary, economically vulnerable people using cancel culture against each other is like hobos fighting over a can of beans while rich people drive by in fancy cars.
Oh come on, there are comments on here dripping with sheer contempt all the time that don't get the authors banned.
Keep in mind, I'm not a leftoid, I just think that most of the rightoids on here are retarded. If we had more leftoids here, I'd tell them that they are also retarded, cause I genuinely believe that.
But the Tomato didn't express himself in a way more obnoxious than what we see regularly here, so come the fuck on, shape up or have this site keep being viewed as a joke by actually smart people.
Right now, this site is mostly just a refugee camp for midwits who overrate their own intelligence because they realize that different races differ in IQ or whatever (Wow! You just have to be a non-retard to understand that different races differ in IQ for probably in part genetic reasons! Congratulations on having a bare minimum intelligence to be worthy of smart people paying attention to you!).
Having the bare minimum of intelligence to be able to see through leftoid ideas of how everybody's on average equal in intelligence or whatever... doesn't take much. It's just like the bare standard minimum. This site is overrun with lame social trads, religious idiots, authoritarians, and so on... all of whose ideas are not rationally obviously correct, but they clearly are pushing these ideas because they have deep-seated emotional (as opposed to rational) reasons for wanting to push those ideas. They often write things that are not rationally justified, and imply that their opponents are all sorts of nasty things when they write it, but I am not calling for them to be banned. So why ban Tomato for writing a mild few paragraphs poking fun at his political opponents?
Edit: Sorry, I was drunkposting and a bit too harsh. Oh well, I don't mind a week vacation.
Militant angry Trump supporters actually kind of are losers until and unless proven otherwise. They have loads of guns and a large fraction of them think that the 2020 election was stolen from them, yet they've killed a total of about 0 government workers. If they continue like this, it will make sense for their enemies to ignore them as LARPers. Personally, I'd love to see them rise up and make some of the establishment face the consequences of their inactions and actions, but so far they haven't done almost anything. What's it going to take? I guess there is some breaking point at which they would rise up, but what would it take?
Yeah, the plain fact is that most of them don't care about civil liberties in a broad and principled way. They're not classical liberals or libertarians. They're conservatives. They're the kind of people who think that the government should be able to put me in a cage for putting recreational drugs in my body. A significant minority of them would probably institute peacetime conscription if they could because they like the idea of how being in the army transforms young men. In other words, they are social engineers, their primarily goal isn't individual liberty, it is to shape society on a large scale into their vision of it. It's just that their vision is different from the vision of leftist social engineers.
Kamala just seems like she would be more fun to have a beer with than Hillary. She's awkward and weird in a fake politician way, but somehow manages to seem more like a human being than Hillary did. Kamala bullshits in public and is a hypocrite but seems like she might actually be oddly fun to hang out with, which might appeal to right-wingers because that's basically Trump's energy too. Even the allegations that Kamala used sex to jump-start her career, in a way, help feed into this impression because it would be hard to imagine 2016 Hillary having sex at all. And if Kamala did sleep her way into her career, it doesn't even make her look weak because well, at the end of the day she became a Senator and then a Vice President. Her having been a prosecutor also probably appeals to the typical right-wing mind on some level.
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