KlutzyTraining
13d ago
The Guardian has long been a useful tool for Democrat politicians to disseminate propaganda.
When I was a volunteer on the Obama campaign in 2008, one of the things the Obama team would do during the primary was to launder negative stories & rumors about Hillary via the Guardian.
The American media often wouldn't touch the negative Hillary stories (for sometimes good reasons and sometimes corrupt reasons- it depended on the story), but the Obama campaign could inject the negative Hillary stories into the American media by getting the Guardian to cover them.
Then it would be harder for American media to NOT report on the stories, since now a "credible international outlet" had reported on it.
KlutzyTraining
1mo ago
I am surprised at how different Trump's 2024 campaign has been, stylistically, from his previous campaigns. And I am also surprised at how little attention these changes have gotten.
It was often claimed by Democrats, and many establishment Republicans, that Trump was incapable of change. I think the 2024 campaign is basically proving that Trump can change quite a lot as a politician and as a person, actually.
-Especially in his 2016 campaign, it seemed like there was a major campaign leak every single day, of some wild thing Trump had supposedly said or done in private. Reporters were FEASTING on leaks from Trump campaign staffers. And perhaps even some of the leaks came from Trump himself!
This time around, I can't remember seeing a single wild story sourced from a leak from Trump's campaign. It's like night and day. Either Trump has completely stopped doing crazy things in private, or he is running a much tighter ship (which would also be a major change).
I think this is responsible for a lot of why this Trump campaign feels so different, and why the media environment seems so different. Trump's staffers aren't constantly giving the media high ratings with wild new storylines. It's a much tighter ship. The Trump campaign narratives are more tightly controlled, and have less of the energy which the old chaos and controversy from the leaks used to bring.
-In 2020, I pointed out that Trump's website literally didn't have a policy page. This time around, Trump's campaign has an extensive policy page. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/issues and https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/?_gl=17vvd3i_gcl_au*MjEwMzg1MDQ1MC4xNzIxODUxOTUz&_ga=2.104524672.1863252832.1725431494-503166579.1721851953)
In 2024, it's the Democrat nominee who doesn't have a policy page. Almost all of the emphasis on the Kamala website is on soliciting donations.
Although, Trump did have some self-declared policies in 2020, and Kamala's campaign has released a few policies so far this year. But it doesn't seem like Kamala '24 and Trump '20 wanted to focus on policy at all. Trump '24 seems to be more focused on new policies.
And perhaps some of this is just the challenge of being an incumbent, which Trump '20 and Kamala '24 are. If you propose any new policies, the obvious rejoinder is "why haven't you already done that?". Perhaps it seems smarter to just not have a policies page. But I think it's a lame thing to (not) do.
-Trump is, for the first time, competing in a political environment in which the Democrats have arguably flip-flopped to adopt some of his biggest positions, and some of his style. (This might be one of the most unusual political achievements of all time.)
Trump used to be considered outrageous for discussing major ways to secure the border. Now Democrats are campaigning on "Securing the Border", and issues with fentanyl and so on.
And Trump has been completely free to go even further, to discuss mass deportation, and this is somehow considered even less outrageous than the border wall was considered not that long ago.
Democrats used to campaign on "defund the police" and other stances hostile to cops. Now Democrats are campaigning on having put more cops on the streets- the old Trump stance!
Trump was also the first President to constantly rattle on about the stock market and gas prices and so on. Now Biden/Harris do that, too.
Trump even created controversy with his "America First" branding. But now Democrats are copying that in everything but name.
Democrats aren't anti-woke, per se. But they have abandoned almost all of their explicit pro-woke messaging, moving much more towards the Trump stance.
The only issue I can think of where Trump has moved closer to a major Democrat stance is abortion. Marijuana might also be an issue with Trump movement, but I don't remember Trump being memorably anti-pot in the past, anyhow.
-Trump wasn't posting on X/Twitter at all in recent years. And even now that his campaign is posting on X again, he doesn't feel as important to the discussion as he used to feel.
Obviously, some of this is due to Trump mainly being active on TruthSocial, his own social media site.
But the way I remember it, from 2015-2020 it always seemed like Trump was the key catalyst on Twitter, almost every single day. He would say something "outrageous", and then there would be a vast liberal response to his tweets, and then a large conservative response to the liberal response. And so on. Everything in politics started and ended with Trump.
His recent tweets seem to be getting a lot of "likes" and "reposts", but it feels like a lot of the liberal sphere and the conservative sphere are just doing a lot of their own thing, having the conversations they choose to have, instead of making everything about fighting against or defending Trump.
And the Trump tweets seem fundamentally less "outrageous". There are dozens of major conservative and liberal posters that routinely say things which are arguably more outrageous than what Trump's account posts.
-Aside from the fact that Trump was inactive on Twitter for a long time, I think this has something to do with Elon Musk paying X posters for engagement. A lot of people on X have figured out other ways to get engagement- and thereby make money- by talking about topics unrelated to Trump.
So even if Trump were to try very hard to be the main catalyst on X every day, a lot of people are going to choose, for business reasons, to ignore Trump and do their own profitable engagement schtick. Trump can try to make it as fun as ever to react to him, but if there's less money in it, then a lot of professional posters are going to ignore him.
Also, quite frankly, I feel like a lot of large accounts on X (of every political variety, and every non-political type) have developed a similar engagement-bait style, much like the style Trump seemed to be the original master of. Trump's old engagement bait schtick would have trouble standing out at this point.
(I suppose this goes to show that in some ways the world has become more like Trump, which creates the illusion of change on Trump's part. But even this is remarkable- how many politicians in the past century have indirectly created so much change in the culture, as Trump has done?)
-One of the old critiques of Trump used to be that he didn't do very many press conferences. Democrats like Obama, Hillary, and the Biden '20 campaign did a lot of press conferences and interviews.
But now Trump is doing a lot of interviews, and Kamala has famously only done one meaningful interview so far.
Even more interesting is Trump doing long-form podcasts, and other long-form videos. It seems particularly unusual for the Trump campaign to do that when they have the oldest candidate. (Putting Biden out in public killed Biden's campaign, after all.)
And yet, Kamala is doing almost no interviews, while Trump is acting confident.
-In '16 and '20, Trump was almost constantly attacking other Republicans, and other institutions like Fox News. And other major Republicans were almost constantly attacking Trump.
This time around, there seems to be much less of this. I remember a tiff with Gov. Kemp in Georgia, which was almost immediately sorted out, and not much else.
It seems like Trump killed the careers of a lot of the disloyalists, and they are mostly out of the public arena now. There are some professional Never Trumpers who are still attacking Trump, but they do that no matter what Trump does, and it's no longer news.
But it also seems like Trump is simply more disciplined now in his targets. He isn't constantly wildly lashing out in every direction.
I also frankly think that after hiring and firing enough people, Trump has finally ended up with a much more loyal staff than he's ever had before. (This is one reason for the lack of leaks to the media.) And he seems to understand the people in the political arena, better than he understood them before (which Trump mentioned in a recent podcast).
-Trump is literally less "orange" than he used to be. His "orangeness" used to be a common trait Democrats made fun of, but his coloring seems to have become more natural since then. (Although it's obvious that, like Kamala, plenty of makeup is being applied to his face before public appearances.)
His coloring is now so unremarkable that the "orange man bad" phrase wouldn't even make sense, unless you remembered what his skin tone used to be.
-Trump seems to have lost weight. I remember Democrats almost constantly making fun of Trump's weight. They don't seem to do that as much any more, because Trump is thinner. Who knows whether it's diet, exercise, or Ozempic, but it's noticeable.
-Perhaps partly due to having less physical heft, he isn't as audibly "loud" as he used to be. His voice tends to be quiet now. Being older might also be a part of it.
But his voice isn't just more quiet. It seems like he is deliberately speaking in a very mellow and relaxed manner in most of his interviews and campaign rallies, perhaps to make people less afraid of him.
I would describe it as Trump possibly trying to lean into a "nice Grandpa" vibe, rather than "angry rabble-rouser", like he was the last two times. The physical difference in his tone is huge.
"Nice Grandpa" might be a good vibe to lean into, politically. Ronald Reagan, Eisenhower, FDR, and Biden '20 did a good job of that, and had great election success. (Well, prior to Biden seeming outright senile...) But it's also a big change from Trump's vibe in '16 and '20.
.............................
Anyway, I have been surprised at how little discussion there has been in the media, and in social media, about Trump's ability to evolve. I honestly had never expected Trump to evolve, and if he did finally evolve, I would have thought it would get more attention, since one of the major narratives about Trump used to be "Trump doesn't learn".
I think that most forms of culture war are specific extensions of the desire that most organisms have, to alter the environment so that they and others like them can more easily thrive. (I apologize that my comment is mostly tangential to the question you are asking...)
An example from nature: when two males fight over a female, it stresses out both of them, but so long as at least one male is confident that his survival benefits from that stress, there will always be a male willing to create this type of stress for other males.
-One of my theses in life is that most people are world-class at lying to themselves. (And then there's a separate group that aren't lying to themselves, but they are good at lying to others. But I think the first group is largest, partly because the people that are best at lying to themselves are often best at lying to others.)
I think it is fairly common that people are actually warring against others, trying to hurt them, but they are using a "noble" motive to rationalize (to themselves and to others) their harms towards other people. The desire to stress out others is usually subconscious, not conscious.
And precisely because they are harming others, their rationalization instinct is strongest.
-One general way to purposefully harm others is that if there is something which stresses someone out less than it stresses out other people, then it can make sense to try to increase that thing. They and their progeny will then be likely to gain a survival advantage relative to everyone else (but it must be a tolerable stress, if they don't survive the stress then it's not worth it).
But it helps to rationalize the harm they are doing, to protect their own self-concepts & to protect their social status. If you see yourself as the villain, and everyone else sees you as a villain, the strategy will usually backfire.
If people like Eisenman are fundamentally more comfortable with disharmony (ironically, they themselves being more in harmony with "disharmony"), then inflicting it on other people will give them a relative survival advantage over others. Eisenman might have rationalizations for why his architecture style is good for society on net, but I think it's entirely possible that it's just an unconscious self-preservation lie.
Some possible examples of the phenomenon of people stressing out others more than they themselves are stressed out:
-People that tolerate or enjoy graffiti might use graffiti to drive out the people that don't like graffiti.
-Online trolls tend to be comfortable with the overall trolling dynamic, so it can be a useful way to take over a community, as it drives off all of the people that aren't comfortable with the trolling dynamic.
-Using gunshot noises to reduce crowding and reduce rents (hopefully just apocryphal, but it would probably work in reality) https://www.quora.com/Can-I-lower-rent-in-my-neighborhood-by-shooting-blanks-and-playing-guttural-screams-from-loud-speakers-in-the-middle-of-the-night-at-least-3-times-a-week-The-rent-here-is-too-damn-high-please-I-am-desperate-for-more
-Using bureaucracy, red tape, and legalese to make life more difficult for most other people, but easier for you (if you are relatively better at dealing with such environments)
-Some people are just generally better at thriving in societies with an excess of laws and rules, and these people often have no real interest in helping other people to be free of excess regulations.
-Some people thrive in societies in which there are lots of vices present. They are relatively immune to the vices (gambling, alcohol, drugs, credit cards, etc), and can instead profit off of exploiting the more easily tempted nature of others.
-My general impression is that some of the people that care the least about environmental pollution are, for genetic reasons or lifestyle reasons, relatively more immune to the negative effects of pollution. Not totally immune, but more immune. And it seems like some of these pollution-resilient people end up being weirdly tolerant and even eager to increase pollution. It is hard for environmentalists to overcome this phenomenon.
-Some people are very good at self-censoring what they say. So even if they don't agree with the censorship, they may go along with it, since the censorship creates a more hostile environment for the competition. (I'm willing to bet that a decent chunk of men in academia are functionally misogynistic to some degree, but if they can reliably censor that, they might be supportive of rules and norms which drive out the men that are bad at self-censorship, since that leaves more women & jobs for the men that are good at self-censorship.)
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