Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
No bio...
User ID: 1226
overall he looks like he's half asleep, without his normal punchiness
He's always like that when he's making prepared statements. He's generally far more energetic when he's running his mouth.
Trump has been absolutely cooked for years, but it's priced in. No amount of rambling word salad, unhinged rants, or basic factual errors will impact people's perception of his faculties. Short of stroking out on camera, no one cares.
what's actually going on in the administration?
It's pretty clear that Trump is living up to his reputation for agreeing with the last person who talked to him. Just today he made a TS post aggressively in support of Ukraine and Europe against Russia, which is yet another flip-flop in that regard. Most likely he had a conversation with some Russia hawk who flattered him while telling him Putin was making him look like a fool, so he's an Atlanticist until the next time he talks to JD Vance. See also: the confusion over the new H1-B fee, with different agencies contradicting each other over what the policy actually is.
My general impression is that Trump doesn't actually care about the details of governing, but he likes it when people kiss his ass, so it's really easy for his subordinates to talk him into doing something. However, he doesn't actually care enough to make sure everyone is in alignment and there isn't enough commonality of interest or values for an alignment to occur naturally.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
22hr ago
The winning move is to get the cop to beat you up without doing anything a reasonable-to-moderately unreasonable observer would construe as deserving (ideally while shouting "come and see the violence inherent in the system"). The insight of people like Gandhi and MLK Jr. was that while the Boot of Power does not tolerate face to face defiance, it ultimately derives its power from a body politic which can, very occasionally, be shamed or disgusted into punishing abuses done in its name.
Unfortunately, this also involves getting beaten up and has a pretty mixed record (bare minimum 1/3rd of the population will say you must have done something to deserve it).
I would more or less agree with this, though part of my thesis is also that progressives are, if not happy, then at least comfortable with the idea of being outsiders (and indeed seemed to struggle with the idea that they had real power even when they were getting people fired), whereas conservatives viscerally hated it.
Conservatives were never really powerless. Even at the height of progressive influence, they still ran half the country, had their own parallel media institutions, etc... (It must be noted that the people most affected by progressive cancel culture were other progressives). But they were in a situation where mainstream cultural institutions gave virtually no deference to their sensibilities (a major change) and where expressing conservative opinions on sex/sexuality, gender, or race risked real social disapproval (not just having a blue-haired college student impotently yell at you). Illustratively, in a very short time frame you went from risking censure for being publicly gay to risking censure for being publicly anti-gay.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
Among other things, but not only that. My observation is that (some) conservatives are much more likely to try and 'gatekeep' Americanness and call things they don't like unamerican (progressives occasionally try, but their heart never seems to be in it); they often frame opposition to wokeness as 'reclaiming' or 'taking back' the country. In general, they seem much more inclined to pushing forward a prescriptive vision of American culture than other factions in American politics.
Some of this I will freely admit is a vibes-based assessment that a lot of conservatives were really disoriented and angered by being on the other side of the enforcer-transgressor dichotomy. By contrast, progressives were also disoriented by the flip, but had previously been quite comfortable in the transgressor role and often seem to prefer it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
To many, it seems like the Right now has its own version of woke.
I will maintain my position that the Right has always had its version of woke (meaning in this context, an impulse towards moralistic censorship*) and has always been fairly weak on free speech. Notably, basically every free speech advocacy group is staffed and supported overwhelmingly by liberals. Conservative groups will support conservative causes on 1A issues, but as far as I can tell there's no right-wing equivalent to the ACLU representing the Nazis and there's long been right-wing groups eager to wield social pressure (and state power) to suppress viewpoints and ideas they don't like.
Cancel culture was always a thing, but it became a Thing with the emergence of a faction of illiberal progressives that had the clout to actually apply pressure and a desire to do so. This inversion of the 'proper' order of things was deeply upsetting to the many conservatives who saw themselves as rightful hegemons of American culture.
Helpfully for RW culture warriors, they have something of an advantage in wielding social opprobrium and would probably be even more effective if they hadn't unilaterally retreated into a bubble. They tend to be appealing to a moral lowest common denominator against marginal targets, whereas progressives tend to be morally capricious and avant-garde (which makes them hard to support and leads to frequent circular firing squads).
The Left arguably did this with Bork’s nomination
Aside: Bork is a great example of how differences in perspective lead to mutual perceptions of 'defection'. The Republican view of Bork is that a perfectly qualified candidate was rejected for political reasons. The Democratic view of Bork is that he was utterly disqualified for his role in the Watergate scandal and the GOP was defecting by nominating him in the first place.
Which is why the cooperate/defect paradigm of political analysis is often heavily deficient. There's this tendency to treat political factions as unitary actors who might have different values and goals but at least have the same basic understanding of reality and the 'rules', but that is obviously nonsense. What one side sees as justified retaliation for some infraction, the other sees as unprovoked escalation that demands retaliation in turn.
--
*censorship is being used somewhat carelessly here - this phenomenon is driven primarily by social pressure rather than actual censorship, though the state does occasionally weigh in
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
The US isn't just an economic zone regardless of its immigration policy, so it would be helpful if the people saying this would say what they actually mean.
Put it this way, would you be ok with being deported to India if it made numbers on a chart go up? Or do you think you have some sort of right to be here?
You're going to have to elaborate further, because this seems like a total non-sequitur.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
No. Not going into specifics, but mostly a mix of prominent tech firms and small startups. A lot of Indian co-workers, but no distinctive complaints.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
It helpfully clarifies that the issue is not actually exploitation of H1-Bs and is in fact just opposition to immigration.
Hooray economic zone?
Can you clarify what this means? The US is an economic zone. It will still be an economic zone if it expels every single foreign-born individual and closes the borders.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
They could just ask Congress to change the law. Trump can whip congressional Republicans to do pretty much whatever he wants, and there would be more than enough Democrats in favor of liberalizing H1-B work restrictions that it would almost certainly pass.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
I think the marginal impact of post-mortem rudeness about a guy who was murdered by a lone wolf terrorist on future acts of terrorism is functionally, and in practice completely swamped by other effects arising from the act (e.g. I think the use of Kirk's assassination as a pretext for a crackdown is orders of magnitude more likely to produce further violence).
insofar as the elasticity of terrorist attacks with respect to celebration of terrorist attacks sure seems like it should be positive
This would probably bear credibility wrt to Mangione, who attracted significant direct praise for his actions. The closest Robinson got was a lot of people saying "good riddance" about his victim. But in either case (as with lone wolf terrorism more general), you were looking at strong internal motives, not seeking adulation or other social factors.
It is well known that academic and credential fraud amongst Indians is rife
Is it? I'm sure it's non-zero, but is it of an actual scale that we should care? "Everybody knows" weirdly doesn't seem to include anybody I know in the tech industry. Admittedly, these people are all employed, so they're not really worried about being outcompeted by an allegedly illiterate Indian software dev.
The pervasiveness of blatant racism amongst the "everybody knows crowd" does not exactly lend them credibility, and the severity of this supposed problem seems wildly overblown by people who want to use it as cover for more general anti-immigrant sentiment. (I'm old enough to remember when the nativists were promising it was only 'illegals' they had a problem with).
I don't give a damn about your reverence for rules or processes.
I know you don't, but you should at least care about naked corruption (but I know you don't care about that, either). Flawed processes should be replaced with better processes, not replaced with arbitrary and easily corruptible discretion from an administration that is already among the most corrupt in US history.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
The US is not an economic zone.
What does this mean? Like, policy-wise, this idea would seem to suggest support for social services and doing our best to ensure a minimum standard of living for all Americans. In practice, it seems like the people who say "the US is not an economic zone" are the people most prone to treating the US like an economic zone - indifferent to the welfare of their fellow citizens and primarily interested in making the country a captive market for the purposes of rent-seeking.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
Trump admin replaces rules-based system with corrupt exercise of personal executive discretion, episode 2847. The big catch in all this is that the administration can waive the fee.
Also, it's probably illegal, though that hasn't been a major impediment so far.
I'm also deeply skeptical of the 'productivity' of the vast majority of tech H1B hires
This seems incoherent. H1bs are simultaneously undercutting wages but also not actually a replacement for domestic equivalents?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4d ago
Everything else from Mike Brown, to Jacob Blake, to Trayvon Martin
Martin wasn't killed by LE, so is irrelevant to this subject. Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, and Eric Garner immediately leap to mind as unambiguously unjustified police homicides which were widely excused on grounds that the victims were lowlife scum who wouldn't be missed. But the point here is not to trade anecdotes, it is to point out that there is a widespread attitude that is at best indifferent to and frequently outright celebratory of police brutality. Never mind dubious police shootings, the amount of times I've seen people cheer for law enforcement assaulting protestors is disturbing.
Obviously, justified and unjustified uses of force exist. The problem, which I am trying to get across, is that a lot of people subscribe to the Tango and Cash Theory of Criminal Justice. Their concept of what constitutes acceptable/justified use of force includes a great of deal of unambiguous police brutality, they tend to have a negative view of civil liberties, and they are willing to cut LE a ton of slack when they cross the already generous line as long as the victims fit into a category of acceptable targets. Attendantly, criticizing the conduct of law enforcement is often construed as being pro-crime.
The most clear-cut example of police brutality I witnessed was with Tyre Nichols. This came and went in the span of a week for reasons that are probably unsurprising to anybody here who looks into it or remembers the details.
I suspect what you're trying to hint at here is that the perpetrators were also black, but a) that didn't stop people from protesting b) you're understating the scope of the reaction. It's pretty clear that people who care about reducing police violence did care about it. It is somewhat plausible that people who would ordinarily defend cops to the hilt passed on the issue because they were black, although I think (a la Daniel Shaver) it is more likely because the incident was so clear cut and indefensible that there was nothing to argue about. If the cops pull a guy out of out of his car and throw him to the ground and rough him up a bit, T&C Theorists might say "well, he should've been more compliant and it's not a big deal if the cops knock a suspect around a bit anyway". CJRers say "that's appalling", and we're off to the races. If they pull him out of the car, throw him to the ground, and then beat him to death, there's nothing to argue about.
You may still find that ugly, callous, or mistaken. Whatever it is, it's FAR away from dancing when a professional TALKER gets sniped in the throat.
I don't actually think that it is. Excusing (and frequently endorsing) police brutality as a matter of regular practice because you have little regard for their victims' rights or welfare is significantly worse than dancing on a metaphorical grave. One is indecorous. The other contributes to perpetuating unjustified violence (and, it bears repeating, detracts from public safety).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5d ago
I feel like people sometimes forget how big the US is. There are about 250 million adults in the US. Five percent of that is 12.5m. If five percent of them made a social media post disparaging Kirk, you'd have 625k Kirk-critical social media posts. You could grab the top one percent most provocative of those and have enough material to show case 15 such posts per day for a year with a solid amount of leftovers for a year-end marathon.
This is just another way of saying the GOP hadn't yet coalesced around the "Donald Trump gets to do whatever he wants" platform. Trump very much wielded the power of the presidency during his first, but he had a less cooperative Congress and judiciary.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
Your mileage may definitely vary. Trump hadn't assume the absolute mastery over the American right he (or at least his coterie of handlers) has now, but he was very much in charge and his political adversaries felt it.
I further feel extremely confident saying that Barr getting canceled was not the product of pressure from the Trump administration, and hold up her statement quoted above as demonstration of a particular kind of delusion victim complex.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
If you want to talk about red flags, lets talk about the insistent conflation of protests and riots being used to excuse the violent suppression of the former.
And let me be blunt: the consequences of bad policing in the US have eclipsed both the human and financial costs of anti-police rioting pretty much every single year, and that includes 2020, which included by far the most dramatic anti-police rioting in ~30 years (hell, the fact that we have anti-police riots in the US is a strong signal that there are serious problems with American policing). The reflexive deference to police authority, even when they are clearly abusing it, is both undignified and immoral. The fact that the police frequently mutiny if threatened with accountability is just straight up a threat to democracy. A riot is an ephemeral public order problem. An uncontrollable law enforcement apparatus is systemic governance problem.
One bad cop treating one possibly-ODing drug addict badly means the necessary response is... billions of dollars in property damage across the country and a couple dozen extra murders? Damn, that's a heck of an exchange rate.
Do you genuinely think that this arose from a singular incident? There's a steady drumbeat of cops murdering people*, but behind the murders is an parade of harassment, dishonesty, and casual brutality so pervasive that many don't even register it as abuse. It's just sort of taken as a given that the police might rough you up a bit if they feel like it, or they might lie about what happened to hide their misconduct.
And, importantly: extremely limited accountability. 'Paid administrative leave' became a punchline for a reason. There'd be a lot less resentment and hostility if brutal or reckless cops were consistently punished for transgressions, but overwhelmingly they are not.
*The unarmed aspect doesn't really matter much. As it must be understood that being unarmed does not mean it was a bad shoot, it must also be understood that being armed does not mean it was a good shoot. And the fact that it was legally a good shoot does not mean it actually was.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
Bending over backwards to make excuses for police murdering people and undermining efforts to hold them accountable is an extreme and hostile form of indifference (and it produces more crime). I used to be more charitably inclined, until 2020 made it abundantly clear that many right-wingers were not simply credulous of police excuses and actively supported police brutality as long as it was directed against their idea of someone who deserved it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
A fair amount of the "police let them do it" can be blamed on the police preferring to attack people protesting police brutality over maintaining public order. Which, you know, kind of vindicates the people protesting police brutality.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
Indifference is insidious.
Interesting. How shall we assess indifference to police brutality? Why is it that when people protest unambiguous police brutality and the police respond by refusing to do their job, it's the fault of the protestors for failing to lick the boot hard enough? Should we be worried that one of the central institutions for public order will mutiny if not granted impunity for their crimes?
What is it with Trumpists forgetting who was president from 2016-2020? Is Barr saying Trump got her fired?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
No. Trump has, from day zero been far above and beyond normal politics in the level of blatant dishonesty, in hus sheer commitment to manufacturing an alternative to reality. It seems to have fallen off again, but for a while posters here even developed their own cope for this with the "Trump lies like a used car salesman" bit, like shameless dishonesty was some kind of virtue (but also that we were supposed to ignore the fact that Trump makes your average politician look positively Washingtonesque).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
He's just slandering a large chunk of the country with laughably false disinformation in a breathtaking display of hypocrisy.
I'm not sure that's the hill the Trumpist movement wants to die on.
Sanderson is very good at what he does. What he does is crank out easily digestible lowbrow epic fantasy. Sanderson novels are the MCU films of contemporary fantasy literature. He's a self-admitted mediocre prose artist, but he has a reasonably effective plot formula and has a genuine knack for writing fantasy action scenes, which make his books fun to read if you're into that sort of thing. The gimmick-based world building and magic systems appeal to the nerdism of fantasy fandom and gives a sense of novelty to what are otherwise fairly forgettable stories.
Sanderson is YA, but aimed primarily at men in their early twenties rather than women in their early twenties. The fact that his writing is not on the level of GRRM is the point - almost every higher caliber SFF writer I can think of is also significantly heavier, which is not necessarily a plus.
I have an ungenerous theory: this is a plus for two reasons. The first is that epic fantasy is a genre that implicitly equates bulk with quality (you compare it to LotR, but LotR is quite modest in length compared to later epic fantasies), so a padded writing style helps there. A lot of readers want the pointless fluff. The second is that it makes it easier to read without paying close attention. It's okay if you miss details because Sanderson will just tell you again.
More options
Context Copy link