Skibboleth
No bio...
User ID: 1226
The burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire
That personalist politics are prone to corruption and abuse is well-known. Very occasionally you get Lee Kuan Yew, but mostly you get thugs and conmen.
The trouble is that personalist followers are really good at convincing themselves the vices of their big man are actually virtues.
Skibboleth
1d ago
Trump is somewhat less corrupt but much less tasteful about it than Bide
That would require some substantiation, especially considering this might be the single most corrupt act by monetary value of any US president, ever.
Skibboleth
1d ago
This line of reasoning seems like a bit of a cop-out and/or an excuse to suspend critical thinking. If all pols are secretly crooks, then I don't have to feel bad about supporting the guy who is openly a crook.
'Politicians' are not corrupt. Some politicians are corrupt, and not every corrupt politician is equally corrupt. If I see one guy doing lots of corruption, a second guy doing a little corruption, and another third not doing any corruption, "all three are doing similar amounts of corruption but the latter two are better at hiding it" is not the most parsimonious explanation.
Skibboleth
10d ago
No. "Joe Biden and his team of advisors" is equivalent to "Donald Trump and his team of advisors". The equivalent of "The Left" is "The Right" - a group which includes white supremacist terrorists, corrupt police unions, etc...
Expecting someone to completely abdicate political participation because someone directionally aligned did something disqualifying is unreasonable. Expecting someone to display basic civic virtue by not support a particular candidate that did something disqualifying is entirely reasonable.
Skibboleth
10d ago
Harris and Biden both condemned rioters. Donald Trump vocally supported rioters as long as they happened to be wearing police uniforms and attacking protestors.
Skibboleth
10d ago
It is an unreasonable take, precisely because the FDA is a government agency that respond to political and legal forces, not market ones. The whole point of the article is that it fundamentally misunderstands what drives government waste. If you sack half the staff of a private firm, they'll respond by reducing the scope of their activities. Government agencies don't really have the latitude to do that. They have some ability to alter their internal processes, but their legal incentives and political directives push them towards slow, restrictive processes over fast, permissive ones, and they generally can't just say "we're not doing X anymore".
Here's a list of non-negotiable KPIs you have to meet
Or what? Like, what happens when FDA staff slow-roll you because they know you're not going to abolish the FDA, or because your non-negotiable KPIs are delusional?
Skibboleth
10d ago
I don't want to discount the insurrection - the combination of the riot and the fake electors scheme was truly egregious. I don't know if Trump intended for a literal riot to happen, but if you look at the speech he gave at the rally directly preceding the march on the Capitol it seems fairly apparent that Trump wanted to intimidate Congress into acquiescing to his stealing the election.
Skibboleth
10d ago
"The Left" cannot run for president. There are numerous distinctions between Trump's post-election schemes and the summer 2020 riots, but Trump's close personal involvement is a rather glaring one.
Skibboleth
10d ago
Thoughts? I don't really have a thesis here.
America has a long and proud tradition of subsidizing people living in disaster prone areas. Floods, hurricanes, wildfires: you name it, we've got it and we've probably built a major city inside the impact zone. It's unlikely to change any time soon, except maybe on the margin, since it would involve relocating tens of millions of people.
TBH fire-lighting seems like very low-risk, high-return terrorism, it's astonishing we haven't seen it become more common in certain vulnerable countries
You're probably overestimating how easy it is to get away with effective arson. Lighting some random fires is easy. Lightning fires that actually destroy something important is not, and starts to approach just building a bomb if you don't have very favorable circumstances.
Skibboleth
12d ago
American right are nearly all palingenetic nationalists and I don’t think that they’re all fascists.
Fascism is palingenetic ultranationalism plus totalitarianism. One of the things that has a lot of Trump critics sweating is that Trumpism is exactly that sort of reactionary populist movement and Trump personally makes lots of authoritarian noises. Combine that with Trump's lack of inhibition or scruples and the uncritical devotion of many of his followers and it's easy to see why someone might start throwing around the f-word. Is it fascist? No. Is it fascish? Yeah, kinda.
Skibboleth
1mo ago
At the mercy of China if China ever decides to do coercive diplomacy
The relative cost of this goes down the more nakedly transactional the US gets in US-European relations. If your choices are to get bent over a barrel now by the US or maybe get bent over by a barrel later by China, cutting a deal with China is going to start looking a great deal more appealing.
A large part of US power is that it doesn't demand very much of its allies (occasional Article 5 moment aside); the more the US tries to treat its allies like vassals or tributaries, the weaker that soft power grows. And if you're stuck dealing with a transactional superpower, you might as well go with the one offering money instead of demanding it.
At the mercy of the US – not only could the US cut European shipping in any war with Europe
Give me your scenario for a US-EU war.
Skibboleth
1mo ago
That seems... unnecessary? If you're going to pull a Spartacus and turn yourself in for someone else's crime, you don't need to go to all this effort. Unless it's obvious bullshit, I'm pretty sure the police will gratefully accept your surrender.
The world needs more humans, and fewer bots who are governed by algorithms
The world has enough humans. We need more bots, or at least people who recognize some higher principle than blind tribal loyalty. Especially when you are president of the United States. Nepotism is for peasants.
This is precisely the sort of behavior I despite Trump for, and while I think there's a dramatic difference in scale, that's not going to make me say "actually Biden doing it is good."
Would TheMotte really be here condemning Trump if he pardoned Don Jr. in a tax fraud case?
We don't have to speculate. Trump pardoned his father-in-law for substantially more egregious conduct.
To be fair to both Trump and Biden, this is honestly not that unusual. The core function of the presidential pardon power is exonerating politically favored individuals. To be less fair, it's not clear to me why this is an essential piece of executive discretion. I'd rather have amnesty be a congressional function where it is not dependent on the whims of one man and where you're going to get fewer instances of blatantly political pardoning of friends and allies.
Skibboleth
2mo ago
A focus on reducing obesity and preventing sickness would be a welcome change.
Reducing obesity is a goal, not a policy. Obama focused on reducing obesity. Didn't achieve much. What is the Trump administration and the GOP going to do? What policies that are both effective and palatable to a) Republican voters b) Republican elites do you expect them to pursue
What changes would you propose?
Tax sugar (or Ozempic4All, if you're feeling pro-injection and like free healthcare). Invest in public transit and rework urban planning (15min cities are back, baby) so people drive less (fewer car accidents) and have more active lives (-obesity, +basically every other aspect of human health).
Of course, these are already ballot box poison (and that's before we even try to do anything about suicide, where massive social engineering might be more politically viable than restricting access to guns). Which points back to what I was originally saying: low American life expectancy is revealed preference re: lifestyle. Policies to address these issues have been floated repeatedly and outside of a few locations they've been shot down.
(Not a clue, re: drugs. There's some proximate interventions you can do to reduce OD deaths, but that's just nibbling around the edges of the problem)
Cities like Chicago and DC have done literally everything that establishment figures say is good, and look at the results.
Can you be more specific? Which establishment figures, which policies?
Sidebar: I would note that the stereotypically very liberal states like CA and NY have the highest life expectancy; the worst states are in the ultraconservative Deep South. Again, I don't think this is really about policy (cf. Idaho, which is also extremely conservative), except perhaps insofar as state governments could spend money on ameliorating the consequences of Southerners' unusually unhealthy lifestyles but don't (generally with the support of their electorate).
I am not aware. Here in Seattle open air drug markets are tolerated and people who have been arrested for dozens of crimes (including violent crimes) are frequently released onto the streets without trial. It's hard to imagine a more lenient system.
Well I'm pleased to inform you that the world did not start three years ago, nor did America's durable problems with drug use and violent crime, nor its unusually harsh sentencing practices. The US has mass incarceration. It, rather notoriously, has more prisoners per capita than almost anywhere on Earth, including actual totalitarian regimes. It doesn't seem to have had the desired effect. Unless you can do something about the processes that produce new criminals, the problem isn't going to go away just by throwing more and more people in prison.
Skibboleth
2mo ago
Can you to be more specific about what effective interventions you're thinking about? The main causes of the European-American life expectancy gap is not a mystery, and I promise you it's not tripotassium phosphate or excessive vaccinations.
Like, stricter regulations on microplastics or whatever would be great, but the effects on life expectancy are going to be completely swamped by obesity, drugs, car accidents, and suicides. (Not to mention, the GOP traditional stance on environmental and health issues makes me think there's not going to be much appetite for imposing additional standards on industry).
I agree that America should be more like Europe and Asia by harshly prosecuting violent crime and refusing to tolerate drugs.
The US prosecutes violent and drug crimes far more harshly than Europe, as I'm sure you are well aware. Tolerance is not the issue.
Skibboleth
2mo ago
We spend by far the most money in the world and get the life expectancy of (checks notes) Turkey, Ecuador, and Albania.
It would probably help if Americans drove less, exercised more, were less fat, did fewer drugs, and stopped shooting each other and themselves. However, the public health interventions needed to address these cultural and lifestyle issues are fairly unpopular.
Skibboleth
3mo ago
Mark me down for reaction two.
Political coordinators are necessary in any political system. Otherwise, incumbent authorities exercise power by default. Political conflict has a cost, but so does a lack of political conflict. It's not just allowing motivated people to exercise more influence in politics; it's making it possible for people to concentrate their political power in a way that allows them to achieve goals. Think tanks are just one example of this, of course. Political parties serve similar role in different contexts, as do community organizers, church leaders, etc...
I'd also concur with Gillitrut re: think tanks in particular having a major role in operationalizing political beliefs.
Skibboleth
3mo ago
(1) other people's behavior is irrelevant to your own
It's highly relevant, because I am trying to figure out what the actual infraction is, and one of the ways I'm going to do that is by comparing what I did to seemingly similar behavior from others. Right now it looks to me like it is somehow less provocative to say "Trump supporters are so stupid they can't help believing in conspiracy theories" than it is to point out that someone has said this. (The former, while directionally atypical for this forum, is within normal parameters of discussion as far as content goes, but it nevertheless seems to be a more controversial claim than the latter).
You perhaps understand my confusion.
First off, "to me" and "seem" do some work here: reporting on your own perception in a very clear way does not excuse flagrantly bad behavior, but in the interest of encouraging honesty of self-report, it does provide some cover. Second, "supporters of those theories" is a reasonably specific group in this context, in a way that "conservatives" simply is not.
So you're saying that if I'd sprinkled in a few hedging words, there wouldn't be a problem? Or if I'd specified "Republicans" and "Democrats"? Forgive me if I am skeptical.
Now to what you said:
That is me characterizing the pattern of thinking I am talking about, as exemplified in the excerpt I quoted. I really don't know what you want here. If I actually thought that Trump supporters were dumb animals, I wouldn't be objecting to a double standard, I would be enthusiastically affirming it.
Skibboleth
3mo ago
Male decision making often tries to figure out what he thinks is true whereas female decision making tries to figure out what belief is most popular
Can you substantiate this? Because this really doesn't match my experience. Differences between men and women in terms of decision-making strike me as more about performing different virtues for different audiences. A "good" man is tough and decisive, so men making decisions try to look tough and decisive. A "good" woman is supportive and non-confrontational, so women making decisions try to seek consensus (or at least look like they have). Truth is a tertiary concern, or people already think they know what is true.
Skibboleth
3mo ago
You can be both an insurance salesman and a hunter. I knew quite a lot of people like this growing up (admittedly, in the upper Midwest, not Dallas). It was entirely normal for white-collar suburbanites to put on an orange vest, get a little drunk, and sit in a tree during deer season. Significantly, this is a sporting hobby. They may eat the deer meat, but they're doing it for some combination of social reasons, trophy hunting, and just liking hunting. Also significantly: this does not make you a rugged outdoorsman. If you were to make these people to survive in the woods, they would die.
I think it is probably true that the average homesteader is pretty conservative. The average conservative, however, is a suburbanite, and their nods towards that sort of lifestyle are affectation. (And again, lest it seem like I am beating up on conservatives, I think these affectations are mostly harmless and liberals certainly have their own set of silly affectations). They are not cultivating mannerbund or heroic virtue, or even trying to. They are grilling and shitposting on the Hawkeye Report forums.
Skibboleth
3mo ago
But when you additionally frame all that in a broad swipe at your outgroup
I don't think you understood what I wrote. I don't think conservatives are particularly low agency. I think there is a general tendency for everyone to act as if they are low agency. For example, the excerpt I quote from from @Goodguy's post, where he literally says they're too stupid to help themselves. So I'm a little unclear as to what the dividing line here is. You can say conservatives are too stupid to be held accountable, but you can't note that people do this?
Skibboleth
3mo ago
They certainly don't conduct themselves as if they know they're being lied to. The hard core of Trump supporters are far too celebratory and uncritical for me to believe that he is popular because they view him as honestly dishonest.
Skibboleth
3mo ago
What you live in a world where corruption is already rampant and the norm? One where you are going to have to bribe your way through no matter what. Consider yourself in that situation.
What if you don't live in that world, but want an excuse to act like a bandit, so you claim that you do?
Skibboleth
3mo ago
The parts of WV without West Virginians are objectively non-shitholes and actually pretty incredible. The inhabited parts, on the other hand, not so much. Rural squalor is truly an underappreciated part of America, especially in the South. I would say it's tragic, but they mostly seem to prefer it and who am I to tell people how to live? So godspeed and all, but don't try and tout its superiority.
The US could offer Panama statehood. We'd get the canal and a quarter of global shipping.
More options
Context Copy link