TequilaMockingbird
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User ID: 3097
More seriously, this is a problem with scaling. The peak voting-eligible population of ancient Athens was probably under 60,000. That’s around half the eligible voters in modern Athens, GA. You need a solution that still works at 2,500x the size.
You don't though. There's no requirement for 150 million people to share a single polling place. In fact there's no requirement for any given polling place to handle more than ancient (or modern) Athens. In larger cities like NYC break election up by burrough/neighborhood. Brooklyn votes, the Bronx votes, Manhattan votes, and trusted representatives from each report thier tally to Gracie Mansion who reports the city's tally to the State, and so on up the chain.
This is not rocket science or brain surgery. This is a social technology the western world has had for millenia and as such I'm inclined to both agree with @IGI-111 and take thier suggestion further. Election integrity is niether impossible nor even particularly impractical, election integrity is actively opposed by certain vested interests, the DNC among them.
The people who want that (and are cancelling as a result) are operating on a cargo cult mentality about what makes an institution prestigious and valuable themselves. They seem to imagine that these outlets simply saying things while being who they are makes those things consensus. This is just a justification for entryists to seize these orgs and draw down any credibility they have for what are often silly causes.
I had a similar thought reading a thread from a few weeks ago about how "the Democrats own the language". We had users on this very forum arguing that "the consensus" is whatever the media says it is and the only thing i could think to say was something to the effect of "thats not what that word means."
I think there is a sort of mind that gets so wrapped up in the world of symbols and symbol manipulation that they have trouble imagining that "The Truth" could be a lie, or that Dan Rather and Brian Stelter might be less than Reliable Sources
TequilaMockingbird
23d ago
What "Puerto Rico joke", and why would anyone think it would effect the election?
TequilaMockingbird
25d ago
Some people will cling to the counterfactual no matter how aggressively the world beats them over the head.
TequilaMockingbird
25d ago
As the line says, you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villian.
TequilaMockingbird
25d ago
I don't know who this Torba person is but Fuentes always struck me as one of those guys we were warned about in Matthew.
when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites in the synagogues and in the streets do that they may be glorified by men. Verily I say that they have recieved their reward in full.
That is somone who was mostly in the culture war out of reflexive contrarianism and a desire for personal glory.
Maybe not "energetic" but agree that he's very much "with it" and so clearly so that i find it difficult to understand where the people who are calling him "rambling and incoherent" are coming from.
He even speaks in the interview about how he believes that part of being a good orator/negotiator is being able "to weave" multiple tangents together to create a desired mental/emotional state and then he goes and does it.
The steelman is a combination of what @hydroacetylene has said coupled with the belief that the economic upsides of inceased wages and labor-force participation will offset the likely increase in import costs.
TequilaMockingbird
25d ago
Echoing all of these except the keto because i don't really do the keto thing but i do find the rest to be helpful.
TequilaMockingbird
25d ago
I actually think 2 - 3 hours of Rogan (or day-time tv) is the "normie" attention span as evidenced by his podcast's reach as well as that of others like the Kelce brothers. 2 -3 hours is also the typical run-time of football or baseball game.
IMO, the extremely-online trying to dunk on "normies" for an alleged lack of attention-span reads more like projection than anything else.
TequilaMockingbird
26d ago
How much can I dislike Trump without it being TDS?
I feel bad about piling-on here because i feel like this is a legitimate question that deserves a proper long form answer, but i want to contrast it with your statement that
...I think he will epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world.
Because to me this is one of the core TDS "tells". Much like some of the arguments about Trump being senile in the comments about his JRE appearance upthread, I find myself wondering if we watched the same podcast. I genuinely have trouble placing myself in the mindset of somone who would believe this.
Rather, while I can see how somone might have believed this back in 2016, I don't understand how someone who has been paying attention to the last 15-20 years of US foreign policy could reasonably conclude that given how Trump's first term went, a second term would be likely to do more damage to the US's standing and long-term interests than say, 4 more years of having somone like Clinton or Blinken as Secretary of State, or a hypothetical second Biden term where he isn't forced out of the race.
TequilaMockingbird
26d ago
That is my recollection as well. Bernie was essentially the last gasp of the labour-oriented non-idw left and now the Teamsters are voting Republican.
TequilaMockingbird
28d ago
So your position is essentially Tutto nello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato?
TequilaMockingbird
29d ago
A feel like you're splitting hairs and the distinctions you are trying to draw are largely irrelevant.
TequilaMockingbird
29d ago
If its not sufficient, how do you prove that it's neccesary?
TequilaMockingbird
29d ago
But, that doesn't really justify Trump's actions.
Does it not though?
Isnt the steelman of Trump's behavior (and arguably the entire motivating impetus behind it) something to the effect of "what's good for the goose is good for the gander"?
TequilaMockingbird
29d ago
IQ vs ability is not linear, so an extra 40 points is not being 40% better than someone with an IQ of 100 but many magnitudes smarter.
Again, i don't think our understanding of consciousness and cognition is nearly as good as we like to pretend it is and and this sort of fetishization of Goodheart's Law sticks out to me as an obvious pitfall.
Is an extra 10 - 20 points over the median result in a significant advantage over said median? Sure. But i would also caution against reading too much into it. My alma mater may not be as prestigious as Oxford or Cambridge but it is reasonably prestigious (im confident that you'll have heard of it) and having pursued a degree and subsequently made my career in mathematics I've had a lot of dealings with both precocious kids and MENSA-types and can tell you that IQ does not neccesarily translate into intelligent behavior or cognitive function. The Sheldon Cooper archetype exists and they tend to be far less fun or functional in IRL than they are portrayed as on TV. I have nothing to base this on aside from my own observation but my impression is that there is an inflection point where (to the degree that IQ is real) the upsides of "number go up" become overshadowed by the downsides of nuerousises, mental illness, addiction, Et Al. I think that the thing set a lot of the "great geniuses" a part is not thier raw intelligence as much as it is thier ability to be botb highly intelligent and highly functional at the same time.
TequilaMockingbird
30d ago
The general mood in Republican spaces seems to be "our opponents' position is weak, time to press the attack" combined with concern over the possibility of some sort of last minute manuever by the Democrats/media to "fortify" the election. Sentiments like "Beat the cheat" being reasonably common.
TequilaMockingbird
30d ago
Trump is going on Rogan because it's Trump on Rogan. CNN and the New York Times can only dream of having the sort of veiwership, and cross-cultural appeal that The Joe Rogan Experience enjoys. Trump is going on JRE for the same reason that Obama went on Oprah, unless he completely stuffs it (which he is presumably confident that he wont) there is little to lose and a great deal to gain.
What you're effectively saying is that you find it "puzzling" that a reality TV star would participate in what is likely to be the media event of the season. Think about that for a bit.
TequilaMockingbird
30d ago
That would explain a lot.
it should be a dirty secret instead a publicity stunt.
That's the joke.
Trump is simultaneously thumbing his nose at elite norms, calling out the Harris Campaign's cynical attempt to curry favor with min-wage workers, and reinforcing his own brand as "a man of the people".
The louder out-of-touch members of the PMC class sneer and complain it, the more effective it becomes as a PR stunt. See @jeroboam's bit about "hacking the media"
TequilaMockingbird
30d ago
If my leaders are going to put on airs of being worldly, I want them to keep the pretense up for more than one day a year.
Isn’t one the chief complaints leveled at Trump, ever since he was a candidate the first time around, that he was/is "vulgar" and "unpresidential". I think that one of the reasons this little pr stunt has worked as well as it has is the relative lack of pretense.
There's something "It's Okay To Be White" about this, where most of the propaganda value of the stunt is in the reaction.
I think it speaks to the "red tribe/blue tribe dichotomy" described by the OP and the notion of "Protestant work ethic" brought up by others downthread.
There is a real sense that the blue side seems to view hard work (and service/menial service work in particular) as beneath them. Work is something to be suffered through when neccesary and avioded if possible. Whatever you're work is, it's not something your supposed to be smiling about or celebrating. One might almost be forgiven for thinking that "Flipping Burgers" was some sort of PMC euphemism for a fate worse than death given the spit that often accompanies those words. (as an aside The Menu was a pretty good movie).
As with "It's Okay To Be White" what i think is happening here is that the media and the Democrats are being baited into expressing "true feelings" that they would otherwise conceal. ie "that it's not ok to be white" or in this case that "working and serving is for suckers" which naturally doesn't play well amongst people who actually work.
TequilaMockingbird
1mo ago
Who's "we"?
Far from most likely but by far the worst case scenario.
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