haroldbkny
18d ago
But like I said, I don't think it's "justice" in any way to pardon him. I just think it's what a father would want to do, and maybe should do, because fathers should always protect their children in any way possible.
I think for all his children, but especially his youngest, it could take a big emotional toll to have a father in prison. I just don't really know how they feel about him, but I could see that it could cause anyone to have additional layers of self loathing and feelings of inadequacy to be told that they come from someone that is deemed as not worthy to participate in society.
Finally there's the point about Hunter providing for his children financially, to which my only response is a high trill of gay laughter. Whether Hunter had gone to prison or not, I think we all know that, either way, his children would have been financially provided for by their grandfather, not their father
Yeah, that's probably true. Though I don't know much specifics at all. It may be a drop in a bucket, though, but it is generally costly to a family to have a father in prison.
Hunter's children being elevated to being a point of material concern in whether or not he should serve jail time, and not the welfare of the children of all the other people who've been convicted under the same laws he's deemed to have violated?
Well, I'm definitely not saying it's fair, or the right or just thing to do, or that Hunter shouldn't serve jail time. I'm just saying what I would do as a father if I had the power to. But also that Biden may also wish to think about how such a move may have repercussions for his party or the political system.
haroldbkny
18d ago
Yeah, I'm somewhat aware of that, though I didn't know all details. I still think that for all parties involved, having Hunter in prison would have far more detrimental effects, emotional, psychological, legacy-wise, and otherwise, than not.
haroldbkny
18d ago
Well, I really don't know too much about the Biden family's situation, so I could be wrong. But my general assumption would be that it'd destroy his family if Hunter were in prison. It'd be detrimental to Hunter and his kids to have a father behind bars, creating emotional trauma and financial and logistical hardships that could last generations. As opposed to if he is pardoned, he could still be a father and go on to still achieve things.
haroldbkny
18d ago
That's interesting. I kind of feel the same way, in that it is absolutely virtuous for a father to protect his son, and ensure his family has a future. But this also makes the future of his political party more difficult, along with worsening the state of partisan politics in the world, as it gives the other side both a bludgeon against his party and an excuse to do corrupt things like this themselves.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
Conservatives are dominating media. The MAGA narrative and style really are popular. Liberals will have to find or wait for a narrative and delivery that actually resonates
I think it's way too soon to say this. This forum just spent the last however many months lamenting that it would be impossible for Trump to get elected since leftists control all institutions. The election was a victory for conservatives, sure, but can we really say that they're dominating media? Maybe they're dominating media that works outside of traditional media formats, and paywalled media, but I don't even know if that's true.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
a modern take on Back to the Future featuring a Cybertruck
"The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with a complete lack of style?"
haroldbkny
1mo ago
This change is really weird to me, as someone from the heart of “you guys” territory. I had a lot of progressive friends in school who always said “you guys.” They didn’t think of it, it was just what people said, not something anyone needed to police.
Yeah, I don't think it's universally agreed upon. Some left-leaning people are okay with "you guys", and some think it's another example that is masculine-normative, that's excluding women. From what I've seen, I guess I see hardcore leftist-of-the-left radical feminists be most against it in terms of calling people out, followed by the older token progressives who are looking for a way to contribute and/or signal their allegiance and/or keep the eye off Sauron off themselves. Like, advocating against "you guys" is the sort of thing that I've seen corporate boards and their lackeys do and recommend. It's enough to scare me, though, so I end up being a lackey, too, in the interests of not letting anything get between me and my ability to provide for my family.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
Why not? It was an emergency that people were willing to give up their individual liberties for. It'd be easy for a dictator to pull a Palpatine and grant himself emergency powers to do all types of mischief.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
The right war, the right resistance, the right economic resentments etc
The right pandemic that resulted in people's rights being infringed upon all across the world?
I think if Trump didn't use covid to significantly expand his personal powers, he's pretty harmless.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
"Instead of saying 'you guys', which is etc., try something like 'y'all!'"
Oy. I do that at work all the time. I'm actually afraid to say "you guys" anymore.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
Likewise to @Amadan, I don't concretely know what "y'alled" means, but I'm assuming that you mean to express surprise that it's still acceptable to say "hysterical" given its origin.
I'll say, you're not allowed to say "hysterical" in the circles I run in without getting at least a remark about how we shouldn't use gendered and/or historically sexist/misogynistic language.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
These are the biggest things I've seen them be afraid about:
- women's reproductive health
- immigrants getting deported
- tariffs messing with the economy, and in some cases their actual jobs
- losing health insurance and getting stuck with large bills
haroldbkny
1mo ago
I wrote last week about how my circle was reacting poorly to the Trump win, but also how their reaction wasn't as bad as 2016. My latest update is, it's still pretty bad, probably worse than it was last week, but still not quite as bad as 2016. But I'm starting to get that feeling again like I'm the crazy one, simply on the basis that everyone I know in meatspace seems to think a complete disaster has befallen us. Furthermore, I think I need to retract my previous statement that my exposure to this strong sentiment is because I went to a very leftist college. I'm now seeing a lot more of this from people who I know outside of that school.
I have a number of people posting multiple times per day about some kind of issue du jour, ranging from high school boys chanting the Nick Fuentes thing, to screeds about how people will (literally) die due to Trump being in charge, for whatever reasons. And I spent the weekend with family and friends who wouldn't stop talking about it, also. It was a lot of signaling and complaining and without any real acknowledgement that over half of the country voted for Trump, including huge gains in lots of minority groups, and that maybe that means something.
So far, from a personal standpoint, this is not off to a good start, and I worry this next four years will be as personally trying as the previous four, with regards to my ability to keep my cool and not feel like a crazy person when surrounded by those in my life and their insistent attitude about Trump. Personally this is starting to make me want future Democrat wins, but not because I believe in the Democrats. If the dems win, my life mostly stays the same. If the Republicans win, my life gets worse just because people around me can't deal with it. But I also can't bring myself to really take these people's fears seriously, since I do feel like this chicken little routine happens every time a Republican gets elected (from my limited experience), without the Republicans even doing anything that bad.
Are other people also seeing an escalating level of this sentiment? It seems maybe like the anti Trump machine had some rusty gears and a slow start, but it's starting to get going again.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
Trump's flagrant interview
I didn't watch the interview, as I've been keeping my eyes away from election politics as much as I could for the past 4 years. I'm curious though, what was flagrant about it. And it sounds like you liked that it was flagrant? Why is that?
Also, reply to @Rov_Scam here.
I am unaware of any iconic interview.
That might have been true in the past, but there's been so much change recently. Podcasts are a whole new world, Joe Rogan is a whole new level of long-form interview viewership, and Trump is a candidate ripe for this new world. I wouldn't think it's out of the question that in this particular case, the willingness to do those interviews, in the sort of way Trump would do it, really makes him more relatable in a way that a large portion of the American populace wants to see in a candidate, and it hurt Kamala that she wouldn't put herself on the line in the same way.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
I only hope that this time around there's much less of the "not quite lying, but fudging the truth to such a degree that it makes me feel like I'm going crazy". Examples of this include the media acting like Trump installing his own staff into the white house was unprecedented and all ran shock stories about how Trump just fired everyone (even though that happens every presidency), and also when they said that Trump made rape a preexisting condition. The media whipped everyone into a frenzy about everything Trump did, even the most anodyne stuff, and spun it all in the worst possible light. Even if Trump isn't more effective this time, I just hope that people are sick of the media BS and that they do not start doing this sort of dishonest tactic again.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
I mean they will end up dealing with Trump the same way they have dealt with him in the past, as outlined by Scott in his recent post. They'll work within the system to change institutions over to their monoculture, stifling all opposition while still maintaining a veneer that they're not doing anything bad. This may include more drawn out trials to say that Trump's win, or even his candidacy, is completely invalid. But they won't go January 6th on the situation and try to handle it in any sort of immediate sense. It's always the long game.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
Seems like you just contradicted yourself. The president has nothing to do with the economy, but Trump is going to print money and make the economy worse?
Yeah, probably. I don't doubt that what I'm seeing is non-representative. I think the most key demographic for my case is that I went to one of the most leftist schools in the country. A lot of my acquaintances I'm seeing this from (but not all) are from there. Those people are truly in bubbles within bubbles, and they're the sort of leftists who call each other out constantly for not being leftist enough or in the right way. They are probably most immune to receiving the memo that politics is less cool these days like @2rafa mentioned.
Maybe I also overstated when I said
My facebook is filled with lament and horror, the kind of which I had mostly not seen recently applied to Trump by media and most acquaintances
Yes, there's been a very large uptick in it today and yesterday. There's a lot of it on my facebook, even by people who haven't seemed very political lately. But thinking back, it is really really restrained compared to what I saw back when Trump was first elected. You would have thought everyone's family was just recently killed, based on the reactions back in 2016. I think @2rafa is correct, it's much more limited than it used to be. I'm guessing the outwardly-facing reactions will just be a mostly temporary thing, for most people.
Edit: though, one of my acquaintances did just actually post that she feels today like she did the day her dad died, because she is afraid for her well-being as a "gender nonconforming disabled person".
My facebook is filled with lament and horror, the kind of which I had mostly not seen recently applied to Trump by media and most acquaintances. There is much discussion about people "losing rights" moving forward. I kind of thought people had started to get over their TDS. I really hope this is just a temporary relapse, and not an indication of a return to 2016 to 2020 levels of leftist obstructionism for the next four years.
One more based leftist friend has this to say:
Maybe we've learned that in the face of terrible inflation, saying "that's actually a good thing" or "that's not actually happening" isn't a good way to go.
I think this take is very correct, and has a lot to do with why Trump won. If there's one issue I care about a lot on a less rational level, it's the fact that my spending power is significantly decreased, and I blame the current administration, rationally or not, for not making things better. I worry about what's going to happen to me and my family for the rest of our lives. Will we be able to retire? Will we be able to afford good schooling? Will we be able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle?
However, I also wanted to ask people here if this is rational. Did Biden do much to make this the economy so terrible? Or was it inevitable, or even did Trump cause it? It seems these are the most likely causes:
- the massive printing of stimulus money during Covid
- the obstruction of supply chains during Covid
- something about the Russian-Ukraine war
- natural economic forces over time, returning to normal levels after a strong economic boom in the 2010s
I think the consensus on this forum in the past has been that 1 was the true cause, and 3 was really just a red herring. If that's the case, does Trump deserve to be the one people turn to for relief? Or did he cause it to begin with during his last year as president? Is he actually going to make anything better now?
haroldbkny
1mo ago
Agreed. Not to mention, absolutely anyone in her position would get swept up by visions of grandeur, and start to really want it badly. I mean, she probably really thought she had a good chance of going down in the history books as the first female president (the sort of representation I'm sure she cares a great deal about), but now it seems rather that she'll be relegated to being the second woman who failed to become the president.
haroldbkny
1mo ago
You're probably about 2/3 of the age of most Mottezians, from what I recall the last time a bunch of people mentioned their ages.
I also think it's important to remember the lesson Scott tried to drive home here, that absolutely no one heeded: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/07/tuesday-shouldnt-change-the-narrative/
Back in 2016, I believe Scott was right, and yet, immediately EVERYONE's narrative shifted to "Trump beat Hilary because of <whatever reason: racism, sexism, Trump was better then her, people liked him, people disliked her, etc>". I think Scott's lesson is probably right here as well, but already no one is acting that way. On this very thread, we have many people saying Harris's win is inevitable because leftists control institutions, or Trump's win is inevitable because Harris is less likable or more stupid than Biden or Hilary ever were. Once one of them wins tomorrow, everyone will be frantically updating their priors accordingly, in order to make their world make sense. But should they really, or are they just overfitting to noise?
haroldbkny
1mo ago
Gay Rites Are Civil Rites is not anywhere near one of his most viral or famous articles, though, is it? That's what makes me think the most like he might not just have found the article in passing.
No, definitely not, and I dislike that style. But at least it makes it clear that the narrator is not to be trusted, and that they are not reputable. I kind of feel like the even more insidious style is when the narrator doesn't include little jibes like that, but basically comes just short of doing it. I think most modern, reputable news sources do this, and thus maintain a veneer of impartiality, while still managing to steer the readers' perceptions whichever way they want by being very selective about which facts they share, how they subtly prime the readers' view of those facts, and which quotes they include.
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