moderateliberal
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User ID: 3289
moderateliberal
5d ago
From a certain point of view, think tanks are merely a constituent part of American politics, and their effects can't or shouldn't be calculated out to a one dimensional reduction.
From a certain point of view, Scott Alexander's blog is a think tank. For that matter, from a certain point of view, Scott Alexander's link roundup is a prestigious journal, but without the systemic wokeness which cripples academia.
After all, I think the reason many of us here is that Scott Alexander was willing to stand up to the social justice warriors before it was cool. The influence of Scott extends to the woke-skeptical like Paul Graham and others who spoke up in defense of Scott during the NYT's perfidious bullying.
I know I'm not the only one staggered by the left's insane hysteria in response to Trump. Without Scott Alexander to act as a beacon, it would be a lot harder to keep my sanity. Scott Alexander's ideology is a corrective force which reduces the damage the left can do.
But they are also a necessary set of institutions for balancing out democracy.
Groups of citizens discussing and forwarding an ideological agenda is the very essence of democracy. You seem to have an atomized view of citizens, but democracy works under principles of reasonable conversation driven by informed authoritarian sources.
We're lucky to have the institutions we have built for ourselves, but more to the point, there isn't any other way it could be.
moderateliberal
5d ago
I was being glib in that statement I admit but I'm directionally correct. Leftist anti-capitalist sentiment could get us all killed. I like my shelves stocked thank you.
moderateliberal
5d ago
It's not like he ordered the military to assault the Capitol.
moderateliberal
5d ago
I guess you don't have to think about what I have to say if I'm a troll. We live in a shocking reality. Easier to ignore it.
moderateliberal
6d ago
What do you have difficulty with, the notion that I believe the left reports on Trump's speech in Aurora dishonestly? Or something else?
moderateliberal
6d ago
There's nothing bad about my case. I'm simply willing to platform the ideological manipulation of the left in a spirit of good faith, and I resent the implication that the pro-Trump position as presented by either of us is somehow indefensible.
Just because the left is reduced to hysterics in its hallucination of a wolf doesn't mean I can't platform those hysterics.
moderateliberal
6d ago
The following is a melancholic musing, and maybe my participation here is as an unhealthy rant, just a sort of getting my rage and consternation out of my system so that I know other people feel the same way.
I appreciate that you're giving me the benefit of the doubt, even as giving people the benefit of the doubt is a charitable act which strains the bounds of reason. Wokes have shown us what they'll do with the benefit of the doubt, given power and the means to persecute their enemies.
But I also wish that more people extended Trump the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that's the only path to civilization.
Alas, I'm a nobody and I want to keep my online presence small. If you look at the history of purges, there's nothing stopping an AI from scraping pages to find the undesirables for re-education, and I wasn't always good at opsec. So forgive me if I don't mention past usernames. It's enough that you let me stand. (Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there's no one out to get you.)
I am left with this melancholy: what is good faith participation? In a hyper-partisan atmosphere where one side insists on a false reality in which IQ is imaginary, that when Trump mentions a 'bloodbath' in manufacturing he's talking about actual violence, that communism can work, how can we engage constructively?
I didn't put much thought in my username, to be honest. I try to be moderate, in that I find the extremists on both sides reprehensible. I try to be liberal, in that I still try and believe that speaking with people can lead to greater understanding, that platforming people matters. Sorry if that was a suspicious choice.
And thanks for working so hard to keep this place running.
moderateliberal
6d ago
I tend to delete my Motte account for my own mental health, but I'm back because the lawfare against Trump has gotten so intensely bad that I'm afraid for the future of this country.
Elon Musk is right: if the Democrats win, then the demographics of the next elections will favor the Democrats. Sure, there could be splinter parties or factions which adjust to a new post-Republican reality, but the victory of the progressive stack will be permanently fixed in our society. The Civil Rights movement went too far and now we're stuck with a notion of equality that is anything but. And who will stand against the wokes?
When Trump stood against him, they made up the most vicious lies about his supposed 'fascism.' Look at this piece of work.
Headline: Trump's Rally Just Went Full Nazi with Bloodthirsty Immigration Threat
Does that sound like unbiased news to you? Excerpt:
“They took the criminals out of Caracas, and they put them along your border, and they said if you ever come back, we’re going to kill you,” Trump said.
“Think of that!” he continued. “We have to live with these animals. But we won’t live with them for long!”
At that, one person in the crowd shouted, “Kill them!”
In the same speech, Trump called for the expeditious “removal of these savage gangs,” promising that, if elected, he would appoint “elite squads” to conduct mass deportations. He also vowed to enforce the death penalty for “any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer.”
Obviously one person shouting isn't representative of a movement. It could be a leftist plant trying to make Trumpism look more violent than it actually is, and this dishonest leftist propaganda is intent on portraying Trump himself as violent.
The truth is that we have to be able to discuss the perils of unmitigated mass migration. Why should people in Aurora, Colorado have to deal with these criminals? It's central to a nation that it defends its borders and keeps these people out, and if they get in, they need to be rounded up and deported: a sensible policy that is painted as "fascist" by the wokes who can't reason functionally about certain topics.
But the lawfare is what makes me the angriest. Jack Smith is an illegally appointed special prosecutor fabricating dirt on Trump to be released by the corrupted courts right before the election (linking to PBS so you can see how they're spinning it). These witnesses aren't telling the truth: the truth is that Trump, being president and having access to top secret information, knows things we don't, and Trump is within his executive right to fight the results of the 2020 election, and this election, too, if it's not fair. And it's already not fair.
Trump's statement on the matter in 2022 makes it crystal clear for me:
Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.
It comes down to who you trust, and I trust Trump to fight against the communism of the wokes. But I'm afraid because as much as the polls look good for Trump, the cheating will continue.
I encourage you to vote because that makes it harder for them to lie.
As cynical as I am of institutional capture by wokes, I don't begrudge them their right to an opinion, their right to advance an agenda.
You want to live in a world where the woke fight never happened by wishing away intellectual collaboration in the service of a political ideology? That seems opposed to freedom of speech.
I have had to cut contact with woke people in my life but as much as it is straightforward that their ideology is destructive incoherence and irrationality, there still exists a point of view, an attempt to fight oppression no matter how imagined that oppression is.
These ideologies will surface and resurface because people aren't going to change. Bemoaning the necessity of the fight isn't winning the fight. The struggle is perpetual and the wokes must be defeated over and over again.
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