There are geopolitical and moral reasons to support Ukraine beyond what you list. It is not Marvel-ization but a support for American unipolarity, liberal democracy, and upholding of the taboo against territorial conquest. With all due respect, I think it is you who is acting stupid for thinking that bad arguments for supporting Ukraine -> good arguments to not support Ukraine. (That said, Zelenskyy's strong leadership is genuinely inspiring, even if it isn't itself a factor in the equation of whether or not to support or send aid to Ukraine.)
And there are plenty of reasons to think Israel is mostly in the wrong right now. In my opinion, there's a kind of midwit curve here where the topwits and the dimwits are the ones saying "TV images bad = Israel bad". You have the dumb leftists reflexively opposing whatever Israel will do but then the pro-Israel side reflexively defending them and telling you not to believe your lying eyes because of "Pallywood" or other such nonsense.
There are many valid criticisms of Harris, but if you dislike Trump more than Harris you must support Harris and vice versa. To act otherwise in the US electoral system is to act irrationally.
But, anyway, all these comments trying to relate this to his cancellation are truly baffling to me. How can you all be so tribe-brained? The NYT and some weird anti-rats with vendettas trying to cancel him is completely orthogonal to Trump being a horrible person, a horrible leader, and an initiator of democratic backsliding in the US (with a possibility he will become even more of one, whether he wins or loses). Harris and the DNC did not pen articles about Scott being problematic, and even if they did I suspect he would still (rightly) support Harris and the Democrats in the 2024 election, because their opponent is Trump.
monoamine
16d ago
He's being honest rather than cowardly, even knowing it will be controversial. That's a good thing.
monoamine
16d ago
He shouldn't have said it (for optics/politics reasons), but he's 100% right (or at least 95% right; some, I assume, are good people). Just wish he would've said it after November 5th instead.
(But also, it's clear from his statement that what he meant is "the real garbage is the people saying Puerto Rico is garbage".)
monoamine
1mo ago
I'd be curious to see what female Mottizens (do any exist?) would respond to this post with.
monoamine
1mo ago
You believe this is more likely than the deep state and political actors working in unison to protect their preferred candidate from the truth?
When it comes to Blinken, there's a decent shot he might've known it was real and was trying to help cover it up, given he was an advisor to Biden's campaign. But I think there's also a decent shot he thought it had a high chance of being Russian disinformation or real information but a Russia-led operation. Now, could Hunter have told Joe who could tell Blinken that the laptop was real? Very possibly. I'm not going to say with high confidence that Blinken was entirely acting in good faith on the matter. But I think most of the other parties probably were.
Have any of the 'intelligence officials' retracted their letter?
For starters, here is the meat of the original letter:
It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.
We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement—just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.
If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.
There are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.
Such an operation would be consistent with Russian objectives, as outlined publicly and recently by the Intelligence Community, to create political chaos in the United States and to deepen political divisions here but also to undermine the candidacy of former Vice President Biden and thereby help the candidacy of President Trump. For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.
A “laptop op” fits the bill, as the publication of the emails is clearly designed to discredit Biden.
Such an operation would be consistent with some of the key methods Russia has used in its now multi-year operation to interfere in our democracy—the hacking (via cyber operations) and the dumping of accurate information or the distribution of inaccurate or misinformation.
So, to be clear, they carefully hedge the letter to say that it is very possible all of the emails are real. They say "information operation" rather than "disinformation operation", they say they do not know if the emails are genuine or not, they say they have no evidence of Russian involvement, and they refer to one of Russia's tactics being "the dumping of accurate information".
The rest of the letter states past alleged examples of passing of information from Russian intelligence officials to Giuliani and that
According to the Washington Post, citing four sources, “U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.”
This letter was somewhat irresponsible but not that irresponsible. Many of the intelligence officials who signed off on it probably didn't and don't even like Biden or Democrats. It turned out that Russia appeared to have no involvement in it and all the emails were real, but it wasn't ridiculous to assume they could've been involved.
From some quick research, it appears none of the intelligence officials have retracted their signature or said they regret signing it, as recently as a few months ago. Some have explicitly said they don't regret it.
monoamine
1mo ago
The request occurred because the DoJ became aware of their existence. They are obligated to request their return once they become aware of their existence. At least in the past, what, 30 years, I'm not aware of a situation where they discover a former president has classified documents and don't request them to be immediately returned.
The idea that there's all this collusion against Trump feels odd. Many people working at the DoJ and FBI are Republicans and voted for Trump and will probably vote for Trump again. (Maybe some have changed their mind after starting to prosecute him.) They're not picking on him by going like "those documents you're not legally permitted to have? please report all the ones you're aware of and return them to us". They're not bullying the guy because they hate him. They're following the law and carrying out their duties. It's possible there's some political motivation in the New York case, but many of the people involved in the classified documents case likely aren't putting politics into the mix. It's a pretty straightforward case.
monoamine
1mo ago
I understand your point, but I wish you could see your posts here from a God's-eye view right now. How is it that this is the state of America and so many of us are just speaking of it in banal terms? Do you and others in this thread recognize why so many people on the left conclude Trump is an unprecedented threat to democracy, and why it's so irritating that Trump fans call that stochastic terrorism?
You may even be objectively correct, but the whole situation is ridiculous and abominable.
monoamine
1mo ago
He was president for four years. What did he shake up besides many of the establishment norms that are actually good establishment norms? He complained about the Deep State hampering him from doing things that actually should've been hampered, got nothing done, refused to leave, then had to be dragged out kicking and screaming. I'm not a big fan of Bill Maher but he predicted it all exactly right from the start.
If it were Andrew Yang or Mark Cuban or Michael Bloomberg or maybe even Bernie Sanders (despite me very much not being a socialist), and if they hadn't already been president for four years, I might be willing to lend charity to this overall vibe or maybe even vote that way. But I can't understand the people acting like Trump either was going to be the great disruptor and the great fixer or somehow will be now.
Democrats rioted on election day.
Democratic politicians and Clinton didn't, and I believe almost all of the protests on 2016 election day were peaceful and didn't involve any rioting. Look at what Republican politicians and Trump did on and after election day. Not to mention general Trump voters.
They proclaimed him #NotMyPresident and declared #Resistance.
Look at what Republicans did when Obama or particularly Biden won.
There's no way you could distinguish between defectbot and tit-for-tat under these circumstances.
Compare the top-down leaders and the rabble. Hillary Clinton, although publicly claiming Russia helped increase Trump's odds (which is plausibly true, even if it seems more likely than not he still would've won without the DNC hacking and social media influence schemes from Russia), publicly and privately accepted the election results within hours. No high-level Democratic leaders advocated any tricks to try to keep Trump from being inaugurated. A few very left-leaning journalists suggested such things, and some Democratic voters did, but it was fringe. I'm not going to even bother to contrast with what happened from the other side.
Red MAGA is much less tethered to reality than Blue MAGA is, Red MAGA is a much greater proportion of Red Team than Blue MAGA is of Blue Team, and Red MAGA includes most of the current Republican leadership while Blue MAGA contains little of the Democratic leadership.
monoamine
1mo ago
My overall concern is that Trump is a threat to democracy. As I stated in my initial post, I think the immediate harmful effects to democracy will be greater if he loses than if he wins, due to his underlying motivations for not caring about democracy (narcissism). It's not "if he wins, he will do this", it's "as a person, he is a force of destruction when it comes to democracy".
monoamine
1mo ago
I think at least half wouldn't want to. I don't think Obama would want to. If there were no term limits, I don't think he'd run max 2 or 3 total times, and I definitely don't think he'd try to rewrite the constitution to make it so there are no more elections for so long as he's alive.
At the least, I think Trump likely wants to more than all or almost all of the past ones.
Fair. I really actually meant 99%, not 99.9%. And sure, I'd be happy to bet you, but I don't have a lot of money spare so we could use a Manifold market (or similar) instead of betting real money. If I had money spare I'd bet you a fair bit of real money. Unless you only want to bet $50 or something, but I don't know if that's worth all the setup. But I'm willing to bet $50 if we can find an easy way to make it work.
I'll change my probabilities to 99%, 90%, 75%, and keep the last at 98%. Skin in the game does indeed help with calibration.
I'm not sure what Musk stands to gain from supporting Trump once he's conclusively lost.
I've frequently seen this sentiment from people - that Musk is supporting Trump purely for selfish and opportunistic reasons and will stop being so vocal and annoying once the election's over. I think this is very likely a complete misunderstanding of him. These are his actual beliefs. I think he's ride-or-die for MAGA, and if Trump loses I think he's very likely going to be making tons of tweets per day either casting FUD about the election or explicitly saying there was fraud and that Trump is the true winner. It's not a matter of what he stands to gain, because that's not his mindset.
monoamine
1mo ago
What erosion of democracy do you believe Donald Trump, avatar of your outgroup, to want?
Actually trying to peer into his mind and speculate exactly what he wants is difficult. I think he likes power and I think it's reasonably probable that if he thought he could do it pretty easily, he'd appoint himself president-for-life. If he does want to do that, I don't think he will try to do it, because he knows he couldn't get away with it. But the thought that he might want it is concerning. (But I only think it's "reasonably probable" he does. I'm definitely not certain.)
What I do know is that if Kamala wins, the following will happen, with the following likelihoods, whether or not there are any credible widespread fraud allegations:
- Trump will declare that he rightfully won and Harris only won due to fraud (99.9%)
- Elon Musk will say it's very concerning and suspicious how many irregularities there are, and use his platform to spread that sentiment as much as he can (95%)
- Elon Musk will outright declare that Harris's victory was fraudulent and that Trump is the real winner (85%)
- Most Trump voters will believe Harris only won due to fraud (98%)
That is not good for democracy. The fact that we all know that Trump will declare victory no matter what happens is not good for democracy.
If there's no substantive evidence to support his claims, we all know that Trump is going to say he won when he lost. This is an absurd state of affairs.
I'm just going to repeat this for emphasis. Everyone reading this knows that Trump is going to say "I won" on November 5/6/7, no matter the circumstances. We all know he's going to do this.
People in the intellectual dark web regularly talk about "sense-making", but they seem to (from what I can tell) avoid the fact that if there can no longer be any common agreement on who won an election, democracy is in jeopardy.
I don't think Republicans, or even Trump, necessarily want to suppress the legitimate vote, per se. I do know that Trump is going to say he won if he lost. Basically everyone knows it. That is an erosion of democracy.
monoamine
1mo ago
There's (in my view, as a progressive anti-authoritarian liberal) a lot of truth to what the parent poster said, but certainly a lot of truth in what you and Scott said. I think the better way of thinking about it is that the "social conservatism, big government" quadrant is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fascism. When taken to its extreme it becomes fascism or akin to it, just as socialism can range from social democrat to libertarian socialist to democratic socialist to authoritarian socialist to Marxist-Leninist to Stalinist to Juchist, but calling all socialists Stalinists/Juchists is silly.
monoamine
1mo ago
The cover-up certainly was bad, but it seems like the news media, social media, Blinken, and the former intelligence officials mostly or entirely sincerely believed it had a good chance of being Russian disinformation. When more evidence came out that it was real, most serious outlets reversed their stance, and Twitter and Facebook stopped censoring it.
monoamine
1mo ago
You're right, but it's still absurd to threaten to leave NATO over it, regardless of how serious the threat is. Other kinds of pressure should be exerted to make NATO members spend more on their military. Combined with his lax at best or friendly at worst attitude towards Putin, it's not reassuring.
monoamine
1mo ago
I think the unprecedented part isn't that Trump took and kept documents but that he and his team explicitly lied to law enforcement/DoJ when politely asked to report and return classified documents.
monoamine
1mo ago
I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.
As a Democrat, I hold both views simultaneously. An actually more accurate way to put it for me is: I think he'll probably directly be a threat to democracy if he loses, and probably won't directly be a threat to democracy over the next four years if he wins, but might have already tipped the first domino in a progression that leads to an erosion of democracy and might be able to nudge the next domino (or have his allies do so) based on some of his actions during his next term.
monoamine
1mo ago
I know many left-leaning accounts that got pretty big payouts. Though given I'm a left-leaning tech person and that's my bubble, the "tech-adjacent influencers and intellectuals" part might still be true.
monoamine
1mo ago
Lilith is an extremely common name for trans women, for whatever reason. (I'm very supportive of trans people and have several trans friends, and "Lilith" is a common joke/punchline in trans communities when discussing names due to how common yet silly it is.)
I think for most of them the name is a reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
I don't want to get into an object-level argument about this (though my personal stance is probably blatant), but it's interesting and funny how for the opposite side it's viewed as the exact opposite of this, with the perception that all media across the spectrum is always "grading Trump on a curve" / minimizing his actions because they're so acclimated to it while the left can get away with much less than he can.
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