Goodguy
7hr ago
It probably was not written by ChatGPT, in my opinion. Maybe some other LLM. But it shows none of the usual signs of a non-very-specifically-prompted ChatGPT's output. ChatGPT, by default, writes like an annoying, overly eager-to-please teacher's pet high school student. It's a style that is very easy to spot once one is used to it.
Also, why would anyone need to establish an alt here? After all, this isn't Reddit, where unless you have a certain amount of karma, you literally are unable to post.
Goodguy
2d ago
Vance might be the bridge to a new generation of right-wing politicians who grew up on highly online alt-right and dissident right culture, not on traditional American conservatism. Whoever becomes the most prominent Republican figure after Trump probably will not be a Trump impersonator, since generally speaking trying to impersonate another successful person in an attempt to acquire their level of charisma is counterproductive - the very attempt to be inauthentic makes one less charismatic unless one is a spectacularly talented actor, and probably most politicians are good actors but they are not that good. Politicians with the charisma level of a Bill Clinton, Obama, or Trump do not grow on trees, but they do come along every once in a while. The Republicans would probably do well to keep having actually competitive primaries so that the best talent can rise to the top, instead of trying to shoe-horn in some kind of Trump version 2. Trump is one-of-a-kind in so many ways that realistically, there will never be another one. All the Republicans can really do is have a fair primary process so that they can give themselves the best odds of finding someone who isn't Trump, but has Trump-level charisma.
Goodguy
2d ago
Does the math work? Average apartment rent in the US is $1750 / month, so $21000 / year. Some quick Googling shows that in the US, the average factory worker salary is about $35000 and average construction worker salary is about $40000. In reality it's probably significantly less since I am guessing that the available figures don't include many illegal aliens' wages and under-the-table arrangements.
So unless something changes to either increase the salaries or make housing cheaper, we seem to on average have a situation where as a blue-collar worker you'd be paying half of your salary in rent. Add on other vital spending like food and health insurance, and pretty soon you have a situation where there isn't much money left over to do anything besides just survive.
Granted, deporting illegal aliens would likely drive up blue collar wages, but it could also lead to increases in prices on things like food so the benefits are not completely straightforward. Let's say that deporting illegal aliens does substantially increase blue collar wages. Even then, unless the government does something to lower housing costs, it still seems that the situation would be pretty dicey for the average blue collar worker. And Trump, as far as I know, barely talks about housing. He and his administration do not seem to give the issue of housing affordability much attention at all. Yet it is probably the single biggest economic expense for most Americans, and the supply is not matching the demand.
Goodguy
2d ago
It's hard to tell what Hanania actually believes, since he is a troll, an unabashed X grifter who is happy to post controversy bait, and to me at least he sometimes comes off as a sociopath. That said, he has been very consistent in supporting free market principles above almost everything else. To me, he seems untrustworthy, and I probably wouldn't trust him with anything important to me, but he does seem to genuinely be a principled free market supporter, so it does not surprise me that he views Trump's tariffs with horror. Free markets and free trade might be one of the few things that Richard Hanania genuinely believes in.
If Trump crashes the economy, the Republicans will lose heavily in the midterm elections in 2026 and will also lose heavily in the general elections in 2028. This isn't Venezuela. The Republicans only have 2-4 years to show that they know what they are doing with the economy. If they actually seriously damage the economy, they will lose power hard and Trumpism as a brand will sustain serious damage even among those who currently support it. Hanania seems to overestimate the degree to which voters being stupid and uninformed could sustain unsuccessful politicians in power. Sure, the overwhelming majority of American voters on both the left and the right are stupid and uninformed. And sure, voters in all democracies seem to have a remarkable level of tolerance for clearly failed government policies and politicians. However, one thing that voters usually do not forgive is economic problems. You do not have to be smart or pay much attention to politics to notice a major economic downturn. If the economy blows up, Trumpism will be done as a political force for the next several years unless the Democrats manifest a level of dysfunction and miscalibrated messaging that eclipses even their recent pathetic performances. Are the Democrats capable of fumbling the ball so hard? Yes, they are. I have never before in my life seen the Democrats be as disorganized, pathetic, incapable of communicating with the average person, captured by insane ideological purity spirals, detached from reality, and happy to sit in their mansions and make money instead of actually going out and winning elections as they have been these last few years.
I don't see how Trump's tariffs are going to make things economically better for the average American. It's literally a tax hike. Yes, there are also some tax cuts supposedly in the works, but I'll believe them if and when I see them. Part of what made America great back in the 1950s wasn't just that you could go easily get a job as a factory worker, it was also that your job as a factory worker would be enough for you to afford housing. Bringing back manufacturing jobs, even if it happens, will not magically create the demand for the sorts of relatively low-skilled positions that existed decades ago. Modern manufacturing is a lot more technological than it used to be. And tariff increases will not magically make landlords and home owners offer their properties to renters or buyers for cheap. What good would it be if you can suddenly get a factory job, but all the housing is still expensive? Trump's administration barely even talks about the housing crisis. When it comes to economics, they seem to be laser-focused on tariffs and on some small cosmetic efficiency improvements such as what DOGE is doing. But realistically, DOGE isn't going to substantially cut the federal budget. I don't believe that the Republicans have either the courage or the political will or the desire to touch any real big spending, such as the military budget. And even the military budget is less than a fifth of the federal budget. Meanwhile, they're laying off a bunch of government workers, thus causing many of those people to enter the private workforce and add more competition to everyone else who is trying to get a job in the private sector. Which could theoretically be beneficial if the resulting federal savings get passed back to the taxpayer... but again, I'll believe that if and when I see it, and in any case, even if the savings did get passed back to the taxpayer, it would take some time for the results to manifest themselves.
Goodguy
3d ago
Everyone who thought it was ok to torture people purely for fun certainly was. The ones who believed that it had to be done to appease the gods at least have an excuse. But anyone back then who was doing it purely because they enjoyed it was psychopathic by my standards.
Goodguy
3d ago
It does not matter whether they would have agreed or not. Morality is not a democracy.
Goodguy
3d ago
The problem is that the proles seem to be voting for stupid forms of economic nationalism. Realistically, Trump's tariffs are not going to do much to help the proles. What would help the proles a lot more are things like mass housing construction and cheaper healthcare, which are barely even parts of Trump's program.
I sympathize with people's desire for economic nationalism, but there are probably much more effective ways of doing it than whatever Trump is doing. It's unfortunate that the Democrats and progressives threw away their cachet with the working class by turning into snobby, wimpy elitist scolds and that as a result, there is currently basically no serious and influential political movement that is based around doing economic nationalism in an actually effective way. Right now, Americans more or less just have the choice between the Democrat mainstream, on the one hand, which delivers occasional wins to the working class but is also firmly committed to neoliberalism... and Trumpist economics, on the other, which promises economic nationalism but increasingly seems batshit crazy to me when I look at the actual implementation details.
Goodguy
3d ago
I think that many of us thought that he was just saying it to get swing state votes and that he wouldn't actually do it. After all, he has a long track record of saying that he will do things and then not doing those things. Oops. I forgot that he also has a track record of, sometimes, saying that he will do something and then going ahead and actually doing it.
Goodguy
3d ago
The "we" is doing a lot of work there. Maybe in some ways the country as a whole would benefit from a recession, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't benefit from one. And if Trump causes one, then despite despising the Democrats I might be compelled to put aside my objections to the Democrats' many many insanities and vote for them in 2026 on the principle that yeah, the Democrats care more about violent criminals than they care about me, but even in Democrat cities the chance of being the victim of a violent crime is pretty low, whereas the chance of being poor if the Republicans destroy the economy is relatively high.
Goodguy
3d ago
I think that some moral notions are close enough to being objective that only a genuine psychopath would seriously question them. For example, all else being equal, it is more moral to not torture people for fun than it is to torture people for fun. This was as true 2000 years ago as it is now.
That said, I agree that history is best when it is amoral. It is interesting to study the history of morality, but high-quality history does not base itself on moral arguments. It should be the study of what happened, not whether what happened is right or wrong.
Actually only about 16 million Americans served in WW2, out of a total population of about 132 million. So the fraction of able-bodied adult male Americans who served in WW2 is probably about 50%, unless you count working in military-related factories as serving.
Also, about 60% of the Americans who served were drafted, so really less than 25% of able-bodied male Americans served willingly. Of course, that is still enormous compared to the fraction of today's able-bodied population that serves in the military willingly.
That said, in modern war having tens of millions of soldiers would probably be more of a hindrance than a help, given how highly technological it is compared to WW2 standards.
Goodguy
3d ago
But China is basically our factory. I don't see the benefit of devastating one's own factory.
There is this argument that by decoupling from China we can re-shore American manufacturing. However, as long as steps are not taken to address the housing crisis, no realistic increase in American manufacturing jobs will bring substantial quality of life improvements to Americans. The jobs that became available as a result of decoupling from China would, I think, simply not pay enough for that. Correct me if I'm wrong of course. And the Trump administration seems to be doing nothing to tackle the housing crisis. As far as I know, housing is not even a major part of their messaging.
Goodguy
3d ago
My heuristic for figuring out whether DOGE is actually motivated by getting rid of waste involves seeing whether they are willing to cut military spending. Republicans tend to love the military for all sorts of reasons, and are usually very happy to spend a lot of tax money on it, so DOGE being willing to touch the military budget will go a long way to telling us whether or not they actually care about efficiency. My guess is, no.
Goodguy
3d ago
Well sure, many of the "experts" are ideologically motivated liars, but Trump and many of his people are also ideologically motivated liars. And I think that the tariffs are nonsensical not just from some complex ideological "expert" perspective... to me, they also seem nonsensical just from a common-sense perspective. I understand hating the "experts" and wanting to just push buttons, but that doesn't mean that we should abandon all sense of what buttons might be good or bad to push. I understand being frustrated with mainstream economists' consensus, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Trump's alternatives will be any better.
I like that Trump did a lot to stop wokism as a political force but at this point I have no idea what he's doing, lol. I don't know much about economics, but two things seem clear to me:
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Tariffs as a partial replacement for taxes might be cool, but keeping the existing US tax system in place and adding tariffs on top of that is basically just a massive tax increase on the average American.
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The only ways I can think of for the tariffs to help the US as a whole is to help US companies be competitive and to advance national security. However, I notice that Trump's administration is doing nothing to address housing shortages. And bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US isn't really going to help people if housing is still extremely expensive. As for national security, I'd much rather address it through diplomacy with China, not by falling into the Thucydides trap and mind-fucking yourself, out of a sense of fear of being overtaken as the world's superpower, that a war with China is inevitable, which could unfortunately prove to be a self-fulfilling assumption.
Speaking of helping the US as a whole... of course, I have no reason to believe that this is actually Trump's motivation. He could well just be aiming to help his own supporters. But even then, I don't really see how the tariffs do that. It plays well with some unions and will help consolidate union votes for Trump, but it also seems to have a pretty high chance of economically screwing over a bunch of people, including actual and potential Trump voters.
Edit: After thinking about it some more, I guess the answer that makes sense to me is that Trump is bluffing and trying to get other countries to drop their tariffs on US goods.
One thing all the drama teaches me is that a less strict version of the one-drop rule is still very much real in American society.
Rachel Zegler, even though she is probably about 3/4ths European genetically, is viewed as a brown woman both by the left and the right.
Obama, even though he is 1/2 European genetically, is almost universally viewed as a black man both by the left and the right.
It really is sort of strange if you think about it.
To be fair, the fact that Zegler probably identifies as brown and Obama at least publicly tends to identify as black muddies the waters a bit. It's not just how American society defines people, it's also how they define themselves.
And to be extra fair, it's not like Obama ever had a real choice about publicly identifying himself as black. Realistically, given how American society views race, he never would have been able to pass himself off as a white man. 99% of Americans look at him and immediately think "that's a black guy", they don't think "that's a half white, half black guy".
Goodguy
10d ago
But if women were just as strong as men, an appropriate response to women complaining about male violence and oppression would be "sounds like a you problem. Git gud."
I don't think that would be an appropriate response. If that's an appropriate response, then it's also appropriate to tell a man who gets punched by another man in the street that he should just git gud. But part of the whole point of society is that we are supposed to have a dedicated force that prevents people from physically assaulting each other, instead of every single man having to be a martial artist or having to find some kind of mafia to defend him.
Goodguy
13d ago
The most likely explanation is that they just fucked up. There is no possible benefit to deliberately leaking the info to Goldberg that would make up for the embarrassment of him going public with how he obtained the information.
To end, VP Vance reportedly typing “a prayer for victory” after a course of action was decided upon.
To me this is kind of funny given the enormous discrepancy in power between the USA and the Houthis. It's kind of like if a grown man prayed for victory just before getting into a fist-fight with an infant.
Goodguy
14d ago
The simplest explanation, though not necessarily the correct one, is just that many large corporations have huge numbers of people who genuinely hold progressive political views, including on the higher levels where they can make policy. In other words, it's not that they bent the knee to the crowd, it's that they agreed with the crowd.
Many prominent tech industry people, for example, grew up in progressive households and held/hold a mix of libertarian and progressive views. It's only very recently, once the woke really well and truly overstepped their bounds, that some of them began to change their minds. I think some people might overestimate the degree to which these shifts are just staged for mass consumption. For example, the simplest though not necessarily correct explanation for why Musk went from a somewhat Democrat-leaning moderate to a full-on Trumpist over the course of the last few years is that he genuinely changed his mind.
Goodguy
14d ago
I really would have to know more about her to figure out what her motivations are. One possible motivation that no-one else seems to have mentioned is that she simply just actually believes that we are headed for a fascist dictatorship that will take away women's rights and so on.
In the course of the last few years I have seen several very smart friends of mine become rabid Trump-haters who genuinely, not in a virtue signalling way, but genuinely are worried that Trump is taking the country towards dictatorship and that there are plausible mechanisms by which Trump could create such a dictatorship. These are well-read, sharp people who do not normally display any sort of cognitive derangement or hysteria.
I myself have some worries about Trump and dictatorship and so on, which I have expressed here before, but not to the level of these friends of mine. I think that Trump would absolutely love to be a dictator, I just see no plausible path by which he or any other politician could accomplish this. Any major steps that Trump took towards dictatorship would literally cause a civil war. For example, California wouldn't sit around letting it happen, it would secede from the Union. I don't know, maybe I am overestimating the left's willingness to resist, but in any case I just can't imagine any plausible path to dictatorship as long as the politically non-apathetic Americans are split about evenly 50-50 between the left and the right. This isn't like Russia, where basically 80% of people supported Putin in the early 2000s, which gave him an opportunity to consolidate a dictatorship while backed by a huge fraction of the population.
Some of my smart friends, however, very much disagree with this.
Anyway, my point is that it's perfectly possible that this woman just genuinely feels like she has to do something, anything. Do I think that's the most likely explanation? No, but it's a possible one.
Goodguy
16d ago
I'm not fully convinced, but that's an interesting theory. Trump does seem to really love size, he constantly uses the word "big" and he likes big buildings and so on. Although to be fair, who doesn't? A USA that includes Canada and Greenland would look gigantic on the map, and Trump would then be sure to have gone down as one of the most significant US Presidents of all time. Even more than he already is, I mean. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the map would look even better if the US also expanded all the way down to the Panama Canal. There would be something aesthetically satisfying about one country's color painted over the entirety of North America. But then, if the US absorbs not only Canada, but also Mexico and Central America, well US politics would become completely unrecognizable.
Goodguy
16d ago
I still have no idea why any Republican would want to make Canada the 51st state and thus add tens of millions of people who tend to lean significantly further left than the GOP to the US electorate.
Aren't we in a time when it's hard to tell the difference between the Trump administration's actual, real, policies and AI-generated slop? These days actual politicians, too, use LLMs.
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