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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29506 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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This weekend, I witnessed the Vibe Shift firsthand.

When we met for lunch, my mother’s first topic was the DNC. Who spoke and how great they sounded. How excited she was about the whole thing. She corrected me on “Comma-lah’s” name, which I’d apparently been mispronouncing, and used that as a springboard to discuss Kamala t-shirts. She didn’t mention that watching the DNC had been inspiring enough to get her volunteering to write postcards and stuff mailers. It was clear that she was all-in on the program without ever discussing policy—or even Donald Trump.

Dad chimed in a couple times to note that the overall messaging was much more positive, except for Bernie Sanders, who sounded unchanged from the last ten years. He appreciated this. I’d say he represents a section of the populace with immense distaste for Trump, but a comparable disdain for politicians who spend too much time talking about the man.

I had been under no illusions that Mom would vote anything but Democrat. Dad, not so sure; I’d have given good odds of a protest vote if the Libertarian candidate wasn’t such a non-entity. More likely that he abstained. But the last couple weeks appear to have left him much more comfortable voting D. The same has to be true for Mom, too, as I never saw this level of enthusiasm for anything Biden did or said.

That’s the Vibe Shift: apathy to enthusiasm.

It doesn’t take a coordinated blitz of friendly op-eds, since my parents were getting this straight from the TV. It doesn’t take an iron grip on that TV presentation; the DNC herds their cats, but they can’t convince Bill Clinton to get off stage. And it doesn’t even take a winning policy slate. The Democrat base, the casual never-Trumpers, maybe even the grillpillers? They’re just glad to have a candidate under the retirement age.

To be honest the sense I get is that the Democrats have settled their major internal fights since 2022/2023, and Bidens age was a distraction. Three progressive democrat sacred cows were executed in 2022: racial hyperfragmentation, defund the police, open borders. Latinx as a neologism being thoroughly disparaged by the entire polity in 2022 put paid to the split-and-lift approach democrats had of highlighting racial subidentities and holding them in high esteem in order to oppose white men and drive turnout. Defund the police and restorative justice as a whole died with the COVID crime rises and Chesa Boudin being ousted put other prosecutors like Krasner, Price, Bragg and Gascon on watch for being overly progressive, with less public celebration of defending criminals. Finally, the migrant invasion into democratic cities has muted active open border proponents.

The democrats still are vulnerable on these issues, but the muting of the progressive wings gives normies hope that democrats aren't actively trying to end run the retard ball into an open goal. Yes the progressives are loud and extremely irritating still, but they aren't being actively supported by politicians anymore. Without the progressive bogeyman, much of the past 8 months has been focused on Bidens incapability, and with Harris wisely shutting up about specifics there is little attack material that is holding against her.

Culture war now is a wash for republicans, because abortion is remarkably salient, while Trumps centrality to the Republican establishment means his rambly whining and halfhearted autofellatio is taking up valuable discussion focus away from economy and border.

Hyperfocused overthinkers are wont to laser in on individual policies or vague connected webs to posit the end of civilization based on the extrapolated outcome, but most people don't care for that. Talking about democracy ending with Trump was not a vote winner, and talking about the woke mind virus isn't either. Democrats have pivoted to a surprisingly blank slate bollard of a candidate, Trump is still trying to gas up his hot air balloon while flinging shit at Harris. The election is still Trumps to win, but he's gotta get the cook going now.

I'm not at all getting the feeling that those holy cows are dead, just that they're swept under the rug for now.

Everyone seems to have gotten the memo that they need to unite under glorious leader of joy Kamala and her bright unspecified future because the dems do believe in winning, But while it's easy keeping divisions unstated when you are this vague, she's going to have to concretize at some point. Either during the debates or when she actually has won and must have a policy.

Hell, if things made any sense, she'd have to concretize right now given she's the incumbent.

This entire illusion rests on the sole condition that nobody asks any hard questions so she can maintain ambiguity. It's not a bad strategy when the media is on your side, Obama ran on the same sort of emptiness, but it's very fragile.

Anything that brings back the news cycle to some hard reality could bring it all down. You can't be a windbag if the economy is crashing or some serious international incident is going on.

This entire illusion rests on the sole condition that nobody asks any hard questions so she can maintain ambiguity. It's not a bad strategy when the media is on your side, Obama ran on the same sort of emptiness, but it's very fragile.

Is it fragile? Obama won re-election.

It also only has to hold for a couple of months

(Before someone says that Kamala is no Obama)

Hell, Virginia and Minnesota start voting in three weeks.

A very different Obama won reelection. "Hope & Change" Obama vanished in a puff of smoke some time after he got his Peace prize.

It's not really a unique gamble, but Harris is uniquely audacious for attempting it while still being in office.

Sure, but ‘Hope and Change’ Obama was replaced by ‘I guess he’s not that bad, there’s no urgent need for [further] change’ Obama, and that kind of continuity is exactly what Harris is about. People saying “I guess the present isn’t too bad, and I dislike Trump”, and indeed that describes a lot of voters.

It's what she's trying alright, but imagine Obama running on "Hope and Change" in 2012 after being in office for a full mandate and right in the tailwinds of the 2008 crisis. Much harder sell.

We don't have a 2008 crisis on our hands yet (things suck but its a rotting, not collapsed economic house), and the wrecking ball of an economic failure will annihilate Harris just as badly regardless of her party discipline. My point is that a portion of the animus motivating people against democrats from 2020 to 2023 have dissipated with the retreat of the progressive cultists. It will be a while before they can resurrect their unpopular totems, and in the meantime the Republican's are flailing against shadows. 2024 Harris isn't spewing progressive bullshit like in 2020, and her current brevity has let her deflate much of the invective flung against her I'm also not sure pinning her down is an automatic win for Trump; a blow has to land and Harris being brief on specifics and long on Joy somehow stinks of Bait to lure in a bad attack from Trump.

If Trump can stay on message and hammer Harris on the border and the economy consistently, he takes November. Right now though he's just whining and rambling.

Obama did, but he stopped pulling down ticket races up by his coattails in 2012.

Romney ran a bad campaign on what could have been a winnable election. Obama is still viewed fawningly by his supporters, but presided over a tremendous drop in elected Democratic officials nationwide. His presidency directly lead to the election of Trump. In exchange, liberals got... Obamacare?

Sotomayor, Kagan, and potentially Garland. Plus the various court victories and budget squabbles that benefited from a Democrat in office.

Obamacare was disappointing, but in a way which made it easy to demonize Republicans. “Real socialized healthcare has never been tried!” Neither Trump nor Biden really delivered on a corresponding promise. Maybe signature legislation is just unlikely in this political climate?

The Obama presidency definitely lead to the Tea Party, and from there maybe to Trump. There was also an interesting post in the old country which argued he specifically hollowed out the Democrat roster. I’m still reluctant to assign blame/credit for Trump, though. In the counterfactual where Trump had a heart attack before ever announcing his bid, I don’t see Republicans running anyone remotely comparable.

So, while there were legitimate issues with Obama and his team's larger running of the Democratic Party, it's important to remember that of the supposed 1,000 legislative seats lost, 150 were in NH alone (because NH is weird and has a massive 400 seat legislature with lots of weird swings), and a lot more were in rural Yellow Dog seats in places like Arkansas, Mississippi, and so forth that were basically doomed the moment they could be put in a flyer next to a black Democratic President in a way that wasn't true of John Kerry or Al Gore.

I would say the nomination of Hillary and James Comey's choices of what to announce and when is what led to the election of Trump, but I'm aware the latter is the minority position here.

I don't know maybe it's age but all I can think of here is how nice it was to be in a room with my parents listening to them talk about whatever, when they were both alive.

A couple things stand out to me, in no particular order.

Friends of mine saying that Kamala’s lack of policy proposals is good, actually, because whatever she said would just get attacked. I guess the idea is nothing she could possibly say or do is worse than Trump so gotta get her in by any means necessary, including vibes.

I watched Kamala’s speech at the DNC and it honestly reminded me of 2012 republicans. Lots of talk about how great the country is and framing things in terms of freedoms.

I remember distinctly in 2016 some mixed wires with BLM and so on as to whether things looks bad for black Americans. I remember getting that vibe from the Dems but then Trump also said that and suddenly Hillary starts going on about how tone deaf that is and using the word “vibrant” a lot.

I’m not sure if it’s just about who is incumbent now, but I suspect it’s part of a larger shift towards Democrats wielding a cultural majority, or at least acting like it.

Out of favor, Democrats were the party of misfits, the marginalized, and dare I say it, the weird.

Out of favor, Democrats were the party of misfits, the marginalized, and dare I say it, the weird.

This is almost 100% through deception though. They can only keep getting away with it so long as the media keeps up the charade and does so successfully. Some, like nybbler will insist the success will prevail and the fake news will win. And perhaps it will, but I am not 100% on that side. It is plausible that the fact that Kamala wants to trans all the kids and ban private healthcare and discriminate against white males at every step of the meritocracy ladder will stay under wraps for the next 3 months. But it also might not.

The Salier description of the Democrat coalition remains true, they are the coalition of the anti-central-American. The question is whether the vibes can be maintained long enough for her to harvest enough ballots to the contrary.

You’re coming in pretty hot. Please either qualify your statements—“I don’t think Kamala can win without harvesting enough ballots”—or provide evidence.

When you say “under wraps” you make it sound like this is established but not widely known. What leads you to call it a fact? I’m open to her being crazy but can’t seem to get any deeper than “I want to create an opportunity economy.”

Do you have a link handy to this Salier description? It sounds interesting.

I assume he’s talking about Steve Sailer.

The view from my neck of the woods (western Montgomery County, PA, which went handily for Biden in 2020) is that Trump signs outnumber Harris/Biden signs 100+:1. In 2020 there was more parity in comparison to the lopsidedness this year. In my neighborhood of 70 some homes I count 8 homes with Trump signs out front and no signs for anyone else. At minimum I take this as a sign for greater enthusiasm for Trump.

This is contradicted in my own home where one member who voted for Trump last time almost certainly will not this time due to Dobbs.

So far in my SEC college town one could be forgiven for not knowing that an election is happening at all. I've seen one Harris bumper sticker, while Biden had a fair amount in 2020 and Bernie had an overwhelming amount back in '16. There are Trump stickers and signs, but not as many as in '16 or '20 so much as just the normal level of background noise.

Then again, there isn't a Senate election (and Doug Jones' campaign did far more than the necrotizing corpse that is the Alabama Democratic Party), there isn't going to be a single competitive House election, and Trump is going to win the state by something like 20 points (My only object of curiosity is how many counties he can break 90% of the vote in.) so neither party is spending any money (and they're probably both depleted after litigating over whether or not to impose another VRA minority opportunity district upon the state).

It's nice in the sense that I'd really rather not talk about politics with normies when I'm out at the bar (Thankfully, we have football to keep us distracted throughout the election cycle.), but it makes for a weird bubble that along with being overly online makes it difficult to have any sort of intuition as to what people are thinking out in the real world.

I'm in PA, purple part of a purple county, and out and about this is closer to my experience. TV and my mailbox are another matter. Enthusiasm just seems to be low all around.

I see that, too, but I'll be frank, the people who show their support for Trump come off like loonies. They're often the ones who deck out their cars and lawns with Trump signs like they're decorating for Halloween. I think the crazy conservative conspiracy theorists are the only ones with little enough self awareness these days that they feel comfortable broadcasting their political beliefs to all neighbors. Sometime between 2020 and now, I think the leftists learned not to need to tell everyone all of their political beliefs. Maybe it was the internal Israel Palestine divide in the Democrat party that taught them that lesson.

the people who show their support for Trump come off like loonies

Not as much as the "in this house we believe" loonies

I saw one of those set out with bulk trash pickup a few months ago. Wasn't sure if it was someone moving or a legitimate vibe shift, but it was memorable.

In my neighborhood there is still one "In This House..." sign, it is counter-signaled by three "Love Lives Here" signs

Just reading that gave me goosebumps.

My wife really wants to make one with inane or insane things on it. In this house we believe... Dallas Sucks...Thomas Paine is the forgotten founding father...Nulla crux nulla corona...Demian Maia defeated Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight title according to the ten point must scoring system...the hanging curveball... high fiber... good scotch... that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent overrated crap... I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight.

I have this hanging in my dining room.

My wife really wants to make one with inane or insane things on it

https://i.imgur.com/tQBp2oa.png

After this exchange happened earlier this year, I joked with my wife about making a sign that says "in this house we believe the Beatles are good music".

I think that is the closest thing I have to religion, in that I was raised with my family praising the Beatles all the damn time, and I got sick of them and branched out musically, rebelling against my family. But my family still ultimately instilled this value in me that I do fundamentally think the Beatles are good music, and I'm willing to fight to defend them.

There’s an Etsy seller with a variety of insane in this house we believe signs. I can’t seem to find the storefront(it may be defunct), but things like ‘Bigfoot is real… I’m going to kiss him’ was just the tip of the iceberg.

I've got an Internet one I want to make: Traps are not gay Shrek is love, Shrek is life Anime was a mistake Your waifu is shit Epstein didn't kill himself

But that's the thing, I don't really see those anymore. I think the median Dem learned a lesson, maybe. But I'm not too hopeful

I still see these with regular frequency in my [major US city] in white, middle/upper middle class neighborhoods. Which are the only neighborhoods they had presence in to begin with. I see comparatively less of them than 4 years ago-- perhaps by half or more. You will see one per every couple of streets. Two or more in each neighborhood would be my guess.

I continue to see no Trump signals with certain exceptions. Plenty of Trump signs out in Ruralville by normal enough people. It's only when the "in my house" sign is accompanied by other sloganeering, yard art, and tacky decorations does the sign indicate a potential loon.

A willingness to put up a Trump sign in my neighborhood might indicate an intent to be excessively confrontational, and that's a trait lots of loons have, but that's also the point of political signs, no? It's why many people with taste don't smear their cars and homes in sloganeering. No offense to anyone that cares to.

I have not noticed any Harris signage yet. Maybe they haven't had time to pump those out yet? I do see the odd, old Biden/Harris bumper sticker, but it does feel like it is with less frequency than the last couple cycles.

I see Texas independence signs(probably as much ‘generic far right’ as much as secessionist), state legislators(I mean, they’re unopposed republicans so I don’t see the point), trump signs, and even in Dallas I haven’t seen an in this house we believe in a while. I’d be curious if @netstack is seeing political signs in the part of the metroplex which isn’t R+25.

On street corners/pasture fences, it’s the usual mix of R and D local signs.

In neighborhoods, I don’t think I’ve seen a Harris sign, but I’ve definitely seen more than a few Trump ones.

Bumper stickers are more mixed. Trucks only swing one way, but you never know who’s driving a Biden-bedecked SUV. There’s one car in my neighborhood with both Beto and Sanders stickers. They really know how to pick a winner.

There’s one car in my neighborhood with both Beto and Sanders stickers.

These vehicles are everywhere and I usually assume they’re used. They certainly seem to be generally old enough.

In my upscale Seattle suburb neighborhood the In This House and Black Lives Matter signs are gone. Before it was about every other block where you’d see one.

No one is sporting any presidential election signs.

There’s one guy that occasionally flies a Let’s Go Brandon flag, but he’s done that since I moved here three years ago.

There are a bunch of signs for the Republican running for a state legislative position, I’ve only seen signs for his incumbent opponent on public rights of way, not homes. But the primary had all the Republicans together earning like 40%.

There are a handful of governor’s race signs on either side, and that race appears actually competitive.

Interesting. It surprises me Seattle doesn't In This House anymore. Speaking in generalities, my city is much blacker, but far less woke than Seattle. Although the neighborhoods the signs go up in probably have comparable demographics to ones in Seattle. A declining trend regardless.

Seattle suburbs I would have guessed were blue as blue gets. Some push for change I reckon? As much change as state legislators can provide hah.

Oh I'm guessing Upper Queen Anne and Madison Park, fancy neighborhoods in Seattle proper, probably still do sport such signs. I haven't been to those neighborhoods in years, though.

The suburbs are more sane the city. We actually fund our police departments and encourage them to do their job. But the criminals they catch get handed off to a county-wide prosecutor who has a bias against prosecuting.

When you do see those they are decked out on a loony display that will put the Trump supporter to shame

Those are normies.

Even in the libbest area during the peak of nlm, maybe only 10-20% of the enemy put one of these signs out. These aren't normies and never were.

Stop waging culture war.

Yes, that means that besides avoiding casually derogatory sneers like "libbest" and "nlm" (which usually we'd probably let go if not stacked with a bunch of other antagonism), I am flatly telling you not to call people "The Enemy" when referring to your outgroup, because your outgroup posts here too.

Every time you want to say something about how much you hate your "enemy", ask yourself the following question:

If one of them posted here saying the same thing about me, would I be pissed off, and moreso if the mods let it pass?

Now making an argument that people who post "In this house" signs are not "normies" but are in fact political extremists is fine; you can say that if you think so. But you really need to knock it off with the low-effort sneerposting.

Libbest was not intended as derogatory at all but you got me on all the rest

If one of them posted here saying the same thing about me, would I be pissed off, and moreso if the mods let it pass?

Not at all

Well, that's nice, but I can assure you if a "lib" posted here about "the enemy" we'd get a bunch of reports, and accusations of being lib-subverted if we didn't mod them. We already get that just for letting leftists post.

That was three months ago.

That was three months ago.

I'm not sure why that matters.
Also, the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict's been going on since October 2023, and internal tensions in the Democrat party regarding the two factions have been high since then.

You said the Dems have figured out not to let their freak fly. Yet three months ago that was happening. Hell Kamala first went on rupaul drag race — that was her first or one of her first appearances since becoming the nomination.

It is relevant because it proves the Dems haven’t gotten wiser. It is just they haven’t said too many dumb things recently (though their price gouging law seems to qualify in my book)

Well, I can't speak for everyone. But I can definitely say that I've seen more introspection from some, and many fewer spouting their opinions like they're the only logical ones. Three months ago, I don't remember nearly as many Dems doing that sort of behavior as, say in 2020, when it singled you out if you didn't act with no awareness that others might disagree

Dude — 2020 was four years ago. The events you are talking about were three months ago. Let’s not pretend like the Dems haven’t been crazy for the past four years.

I can’t tell if you’re talking past each other. What happened three months ago? How is does it contradict @haroldbkny’s report?

I know it’s obvious to you that Democrats are “crazy.” I’m sure that you can provide examples of why you think that way. I’m asking you to do so preemptively, rather than just making the assertion.

More comments

If we are talking vibes and just random anecdotes, then republicans are very excited about the RFK and (to a lesser extent) Tulsi endorsement. Both RFK and Tulsi are big in the Rogan orbit. Could help Trump and helps with enthusiasm. Listen to the roar of the crowd when RFK walked on stage Friday in Arizona. That’s vines.

Adding to this, Trump was just on Theo Von's show. 2024 has been wild enough already, maybe this is the year the Youth Vote swings things? God help us.

I noticed a big swing over the last year on some of my gen z coded meme pages on insta to be less overtly hostile to Trump to the point where they come off downright supportive.

And pretty mainstream ones, too. Not just crazy DR stuff.

The assassination attempt, while its been drown out in the mainstream press, seemed to really change the tone.

It was a really good pod too. Trump actually came across very humanely. I bet the pod format is great for him because in person he has charisma.

The fact that RFK is the counter enthusiasm on the R side is sad and desperate. We’re not building enthusiasm anymore to build the wall or drain the swamp or even fight inflation. It’s a crackpot lefty further watering down any sense of conservatism.

The ability to incorporate old-style moonbats in the GOP at least indicates a credible commitment to giving moonbats some of what they want, and for a conspiracy-leaning base tired of adventurism that’s definitely a benefit.

I'm not sure if you've been paying attention or not, but conspiracism and crackpot theories has become mainstream for years, if not decades at this point. Old, genteel conservatism that is happy to be a principled loser voters are tired of. There is nothing more American than winning, because Americans love winners. Even returning to 2000s liberalism is a conservative direction to Western culture's current trajectory.

It's a big tent.

RFK's strongest takes have always been about health. Americans are getting fat and sick on seed oils and other ultra-processed foods. For some reason, Democrats are celebrating this?

Whatever his quack views, Kennedy at least believes that "good things are good". I think that's the core position that defines the difference between the right and the left. He fits in the tent.

I think most Americans have no idea what an actually good apple or tomato tastes like, because virtually all produce grown here is terrible crap selected for its looks on a supermarket shelf, its easiness to grow, and its ability to withstand sitting in a truck for a few days.

I think that many Democrats think that they are being smart by eating so-called organic food or local farm food. I've eaten that organic food and local farm food, to me it mostly tastes more or less the same as supermarket stuff. Maybe like 10% better at best, and more frequently indistinguishable. It's really bad compared to actually good produce.

America does have a food problem, and it's unfortunate that most Americans do not realize it. The quality of American produce is despicably bad, it's basically trash. The meat seems okay though. And Americans are famous for not eating fruits and vegetables much anyway, maybe this is why people have not rebelled yet against the fact that their fruits and vegetables are terrible. The meat is laced with chemicals that are put in animals for various reasons, but that does not automatically make it bad of course, it depends on what exactly the chemicals do.

I have to wonder what exactly your mental model is here. When you bite into an apple you're tasting sugar, and though I have a pretty awful sense of taste, I really don't believe that others can taste vitamins. So I don't really know if when I bite into a tasteless, watery carrot, I'm actually missing out on nutrition.

A good apple has rich, complex overtones of flavor, like an entire symphony of flavor... even to the point of different aspects of the flavor manifesting themselves over time as you bite in, first one and then a second later another one becomes more prominent. And after you bite, the smell of the freshly bitten apple is heavenly, you don't even have to touch it with your mouth, the very scent manifests its complex beauty. If this seems erotic, that is because it kind of is related to eroticism, it is a deeply sensual experience to eat genuinely good food. A bad apple just tastes like sweet water, with no complexity.

Peaches and melons right from the supermarket taste as good as homegrown. Tomatoes, you have a point.

I had some plums from a Kroger store this week which were almost completely free of taste despite being the perfect softness to eat. Very offputting.

In fairness fruit is really sensitive to growing conditions. I've had figs from a tree that overproduced that were watery and tasteless.
Abandoning fairness, growers are basically incentivized to optimize for weight and transportability over flavor.

I've occasionally experienced this with various foods but eventually determined that it was usually because I was in an (often minor) illness phase accompanied by reduction in odor sensitivity. Remember that almost all of what we consider flavor is not taste but smell.

You can buy honeycrisp apples in stores that taste almost as good as the ones from my tree. Tomatoes, yeah, a lot of the best varieties just aren't fit for mass shipping.

While I wish public health was actually a large issue, for either party, I don’t see any evidence that Kamala or democrats broadly are celebrating people getting fat.

While ‘body positivity’ is generally supported, ‘Fat acceptance’ is still extremely online. At least, I’m assuming, couldn’t find polling at a glance.

If we are talking trim, fit bodies, prominent Democrats (the men, at least) probably better represent the healthy norm than Republicans. Compare Trump, Christie, Huckabee to Obama, Bernie, Newsom, even Biden. (Women there isn't as much a disparity, and might even cut the other way. Few of either party qualify as actually obese.)

That said, I see Republicans as more willing to explicitly say that fat is bad, fit is good. They just lack any meaningful follow-through.

You're just summarizing Murray in Coming Apart (2011) on EVERYTHING.

RFK built the largest independent political campaign since Ross Perot. He has a big political organization made up of volunteers from the broad political middle of the country. He is, besides, like Trump, much smarter than consevatives.

He is, besides, like Trump, much smarter than consevatives.

I don't understand this at all. You're saying that two people are, individually, more intelligence or cognitively capable than an intellectual movement?

Political apparatchiks have an insular and provincial view of the American electorate based mostly on hearsay and things they learned from their political science courses. They aren’t necessarily reading the room as it actually is, but seeing it through lenses that are decades out of date and thus either don’t work anymore (seriously, who’s watching political ads on TV, let alone basing their votes on them? Hence Trump was able to get around the media gatekeepers because he understood that people are much more engaged with social media and online platforms and online news). RFK understands that most of the concerns of the working classes below the PMC are much more rubber meets the road kinds of problems than the high minded “let’s build the future” vibes that the major parties are putting out. The political class is baffled by the fact that most people think the economy is bad and that inflation is a major problem. They keep jabbing at random graphs and saying “look the numbers are going in the right direction!” And the people look up from their kitchen tables where they’re trying to squeeze their budget even tighter because rent, groceries, and gasoline went up again unimpressed with those graphs. Trump and RFK get that. They also get that people want things like safer streets, schools focused on the basics, etc.

The political class is baffled by the fact that most people think the economy is bad and that inflation is a major problem.

The political class isn't baffled. Maybe journalists are baffled because they're high on their own supply, but this isn't a case where the numbers say one thing but the feeling on the ground is different. The numbers are in fact mediocre. Unemployment is increasing. Job growth numbers were recently revised downward big-time -- and this was pretty much expected. Inflation was obviously terrible over the past few years and is still above that 2% benchmark. Yes, various flacks have been pushing the idea that the economy is doing just fine, but they're mostly not honestly wrong; they're lying. For the Democrats, this is their best strategy because they're stuck with responsibility for the economy.

Even this analysis has a problem in the fact that the numbers aren’t telling the full story here. The cost of necessary household goods, groceries and gasoline have gone up much more than that 2.9% and because you feel the effects of this very strongly because it’s directly impacting QOL even more than the 2.9% number would suggest. Eggs were $2.02 in 2019 and $2.86 in 2022. The graph doesn’t go to 2024, but going from $2 to nearly $3 is a big hit to the budget. (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/egg-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/). If you’re seeing those kinds of new prices, especially if rent and other bills are increasing faster than your paycheck, it’s not good.

And I just don’t see the party in power especially taking it seriously. Trump and RFK get it because they’re talking to ordinary people who struggle to afford things. I know lots of people who are constantly taking formerly normal things off the table. No more name brand stuff, staycation instead of vacation. No more meals out. Make clothes and shoes last longer. And as this continues, the appeal of candidates and media outlets that at least get it will be more popular. And unless the ruling elites start to get it, vibes don’t work as a bandaid. Kamala has a weakness hear because she doesn’t seem to actually get how the cost of living has changed since the Trump days.

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2.92% inflation in the last 12 months. If you measure inflation as "absolute distance from 2% target" this is 54th percentile for all years since 1990 (a hair worse than average)

I'm usually on team "the economy isn't really hat bad actually" but I'm baffled how people can misread the sentiment like this. It's obvious that what people who think inflation was too high want is for prices to go back down. the inflation number is a second order leading indicator. The previous years were 3.4%, 6.5% and 7.0% so around 17% over 3 years. And spread unevenly among the indexes so there were items in the basket that stayed relatively flat and other items that saw much higher price hikes, human cognition is such that those price hikes are the main thing people notice and do feel like the kind of thing that ought to be able to be put back in the bottle.

The leading indicators of how the economy is going to feel in the future have done decently over the last 6 months is just not really a compelling argument.

2.92% inflation in the last 12 months. If you measure inflation as "absolute distance from 2% target" this is 54th percentile for all years since 1990 (a hair worse than average)

So, as usual I'm somewhat limited in what I can back up with my own to eyes from where I sit, but what do you make of gimmicks like this?

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Nobody's comparing to all years since 1990. They're comparing either to the Trump years, or at least to the post-GFC years. Unemployment was declining from the end of the GFC to Covid. Now it's rising. Inflation remains higher than any pre-Covid time later than 2011. Real wages are roughly flat.

Picking longer timeframes to make things look better doesn't fool anyone who doesn't want to be fooled.

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Wait for the downward revision…

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Many here were dumbfounded. I argued the job numbers were obviously phony looking at 1) the divergence between establishment survey and household and 2) the unlikely amount of one sided downward revisions.

The response was “sometimes shit moves funny.”

You'll notice the market didn't react, so at least the people with money weren't surprised. And the job numbers (which are based on a model) weren't matching the unemployment numbers (based on a survey). Anyone fooled was either not paying enough attention or was fooling themselves.

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If some/all of the movement's core assumptions are incorrect, that would poison the entire edifice - e.g. Marxist thought might be the largest published corpus of philosophy or economics ever amassed, but it wouldn't be hard for one person to be more correct because the Marxist edifice is chained to fatally-flawed premises.

I think his support for free speech is something every conservative can get behind. Also there has always been a strain of “no foreign entanglements” amongst conservative thought for a long time.

Doesn’t mean RFK agrees with all or even most of conservative thought but there are some key overlaps there and it shows that the Republican Party can appeal to disaffected democrats. It also could be big for the election. Assume RFK was polling 5% in battleground states. Assume 60% of his voters vote and they break 2-1 for Trump. That’s a net 1% bump for Trump.

"Support for free speech." Isn't this the guy who was calling for the imprisonment of "climate deniers" like two minutes ago?

Converts are welcomed!

Specifically think tanks and organizations. Now I still think it's wacko, as are of course a lot of things about the man, but on paper the idea that individuals have free speech, not organizations, is perfectly coherent.

Having one's rights end where those of a legal fiction begin is one of the more insane accepted beliefs of our time.

There's definitely a bi-partisan contingent of people who think corporations should shut the fuck up about politics, that their involvement amounts to bribery and that Citizens United was a bad decision.

It's of course a longstanding gripe in US lefty circles, "take the money out of politics" and so on, but individualistic libertarians on the right and even MAGA people don't hold woke corporations in their hearts. So RFK codes as a friend more than he does as an enemy.

on paper the idea that individuals have free speech, not organizations, is perfectly coherent

I don't see how it can be coherent at all when organizations are simply groups of people. If a person expresses a belief, that's fine. But if a person brings 5 of his friends who all believe the same things together to form an organization and express those beliefs together, that's not allowed?

I don't see how it can be coherent at all when organizations are simply groups of people.

Isn't it weird then how their legal status is not that of simply a group of people? You could, if you wanted, replace every single person in an organization,, and the government would treat it as the same entity.

This is Ship of Theseus paradox and I don't see how it relates.

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Novel behaviors emerge out of collections of components. Locusts are harmless and even helpful when in their solitary phase, but subjecting them to enough density induces a far more destructive gregarious phase by a cascade of social and physiological changes.

To take a human example, I don't really care if someone does fentanyl alone in the confines of their own home. I guess it's sad if they die, but that's their life. But allowing large groups of fentanyl addicts to congregate and use together has damaging consequences far larger than the damage they inflict on themselves.

Unless you're a hyper-individualist, it's perfectly coherent to say it's reasonable for the government to regulate destructive collective behaviors while otherwise taking a hands off approach to individuals.

To take a human example, I don't really care if someone does fentanyl alone in the confines of their own home. I guess it's sad if they die, but that's their life. But allowing large groups of fentanyl addicts to congregate and use together has damaging consequences far larger than the damage they inflict on themselves.

I would say that the obvious solution to preventing groups of fentanyl addicts from congregating is to stop individuals from using fentanyl in the first place. Further, I'm not sure that groups of people using fentanyl in and of itself is the problem, but the results of that such as homelessness and destitution. Suppose a group of otherwise functioning fentanyl addicts congregate to one of their homes and does fentanyl, then leaves afterwards and goes back to work and later goes back to their families. Is that a problem in your eyes? Conversely, if a single fentanyl addict is shitting in the street and yelling at passers by, is that not a problem simply because it's an individual?

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Devil’s advocate, but it’s almost never just their life. Sooner or later someone has to pay the bill. So long as it’s possible to go outside and make a mess, the warped incentives of drugs will lead people to do so. And we’re a long way from the level of totalitarianism you’d need to make it impossible.

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on paper the idea that individuals have free speech, not organizations, is perfectly coherent.

No it's not, it's completely bonkers. An organization - especially something like a think-tank - is just a group of people gathered for a common purpose. Anything that a member of the organization says can trivially be rebranded as the speech of one or more of the organization's component members.

it's completely bonkers

My individual natural rights come from Gnon. And are therefore inalienable.

Where do organizations, fictitious entities that don't exist in nature, derive their rights from?

The only coherent theory of rights that provides for organizations to have rights is one where those are privileges granted by the State, which are as revocable for corporations as they are for individuals.

I assume that by Gnon you mean god. But these are extremely bold assertions to make. The idea that there is a god, and that there is such a thing as rights in any sense other than that of a social contract, and that god gives you these rights... all these ideas should be justified by some kind of argument, I think, not just stated blankly. Because certainly not all of us here agree with any of these assertions. I personally agree with you about qualia. I think that in some sense of the word "god", there may be a god. The hard problem of consciousness is real. But I do not believe in a god who grants natural rights, unless by natural rights you mean something more like a striving for those rights that is inherent to being human.

My own opinion is that "rights" are a legal fiction. They are extremely important, but they have no existence outside the context of a society with its particular laws, habits, narratives, and power dynamics.

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Where do organizations, fictitious entities that don't exist in nature, derive their rights from?

From the rights of the natural persons they are made up of.

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My individual natural rights come from Gnon. And are therefore inalienable.

Of course individual rights are alienable. What "right" to life does a murder victim or conscripted soldier have? What "right" to free speech does a nativist Britbong have? Etc. etc. Even the founders admitted that rights only exist where people demand them and are willing to back up those demands with force if someone tries to take them away.

Where do organizations, fictitious entities that don't exist in nature, derive their rights from?

Hypercooperation and the formation of organizations is hard-coded into us.

At the very least, the organization would have the same rights as its constituent individuals, no?

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Organizations often have privileges beyond those granted to individual members. Why should we be able to grant such privileges to organizations but not set restrictions on them?

Organizations often have privileges beyond those granted to individual members.

Could you elaborate on what these privileges are? Because the obvious ones that come to mind are limited liability, which has some limitations and regulation regarding group formation, and tax advantages for nonprofits, which come with restrictions on governance, actions, and even speech -- 501(c)(3) organizations are largely prohibited from political action in favor of candidates.

Because "the combined group has more resources" is true, but seems pro-egalitarian: pooling resources allows larger expenditures (TV ads! Blimps!) that would only otherwise be accessible to the Musks and Bezoses of the world.

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Practicality, for one. If your restrictions can be trivially circumvented by a constituent member of the organization publishing "in their own name" instead of in the name of the organization, you haven't meaningfully impaired or restricted anything, and have just incentivized the organization to go underground.

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Money out of politics? Is this what you think this is about?

New York, for example, prescribes corporate death whenever a company fails to "serve the common good" and "to cause no harm."…

No. It's about shaking down any company that does things that New York thinks is bad, or is associated with a persona non grata. Such as being funded by the Kochs.

Thinking that this is about getting corporations out of politics is among the more naive takes I've seen on this forum.

You think you're a cynic, but you're not nearly cynical enough. Politics isn't about policy or the effects of policy for the most part.

It's about signalling the right things to the right people. Politicians routinely support insane policies that would never actually be implemented or even do anything that furthers their goals on the sole motivation that those policies send the right signals.

"Build the wall", they say, and then don't literally build a literal wall, because what the people heard and care about is "I want to lower immigration", not the thing in itself.

What I'm trying to get at here is what tendency RFK is coming from and whether that tendency is reconcilable with that of Trump's electorate. That his actual policy positions are contradictory with those of Trump, or even with themselves, is immaterial.

RFK is the standard bearer of old school hippie leftists who are skeptical of the government, corporations and buy into every conspiracy theory under the sun, his alliance with Trump is a ritual that consecrates the alliance of that tradition with the generally syncretic MAGA movement. Or at least it's what the Trump campaign is trying to make it into.

"Build the wall", they say, and then don't literally build a literal wall, because what the people heard and care about is "I want to lower immigration", not the thing in itself.

The wall was synechdoche, not metaphor. There is indeed a literal wall involved, but it's also part of lowering immigration.

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You think you're a cynic, but you're not nearly cynical enough.

This isn't even cynicism, it's just taking him at his word.

RFK is the standard bearer of old school hippie leftists who are skeptical of the government, corporations and buy into every conspiracy theory under the sun, his alliance with Trump is a ritual that consecrates the alliance of that tradition with the generally syncretic MAGA movement. Or at least it's what the Trump campaign is trying to make it into.

Noted businessman Trump is not exactly the kind of guy who I would say is skeptical of corporations. The argument you are making here seems incoherent - RFK is against corporations, we must imagine Trump is too, therefore they go together. Then you confusingly heap the campaign finance angle on it for some reason even though nobody is talking about that.

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What are the conservatives even conserving anymore? We don't really have a way of life to conserve that actually has principles and promotes belief in God. Churches have been hollowed out, the lifestyle of most 'conservatives' in America is nothing but rural poor people indulging in thoughtless moment to moment hedonism.

Conservatism as a project has clearly failed, as far as I'm concerned. The right needs to move away from this idea of conserving a past which is gone, and move towards building virtues and morals in culture that don't exist anymore.

Some combination of patriotism, protecting the rights of the socially conservative quintile to their trad lifestyle, and sanity in certain regulatory and tax policies.

I want to argue with you, but it's hard to. I've also been profoundly distressed that Trump is the best our nation can muster in defense of it's founding principles, before they are abolished entirely and written out of history. He's like a fucking child, pretending to be Thomas Jefferson. He can gesture at ideas he doesn't understand, but knows the adults in the room talk about with reverence. He governs like my four year old pretends to woodwork in the shop with me. Which is to say, he sits at his desk, mimes some actions he thinks he's seen politicians do, but has no understanding of how to work the levers of power. He's also not allowed to use any of the real tools actual politicians use to govern.

And yet, he's it. He's all that's left. Americanism has been extirpated from all the institutions that train up future leaders. Nobody with experience working the levers of power will ever believe in our founding principles ever again. That's how thoroughly our nation has been attacked and conquered. I'm waiting for three letter agencies to start quartering troops in our homes just to teabag the bill of rights completely. It's going to be an increasingly centralized command economy, increasingly looting the country to give party members in good standing the spoils, and fewer and fewer rights and standards of living for everyone else. And probably flooding the country with people who will rape, maim and murder the founding stock of the nation.

The conservative movement does have people who are extremely smart and capable: Vance, DeSantis, Thiel, and Musk for example.

But they can't speak to the people because, as you mention, the people just want government handouts, legal marijuana, and Doordash.

Trump can speak to the rubes, and he is willing to work with the smart people in the room. Choosing Vance is evidence of that. It might not be much, but it's the best we've got. The alternative is just more socialism forever.

I'll put DeSantis down as a maybe, but Vance, Thiel and Musk are radical libertarian opportunist. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have their help, god knows we need it. They might even put off the abolition of free speech 5 or 10 extra years. But their entire temperament is wrong to "conserve" anything. Their have that typical silicon valley mantra of "move fast and break things". Works great when you are building an unmanned reusable rocket. Less great when you are attempting to restore the republic.

Unless you are using the Romans as your template. But that only buys a generation or so of time, at most. Though it would be satisfying.

their entire temperament is wrong to "conserve" anything. Their have that typical silicon valley mantra of "move fast and break things".

I disagree. Actually much of the libertarian right, via a ton of really weird reverse-engineering of religion through game theory and such a la @coffee_enjoyer, have come to genuinely respect religious institutions and social coordination mechanisms.

In fact, a few of them have even genuinely converted to religious beliefs privately, I have heard through the grapevine. (Not the figures I mentioned, but some in that space)

We're going through a massive religious revival at the moment, it just hasn't gotten the public's attention yet due to censorship of anything right-coded and the tight grip of the media. I don't think it will be long before you start to see more and more of these figures publicly coming out as religious.

There may be a religious revival among a very certain set of previously agnostic to atheist right-leaning people in specific industries who spend a lot of time on Twitter, I see no evidence in church attendance numbers or other factors of any actual shift in religiosity among the larger population.

The religious revival is notable for only really happening among heterosexual white men. I believe this is because it’s become clear to everyone that the ruling belief system has no place for heterosexuals or white men, and they’re searching for an alternative belief system and community that values and valorizes heterosexuality instead of rejecting and demonizing it. The young straight men I know are either depressed and demoralized, or they’re religious.

Old religions have the social proof and track record to do this. They’re also attracted to personal development and ideological purity, which is why traditional Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and to a lesser extent confessional Protestantism, are the religions of choice. Evangelicals bend too far to try and appeal to the world with laser shows and electric guitars, and mainlines try too hard to appeal to the world with ideological indifference.

But the problem is it takes two to tango, and straight women are the movers and shakers of the ruling belief system. So you’re ending up with straight men crowding into Latin masses and Divine Liturgies, with the women there so crowded with male attention that it might as well be Tinder or so obsessed with a rigid sense of gender roles that no spiritually-sensitive man could ever be masculine enough for them. The one exception I’ve found is the genuinely rad-trad Catholics who are comfortable attending mass at SSPX chapels, where there do seem to be a lot of women. This certainly has a lot to do with having 7 children to a family, approximately half of which will statistically be women.

I don’t actually know if this current wave of religious revival will last, if it can’t reproduce it can’t persist. Rad trad Catholics will, but I don’t have much optimism for the future of Eastern Orthodoxy in America as I think the orthobro converts will burn themselves out, and the evangelistic and phyletistic contradictions at the heart of Orthodox ecclesiology will eventually show their ugly face.

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The religious revival is, if anything, a reactionary retreat in response to the disgusting progressive ideology. I will use such a negatively loaded term because the actual visceral response most normies have to Drag Kids, or Black Crime Is Just Unfair Noticing, or Public Junkie Defecation Is Part And Parcel Of Living In A Big City is disgust.

Secular humanism and urban social dynamics have turned out to be bitter tinctures because progressive shibboleths have not been filtered for failure. With the continual rot of safety and education failings being unable to address due to the moral sanctity of the poisoners, religion is a steady bulwark standing against the continual social degradation. It is no surprise that some would find genuine comfort in religion as a result.

I honestly don't think Musk Thiel Vance are especially intelligent and capable. Certainly their public profile allows for such generous assessments to be feted, but thats just a best-fit for the Smartsuit, not that the suit actually fits. Too many normies don't think especially highly of Musk or Vance, and Thiel is not on the public radar. Also, Trump kicked out the last smartdicks he had (Tillerson, Mattis, Bolton - I accept the controversy about this dude, pls no bully), so there is a risk that being smart isn't actually good enough to stay in the cabinet.

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I think conservatism as a popular movement is quite minimized, yes. But as an intellectual movement with real political force, it endures.

Say what you will about Project 2025, but The Heritage Foundation isn't going anywhere. And, besides AEI, it is the most influential think tank on the right. Furthermore, thinkers like Deneen are on the up in conservative intellectual circles currently. Now, are "conservative intellectual circles" going to amount to much more than bespectacled dudes smoking cigars and mentally masturbating about a benevolent dictatorship? Probably not, but they will continue to exist. The whole point of conservatism is that it functions even as a small minority. It's a movement based around not doing much and doing that slowly.

The popular right wing movement is going to be the Techno-Libertarianism of Peter Thiel and his greater orbit. I mean, that's why JD Vance got the VP pick. It's a seductive movement because it attracts big money and top human capital, but I worry that it lacks any appeal to women and, more broadly, families. Thiel himself is a gay transhumanist. Nothing wrong with the gay part and nothing currently wrong with the transhuman part, but, taken together, this is hard for the Nebraska insurance salesman and his 2nd grade teacher wife to really get behind they did with Reagan.

The competing popular movement is Club For Growth et al. While pro-growth is a very broad and appealing economic argument, it comes with some thorny social baggage. Close to open boarders, offshoring. It offers nothing in the way of "community cohesion" or "social order" which, while highly vibes based, are important for a conservative inspired movement.

While they're are certainly fights to be fought on the right, I have more (vibes based) confidence they'll figure it out. This is because the left is trying to decide between actual statist communist and explicit racism as its number one priority.

I agree, but I'd go one step further: the best would be to stop worrying not only about conserving vs changing things, but about what counts as "right" vs "left". Align yourself with What Is Good and work for that, regardless of whether it is present or absent in your culture, ancient or new, "left" or "right", progressive or reactionary. The moment you take your eyes off The Good and start choosing your values based on political alignments is the moment you lose your way. Politics ought to never be anything more than merely instrumental.

Beautifully said. I absolutely agree with this.

We have an incredible opportunity with the current political realignment to reintegrate Goodness with politics. I say we take it.

How so?

Well basically, there's a bunch of chaos and things are up in the air. That means opportunity to form something new.

the lifestyle of most 'conservatives' in America is nothing but rural poor people indulging in thoughtless moment to moment hedonism

In whatever shape England emerges from the war it will be deeply tinged with the characteristics that I have spoken of earlier. The intellectuals who hope to see it Russianized or Germanized will be disappointed. The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children's holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same. (George Orwell, 1941)

I've been curious since reading it a few years ago... how are those suet puddings doing?

Remember that he was deliberately writing propaganda because he believed that the war would create conditions for a communist revolution in the UK.

The essay series was literally crafted to sell Ingsoc to tories worried about the war. It's as exploitive as any other communist propaganda.
It's the same basic thing as a Democrat telling you "vote Biden to cool down the culture war," barely hiding his utter contempt for the rube he's manipulating. Or "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it"

Lying to people that nothing they love is going to change is the first step in destroying every they love.

It does, however, characterize 'rural poor people indulging in thoughtless behavior' as essentially conservative behavior, without sneer, as early as 1941.

Tangential, but either George Orwell is a believer in the magic soil hypothesis or didn't realize that mass immigration could ever be a thing.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, foreign conquest doesn't necessarily change a country. But wholesale replacement of its population does. The Norman invasion didn't change the fundamental character of England. It merely replaced the ruling class. But the Saxon invasion did change England and made it what it is today. It did so by extirpating the prior residents and replacing them.

What emerges after 100 more years of mass immigration will be far less English than if the Germans had conquered it in WWII.

either George Orwell is a believer in the magic soil hypothesis or didn't realize that mass immigration could ever be a thing.

Orwell died in 1950, a full 18 years before Enoch Powell’s much-maligned “Rivers of Blood” speech. So my money is on the latter.

That's my view as well.

Reminds me a bit of the UK, how they just elected Labour. After 14 years of the Tory clownshow, people wanted something new. Starmer seemed normal enough.

And what did they get? The same as before. The Tories were flailing around pretending to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and not actually doing it. Starmer cut the Rwanda facade. Mass immigration continues either way, regardless of Brexit or anything else.

The Tories were perceived as pursuing relentless austerity cuts. Lo and behold, Starmer is continuing in their footsteps, announcing a 22 billion pound black hole that needs to be fixed up with tax hikes. There are starting to be these wailing posts from Labour hopefuls who credulously expected hope and change, only to get yet another serving of decline: https://x.com/D_Blanchflower/status/1827688405632761960

British steel industry under the Tories? Dying. Under Labour? Dead. Tories soft on crime? Labour will be as soft or softer: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/26/violent-offenders-increasingly-let-off-with-apology/

More than 147,000 people accused of offences including sex crimes, violence and weapons possession were given community resolutions in the year to March instead of being prosecuted. Such resolutions do not result in a criminal record.

The surge comes amid a deepening crisis in the criminal justice system. Prisons are so full that the Government is releasing thousands of criminals early next month in the wake of the riots, while police have raised concerns that any worsening of jail overcrowding could limit their ability to make arrests.

I suspect that if Kamala is elected, people are going to quickly sour as the impressions they absorbed prove ethereal. It'll be more of the same. Just like Trump in 2017, a lot of people were really fired up about draining the swamp but it never actually happened. A lot of people wanted something more than tax cuts and didn't get it. The machinery is already in place, the ship steers very slowly if you can even find the controls.

Labour got fewer votes in this election than the last one. There was no labour hype, there was just a collapse of the tories. Labour got 33.7% of the vote in an election in which the turnout was 60%. About 21% of those eligible to vote voted labour. Among ethnic british people less than 20% voted labour.

Yeah, it's a terrible choice. The only difference between voting R or D is the slope of the decline.

For a conservative, there's three paths:

  1. Vote R because you think that things will get better (delusional)

  2. Vote R because you think things will get worse more slowly

  3. Vote D because you want things to get worse quickly so they can reach "rock bottom" and then come out the other side.

For the United States, I prefer path 2. There is true value in fighting a rearguard action. Maybe some exogenous force will come about to reverse the tide. America is still an amazing country with a massive reserve of wealth and human capital. We can't give in to socialism just yet.

For truly gone places like Chicago, then I would suggest path 3. If I were mayor of Chicago, I would lower taxes, increase spending, and hasten the inevitable bankruptcy.

But America is not there yet... It's time to play defense and not blame the defenders overly much when they occasionally lose ground. Voting Trump probably buys the United States another decade or two.

For the United States, I prefer path 2. There is true value in fighting a rearguard action.

This is SCOTUS and lower Federal courts doing what they do. Saint McConnell saw the necessity of this 30 years ago and went all in on his career to get the courts where they are today.

Saint McConnell saw the necessity of this 30 years ago and went all in on his career to get the courts where they are today.

And who is ironically hated by MAGA as a swamp creature when his ability to navigate the swamp gave them Dobbs. I'm fairly certain that he made a deal with Trump in 2016: We GOP holdouts in the Senate will support you if you let us pick all the judges. It's emblematic of Trump's know-nothing approach to government and the blind cult of personality in his followers that McConnell is so despised by the new right.

McConnell consistently opposed MAGA and conservative desires. His people spent money against conservatives in the 2022 midterms so he could maintain power over the Republican Senate bloc. The man is currently opposing conservative priorities, for example, the SAFE act.

McConnell's treatment of justices was a great victory for cons and perhaps did more to elect Trump than any other Republican. He's also a snake and conservatives are right to dislike him. It's entirely emblematic of the know-nothing commentariat to declare that conservatives don't know anything, while not knowing anything yourself, then smugly declaring that we're nothing but a "blind cult".

His people spent money against conservatives in the 2022 midterms so he could maintain power over the Republican Senate bloc.

Or maybe, to try to win? There were a lot of places (e.g. Arizona) where the more MAGA candidates did a lot worse in the general election.

McConnell has his merits and faults, but he intentionally tanked 2020 WRT to the senate with his allocation of dollars spent.

There is no hitting rock bottom. You can look at the worst places in the US, like Pine Bluff, Baltimore, or Detroit and they have only learned to turn left even harder. You can also look at countries like the UK and see that there's no bottom. Accelerationists need to zoom really fast if they want anything to happen, because there is no bottom.

Yes in most cases I agree.

For Chicago they need to prevent themselves from becoming Detroit. Which means preserving as much human capital as possible. Every year, thousands of high performers leave and are replaced (if at all) with low skill immigrants. The end of this path is Detroit. By precipitating a crisis, they can declare bankruptcy, and get out from under the crushing burden of pension obligations and debt. If it happens soon, there might be enough human capital left to save the city.

But of course this assumes that the new Chicago wouldn’t just make all the same mistakes as the old one. Which seems unlikely. I think they are doomed.

The best bet for the Chicago machine is to keep delaying the inevitable until they can manage to get a non-bankruptcy bailout (e.g. by the Harris administration). Then everyone else can pay for their malfeasance and they can continue as usual.

like Pine Bluff, Baltimore, or Detroit

Genuinely curious, can you say more about Pine Bluff? That town doesn't usually come up in lists of "most whatThefuck places in the USA" ... while Baltimore and Detroit absolutely do.

Pine Bluff, AR is pretty rough, but probably not that much worse than Jackson, MS or other similar places in the South. I frankly thought immediately of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which is definitely a bitterly poor place that I've heard of as being uniquely bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Ridge_Indian_Reservation#Social_issues_and_economy

Can't speak to Pine Bluff but the most fucked town in the U.S. might be Cairo, Illinois.

Population in 1920 of 15,203. Today just 1,733.

The Wikipedia article is a decent read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo,_Illinois

Cities are the Curley Effect in action The productive move out and the people remaining are even further left. The problem is nobody ever learns from this (except Cubans), least of all the not-personally-useless leftists who move out and turn their destinations further left.

A country is different; it doesn't look like Baltimore but like the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s, which could not feed itself without subsidies from its great enemy. Except there will be no benevolent enemy to feed the United States.

Cheer up, China might throw a few scraps in return for subservience.

We gave the USSR food for physical sustenance; China gives us cheap backdoored trinkets and TikTok for spiritual sustenance. We have willingly made ourselves subservient.

If we are talking economic output, then rock bottom would be 'everyone is dead'. However, this is a really hard state to reach, even horrendous commie countries don't make it that far.

Of course, there is no bouncing back from that state.

In general, I am skeptical of the 'things have to get worse so they can then get better' meme. The real world is not full of either metaphorical or physical springboards.

Of course, I am also skeptical of the decline and fall narrative of the US. I don't think that every job will be that of a DEI officer eventually. Instead, it might eventually go the way of McCarthyism, where we got rich of most of the witch hunts (but obviously still screen job seekers in highly sensitive jobs like defense R&D for political leanings).

Yeah, accelerationism is fun to think about but I am skeptical that it actually makes sense. Places like Venezuela and North Korea show that you can get pretty close to the bottom and just linger there for years upon years, with no coming out the other side.

Some people have never lived in dead-end countries, and it shows.

The other option is start a location independent business and move from the declining West to Dubai or some other Special Economic Zone. I can't really see anything else that will have a major personal impact, but it's not really feasible for those that have put down roots.

to Dubai or some other Special Economic Zone.

Maybe it's just my personal pet peeve, but Dubai is a two bit dictatorship totally devoid of any human capital and social order. Its special economic zones are "business friendly" like the North Korean ones are, and can be yoinked away if the dictator wakes up on the wrong side of bed.

If you want a place that lacks anything of value for your business, you might as well set up in Antarctica.

can be yoinked away if the dictator wakes up on the wrong side of bed

As opposed to what? Russia and China are well known for stealing businesses they don't like at gunpoint, and the West's reputation for not doing that is well and truly over now that they're denying any property rights at will to anyone who may or may not be involved with belligerents of the Ukraine war.

Even Switzerland isn't safe anymore.

Where would a Pavel Durov set himself up exactly but in a SEZ where he has some interest in the local government?

Nowhere is safe, so set up somewhere that makes it more likely to succeed. If you're a dissident then you have to find friends in the enemy of your enemy or the fargroup.

Singapore can be a stand in.

There may be others like Switzerland.

A location independent business has no local resources that can be nationalised. Dubai is more of a tax friendly base (at least until it isn't). Sure if you own property, that could be confiscated in the worst case scenario.

If there’s a huge global crisis I think there will be few worse places to be than the Gulf, a place with no loyalty to its foreign residents, no ability to grow any food for itself, utterly reliant on global commerce and trade flows, with no safety net and an extremely heterogenous population.

The best bet is some rural or semi-rural community in a European or North American country where you know everyone and that is far away from major population centers to be irrelevant. Or somewhere similar. There’s a reason Thiel and co built their compounds around Lake Wanaka on New Zealand’s South Island; it’s probably the safest place on earth.

New Zealand is a great place to retreat to in the event of a global economic collapse, but its a terrible place in terms of personal income tax. If you're at the billionaire level and just take loans out against your assets instead of 'earning income' then this probably won't bother you.

New Zealand does seem pretty safe, but its violent crime rates are significantly above those of places like Japan and even, to some extent, Germany. I suppose that the Maori have a lot to do with that.

On the plus side, New Zealand seems pretty unlikely to get nuked in the case of WW3, because there would be very little benefit in nuking it.

Is there a particularly large Māori population around Wanaka? I just looked it up and apparently that region has the lowest Maori population of anywhere in the country; they’re largely concentrated on the North Island.

The Democrat base, the casual never-Trumpers, maybe even the grillpillers? They’re just glad to have a candidate under the retirement age.

Yes, this is what polling showed consistently through the entirety of the election and hell, Nikki Haley said on stage the first party to not nominate an old man would win. Of course, she was being self-affacing with that argument and now denies that, but it may turnout to be true.

I think to a certain extent, people want to turn the page of the Trump-era of politics and Harris just has to be a reasonable choice to swing voters. Who don't deeply care about the things many rightists here do, but also don't care deeply about the stuff I do as a social democrat.

I’m probably not a good representative of Harris backers, but I’m definitely way more enthusiastic about her than I was about Biden. I’d say this boils down to the fact that she has a decent chance of winning if polls are to be believed. Going from certain defeat to having a fighting chance is invigorating. Something akin to a last minute touchdown that ties up a game. All of this is in spite of the fact that I find the majority of her policy positions abhorrent.

How do you justify this, given that you find the majority of her policy positions abhorrent?

It's simply a vote against Trump. He's the linchpin holding the Democratic coalition together. Once he's gone, many of us want nothing more to do with the Democratic party.

As for why I'm so against Trump I have a couple of reasons. They basically boil down to a) I like living in a stable society and b) I like living in a rich society.

Stability:

There are really only 2 stable forms of government: Autocracy or aristocracy. We live in an aristocracy. These tend to be the more stable of the two, since there are competing factions with overlapping interests. Because of that, it's hard to enact change without stepping on anyone's toes. So change comes slowly. This allows a lot of institutions to be built on the bedrock of a (somewhat) stable system.

When an aristocracy changes into an autocracy, things usually get ugly. You get a lot of purges, and often a bunch of erratic government behavior. Look at the early Roman empire. For a more modern analogy, look at China. They were briefly an aristocracy with competing factions holding each other in check. Now they're an autocracy with Xi making questionable decisions. Life in China now does not look as good as it did a decade ago. Yes, there are multiple reasons for this. But the change in government structure is certainly one of them.

I think the whole "stolen election" affair moves us a lot closer to autocracy. Mainly by casting doubt on the electoral process, but also by normalizing the use of extra-legal means(fake electors) to hold on to power. To be fair, i don't think Trump will become an autocrat. He's not Julius Caesar. But he might be the Gracchi. Using populism to upend the old order doesn't usually lead to a better system. Instead, you just get chaos.

Wealth:

The US has a large empire. It is largely economic but there is a military component. The US dollar is only the reserve currency because the US is able to project force around the world. When the perception of strength goes, the huge inflows of cash will go too. The more the US leans into isolationism, the faster this will happen. And Trump's refusal to support the provinces/maintain the boarders is really pushing us in that direction.

All that being said, I'm not a big fan of the current culture of the "aristocracy" in the US. I think it's decadent and weak. But I also think that reform from within is possible. I think culturally the pendulum is swinging. Maybe not back to where it was, but certainly away from some of the craziness that we just saw over the last decade. I'd much rather see where that process goes, as opposed to opting for populist chaos.

At the end of the day I'm an institutionalist. I think the institutions in this country took a long time to evolve, and I'm not ready to abandon them, even if some of the people running them are crazed cultists.

At the end of the day I'm an institutionalist. I think the institutions in this country took a long time to evolve, and I'm not ready to abandon them, even if some of the people running them are crazed cultists.

I think I agree with a lot of what you've said about institutionalism, etc.

How do you fit this framework with all the Democrat-led attacks on the Supreme Court? They seem intent to add new justices who will be servile towards their interests (court packing, terms limits bills), or to let Congress strip them of whatever power they feel like, whenever they feel like it (the No Kings Act). Either of these, but especially the latter would be extremely destructive towards our Constitutional order.

To be fair, I'm strongly against changing the Supreme Court. The difference there is that the Democrats are still working within the framework of government that exists. The constitution gives the president the right to appoint justices, and there is no cap to the number. Would it be a break with tradition to pack the court? Yes. Would i support an amendment capping the number of justices? Also yes. But the fact remains that everything being done is following a precedent that has existed for quite some time. Partisan justices are nothing new. Even threats of court packing are nothing new (FDR).

When you start acting outside of the institutional framework, you get into really dangerous territory, especially with respect to elections. The threat of escalation is high. If one side does something, the other side will do it too. I really don't want to see every election being questioned by the loosing side. If that happens, it's only a matter of time before we get real political violence.

Hmm. Two points. First, I don't know that I'm seeing that big of a line between what you're using as a deciding factor (Trump using dubious legal theories and severe norm-breaking to try to remain in power) and what I'm pointing to (democrats using dubious legal theories and severe norm-breaking to try to seize power). Both of these look really bad to me, perhaps assuaged very slightly in each case by there being some people in each camp thinking that they're fixing genuine wrongs. Both are sort of operating within the institutional framework, sort of not. (In the case of the SCOTUS schemes, they have components that are probably unconstitutional.)

Anyway, court packing has been widely held to be a terrible and destructive idea for years—people are not at all in favor of FDR's actions, across the political aisle. And I'm not aware of any precedent for doing things like the No Kings Act. I don't think you're realizing just how destructive the latter would be. Letting Congress move court jurisdiction to whatever justices they prefer, and instructing them to rule whatever way Congress prefers is very bad.

The continuing independence of the federal judiciary matters, and Republicans are the only ones treating that institution as worth anything.

I agree. I think an independent judiciary is one of the better aspects of the US government system, and I'd really hate to see it done away with. That being said, in my mind, it comes down to probabilities. I think simply allowing Trump to win after having attempted to circumvent the election results the first time would signal that doing so is now fair game. I think we would see far fewer uncontested elections. And I think ultimately it could lead to electoral violence in the fairly near future.

On the other hand, I think the probability of a Democratic sweep is relatively low. Even in the case of a Democratic trifecta, I think the likelihood that all senate Democrats would be onboard with something like this is very low. And finally, if that law did somehow pass, I suspect that it would then be held up in courts for a very long time before being implemented, if not struck down entirely. In other words, the risk of the worst case scenario occurring there is extremely low.

So by that measure, the safer path is to go with Harris (and all republicans down ballot). It's certainly not a pleasant vote. But I'd like to think the reasoning behind it is sound.

Hooray, now we're talking about the likelihood of a small-ish set of events, instead of a nebulous variety of considerations: how likely are these?

First, considering schemas like those Trump's attorneys were pushing, what do you think of the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022? Do you think that would decrease the ability to do so? Something like that was clearly the intent of its passing.

Secondly, how and why do you expect that to vary depending on whether Trump wins? I'm not seeing anything to suggest that, should Trump disappear, the opposing sides would stop seeing the other side as entirely unable to be trusted, and worth pulling out all the stops against, and I don't see a loss here as likely to help with that in any way. Could you explain your model here a little more fully?

On the other hand, I think it is fairly likely that we get a trifecta. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but Manifold has it trading at a 24% chance. This might be a little of an overestimate (summing individual elections don't match other markets), but it doesn't seem crazy, once you consider that the three should correlate with each other.

I trust this market much less, as there's less activity, but they estimate a 33% chance of a democrat trifecta trying to remove lifetime appointments for the Supreme Court. Senator Whitehouse has said that it would be virtually certain to happen, as it would be bundled with a lot of other desirable things. (Yes, I recognize that those two do not agree.) If we go with the smaller number here, for the sake of the argument, and multiply, that gives an 8% chance. That's high! (And only considering one sort of attack on the Supreme Court, not things like packing or the No Kings Act.) Do you think that that is a significant overestimate?

To me, which party is in office seems to have little long-term effect on how willing people are to break every norm and turn more and more to just what gives power (if anything, things like the R-backed bill to require proof of citizenship should help). This may be wrong! I'd love to hear why. On the other hand, which party is in office seems to have a pretty big effect on whether the judiciary is turned to the will of activists or stripped of power.

See it seems to me that a dem victory brings us closer to autocracy. Schumer has already promised to break the filibuster for abortion and voting rights. Why not for court packing? Why not for DC statehood? Why not for PR statehood? The Dems could take a tiny lead and end the constitutional republic.

No, an autocracy requires an autocrat. The democrats are most definitely an aristocracy. They have different factions that vie for power and influence. Also, all of those things you mentioned are within the realm of legal possibility. Do I support them? No. Are they legally tenable within the US framework of government with enough votes? Yes. Gerrymandering is perhaps the best example of this. And both sides do it.

In contrast, acting to subvert faith in/circumvent the legal means of transferring power is not only breaking the rules of the system, it threatens to undermine the whole thing.

An autocrat requires loyalty of his subordinates, of which, Trump commands none. Even on the most famous day of "January Sixth" Trump preemptively offered National Guard support to the Capitol Police which both Pelosi and McConnell denied. Then the mayor of DC denied. Capitol police then asked for backup for several hours and were then ghosted by Pelosi for several hours during Trumps speech and during the march towards the Capitol and eventual riot. After several hours the request for NG was approved, but the riot was already dispersed. They showed up approximately 10 hours after the riot subsided for a photo op.

Trump would need to replace almost every person in the US government to become an autocrat. Biden got federal prosecutors to open 2 weak as hell cases against him by simply being president.

Do you have some trustworthy - and by that I mean palatable to the average democrat voter - sources to back this up? The whole January 6th debacle is a poison pill in discussions with anyone who has an opinion on it. And unfortunately, anyone with whom I end up discussing it already has an opinion on it! Trump offering National Guard assistance completely changes the dynamic of the event, so it would be nice to have some fact-check-proof evidence I can throw at people who loudly proclaim he wanted an insurrection to happen.

How about the head of Capitol Police at the time's own word?

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/09/19/congress/jan-6-capitol-police-security-hearing-intelligence-00116870

Thats the story reporting that FBI and DHS did not share intelligence with Capitol Police in the days up to 1/6.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/23/congress-answers-jan-6-insurrection-471000

There's the one talking about the denied response to requests for NG before 1/6 and the delayed response on the day of.

1/6 is actually a pretty simple story. Capitol Police were both understaffed and incompetent. They lost a fort to a relatively small number of unarmed rioters because their external barricades with haphazardly arranged, and because they failed to shut and lock a big door.

Trump wanted troops to protect his supporters at Jan. 6 rally - Rueters

In contrast, acting to subvert faith in/circumvent the legal means of transferring power is not only breaking the rules of the system, it threatens to undermine the whole thing.

I don't think it was their intention to be that destructive. It's still extremely destructive anyway. If we were in a better political climate, I absolutely would be considering not voting Trump because of it, but there's so much that's unconscionable within the Democratic party that it's still worth voting for him anyway.

In any case, the Democrats are threatening to undermine the whole thing. The No Kings Act is quite radical, and, if implemented and upheld (It has over 30 cosponsors!), would be retaliated against and copycatted with regard to every topic imaginable, destroying the independence of the federal judiciary. They're also proposing term limits plans, which, once passed, after the retirement part is struck down as unconstitutional, are just court packing. These are not good, and are absolutely examples of your final sentence.

This is especially bad, because the federal judiciary is the only branch that cares to any significant extent about constitutional limits, and I like having the bill of rights mean something, and protect against a tyranny-inclined majority (this is the whole principle of your argument, right?).

I mean, fucking around with courts is 100% the stepping stone to autocracy. I’ll agree that Kamala doesn’t look like an autocrat, but places that rig elections/change the results(there’s not actually much difference from 10,000 ft) get away with it because the courts are partisan.

Court packing is legitimately a bigger threat to paving the way for autocracy than trump. He’s berlusconi, not Mussolini.

I could easily say “acting to divert faith in/circumvent the legal means of deciding court cases / elections is not only breaking the rules of the system, it threatens to undermine the whole thing”

Court packing is a core attack on separation of powers — the key bedrock of our constitutional republic. Similarly importing voters (either via DC statehood or immigrants) is fundamentally at odds with the democratic part of our system and historically raised issues (eg between slave and free states).

Once he's gone, many of us want nothing more to do with the Democratic party.

Once he's gone, the Democrats will invent a new threat that requires you vote blue no matter who to save democracy. You have no leverage.

I've heard that argument from the right a lot. And quite frankly, I think it's an attempt to rationalize away the fact that Trump is an exceptionally bad candidate. Will the Democrats come up with reasons why people should vote for them and not the Republicans? Of course, that's what they do. The Republicans do the same thing. Will everyone buy it? No.

This is certainly anecdotal, but the last time i voted for a Democrat at the top of the ticket was Obama. And frankly, were I to have the choice again, I would go with Romney. Not everyone is consistent.

You still voted for Obama at the time though. Why?

And why do you think you are immune from the same influences when you are making the same arguments today?

I think it's an attempt to rationalize away the fact that Trump is an exceptionally bad candidate.

But I can name a dozen reasons I want to vote for Trump. And by this point the idea that Trump is a bad candidate is growing stale: he significantly outpolls the modal generic Republican.

He isnt bad because republicans don’t like him sufficiently. He is bad because he is uniquely reviled by his opposition. The Democrats coalition is one of not-Trump.

Literally the current president and de-facto head of the Democrats told a primarily-Black audience that now-considered-milquetoast Mitt Romney would "put you all back in chains." The idea that whomever the Republicans field will get demonized as fascist and slavery-adjacent is not wrong, but you've also got a point that in many ways Trump is an exceptionally bad, although IMO not a guaranteed loss, candidate in 2024. I sometimes think that if the Republicans found a good candidate, someone Reagan-esque in all the right ways, that the DNC would be completely unprepared. But at this point it's not obvious who that would be in the next cycle.

Pray tell who this magical candidate is? We must contextualize this inquiry in light that the dumbest, most radical, possibly drunkest candidate of this century has been portrayed as normal and safe and not part of the administration she is literally the VP for successfully.

How would some governor of Nebraska change this?

I would vote for someone like that in a heartbeat. So would a lot of people I know. I really hoped that it would go more in that direction after the 2020 election. And I somehow still hope that it will go in that direction after this election. That may be unwarranted optimism. But I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibilities.

So you did vote against binders-full-of-women and you swear you won't get fooled again.

Has it occurred to you that, given the world didn't end under Trump, you might be getting fooled again right now? That any possible candidate with a R next to his name will always be so bad that you wish you could get the last one you also didn't want?

I think about that a lot, for what it’s worth. Asking Pence not to certify the election seems like a bright line though.

If not for the 2020 election shenanigans I’d probably agree that he’s just like the prior republican candidates and we’ll see him as tame in ten years compared to the New Threat.

I think about that a lot, for what it’s worth. Asking Pence not to certify the election seems like a bright line though.

So you voted Trump 2016? If not, this is clearly not the reason.

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I think about that a lot, for what it’s worth. Asking Pence not to certify the election seems like a bright line though.

If not for the 2020 election shenanigans I’d probably agree that he’s just like the prior republican candidates and we’ll see him as tame in ten years compared to the New Threat.

I struggle with this, too. I am anti-Trump for many reasons -- mainly that he's civically corrosive and ignorant of how to operate as president -- and I certainly think that he handled the aftermath of the 2020 election poorly. And I'm glad Pence stood up for order over chaos. However, I don't think that Trump (and the circle of hucksters that he attracts) being typically dumb in his reaction to a very fishy election negates that there was a lot of very fishy stuff going on with that election. IMO everything Trump did made it worse and not better, but the legitimacy of the gripe is still mostly unexamined and very concerning.

I'm still debating to myself whether or not he'll get the Dubya treatment. Leaning towards not, but it's not that clear cut.

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That's not exactly a good faith interpretation, but I'll answer it anyway. 12 years ago I didn't have sufficient experience with the world to realize that human nature makes utopias impossible. I think that's the fundamental fallacy of the left. And I think that as people get older (assuming they are willing to consider new viewpoints), they tend to accept that. Hence the old adage about people becoming more conservative as they age.

So no. I didn't care about "binders-full-of-women". I believed at the time what I had been taught that leftist policies could make the world better. I no longer believe that. That being said, I would like to hold on to some of what we currently have in terms of a society. And subverting faith in democracy is one of the fastest ways to lose that.

Fair play. I'm not trying to sneer or anything, just to genuinely ask tough questions.

I don't see anything that's worth saving personally. Or rather, what few things are worth saving are what the system as it exists is precisely trying to destroy.

That said I no longer have any attachement to democracy at all, since it's revealed itself as mere justification to take my life and property away from me over the past decade. All the evil and none of the good that has been done to me was in the name of democracy.

I no longer believe Westerners have any significant level of control over their governments. If we are in agreement there (are we?) then I don't see what positive effect this faith may have that would be worth prolonging fiction that provides the maintenance of tyranny.

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It's simply a vote against Trump. He's the linchpin holding the Democratic coalition together. Once he's gone, many of us want nothing more to do with the Democratic party.

I feel I should point out that Trump won't go away unless he's term-limited or dead.

I hear a lot of people say that. It seems like a pretty big assumption. There are a lot of things that can happen over the next 4 years.

I mean, I guess I missed "there is no free US presidential election in 2028" (whether because civil war, because nuclear war, because an AI mind-controlled/paperclipped everyone, or because the establishment bans Trump somehow). I'm not seeing any other ways that Trump is alive (and not comatose/lobotomised/otherwise dead for all intents and purposes), not term-limited, and doesn't contest 2028; his base is too loyal and he's too stubborn.

("Trump is dead" is a real possibility, though, given his age and his propensity to attract assassins plus the aforementioned nuclear war risk.)

People don't like a loser, Trump's whole brand is winning and it's why he can't give up the last election. Two losses in a row and becoming even older is going to be enough to have people jump ship, even if his health doesn't decline biden style.

Or maybe a sufficient number of the people backing him are peeled away by some other movement. Just because the competition this cycle was weak doesn't mean it always will be.

Or maybe Trump has a stroke. Or maybe age takes its toll and he starts having that same vacant look Biden does. Assuming that an individual low likelihood event wont happen may be safe. But assuming no low likelihood events will happen is not.

Granted, I don't understand economics very well, but I don't understand the argument that the dollar is the world's reserve currency because the US can militarily dominate huge regions of the world. I can potentially see some indirect and relatively weak mechanisms that would connect the two, but I don't see any clear direct mechanism by which the military power would have a dominant impact on the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. Isn't the dollar the world's reserve currency because the US economy is huge, fairly dynamic, and - most importantly - stable?

If the US became isolationist but retained a very strong and stable economy, why would other countries switch to using some other currency other than the dollar as the reserve currency?

I'd also like to briefly address your point about Trump as a destabilizing factor. In my opinion, while he is destabilizing, the impact of this is effectively contained by our political system. The chances of him becoming a dictator, as you at least somewhat agree, is extremely small. Meanwhile, the Democrats are also a destabilizing factor. For example, I personally think that the combination of weak law enforcement in Democrat-run cities and frequent leftist street riots is significantly more destabilizing than everything that Trump has ever done put together, since it contributes to a sense of physical insecurity and a sense that one is living in anarchotyranny. The destabilizing effects on people are both directly physical - in the sense of street crime - and mental, in that living in such an atmosphere can make one rather grim, pessimistic about the country's future, and bitter at one's political opponents.

Trump might inspire a future Caesar, but the way I see it Democrats are already, right now, working on ripping apart our social order in a deleterious way. That's not what the vast majority of them think they are doing - they think that they are working to make the world a better place, but I believe that is what the actual consequences of some of their policies are.

The dollar is backed by the navy keeping shipping lanes open, as the pound was before it, and the Spanish dollar before that.

Of course, Spain and Britain are wealthy countries today. They happen to be much less so in world standings than they were at the height of their power(Britain in particular). But the average Brit didn’t start seeing real declines in standard of living until very recently.

The real question is ‘who becomes hegemon if the US collapses?’ Don’t make me laugh by saying China.

Leaving aside the very historically likely "something completely out of left field due to totally unforseen factors", the question is really just to ask ourselves who today can muster the most competent complex organization and is willing to swing power to get their way.

I think there's a real possibility for a corporation to be a contender this time. The power of nation states has been waning for quite a bit and they're all so exhausted that the idea the next Great Man and his retinue would be in the public sector almost seems silly.

On one hand, military power is a very jealously guarded privilege. On the other hand, large parts of the tech industry are aligning themselves to weapons manufacturing, automation and infrastructure in a way that could make something like this happen. Maybe the non-extractive parts of the MIC decide they're tired of subsidizing morons, cut out the middle man and rule the world directly.

My base case is that there won't be a great hegemon for a while though, that we're due for a long period of decentralization and diminishing power until someone kicks off the imperialism again from a direction that may be impossible to even imagine right now.

Economics and military strength are not directly linked per say, but there is a lot of overlap. There are certainly incentives for allied countries to hold large amounts of US assents, as well as to allow US companies access to their markets. We take for granted the fact that McDonald's is even allowed to exist in a lot of other countries. Without the implicit threat of force, we could see our access to foreign markets (both as a producer and as a consumer) diminish in the long term. And this would certainly make us poorer overall.

As to your other point, I agree that a lot of democratic policies are having an adverse effect on living conditions. If there were simply a vote on whether or not to continue with those policies, I would certainly vote no. But as it is, there are more factors to consider.

On the fake electors, I initially found this compelling, but not anymore. As far as I can tell the electors met, pledged their votes to Trump, and recorded this on paper on the appointed date. This was in anticipation that election results in their states could change, and if so there could be a problem if there were no elector votes recorded by the date specified in the Constitution.

There wasn’t a scheme to substitute these electors in place of the ones representing the state’s certified winner. On Jan 6th Trump’s ask of Pence was that he not certify the election, not that he count votes from the electors for Trump.

An alternate slate of electors also met and recorded their votes in Hawaii in 1968. Nixon was certified the winner, Kennedy’s electors met and recorded their votes anyway, and then later a recount went in Kennedy’s favor. Nixon, in his capacity as Vice President, counted the Kennedy electors from Hawaii.

I was referring more to the entire legal process that was attempted. As for the Jan 6th riot, to me that's a non-issue. More of a media circus than anything.

My primary concern is simply that democracy is a lot like the banking system in the sense that it requires everyone to have faith in the system working. Once a sufficient number of people stop having faith in it, it ceases to function. Because of that, I think claims of cheating should be taken quite seriously, but false claims should be treated very harshly.

This seems pretty reasonable.

Because of that, I think claims of cheating should be taken quite seriously, but false claims should be treated very harshly.

Do you feel similarly about all the slander against Justice Thomas?

But there obviously was cheating. When the intelligence agencies are running an op against one candidate then there was cheating. You already crossed the rubicon!

When you can choose which stream is the Rubicon after the fact, you can always make it so the other side is the one to cross the line.

Cheating in what sense of the word? Influence campaigns? Those have been run by everyone. Intelligence agencies, state actors, private companies, etc. Anyone who has something to gain by one administration winning can try and convince people. That's how the system runs.

But if by cheating you mean what Trump keeps claiming, which is that large numbers of fake ballots are being added to the count, then no, I do not believe it. I would need to see pretty strong evidence to substantiate this claim.

The reason I'm skeptical is because cheating in such a way would require a huge number of people keeping silent. Given that any one of them would stand to gain a lot by defecting, it really seems unlikely that all would keep silent. Contrast this with something like Epstein being killed. Do I think that was a conspiracy? Quite possibly. The number of people involved was small. That would have been much easier to keep under wraps.

Chain of custody was destroyed for tens or hundreds of thousands of ballots across swing states. Conveniently after counting stopped simultaneously across several swing states, and started finding massive returns for Biden. The evidencr you would use to prove that these votes were all legitimate doesn't exist, because it was destroyed.

But if by cheating you mean what Trump keeps claiming, which is that large numbers of fake ballots are being added to the count, then no, I do not believe it. I would need to see pretty strong evidence to substantiate this claim.

This isn't quite what you're asking for, but I believe there was some recent news that the immigrant communities in Michigan (in, for example, Hamtramck) have been shown to have substantial amounts of vote-buying going on, wherein empty absentee ballots are collected. Claims of this go back well before voter fraud was made a partisan issue with the 2020 election, in, for example, this story. Sure, I get that those are biased sources, but are they wrong? (Of course, it is unsurprising that a D-leaning political machine would be more likely to be investigated by R-leaning people.)

I don't know that that was enough to sway the election, but if he was aware that stuff like this was going on, suddenly his actions seem a bit less crazy.

You ask how a conspiracy would be kept under wraps. Well, in this case, first, it wasn't as if it wasn't talked about beforehand, as I pointed to. But second, the fact that it's an immigrant community would substantially help, as they'd be more isolated, and not as likely to speak English. I'm also not seeing what gains from defecting you are pointing to.

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Can you give a single example where our intelligence agencies knew there was a damaging story coming to hit one candidate in a domestic election and sprung into existence to ensure the media would believe the true story was false? This to my understanding is unprecedented (albeit it is possible it happens and we don’t find out)

Cheating in what sense of the word? Influence campaigns? Those have been run by everyone. Intelligence agencies, state actors, private companies, etc. Anyone who has something to gain by one administration winning can try and convince people. That's how the system runs.

This is absurd. If soldiers can have their First Amendment rights suspended for the duration of their service, then clandestine, not-democratically-accountable state agencies can (or rather should, because apparently they cannot) be told to keep their hands off elections. The idea that public service should remain politically neutral is not particularly novel.

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For those not familiar, the theory of how to accomplish this came from John Eastman:

[1] VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro Tempore Grassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).

[2] When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.

[3] At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of "electors appointed" – the language of the 12th Amendment – is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe. A "majority of the electors appointed" would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.

[4] Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who now claim, contrary to Tribe's prior position, that 270 is required. So Pence says, fine. Pursuant to the 12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote ..." Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.

[5] One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed and, upon getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break into their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean that a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one – a constitutional no-no (as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone – Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. – should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.

[6] The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position – that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.

This is, of course, quite norm breaking. I think it's reasonable to argue that it's not even a good-faith legal theory, that it's just plain illegal and Eastman knew it was illegal, and he was just doing wishcasting to try to give power to his guy. But really, it's not any more of a "coup" then the Compromise of 1877.

"Coup" is the closest word I can think to describe it. To my reasoning, one party is unilaterally inventing a conspiracy (note that "election fraud" only seems to be a concern when a Democrat wins) then using said conspiracy to attempt to stay on power when legitimately he was the losing candidate and must transition power.

Let me put it this way. Let us pretend that my accusations were true of a hypothetical person that is not Trump, and that they had succeeded. What term would be better to describe it?

This one is Kamala's to lose.

The biggest sign was how quickly the Trump assassination story died down. The second Biden stepped down, he overwhelmed the media cycle and wiped the slate clean on both sides. Ofc, getting the support of everyone other than the crazies really helps. Every institution (left and right) is aligned on putting her in power. Look at Trump's new twitter, it has fully morphed into the caricature that Hillary claimed it was in 2016. (https://x.com/realDonaldTrump).

Kamala has picked a golden retriever of a VP candidate and has managed to be in public life for decades without expressing a substantial opinion. This is useful. It allows a vibes based campaign to flourish. If you have said nothing, they can't attack you. One big scandal from Kamala or Tim can potentially turn the tides, but so far she's been doing well.

Trump camp seems clueless too. Kamala is happy to fight in the dirt with Trump, because she too can have a full debate without saying anything substantial. So much energy was expended painting Hillary, Biden and Obama as evil, that Trump doesn't have much novel angles of attack. On top of that, JD Vance is clearly a terrible VP candidate (as much as us Rationalist types might agree with him). Kamala has avoided the obvious landmines too. She has steered clear of supporting Palestine and immediately stopped talking about the new capital-gains-tax before it could turn scandalous. She was a harsh prosecutor, so the crime angle doesn't work. Kamala has lucked into a pretty defensible position, because she is an uninspiring candidate for democratic primaries. But, her track record is pretty centrist for the generals.

All that being said, the electoral college is surely going to make this one a lot closer than it actually is. (ofc a lot can change between now and nov)

Kamala has no potential positive external events, and many negative ones.

The economy is the biggest one. Unemployment can't really go down in a way that matters to voters, wages can't really go up without driving up inflation and interest rates, the stock market is doing fine but no one cares. She can't get good news, only bad news. A recession would doom her.

And on foreign policy, Kamala is in a terrible position, because once again the Biden team is by Blob standards doing a good job. The stalemates in Israel and Ukraine are the best results the mainstream can get. Any side "winning" would be horrible for her. Any ceasefire is going to taste like ash to 2/3 of people.

And she's constantly at the mercy of various ongoing crises allowed to fester in America. An illegal immigrant could rape a sufficiently photogenic blonde. Some teenager who thinks they're trans could beat up a girl in a locker room. Some particularly bad wave of fentanyl overdose deaths could run through the country. Letting these things fester puts you at the mercy of the eye of sauron.

Kamala could lose an election of the economy goes to shit, if Russia wins the war or if illegal immigrants suddenly decide to start raping pretty women.

Yeah, you're right. They could derail the campaign....but that would derail any campaign. If anything, hoping for freak events shows that Kamala holds the cards right now.

A lot can happen between sept-nov, but it is still only 3 months.

The difference is that nothing positive can break for Kamala.

Zooming back to our last normal, non Trump campaign, Obama and Romney both had hopes and fears from unemployment numbers, or overseas entanglements, or scandals and controversies. Obama could have been sunk by bad numbers or buoyed by positive ones, and Romney vice versa. By comparison, Don has nothing to lose and Kamala has nothing to gain.

The difference is that nothing positive can break for Kamala.

What if Biden is declared unfit in early October and a new wave of enthusiasm for the First Woman President gives her a 5% boost to carry her through the election a week or two after she assumes office?

That didn't happen in Veep, and that show is unfortunately a crystal ball for US political developments now.

...I guess? But I don't see that happening. If anything, Biden resigning might remove some first woman president energy since at that point it already happened.

If that was going to be beneficial it already would have happened.

An illegal immigrant could rape a sufficiently photogenic blonde.

There is no one so photogenic the media couldn't ignore.

Yea the media smothers all the migrant rape and murder stories pretty hard. The only migrant murder/rape stories that make it out is if it was mass captured on social media and impossible to ignore, like the muslims attacking random white people at the pub in the UK. Without public eyeballs the media just repeatedly confirms coulters law over and over again.

Illegal immigrant rapes Taylor Swift. The dankest timeline.

With her resources & body guards, my immediate suspicion would be that it was Taylor doing the raping.

She has private security.

I’m not suggesting it is likely to happen and hope it doesn’t. But I’m just saying that would break out

Alright... Taylor Swift rapes illegal immigrant.

How terrible, can you imagine the backlash for peaceful members of the Swift family.

I think that's actually the only plausible way that such sex could even occur, given many people's stated beliefs about rape via power differential.

The stalemates in Israel and Ukraine are the best results the mainstream can get. Any side "winning" would be horrible for her.

Am I missing something? A Ukraine win sounds like something she could brag about, though obviously it's not about to happen before the election concludes.

And she's constantly at the mercy of various ongoing crises allowed to fester in America. An illegal immigrant could rape a sufficiently photogenic blonde. Some teenager who thinks they're trans could beat up a girl in a locker room. Some particularly bad wave of fentanyl overdose deaths could run through the country. Letting these things fester puts you at the mercy of the eye of sauron.

All of these can be swept under the rug by the media until she wins. You need something that breaks containment. A recession would probably be the worst that can happen to her.

A Ukraine win would be a disaster for Kamala politically, as the Nazi-auxiliaries start launching reprisals against collaborators, which for a sufficiently large Ukrainian win would include most of the population of Crimea. Winning would not be a liberation, it would be a conquest. Closer to a shorter term Nagorno-Karabakh than de Gaulle rolling into Paris.

As for media containment, I just don't believe in it anymore. It doesn't exist.

https://sectv.com/lehigh-valley/channel-lineup/

If you live in PA (the keystone swing state) and you get CNN, you also get Fox News NewsMax and OANN. Twitter is somewhere between open to and pushing right wing stories.

Who is doing the containment, the newspapers no one reads?

For all the efforts of the NYT and Slate, for some godforsaken reason I know where Loudon Virginia is, and more about Hunter Biden than I ever wanted to know. When a story gets momentum, it goes. People still do really believe and care about things.

I mean, the UGCC convincing Ukraine to suspend freedom of religion isn’t on Fox News.

The kind of Ukraine win you are talking about probably leads to nuclear weapons being used. Which is bad.

There is no world where Ukraine wins decisively. Both sides are tired and maintaining stalemates.

With the impending Russian winter, it is too late to start a fresh invasion. There isn't enough time to establish control of newly captured outpost and establish supply chains before the country freezes over.

I agree with this. I was responding to a comment from the the other poster about Ukraine conquering Crimea.

Exactly.

So Kamala can't have Ukraine lose, and she can't have Ukraine win. She can't have Israel lose, and she can't have Israel win (although that's more or less categorically impossible anyway). Only bad news from abroad.

For all the efforts of the NYT and Slate, for some godforsaken reason I know where Loudon Virginia is, and more about Hunter Biden than I ever wanted to know. When a story gets momentum, it goes.

I don't think you're exactly a typical normie.

If you live in PA (the keystone swing state) and you get CNN, you also get Fox News NewsMax and OANN. Twitter is somewhere between open to and pushing right wing stories.

This might have (and did) work back in 2016, people were a bit more open mided back then. Nowadays any news coming from the outgroup is immediately dismissed.

People still do really believe and care about things.

I sure hope you're right.

Kamala has picked a golden retriever of a VP candidate

Stolen valor.

JD Vance is clearly a terrible VP candidate

Outside the media distortion field he's an extremely capable speaker.

This kind of political analysis basically assumes that the mainstream media frame is the only frame. It isn't. Most voters reject it.

can you show me examples of JD Vance being an effective speaker? I'm not doubting you but I want to see this.

extremely capable speaker

Being an intelligent & articulate speaker does not mean you're a capable speaker.

Obama is considered a generational speaker not because of the contents of his speech. It is because he can spontaneously create 'Russell Crowe Gladiator' tier moments around him, week in and week out. I used to do a lot of stage performances & skit comedy when I was younger. Obama is the greatest performer I've seen on TV. You should slow his videos down and study him. His suits, posture, micro adjustments, voice cracks, his wife, his kids.....everything is perfectly done. If you put a obsessive director in a room and asked him to micro-adjust a public speaking movie scene to platonic perfection, you'd get Obama on any random weekday. And no, this isn't me retroactively fawning over Obama's traits. Because the textbooks were written long before him. This came out years before Obama. If you saw it today, you'd think writer lazily wrote a 'what if Obama had aids' script. But in fact, Obama has modeled himself after the archetypical black inspiration that Hollywood had been doing for decades. (see any Denzel, Morgan Freeman role). Putting on that performance matters big time in popularity contests.

Public speaking is diction, content and performance. JD Vance is bad at this specific type of performative public speaking. And it's the most important one for winning presidential elections.

Pete Buttigieg is a similar type of speaker to Vance, but he adds narrative pacing to his conversations, allowing him to have little "gotcha!" wins and "damn brother!" retorts. Vance comes off.....academic. He is a 'bad' public speaker, and us nerdy types liking his speech style has very little impact on how the rest of the world perceives it.

I always thought Obama was a mediocre public speaker propped up by media hype and social consensus. My evidence for this is that now that he's out of office, nobody especially cares about the occasional speech he gives. Every few years the left falls in blind love with these wunderkids who all present the same front: Obama, Beto, Wendy Davis, Stacey Abrams, now Kamala. The men are skinny and roll their sleeves up, the women are spunky and loud. We go through this routine every few years, and the eventual result is always that, win or lose, this once-in-a-generation political superstar is revealed as another mediocrity who doesn't really know anything but runs great when the media is nice for them. I think subconsciously it's all aping after the JFK aesthetic.

Vance screwed up a conversation with normie minimum wage employees in a donut shop. He is bad at many types of public speaking, though he can write a decent essay.

Stolen valor

I find it hard to believe that the average voter - or indeed almost any voter not already all in for Trump - who cares about the distinction between serving at a rank and retiring at that rank, especially when it's the Minnesota National Guard. Complete inside baseball.

Outside the media distortion field he's an extremely capable speaker.

This kind of political analysis basically assumes that the mainstream media frame is the only frame. It isn't. Most voters reject it.

Well he simply is not popular at the moment.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/jd-vance/

I find it hard to believe that the average voter - or indeed almost any voter not already all in for Trump - who cares about the distinction between serving at a rank and retiring at that rank, especially when it's the Minnesota National Guard. Complete inside baseball.

He lied about serving in combat, or allowed his allies to lie on his behalf. You cannot systematically lie about your military service and then claim, when finally called out, that it doesn't really matter anyways. Then why lie?

Well he simply is not popular at the moment.

JD Vance propelled his unlikely political career on the basis of his memoirs, which were unusually popular and well-regarded. The man is very smart and a good public defender of Trump's ideas. I predict that these qualities will age well and any temporary unpopularity is the result of a concentrated media push.

It isn't. Most voters reject it.

I don't know about the latter, but it's definitely frustrating to have that frame pushed here by default, without anyone bothering to make an explicit argument for it.

That "frame" is basically the Harris campaign strategy. It's being pushed on all the media, social media, and through all the informal Democratic networks in all the institutions. It would be shocking if it didn't make it here.

The Motte is honestly the most fatalistic place I know. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe smart people read history and spend too much time contemplating the death of Western Civilization. The Republicans I know are in good spirits about the election. Trump is polling well, at or slightly above a tie, whene he was supposedly -10 this time 2020. He's been endorsed by Musk, Tulsi, and RFK, and is putting together a unity ticket of conservatives, moderates, and classical liberals. The assassination shocked a lot of powerful people into joining his team. RFK's people are organized and working with MAGA. Then I come here and it's all about how Kamala is too powerful, nothing Republicans can do is working, Trump is hated, Trump is doomed, etc. etc. etc. I really don't get it.

Most people here just hate Trump. 'The adults are back in charge' was the common phrase uttered when Biden was elected, which aged like sour milk. 'It's just a stutter', which also aged like sour milk, was the common reply when others pointed out Biden's declining mental capabilities.

For all the claims that this place is very much right-wing/alt-right coded, it's still very much a liberal-leaning bubble that tries to hide alot of it's biases behind a layer of claimed neutral observations.

They can put it to his name, but it's not Trump they hate. It's the cold reality of neoliberal consensus being shattered. If not for Trump, somebody else would be the face of history not ending, and they would hate him too for rallying the plebs against those that know better.

I know this because Europe has a lot of slightly different political microcosms and every single one has its own avatar of "populism" that the middle class ritualistically fears. In the UK "Trump" is called "Brexit".

I just wish this was the 40s and they actually had the balls to say that their rule is scientific and good and that you shouldn't oppose them because they'll bring wonders and solve your problems instead of protesting impotently that the plebs should know their place and shut up about the obvious shambles their betters are making of everything.

My kingdom for a competent elite, any competent elite.

Most people who post here are Grey Tribe and ensconced in heavily blue cities. Some are not American. They are not a good representation of the American electorate.

There's something to be said about us growing older and more cynical, remembering all the shenanigans they managed to pull off with impunity, and going from outraged amazement to it's-all-so-tiresomed resignation, but personally I think Trump stands a decent chance of winning. The fatalism might set in later on, because the first question I want to ask is "so what?", after seeing how his first term went.

I imagine Napoleon and Alexander felt the same way: so many victories, success unimaginable, unparalleled, and yet, and yet, and yet. So much unrealized. It's really always been this way.

I don't imagine even a Mega Trump who accomplishes more than anyone can imagine can solve all the problems we need to solve. I don't imagine these problems can even be solved in my lifetime. But I imagine that a lot of good can be done anyways.

I find it hard to give Kamala much credit here beyond being able to thread the needle between acting like a harmless ingenue and projecting enough professional demeanor that there is no actual feeling of wrongness when imagining her as a president. Rather, I'm left impressed with the perfectly choreographed campaign that started with a big and somewhat crass push to caricature Trump and Vance as creepy (that TV ad someone here linked a while back). This was followed by an almost complete denial of media air to Trump, except to prominently describe them as "weird" and thereby subtly keep the memory of the initial blitz alive.

The media discipline in following this script was basically flawless and extended even to cultural vassals like DE, and seems to have been calibrated to tickle the same social receptors that enable people to rapidly catch on when a member of their peer group fucked up one time too many and there is an unspoken consensus to quietly cut them off. It must have taken a great amount of internal whipping to stop any and all outlets from defecting and farming TDS engagement by reporting on his shenanigans, but short of dying, killing someone, withdrawing or going to jail, he will probably not get rent-free headlines again.

What surprises me is how little self-respect the corporate media seem to have. The Harris campaign treats reporters with complete disdain. Harris refuses to answer even the most basic questions, let alone explain any substantive policy proposals. The DNC handed out hundreds of press credentials/passes not to actual reporters but to TikTok influencers. The DNC gave clueless celebrities the choicest access to insiders in a display reminiscent of a foreigner’s pre-planned trip to Beijing or Pyongyang. Reporters fawned over the cult of personality of an empty vessel for President. Do they have no shame? Do Comcast and Time Warner shareholders really care so little about journalism in favor of maximizing profit?

Glenn Greenwald, an actual journalist, covered these sentiments very well. I would refer you to his opinion pieces.

Kamala is happy to fight in the dirt with Trump, because she too can have a full debate without saying anything substantial.

Then why hasn't she done any interviews, answered any questions from the media, or agreed to more debates? She's terrified of being put on the spot. Remember, this is the woman who was so nervous about having dinner with a big doner that she had her staff put on a practice dinner for her.

Why is she gunning for debates with mics on, now? It’s clear her team think she can say nothing for an hour while interrupting Trump and looking ‘strong’.

Why is she gunning for debates with mics on, now? It’s clear her team think she can say nothing for an hour while interrupting Trump and looking ‘strong’.

Trump defeats himself when he can't stop talking, which is why his 2020 debate with Biden went so poorly for him due to his constant interruptions, but in the 2024 debate Biden had several uninterrupted moments of looking old and weak. A closed mic helps Trump even though/because it goes against's Trump's nature.

I think they keep changing rules and taunting Trump in the hope of avoiding the debates altogether. Trump is too weird to debate, he does odd things over and over, and reactions to them are unpredictable.

My theory is that she thinks that the longer Trump talks the weaker he looks. Trump talks in streams of consciousness that often wander completely off-topic. For someone like Kamala who has barely any record and Isn't that good of a speaker, why not let him ramble and try to jump on the weakest thing he said?

Don't know if it will work (he's called "Teflon Don" for a reason). But maybe she'll have better luck by not being a geriatric man with a history of gaffes.

My guess: goading trump into responding, then cutting him off with a haughty "a powerful Black woman is speaking" (gestures to cut his mic)

They are absolutely angling for an "I'm speaking" moment. Same thing with Biden's "will you be quiet" moment that received extensive and fawning media repetition.

The biggest sign was how quickly the Trump assassination story died down. The second Biden stepped down, he overwhelmed the media cycle and wiped the slate clean on both sides.

There's a lot of passive voice here! Media outlets consist of actual people that make decisions about things. When we say that the Trump assassination died down, what we mean is that the media doesn't really have much curiosity about the shooter or why he putatively went unnoticed. Likewise, when we say that Biden stepped down and everyone rallied around Kamala, what we mean is that the media stopped being curious about what exactly Nancy Pelosi meant by doing things the "easy way or the hard way" and why it was that no one really mentioned that Biden was plainly senile.

It's hard for me to see how the Trump assassination attempt could have stayed in the news longer than it did. Two things that keep stories in the news are mystery, and continuing developments. There was no mystery as to the identity of the shooter, and the continuing developments were naturally limited. With a murder, there's an announcement, a police investigation, a suspect identified, an arrest, hearings, a trial, appeals, etc. With a missing persons case, like Natalee Holloway or the plane that disappeared, there's endless speculation on what may have happened, as well as updates from the continuing investigation. With this, there was nothing. The shooter was dead, and we didn't learn anything interesting about him other than that he lived a few blocks from where my grandparents lived (which was only of interest to people from the area). After a couple days we learned nothing interesting about the shooter, and nothing of note happened other than the announcement of the House investigation and some remarks by the various law enforcement agencies blaming each other (I probably heard more of this than most because local police talked to the news in Pittsburgh after the Secret Service threw them under the bus).

Now, it might still stay in the news if there's nothing more interesting to talk about, but two days later the GOP Convention started, kicked off by Trump's VP announcement, and that was inherently more interesting than an crime with no further developments. Then a week later Biden dropped out, and the Olympics started, and by that point it was hard to see what coverage they could have even run about the assassination without it being the kind of pointless drivel that causes people to reach for the remote.

There was no mystery as to the identity of the shooter

Officially, maybe, but speculation about Maxwell Yearick is still circulating on social media.

The shooter was dead

The patsy was dead, and what about the other shooters?

The patsy was dead, and what about the other shooters?

More effort than this, please.

This is illustrative of the complete lack of interest being shown by the media. We have many eyewitnesses saying multiple shooters. We have audio from all over with bullets sounding, and we can count them, and it doesn't match what the patsy allegedly did.

But if you don't know there were other shots, and don't know there were other shooters, because the media you choose has chosen to keep you uninformed of that fact, then what an I supposed to do? I can't choose for you.

Didn't it come out pretty quickly that local police returned fire, missed, and then the service ended the issue? That's multiple different guns right there.

The congress-dude who's independently investigating (see gattsuru's link) says that the local SWAT guy ran across the open field towards the action, engaged with his AR-15 and got one round off hitting the butt of the guy's rifle (ie. pretty near his face and a good shot all things considered) causing the shooter to pause his activities and possibly jamming the gun by fucking up the buffer tube -- pretty interesting stuff, and the fact that you or I (who are presumably more interested than average, given our current venue) didn't hear about it on the news is indeed kind of... weird.

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The shooter was dead, and we didn't learn anything interesting about him other than that he lived a few blocks from where my grandparents lived (which was only of interest to people from the area).

There were repeated and conflicting reports about the shooter's social media (including the possibility that [the deputy FBI director in charge of the investigation mislead Congress on the matter), the shooter's body was cremated before the autopsy was released, we have no information about how the Secret Service fucked up so badly that they couldn't pick up a radio but the steady trickle of how badly they managed to fuck that up, that particular event was apparently the first(!?) post-Presidency Trump event with any countersniper presence from the Secret Service, and a whistleblower has come out claiming that the Secret Service headquarters "encouraged agents in charge of the trip not to request any additional security assets in its formal manpower request".

Oh, and I still like the 'bicameral, bipartisan' process that the Rowe claims to have, in an organization that doesn't have a 'cameral' to start with.

There's also the part where Congressional democrats had been trying to pass a bill to strip Trump of his Secret Service protection. But none of this matters. Nothing matters unless the Press wants it to matter.

When we say that the Trump assassination died down, what we mean is that the media doesn't really have much curiosity about the shooter or why he putatively went unnoticed.

There's this fascinating genre of Tweet/Post/Comment/Blog that I've seen among certain kinds of Rightists in the last month that goes something like "Why aren't we talking more about the Trump Assassination attempt? That was a really big deal guys!" But they don't seem to have anything to say about it to spark a discussion.

There's some Monday morning quarterbacking stuff with the Secret Service, but it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere interesting. The stochastic terrorism stuff never got any traction, with everything we know about the shooter making it feel like a reach, and there's not much appetite on the Right for "let's all cool down a little." It's not clear to me what advantage he's getting out of going in the little hamster aquarium they have him in now, I don't feel like he's any more likely to get shot tomorrow than he was yesterday.

I'm always kind of confused by this confusion about why the story died down, what else was there to talk about?

Anything to say?

!!!!

Ad data purchased by Heritage shows a person regularly visiting Crooks home was also regularly going to a restaurant next door to FBI in DC.

Whistleblowers from SS say they were told not to ask for more people because none would be given.

SS who killed Crooks were the second shooters at Crooks. First shot by local cops hit Crooks's rifle.

The SS sniper team did not take local police radios set for them for the event..

Plenty of oddities!

What does the first shot hitting the gun mean?

The current Official Story of the shooting is that:

  • A total of ten shots were fired.
  • "8 shots were fired by [the shooter] from his firing (and dying) position on the AGR rooftop."
  • "The 9th shot fired on J13 was from a Butler SWAT operator from the ground about 100 yards away from the AGR building... He stopped [the shooter] and importantly, I believe the shot damaged the buffer tube... This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, [the shooter]’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his 8th shot."
  • "The 10th (and, I believe, final) shot was fired from the southern counter-sniper team... entered somewhere around the left mouth area and exited the right ear area. Instant over. This entry-exit aligns with USSS southern counter-sniper team position."

That is, a rando on the ground managed faster and more accurate counter-sniper operations, possibly even disabling the shooter, than the actual federal counter-sniper team.

... Why do we expect significantly higher performance from federal than local sharpshooters? I would think that's a skill that caps fairly quickly.

Sharpshooting is a pretty serious skill, both in terms of developing and maintaining direct shooting ability, and also in terms of developing a broader set of situational awareness, learning to see things rather than patterns, and developing stamina.

More generally, counter-snipers are set up in what they've selected as an ideal position, generally shooting from prone position, and often are working with spotter assistance. The Butler SWAT individual had to sprint from a location with obscured view due to foliage, get a sight picture, and was almost certainly firing from a standing position (albeit possibly with support/cover).

It's 100 yards, which isn't some amazing world-defying feat, but it's one that I would normally expect a counter-sniper team to excel at in ways that most police officers (and most SWAT) don't really prioritize. ((Though obv this guy may well have been an outlier.))

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..that SS absolutely fumbled it and even looks somewhat suspect because as the primary security on the they site failed to engage a guy in civilian clothing pointing a rifle at their subject ?

How long did the Uvalde shooting story last in the news? How long did Sandy Hook Elementary stay in the spotlight? Both cases involved controversy, to put it mildly. The incompetence of Uvalde PD rivals even the Secret Service's vaunted inability to pour water from a boot with instructions on the heel.

The 'stochastic terrorism' stuff is always a reach -- it's never a commentary on the perpetrator, but on the rhetoric of your outgroup. The Pulse nightclub shooting was blamed on homophobia until it became clear that it was a terrorist attack. Media bias means that the people in charge of news (90% leftists) likes to make a story about their outgroup, no matter how implausible the tie-in, but has no appetite for doing the same to stories about their ingroup. How long did it take after the Trump assassination attempt for Biden to double down on calling Trump a danger to democracy?

Let's say the roles were reversed -- let's imagine a world where today Kamala Harris dodges a literal bullet by half an inch on live TV, and the shooter turned out to have the internet posting history of Thomas Matthew Crooks. 1) How quickly would the attack be blamed on right-wing extremism, and how persistently would that blame 'stick' once more facts were in? 2) How long would the story remain on the 'front page' of media outlets? 3) How long would the story and its many many permutations (e.g., gun control, Secret Service incompetence) last in the news cycle? 4) How long would the story survive in the public consciousness, off of the front page but still in regular media references (e.g., whenever Trump says anything that could be interpreted as a call for violence?)

The answer feels almost self-evident. The only real question would be, by what margin would Kamala Harris win in November?

I'm always kind of confused by this confusion about why the story died down, what else was there to talk about?

Yet somehow there's never a shortage of 'something else to talk about' in those other cases.

There's no appetite on the part of the victim(s) in this case to make the story about gun control. And the Dems lacked the guts to push it. No other angle really sticks.

Without gun control, we wouldn't talk much about school shootings either.

I have to put my cards on the table: I bought two ARs that Monday on fear of a fresh gun control push. More fool me, I guess.

If Kamala were shot at by a normie Dem they/them of color, the story would disappear almost before the shell casing landed; which would be the equivalent.

TINSTAPP

There Is No Such Thing As A Presidential Prospect

So many anointed ones have flamed out, from Aaron Burr to Adlai Stevenson to Mario Cuomo to Jon Huntsman to HRC. More than four years out, it just doesn't matter. There are fifty maybe presidents for every president.

If Kamala were shot at by a normie Dem they/them of color, the story would disappear almost before the shell casing landed;

The story would be picked up by every major news organization and not dropped for years, much how they responded when Gabbie Giffords was shot, but not when Steve Scalise was shot.

Giffords’ shooting was a huge deal. I don’t think it can be understated how pivotal that event changed American politics. In my opinion, Giffords was being prepared for a long career in the U.S. Senate, perhaps even to become President someday. The shooting changed the trajectory of the U.S. forever. The media was right to cover it so much, because the shooting effectively robbed the U.S. of a future President. In another timeline we might be debating a Trump vs. Giffords election right now.

I say this as someone who lived somewhat close by to the ‘Congress on Your Corner’ event where the shooting happened. It was 2011. Giffords had served in the House of Representatives for the prior four years, and in Arizona state politics for the prior decade. She started in politics at the age of 30, and was 40 years old at the time of the shooting. A Jew, she is related to celebrity stardom (Gwyneth Paltrow) and married a corn-fed, non-Jew military guy, the current junior Senator, Mark Kelly, a man with no political aspirations himself before the shooting happened in 2011. Giffords went to the correct private liberal arts colleges, was a Fulbright Scholar, ran her family’s business, and spearheaded economic development initiatives in Hispanic, rural Arizona. Check, check, check. This was a woman with ambition for higher office. She had never spoken at the DNC but she was young. She, too, could have her 2004 Obama moment. Until a schizophrenic loser tragically came out of the woodwork.

How many ‘Congress on Your Corner’ mass public campaign events do politicians hold nowadays? Basically none, I think. If you’re not an incumbent you still have to hold outreach events, but they happen in private establishments, often with guest lists and operational security to control access. Or you just cut the populist facade and hold dinners that charge $50,000 per plate to attend. The Giffords shooting also sparked the resurgence of the gun control movement. The shooting was the beginning move toward a greater political polarization, since the media blamed Sarah Palin and her ham-fisted Internet ad about putting elected Democrats ‘in the crosshairs’ for unseating them at re-election.

Were the shooting not to happen in 2011, or if Giffords’ career hadn’t effectively ended that day, I have no doubt that she would have been Senator instead of Mark Kelly. They wanted her, not her husband. But she’s part of the same Orwellian Inner Party apparatus, that’s why she got a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022 as well as a speaking slot at the DNC this year in 2024, long after she’s become irrelevant. The DNC apparatus wanted her to become Senator, maybe even President. But it wasn’t meant to be.

It might have robbed the US of multiple future presidents.

Steve Scaline was the No. 2 House Republican, got shot with half a dozen other Republicans outside, and the media shrugged. Rand Paul got attacked by his neighbor not long after his presidential run, and he got laughed at by the media. Trump almost got his head blown off and the media is not even curioud about the investigation, after several news orgs have put a ban on the iconic photo of Trump pumping his fist. Meanwhile, I remember coverage of Giffords being so overwhelming that Sarah Palin was blamed for the shooting because she had a campaign ad that showed crosshairs.

I can't speak to Giffords' potential. I had never heard of her before the shooting. Maybe she was poised for great things. But there are hundreds of national politicians actively jockeying to become national names, and dozens at any moment who are close to actual power. I can't say with confidence that Giffords would have achieved special renown if not for the shooting. (I don't think it's meaningful that she got a Medal of Honor -- any sitting Congressman who gets shot and lives probably rightfully deserves one.)

Nah. I've never heard a peep from the Mainstream about the trans whatever that shot up that Xtian school. Giffords shooting launched a whole political career, but it's primarily been about, once again, gun control.

My dad loves Tim Walz. I haven't seen him like a politician this much in decades. It's weird to me, because I'm way too cynical. It feels like when my wife makes me watch TikTok videos that have obviously been staged, and I can't enjoy them because I can't suspend disbelief, while she does. She's not a gullible person in general, her job depends on not being taken in, but she enjoys the videos and I can't. My dad is a smart guy, and a very cynical guy about politics, but Tim Walz' nice-guy schtick really works for him. He teared up repeating lines from one of Walz' speeches to me (my dad tears up a lot as he's gotten older, actually, and it makes me very uncomfortable), and he won't stop inventing things he wants Tim Walz to say to J.D. Vance.

I don't really get it. I like Tim Walz' schtick well enough, as schticks go it's better than some, but buying into lock stock and barrel seems kinda over the top. On the other hand, he's so out of the great white north that it seems Republicans won't come up with decent attacks before we get to November. ((Before someone brings them up, no, the horse semen attacks weren't decent, nor were the weirdo implications about race fetishism. The riot stuff might stick eventually, but it hasn't so far.)) Idk, I just can't get up that kind of enthusiasm. When I listened to Pod Save America after the debate, I'd hear them curse and think that I need to work on cursing less.

Trump supporters seem grimly determined. It's hard to get excited about Trump anymore, we know what we're getting.

I feel bad for JD Vance. I identify a little with him, and he's just getting hammered on bullshit day in and day out, over and over. I don't think he's doing great, but he can't get out of his own way. In many ways, 2024 Vance is like 2020 Harris: he's running against his own type. We're seeing it, once again, with Dave McCormick, who will spend millions of dollars telling me he was in the army for a minute and likes hunting; until I read his wikipedia I never knew he got a fuckin' PhD from Princeton, and he never brings up that he ran one of the world's biggest hedge funds. Vance and McCormick are running against their own achievements and their own intelligence and their own qualifications, which says something absolutely tragic about the Republican base electorate.

But why does he like Walz other than positive media coverage?

I don't really think it's attributable entirely to positive media coverage. Walz' schtick is different, qualitatively, from Trump's schtick or Vance's schtick or Dave McCormick or Bob Casey.

It happens to be perfectly targeted to my dad. He watches a bit of Fox News here and there, and reads the WSJ daily. It's not an MSNBC problem or a Twitter problem. It's just a good product.

I feel bad for JD Vance. I identify a little with him, and he's just getting hammered on bullshit day in and day out, over and over. I don't think he's doing great, but he can't get out of his own way.

I mean, it's almost impossible to "get out of your own way" when malicious hyper-scrutiny is applied to every facial twitch, and it's definitely impossible when people simply make things up and meme them into existence with the support of 24/7 news media. This is exactly the Mitt Romney treatment all over again.

Yeah. I thought the same thing about Joe, once people decide you are senile, we all do things that offer evidence.

my dad tears up a lot as he's gotten older, actually, and it makes me very uncomfortable

Has he had heart surgery? Don't know if it's been studied but family legend from doctors, nurses, and patients is that heart surgery has significant effects on making people, especially men, more openly emotional. Not just a "brush with death" effect, other surgeries and close calls don't seem to do it.

Yes, actually!

On the other hand, he's so out of the great white north that it seems Republicans won't come up with decent attacks before we get to November.

Stolen valor?

Vance and McCormick are running against their own achievements and their own intelligence and their own qualifications, which says something absolutely tragic about the Republican base electorate.

The people attacking Vance for his accomplishments are Democrats. Tim Walz literally said that Vance couldn't be a true country boy because he went to Yale. This is "stop hitting yourself" misdirection.

Show me the David McCormick tv spot where he mentions having a PhD in foreign relations, or running the world's largest hedge fund. If it exists, he doesn't play it during the news, jeopardy, or Phillies games in my town.

Literally an untreatable resume for a senator, and he's choosing to talk about high school wrestling.

Stolen valor

Oh God, I have to hear about it every day, how my dad can't believe how stupid it is to attack a 40 year old man for retiring from the military.

This is where I get confused about the accusations of one-sided astroturfing.

No one begrudges him retiring per se. It’s how he retired and what he said afterwards.

Tim Walz left service before his unit deployed to war, carefully timed so the official orders hadn't come through so "he didn't know". Fine, it happens. Then across a long political career he is introduced as having served in war, or makes references to carrying weapons of war, in times of war. How did everybody get the idea that Tim Walz served in war? Who told that lie to every introductory speaker for 20 years?

It might not matter to legacy media but there are people out there who care and are offended. It only makes sense to characterize Walz as a charming scandal-free puppy in a partisan media frame that ignores all such problems.

my dad tears up a lot as he's gotten older, actually, and it makes me very uncomfortable

Mine too, I think it’s a hormonal thing unironically.

@FiveHourMarathon what's wrong with it? Personally I think being able to cry more freely can be quite masculine - the Greeks and Romans saw it as a sign of a strong character. (of course it had to be paired with physical strength and oratory skill etc etc)

It's not that he cries, or that it's a sign of defective character, it just makes me uncomfortable because he's my father and we're WASPy enough that it's atypical.

Like, ok, last week we're at a funeral for a friend he'd known for 50 years, talking to his widow of 62 years. There's gonna be tears.

But I stop by in the morning and we're reading the WSJ and he starts talking about a TV ad and chokes up? He happened to catch half of a black and white version of Les Miserables on TCM last night and he's telling me the plot and BAWLING? He's telling me about Tim Walz pausing his speech to get a woman help and crying?

It's weird for me.

Ok wow yeah those are a bit intense. Interesting.

It's not hard. Tim is a guy everyone knows. Almost Forrest Gump-esque in his sincerity. Join the military, teaches at a school, coaches a football team and then runs for office. Minneapolis is one of the few non-coastal American cities with a positive storyline from the last decade. Dude has made no money from politics, loves his kids, is religious and just kinda does his thing.

You know when people say, "I'd vote for a random dude off the street, rather than a slimy Harvard educated lawyer."........ Tim is the random guy off the street.

In response to riots in Minnesota, Walz partially activated the Minnesota National Guard on May 28, and fully activated it on May 30. President Trump reacted to Walz's actions by saying that he was "very happy" and that he did "fully agree with the way [Walz] handled it … what [the Minnesota National Guard] did in Minneapolis was incredible". Trump called Walz an "excellent guy".

Even Trump seems to like the guy (I know wikipedia is obviously biased, but the events happened)

Kamala is clearly going for a "neapolitan ice cream" sort of campaign. She needed an inoffensive flavor combination. She picked an inoffensive VP candidate.

I feel bad for JD Vance

I don't. You saw it with Bloomberg, and you see it with Vance. The typical executive types are too used to talking to intelligent people. Politics is a craft. Like standup, you need to work your audience. Meet them at their level. Vance is like people I meet in my peer group. The main problem with Vance is he's too smart to work for Trump. He can't play a wise-cracking used car salesman because he isn't one. He was only chosen because of the paypal mafia's outside support. He knew what he was getting into. Should've known better.

Ive never met someone like Walz. Every person who served I know underplays their service. Every teacher I know doesn't start pedophile adjacent clubs for kids (except the one who was arrested for giving 16 year olds booze and we all knew was a creep). Walz is an outlier in my life in that he simply lies about everything in very important ways. Much more important than Trump saying he had the biggest crowd somewhere. If Walz was in Vance's position he'd already have dropped out, that is how bad he is and how extreme the Democrat media advantage is.

What? I dont even understand this comment. Are you saying Walz is a pedo because he appears to be an actual good person?

How does this comment have 9 upvotes?

What makes you feel like he is an "actual good person?" Hes a hardcore LGBT ideologue that started a social club at his school that could easily be used as a vehicle for grooming.

A more common place for abuse has always been church youth groups. Every town I have lived in has had a scandal with one, and those are just the abusers that get caught.

More teachers than religious groups engage in sex acts with their subordinates. Even per capita it is very close.

hardcore LGBT ideologue

Not an evil act.

started a social club at his school

Not an evil act.

that could easily be used as a vehicle for grooming

A description that includes so many social groups as to be meaningless, certainly not an evil act by itself. Of course all social clubs of our enemies are creepy weird grooming vehicles and our social clubs are necessary wholesome chungus.

This seems like a standard misunderstanding that may or may not be intentional by people sympathetic to LGBT causes. They think well these kids who are confused/different need a space to talk to adults. And then they need to keep it secret obviously because dad prolly isn't an "ally". But talking about sexuality and maintaining secrecy is exactly the first set of steps of the groomer playbook. So it doesn't matter what is in your heart of hearts, you are engaging in the same objective acts as a groomer, and by defending your own activities, you are providing them cover.

This is different than a soccer coach, who, I admit, many probably want to pork their players. But if the soccer coach starts talking to Johnny about tops vs. bottoms and Johnny says something to someone no one reflexively defends the soccer coach as having done the right thing. Which is why LGBT advocacy in youth populations is inherently dangerous, and I would say an evil act.

I do not believe the LGBT spaces must maintain secrecy. Without the secrecy being inherent, I again do not believe LGBT groups are inherently dangerous.

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Have you never met a politician. Overplaying their story & creating myths is in the job description. People in the wild are humble because they don't have to sell themselves to a full country.

I work at a tech company. The humble engineer is never picked to do public demos, because public demos are the place to be shamelessly self promoting.

Politics is this phenomenon at its peak.

pedophile adjacent clubs for kids

This is a really bad mental model of what GSA clubs look like.

How so? The purpose, ostensibly, is to get kids talking about their sexuality around adults. The few who will be interested in hearing such banalities are likely to have other motivations. Its like a guy who enthusiastically volunteers to run the cheer-leading team for his 14 y/o daughter and her friends. Is it necessarily true he's getting something sexual out of it? No. But a higher % of such people than a randomly selected dad will be.

Maybe it's changed since mumblemumble years ago, but back in my day it wasn't like each meeting started off with everyone sitting in a circle and exchanging distaff American Pie jokes, or spin the bottle, or gay sex ed. When there's a new student you'd go around for introductions and have the option of disclosing your orientation, and then mostly a sit-around-and-bullshit social club. There were teenagers that were hooking up who'd met at the GSA, but even the people who'd brag about it weren't going to do that in front of as varied a crowd as you'd get at a club meeting proper (there were girls there!).

(uh, second-hand from my brother, band camp was closer to the actual gay relationship or 'relationship' space. I'd expect that was somewhat specific to the cliches at the school we went to, though.)

@SteveKirk's "oh boy relationship drama" is closer to my experience, though I tended to run into where it was most an annoyingly creepy teacher wanting a bunch of disposable and impressionable activists. Which is a problem, but a different sort.

(probably not universal, but pretty damned common).

Is it? My only experience with one was a creepy groomer art teacher who reaaaally got off on being surrounded by gay boys having relationship drama.

Then perhaps it wasn't a good idea to name that kind of club something that suggests it encourages the sexual development and expression of children.

Yes, these clubs are basically just hangouts that staple the occasional rainbow around the school and exist as a space to eat lunch and not be called a fag every 5 seconds (and is indirectly an interest club for the things that type of person coalesces around), and while it's truthy (and perhaps somewhat obvious) that the kinds of teachers interested in encouraging the non-standard sexual development of students in ways that cross the line for some people are likely to be interested in encouraging the non-standard sexual development of students in ways that cross the line for most people I doubt that rate of [criminal] line-crossing is appreciably higher than the base.

While it is true that students come last on the list when it comes to what a school should do and calling it [what people will hear as] "gay kid's club" wasn't the best of moves, those things weren't quite as true in the '80s and early '90s as it is today, and sexual mistake theorists wouldn't be fully purged from the general sex movement until the mid-'90s (naturally, people who wouldn't have a problem with "straight kids' sex club" won't even look to see if their efforts can be read as "gay kids' club about sex").

Sexual conflict theorists would probably have just called it "tolerance club". And yes, Boomercons (and people who parrot Boomercon talking points) have a really bad mental model of what the general sex movement looks like because they never updated their mental models of it past the '90s; they don't even know the general sex movement has pivoted to being about angry old women ensuring young people have as little [straight] sex as possible now (and of the ones that potentially could, they're too distracted by the concessions the angry old women give to the non-straights to notice).

It's more a real bad mental model of how the public perceives a teacher advising the GSA club. Which is the important part of an election prediction.

Of course one must see media interference in public opinion, if one operates from the base assumption that the GSA in the 90s was a pedophile club. How else could one explain that the rest of the country doesn't see it?

Of course one must see media interference in public opinion, if one operates from the base assumption that the GSA in the 90s was a pedophile club. How else could one explain that the rest of the country doesn't see it?

Well covering up the link between pederasty and homosexuality is a long running media interference operation. That doesn't mean people still dont get a bit skeezed when they notice a guy jumping up and down to run the boy scout camp.

Fellas, is it pedophilic for a man to run a Boy Scout camp?

Its BORING to run a boy scout camp. Why you are dealing with that boredom is probably because you love your son. But that guy who doesn't have a son at camp? Weirdo.

When the boy scouts were a designated party enemy, yes, it was. We both lived through 00s late night television.

Now they aren't enemies because the party took them over, being a boy scout leader isn't creepy any more.

Tim is the random guy off the street.

Or at least he plays one on TV.

Tim is a guy everyone knows.

I agree that he's a guy everyone knows, but I don't agree even a little bit about him seeming like a sincere, earnest guy. He's the bullshitter, he's the guy that has to inflate every single thing he does. Even the things that are honest-to-god admirable, he still has to be an E9 instead of an E8, he doesn't just know a thing or two about rifles, he carried them in war, and so on. He's never invested a penny, never genuinely risked anything, and he resents the hell out of the guys that got more money and status than him in the private sector. He babbles about racial justice while a half billion dollars in damage is done to Minneapolis as his wife enjoys the vibes (and scent of burning debris). Someone else's business is a small price to pay for him to feel better about white supremacy.

Yeah, I know guys like Tim Walz.

He's never invested a penny, never genuinely risked anything, and he resents the hell out of the guys that got more money and status than him in the private sector. He babbles about racial justice while a half billion dollars in damage is done to Minneapolis as his wife enjoys the vibes (and scent of burning debris).

In a way something quite Germanic about this

He's the bullshitter, he's the guy that has to inflate every single thing he does.

And Trump isn't?

The media will fact check Trump for stating opinions that they don’t like.

Walz gets a free pass. There’s about half a dozen of his previous colleagues in the military that have come out against him, but a viewer of the mainstream media wouldn’t know it. The media has decided that they’re not going to allow swiftboating, whether legitimate or not.

I have a theory that the Republican strategy teams are waiting until the timing is just right to launch this one. There's some serious shit in Walz's "Military Service."

They're running out of time. More likely they just can't find a way to launch it outside the already-right-wing bubble, because the mainstream media is maintaining message discipline.

Also it’s rare that a VP sinks it. Palin didn’t sink McCain, Obama did and even then Palin was a character and an image very different to Walz, who is much more inoffensive. If he lied about his military career it wouldn’t affect much, Trump has not getting AIDS from whores as his ‘personal Vietnam’, Kamala is a woman, Vance was a ‘military journalist’ writing articles for the press office. There are no war heroes there.

Is there an insulting mass media propaganda campaign insisting he isn't?
It's the same as biden's senility. The worst part was the lockstep lying in the face of what we could plainly see, which was then abandoned the literal second their political objective changed.

It's the difference between a used car salesman lying to you (expected, almost charming), vs realizing the mechanic you brought with you for advice is also working for him (creepy and sinister).
Then you turn to your wife who's had her heart set on this car at any price, and as you look into her pleading coal-black eye slits you remember you don't have a wife. All three of them start chanting in an unspeakable language as the stolen flesh melts from their faces, and the sky outside is red redredredredred.
In a final moment of sanity-shattering realization, you understand you will be walking out of there with a 19% financing agreement.

That's the basic sensation of watching CNN for five minutes. Or seeing a still frame of that Anderson Cooper(?) lizardman wax model robot.

The sensation of being under bombardment by the American media makes me jealous of the countries that just get regular bombed.

Yes, the Orange Man is also Bad. To my knowledge, very few people believe him to be a sincere man, as was articulated about Walz above. I've got a solid decade of saying I don't like the Orange Man though, as where Walz being an annoying bullshitter is new to me.

So in essence, Trump being a bullshitter is already "priced in" whereas the worry is that Walz being (possibly) much the same might not be?

Walz isn't possibly. He's orders of magnitude above. Everything he claims is a lie. Trump says he gets the best crowds when maybe he gets the second best crowds. Walz lies about things for no reason. He claims to be head coach of a football team when he is assistant coach. Thats not exaggeration, its lying. I am an attorney. If I claim to be a good attorney despite losing a lot of trials, that is exaggeration. That makes me like Trump. Walz claims to have a great trial record in court despite both being a secretary, not a lawyer, and his superior lawyers losing all the time.

He's the bullshitter, he's the guy that has to inflate every single thing he does.

Well, he is a politician.

I'm reminded of this deep dive video into wrestling. It covers a lot of ground, but the relevant part is the WWE tried hard to make Roman Reigns a thing for a time, and the fans revolted. The WWE kept writing fights that tried to make him look cool, and the fans in the audience would chant back "THIS STILL SUCKS". But it took a long time to get there, and even once it was there, the WWE never broke kayfabe and acknowledged it.

This feels like the DNC right now to me. They've written the script for this election to make Kamala look awesome. They've moved past the sale, and are carefully curating all her appearances to create the illusion that she's the hottest thing since Obama. I'm not shocked it works on "low engagement voters" or other euphemisms for NPCs.

I have a friend who's all in for Kamala. But he generally uncritically loved whatever advertising tells him to. He loves all the new Star Wars stuff, Star Trek, the big gay diverse Forgotten Realms. He even still loves every Final Fantasy that comes out. He didn't shut up about how awesome FF13 was for months. He's the ultimate slop consumer, and he's all in for the DNC.

As much as I want to rage at the dying of the west, the loss of our rights, prosperity and heritage, a part of me also can't help but think we deserve this. I just wish I wasn't being dragged down with them.

I strongly suspect this can't last through the election. Kamala Harris can't actually hide for 3 months without facing: debates, domestic and global affairs, or some level of unscripted campaigning. Putin conquers Kiev -- what does Kamala Harris say? An astronaut dies -- can she really afford to say nothing while Trump goes for the photo op? Everything adds up, not in her favor, and the less she appears in public the more each moment defines who she is.

A year ago Kamala was disliked because she's a bad politician and is extraordinarily dumb. How long can they paper that over?

Mostly depends if R's have any tricks up their sleeves. I don't think she will be in a position to fuck up bad enough with regards to governance or policy while campaigning. Biden can take heat for any Whitehouse failures on his way out. Even if he doesn't want to. She can pick and choose what to take credit for. She can do her one debate, be described as passing, and the worst will be over for her.

If she gets into office, then she likely gets a free ride for a year. Beyond that, there's always a possibility of a mishandled crisis, interests collide, or something significant enough occurs that cause the media to begin to Ask Questions. How that goes down depends on the topic and interests involved. We might get the We Always Knew, But Had to Defeat Trump retrospectives. Either way, her favorability will trend downwards, as they all do, then a renewed, reinvigorated fight for Democracy miraculously emerges just in time for the 2028 election.

If she is as incompetent and inept as detractors suggest, then the scale of this trajectory can compressed or derailed. She could be at risk of a primary in '28 or, ironically, pressured to step down quietly as her predecessor was. Despite what the media looks like now, Kamala doesn't have the history, connections, or gravitas that Joe The Tenured Statesman has. Those roots grease wheels and papers over a lot of cracks; enough grease and paper to cover burgeoning senility. Alternatively, with this information you could make the argument that the media is just that complicit or effective.

Obama mimicry -- Joy instead of Hope/Change -- is heavily reliant on media complicity and voter willingness to believe. I don't think Kamala is capturing Full Obama-type energy. People are mostly relieved to be given a reason to vote for her and vote against Trump. Obama was capable of contributing to his own narrative in material ways. He could give a speech, he could play the voice of the moderate, he could pander to and rally his base against their ideological enemies. He knew enough to know when and where to choose to do these things.

For the varnish to wear off before the election-- that would require a hell of a fuck up, or a black swan event like Trump dying where media has lesser (if still plenty) reasons to remain complicit in narrative construction.

I've alluded to this before.

Trump literally knocked out his opponent in the first debate. There's a chance he goes 2-0, and the second victory (September 10th) ends with the defeat of an entire party, not just a candidate.

But, then, he'll keep talking his way out of votes. This thing comes down to the wire no matter how you slice it. Thanks, Baby Boomers.

he'll keep talking his way out of votes.

Trump wins votes by talking. His entire political career had been made on rallies and tweet.

It’s basically the same play they ran with Biden. Keep appearances minimal and roll the dice that media can plausibly not talk about how he’s losing his marbles until after the election.

At some point they figured that’s not going to work and so engineered the debate to expose him, and even then it nearly didn’t work to get a new candidate.

We’ve got a couple of months for Kamala to not implode. She’s apparently a poor manager with high turnover, has plentiful examples of incompetent extemporaneous speaking, and has already floated policy ideas unpopular enough that they’re walking them back.

There’s plenty of opportunity there.

We also don’t know what the Republicans might be holding back. Last time there was a coordinated attempt to deny them their October surprise, but I don’t know that the 51 intelligence officials trick will work a second time.

Last time there was a coordinated attempt to deny them their October surprise, but I don’t know that the 51 intelligence officials trick will work a second time.

I'm sure that this time it will be even worse. Something will escalate. Maybe they'll try throwing Trump in jail after all, or they'll declare a state of emergency before the election.

Kamala Harris can't actually hide for 3 months without facing: debates, domestic and global affairs, or some level of unscripted campaigning.

Can't she? Biden hid for 6 months before the election, and then 3.5 years after the election. He apparently hadn't met with congress for 2 years. It's possible if there had been no debates, he would have continued to hide right through November.

Putin's unlikely to conquer Kiev by November. If an astronaut dies she can give a canned speech. There's only two full months left and it seems most people just want a not-obviously-unacceptable Democrat. If Harris can manage to stay in the basement, she can likely pull that off.

It would seem obvious to me that there are, in fact, a lot of Americans who like what the Democratic Party has on offer - obviously! A party can't survive for ages if no-one likes what it has on offer! - and are happy to have it represented by what has always seemed to me a basically (though not expectionally) competent politician (competent at politics, that is) who happened to have an off-season in 2020 and doesn't have an off-season now. Thus, there is not anything particularly special to what is happening now.

What I wonder about is how hard it seems to be for American conservatives to believe that there exists a non-astroturf sentiment (and what does astroturf even mean these days, anyway? Both major parties have well-honed political machines to make basically literally any movement existing within their purview at least partly astroturf if you choose to look at it that way) supporting American liberalism organically. Why wouldn't there be? The last four years have seemed to be quite good for a fair few Americans, materially, especially compared to what is the most natural comparison to me - Europe's continuing malaise and doldrums.

What I wonder about is how hard it seems to be for American conservatives to believe that there exists a non-astroturf sentiment supporting American liberalism organically.

I think you've identified a genuine sentiment here, and it's related to the accusations of NPCism/groupthink that the right frequently levies against the left.

Other replies have brought up good points that I endorse. I'd like to add that there's a certain asymmetry to these accusations in general which could be taken as evidence of their veracity.

Both sides use plenty of generic insults that are little more than emotive expressions of sentiment. Rightists say that leftists will usher in an age of civilizational decline, that they're only doing what they're doing out of self interest, that they hide their true intentions until the right opportunity presents itself, etc. And vice versa. Precisely because these accusations are symmetrically employed by both sides, they don't reveal much interesting about the actual policy positions of the right/left or the psychology of rightists/leftists. There's little signal to separate from the noise.

The NPC meme, in contrast, is used far more often by the right than by the left. Why is that? If it was just a generic insult, if it was just a synonym for "stupid" or "uninformed", then we would expect leftists to use it too, given that it has proven itself to be a meme of rather potent virility. But they don't - not nearly as much, anyway. And I think that indicates that the left doesn't really believe it to be true about their opponents, whereas the right very much believes it to be true about their opponents. And the best explanation for a widespread asymmetrical belief of that sort is that belief having some actual correspondence to the facts of reality, however attenuated that correspondence may be.

Certainly there are versions of the NPC accusation that are employed by the left - it's common to hear rhetoric about Trump supporters being fascists who all march in lockstep, for example. But the tenor is different. There is a much greater focus on the morally deleterious content of the Trump supporters' beliefs rather than the form of their thought itself (the old "rightists think their opponents are stupid, leftists think their opponents are evil"). I think there's also the implication that the alleged fascist Trump supporter marches in lockstep because of some fundamental moral deficiency which draws them to fascism specifically, whereas the prototypical NPC could be made to follow virtually any ideology if the Cathedral declared it to be The Correct Belief.

All this is a very roundabout way of saying: I'm not going to evaluate the first-order claim that "support for Kamala/liberalism/etc is astroturfed", and at first glance I'd agree that that claim is not entirely fair. But the mere persistence of the claim indicates that there is some phenomenon here that is worth investigating. People don't just make shit up. If enough people are repeating something, there's usually some reason for it.

The only reason the left doesn't call the right NPCs is because the NPC meme is right coded and everyone knows it so left wingers find the idea of using it icky.

Instead every comment that goes against the left wing hive mind is a bot. Same idea, different terminology. Kind of like how Red Pilled and Woke mean exactly the same thing (awake to realities that normies don't or won't see) but everyone who uses one hates the other.

Instead every comment that goes against the left wing hive mind is a bot

More specifically, a "Russian bot."

Bot implies that the personality behind the account is faked and it's being directly used by a malicious agent to spread misinfo, unlike the NPC meme where it's actual people who get "programming updates".

Also, it's been a while since I've seen "woke" used by anyone other than right wingers (as an insult).

The NPC meme also seems low key to be about masculinity

Is it? That never occurred to me. I don't think that the type of person who is apt to criticize someone for not being traditionally masculine is also the type of person to care much about epistemic hygiene. But perhaps I'm off base here.

The NPC critique is that the other person outsources his thinking to another and just believes what the consensus says. Traditionally part of being a man is believing what you believe regardless of the popularity.

And yet, it appears that traditionally men believed what was popular and what men believed was popular. The Overton window within a given society was far more narrow. Men did act differently, according to their ability and social strata.

Only in as much as its about agency, which men are supposed to have at all times.

I think that the right-wingers do genuinely recognize an actual pattern - in left-wing circles opinion-forming happens through reorienting consensus, in right-wing circles there's more individualism but also room for strong leader types - but the category error made is thinking that the consensus shifts mainly through some actor above the grassroots, like the DNC, issuing marching orders, when it's really a more subtle and diffuse process among the activist class with at least some room for actual grassroots-level interaction.

Also, I'd guess it's easier for many conservatives to believe there was actual grassroots support for Sanders, especially in 2016, than, say, for Kamala now.

but the category error made is thinking that the consensus shifts mainly through some actor above the grassroots

A good example of this is the split between Trump and his base on the Covid vaccine's Operation Warp Speed. He could brag about that non-stop and it would convince none of them. But within an hour all loyal Democrats will replace their Twitter profile pics with Ukraine flags and make jokes about couches. It's an open question whether the centralized media/messaging on the left and the decentralized media/messaging on the right is reflective or formative of the respective groups and their information heirarchies.

I have no trouble acknowledging that there are many people that support a bunch of Democrat policies that I don't like much. If, for example, someone just doesn't think they should have to pay their student loans, they're probably going to vote Democrat.

On the flip side, the enthusiasm for Harris is genuinely hard to understand. I accept that the firmware update worked as intended and people really mean it, but it is genuinely puzzling to me what they're seeing that they're excited about. The answer is apparently as simple as the fact that she's 60 and lucid rather than 80 and comatose, which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't really get me to understanding excitement.

As a bit of an extra point, I think if you'd told me this was how it was going to go down a few years ago, I would have thought a bunch of Democrats would be annoyed that they didn't get a say in picking their candidate. Instead, everyone just happily agreed that they're coconut-pilled now, that they're not going back, and that it's time embrace what can be, unburdened by what has been. That, above all else, is why I can't stop thinking of the situation as embodying the NPC meme. It is very hard for me to believe that people authentically watched some teleprompter speech and thought, "wow, now I can't wait to get out there and campaign"; I don't think it was astroturfed, but I do think that this is almost entirely an exercise in groupthink.

You make the mistake of the intelligent.

Politics are not really about policy. Kamala has a poor track record and every policy she's advocating is, at least in its current form, going to be disastrous in concept or execution. This has not tamped down the enthusiasm for her any.

She is photogenic, she smiles for photos, she looks attractive for her age and isn't obviously decrepit. Trump looks like a shriveled tangerine. America lies about a lot of things, in particular, that they don't care about looks. Obama wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the electoral success he did had he been unattractive. Don't hate the player, hate the game. The meta in American presidential politics is to run a supermodel or attractive actor who will say the right things. They can be more easily understood as a figurehead for what will let Americans feel good about themselves.

I hate Kamala, but she's definitely got a shot as America's president given that she is an accurate representation of what one half of America believes itself to be. Attractive, opportunistic, professionally presentable and economically illiterate.

There's also the side factor that - well, teenagers who only remember Trump and then Biden as president see a chance for Hope and Change in their generation. They haven't had that yet. Older people got their Hope and Change, when's their turn? Older people got their Vietnam to feel good about, why can't they get to feel good about Israel?

well, teenagers who only remember Trump and then Biden as president see a chance for Hope and Change in their generation.

Men 18-29 are now a Trump-leaning demographic.

Men 18-29 have always been a Trump-leaning demographic. His brand is winning bigly and actually putting up a fight on behalf of red team. The newer, younger ones, though... those guys have seen him win, fail to achieve many of his right wing aims or win the culture war while in office, then lose, whine about losing, and get a clown invasion of capitol hill condemned as an insurrection. How much impact he had on each one of those outcomes is limited, but people like winners.

Young men, a Trump-leaning demographic, are not switching to Kamala Harris. The suggestion is preposterous. It can only be made in the fatalistic Motte fantasy world where people continue to not know anything real about Donald Trump.

How much impact he had on each one of those outcomes is limited, but people like winners.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

They can also abstain from voting or go third-party, which is positive for Kamala.

I don't detect the energy that Trump's campaign had in 2016 in 2024. He's a known quantity now and he didn't actually "drain the swamp", "lock her up", or do any of the things that young men actually wanted.

You seem to assume that the Motte is fatalistic because it lives in a fantasy world. In fact, the Motte is fatalistic because both sides of the political fence have failed to make a cogent argument for rationality and truth-seeking order. Both sides are retreating from this; some are even loudly claiming that this is the dead end the Enlightenment tradition has led us into. The entire COVID debacle had people here very loudly slashing their wrists over the mass denial, the reaction, the overreaction, the bad science, and the memory-holing. Even the most pure of quokkas would, having being equipped with basic powers of observation, have felt a collapse akin to finding out how stupid and apathetic people really are about being at war with racists who think COVID is a big deal anti-vaxxers who believe COVID isn't a big deal people who refuse to isolate people who refuse to wear chin diapers people who think it's bad to campaign publicly for BLM during social distancing people who don't social distance Eurasia Eastasia conspiracy theorists people who think COVID spending is a bad idea people who think COVID didn't disproportionately hurt black people [software update pending, please hold, fill in the blank as you wish depending on what the people in power want you to hate].

This place doesn't have many shared values anymore but one of the very few is a desire for truth seeking out of a belief it produces better outcomes and that houses built on sand cannot stand. Finding out that the truth is like poetry, and that most people fucking hate poetry, even if it can recognizably produce better outcomes, is like finding out the Earth is flat and that proving it isn't makes you into the lunatic they burn at the stake.

Call it learned helplessness it you want, I prefer the pithy "Oh shit, people really are that stupid and easily led" and "if they could mindfuck millions of people into doublethink this easily, what else are they mindfucking us into?" Older people remember the Iraq war, maybe next time the powers that be will pick a juicier target.

I don't detect the energy that Trump's campaign had in 2016 in 2024.

Trump is polling higher than he ever has before. A month ago he was shot in the head and dodged a bullet. Then he got on his feet and started a fight chant.

The people saying they don't feel 2016 energy are all people who, in 2016, were certain that he was going to lose and could never possibly win. This time 2016 the Republican party was abandoning him in droves, "grab them by the pussy" was coming out and convinced everyone that this campaign was finished, and Hillary was giving interviews about how far ahead she was. This feels some some new meme fatalist consensus: but the same doomsayers were doomsaying then too.

People aren't satisfied with Trump? After 4 years of Biden Trump looks better than ever before. People remember peace and a stronger economy and groceries that didn't triple in price. He didn't drain the swamp? Gee, yeah, I wonder what happened.

This is what I'm talking about: the fatalism here is people who don't like Trump and never liked Trump rationalizing increasingly desperate forms of depression. What on earth does this have to do with the Enlightenment? The average poster here is pretty smart, but I doubt 1 in 10 could give a coherent definition of that period of time without consulting Google. Desire for truth? Maybe in principle, but I see bullshit repeated here all the time.

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On the flip side, the enthusiasm for Harris is genuinely hard to understand. I accept that the firmware update worked as intended and people really mean it, but it is genuinely puzzling to me what they're seeing that they're excited about. The answer is apparently as simple as the fact that she's 60 and lucid rather than 80 and comatose, which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't really get me to understanding excitement.

From what I have seen, in my very blue bubble, it's 90% the euphoria of believing you were doomed and suddenly realizing you have a good chance of winning. Immediately after the attempted assassination of Trump, the mood among Democrats was bleak indeed. Pretty much everyone believed the election was basically Trump's to lose, and Biden gave little reason to hope.

The DNC had no real mechanism to force Biden to withdraw, and I was pretty convinced he would never do so voluntarily. Even if he did, I thought they would have to have an emergency primary, with the unappetizing choice of Harris (who until five minutes ago was considered an even worse candidate than Biden) or equally bad prospects like Gavin Newsom.

That the Democrats actually pulled off (1) getting Biden to withdraw, (2) instituting Harris in his place as a fate accompli, and (3) making it seem like a smooth transition, was actually a pretty impressive bit of political maneuvering. Republicans spent a little while trying to generate crocodile tears about the undemocratic nature of the process, but not only did this not stick, but the whole thing basically pushed Trump's post-shooting boost right out of the news cycle.

Now it's increasingly looking like Harris's race to lose. All the stuff being thrown at her and Walz look like cheap shots that aren't landing. Of course the Democrats are ecstatic. I was personally convinced Trump was going to win, and now if I had to place money, I'd bet on Harris. I think she will have to screw up hugely, or Trump will have to pull a hat trick of the type that is not really his forte, for her to lose. Any October surprises or sudden catastrophes will only help her.

To be clear, I absolutely agree there is nothing about Kamala Harris personally to inspire excitement. She's a political nothing (like most VPs, to be fair). But the fact that she's basically a generic Democrat with nothing terrible in her closets (as far as we know) and will be the first (POC) woman president is enough to make Blue tribe giddy at the prospect of the Revenge of Hillary Clinton.

fate accompli

It's "fait accompli".

As a systemic victim of shitty autocorrect, I'd say there's no point in correcting people on the spelling of foreign phrases.

As a systemic victim of shitty autocorrect

There's a fairly-simple solution to autocorruption; turn it off. It's what I do every time I get a new computer, browser or word processor.

The problem is that I fucking hate typing on touch screens, and anything that can help me minimize it is a plus. There's an open question if the medicine is better than the disease, and if the best solution isn't just to postpone my shitposting until I'm in front of a keyboard.

if the best solution isn't just to postpone my shitposting until I'm in front of a keyboard.

This is certainly what I do (I hate touch screens even more than normal, as I'm used to typing with fingernails).

was actually a pretty impressive bit of political maneuvering.

In some countries, they refer to this as a "coup".

I generally agree with the rest of your post, but it isn't Kamala's race to lose. Right now, this is a toss up, which means it's about the next "thing" that turns into the "current thing" that each candidate has to respond to. Remember, Harris got a two free news cycle passes in a row - when Biden dropped out followed immediately by the DNC. In the next few weeks some-"thing" will happen. Then, the race actually starts.

In some countries, they refer to this as a "coup".

No, it isn't.

First, a party can nominate whoever it wants; it doesn't have to go through a "democratic" primary process, and the Democrats only did that in the most disingenuous way possible for this election.

Second, it's absurd for people on the right to try to claim that, both, A. Biden is mentally unfit; and B. It's a "coup" to replace him. If A, then B must happen in the name of civic responsibility.

I'll grant that a lot of Democratic Party shenanigans stink to high heaven, and this whole election process makes them look like the most cynical operators. But it's rich for people, most of whom don't even think Biden was legitimately elected in the first place, to try to claim that switching out nominees in this case is somehow deeply illegitmate.

Trump followed with the RFK Jr. endorsement followed by the Gabbard endorsement. The latter didn't even make a splash; it barely got an offhand mention here. If you have a "thing" but the media downplays it, it's not a "thing".

That's a very fair counterpoint. I hadn't thought of that.

Coup has two meanings in a way which makes this confusing. The term derives from the French "couper" meaning "to cut" in common French but closer to "to strike" in fencing terminology, which is where the relevant English idioms get the word from, including coup d'etat, coup de theatre, coup de grace etc.

So we have "coup" meaning an achievement analogous to a well-executed hit in fencing - the dictionary describes it as "successfully achieving something difficult" but I think it is only idiomatic if the achievement is an apparently sudden and surprising victory in an adversarial setting analogous to a duel. In this case Pelosi and other Democratic elites removing Biden cleanly is clearly a coup.

We also have "coup" used as a shorthand for "coup d'etat" - specifically the idea of a sudden violent replacement of a government (although again "coup" is only idiomatically correct if the success is so spectacular that only minimal violence is actually needed - otherwise it is a civil war or a revolution). The replacement of Biden by Harris is clearly not a coup d'etat - the rules as written were followed and there was no threat or use of violence.

To me "coup" implies coercion. And, while I don't know what happened behind closed doors to get Biden to step down, so far at least I have not seen any evidence that there was coercion.

Wait you think Biden did it willingly? It is pretty clear they told him step down or we will 25th amendment you. Legal? Yeah. Coercive? Yeah.

I don't know, the fact that it happened on twitter without any visible involvement of the man himself (and famously even the wrong signature) does it for me.

When a political party replaces one candidate with another candidate (who is in fact the deputy of the current candidate) that can hardly be called a coup. Coups involve replacing the government, Kamala's government position (VP) hasn't changed, she's just now the person standing to be the next president instead of Biden.

Candidate choice is an internal party matter for the Democrats (as it is for any political party). There is nothing even remotely coup-like about this.

This is absurd. Candidate choice is not an internal party matter. We have these state run things called primaries that have determined nominations for a long time in this country. I know it’s convenient to say “internal matter” but most internal matters don’t require the local Secretary of State to get involved.

But it is still true. You are right to point out state involvement. But most states have no law about whether delegates are bound legally and those that do almost invariably have an exemption for the candidate withdrawing. Plus many other exemptions for being unbound after rounds of voting or if their chosen candidate is doing too badly.

But regardless of all that the Supreme Court held that state election law cannot override a parties internal processes in any case. It is literally legally an internal matter.

Regardless of the primaries, the delegates were legally free to pick Kamala. All the DNC delegates are bound to do is in good conscience represent their voters. If they in good conscience think their voters would no longer want Biden they can and indeed should switch even if he didn't step down. Note this rule was changed in 1980 when they were trying to replace Carter as acandidate with a Kennedy, and only their own internal rules prevented them from doing so. So this is something that has been planned for. The only thing they have to do is manage the political fallout if any.

The truth is the primaries are theatre legally. The only thing that binds the parties are their internal rules. Hence an internal matter.

There are principles of norms and there are legal realities. The fact is people have understood for a long time that primaries are how we pick candidates. The fact is those processes are run by states.

And now when the Dems were going to lose they claim “well it is just an internal matter” ignoring the norm that even involved the state!

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The answer is apparently as simple as the fact that she's 60 and lucid rather than 80 and comatose

and she's not Trump. Don't forget who this election's really about. This is the elation of "oh shit we can win" that followed the desperation after Biden's debate performance. I honestly think this is explained by fairly standard human emotional dynamics.

Of course the emotions get narrativized, but that's just what humans do unless (and often still when) they have uncommonly large amounts of self-honesty

The idea that you were, at one point, bound to lose (particularly immediately after the assassination attempt) and, all of a sudden, you're now bound to win is pretty exciting in itself, no?

One could argue that the Dems had a say in picking their candidate - in 2020, when they accepted Harris as the person who would take the reins if the President became killed or incapacitated. Now the President is sort of incapacitated - yes, it's a very odd sort of incapacitation that apparently means you can no longer run for Presidency but can still function as a President, technically - so Harris takes the reins for that one particular thing.

Personally, I'm not too sure whether the tension inherent in Biden being smoked out by the media and party elites has been quite resolved yet and might still come up and bite Harris on the butt after the convention fever is out, and it is certainly not confirmed that Harris's current lead will continue, but I guess it'll take until November to see what will happen.

One could argue that the Dems had a say in picking their candidate - in 2020, when they accepted Harris as the person who would take the reins if the President became killed or incapacitated.

huh? there was a primary for the VP slot that I didn't know about?

No, but there's an election where you vote for a ticket consisting of a president and a VP.

but that election is between the two major parties, not a selection of VP candidates.

Look me in the eyes and tell me that you, personally, believe that this constitutes picking your candidate.

I dunno? It's not my job to pick the US Democratic Party's candidate.

A lot of people do seem to think that way, though, from the speed at which they united behind Kamala. I'm just spitballing for reasons why that happened. I could, of course, also just go with "they're dumb lib NPCs who do what they're told", but that doesn't seem quite the satisfactory explanation.

I dunno? It's not my job to pick the US Democratic Party's candidate.

Well then - you might have your answer for why some people have such a hard time believing it's not an astroturf.

A lot of people do seem to think that way, though, from the speed at which they united behind Kamala.

I don't see how that follows.

The idea that you were, at one point, bound to lose (particularly immediately after the assassination attempt) and, all of a sudden, you're now bound to win is pretty exciting in itself, no?

I don't relate to politics that way, no. I have trouble empathizing with other people that do, at least outside of people that are directly involved in campaigns or work in policy positions. It's not a sport, I'm not cheering for it, and I don't get excited about it in this fashion. Politicians are, at best, instrumentally useful when it comes to getting the things I want done.

But sure, this does seem to be exactly how other people relate to it. Their team was down big in the second half, suddenly got a quick score, and now they might win. Wow, how exciting! Is Kamala Harris good, or committed to any particular values, or someone that earned the job? Who gives a shit, she got a pick six and now those Republicans are so fucked! They can't stop her!

The shape of my understanding for how this works has certainly evolved slowly, arriving much after events unfold, and it has not done wonders for my opinion of my fellow man.

I dunno, I think many people are excited now because they can see it's useful to be. That extra bit of voter zeal for Harris could make a difference to the election, whereas the same wasn't plausible with a Biden ticket. It seems more rational now to add one's excitement to a pot that could overflow into an electoral win. Whether Harris is herself all that exciting is a secondary consideration.

The "both parties are like this" heuristic is normally a good one. In this case, though, it's pretty clearly wrong.

Donald Trump was the result of a genuine grassroots movement. The Republican establishment very much did not want him around, but simply got run over.

Kamala, on the other hand, had the Vice Presidency and then the nomination handed to her by party insiders. She still, as far as I know, is not allowing any unscripted appearances or interviews. It is pure astroturf, much more even than Hilary's 2008 and 2016 campaigns. All interactions between her and the public are mediated by the party and the media.

Donald Trump was the result of a genuine grassroots movement. The Republican establishment very much did not want him around, but simply got run over.

Amusingly enough, I had a discussion with someone earlier today on that, on the theme / note that Trump has toppled a number of prominent political dynasties over the last decade. We spent a good minute trying to recall whether he'd upset more Republican or Democratic dynastic arrangements.

And yet, after getting run over, they acquiesced and acclimated to the situation very fast, and Trump ended up governing pretty much like a standard Republican, and now there's not a particular visible difference between the "Trump movement" and the Republican party in itself.

My point was more that when you're talking about the national politics at this level, there's no firm line separating a wholly grassroots movement from a wholly artificial one. All notable movements have at least some organic popular support, all movements also involve someone planning things from the above and conducting at least campaigns of at least some level of artificiality.

Are you kidding? there is still a huge difference between the average republican party member and the average republican party voter. Are you forgetting they booted their speaker for the first time in history? Does the propaganda just work differently on you guys? You can't remember basic political happenings from a year ago? Is the dissonance between what you're told to believe and what actually is just so great that your mind starts to paint over things?

Are you forgetting they booted their speaker for the first time in history?

And how much did that change, concretely?

Again, there doesn't seem to be a particular visible difference between the "Trump movement" and the Republican party - because the Republican Party is Trump's party, and what the Trump movement does is follow Trump and rationalize his actions, no matter what they are. Trump wants Mehmet Oz as a candidate in Pennsylvania despite him being an obvious charlatan? Then Oz is a candidate. Trump wants to moderate on abortion, or throw away free-market principles? Then that happens. Anti-vaxxers who believe the vaccine was a genocide going to bat for Trump, who couldn't stop talking about his big beautiful vaccine that came to be because of him? No sign of cognitive dissonance in evidence.

What the "non-Trump" Republican Party, insofar as it has an independent existence (staffers, politicians etc.) thinks, seems to be ephemeral. Either they pledge allegiance to Trump or they're out. And it's easy to pledge allegiance since Trump didn't want any radical ideological changes anyhow - the most radical things he did, ie. around Jan 6, were simply related to his continual desire to cling in power.

It delayed funding (money laundering) for globalist wars for a few months. After that it changed nothing, but this isn't because the republicans in congress are captured by Trump. It's because they rebelled against Trump and enough of them were talking about voting with the democrats to push the funding through. The reality is that Johnson isn't a Trump populist. He does what the other snakes in congress do and pays lip service to Trump, Trump is shallow and doesn't learn from his betrayals so this works, and then ultimately does what the neolib/neocon police state wishes.

They don't care who Trump appoints to get elected because the elections are already rigged in a, heads I win, tails you lose way. If Oz is a charlatan and loses then their guy that is willing to go to bat for the imperialist occupiers still gets in via the dem candidate. McConnell will even play with republican campaign funding to help that happen.

The anti-vax thing is just another weak man. Republicans were no more anti-vaccine than dems, if anything the vaccines cause autism thing was more of a California hippy, "nature is good, not nature is not good" thing prior to covid totalitarianism. The friction came when the state decided to force it on people and use a bizarre and illegal interpretation of OSHA rules to pressure employers until that was struck down. Before that there was a lot less pushback and maybe if the globalists hadn't held back news that the vaccine had passed trials til after the election to help their team republicans would've been more for it.

Are you kidding?

Posing rhetorical questions in the second person is not against the rules, but it is very often a sign that you are dropping into an antagonistic rather than productive conversational pose.

You can't remember basic political happenings from a year ago? Is the dissonance between what you're told to believe and what actually is just so great that your mind starts to paint over things?

These in particular are standard issue hollow accusations; they seem routinely applicable to basically everyone, and are equally routinely dismissed with "eh old news." So if you actually want to talk about relevant past events, you should put in the effort to specify which events you find most relevant, why you find them most relevant, and how you think that matters.

In short, none of the questions you asked appears to be a solicitation of actual information or in furtherance of discussion. You're just being performatively incredulous at your outgroup.

Don't.

there is still a huge difference between the average republican party member and the average republican party voter.

Yes, the average Republican Party member sits sufficiently further to the right that Republican politicians need to moderate hugely from their party platforms to avoid mass defections from among their voters.

The hardline conservative quintile staffs and runs the Republican Party. Even the rinos have offices mostly made up of uberconservative hardliners, with aids constantly pushing for things that would have been called tea party wish list items back when that was the term in use. A successful GOP politician like Abbott or Desantis manages to thread the needle of moderating enough to keep the normies while giving GOP members(hi!) enough of what we want to harness our enthusiasm.

The hardline conservative quintile staffs and runs the Republican Party.

I know and have even dated Republic staffers. They are generally significantly more moderate than the base, and behind closed doors lament the voters in their own party. They are not "ultraconservstive hardliners": I don't know how you make sense of conservative politics of the last 20 years if you believe the party is sympatico with the base.

Yes they frequently lived for a long time in places like DC. It is in the water. If the republicans were smart, they would campaign on making DC poor (eg move the house to say Tulsa and the senate to say Orlando).

They tried moving the Department of Interior to Colorado Springs under Trump, but bureaucratic revolt/heel dragging kept much from actually happening before Biden was elected and reversed the decision.

Moving the agencies out of DC to help cure the government monoculture has been a Republican wishlist item for decades, and I wouldn't doubt it if Project 2025 has a whole chapter on just that. Easier said than done, unfortunately.

Yes. Starve DC. Move every federal department to a cheap rust belt city.

A party can't survive for ages if no-one likes what it has on offer!

Why not? "Lesser of two evils" logic could support no one liking what any party has to offer.

Why wouldn't there be?

It's not that there's a reason there couldn't be, it's that no one seems to be able to argue for Kamala directly. The enthusiasm is always in another castle.

I'm not eligible to vote in the US but as a citizen of an American cultural colony I've definitely fallen for the vibe shift too. I always suspected Harris had some undeveloped potential but I really liked her DNC speech and it made me feel things. Lots of good lines, especially this moment. Low on wokeness, high on muscular optimism, high on American exceptionalism. Put me in mind of Reagan's "morning in America" in terms of vibes.

It doesn’t take a coordinated blitz of friendly op-eds, since my parents were getting this straight from the TV.

Is this not just the visual version of friendly op-eds? Outside of the explicitly right-wing media entities, everyone else has granted Harris what seems like fawning coverage to me. I hear that she's running a great campaign but haven't actually seen her do anything other than read a couple speeches off of teleprompters. I quite literally haven't heard a single word that's actually a thought that occurred in her head rather than something that someone else wrote down for her to say.

I'm not doubting that there's a vibe shift, but I do absolutely marvel at how people's vibes shifted so much when nothing actually happened. As I covered a couple days ago, I thought it was a good speech as far as such things go, but I really have trouble relating to people that treat these sorts of things as decisive factors for themselves.

I quite literally haven't heard a single word that's actually a thought that occurred in her head rather than something that someone else wrote down for her to say.

Change the genders and that is just Obama's campaign in 2008. It's all vibes, and always has been.

I could tell what excited people about Obama, everyone showing up here that's pro-Harris seems to say it's just about the Blue team being able to win.

What do you think excited people about Obama? From what I remember of my perceptions of 2008, I think to me it seemed that basically the only substantive thing exciting people about Obama was the idea that he would replace the administration that gave us the Iraq War. Other than that, it seemed to me that people just liked him because he was a handsome, eloquent, intelligent young black man (and thus, basically, a character straight out of a Democrat's dreams) and that he spoke of hope and change.

To be fair, I watched very few of his public appearances on the campaign trail, so it is possible that I missed a lot.

I wasn't watching his appearances either, I was doing what I'm doing now - hanging out at neiche American-centric internet forums. Like you said, the burnout with Iraq and Afghanistan was starting to set in, the 2008 crisis was unfolding just as the election was ramping up, and healthcare reform was on people's minds. "Handsome, eloquent, intelligent and young" may seem vacuous, but his youth meant he was a bit of an upstart (2008 was the first "It's Her Turn" I remember), giving the impression that he'll bring something new to the table, and set the US away from the course that got it to it's current position (in that sense he was the Democratic equivalent of Trump) while "eloquent and intelligent" implied he'll be competent enough to do so.

The reason the excitement for Harris campaign seems so artificial, is that they're trying pull off the "upstart" shtick while arguing for an incumbent, and appealing to hope for a better tomorrow while studiously avoiding any mention of not just how they will make tomorrow better, but of what is supposed to be better about it.

The war was a big deal at the time, so it was no small thing. He had credibility on it, too, rather than being a flip flopper. Combined with his personal charisma and the dissatisfaction of the on-going financial crisis and all sorts of people had something to be excited about.

The difference is that Obama is actually good at this. Harris is a prop and she has been her entire career.

I'd say he's been the best President of 2024.

I was digging through Google for old articles about Harris from when she was elected AG and a huge number of them were direct comparisons to Obama when he was the Hot New Thing. She's been pretty directly groomed for this and she still can't do much more than read from a teleprompter.

Are you trying to convince us with this information that is irrelevant to anyone but you, or convince yourself? If yourself why bother us with it?

If it's not the orwellian stranglehold on all information in the west that is fueling the vibe change will your team finally relinquish control of it? Free Durov? Stop lawfaring Elon Musk. Maybe I can finally browse reddit for news w/o it being freeze framed photos of Kennedy stopped at just the right moment to make him look as stupid as possible "organically" voted to the front page.

I doubt it though. This post basically reads like, "It's not totalitarianism! it's Kamala's youthfulness!"

If you were trying to convince us and not yourself than I have to say no, I still think you lot are totalitarians.

This is all personal attack and booing your outgroup.

Even if your uncharitable reading of @netstack and his "affiliation and interests" (as @theory only slightly less obnoxiously put it) was correct, people are allowed to post about "vibes" and impressions and opinions they have about what's going on in politics. Indeed, that makes up a large share of the posts here. If you think his reading is off, or what he perceives is because he's biased and in a bubble, you can say that. You cannot say "Shut up and go away, we don't want your kind or your opinions here."

So we can't post links to well thought out articles without wasting time regurgitating parts of it in our own words or adding pointless takes, but we can just randomly showerthought now?

So we can't post links to well thought out articles without wasting time regurgitating parts of it in our own words or adding pointless takes

You cannot post bare links. If you feel it is a waste of your time to be asked to tell people why you are posting something and why you think it's worth discussing, then this is not the place to post those links.

but we can just randomly showerthought now?

You can post things that you think are relevant and interesting. It is possible someone else will think it is a "random showerthought," but they will be expected to respond to you with civility.

I mean, my mom and dad like Harris is pretty short shrift for a post.

I think it was a great top level post. Plus it’s retroactively validated by the amount of discussion it kicked off.

We are always told “discussion doesn’t validate whether a top level post is good or not.” What makes you think it is great? It reminds me of Tom Friedman talking about his cab driver.

We are always told “discussion doesn’t validate whether a top level post is good or not.”

Yes, that's a valid point to bring up. A bare link that occasions a fascinating reply doesn't itself become a good post - but I would nonetheless be thankful in retrospect that that bare link was posted, if the reply it solicited was good enough.

What makes you think it is great?

It's an earnest and straightforward anecdote about an interesting and relevant topic.

I don't really get the sense @netstack is among the "you lot" your post refers to.

The last few years have been a bit rough for me politically speaking, in that although I have since childhood intellectually understood that most people are unthinking morons when it comes to politics, the last few years have really viscerally made it apparent to me.

I am no Republican, but at this point I also cannot imagine myself voting for a Democrat. After the 2020 riots and the way that Democrat supporters ran cover for them, after all their soft-on-crime policies, after their years of childish propagandistic attacks on the right and on Trump... no, can't do it. Obviously the Republicans are also guilty of a lot of bullshit, very much including childish propaganda, but then, I'm not about to vote for them either.

The last few weeks have been sobering for me, I intellectually understood that electoral politics is about optics, not about anything substantial, but it has been rough to see the signs of the vibe shift that you refer to happening on social media. Especially, I am annoyed by the completely blatant astroturfing that both sides engage in. Pretty much every prominent political account on X, for example, is either an astroturf account or is run by someone who is so partisan that their writings are indistinguishable from an astroturf account.

I will echo what @plural said:

Really, below Trump imo because Trump is a liar and a blowhard and I certainly don't take his insults as the dead serious "I would murder you and it would be completely fair and right" attitude that people have about Trump.

I feel much the same way. While Trumpists are guilty of many things, they do currently not worry me on the visceral level that the left does. It is quite likely that part of this is just because the right is not as strong as the left, and if it was, the right would worry me just as much. But for someone who has read as much about history as I have, the hardcore lockstep groupthink of the modern left is very concerning. It raises alarm bells in that it is reminiscent of totalitarian leftist movements from history. Maybe this is just my version of what leftists do when they worry about Trump creating a fascist dictatorship. I am not sure.

Another reason why the left currently worries me more is that their delusions are deeper than the right's delusions. The left tends to believe in grand systemic delusions like "hardcore socialism is a good idea" or "modern America is horrifically racist against black people". The right, on the other hand, tends to believe in more surface-level LARP delusions reminiscent of thriller novel plots, like "the Clintons are running a pedophile organization and Trump is just pretending to spend all his time on Twitter, he is actually leading a secret special ops campaign to round them up" or "Klaus Schwab wants to make us live in pods".

Both of these types of delusions are ludicrous, but the left's delusions actually worry me more. Leftists actually believe their delusions deeply in some important way, whereas the right-wingers who have bought into typical right-wing delusions are largely, I think, just doing it for fun on some level, although most of them are not consciously aware that they are doing it for fun. The way I would put it, and of course these are generalizations: the left think that they are engaged in a deep meaningful struggle against an evil enemy, which has to end with the complete overthrow and eradication of that enemy from the earth - meanwhile, the right think that they are in an X-Files episode about wacky conspiracies. Clearly the former is much more likely to lead people to fight hard politically than the latter.

The right is also easily satisfied. The left is never satisfied, if they win one battle against what in their delusional world-view is the evil oppressor, they immediately find another level of supposed oppression to battle against. The right, on the other hand, is happy any time they get some kind of win, and they immediately start relaxing and celebrating. The left is deeply committed to the fight, they are in it to win it. Their entire perspective of the world is that it is an epic and grueling battle of good against evil, and the evil must be destroyed. The right, on the other hand, kind of just wants to relax and go watch some football, even if the football is interspersed with ads containing left-leaning propaganda. The left is not like this - if they go watch some fun TV show that is interspersed with ads containing right-leaning propaganda, they will form ranks and march on social media against it.

I find it interesting that the entire alt-right, the whole ecosystem ranging from 2016 Trumpist meme populism to hardcore 4chan /pol/ white supremacy, is both notably leftist in some key aspects of its psychology, and also clearly more committed to the fight and in many ways better at fighting it than mainstream right-wingers are. I say leftist because the alt-right, in their populist economics, their sense that they are oppressed by shadowy elites, their obsession with race and sex and the cultural meanings of both, is very reminiscent of a leftist movement. Forgive me Curtis Yarvin! It is too long that I did not understand one of your central points, but I do now, and the point seems to be true - leftism is, simply, politically more effective. Even people with right-wing views become more politically effective if they adopt a leftist psychology and political attitude.

I do not think that either side is currently strong enough to overthrow our liberal, small-r republican system of social organization, but the left currently seems stronger than the right, and both sides are alarming in different ways, so I am currently more alarmed by the left. Also, while I find a large fraction of right-wing policies to be insane or just simply unappealing, the right is currently - and again, this might just be because they are weaker - more open to intellectual dissent than the left is. I find a large fraction of left-wing policies to also be insane or just simply unappealing, but at least on the right there seems to be a bit more room for thought, a bit more space for dissenters, whereas on the left it is "either you are with us, or you are with the enemy".

My deep political offline conversation with the average committed right-winger is kind of like "Hey man, we don't agree but whatever, it's fun talking about this stuff". My deep political offline conversation with the average committed left-winger consists of me trying to get them to question their ideas while gingerly ballet-leaping my way over the various minefields that, if I stepped on, would cause them to classify me as Adolf Hitler. Don't get me wrong, I also often just straightforwardly speak my mind with leftists in the mode of just "chatting about politics for fun", and this has not brought me any harm. Most leftists I know in person are not about to go report me to the thought police, they are not totalitarian. What I mean is that in those occasional really deep political conversations that one engages in, the ones where both people actually care about talking about the politics in a meaningful way rather than doing it just for fun or to vent, I have found that right-wingers are generally more easily accepting of disagreement, whereas with left-wingers you have to slowly seduce them into letting go of their instinct to assume that your disagreements with them mean that you are Hitler.

I am annoyed by how weak the Republicans are. Increasingly, 2016 seems to be a flash in the pan. For all their macho posturing, the reality is that today's right-wing is soft, easily bullied, and unstrategic. Think of when Greg Abbott bussed those migrants to blue cities. Didn't it seem like a brilliant political move? Well, part of why it seemed that way is because that was one of the very few things that any right-wing politician has done in the last few years that actually seemed like a good chess move. It's hard to name any others. Also consider that despite years of bluster about how guns are a bulwark against oppressive government, pretty much nobody on the right who believes that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump (which I do not believe, but many do) did anything about it with their guns. The bluff has been called, and I think on some visceral level the left understands that they can push the right a lot harder than they currently are pushing before the right would actually react with anything other than online whining.

For all their macho posturing, the reality is that today's right-wing is soft, easily bullied, and unstrategic.

Hear, hear. The main question for me in the American politics for the last decade or so was not why Dems do what they do - they are a leftist party moving increasingly to the left, and they do exactly what is expected of them. It's how inept, weak, inconsequential and dumb most Republicans are. They fall in every trap the Left puts behind them, and when there's none, they manufacture their own and fall into those too. They are absolutely incapable of using any of the left's blunders, but are vicious to their own. Despite the common "Republicans pounce", they are really shitty at pouncing, outside couple of internet places. Their treatment on Jan 6 people, for example, is horrendously shameful - pretty much nobody (including, from what I understand, Trump himself) did anything to protect them. While the Left is absolutely openly and shamelessly shields violent Antifa from justice, the establishment Right is largely still afraid to even mumble something in the general direction of Jan 6 not being worse than 9/11. Not that it helps them in any way of course. And there are many other examples. And people notice, you know. The Left knows if they fight for The Party, The Party will take care of them. The Right knows if they do anything even slightly controversial for their cause, or even slightly questionable in the eyes of the New York Times, the establishment Right will make sure to proclaim on every corner that they want nothing to do with those violent extremists, never knew any of them and completely fine with throwing all the books available at them. And also whatever cause it was, they'll betray it anyway at the next budget vote. So who would want to do anything even minimally risky for such people anyway?

But for someone who has read as much about history as I have, the hardcore lockstep groupthink of the modern left is very concerning. It raises alarm bells in that it is reminiscent of totalitarian leftist movements from history.

I feel you.

I find it interesting that the entire alt-right, the whole ecosystem ranging from 2016 Trumpist meme populism to hardcore 4chan /pol/ white supremacy, is both notably leftist in some key aspects of its psychology, and also clearly more committed to the fight and in many ways better at fighting it than mainstream right-wingers are. I say leftist because the alt-right, in their populist economics, their sense that they are oppressed by shadowy elites, their obsession with race and sex and the cultural meanings of both, is very reminiscent of a leftist movement.

The alt-right is basically "rightism for angry, rebellious young men", as opposed to "rightism for boring normies", and what you're seeing is similarities to "leftism for angry, rebellious young men" which was how the counterculture got started. RfARYM isn't new; it just was a taboo area of politics in the West for 70 years because the last big Western proponent was named Adolf Hitler (note that Nazism hit all three of the points you mention). I suspect part of the reason RfARYM has started being a thing again is because SJ threw the word "Nazi" around so much and so lightly that the taboo got worn down to merely being "edgy".

I say leftist because the alt-right, in their populist economics, their sense that they are oppressed by shadowy elites, their obsession with race and sex and the cultural meanings of both, is very reminiscent of a leftist movement.

Sailerism is not leftism, not in the slightest.

Wanting safe streets and criminals dead or gone is not leftism either.

Sailer’s personal politics are dissident right adjacent but pretty heterodox for the DR in their own right.

Another reason why the left currently worries me more is that their delusions are deeper than the right's delusions.

Yes: The left is smart and understands the system and has been re-engineering it for decades. I am far more wary of smart people who know how to accomplish bad things than dumb people who might accidentally break some stuff but don't know how to permanently damage the structure of it. It's a grim choice, and I can't endorse either one, but I know which one is more frightening.

Do you believe the "permanent structure" can survive, say, the next decade, regardless of who wins this election?

Next decade, sure, there is enough structure left yet. It'd be a gradual process anyway. If the Dems win, the Left will devour SCOTUS first. That'll take time. Then they'll do immigration amnesty. That'll take time too. Next elections will be likely full mail-in with pretty much zero security, so guess who suddenly gets permanent majority. Then there will be Green New Deal, whatever it will be then, and killing the First Amendment, at least online. Electoral college probably will be done somewhere on the way too. Then the Second Amendment - it's not as big impediment as many think, but it must be done, and it'll take time to do it properly. Then there are no limits, anything goes. May take way longer that a decade overall. If Republicans somehow manage to pull an upset anywhere on the way (though I am not sure how it'd be possible after the amnesty) it may slow it down further. But in two decades, I'm not sure it'll be the same republic - or any republic at all.

The timeline you've laid out seems to presume that the Progressives do as they please, and no real effective response ever emerges. I would hazard a guess that you'd justify this lack of opposition by pointing out that these steps are self-reinforcing, that each step makes the next step much easier and opposition harder. Certainly this seems to be how Progressives see things; they see themselves as snowballing a set of advantages into even greater advantages, with the hope that eventually the snowball gets too big to stop or even slow down, and their opponents simply give up and die off.

The problem with this is that a considerable portion of their opposition will not give up, that escalation can and will invalidate all advantages of the snowball, and that the snowball cannot, in fact, prevent escalation and in fact makes it inevitable. They can absolutely dominate the society we have now, but the society we have now depends on a lack of domination to survive. They are committed to destroying the foundation for their own existence.

Right now there are mainly three venues, as I see, that Republicans can resist. First: SCOTUS, which is the most powerful, even if the slowest and least sure way, and its power means it's going to be destroyed first.

Second: electing Republicans that are capable of blocking Dems in Congress, in numbers that enable that. With filibuster pretty much gone, and Republicans still unable to figure out how to counter things like mail-in voting and ballot harvesting, and completely incapable of handling lawyer superpredators like Elias, this option's time seems to be running out quickly. Oh yes, and if Big Tech keeps its informational war against the Right - and I see no reason why they wouldn't - it means reaching the masses necessary to make cheating impossible, and delivering message consistent enough to entice them, is extremely hard. Not many normies read Gab and TruthSocial (and tbh things happening there aren't always good for convincing normies, either). Musk helps but it won't be enough - and with enough force deployed, Musk will fall too. If 2024 elections would resemble 2020 in any way, this option is out.

Third: red states conducting independent policies and blocking federal Dems. This is also a weak option and becomes weaker once SCOTUS falls, because this means state rights are gone, Constitution is a living document, and Feds can do anything they want. Plus, many states have been long dependent on massive federal funding grants, and threatening to pull those would politically kill any local Republican that becomes too uppity. So yes, these things are reinforcing each other, each of them makes resisting others harder. Please tell me which venues of resistance I am missing.

The problem with this is that a considerable portion of their opposition will not give up, that escalation can and will invalidate all advantages of the snowball,

What kind of escalation you are talking about? Strolling through Capitol again and getting 8 years in jail for that? I am not sure it's as scary for Dems as some may think.

Plus, many states have been long dependent on massive federal funding grants, and threatening to pull those would politically kill any local Republican that becomes too uppity.

Why didn't Biden use this power against Abbott when Texas defied the federal government on the border?

...It seems to me that many such predictions vastly overestimate Blue Tribe's willingness to actually prosecute a fight, or to enforce their will in the face of significant opposition. They absolutely like dropping the hammer on isolated Red Tribers who they estimate they can destroy without consequence, but they do not actually seem to relish a fight that costs them casualties. Rittenhouse ended the Kenosha riots single-handedly, after all. The ATF will absolutely murder some isolated loner's wife. I doubt they will relish going door-to-door in Texas or Arkansas, and I doubt they can make the locals do it for them.

What kind of escalation you are talking about?

See here. In short:

I'm convinced it is possible to shift the probabilities toward collapse of centralized authority by a two-digit percentage through the exclusively legal, entirely private and secret actions of between two and five individual people committing to a year or two of dedicated effort.

Perhaps that seems implausible to you. If you believed it were true, though, would it shift your assessment of the probability of success for the current Blue Tribe snowball approach?

Here's a fresh example of using funding power to coerce a red state to change their policy: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/09/04/scotus-blocks-oklahoma-federal-family-planning-funds-amid-abortion-fight-n2644339

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Why didn't Biden use this power against Abbott when Texas defied the federal government on the border?

First of all, Texas didn't really do anything substantial. The border is still largely non-existent and the migrants are still pouring in. Second, SCOTUS and Republican house are still there, for now. Third, Texas is a big state which may be harder to make to bend the knee. Smaller red states could be much easier. Texas would probably be the last to go, and likely will fall from the inside rather than the outside.

they do not actually seem to relish a fight that costs them casualties

Which fight would that be? They don't need to make army to invade Texas. They just need to restructure subsidies and pork spending and Republicans that are too feisty suddenly find themselves unelectable because they can no longer bring home the bacon. No casualties necessary.

Rittenhouse ended the Kenosha riots single-handedly, after all.

He didn't. 1000+ National Guard deployment did.

I doubt they will relish going door-to-door in Texas or Arkansas, and I doubt they can make the locals do it for them.

How many locals refused the lockdowns and the mask mandates? That was a trial run. Most complied. Seriously, I've seen people wearing masks on the street as late as 2023, and this is a deep red area. They will comply the next time too.

And btw, if anybody on the right gets some ideas about "shifting the probabilities toward collapse of centralized authority" - that would be the left's wettest dream of all. Now they need to wait for China to make a suitable virus or to invent some bullshit threats involving FBI entrapping a bunch of idiots, but if they get a real, genuine thing... They will use it to scare the population so shitless that they will agree to literally anything just for the nightmare to end. They are good at it, judging by the results. And terrified people are very easy to herd.

Sure. There's a lot of ruin in a nation. If Trump wins, the Democrats probably stymie him and win in 2028, and assuming they win with a candidate who isn't Harris, we probably continue plodding along the road to serfdom. If Harris wins, we'll speed up that trip, but this nation has more than a decade of ruin remaining regardless. Probably not two decades at Harris pace, but she'll likely overshoot and in reaction the next president will be a plodder.

I am annoyed by how weak the Republicans are. Increasingly, 2016 seems to be a flash in the pan.

2016 wasn't a flash in the pan, it was a brick wall that all the momentum the right had been building since 2010 smashed to pieces against.

There was no momentum in 2010. In fact, there's a pretty clear descending line from 1984 Reagan to 2024 Trump, with lower highs and lower lows each cycle.

The natural constituency of the Republicans is dying of old age and being replaced with immigrants who have fundamentally different values.

In this light, it's a small miracle that the Republican Party even exists at all, let alone is relevant. As much as I hate Trump, I think he's able to reach people that normie Republicans are not.

The post-Trump world will likely look like a permanent blue victory. The Republicans didn't do anything wrong. They just don't have a big enough tribe any more and people are convinced that socialism is the path forward.

There was no momentum in 2010.

The Republicans won the largest seat number in the House they had won since 1946 and the largest individual seat gain for either party since 1948. And, of course, the momentum didn't stop there: They won more seats total in the House in 2014 than they'd had in any year since 1928. The GOP went from controlling 10 state legislatures in 2010 to controlling 25 after the 2016 elections, they took enough individual chambers to drive the Democrats down to unified control of just 5 total state legislatures, and went from occupying 23 to occupying 34 gubernatorial seats. Obama apparently presided over the Democrats losing more than 1000 downballot offices in his two terms.

The Republican Party was at an apex of its power going into 2016 that it hadn't seen in a century. Trump barely squeezed out an EC victory from that and ran behind the rest of the party everywhere, then presided over a Democratic landslide in 2018.

This:

The Republicans didn't do anything wrong

is nonsense. They totally failed to live up to the expectations of a big portion of their base and so they got saddled with Donald Trump, who drives turnout for the Democrats at least as well as he does for Republicans, and dramatically better in midterm years. Had they done something to appease enough of the base that Trump's impact on the 2016 primary was as big as his impact on the 2012 primary and the Party went into the 2016 election with anyone more acceptable to the broader public, we'd be in a wildly different place.

IMO your last paragraph nails the problem, though I'd caution that the 2010-2020 GOP was built on demographic quicksand (because REDMAP was that good, and Democratic gains from '06-08 were reliant on a lot of soon to die blue dog Democrats).

What was the signature accomplishment of the Obama era GOP? Legislatively? I dunno? Shrinking the stimulus a bit? Scuttling the Iran Deal? SCOTUS killed 50 state Medicaid expansion? Meanwhile, the SCOTUS majority that voted liberal against W's signature culture war issue (same-sex marriage, and Trump's justices did the same with Bostock) was 40% Republican appointed. Why lie down and think of the courts when Republican-appointed justices turn liberal almost as quickly as Republicans can appoint them?

Dramatic shrinkage of the deficit, from almost 10% of GDP in 2010 to less than 2.5% of GDP in 2015, was the primary immediate accomplishment.

The Trump judges were coming no matter who the GOP President was after 2016. They were fruits of the Federalist Society cultivating actually philosophically conservative jurists for several generations and were chosen by advisors and movement conservatives. Whoever was formally appointing them after 2016 would be appointing the same people, or similar people.

The Republican Party was at an apex of its power going into 2016 that it hadn't seen in a century

Do you remember who was expected to win before Trump showed up? There's no way that Jeb Bush was going to achieve or do anything substantially meaningful if he was elected, and even that's a tall ask - I don't think he beats Clinton in the 2016 election. In the counterfactual world where he takes office the biggest changes I can see are that Russiagate never happens, the Syrian war gets escalated and the Ukraine war kicks off early.

I agree. After McCain and Romney both failed, it's kind of hard for me to believe that any of the other 2016 Republican primary candidates other than Trump would have beaten Hillary. It seemed like the Republicans needed to try something new, because what they had been doing was not working.

To be fair, Hillary is no Obama in terms of charisma - so it would have been easier for a Republican to beat her than for one to beat Obama. But the field was pretty bad. Jeb Bush was dorky and a Bush, Marco Rubio was goofy, Ted Cruz was easily made fun of and memed on by Democrats. Maybe Kasich could have won? I don't remember much about what he seemed like.

There were no great candidates in 2016, but probably any of them but Bush could have beaten Clinton fairly easily. Bush's name would have dragged him down harder with the kinds of voters he needed to make up for the lack of immigration restrictionists that we really got to see when it was just the primaries.

There was a time when people were thinking, "I we really going to end up with Bushes and Clinton's again?!"

There were no great candidates in 2016, but probably any of them but Bush could have beaten Clinton fairly easily.

Fairly easily? Maybe I'm the one that's off my rocker, but from where I sit, Trump was the only one that even had the chance. The kind of people that vote Republican wouldn't go for another 4 years of the neocon war-globalism machine (there's a reason why Trump swept the primary, and continues to have a stranglehold on the party) and would just stay home, and the kind of people that wouldn't mind would be completely content to vote for Clinton.

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Bush's lead had disappeared by the time Trump started taking off. It was essentially an open race and, to be honest, would probably have ended up being either between Rubio and Cruz or a three way between them and Kasich, depending on if Kasich and Rubio could consolidate. However, Rubio's pro-immigration image would have turned off the people who went for Trump in real life, so I could see it easily going to Cruz.

He's a weak vessel, but we didn't know that in 2016. He could probably handle Clinton fairly easily, especially if he focused on immigration like Trump did.

Bush's lead had disappeared by the time Trump started taking off.

I was under the impression that this was in no small part due to Trump's attacks on Jeb. Without Trump there's no differentiation among the republican candidates at all, and that means Jeb's structural advantages deliver him the nomination (so he can lose to HRC). As for Cruz, we absolutely knew he was a weak vessel in 2016 - though I'm not sure that becomes as obvious with Trump out of the picture. At the same time, I don't think Cruz would even adopt the positions he did without Trump establishing them as primary-winners first.

I hate to say it because I would prefer that it didn't matter to people, but given how politics actually work, I'm not sure that Ted Cruz has the looks to win the Presidency. Trump looks weird too, but the difference is that Trump has figured out how to own his looks and make them work for himself. Almost everything weird about Trump's looks plays into his "the blue collar man's billionaire" macho persona. His obesity, his cheap-looking spray tan, his thin hair. I don't know if Ted Cruz would have been able to pull off making his looks work in alignment with his persona.

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Bush's lead was already shrinking before Trump came down the escalator. He had an early lead because he started with more name recognition, but he was not a strong candidate along any dimension except that vague sense of competency that came from having done a good job in Florida, which he failed parlay into actual success on the campaign trail.

Immigration was already an issue prior to 2016. The whole reason the autopsy had happened after 2012 was because the Republicans were already tentatively on the restrictionists side of the brewing crisis and had been for a while -- pretty much the entirety of the highly restrictive current legal environment was passed by Republicans in the 90s and 2000s. Unfortunately the only Republican President to serve after those laws came into effect was an immigration booster and Obama was never going to enforce the letter or the spirit of the law, so they never worked.

Cruz came from the right wing of the party on this debate. He may not have made it the center of his campaign -- but he may well have -- without Trump, but he already had the reputation and had already made it a important plank of his platform.

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Bush wouldn't have focused on immigration, though, because Bush is pro-immigration (as was his brother, as was his father, as was Reagan) and would rather lose and tank the GOP for a generation with it than run against immigration.

I'm talking about Cruz.

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AAQC'd. This is the best writeup of the past 15 years in American politics I've ever seen.

My girlfriend talks a lot about how the 2016 primary was a ridiculous joke, just a stage full of jokers. The fact that Trump was able to stampede over everyone speaks to how dire the Republican party situation was at the time.

But it also definitely speaks to the contempt that a lot of grassroots Republicans felt, and feel, towards the GOP. There's a feeling, grounded in truth, that the GOP never fights and never wins, they just keep compromising, while the left keeps winning. So Trump stood up and talked tough on immigration, and American greatness, and manufacturing, and even his facile ways of showing affinity for the working man (anyone remember him miming a pickaxe in a miner's cap?) was enough to win the undying loyalty of a lot of people. There's a forgotten America, and they don't want to be forgotten.

But it also definitely speaks to the contempt that a lot of grassroots Republicans felt, and feel, towards the GOP. There's a feeling, grounded in truth, that the GOP never fights and never wins, they just keep compromising, while the left keeps winning.

This is it. The momentum that @laxam mentions was momentum in favor of the neocon/neoliberal/uniparty faction of the GOP. As someone in the social wing of the party, I'm glad it hit a brick wall and splintered. Better to open the field for some sort of real opposition than to be stuck "voting harder" for Republican swamp creatures and desperately hoping they won't pull the football away at the last second yet again.

I don't know if you remember the era well or not, but I do. The Republican Party of that time wasn't 'neocon' (a term in ridiculously bad odour, something no one wanted to be associated with), this was the TEA Party party. And they delivered, at least partially as a way of being seen as fighting Obama. We got several government shutdowns or near shutdowns, budget fights for the ages, and Sequestration, which included deep cuts into ostensible sacred cows like the defense budget (something I can't imagine the 'neocon' boogiemen ever doing).

Looking back, it's a shame we didn't do more. The Federal fiscal situation is out of control and is on schedule to get worse, not better, as time goes on. I was outright disgusted when the Biden administration bragged about keeping cuts to 1% in 2023 budget negotiations. We'll have a crisis on our hands within the decade because we failed to do enough in the 90s (no balanced budget amendment), we failed to do enough in the 2010s (no path to balance and the tax cuts under Trump), and we're failing to do anything right now.

My deep political offline conversation with the average committed right-winger is kind of like "Hey man, we don't agree but whatever, it's fun talking about this stuff". My deep political offline conversation with the average committed left-winger consists of me trying to get them to question their ideas while gingerly ballet-leaping my way over the various minefields that, if I stepped on, would cause them to classify me as Adolf Hitler. Don't get me wrong, I also often just straightforwardly speak my mind with leftists in the mode of just "chatting about politics for fun", and this has not brought me any harm. Most leftists I know in person are not about to go report me to the thought police, they are not totalitarian. What I mean is that in those occasional really deep political conversations that one engages in, the ones where both people actually care about talking about the politics in a meaningful way rather than doing it just for fun or to vent, I have found that right-wingers are generally more easily accepting of disagreement, whereas with left-wingers you have to slowly seduce them into letting go of their instinct to assume that your disagreements with them mean that you are Hitler.

I've also noticed this - I don't know how much is really down to right wingers being inherently more accepting of differing POVS as opposed to the fact that in young, educated circles leftism is the default and being willing to share right-views necessarily means having to be able to tolerate aggressive pushback.

TBH I’ve never really had a deep offline conversation about politics that were really about politics and not ultimately vibes. What I mean by that is that left, right or libertarian (have yet to meet a communist) all seem to be picking positions based on “vibes” or “culture” rather than any specific position or set of facts about the outside world. The world of politics isn’t about rubber meets the road issues, but essentially about tribe proxies forming up based on shared cultural norms and interests.

TBH this is why I don’t trust either side completely. Neither one is actually interested in fixing things or building for the future. There’s no real problem solving going on there. I’ve come to the conclusion that whether it’s D or R that eventually pull the trigger, American democracy is essentially already comatose and on life support. Politics is about solving things, filling potholes, teaching kids to be literate, numerate and scientifically literate future citizens, creating a social structure that promotes human thriving, passing real budgets, and making good decisions about how best to protect the people from enemies and keep them healthy. None of that actually seems to happen, and while the government and the parties and the people themselves are distracted by various flavors of vibes-based Kafaybe arguments, our country is rotting from within.

In 1960, the median family could afford a modest home, a car, and a local road trip vacation. That same median household probably could walk around town without worry about crime. Homelessness and drug use were fairly rare. Most kids, even without college (which was, at the time, fairly affordable) could read and write on grade level. Attacking a teacher was absolutely unheard of, and school shooters were rare enough that schools allowed kids to keep hunting rifles in their cars. Every single one of these QOL indicators has gone down quite a lot since then, and all we have from our leaders, the parties, and “political groups” is Kafaybe and Vibes.

In 1960, the median family...

A quality post, but I would caution you not to fall into Baby Boomer sunny day nostalgia.

In 1960, the median family was smoking, drinking, and physically fighting more. A lot of the "social order" that we yearn for today was at the expense of a lot of behind-closed-doors domestic abuse and built on the back of what was a fundamentally racist society. Furthermore, the American West was still "frontier" enough even then that if you were just kind of a trouble maker, you hopped on a train to California and, I don't know, go found Apple Computers or some shit.

Please also remember that In 1960, the median family that was black or living in greater Appalachia wasn't living that much better than the 1860 median family.

I am 100% behind the idea that a lot of social and political (and economic) ills today are because of social dysfunction. I am at the level of "As soon as you stop hearing "sir" and "ma'am" the rest is sure to follow." I think you should hold open doors for women, and that guys should pay on the first date. I will call the police on you for loud music after 9pm. My lawn need gettin' off of.

But, at the same time, fuck 1960. We're not going back. Ah, fuck! Look what you made me do.

In 1960, the median family that was black or living in greater Appalachia wasn't living that much better than the 1860 median family.

Uh, no. I'm from greater Appalachia, TVA country. If you'd said 1920 or 1930 (I chose those dates deliberately because IMO given the choice contemporary neoliberals would've never electrified the South.) I might've agreed with you but rural white Southerners wouldn't have worshipped FDR/Truman and the Democrats 50 years past their terms if things hadn't gotten better when they were in office.

My Silent Gen grandparents were lucky to have 8th grade educations, worked in the fields as children, and went hungry such that they hoarded canned goods in their old age. My Gen X parents had 12th grade educations, didn't starve, and didn't endure child labor. People are nostalgic for the mid 20th century not just because of social mores but because we had incredible economic growth that we haven't come close to matching in the 21st century even with a giant immigration wave (Keep in mind that all that mid 20th century economic growth happened with de facto closed borders.).

Yep. My Cajun great-grandfather literally slept in a barn for years at a time. His son grew up in a house with (non-central)air conditioning.

I'd love to believe that my fellow travelers are amazing at tolerance, but I honestly believe it's the second one. For educated people, progressivism is the default. If you're going to be educated and not progressive, you need to develop your ideas and hone your beliefs, because everything and everyone around you is going to try and push you into being a progressive. If you're a young, educated conservative -- or even a moderate -- it means you're already not the kind of person who allows the Overton window to set your political beliefs. You arrived, or maintained, your conclusions in spite of the social consensus. You're a maverick.

There are definitely circles where the polarity is reversed, but for the most part you have to seek them out.

But also political liberals are more likely to report mental health problems like depression and I can't help but believe that part of it is just that political conservatives are more comfortable in their skin than progressives. And that progressives have a lot of intense fear about what conservatives might do that is shaped by an overall negative impression of the world. Which is food for thought -- progressives are often described as the bright cheery optimistic idealists, and conservatives the dark brooding fearful X-phobes... but I think the reality is much more complicated.

I think at least some of the differences in mental health are caused by the nature of the movements. Liberals tend to move further left and tear down anyone who doesn’t go along completely on everything they believe. If you take the liberal positions of 2004, you are on the far right to most social liberals. And the same group is not shy about using their power over institutions to massively punish people for pretty small transgressions. The bleeding edge of social liberalism wants Harris gone for daring to say that what Hamas did on October 7 was bad. It’s a massive purity spiral that’s easy to fall off of requiring adherents to live in a 1984 world where you have to change your views on a dime and pretend that Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia.

Conservatives are much more chill about the whole thing. If you’re conservative, you are allowed to have beliefs outside of that. As long as you’re generally conservative on most things, they don’t really care. If I’m in favor of gay marriage and my more conservative friends are not, my friends will not scream at me, nor will the more conservative kids decide that my political beliefs warrent ruining thanksgiving dinner when they throw a fit and leave. If I work for a conservative, my job isn’t in jeopardy if he finds out I’m not super conservative. There’s not really a purity spiral either. If I stand still, I’m not going to find that the party as a whole finds my views abhorrent.

There are definitely circles where the polarity is reversed, but for the most part you have to seek them out.

Eh, there’s a quintile on both sides where most people hold outside the Overton window political beliefs. There are very definitely filter bubbles situated in the rightmost quintile which you can just wind up in. I live in one.

For educated people, the class-enriching position is the default.

Indeed (progressive thought is designed by and for these people). It's worth noting that this also applies to conservatives, but the tension comes from most of the problems they solve not being fake [in the sense that their usefulness/worth/meal ticket doesn't tend to come from artificial structures (regulatory compliance, education, management, bureaucracy)].

It takes a rather unusual kind of person to notice that and reject it, though I think the rejection comes first and the noticing second (I think educated conservatives are most likely to believe their underlying skills will allow them to succeed even if the number of bullshit jobs fell by 90%, and it's more common for men to think this than women). And fixing it is not going to make you money anyway.

And that progressives have a lot of intense fear about what conservatives might do

If I had the sense that my entire sociopolitical salary was built on a house of cards that specifically depends on the welfare of not-my-political class to sustain (and when my meal ticket comes from taxing them, and when new positions open up for my talents it's funded by/in the service of yet another new tax) I'd be utterly terrified too. I think progressives have an innate sense of this (hence the need for the hostility and the suppression); though the capacity for resistance ironically might be conservative propaganda that progressives are buying into.

I’d need a more careful analysis to ascertain whose delusions are more delusional. In terms of harmful narratives, the notion that we could round up over ten million people, deport them, and we’d like the result is on top of the list. I’d consider that equally harmful to forgiving all student debt or further expanded entitlements when the current ones are insolvent.

In terms of party cohesion, the left is very strongly aligned against Trump but is split hard on Gaza (not in numbers but in terms of unwillingness to compromise). Once again, we could use some charts I think.

Thank you for this comment! Really sums up my exact political experience. Although I have been radicalized enough to vote for the right, sadly.

The ballet-dancing around land mines was a perfect metaphor for my experience in these convos. Also

I am annoyed by how weak the Republicans are. Increasingly, 2016 seems to be a flash in the pan. For all their macho posturing, the reality is that today's right-wing is soft, easily bullied, and unstrategic.

YES! It's so incredibly frustrating. The right is so pessimistic and honestly nihilistic for what's supposed to be the party of God and goodness and strength and masculinity. The presented optics are just very different from the reality, it's annoying as heck. I feel like I've been sold a false bill of goods at times.

But as you say, my reading of history meant that after the Covid lockdowns and mass censorship campaigns, I became extremely wary, and have only had my hackles raised more since.

The right is so pessimistic and honestly nihilistic for what's supposed to be the party of God and goodness and strength and masculinity.

I think that demoralization and stigmatization have just been that effective. It's hard for me to imagine creating a political organization that champions God, virtue, and masculinity that wouldn't immediately be tarred as anachronistic, hokey, and LARP-y not only by the unfriendly omnipresent progressive media machine, but worse still by conservatives themselves who, having been raised by that media machine, instinctively and reflexively cringe at any overt, unironic celebrations of their own values. It's a problem that I've been wrestling with solving for a while. For now, the only solution I can think of is to first have one's target audience unplug from the machine long enough to recover from irony poisoning before trying to pitch such an organization. But that's a tall order -- you'd have to replace it with something else, but large-scale dissident media efforts are not tolerated by the machine, and so you'd have to do stuff in meatspace, which essentially mean's you'd have to first create a physical intentional community. "Just start your own bank nation, bro."

Learning a second language seems to help. A lot of the brainwashing / cringe reflex is associated with particular turns of phrase, and I've found that expressing the same sentiment in a language you learned as an adult doesn't trip the same wires.

I want to know how the libertarians managed to have zero presence even when the race was Trump and Biden. Can’t have childish propaganda without any propaganda, maybe?

I had to look the guy up! At least people recognized Gary Johnson!

Because all the "good" libertarian stuff is taken up by one of the two parties - Trump pretends to be anti-war and pro-gun, Democrat's are pro-LGBT, pro-abortion, and pro-weed, and nobody outside of rich people and dorks actually like libertarian economics. So, the libertarian party becomes a breeding ground for weirdos complaining about having to have driver license's, legalizing heroin and selling it at 7/11, and knowing way too much about age of consent laws.

As pointed out, their nominee is actually a consistent libertarian, which means the weirdo culture war libertarian types don't like him, but also any left-leaning people upset with Kamala over foreign policy would be turned off by his economic standards.

Summary from Reason

Angela McArdle, in her second term as the chair of the [Libertarian National Committee] and from the Mises Caucus faction that did not want Oliver to win [the party's nomination], is a major public voice for the party. Oliver's victory was hard-fought and narrow, only beating "none of the above" with 60 percent on a seventh ballot. On various podcasts and videos posted to her X account since Oliver got the nomination, McArdle has made it clear her goal for the [Libertarian Party] this year is to ensure that Trump wins the presidency. She said in her endorsement video, "I endorse Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden," while talking up promises Trump made to commute Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht's sentence and put a libertarian in his cabinet. A party pamphlet being given out at FreedomFest this week contains two paragraphs of praise for Trump before mentioning Oliver; the thought behind this strategy is that by leveraging Libertarian voters' power strategically, it can ensure that a major party candidate wins who will, its proponents believe, achieve significant libertarian, if not Libertarian, goals.

The wing of the libertarian party that's closer to the conservatives doesn't like their nominee, I think.

I honestly thought RFK was the libertarian party candidate.

The libertarian party is in the process of being torn apart by conflicts within the party between the Gary-Johnson pragmatist wing, and the hard right Mises Caucus. This Judean People's Front conflict has pretty much stymied any possibility of an effective campaign.

I don't know this all sounds like a specific bubble. Here's my personal bubble.

In 2020 I would have voted for Biden if my vote mattered but I live in California so I've always voted third party. I thought Biden would tone down the culture war and stop petty political bullshit. Didn't appear to happen at all. Kamala's campaign seems to be built on saying she's great, ridiculing and slandering anyone at all who disagrees, and both of those things coming back to "this is true because I said it's true." And to be fair it works, a bunch of idiots wandering into a building and breaking a few things is now an insurrection. And that's been so common that I've become enured to it. But the petty mean girl shit they've been doing has actively made me think I might never support the democratic party again. Coupling together the "Kamala can't possible lose and is polling ahead of Trump on all demographics" and "Yeah, but also fuck him, fuck his family, this JD Vance guy fuck him, too, fuck his family, they're all dirt and should die. Kick 'em while they're down and don't stop 'til they're dead." They're justifying this shit by saying it's Trump's weakness. Yeah, well, now you're just like Trump and you can't pretend to be the party of good vibes and higher moral character anymore except for people who don't pay attention or have no compassion for anyone who thinks differently. Being underhanded, playing dirty politics is one thing to do behind the scenes or allowing to happen hands off but this explicit endorsement of being without decorum or decency has vibed me into my vibe-shifted vibe that I can't hold onto any hope or promise because it's all tainted with being scummy.

(Note that I look at Reddit too much. This may be strongly responsible for my vibe-bubble or vibubble for the vibe enthusiasts out there. Also note, I'm not making fun of you specifically for saying vibe, but it's become almost a meme to me at this point where people just say vibe about everything, now.)

There's a scene in Good Will Hunting where Will is telling his therapist how his dad used to present him with a belt, a stick, and a wrench and make him choose with which to get beaten. He chooses the wrench because fuck him. I'm almost that bitter because of how they decided it was a good idea to sink to Trump's level of being a petty insulter. Really, below Trump imo because Trump is a liar and a blowhard and I certainly don't take his insults as the dead serious "I would murder you and it would be completely fair and right" attitude that people have about Trump.

My vote doesn't matter but I might just vote for Trump. Trump deadlocking the world because no one will ever agree with him even if he said the sky was blue sounds like a better option than having another president and cabinet that get to do insanely retarded bullshit like trying rioters as insurrectionists because they feel differently about their politics and not any of the actual intentions behind the riot itself. Trump might try to do that but the justice department will protest, sit on their hands, and nothing will happen. So, how is he not the better option, here?

I will say until the end of time that the most politically brilliant thing Biden could have done was to immediately pardon everybody involved in J6, commit to blanket pardoning Trump for any stupid bullshit anybody tried, and leaned hard into national unity.

If he had done that, even with the rest of the woke bullshit, I’d probably be campaigning for him right now. Instead we got pseudo angry grandpa, endless lawfare, and more endless division presented as unity.

I remember thinking the same. I figured he’d offer it just for the “accepting guilt” gotcha. Instead, nothing.

Why do that when not doing that works just as well, and conveys additional advantages that doing that does not?

Because it would appeal massively to moderates, and reduce Republican turnout in subsequent elections, by giving the message that no, the Democrats are not trying to criminalize dissent, if you don't hold to the party this time there is still going to be an election and a GOP in 4 years.

Right now, they're sending the opposite message, which probably will lead to a lot of Republicans who could have been convinced not to vote for Trump voting for him because the alternative is, from their perspective, the system being blatantly weaponized against their very existence for another 4 years.

Why appeal to moderates when you don't have to? The formative experience for the modern Democratic party is the FDR-LBJ era when they wiped the GOP off the map for a generation and held the House for 48/52 years from 1933 to 1993. Anything less is apostasy to them, and they still haven't forgiven Gingrich for having the temerity to actually win and do something for once.

I thought Biden would tone down the culture war and stop petty political bullshit. Didn't appear to happen at all.

I still feel kind of burned by this. The number of obvious self-owns from choosing to wholesale reverse (rather than tone down or moderate) Trump's policies has led to a number of IMHO completely predictable results, from reversing sanctions on Iran and funding UNRWA, to police defunding and demonization, to reversing Remain in Mexico, to promising that this stimulus won't cause inflation. Clearly nobody could have forseen any of these troubles.

And honestly I feel burned enough that, absent some explicit acknowledgement of the failures and a change in direction, I'm not particularly inclined to offer my vote to blithe platitudes. The debate agreement is particularly frustrating, because it seems we'll at best get one debate between a candidate that I don't particularly like (but I at least know where he stands) and a candidate that seems to have a complete absence of policy proposals (excluding the non-moderate ones of her 2019 campaign). Debates would at least provide an opportunity to challenge both candidates as to where they stand today versus four years ago.

EDIT: I am not a betting man, but I would give decent odds that if Harris wins, she'll have a lower approval rating than Biden does now within her first year in office. Partly from a long-term downward trend in approval numbers, and partly because you can't promise a bunch of actually-disagreeing voters the moon Joy! and deliver something that satisfies all of them.

I was hoping to get some example of progressive moderation by people who are still supporting Biden/Harris, but at this point I'm hard-pressed to present the question over at The Schism in a way that wouldn't come across as trolling, and most places I can meaningfully ask aren't going to give a useful answer, but instead just Not Fifty Stalins Yet me.

I'm hard-pressed to present the question over at The Schism in a way that wouldn't come across as trolling

The bigger question IMO would be is there anyone still there willing and interested to give a useful answer?

For local-culture reasons, the example given at Blocked and Reported's subreddit was that the Title IX injunction did not become a major topic of the DNC. I don't find it a particularly satisfying answer, but that was slightly surprising.

For completion's sake, I did get a response from Trace.

I’m not completely sure I’m looking at the same tweet, but that… wasn’t really a response.

So goes the Trace of today; the Trace of yesteryear that we appreciated has been lost to the sands of time.

It's the full thread, or at least down to :

better on the margins than not doing it, and given their need to pivot messaging towards the center during election cycles (albeit without policy changes), at least marginally better than my protest votes against Trump have been working the past decade

Oh, ok. I don’t really use Twitter so nowadays I just get linked to a single tweet outside of any thread. So I just try thought he said, “you morons are just trying to dredge up your old arguments,” or however that last tweet put it, and that seemed rather passive-aggressive.

Filter bubbles are valuable information. For my part, the red tribe leftists I know have mostly decided that, whatever their disagreements with the GOP and Trump, the democrats have simply moved too far left on social issues to get their vote. Taking trans kids away from their parents or very late term abortion doesn’t happen very often, but the democrats insisting on defending it really does upset some people.

Life long democrat and anti-Trumper, both after viewing pro-Democrat media, repeat Democrat talking-points and feel like they are told to feel. About as big news as that after Trump stated 2020 election was stolen, his supporters also questioned its validity.

And this is examining your anecdote in the most charitable way possible. Your political affilition is well-known, so inventing it would serve your interests. Thus by the converse of Criterion of embarrassment, it is less likely to be true, than if it were told by someone more to the right.

And this is examining your anecdote in the most charitable way possible.

No, I'm afraid this is not sufficiently charitable. It's okay to express your doubt regarding the veracity of a story, but even then you would need to do so in a less antagonistic way. For example:

To be honest I find it difficult to believe anecdotes like this one. It seems like everywhere I look, people are doing their damnedest to pretend that a historically unpopular and utterly unaccomplished politician suddenly has incredible merit. I'm not saying you're lying, but maybe this is the real essence of a "vibe shift": people consenting to an artificial narrative (or propaganda) shift rather than (or even in opposition) to any relevant facts on the ground.

When you make the conversation about a person instead of about the ideas under discussion, you lower the quality of discourse. We're not here to hold referendums on one another's character, but rather to have civil discussions with people who don't always agree with us. Please keep that more closely in mind.

His interests of what? This is theMotte, not an opinion column in the NyT.

He is not claiming that Kamala is good or that you should vote for her but that in his real life democrats are excited and centrists less apprehensive about the democrats, which seems to align well with what polling and donations show.

Nice to see you too, buddy.

I agree that this is about as predictable as old rednecks getting excited over the border wall, or college students chattering about Palestine, or whatever’s the tribal flag of the week. I think it’s interesting mostly as a counterexample to claims of astroturfing. There’s no intermediate step where the Democratic machine launders Kamala into a saint, at which point people get excited. No, they just start cheering for the most pedestrian reasons.

Tell me more about my interests, though. Maybe I’ll learn something.

Tell me more about my interests, though. Maybe I’ll learn something.

If you stick around TheMotte long enough, you live to become the progressive. You filthy life-long democrat, you.

Having never met your parents, please forgive me for stereotyping them.

I think a lot of people just want to feel good, in both senses of the word. Your parents are happy because they've been given an opportunity to vote and not feel bad about it, and they don't want to hear about policy because that would spoil it all. It's been talked about before but people want to love Big Brother because it makes life easier. They want to be persuaded. All they need is an excuse.

I completely agree.

They’d be happy to have a completely neutral butt in the chair. Trump is perceived as worse than neutral, mostly due to personal distaste. But Biden got too unappealing, by age or inflation, to clear the “tolerable” bar. So Harris gets a flood of enthusiasm for no particular reason.

I'm obviously not in the position to confirm or deny any vibe shift happening half a world away, but my ongoing frustration with the whole Kamala thing is that there's always at least one degree of separation between the enthusiasm and the person reporting it's existence. I'd love to hear the thoughts of an earnest supporter, starting with what they're hoping to get from her that they weren't getting for the past 4 years.

I'm my sabermetrics addled brain, the Trump-Biden transition was between a negative WAR president and a replacement level president. Biden amounted to a blank space in the oval office, and the country/government ran itself around that.

Kamala represents getting a 1war player over a replacement level player. Some upside! Major league competence! But still well below average. And there's some good, organic Kamala content out there. It's fun!

I still expect to vote third party.

I think it's debatable to what level President Harris would even "do" anything. The stabdard now is that she can't speak off-script, so she hides; and Biden is senile, so the departments run themselves. If Trump wins, he imposes change, a little or a lot. If Kamala wins, why wouldn't things go on mostly as they have?

As someone now leaning Kamala (despite having some nasty things to say about her earlier), she isn't embarrassing in the same way Biden was (or Trump, to a lesser extent, is). When she does something goofy, it's more endearing than terrifying.

I'm unhappy with both candidates' "policy platforms," but in the end neither will be enacted to a meaningful extent. Kamala's also more allied with my geography and employers, so I might receive more benefits from federal largesse.

Does that count as enthusiasm? Hah. My vote doesn't matter anyway.

I'm unhappy with both candidates' "policy platforms," but in the end neither will be enacted to a meaningful extent.

Are you sure about that? The chance of a trifecta, provided a Harris victory takes place, is about 50%, per the betting markets, I believe. That's high! They might not be able to get some of the price controls stuff through, but if they get 50%+1 in each house, they absolutely will enact "court reforms" (term limits, which are really court packing; the No Kings Act, which is really a way to force the judiciary to stop taking positions one dislikes, constitution be damned) that have popular sounding names and high esteem among democrats (so they'll pass), but have the long-run effect of destroying the independence of the federal judiciary and our system of government. Also, no way they crack down on the border, which will over time, as those here illegally get citizenship, push the country farther left, and get you some more of those policies you don't like.

I am skeptical about the judiciary changes happening: if Democrats win the Senate and the Presidency, the court "reform" (I agree it would be bad, and I'm pretty content with the composition of the current court) is a much bigger lift than simply appointing new justices. In fact, I'd say that Trump winning actually increases the risk of judiciary reform over the next decade, if he replaces one or two of the Democratic justices and Democrats feel increasingly desperate and hopeless. If court packing is going to happen, electing Harris or electing Trump just shifts it a couple years forward or back.

As far as immigration goes, neither Trump nor Harris will do much to change the existing system. They'll take different rhetorical approaches and make some marginal changes, but both will more or less maintain the status quo. The constant stream of millions of illegal immigrants is just too critical for the lifestyles of both Democratic and Republican donor classes to allow for any real action to be made. You'll still see roughly the same number of immigrants in the US regardless at the end of their respective terms.

The only place I see a substantively different choice of futures is foreign policy, particularly China. Who's better to avoid a war with China? This is not obvious and requires some guessing: Harris is a sock puppet for the existing foreign policy establishment, while Trump's approach is (charitably) more personalistic. As much as I dislike the foreign policy establishment, they provide predictability. Major wars break out when one side doesn't correctly predict what the other side will do; if everyone can predict what will happen and the costs to each party, it greatly increases the likelihood of managed transitions that don't go kinetic. A war with China will hurt the economy far worse than cherry picking all the worst policies from each candidate, so that ends up being one point in Kamala's favor for me.

What do you make of Senator Whitehouse saying that they'd pass the reforms that, bundled in a single bill with a bunch of other popular things, to only circumvent the filibuster once? That they would be "virtually certain" to pass such a bill, and that it would have "spectacular tailwinds"? Is he lying, or wrong?

I don't expect Republicans would overplay their hand with replacing Democratic judges, because of what the situation is like right now—if they could get a sufficiently strong commitment to not blow up the whole thing in the future in exchange for replacing the justice with another Democrat, that seems well worth taking. (Though I could certainly see them replacing some of Thomas, Alito, or Roberts, with other conservatives.) I could be wrong; it's possible they have no self-control.

I think immigration can be done with more direct action, so congressional actors are of a little less importance.

I'm similarly uncertain on foreign policy. In practice, it looks like Trump's foreign policy worked out a lot better than Biden's (see: Afghanistan, Abraham Accords, Ukraine, Iran), which is a point in Trump's favor, but I don't know how the amount of risk taken compares. Are you opposed to people using strategic ambiguity?

As much as I dislike the foreign policy establishment, they provide predictability. Major wars break out when one side doesn't correctly predict what the other side will do; if everyone can predict what will happen and the costs to each party, it greatly increases the likelihood of managed transitions that don't go kinetic.

I don't see how this follows at all. If one side is able to predict with relative precision the costs of a conflict will be, they will be more likely to do it whenever the benefits exceed those costs. Predictability alone is not a prophylaxis, you need a robust and credible cost infliction strategy to actually generate deterrence.

You absolutely need a cost infliction strategy. But the competitor needs to be able to predict costs will actually be inflicted. Otherwise, they can convince themselves it would be lower cost than it actually will be.

For a Taiwan contingency, I believe the variance of costs (or, more precisely, China's perception of the variance of costs) is higher with Trump than with Harris. A war resulting in a quick, painless victory with minimal worldwide economic repercussions is likelier with him as he's more likely to call bluffs and cow China with escalatory responses, but so are disasters where we tumble into massive total war because China mispredicts US responses. (He's also more likely to sell Taiwan off, which isn't great but still a much better scenario than the total war outcome.)

I acknowledge this is guesswork, and the primary determinant of how horrific war will be is decisions on the Chinese side, not the US side.

As much as I dislike the foreign policy establishment, they provide predictability. Major wars break out when one side doesn't correctly predict what the other side will do; if everyone can predict what will happen and the costs to each party, it greatly increases the likelihood of managed transitions that don't go kinetic.

And yet Putin didn't invade Ukraine until the existing foreign policy establishment was fully back in control.

I don’t think democrats need 50%+1 to pass court reforms. Historical dem majorities have relied on blue doggers who are scared of such things.

They likely need 60% in the house, or close to it, and a good 55 or so senators, at least.

I've yet to see anyone commit that they won't. It's worth noting that term limits is a popular and moderate-sounding proposal, and the no kings act has the advantage of being against an unpopular, and extreme-sounding SCOTUS decision.

In the Senate, Manchin and Sinema were the only ones who cared about the filibuster. They'll be gone.

The list of D-affiliated senators who did not cosponsor the No Kings Act are: Senator Sinema, Senator Bennett, Senator Murphy, Senator Ossoff, Senator Tester, Senator Cortez Masto, Senator Rosen, Senator Hassan, Senator Menendez, Senator Brown, Senator Fetterman, Senator Warner, Senator Kaine, Senator Cantwell, and Senator Manchin.

The most likely set of seat changes, should the democrats win the senate, are Sinema->Gallego, Cardin->Alsobrooks, Stabenow->Slotkin, Manchin->Justice, Butler->Schiff, Carper->Rochester, Menendez->Kim.

That means they would still need to convince all of: Bennett, Murphy, Ossoff, Tester, Cortez Masto, Rosen, Hassan, Brown, Fetterman, Warner, Kaine, Cantwell, Gallego, Alsobrooks, Slotkin, Schiff, Rochester, and Kim. 18 Senators. Schiff's literally running on court packing. Alsobrooks spoke in favor of the Biden "reforms." Kim and Rochester are members of the house progressive caucus, as was Gallego before he had to pretend to be moderate, so moderation should not be our expectation. Slotkin's said she'd be open to term limits. So that's all the new members.

If anyone votes it down, I think it would be one of the current members. These are not as strong, as evidence, but Cantwell, Rosen, and Cortez Masto all cosponsored a bill to propose a constitutional amendment saying that Presidents have no immunity for actions, and generally applicable laws should be ordinarily read as applying to Presidents. Most of the rest supported ethics code things, but I don't really think that's weighty evidence.

Senator Whitehouse recently said that the "reforms" would in all likelihood be bundled in a package containing everything else they really want (e.g. making abortion legal everywhere), so that they only have to bypass a filibuster once. He says that would have "spectacular tailwinds," and that they'd be "virtually certain." It's possible that he's lying or wrong, but I'd expect he'd understand the environment better than I would.

Does that count as enthusiasm? Hah.

Pardon if I get something wrong in the process of paraphrasing, but if the argument is "I think the Democrats' managerial apparatus is better (or more aligned with your interests, as you seem to be saying) than Trump's, and Kamala is a superior skinsuit for it compared to Biden" then it's something I can respect, and it can serve as a starting point for a conversation. I'd have some follow-up questions about what this says about the state of your democracy, but I can accept "it is what it is". I also understand how the tee-hee-heeing about all the fun the Blues are having in their tree house, and how us chuds are not invited, is part of the campaign and has to be blasted through the media (social or otherwise), but I don't see how that can serve as a start for a conversation, and so I am left somewhat frustrated with the utter state of the discourse.

A bit of column A, a bit of column B, and some caveats, but yeah, that's a fair paraphrase.

If you're asking me to make the media blitz and astroturfed social media campaign somehow palatable or something that's worth rationally participating in, well, that's a big ask. The thing that pushes me most towards Trump is seeing that and thinking "Trump losing will make those people happy."

Having just spoken to Mom, I don’t think she could answer that. Not in a satisfying way. Zero discussion of policy, no signature proposal, none of that. That’s why I used the goofy “vibe” term. It really felt like this was just people getting permission to feel good about what they vaguely wanted.

Yeah, the Harris 2024 campaign website literally doesn't have a "platform"/"policy" section. The closest you get is the Meet Kamala Harris and Meet Tim Walz pages discuss policies they have implemented in the past, so we get a vague idea of the kinds of things they're in favor of. But the most concrete policy discussion is the Tim Walz page links to a page about Project 2025 explaining what policies they're against.

I understand the strategy: any time you give a concrete policy, some of the people that would otherwise support you are going to be against that specific policy, so the less you say, the fewer people you alienate. Harris/Walz have decided there's no upside for them to be talking much about policy right now and they may very well be right. But it's frustrating that just vibes is the level of political discourse we're at when theoretically elections should be a time to have a national conversation about the future of the country. Although realistically that mostly happens in primaries, not the general election.

Ages ago, @AshLael posted this theory.

In a vacuum, state your beliefs. People like a strong horse, as it were, and they definitely like a “positive vision.”

If you can’t directly compete with a strong statement, try debate. That can’t work because X. Supporters haven’t considered Y. Set yourself up as the reasonable one, tempering the initial naïveté.

And if someone is out-debating you, if you don’t have the institutional backup to argue policy? Call ‘em nerds and shove ‘em in a locker. Policy is boring, so remind them that you’re the one with a real vision. Play up your outsider status. Sneer at the ridiculousness.

The risk, however, is that Americans like one thing more than a strong horse. If your opponent can come across as an underdog, a scrappy idealist standing up to your bullying, they have an advantage. Debate beats state, sneering beats debate, state beats sneer.

===

Donald Trump is pretty good at pivoting between state and sneer. The 2016 Democrats had no ability to state a positive vision, so they weren’t able to counter his enthusiastic sneers. Worse, any sneers at deplorables, etc. were ammunition for Trump’s strong, stated narrative.

Once he won, he was faced with four years of institutional opposition. Backing up bold statements is hard without a deep roster and/or a detailed plan. So he looked like a poor debater and lost 2020 to an incredibly boring candidate plus an incredibly sneering media.

Here we are in 2024. Trump still struggles to debate policy, but he had plenty of opportunities to sneer at Biden. The assassination attempt also gave him some serious armor against sneers. That left the Democrats with one strategy: outcompete him on statement. So now we have the Democrats pivoting towards just that sort of substance-free platform. Can Harris actually out-MAGA him? I’m skeptical, but it’s better strategy than trying to debate. Against Trump, that’s just asking for a swirlie.

There is probably also the part of not having a literal dementia patient in the oval office, which is pretty exciting almost regardless of policy platform.

Sure, but on this point I'd have to ask your thoughts on celebrating the solution to a problem that was still being described as a far-right conspiracy theory just a few months ago. What's next? Are we going to celebrate the vanquishing of pedophile satanists when the next palace coup happens?

Obviously the public didn't agree with the media description of the situation. People thought Bidens age was a huge issue regardless of what spin the media tried to present.

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