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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33969 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Well, this is the Trump experience. I mean this debate. He started out really strong, was totally defeating Harris for the first ten minutes or so. Then he just couldn't help but start rambling and making unforced errors. Why decide to bring up abortion and ramble about ninth month abortion? That's not one of the Republicans' strengths. Why bring up Marxism? Outside of the highly online left and right, people generally think of Marxism as some boring thing from decades ago, not as an important issue. Why bring up the Springfield pets thing? That's another highly online issue that plays weird to normies.

Why not just focus on your strengths of crime, the economy, and immigration? He's starting to try to pivot more back to those now, but now he's rambling and raising his voice and acting defensive, which looks bad.

This guy has always sucked at debates other than in the 2016 primaries and when he got to go up against Biden a few months ago, but almost anyone could have won that debate against Biden.

Kamala is a competent but relatively weak debater, a strong debater could easily run rings around her. But Trump has learned nothing, it seems, from past debate performances. He keeps making the same kinds of unforced errors and making himself look bad. He can't stop himself from getting defensive and rambling and bringing up stuff that most people don't care about, or even stuff that favors his opponent.

If he could have just stayed calm and focused, he would have this debate in the bag by now. Instead he is fumbling it. How the fuck can a man have nine years of experience at politics and political debating and not learn the simple lesson of staying calm and looking calm and tough when the context makes it the right decision, instead of getting flustered and emotional all the time?

The greatest Trump sin of 2024 is that he has lost the touch. All the criticisms of his rambling, incoherence, inchoate arguments or whatever, all that is secondary to his greatest strength: hitting the opponent where it'll hurt.

Crooked Hilary resonated as there was sufficient baggage in the info sphere to make it plausible that she was a corrupt incompetent burying bodies on her path to unearned power. Sleepy Joe was obvious to everyone who actually saw Biden speak from 2023 onwards, regardless of right-wing twitter edits. Lyin Ted, Fat Chris, etc... its all the same principle.

And if its not personal, its hitting on values. 2016 Trump hit the immigration nail beautifully with Build The Wall, and he got supercharged with the anger of normies following the Deplorables incident. Frankly he should have swung for the fences in 2020 with Defund the Police, but he fumbled the responde and Biden disavowed Defund from the start, leaving that round a dud in the Trump gun.

That was then. Now? He's got JD Vance, an attack dog that is whining more than biting, a right wing media ecosystem catastrophizing Ring Of Fire disasters out of very real but currently statistically ineffective culture war pain points, and weak attacks against Kamala. He isn't funny, he isn't hitting the pain points of economy and immigration with sufficient focus, and he's ultimately BORING.

Even the supercuts of Trump best lines are boring and inaudible. Theres nothing funny about HIS attacks on Harris and the Democrats, and without that what do we have? A boring rambly mess that doesn't even make me angry at the democrats.

Overall an absolute fumble for Trump. His concept of a plan to win is less tangible than SV pre-ideation startups that strode into VC offices with a dream and a rejected application to Caltech.

a right wing media ecosystem catastrophizing Ring Of Fire disasters out of very real but currently statistically ineffective culture war pain points,

Yeah, the campaign feels very online. The Haitian thing is incredibly specific and the sort of thing you think lands when you follow too many DR accounts.

It feels like in 2016 Trump was saying things that people felt but couldn't hear on cable news or the debate stage. Now it feels like he's digging up things a lot of the people who wanted that would see as the theories of online weirdos.

I agree. The strength of his 2016 campaign was saying out loud what a lot of people were thinking but otherwise reluctant to say either out of politeness or being firmly outside the MBA from Harvard Business School class' overton window. I feel like his 2024 campaign lacks that zest, and is only as strong as it is because the democrats are that weak in comparison.

The Haitian question is a race between whether right wing researchers can dig up a case that gets close enough for plausibility before someone insane yelling about cats murders a Haitian or beats them up with a baseball bat or burns down a house full of migrants. A sort of stochastic terrorism roulette.

It's catchy, but dangerous.

It's catchy, but dangerous.

That's actually optimistic. IMO it's just dangerous and the damage has already been done.

My take is that it doesn't matter if they pull up a case. It's already too late at this point.

Unless Trump went into the debate with multiple, verifiable (as in "caught in 4K video") cases it was always going to seem crazy and be easy to dismiss.

I think the idea that this is what gets John and Jane Q finally onboard is the sort of thing jaded internet people who've seen Democrats seemingly escape every single "immigrant t-bones/rapes/robs citizen" story thinks will finally land and cause the scales to fall from the eyes of the nation. It won't. It just looks weird to even bring up and people will recoil. If they don't Google it, see the first mainstream outlet and fuck off.

The truth is that Democrats in the real world (as opposed to online leftists who have a clear incentive to never cede an inch) aren't getting away with it; people are already dissatisfied with Democrats on immigration (which is why they tried to deal) and the polling indicates this is one of Trump's (or any Republican's) strongest issue and the one where he has the most credibility relative to his Democratic opponent.

It's just that Trump is unpopular enough (and has a flexible enough relationship with the truth) that it's still close. If it was anyone else you likely wouldn't need the dogs and cats thing in the first place. And it certainly would be more believable if Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley decided to sound the alarm.

I don’t think that’s true, because this is something that absolutely hits the sensibilities of the PMC who have been basically able to ignore the problem because it’s not affecting them. Pets are in many parts of the PMC class a very sensitive point. They don’t have to care about blue collar rednecks losing jobs to immigrants. They only have brief conversations with rednecks when they show up to fix the HVAC system or repair the roof or install a floor. But having an immigrant steal your beloved pet and eat it is something that the wine moms are going to be upset about. These are the same people who are trying to certify their pets as support animals so they can take them to Walmart. The idea of losing their pets in that way would be horrific.

If you grew up in the era when people still read newspapers or watched local news on TV (i.e. you were born before about 1990) then if-it-bleeds-it-leads media incentives meant that you were subject to intensive coverage of lurid crimes and a media narrative that crime is out of control. This narrative was completely unresponsive to the large drop in crime in the 1990's, with the result that low-information voters think that crime continued to increase, and use this fact to justify cocooning their kids. You could live somewhere as peaceful as the Zurich suburbs and still fill a local media crime blotter with sufficiently lurid stories that crime would be out of control in the minds of people who consume media crime coverage, and a crucial part of the education of a blue triber is understanding this.

Even if it was true, "One Haitian immigrant in one small town killed and ate their neighbours cat" being signal-boosted nationally by partisan media is exactly the sort of crime coverage that blue tribers have learned to tune out, and frankly that everyone should have learned to tune out.

Still too optimistic.

I don’t think that’s true, because this is something that absolutely hits the sensibilities of the PMC who have been basically able to ignore the problem because it’s not affecting them. Pets are in many parts of the PMC class a very sensitive point.

And race isn't? Arguably it's the sensitive point. If it was refugees from Scotland you might have a shot.

Your mistake here is assuming people are going to treat this as a neutral rational argument and not a plate of political sewage; they will react with visceral disgust. 2rafa's post about how people react in Britain to bringing up uncomfortable immigration facts is how it'll actually go:

It reminds me of real life conversations I’ve had with white English people, intelligent, center-right conservative types, about groups, identity, mass immigration, genetics, civilization, and they just shut down. I don’t mean that they shut down the debate, they’re usually polite enough and I wouldn’t discuss ‘edgy’ things with people I didn’t trust anyway, but they shut down internally. They display the exact pigheaded stubbornness that the Seattle video interviewees do, the strange combination of [post] Christian guilt complex and superiority complex and absolute, ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ type emphasis on propriety above policy

In the American case they'll simply refuse to even grant it unless it's absolutely unavoidable. And even then, you might get some of the "pigheaded 'what of it?' stubbornness" with the more left wing types.

There are some things people of good character and breeding just don't want to hear, let alone talk about in polite conversation. "Black savages are eating people's cats" (which is how it'll sound to them because, let's be real, that's what the DR is saying) is as close to the top of the list as I can imagine. You really need the 4K video. And something that hints it wasn't one deranged person.

The thing is, and I say this as a dirty open borders social democrat, there are plenty of actual bad cases, as you'd expect in a nation of 350 million people to use for examples, and even with families who will support you using their case, as opposed to the poor kid in Springfield, Ohio, whose family is against Trump or anti-immigration folks using their child as a bludgeon against immigration.

So why make up stuff?

Actually the race is between the right wingers yelling about cats REALLY being eaten by Haitians vs right wingers yelling that cats don't have to be being eaten by haitians in order for the threat to be recognized as extant but its irrelevant anyways can we please for the love of god stop talking about the cats.

Guess, uh, guess what's actually catching the attention of the right wing media ecosystem.

Why bring up the Springfield pets thing?

Because when democrats are forced to fact check that and say "the guy who is seen carrying a goose is South African" etc, they're not helping themselves much. And there's police reports of people killing geese in the park and loading them in cars from Springfield, Ohio.

Here's a interview from Springfield. It's rough.

Here's another thirty minutes of residents complaining.

Kamala is a competent but relatively weak debater,

She's being accused of having used help during the debate, though. Her earrings look very similar to wireless headphone earrings being sold. And her frequent gaffes with compound sentences are suspicious.

On the other hand, she did pass the bar exam, so, it might be a legit okay performance.

Is it actually against the rules for candidates to be fed lines by earpiece?

In any case, I think the idea that large numbers of Haitians are hunting ducks in parks seems unlikely given how wealthy American society is. If they’re legally resettled refugees they’re provided with homes and more than enough food by the resettlement NGO/agency; if they’re illegal then they’re working cash in hand anyway in a society where even a very low income is more than sufficient to buy food much tastier and easier to prepare than semi-wild fowl.

People from a desperately poor country wouldn't be happy to save money by cooking up the meat that's just wandering around that the wealthy Americans don't seem to want? Of course they would.

In my state getting a hunting/fishing license for $1 is a low-income benefit that's available and seems to be popular, so the idea of people ignoring the middleman because they don't expect any enforcement does not strike me as inherently absurd.

Reminds me of a story from a former coworker, who grew up eating the "free chicken" at the store. It wasn't until she started shopping on her own she realized what was actually happening was her dad picked up a rotisserie chicken, family ate it while shopping, and disposed of the rest before checkout. The store workers were apparently too polite to complain.

Wild ducks/geese have a distinctive taste which lots of people really like; it’s entirely possible that they just want to eat free range goose.

In some ways, I think it's funny that we've made a full cycle from "those geese belong to your feudal lord" to various democratic revolutions, all the way back to "you can't eat those geese because of the treaty on migratory birds your duly-elected representatives approved generations ago".

Not endorsing any particular side there, just observing.

Penniless Haitian migrants are now connoisseurs of game.

I’m imagining the film now. Somewhere between Ratatouille and The Princess & The Frog.

Catatouille, perhaps? Or The Princess & The Goose?

Jean-Paul was a Haitian immigrant who worked at the best kitchens in Paris, but who was called back to Haiti to look after his ailing mother. Now a poor refugee in Ohio, he eventually wins over the at-first-hesitant locals by dazzling them with delicious dishes cooked with animals he hunts himself at night on excursions from his small (but tidy) tent at the edge of the park. At the end of the movie the mayor (a wealthy car dealership owner) becomes his business partner in a new brasserie, and all the residents turn out for opening night.

Rednecks are, so why not?

Also everyone bitches about geese constantly around here, I could really easily picture someone saying Well if you want me to get rid of them...

Is it actually against the rules for candidates to be fed lines by earpiece?

They were disallowed from even having their own paper notes prepared, so certainly I would think that a live earpiece feeding them information would be wildly against the rules.

if they’re illegal then they’re working cash in hand anyway in a society where even a very low income is more than sufficient to buy food much tastier and easier to prepare than semi-wild fowl.

Only Haitians can truly appreciate how much more succulent a meal is when you can taste its fear.

(Ohio) Canadian geese fear nothing, not even death.

They're really annoying.

Agreed. If you are even debating the question, it’s a win by default for Trump.

I actually found Harris pretty impressive - she didn't get flustered or lost in word-salads, her responses were clear and coherent, and perhaps most importantly she seemed relaxed and calm. And while there's maybe some bias there on my part, I will state for the record that yesterday a few hours before the debate I was reading about the Springfield affair and told my wife that "at this point if I were a US citizen I might actually vote for Trump." So in that sense, I was a 'floating non-voter', and Harris would have won me over.

As for Trump, he seemed like he'd been spending too much time on right-twitter, or more likely had learned his applause-lines from his rallies where the audience is guaranteed to know about the latest scandals. It was probably the closest to Alex Jones vibes I've ever got from him, partly in terms of content (some very silly claims, like "Israel won't exist in two years if she becomes President") but mainly in terms of vibes. Particularly in the second half of the debate, he seemed angry, harried, paranoid, even delusional. Not his finest hour at all, and it seemed like a lot of unforced errors. If he'd stuck to messaging around the economy, used migration mainly as a competence issue ("Harris was made Border Tsar, well let me ask you this, do you the American people think she has done a good job of that?"), moved to the center at least rhetorically on foreign policy issues (why exactly couldn't he say it was in America's interests for Ukraine to win?), and made a more concerted effort to tar Harris with the failures of the Biden administration, I think he could have won.

I will state for the record that yesterday a few hours before the debate I was reading about the Springfield affair and told my wife that "at this point if I were a US citizen I might actually vote for Trump." So in that sense, I was a 'floating non-voter', and Harris would have won me over.

Oh come on. You’ve been posting on The Motte, how long, since the SSC subreddit days? But you claim to be an innocent undecided after everything that was happened? Even if somehow you are undecided, you are the most atypical undecided imaginable.

If he'd stuck to messaging around the economy, used migration mainly as a competence issue ("Harris was made Border Tsar, well let me ask you this, do you the American people think she has done a good job of that?"), moved to the center at least rhetorically on foreign policy issues (why exactly couldn't he say it was in America's interests for Ukraine to win?), and made a more concerted effort to tar Harris with the failures of the Biden administration, I think he could have won.

This is why he did win. Everyone came away understanding that he had the winning hand on almost every issue. Whether he “won the debate” is irrelevant. Nobody says to themselves “I agree with Trump on everything, but since he was ineloquent I guess have no choice but to vote for Kamala. Sorry, I’m coconut-tree gang now.”

Trump persuaded people on the issues. On the other hand, I honestly can’t even remember one thing Kamala said.

innocent undecided after everything that was happened

You're right that I'm definitely very atypical of 'undecided voters', but I never said "innocent"! If anything, I think my indecision is a consequence of having been massively saturated with high quality arguments for both left- and right-wing worldviews, creating a kind of political bistability, in which small changes in my mood or the news cycle triggers political gestalt shifts.

Relatedly, I'm reminded of a fun anecdote from my college days. I was discussing capital punishment with a friend - let's call him Bob - who was an extremely successful competitive debater (British Parliamentary, not the Lincoln-Douglas crap).

I asked him, "Bob, what are the best arguments in favour of capital punishment?" "Oh, that's easy doglatine. Consider the following...", and he gave me a long list of arguments, evidence, and data.

I next asked him, "Hmm, and what are the best arguments against capital punishment?" "That's also very straightforward. We can group these into seven main types, as follows..." and gave me another cavalcade of arguments and facts from ethics, political theory, law, and social science.

Finally, I asked him, "So what about you, Bob? Are you pro- or anti-capital punishment?"

After a long pause he said "God, that's a hard question, I have absolutely no idea."

I wouldn't be surprised if mottizens are actually disproportionally chronically undecided. As far as my understanding goes, especially the rare posters and lurkers are still mostly disgruntled left-leaning grey tribers, disliking the woke far-left wing but not enough to make the full jump to the right. Especially since the right keeps nominating people like Trump, who are at the very least just personally very unappealing.

Try to resist the urge to speak for “everyone,” especially when you’re acting this hostile.

It’s been quite a while since your last warning, but you haven’t really done anything else in the meantime. If you’re just here to stump for Trump, put some more substance into it.

Eh, I disagree here. I was pretty pro-Trump going in, but after watching the debate performance I'm rating Kamala much more highly.

For me it's probably between voting for Trump and not voting at all though. Watching that debate, seeing how angry and flustered Trump was, how he didn't seem to have coherent plans besides just railing about how bad the democrats were, really frustrated me.

I was hoping he'd talk about the deficit, about bringing in Elon to increase government efficiency and cut, talk about nuclear and crypto. All things he's discussed on podcasts recently. But he just stuck to his same old annoying, and frankly disturbing angry populist rhetoric. Not a good look for moderates at all.

Why bring up the Springfield pets thing? That's another highly online issue that plays weird to normies.

The odds aren't low that, somewhere in the midwest, they can find an immigrant (or the child of immigrants, England has shown us that's close enough) who did something that vaguely looks like eating a dog or cat. In any sufficiently large group it will happen. And Democrats are going so all-in on denying everything, that there's no room to retreat. All you need is a black guy with a funny name being charged with animal abuse two towns over from Springfield, and the conservative media establishment will blast it to the sky.

That said, far more concerning to me is that Trump's campaign owes money to venues for unpaid bills from years ago, and increasing stories of campaign dysfunction and infighting with funds misappropriated to be spent on legal fees.

I've been wrong about him before, Trump always has a puncher's chance, but I share your feelings of why? Why, in eight years, haven't MAGA Republicans built any real organization outside of Trump's personality? Why, in eight years, is there no political heir to Trumpism? Why, in eight years, isn't there a policy apparatus behind Trump that Trump won't disavow? Why, in eight years, do we lack any MAGA candidates in the Capitol or Governor's Mansions who aren't complete weirdoes?

Why, in eight years, haven't MAGA Republicans built any real organization outside of Trump's personality?

Because the footsoldiers and bureaucrats who build those organizations (attorneys, accountants, policy-wonks and other recent elite-college grads willing to swallow low salaries in exchange for proximity to power and influence) are overwhelmingly not MAGA, and even not Republican.

Why, in eight years, is there no political heir to Trumpism?

Because Trump has a lot more name-recognition than any other politician, and has a plurality of personal loyalists. He's also very good at attacking rivals, gets basically infinite amounts of free media from mainstream and liberal outlets horrified by him (but who don't realize that their coverage backfires and helps Trump with his base), and the people who rose to challenge him are either out-of-step with the modern conservative electorate (Nikki Haley) or too-online and actually not all that charismatic (DeSantis)

Why, in eight years, isn't there a policy apparatus behind Trump that Trump won't disavow?

Because that would tie Trump to something that he didn't dream up, and his personal policy is basically an anti-NAFTA 1980's Blue Dog Democrat. His genius, such as it is, lies in realizing that policy rhetoric doesn't actually matter all that much.

Why, in eight years, do we lack any MAGA candidates in the Capitol or Governor's Mansions who aren't complete weirdoes?

Because MAGA is so incredibly low-status among wealthy and white-collar folks that only the complete weirdoes are willing to tie themselves to it. Also, Trump has a bad habit of cannibalizing his own supporters to buoy his own efforts. (Does DeSantis count as a weirdo in your view? If so, he's awfully effective for a weirdo)

Desantis we could probably argue over. I counted him as outside of full MAGA, but I might be exaggerating the differences between him and Trump after the primary. Trump hasn't, to my knowledge, been grooming him as an insider in his campaign. But you're right, they're probably closer together than I thought at first.

The number of Trump henchmen who wind up indicted is somewhat startling, and might deter some people. But electoral politics, contra Nate Silver, selects for risk takers.

DeSantis' problem is that he assumed that Trump had self-destructed on Jan 6th 2021 and was planning to succeed him, not to replace him. Had Trump not run, I think this would have worked and DeSantis would have been the nominee with broad MAGA support. But (at least from the perspective of Republican primary voters) Trump hadn't self-destructed and DeSantis acting as if he had was seen as disloyalty. In Q4 2023 DeSantis is very clearly floundering because he doesn't know whether he is doing a Vivek-style understudy run to position himself if Trump has a stroke before the election, or if he is running to beat Trump.

In other words, MAGA rejected DeSantis, not the other way round.

My model for DeSantis is that he was preparing into March or April of 2024 at least competitive, and hoping to consolidate the other non-Trump candidates as they started to drop out. His initial model had been MAGA-y but-competent, intending to pivot to slamming Trump once some big enough scandal hit to kinda force that, preferably something that let him emphasis the competent bit without having to step too specifically against conservative or MAGA positions.

And the first big scandal that hit in that time frame was the Bragg Indictment.

elite-college grads willing to swallow low salaries in exchange for proximity to power and influence

Yes and as many people (including most eloquently TracingWoodgrains) have said, until you fix this problem the right is screwed in the US.

Allexis Telia Ferrell ate a cat in public in Ohio. However, she was born in the United States, and this seems more likely a mental health problem than a cultural difference.

I'm sure given the urge to dig around enough they'll find something. I'd bet I find somebody in the Poconos and upstate NY and WV and Maine who have kidnapped and tortured or eaten cats.

I can tell the story here anonymously: a "ritually tortured dog" story popped up in our town a few years back after a dog was found dead in a field... It was a coyote that a friend of mine had shot because it was sneaking around the chickens. They'll find something.

Today already I've made the joke "that's what happened to all our feral cats" and "can we tell that warehouse to hire some Haitians to deal with the geese in their retention pond?"

All through my childhood the stories of people supposedly kidnapping or mutilating animals were all, as far as I know, fictitious. But it was a common enough type of rumour that you'd hear it every couple of years - yeah my friend says that his older brother found this dog that was all slashed up with a knife. They think some kid in the neighbourhood is doing it.

That being said the next neighbourhood over from me in Toronto is currently dealing with an actual teenage catkiller at the moment, so this particular story has finally had a proven example for me.

I’m a bit more credulous of these claims given how recently animal torture was just a widespread form of entertainment.

Cats especially seemed to get marked for terrible deaths just for a laugh. Cat burnings, cat drownings. Politicians standing for election in England used to get pummeled with dead cats when the crowd turned against them.

Cats especially seemed to get marked for terrible deaths just for a laugh.

To be fair, these laughs can be substantial.

Our own little RFKII stories I guess.

I think this ground has been trod over here and even by some radio news outfits I listen to. There simply isn't an elite pipeline that can deliver normal candidates with good educations and strong bona fides to the top of the republican ticket that can also appeal to the MAGA crowd. Repubs still do fine in local elections in many areas and have developed such a pipeline in the federalist society for court appointments. Democrats certainly have their race grifters, but repubs let in actual grifters time and time again even when it is obvious. There is just such a huge disconnect between MAGA and republicans like Mitt and the old guard. I mean the Republican MAGA presidential candidate is on TV rambling about Haitians eating dog meat in Ohio, and some people here will say, "well he is directionally correct". The fish is rotting from the head down.

It’s more that it’s fragmented. DeSantis, Vance and many others on the populist (rather than Chamber of Commerce / Wall St / Mormon / Evangelical) wing of the party went to Yale/Harvard/Stanford, served in the military, have elite resumes. But they’re all outliers. The Dems pump out thousands of elite grads each year who get parachuted into the D.C. / media / staffer / NGO / think tank / civil service sphere. Young right wing men who graduate elite universities go into finance or tech almost to the man. A few who truly ‘believe’ (often religious Christian conservatives, who have their differences with Trumpism) become lawyers, clerk for conservative justices and then still mostly go into big law for the money.

The irony is that socialism would be the best thing to happen to the US right because it might make finance and tech less lucrative, thus allowing for some brainpower to be redeployed to politics.

One silver lining for Republicans, according to that model, is that they're at least well funded by donations from smart right-wingers who make it big in the fields you mentioned (at least in finance and business).

It's a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of government money laundered through NGOs and contracts back to the DNC.

The problem is threefold -

1.) Money hits a saturation point - ask any resident of Pennsylvania, Georgia, etc.

2.) ActBlue does a better fundraising job at times for Democrat's and is a better gauge on enthusiasm than 14 rich people.

3.) Those rich right-wing donors get Republicans to support unpopular things like continue tax cuts, abortion bans, or allow unpopular candidates to win primaries because they manage to find a political sugar daddy.

Ironically, the GOP would be better off under European-style campaigning, assuming no other changes, where there are no primaries, campaigns are limited, and actually financially restrained.

Trump has learned nothing, it seems, from past debate performances.

He's almost an octogenarian. even if he did had the attitude and humility required to even want to get better at something, who he is as a person - and what he is capable of - has completely solidified by now. Trump, like basically everyone his age, is nearly incapable of personal growth or learning lessons.

Obviously he's nowhere near Biden levels of cognitive decline, but he was all over the place tonight in a way I don't think I've seen before. Recursive angry tangents where even the initial tack was only tangentially related to the question. Limited vocabulary. Etc. I'm 100% pro-Trump and it was impossible even for me to listen to him for more than a few seconds without tuning him out.

The Springfield situation had the potential to be an excellent talking point, but he flubbed it. "They're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. This is what's going on in our country." That was it. To someone unfamiliar with the story, this is indistinguishable from the ravings of a homeless schizo. Even granting that Trump gonna Trump, that was not part of the plan. Mounting stupidity is the only explanation.

I don’t think there was a single question where Trump managed to stay on topic.

Like I actually believe if you sat and counted every response, the number of responses where he stuck to the topic of the question throughout the response would equal zero.

I’m unsure if this is related to his cognitive capacity, or if it was strategic to talk about what subjects he felt important. But if strategic, it was executed very poorly and each time after the rant the moderator would remind him and the audience what the original question was, it was always comical just how far he’d gotten from it without answering it.

This is a standard pattern in presidential debates; the question is asked and the participants instead just talk about whatever they want to talk about. Has nothing to do with cognitive capacity.

No, not quite. The typical playbook is you launch into a message-tested spiel that’s related to the question, but often not a direct answer, hammer it from a particular angle for a little bit, and trot out a fact/statistic or two (occasionally name check an average Joe) as some sort of evidence. Maybe with some attack lines if appropriate.

Note that in almost no case would traditional debate wisdom indicate that you discuss more than 2 topics in any given answer. It dilutes the message. Traditional debate wisdom in wrong in several cases, but not in that respect! At times Trump touched on perhaps 5 different issues in a single answer. It’s rambling, plain and simple.

Who do you think is unfamiliar with this story? My extremely normie family members I was with this week were all talking about this.

People are acting like normies arent all on Facebook sharing shitty memes all day.

Gonna gingerly put my hand up and say I think many (most?) people who still choose to contribute to the 'national conversation' these days are in a cargo cult, pretending that because we're still going through the motions it's all business as usual. My explanation for this is because for many (most?) it would be psychologically devastating to acknowledge we might be headed toward a thousand or so years of unthinkable-yet-predictable decline like the Mediterranean civilization of the 3rd century AD.

Birth rates, mental disorders, health crisis, national debt, it's all stacking up. We're running on fumes. We've been stoking ethnic conflict for about a generation with insane ideologies and mass immigration, and it has only been subdued by continual growth and increases in wealth. That is now staggering to a stop. I don't think the current iteration of AI will be enough to push back the problem much further. But 5 years? 10? 20? I don't know. I'm always surprised at how far the can has been kicked down the road already. I hope I'm wrong.

When I see people say this... People have been saying this forever. Last century had 2 world wars, several nuclear close calls, ethnic strife, political assassinations, riots, race riots, hollowing out of urban cores, the dust bowl, the great depression, a bunch of other wars, mass immigration, existential cold war tensions, the list goes on. The world is always like this, it isn't worse now or something. The can will be kicked forever, and I always feel like people who say things like this really don't hope they are wrong, they are hoping for the collapse. For some great reset where their chosen ideology will rise to the top, or just that their lives will be more exciting! (I want to explicitly point out that I don't think that is what is happening here, just that I have seen that be the case in many forums discussing similar topics!)

We didn't start the fire

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eFTLKWw542g

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2LkVKCWL0U4

The world is always like this, it isn't worse now or something. The can will be kicked forever

This assertion is a perfect representation of the type of thinking I suggested I found cargo cultish.

The Romans had somewhere in the realm of 1,000,000 men in the field at any given time. Recruiting, training, equipping, paying, housing, feeding, dealing with waste, disciplining, etc. From Scotland to Syria. For centuries.

The next time a European power could field a million men for any amount of time was the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century

The next time the state capacity existed to successfully garrison a million men across the continent for an extended period of time was the American/Soviet involvement in WWII/Cold War in the middle of the 20th century

People always talk the fall of Rome like it means something. We are not Rome, the rest of the world also kept on spinning, China fielded larger armies that whole time yah know. in 300 BC they had armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands facing off. So no, WWII was not the first time a state could garrison a million men. Number of people in your army is not the measure of a state.

This is a slight exaggeration - the actual legionary army (i.e. excluding locally recruited auxiliaries who weren't available for service outside their own province) peaked at 400-500k in the 2nd century. And Byzantium was still able to field 300k men until they lost most of their high-quality agricultural land to the Islamic conquests. The first European monarch to field an army of that size is Louis XIV. Louis XIV's army was better equipped than the legions, but worse trained.

But the big picture is correct. In terms of social technology, Western Civilisation didn't recover from the Fall of Rome until the Early Modern Era (In terms of physical technology, we had overtaken Rome by the High Middle Ages - the Romans couldn't have built a Gothic cathedral and didn't have spinning wheels).

Could it be, perhaps, that a few things changed about the warfare meta since the Roman times? Something that would make equipping and coordinating a competitive soldier/combat unit more expensive?

We're not fighting in phalanxes with spears anymore.

Neither were the romans? Yes they achieved some gains with triarii but they thrived primarily after the Marian reforms and the move to manipular formation and legionary standardization with gladius, scutum, etc.

Were you aping on Obama being so catastrophically wrong in '12 about horses and bayonets? Could you explain why you chose to share that thought?

I chose to share that thought because I don't believe you can compare largest army in the Roman times to largest army in modern times (or even in the 1800s) and conclude that modern states are worse at fielding armies purely because they have fewer soldiers. I'm not convinced that I'm wrong just because I got some minutia of Roman logistics wrong. The core of the argument is that the Romans are apples and WWII soldiers are oranges. "You don't know your apples" is irrelevant.

Okay :)

More comments

This is probably backwards. The equipment for a Roman Legion probably represented a greater relative investment of manufacturing and material compared to modern arms.

I'm less certain on how much training was actually done. But I can more or less bet that a middlingly and quickly trained rifleman is much better than a middlingly and quickly trained Legionary.

I suppose it's true. The amount of farmers to feed one warrior was higher in the ancient era, so fielding a lot of warriors was more impressive - if you only care about that part of state capacity.

The conclusion seems to be that the ancients squeezed their people harder, but are they more glorious because of that even though they'd get far less out of their million Romans than we could get out of 100k WWII soldiers?

I agree. I think we’re in a serious decline. I’m not sure how it ends, but I think this is the last generation where the Western world rules the world. Whether or not it means a thousand years of darkness — I think not.

The successors won't be less cruel, but it'll be a challenge for them to be more insane.

It will be a challenge to be more insane or less competent. Even with the repression, if you lived in a state where crime was low, people were prosperous, and where there was high achievement? Or would you rather freedom in a place where you have to go out armed because of crime, where food and housing eats up most people’s pay, and we see our nation doing great things?

I feel this way when I watch panel shows.

There's a contingent of '5 Flags' location independent types out there that believe that the decline of the West is practically inevitable over the next couple of decades. I'm a bit worried and looking to hedge my bets with emerging markets.

If Vietnam stopped being communist at any point I would eagerly invest there as long as AI hasn't made human intelligence mostly pointless, they have really good PISA scores for their current level of income/education investment and a good rank in math olympiads.

Lynn's data on Vietnam gave it a low IQ score but it was also noted by him that it didn't match up with the academical achievements, there's something weird about the data, perhaps it's the case of heterogenous population like in Latin America. I've read that there's an ethnical difference between North and South Vietnam but I'm not knowledgeable about the topic.

Argentina is also an interesting option if they can stop being so socialistic for a long period of time. Eastern europe also seems like it may shine if it can keep avoiding mass immigration there.

What does "5 Flags" mean in this context?

5 Flags is the idea that there are 5 different aspects of your life and you need to choose which jurisdiction to put each of them into separately for different reasons. Four of the five flags are citizenship, primary residence, country of incorporation of your business, and country where you keep your high-balance bank accounts. What the fifth is depends on whether the person selling the idea is focussing on the digital nomad lifestyle (divide "residence" into the country where you do business and the country where you spend money), aggressive tax avoidance (game residency rules to separate tax residence from physical residence) or protection from instability (in which case the country where your non-financial assets are physically located becomes the fifth flag).

In all cases, an important part of the scheme is that each flag should go in a jurisdiction which offers hosting of that particular flag as a service to rich foreigners without any associated civic obligations. Another point is that putting too many flags in the same country is risky in case that country decides it doesn't want you any more, and that the best case is to have a second jurisdiction as a ready backup for each flag as well.

Shower thoughts: I watched some of it and was deeply unimpressed with both. Just constant lying and avoiding answering questions to deliver intelligence insulting propaganda soundbites instead. I hate American presidential debates and continue to do so.

As someone that I would self-categorize as "crazy person," namely I consider myself a socialist and a Marxist but I hate woke and what the modern establishment Democrats have become, I was flirting with the idea of protest voting Donald Trump. I think this debate pretty much sealed me against that.

In particular his two stances refusing to concede and admit he lost the 2020 election, that it was stolen, and supplication to Russia/Putin by refusing to endorse defense of Ukraine were red lines to me.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't have a lot of problem with Jan. 6 and hardly buy into the establishment Democrat narrative that it was some sort of horrific never again atrocity and affront to "democracy" (read: their deep state establishment power) "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure." and so on. I think it's kind of cool the Congress felt some real fear of the people for once, actually. That said, Democracy depends on people accepting they lost and acknowledging the winners as legitimate leaders to work with. A refusal to do this is a dangerous and destructive degradation of western civilization. I don't know if Trump genuinely has a mental problem or if he's just playing to his base that can't accept loss, but either way it's totally unacceptable. Likewise, I don't know where this subservience to Russia comes from, other than again playing to his retard extremely online base, but it's not okay. The USA shouldn't be bowing to anyone. They both bow to Israel though - which would be a red line for me too except.. yeah. It's was sadly expected and there's no apparent escape from the domination.

Apparently Trump also commented on Marxism but I missed that. Well obviously I oppose that as a slur, but that's pretty unique to me I guess. I was already severely backing off from strategic protest hearing that J.D. Vance endorsed some insane Red Scare book that promotes the "Cultural Marxism" myth and argues that democracy is bad and the them are subhumans trying to get you, if you don't get them first. No proof Vance actually read and liked the book for real, but apparently Trump is all in on this shit. It's a reminder that there's no real strategic friendship here. No socially conservative "populist" economics helping born Americans grow strong with brotherhood. In the end they will still sell out America to the elite monied globalists. They will still cut taxes for rich people and pollute the world. They will always pander to & reflect the culture and politics of the lowest IQ band of whites. I hate Democrats, progressives, and wokies. But Conservatives and you people are just plain evil and nothing good can come from this rotten soil. Sad.

Sidebar: looking up that Jefferson quote more interesting things arise from the letter to what I believe is a response to Shays's Rebellion

The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist?

Truly there is nothing new under the sun.

And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness.

The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? ... The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them.

Personally I think I’ve arrived at, somewhat more charitably than the norm, I guess, that Trump’s advisors told him he needed a certain amount of votes to win the election, based on their forecast of turnout. He fixated on this to an unusual degree. Of course turnout was higher than expected, and so the votes to win was higher than expected, but he hit the old metric and I think felt entitled to win based on that. He couldn’t emotionally reconcile the dissonance. So he was hyper receptive to any and all theories that would confirm his gut feeling, and distrust of the media only amplified this (and of course he had a few too many yes-men around). At some point in the last few years I’m sure intellectually he finally realized this incongruity, but as a TV guy knows that the underdog, mistreated, but secretly a winner narrative is decently powerful. So he’s currently playing it up, but originally I think this was an honest but plainly flagrantly wrong belief.

As to Russia and many foreign policy issues, frankly I still, years later, really don’t have a good mental model for why Trump does anything that he does. The closest I can come is that he just flies by the seat of his pants on literally every decision.

I was already severely backing off from strategic protest hearing that J.D. Vance endorsed some insane Red Scare book that promotes the "Cultural Marxism" myth

I hate to break it to you, but the idea that Cultural Marxism is a myth, is a myth. There literally were academics calling themselves Cultural Marxists, and they were promoting exactly the kind of thought that would later become SJWism, and now Wokeness.

but the idea that Cultural Marxism is a myth, is a myth.

No. It's not. I'm a Marxist. If it were real I would have heard of it. The first time I heard of it was from ultra-right wing extremely online types. And they continue to be the only ones that talk about it. This leads to at least one of two conclusions

  1. I am in on the conspiracy. And I am lying to you.
  2. Somehow, you and a bunch of other online fascist adjacent types understand Marxism better than me.

In the years I have argued Marx and Socialist stuff I have pretty much never encountered an anti-Marxist that really knew much of anything about Marxism. It really is kind of astounding how ignorant anti-Marxists are about the ideology they profess to hate, actually. Up to the most respected professors, it's immense amounts of confused BSing. And we're not talking about something small that's easily missed here.

There literally were academics calling themselves Cultural Marxists

You mean academic singular. I watched this happen in real time. The extreme right-wing types that desperately wanted to put the cultural marxism myth on to wikipedia were having a hard time with power users and their citation gatekeeping. Eventually someone just went to google scholar and found a book with the title Cultural Marxism from the 80s or 90s from some literal who. Not a single conservative I've seen citing this "proof" has read said book, that I know of. Nor has any serious Marxist. Nor have I. There might be others, I don't know, since culture and marxism are two very popular buzzwords for overproduced academic hacks, but no serious Marxist has ever talked about such things. This might not be obvious to you, but trust me, It's really obvious to me because I am actually somewhat familiar with this ground.

The other works the conspiracists like to cite never call themselves "cultural marxist" e.g. the Frankfurt School. Who are not literal whos. No fan or detractor of them has called them such in Marxist circles. Again, it's all right wingers from without confusedly opining. Fans call their influence "critical theory" and it's no great secret or grand conspiracy.

Again we are talking about a supposed movement that's brought much of the developed world to its knees. Despite the fact economic leftism as a movement is laughably dead and pathetic now. Not some micro book from around the collapse of the USSR.

become SJWism, and now Wokeness.

If wokeness had much to do with serious Marxism maybe I would be Woke. I'm not. I'm opposed to it.

  • -21

You mean academic singular. I watched this happen in real time. The extreme right-wing types that desperately wanted to put the cultural marxism myth on to wikipedia were having a hard time with power users and their citation gatekeeping. Eventually someone just went to google scholar and found a book with the title Cultural Marxism from the 80s or 90s from some literal who. Not a single conservative I've seen citing this "proof" has read said book, that I know of. Nor has any serious Marxist. Nor have I. There might be others, I don't know, since culture and marxism are two very popular buzzwords for overproduced academic hacks, but no serious Marxist has ever talked about such things. This might not be obvious to you, but trust me, It's really obvious to me because I am actually somewhat familiar with this ground.

  1. Whether the Cultural Marxists call themselves Cultural Marxists or not is not relevant to the usefulness of the term; 'Death of the Author' and all that. Deer don't call themselves deer either.

  2. There definitely do seem to be a subset of >1 academics that do/did call themselves that; here's another: https://scholars.duke.edu/person/jameson. And his book ('Conversations on Cultural Marxism'), which you could buy if you want to read it: https://www.amazon.ca/Jameson-Conversations-Cultural-Marxism/dp/0822341093

  3. That aside, the class struggle components of regular Marxism are so much in the academic water of post-war humanities studies, it seems implausible that academics would not incorporate them into their studies of culture, even if it were unconscious - which in some cases it maybe is. So why not call a spade a spade?

Cultural marxism is slightly pejorative descriptive name for critical theory ("a social theory focusing on critiquing and changing society" per Wikipedia) and other programmes by likes of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Gramsci. All considered themselves Marxists or descendants to Marxist thought, but turned into considering cultural, sociological forces instead of classical Marxist materialism.

Cultural marxism is effectively Antonio Gramsci. He absolutely wanted to influence culture and was pushing marxism.

The cultural revolution clearly shows that the communists wanted to influence culture.

Especially the early soviet union wanted to greatly impact culture.

This isn't more of a conspiracy theory than that right wingers want to change culture. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy that people with similar political views want the same thing. That christians tend to be pro life isn't a conspiracy. They are not all congregating in a central lodge. Many of them aren't really taking orders from above and those who are such as catholics are entirely open about the church's stance.

I understand your frustration here, but it seems manifestly true (from my perspective as an academic, albeit not in the humanities) that the academic priesthood of the SJ establishment has appropriated Marxist vocabulary as well as a fair amount of concepts (whether they use them correctly or not) and generally sees itself as the rightful inheritor to labels including "Marxist", "leftist", "socialist" et cetera, and they only disavow them as part of a slippery routine when their opposition tries to put a name on them (see relevant Freddie DeBoer post). At some point it just seems impractical to not go along with the self-identification of the overwhelming victors - almost as if you insisted that no major modern branch of Christianity were actually Christian, though of course it's not a perfect analogy since we are not in a setting where Christians protest whenever members of other religions pejoratively call them Christian, even as they happily identify with the label among themselves.

that the academic priesthood of the SJ establishment has appropriated Marxist vocabulary as well as a fair amount of concepts

I agree with the "appropriation" framing of it, but one thing I'd like to emphasize, is that this idea didn't spring, fully formed, from the finest minds of Tumblr, the work started around the 60's, as OliveTapendale pointed out.

If it were real I would have heard of it.

Just my unsolicited advice, but 'if it were real I would have heard of it' doesn't seem to me like a sensible way to approach a world where the number of things that might be 'real' are limitless and the number of things you 'have heard' isn't

No. It's not. I'm a Marxist. If it were real I would have heard of it.

I don't see why I should assume this is true.

This leads to at least one of two conclusions:

  1. I am in on the conspiracy. And I am lying to you.
  2. Somehow, you and a bunch of other online fascist adjacent types understand Marxism better than me.

Well, why don't we argue over the facts of whether or not Cultural Marxism is a myth, and then you can tell me which one of those was correct.

You mean academic singular.

Off the top of my head I can think of Richard R. Weiner, Douglas Kellner, and Emily Hicks, so plural. I remember there were more, but I'd have to start searching.

Eventually someone just went to google scholar and found a book with the title Cultural Marxism from the 80s or 90s from some literal who.

a) I think the term goes back to WWII or thereabouts, and there's been several books written about it.

b) "Myth" means it didn't happen, not that it was neiche.

The other works the conspiracists like to cite never call themselves "cultural marxist" e.g. the Frankfurt School.

The students of the core Frankfurt School thinkers were calling themselves cultural marxist, so this is flatly wrong, unless you want to say that people who studied directly under them don't get to call themselves "Frankfurt School".

Again we are talking about a supposed movement that's brought much of the developed world to its knees. Despite the fact economic leftism as a movement is laughably dead and pathetic now. Not some micro book from around the collapse of the USSR.

Yes. It brought it to it's knees culturally not economically. This is why the "Cultural" part of "Cultural Marxism" is so important, and the deadness of economic leftism is irrelevant.

If wokeness had much to do with serious Marxism maybe I would be Woke. I'm not. I'm opposed to it.

I don't get why Marxists get so defensive on this. I agree that OG economic Marxism is not responsible for any of this nonsense.

The term certainly appears starting from the 60s, though, it must be said, not incredibly prominently. I don't think this by itself proves very much, though. "Cultural Marxism" in the sense of 2010s-and-20s culture wars just doesn't seem like something that has much to do with a handful of 1960s academics.

Much like the term “Neoreaction”, “Cultural Marxism” is really several strands of Marxist and post Marxist thought that has been woven together to form what is now the dominant group of ideologies on the academic left since the new left moved from the streets to the classroom and beyond.

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, is the real jumping off point. Critical theory, third worldism, post colonial theory, orientalism, all these things flow from that particular bend in the road.

It’s a descriptor of a family tree of thought with a common ancestry. Without classical Marxism it certainly wouldn’t exist. It’s certainly a much more accurate and narrower description than “The Successor Ideology” or “Woke”.

I think the reluctance to be named, which has been expounded on both satirically and seriously by better writers than I, is ironically part of the fuel for the whole “conspiracy theory”. There’s no shortage of articles basically saying “Ok, you don’t like term X so what the fuck do we call this clearly aligned school of thought?”. “The ideology who shan’t be named?”

The term certainly appears starting from the 60s, though, it must be said, not incredibly prominently.

I recall reading something by Walter Benjamin from just before the war, but back then it boiled down to "Marxists talking about culture".

Cultural Marxism" in the sense of 2010s-and-20s culture wars just doesn't seem like something that has much to do with a handful of 1960s academics.

Why not? What they were saying back then was eerily similar to what would define modern culture wars. I'm half-willing to make a bet that if you trace the influences of people like Ibrahim X. Kendi or Robin Di Angelo you'll run right into those 60's academics.

I wish to do a follow up. Ignore the following if you do not wish to read a bit of venting.

I am angry. I am actually fucking enraged. It's irrational, but I hope people don't hold it against me. This is the fucking best that the anti-left coalition can do politically when running a Presidential candidate? Really? This fucking idiot whose idea of a good debate performance is acting like a fucking 15 year old who makes really basic mistakes and failed to prepare? If so, we might be fucked and we might need to get the fuck out of these leftist cities before things get worse, well those of us who still live in them, I mean. Not that I ever expected Trump to do much about local leftist politics, but I am worried that a Harris win might energize the left and make things worse.

The current right is kind of fucking useless unless you care about abortion, or about minor wins in things besides abortion.

Curtis Yarvin, for all his faults, such as some of his misunderstandings of history or his overestimation of what his preferred political systems would manage to accomplish, keeps seeming to be proven right in some core ways. The left is structurally stronger, the so-called right focuses on the wrong things. Like when they were overjoyed when Trump won in 2016, but that ended up not necessarily being a bigger win for the anti-left than when Musk bought Twitter, cause when Trump became President he mostly sat around Tweeting and getting blocked in his policy suggestions, whereas when Musk bought Twitter he ripped some new ideas right into the heart of what was largely before a leftist-dominated idea-shaping space.

Trump might win in November, though I do not evaluate his chances as good, but even if he does, what of it? Will he do anything more than he did last time he was President? I want actual wins, not symbolic wins, and I'm not sure I'll even get a symbolic win for the current anti-leftist coalition any time soon. To be fair, it's not like I've been doing much to help other than posting online. But in any case, fuck. From the perspective of my preferred political outcomes, I think there must be a major re-evaluation of strategy - what is going on now does not seem to be working.

Not that I ever liked this anti-left coalition much to begin with. I just want to live in a city that isn't full of insane violent people, and I want to not be censored online. I don't care much about abortion, I'm not religious in the least bit, and I am not a white nationalist, even though I am a race realist.

To get from where we are now to the kinds of policies I want will take some effort and maybe even a bit of higher-dimensional magic, higher-dimensional in the sense meaning that it goes outside the lines of what we typically imagine now as politics and taps into some deeper currents of existence and reality and life.

If Trump had gotten out of the way, Desantis would’ve been up there arguing with Kamala.

If the room is suicidal, then it takes someone who actively refuses to "read the room," and doesn't give a shit how impolite that is, to reject suicide.

Does that impose selection effects? Oh, yes.

The Bush administration were neither anti-racist enough not to bomb Afghanistan, nor racist enough to conclude that development of Afghanistan would require imposing radical social change, but in an uncanny valley where liberal democracy is perceived as the natural order of the universe, so American interventionism is morally cheap.

Western elites are stuck in group think because, reasonably enough, none of them want to be the guy to break the perceived inter-ethnic peace and cause a massive conflict. To get someone willing to point out that Haiti is a massive ongoing disaster, we had to search very far outside the typical distribution of politicians.

Thus, you are having the undignified experience of being rescued by a professional wrestler.

His intervention is better viewed as a lucky chance, to be exploited, than a done deal.

What we're probably going to have to do is rebuild the philosophical basis for liberalism from a stage 5 (post-formal) moral perspective, focused on epistemic limits and epistemic humility. Conventional philosophical liberals are having trouble explaining why their principles exist.

If there is a stage 5, then what is a description of all the stages? Your notion of reality seems subtle enough to maybe shed more light on what it really is than the typical ideologies do, Please explain further, if you feel like it,.

The different moral development theories as commonly discussed (Kegan, Kohlberg) seem to have some common ground in an arc of { social morality, formal morality, post-formal morality }, usually around stages numbered 3, 4, and 5, depending on how people are charting it out.

You can think of this as team sports morality ("I'm a Democrat, and our good ingroup believe X") which can turn on a dime (social morality), principled morality that's trying to integrate moral intuitions into a formal system (this would be your conventional philosophies like Utilitarianism), and finally a sort of intuitive recognition that low-dimensionality constructs (like Utilitarianism) are insufficient to contain the whole of morality (for post-formalists).

The transition between each stage involves significant intellectual investment. This motion can be painful because it looks like the old principles falling away into meaninglessness and leaving nihilism.

It's not that Democrats didn't believe in free speech at all. Rather, most political types including most Democrats are social moralists, not formal or post-formal moralists, so they take their orders on their appropriate beliefs from those higher up in their social hierarchy, and then attempt to act on them locally.

2008 American liberalism was a fairly well-hedged ideology overall, so when Democratic leaders pushed for principles like free speech and procedural protections for those accused of crimes and so on, and Democratic social moralists embraced these principles locally, the Democrats as a whole looked a lot smarter than they actually are. The quality of their overall thinking has declined significantly due to the much worse epistemics of Social Justice, and many Democrats are wildly miscalibrated right now.

When I say that we should rebuild philosophical or political liberalism from a perspective of epistemic limits, what I mean is that many liberal principles are similar to prohibitions on economic central planning which is practically problematic due to limits on available information and computational power, but most current liberals don't know this and thus lose interpersonal arguments to "care/harm" types (who use conflict theorist epistemology) because their support for freedom seems "arbitrary."

By developing a philosophical framework which roots liberal principles in limits to information and personal morality, a kind of opposition to "cultural central planning," a new generation of intellectuals could be trained and gain an advantage in the coordination for the defense of liberal principles.

Possibly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Piagetian_theories_of_cognitive_development or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development ?

From the outside, the problem is all the supposedly "better" right-wing candidates fail more spectacularly, at least in the US in elections that aren't in blood-red areas.

Or at least ones that people of your political persuasion would agree with.

But J.D. Vance underran the entire Republican ticket in Ohio in 2022. Blake Masters lost a winnable Senate race. All of the other politicians somewhat friendly to your sort of arguments are in deep red seats a corpse could win reelection too. Hell, I wouldn't say Mark Robinson is on your side, but he's a populist right-winger of a sort and he's losing by 10 in North Carolina. Maybe I can give you DeSantis, but he fell on his face on the national stage.

Obviously, this would not be the real result, but they polled a Harris-Vance race, and it was 59-37 Harris. That's with the guy among current politicians, I'd argue, is the most normie-friendly of your set.

Trump's celebrity + Hillary running + COVID helping Trump like it did every other incumbent politician (only he was incompetent enough to blow the COVID boost basically all incumbents got worldwide) gave a sheen on Trump's political popularity that gave you guys the idea that people liked your ideas than they really did.

If the choice for the median voter is an HR lady stomping on their face forever telling them to put their gender in their bio and calling people by their chosen name or whatever you guys are selling, until you find somebody far better at selling yourself to normies, not online weirdos (I say this as an online weirdo of another political ideology), the HR ladies are going to keep winning, at least in the US.

Yes, with a dip in the economy, a Brian Kemp/Joni Ernest ticket in 2028 could totally win if Trump eats one too many Big Mac's, but that's not what the online right want

Blake Masters and JD Vance sound like fucking nerds. Masters especially looked and sounded like a geek who needed rectangle glasses and a job locked in the basement server room of a nondescript midwestern company.

The right desperately needs a handsome, happily married, tall, moderately successful 40-50 year old man who is very good at public speaking and who can persuasively impart a conservative populist message without scaring the hoes. Fifty such men surely aren’t impossible to find in a country of 330 million people. It’s an extraordinary failure that they can’t find them, which really means they just don’t care to look.

Is there that sort of person really, though?

Or, maybe to put it more accurately, is there anybody who can appease this website, the Daily Wire/Federalist/etc. types, and also not cause non-colleged educate pro-choice women in Wisconsin to get, 'ewww.' Like, it may be true there's not a majority of liberal wokeism, but there's even less of a majority of conservative populism. Especially among people under 50.

I know there's this view it's all about optics and charisma, but if you throw 1997 George Clooney up there and start talking about it's OK if states are banning abortions, you're going to have issues. Like, Obama rolled a natural 20 on charisma, but even he had issues in 2012 because things weren't great and the ACA wasn't popular yet. Hell, Reagan had a massive mid-term loss in 1982, and then had another in 1986 due to unpopularity.

I know there's this view it's all about optics and charisma, but if you throw 1997 George Clooney up there and start talking about it's OK if states are banning abortions, you're going to have issues.

I disagree. Some message discipline is necessary, but you put Trumpism in the body of 1997 Clooney and they’d steamroll this election.

Masters especially looked and sounded like a geek who needed rectangle glasses and a job locked in the basement server room of a nondescript midwestern company.

I’m glad you said this, because it confirms my perception that Masters has terrible physiognomy. To me he always seemed to have (as Shakespeare’s Caesar said of Cassius) “a lean and hungry look.” Very untrustworthy face. I say this as someone whose physiognomy would likely trigger mostly the same reaction in voters; at least I know I’m unelectable.

The problem with this line of argument is that if you directly, anonymously ask normal people about their preferences, many of the answers are so far right that they couldn't be stated in polite society. Especially on the topic of enforcing borders or trans ideology. Compare to, say, libertarianism or any other possible political ideology, which are generally speaking not supported even when you ask people directly (which, I'm sad to say, includes many of my own preferences). So something else seems to be happening than just right-wing ideas being unpopular.

My impression is that if you're successful, it's just stupid to not make yourself part of the international elite. And that international elite has a particular set of values, which from the american perspective might as well be "agree on everything with the democrats". For a simple personal example, as an academic almost any enforcement of borders is a hassle to me, and living in the (expensive) university district myself, I'm fully insulated from perceiving any of the costs, at least in the short-term. Not only that, but many friends of mine are from across the world and they would suffer even more from the borders being enforced. So, from a purely egoistic perspective I should want the borders to be as open as possible. And this is the de-facto only acceptable position here; Being in favor of any border enforcement whatsoever puts you basically outside the overton window of the international elite.

So in turn any person in favor of these topics can't be part of the international elite, which means they're either not really all that successful, or stupid, or extremely disagreeable. So these are the people you're stuck with. Normies notice this, and the situation hasn't deteriorated enough yet in their perception that they're willing to vote for "this kind of person" just to get a change they desire. So they suck it up and consider it the cost of doing business.

The problem with this line of argument is that if you directly, anonymously ask normal people about their preferences, many of the answers are so far right that they couldn't be stated in polite society. Especially on the topic of enforcing borders or trans ideology.

This just isn't true, at least in the United States. Even in polling that shows support for harsh measures, there's also still strong support for amnesty for a number of current undocumented and stuff like the DREAM Act. On the transgender issue, the vast majority of people don't care, think it's at best an issue for their school boards or local government to deal with when it comes to kids, but there's the general American-speciifc libertarian view on it when it comes to adults.

If that was the message from the GOP, they could win on this, and indeed they did when that was the message combined with general worry over school closings. But, as we're seeing, even in places like Florida, the Mom's for Liberty types go off the rails and then lose elections, and when the GOP tries to run ads in abortion referendums about how this actually means something something transgenders will take your kids, they lose on that too.

Yes, the median American is to the right of the median Democrat politician on immigration and transgenderism. In both cases, they're to the left of the median Republican politician and they don't really care about the latter, so they find it, "weird", when GOP politicians and media obsess over it.

It remains a simple and absolute fact, oft forgotten, that the only person Trump has ever beaten in a regular election was Hillary Clinton, a figure widely reviled and disliked by huge numbers of swing voters and democrat-leaning audiences for being shrill, annoying, a ghoul, just the wife of Bill, ugly, nagging and so on, who had already lost a primary to Obama despite being the clear favorite going in.

Kamala Harris is a low quality default Democrat. But it may be that a default Democrat beats Trump every time.

I think that's slightly underrating Trump's competency as a candidate. He's obviously a very polarizing figure, but also a very energizing one, or at least he was.

But that was 8 years ago now. The man is 78. People should have seen the writing on the wall. His mental decline was shielded in part by his nature, in part by his rabid fanbase, and in part by the fact that Joe Biden was doing a more visible and advanced version of the same.

Taylor Swift has officially endorsed Harris/Walz. Specifically citing both the debate and various AI memes of her voting for Trump, even referring to herself as a childless cat lady. It's Joever for Orange Man.

This is the actual meat-and-potatoes culture war topic coming out of the debate.

My model of a swiftie is a PMC or PMC-lite woman between 22-35 without much political awareness but who is very relative-status and fashion aware (in the cultural sense). She more than likely has a male significant other. This is where things get interesting.

Straight men who aren't hyper culturally attuned don't like Taylor Swift. Her songs are about break-ups and girl power, there's very little common ground there. Those same men generally don't care if their wife/girlfriend is a big swiftie - it's her thing, her hobby, go for it. But the Kamala endorsement is doing something tricky - it's, overnight, turning some portion of these fans into "politically aware." They will defend Kamala nearly as rabidly as Queen Taylor. Even a hint of disagreement could be met with "nuclear levels of sour."

The evidence for this was how women suddenly became die-hard Chiefs fans overnight after Swift began dating Travis Kelce and appearing at games (fun fact: If you watch chiefs games this year, and Travis Kelce scores a touchdown, the camera will cut to Taylor in the booth.). The online NFL community has a not-conspiracy-conspiracy that the NFL made sure the Chiefs won the superbowl last year because there was too much swiftie money on the line for them not to. I remember reading that Chief's merchandise sales more than doubled.

I don't get worried about political polarization between urban and rural, bachelors degree and non, even poor and rich. Those are the basic cleavages you see time and again through human history. Harsh polarization between men and women gets worrisome - this is how women end up with actually curtailed rights and the legal status of property of male relatives. Again - the worst victim of feminism is women.

I'm tired of this campaign and whoever wins in November, the country loses in a meaningful way. One of my effortposts last week was on the fact that neither candidate has any economic plan that's connected to reality. The one thing I'll be looking at with excitement (nervous in nature, however) is exit polls on men and women between roughly 20 - 50. If we see gaps of over 25%, strap in.

Straight men who aren't hyper culturally attuned don't like Taylor Swift.

I like Taylor Swift. She does, in fact, have plenty of songs that are about neither breakups nor girl power. And many of her breakup songs are in fact still good songs that can appeal to men, because male artists actually write a ton of breakup songs as well. Turns out it’s a pretty universal human experience that provides ample inspiration for music and art.

"The eugenics advocate enjoys Taylor Swift" was not on my 2024 bingo card. Yet here we are.

I mean she’s hot, and her business acumen indicates she’s a lot smarter than the average pop star. So ‘Taylor Swift as the new aryan master race’ is at least fairly reasonable.

Everyone knows that the oncee and future Queen of hyper-American cosmetic destiny is Britney Spears.

She was sent to us at the Millennium for a reason. Accepting Swift is the acceptance of shallow, imposter level goods. But do as you see fit! Kneel before your God, Babylon!

Britney Spears has working-class physiognomy. A worthless idol for superstitious peasants. Taylor Swift has a refined, aristocratic mien - built to be immortalized as a votive statue in a grand porcelain temple.

There must be war.

God wills it!

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I mean if you’re looking for a physical model to emulate and optimize humanity toward, you could certainly pick far worse than Taylor Swift.

I was thinking of you, Hoff, when I saw Musk's weird tweet appearing to offer to impregnate Taylor Swift. My first reaction was, that would be a cute and funny thing for Hoff to say, not at all cute from Elon.

Which goes back to my point that Elon is just a regular extremely online guy stuck being famous.

I mean, presumably it’s only funny coming from me because there is no plausible path whatsoever to me actually impregnating Taylor Swift. (Teardrops drench my screen protector as the finality of this admission fully sinks in.) Whereas Elon, I think, sincerely means it and thinks there’s at least a non-zero chance she’d express interest. If I was in Musk’s position I’d probably shoot my shot too, although I’d like to imagine he has the resources and clout to arrange a more favorable venue to attempt that conversation with her, rather than a flippant tweet. What do I know, though?

Now if anyone here wants to help me concoct an elaborate plan to surreptitiously swap my sperm donor sample in for Elon’s, I am all ears. I will contribute little or nothing to the logistics or execution stages, as I need to conserve my energy and limit stress to ensure I’m producing the best possible sample.

I mean, that's my point. Elon still jokes like what he says doesn't matter, while enjoying the audience adulation he gets because it does matter.

If he was in any way serious, oh, Lord.

Though a run in at MNF where a drunk Jason Kelce punches Elon Musk to defend his brother's honor would be THE BEST.

Travis (not Jason) Kelce knocking Elon's teeth in would be the culture war Big Bang to set everything right again.

The King of Chad DudeBro's who is dating the queen of The Popular Girls erases high flying nerd who got too big for his britches.

Cue Kickstart my Heart by Motely Crue while Zombie Regan drives a Pontiac Firebird straight into the Oval Office.

Why Travis over Jason specifically? I picked Jason because it has the added layer of male brotherhood, and because his retirement removes the in game impact.

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Though a run in at MNF where a drunk Jason Kelce punches Elon Musk to defend his brother's honor would be THE BEST.

Ah, but who paid the bartender to over-serve Jason? Elon did. And who has been taking the best Brazilian jiujitsu night classes money can buy for a year and a half in preparation for this moment? Elon has. And when Elon vanquishes Jason in hand-to-hand combat as Taylor looks on, mouth agape and heart aflutter, and with all of America watching in stunned adoration, that’s the perfect time for him to make his move.

(And that’s when it becomes very important for you guys to have come up with an airtight plan to make sure the Hoffmeister Sauce Switcheroo will go off without a hitch. We have one shot at this, guys.)

Harsh polarization between men and women gets worrisome - this is how women end up with actually curtailed rights and the legal status of property of male relatives. Again - the worst victim of feminism is women.

This seems unlikely (and as far as I'm aware, has never actually happened, although I'd be interested to hear if you have examples).

A more likely outcome is the situation in South Korea. Young people retreating from dating and socialising, spending more and more time looking at screens (whether at work or in their leisure time), collapsing birth rates, relentless pursuit of status goods and focus on the self.

Certainly bad, and (within a long enough timeframe) civilisation ending. But no Handmaid's Tale.

within a long enough timeframe

This timeframe is not that long - likely within the lives of people alive today.

Yemen has an interesting last 50 years of history here

@Crowstep

Wouldn't the best historical example be the christianization of the Roman Empire, where women converted at much higher rates, and male Christians were much more often babtised by mothers or nurses?

Gibbon et al had plenty to say on the topic.

Rome was about 10% Christian at the battle of milvan bridge and all the evidence we have suggests women had more freedoms in Christian households not fewer.

@hydroacetylene

In an extended sort of way, Gibbon would argue that, yes, the Christianization of the western Roman empire lead directly to its fall, which lead to the barbarian conquests and the dark ages. Where all kinds of bad things happened to the daughters of Roman citizen women in the roughness of the times.

The last part is pretty much Canon on a lot of the DR isn't it? "Modern Western Feminism, in being pro immigration and wussifying western men, will lead women to a future in which they are treated much worse than they are now, by destroying the western civilization which currently protects women's freedoms."

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Wouldn’t Swifties be priced in the polls already? How many Taylor Swift fans are Trump supporters who’d change their votes based on her endorsement?

She isn't changing any votes, but she will get more people to vote.

Taylor Swift gets thousands of women to literally follow her across continents. She could be a significant poll driver just by asking her fans to vote.

In this case it's not just thousands, it's 10s of thousands or 100s (cumulatively). I went to one of her euro shows, the number of Americans at each one was insane.

It's not that the Swifties are particularly critical thinkers when it comes to politics, but many of them will use this as a moral superiority pump for their existing opinions, and those who were apathetic before may take the opportunity to swap friendship bracelets at voting booths.

Isn't the main reason that, since Taylor Swift is quite a bit less of a phenomenon in Europe than in US and the US tickets were thus considerably more pricey, it was actually cheaper in many cases for fans to fly to Europe than to US for a show (especially since many of them would have had to fly inside the US in any case)?

I know a number of American women who went to European shows and this was the stated reason for that per them.

I can tell you that after spending the money on it I don't think it was much cheaper. She increased prices for the Euro shows, but at least people who had FOMO from the US tour were able to get them at "retail".

The whole point is that many people organized entire European trips around this one event, her cultural power is.... significant.

Yes. But this still means that US Swifties are a sufficiently large, rabid fandom that with a quantity supplied of 64 sold-out US stadium concerts (i.e. something like 4 million tickets) the market-clearing price is high enough that travelling intercontinentally is preferable to paying it.

Will the endorsement move votes. Probably not because nothing does, but it is less unlikely than most other things. There are not many swing voters left in America, but my best guess is that they are overrepresented among Swifties. Remember that Swift grew up Red Tribe (childhood in small-town PA, teen years in the Nashville country scene) and has not done anything that would alienate her Red Tribe fans. Since she switched from country to pop, her music clearly has cross-tribal appeal. And if the Democratic theory of change is correct, Red Tribe women whose identity is not primarily Christian are a key swingable demographic.

Red Tribe women whose identity is not primarily Christian are a key swingable demographic.

Unmarried red tribe women who are not religious.

and has not done anything that would alienate her Red Tribe fans.

I mean, besides explicitly endorse liberal political candidates and positions multiple times? How about calling out “homophobes” (on, for example, the smash hit “You Need To Calm Down”)? Or collaborating with hip-hop artists like Kendrick Lamar (on her song “Bad Blood”) and B.o.B (on his song “Both Of Us”)? Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what you mean by “Red Tribe” - I’m on record stating multiple times that I think the existence of “Red and Blue Tribes” is fake, a projection of the bubble Scott Alexander lives in - but those seem like pretty clear ways to alienate Christian conservatives.

You're missing two components.

First, very few people who listened to "Bad Blood" have also done a deep walkthrough of GKMC. Hip-hop collaborations are massively popular, so the political message of the feature doesn't matter.

The size of Swifty fandom is large enough that it is self-sustaining in its own value to women. Being part of the in-group is a huge, huge part of the appeal. Taylor can pay lip service to various leftist causes. Her fandom can take these to extreme positions, but the blame never sticks to her. The groupchat lighting up with celebrations of abortion mean you're annoyed at your friends, not her.

The other half is that her leftist messaging has been overall pretty moderate and lukewarm. Even her killshot last night boiled down to "Do your research and vote, I'm doing this". That's all you need. Millions of women will repost that with

"Yass Queen! End Facism!"

And that's not hyperbole - it's a literal quote from an Instagram story I suffered through this morning.

If anything, she faces frequent horseshoe backlash for not being extreme enough.

I don't think there's been anything like celebrity endorsement parity in my lifetime. Maybe Reagan?

Probably not many, but at least a few i guess. This election is so close you never know what might be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

It's more about getting apolitical people out to register more than anything else, if I had to guess.

Trump chased every rabbit down every hole. Harris totally got under his skin. Criticizing the size of his rallies is a juvenile move, but Trump acted like she had just kicked him in the balls with a stiletto heel. Then a parade of nonsense. Relitigating J6. "Executing babies". "Eating the dogs". "Transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison". "I have the concept of a plan".

The only upside for Trump is that this debate was relatively early in the cycle, so hopefully for him people will have mostly forgotten about this by the time voting comes around.

"Transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison".

I believe that one is real. Harris at some point supported government paid transition surgery for illegals in prison. It sounds crazy because the outer surface of culture warring is typically lunacy.

Doesn't matter how real it is when he makes his point incoherently.

Also true.

The 'transgender' stuff was a recent CNN expose, and the 'babies' pretty explicitly bit about this (and that's the spin claim!). Edit: and this

Thanks for the links. I’d assumed he was just saying as many bad things as possible in a sentence.

Yeah, but it's refuge in audacity. They can say that stuff and if their opponents call them on it, it's too crazy to believe (especially with the media running interference).

Fair, but too crazy to believe has included the idea that a sitting President would hesitate to call Benghazi a terror attack.

I'm calling this one a loss for Trump. Not hugely, and I don't think Harris's performance was dazzling. But she came off looking better and more prepared. She was aggressive and sounded like a prosecutor; Trump kept rambling off on ill-thought attack scripts.

"I have the concept of a plan" is probably going to be a meme, and talking about Haitians eating dogs is not going to help him. Treating the debate like a Twitter thread doesn't work with normies.

Moderator bias was evident (repeatedly fact-checking Trump, and asking him about his comments about Harris's race could only hurt him), but mostly I think he has just slowed down a lot (he's not suffering cognitive decline like Biden is, but he's clearly not even who he was 4 years ago). Harris is hardly a spring chicken, but she seemed more on the ball. A decent debater might have made her sweat, but Trump never made her lose that annoying smirk.

I don't know if saying this is against the rules, so I'm trying to say this politely: I think this kind of posting needs to be bullied. Low-effort whining about how the minutiae of every debate moment and quip is a depressing state of mind. It's extremely tiresome -- Trump raised himself from private citizen to President of the United States by shitposting and debating, backseat driving is extremely tedious.

I kind of understand where you are coming from, but first of all, my apologies for this at least - I had no idea that there was a separate debate thread! I probably should have bothered to check, but I didn't. If I had realized that there was one, I would probably have just posted all of this over there. Also, I personally would prefer if Trump won the general election. I am whining because I feel that he is shitting the bed. And because I feel that his shitposting has become weak and his debating, outside of the primaries, has always been weak, and this is showing itself yet again. Talking about how backseat driving is tedious because Trump has sometimes succeeded at shitposting and debating would be one thing if this Trump had won in 2020, but he did not. So I think it is fair to say, even though granted COVID did a lot to hurt Trump in 2020, that it is fair to question Trump's skills at shitposting and debating.

I don't have a problem with it spilling into this thread and I think we're actually on the same side here -- I just think it's really a waste to sit around worrying about every element of it. "Bully" here is a shorthand for, something like, I think this kind of thinking is bad for you and should be discouraged and I personally

I have little doubt about that brotha, it probably is bad for me. On the other hand, it may have stimulated some interesting discussion.

Well, we allowed a separate debate thread, but it overflowed here anyway.

I don't know if saying this is against the rules, so I'm trying to say this politely: I think this kind of posting needs to be bullied.

Saying you think that is not against the rules (lots of people have opinions about what threads should and shouldn't be tolerated), but if you actually try to "bully" people because you don't like the thread they started, you're probably going to break the rules in numerous ways (for one thing, the implied effort at consensus building). You are free to criticize the comments (politely), but just because you think a topic is tedious doesn't mean everyone else is equally disinterested.

OK this is just silly now.

Harris: "the central park 5!"

Trump: "the economy!"

Harris: "I have a plan!"

I don't know what's even going on anymore.

To be honest, the decline of American culture and democracy. That these are the best minds we can produce to run the country should be deeply troubling. At best we’re looking at a clown show, two candidates who think in sound bites and have no actual ideas. At least neo-reactionaries have ideas. I’m not fully on board, but they can generally tell you what kinds of things they want to do, why, and why this would work. That coming from someone who isn’t a neo-reactionary, but is more or less interested in fixing problems. I’m anti-pothole is not a plan. But we have two people who think in sound bites trying to convince an audience of uneducated dolts to clap along.

But we have two people who think in sound bites trying to convince an audience of uneducated dolts to clap along.

Why would you try to infer anything about how either Harris or Trump think based on how they present in public? They're actively trying to say the things that will win them the election rather than what they actually think. And if sound bites play well with their constituencies, well...obviously that's what they're incentivized to optimize? Being responsive to what your voters want is a feature, not a bug. If you want politicians that behave better in public, convince a large enough fraction of the population to punish their candidate for vapid sound bites or idiotic name calling.

At least neo-reactionaries have ideas. I’m not fully on board, but they can generally tell you what kinds of things they want to do, why, and why this would work.

So do rationalists. So why do neither group win elections, particularly given that the latter is supposed to be 'systematized winning?'

Honestly, because of the education system in the USA, where most schools don’t teach anything like epistemology (critical thinking as taught in American schools means memorizing a list of fallacies and learning to notice them in a piece of writing), reading and math are both pretty bad. And our science education is so bad that people don’t understand germ theory.

The second thing is that the media covers elections as horse racing. There’s much more emphasis on covering how the debates moved the polls or who won the debate than anything the candidates actually said (except for the zingers and insults, of course). We aren’t talking about what to do about any problems we actually face. There’s no talk about reducing street crime, drugs, fix the roads, schools, mental health, cost of living, and lots of other very serious issues. Instead, it’s coconut tree memes and “those guys are weird”.

Kamala got under Trump's skin. Trump had good zingers but is forced to fight against Kamala and the 'host' at the same time. The mics are live and Kamala was talking over Trump when it was Trump's turn. He should have pointed out how Kamala claimed she was the 'president of democracy and not name calling' and proceeded to name call Trump.

Trump did one of the three things he needed to do in the debate: Kamala and Biden's weakness and failure on immigration.

The other things he needed to do is remind viewers how unpopular and useless she was as Vice President and how much we wasted government tax dollars on projects which yielded nothing. If he wasn't emotionally suckered into Kamala's attacks, he would easily dominate the debate.

Kamala is performing better than I thought. Trump is performing about par compared to his other debates.

I would prefer a Trump presidency vastly compared to a Kamala presidency.

Kamals' voice is not particularly pleasant to listen to.

It is funny. Trump let Kamala get away with it. The moderators asked her about flip flopping. She said nothing and then just said Trump rallies suck. He spent most of his time going off about how his rallies are awesome.

The right answer would be: notice how she couldn’t explain her position? I’ll give up my time because I want to hear how she changed so radically in such a short period of time.

I think this is the one really big and inexcusable Trump missed opportunity. The mods ask about flip-flopping, everyone knew they were. Harris didn't pivot, she just didn't answer. That's a golden opportunity and Trump completely missed it. That's Debate 101 or 102 levels of easy.

I agree, Trump had a lot of attack vectors. Debates are stressful. If your body was in full adrenaline mode, it's hard to fully concentrate and really have the calm analytical mindset. As soon as Trump is in control he dominates, but Kamala really prepared well and was able to match Trump's energy, preventing from giving him time to calm down. Having to debate the moderator as well didn't help.

Trump getting suckered into getting emotional and raising his voice and rambling and focusing on things that do not help him has dogged him in every general election debate I can remember him having, other than the super-easy one against Biden the other month. For some reason he was great in the 2016 primary debates, but he seems to struggle in debating Democrats.

He's a very extroverted and present focused individual, I think he probably feels emotions and slights acutely which causes him to overreact when attacked. I would argue it is a strength in many situations, but a weakness in prepared debate prep, especially when the 'moderator' is actively causing a further hassle for him.

Eh, winning the first ten minutes counts for more than winning the last eighty. Most people turn out early. I agree he's doing worse than against Biden.

Much worse. He is constantly allowing Harris to set him up for typical leftist or moderate establishment framings of things like foreign policy and racism and he has little ability to get out of those traps other than by raising his voice, thus looking defensive, and repeating the same talking points about how the Democrats are destroying the country and so on - which I happen to agree with to some extent, but I don't think repeating it and rambling about it plays well to the electorate. He failed to figure out some kind of judo or direct assault to get out of some very typical leftist traps, such as accusations of racism, in a way that would make him look good. He has allowed Kamala to look like the calmer one of the two. He brought up abortion for absolutely no reason before Kamala even did. He is shitting the bed so hard that even a bunch of people on /r/conservative are criticizing his performance. Which is unfortunate for me because, while I hate both sides, on the whole I would prefer Trump to win because I live in a Democrat-run city and I can see close-up the consequences of Democrat policies.

To be fair, the deck is stacked against him if for no other reason than that leftist attitudes are more prevalent in the public mind than right-wing ones, and the moderator might be a bit unfair. But he did not do a good job of preparing for this debate.

He failed to figure out some kind of judo or direct assault to get out of some very typical leftist traps, such as accusations of racism, in a way that would make him look good.

That's a ridiculous standard though. In that setting, those are superweapons. There is no judo counter and no defense, the only thing you can do is absorb the hit and press forward.

Well to be honest, I can't think of any great ones off the top of my head. But surely there must be some out there, and Trump has people funded by millions of dollars working to help him with these things. At the very least, maybe he could point out that Kamala was picked for Vice President for racist reasons. On the other hand, to explain to normies why that is a bad thing would probably take some calmness and sustained intellectual ability at explanation that Trump might simply not be capable of.

I had to tune out at the first commercial break, I can't stand any more of these two.

It's pretty clear Trump's lost this one, he made so many simple errors that he could have avoided by simply staying on message.

All anyone is going to talk about tomorrow is going to be the Haitians. How that will play is anyone's guess.

Yeah, talking about the dogs was him trying to get the media to deny it, which means the media is talking about the Haitians. Didn't help in the debate, but might help afterwards.

Yep. The more we litigate this the better for Trump. It's a brilliant ploy, and I bet his team even told him to say it.

It's the right-wing equivalent of George Floyd. The more this gets "debunked", the more it raises awareness of the tragedy that unfolded under Biden's watch.

He lost the debate in my eyes, but winning debates never matters anyway.

There does seem to me more evidence coming out that police were aware that Haitians were taking waterfowl from public waterways, but that’s a far cry from killing pets.

Of course, those of us paying attention will remember that they tried to deny the ducks and geese too, but normies won’t care.

What evidence? Snopes isn't great but they say this photo is from Columbus, Ohio not Springfield. And there's no evidence the man is Haitian and not just some black American. There's this video from someone at what looks like a public community meeting in Springfield claiming such (@1:04). But who knows how legit the rumors he's quoting are.

Just so we're clear. The video of a cat eating woman (Alexis Telia Ferrell) was also not from Springfield and was not known to be Haitian rather than just some black American, probably on drugs.

After learning how common such culinary practices are in Haiti, I actually find it hard to believe that it isn't happening in Ohio. It should have been predictable. It's not exactly easy to prove someone has been eating cats, especially if they have even an inkling that they're not supposed to--the evidence tends to disappear. Moreover, the authorities and media have very little incentive to look for the evidence, since it can only bring trouble for them--better to just say there is no legitimate evidence and move on. 20,000 is a lot of people, and Haitians aren't exactly known for their tempered good judgement. Even if most of them know they're not supposed to be eating the cats, it only takes a few. If only 1 percent kept on doing so, then that's 200 people. If 200 people in town start eating the local "wildlife", then that's going to impact very quickly. It's basically the same with driving without a license, contracting diseases, and all the other things that are apparently going down. These are massive impacts on a small town like Springfield, Ohio.

EXCLUSIVE: Police Audio, Report Confirm Haitian Goose-Hunting In Ohio: ‘They All Had Geese In Their Hands’

The story wouldn't have gone viral if it was about geese. People love cats and dogs almost as much as they love kids. Normies don't care about geese.

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I've never met anyone who has anything nice to say about them, including blacks and latinos, for what it's worth.

Lived in Miami for a few years, including in Little Haiti for over 6 months, so I think I'm above-average qualified to talk about Haitians at least.

Haitians, culturally, are... fine. There's a lot to say about them that I could go on about and most generalizations are going to be at least a little reductionist, so there's that disclaimer. They don't party quite as hard as the Dominicans by a long shot, but they are generally above-median openness, which I consider a virtue. Of course, they tend to get along with better with white people than other immigrants, with that said (and Dominicans in particular, that's a complicated and tough relationship). The education level is genuinely lacking, and it's pretty prevalent -- most Haitians grew up speaking Haitian-Creole which only got a written version to match maybe two decades ago IIRC, so schooling when present was in French, so you get really a strong rich-poor divide, with most being poor (partly as a result of frankly some long-lasting hostile foreign wealth extraction, partly the language thing, partly very poor self-governance and partly of course some terrible economic/natural disaster luck). There's a small handful of comparably wealthier older-generation Haitians around, similar situation to Cubans, but not a ton. They as a culture tend to love old people, generally, so many Haitians find themselves in the (large) retirement/medical complex in Florida, lots of friendly Haitian ladies there I've met. There's a germ of truth in bits about unfaithfulness and generally chaotic family relations being the norm but I'm not sure how far to take it.

Must say though! Local folk magic including yes voodoo but mostly the variant "santeria" is still alive and well overall, and that includes things like the occasional chicken sacrifice. However, you're in the States, very little chance people are actually eating cats and dogs and pets. I could theoretically see a priest eating a ritually sacrificed chicken (that was a thing in the Old Testament too) but beyond that I don't really think so. I consider this kind of prevalent superstition a negative thing, but at least some percentage of it is a cultural divide (but another part is, well, I AM actually a relatively devout Christian and on a personal level I consider aspects of santeria to be somewhat legitimately Satanist, but that's neither here nor there).

My brother spent a summer working at a resort with a lot of Haitians. He said they were the worst people he has ever had to interact with. On the other hand, he's only had positive things to say about Dominicans, Cubans, and other Latinos.

Anyway... anecdotes are anecdotes. I'd look at the actual country of Haiti and decide if we want more of that here.

The quality and prosperity of a country is not always strongly correlated with the drive/quality/cultural traits/etc of its people. Historical quirks come in to play too. Studying the history of Haiti is fairly illuminating.

The quality and prosperity of a country is strongly correlated to the intelligence of its citizens. While there are negative outliers like North Korea there are no significant positive outliers. Yes, a sufficiently awful government can keep a country below its potential. But nothing can take a country with low potential (like Haiti) and make it a high performer. It has never been done, and not for lack of trying.

This is similar to arguing that IQ is environmental because you can malnourish and starve a genius to lower their IQ. This is true, but the opposite of course is not true. You can't take a person with an IQ of 85 and make them a particle physicist. The best you can do is help everyone live up to their potential.

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Tomorrow one side is going to be running with immigrants are eating cats and the other side will be running with this clip over and over.

https://x.com/ronfilipkowski/status/1833594196630114747?s=10

The funny part is I bet that guy is voting for Trump.

It's a high variance play. If you assume Trump is still playing strategically and isn't lost in the canyons of his own subconscious, that probably indicates that Trump thinks he's losing.

But the fact vs blood libel debate is going to overshadow who said what about fracking when.

I think they're both doing well enough. Good energy for Trump. Great speeches from Kamala. I'd say Kamala is winning but it's close. She landed some good blows on abortion. And she did tell the "big lie" as I predicted. Trump surprised me by saying that dogs were being eaten. Thought he'd stop at cats.

But more importantly, they are both just so incredibly unlikeable and shrill. I don't think many people are being swayed.

The moderators are doing that mainstream media thing again though.

I just need Trump to say "wine aunt" and I can turn it off.

Outside of the highly online left and right, people generally think of Marxism as some boring thing from decades ago, not as an important issue.

Nah, the grass-touching right talks about Marxism too. Maybe not 20-30 year old rightists, but 20-30 year olds won't win the election for Trump.

This guy has always sucked at debates other than when he got to go up against Biden a few months ago

He swept the floor with the Republican field in 2016, and made Hillary Clinton look high-strung and out of touch. His debates against Biden in 2020 could have gone either way. He just seems tired and angry now -- Harris is making him look out of touch. There are so many good attacks he could be making, but he's rambling about other things instead of making his hits.

My thing with Trump debates is they always feel like watching a trainwreck when they're happening, but then when I go back to them I like them better. He does just have a thing for unforced errors, and it's hard for me to root for him during a debate.

I don't really like either candidate's performance in this debate, I'd probably like it more if they started just punching each other. There's nothing substantial going on here, no one has anything to gain from this, and everything to lose.

He's not selling himself to anyone not hugely online. Kamala is giving a serviceable performance, sticking to canned speeches and mostly ignoring the questions. Trump is, at best, picking fights on topics that aren't his strengths and doesn't seem to have a coherent strategy.

No one cares about Viktor Orban's endorsement.

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