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Is it gauche to refer to my own post https://www.themotte.org/post/1160/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/249419?context=8#context
Where I specifically said that there would be a race between 'HAH THEY ARE EATING CATS' and 'can we please stop talking about cats' conservatives?
JD Vance folded, said that he was making things up to get the conversation going. Trump hasn't mentioned it once more. Any unearthing of proximate evidence is burning sacrifices to a dead god. The point was fumbled, and memory holing is the best strategy. Repeatedly digging up this corpse to pretend it can still tapdance is not really helping advance the cause.
This is a gross misrepresentation of what JD Vance said. Yes, his exact words were "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do". IMHO though, in the full context of the back and forth he said that, "stories" is analogous to "headline" not "fiction". If some journalist, and he's arguing with a journalist, was having a conversation where they said they created or wrote a story, you wouldn't not assume they meant they were passing off their own fiction as news. "News story" is a colloquial phrase. Almost every news outlet brags about having "top stories". Vance is clearly talking about creating a news cycle, not making shit up.
Who says "if I have to do [X thing] to bring about [good thing], I will" if X is good or neutral? This is transparently self-justifying talk, which creates the context for "story" meaning "lie", not "headline".
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Very stupid way for a seasoned political operative to put it then.
Yeah, it was so stupid of JD Vance to use the exact same language his opponents use, ignorant to the fact that they can redefine language at their whim. Just so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The game isn't fair and the points are made up. When you have to be twice as good to get half as far, a lot hinges on that "twice as good" bit.
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What he said might have been smart, but the fact that I misinterpreted it proves that it was actually dumb.
JD Vance is actually speaking to the public as an adult instead of giving empty word salad platitude answers.
Unironically. There are more dumb people than smart people (or just people who aren't paying that much attention). Vance's 3D chess playing audience is outnumbered by people like me.
I for one prefer politicians who talk like adults to smooth-talking bullshitters. He's not even saying anything complicated.
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I'm sure it's a total coincidence that not a single conservative politician has even been a seasoned enough political operative to avoid having some sentence somewhere reframed dishonestly in ways that a) every mainstream news organization repeats and b) no mainstream news organization corects.
It's not a coincidence, obviously. They'll find something.
It's preferable they find "binders full of women" than you saying what Vance said. All you can do is minimize.
There's an argument for some Trump-style disagreeableness on important things. But I'd be making this argument if a Democrat spoke this way. This is not the sort of thing you want a paragraph-long explainer on. Waste of time.
Harris died in 2020 because she couldn't walk back her stupid defund rhetoric, and Biden eclipsed her totally on the campaign trail, with literally zero support for Defund The Police from Biden, not a single sanewashing soundbite. If you fuck up your point by saying something stupid, you power through and cede it so your efforts go somewhere productive.
Trump and Vance can still point to immigrant salvadorans and hondurans fucking up NYC. They don't do so because urbanites suffering hubris is a desired outcome for Trump, Trumps existing supporters and the remaining centrists who dislike far left open border crazies. Trying to tie the migrant threat to soccer mom suburbanites failed, and I'm not sure there is time to reload the chamber even if another bullet existed.
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Genuinely not sure about that. "I will do what I have to do, because this is important," may play quite well even among floating voters. It signifies strength and commitment (dishonesty, but pointed in a good direction). The "binders full of women" thing just came across as kind of sad, even for people who knew it had been misquoted. "I have binders full of people I want to promote to positions they weren't able to obtain under their own power" isn't exactly heartening.
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I’m tapping the sign right now.
Journos Delenda est
*delendi sunt
Yeah, fair enough.
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That's not exactly what he said.
So what? Trump is a busy guy. He isn't exactly backing off. He just had to deal with the fallout of a second assassin. Then he gives appearances and interviews. I could post a 20-minute monologue Trump just made connecting Tariffs, the Afghanistan pullout, China selling weapons, and the destiny of Michigan and its auto industry to be even greager than it has ever been.
What point was fumbled? The Biden-Harris is bringing in millions of illegals under TPS and dumping them in small towns. They drive down wages and are a strain on basic social services. They kill people with reckless driving. Landlords use them to drive out tenants for more money. And some of them are even eating pets.
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