site banner
PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   27655 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.

It is not that I do not believe in evil. But I do find it odd when liberals perceive demonic evil in Trump, yet make excuses for vicious violent criminals (at least, as a class if not always individually) who are enabled by Democrats' soft-on-crime policies.

Would Trump do many harmful things in office? I am sure. Harris would as well. Which one would do more, who knows? I do not see a clear-cut answer to that question. He certainly would be no angel, I am sure of that. But it also seems to me that often, vehement anti-Trump sentiment has little to do with a clear-eyed assessment of the possible harms that he would cause.

What explains the particular mind-shattering power that Trump somehow inflicts on so many of his political opponents? Interestingly, it largely do not seem to be his actual political counterparts among the Democrat elite who view him as an eldritch destroyer of worlds... the Democrat elite may hate him, may despise him, may say that he is a threat to democracy, but I don't think I can remember any time that any of them acted as if he was a threat to one's very psychological foundation. Maybe their power and their close understanding of American politics generally inoculates them against such a reaction.

Lest someone think that I come only to shit on the Democrats, unfortunately no. Would that I actually supported either of the two main parties... my political life would be easier. But the Republicans, too, deserve some questioning on this topic. Republicans' reaction to Bill and Hillary Clinton, at one point, was a sort of precursor to the mental shattering caused by the concept of Trump. Interestingly, despite often being accused of being racist, from what I recall Republicans did not actually react to Obama quite as hysterically as they reacted to the Clintons. Sure, there was a lot of vitriol against Obama, such as Birtherism, but it was probably half as vehement as what was thrown at the Clintons.

Yet even though Republicans were in many ways mind-melted by the Clintons, including to the point that Republican forums back in the day teemed with theories about the Clintons literally being a murderous and pedophilic crime family, I still do not think it quite matches up to the new standards of psychological devastation that Trump has wreaked. That might sound weird, given the murderous pedophile thing, but to me supporters of those theories generally just seem like they are stupid and prone to weird fantasies and LARPs but have always been that way, whereas people who are existentially shattered by Trump seem like they might have been different at one point, but then suddenly Trump appeared in the corner of their reality and traumatically inverted it into some new configuration of dimensions.

Why does Trump have this effect? Is it just that there is a large number of people in this country who fail to agree with me that Trump's chances of becoming a dictator are extremely small, that a man who has most key institutions against him, has the top military brass against him, and lives in a country where the military rank and file are probably not about to try to overthrow civilian authority, has very little chance of ending American democracy?

I am not sure. The idea of Trump being the curtain call on American democracy is certainly one of the main things behind his psychological impact on people, but I have seen plenty of people who seem existentially horrified by him for completely different reasons. Some people seem to be driven out of their wits' ends just by the very fact that Trump is crude and vulgar rather than sounding like an intellectual.

I am not sure. The idea of Trump being the curtain call on American democracy is certainly one of the main things behind his psychological impact on people, but I have seen plenty of people who seem existentially horrified by him for completely different reasons. Some people seem to be driven out of their wits' ends just by the very fact that Trump is crude and vulgar rather than sounding like an intellectual.

It's a mix of factors depending on the person. First off, some people are just partisan democrats who will react this way to anyone with an R after their name, but the form will change. To these people "Trump will end democracy"="Romney will put black people back in chains"="Bush is Hitler", and none of them are intended to be literally true. They just mean "I'm a democrat. Have I mentioned I don't like republicans? Anyways, I'm a democrat." Second, there's a lot of people who are concerned about Our democracy. No, not our democracy or our Democracy- Our democracy. You know, the one where experts are more equal than others. Trump, like him or not, really is a serious challenge to the Our part of Our democracy. Thirdly, there really are people who want a president who acts presidential, which Trump does not do.

There's also a set of sophisticated arguments that Trump sets anti-democratic precedents. I'm unclear on how this doesn't apply to the democrats as well, but "Trump is like the Gracchi brothers" is at least in touch with reality even if not, in my view, 100% correct.

Peoples reactions to Trump has nothing to do with Trump. I think it's the psychological side-effect from years of media propaganda against him. There's no things which exists in reality, which warrant a strong reaction against Trump. But if you look outside of reality, in various stories and subjective experiences and predictions, you can find reasons to feel strongly about Trump. If somebody claims that Trump is a psychopath, for instance, you may experience him as such, even if you would never have come up with that idea on your own if nobody had told you.

This forums is quite competent around politics, but I feel like psychology is more essential in understanding the world than any political theory is. It's like psychology and human nature is the "upstream" of everything, in the same way that one can spend tens of years in vain trying to make sense of women or dating, but then reading a few books on evolutionary psychogy and natural selection and have everything fall into place in a couple of days.

I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.

As a Democrat, I hold both views simultaneously. An actually more accurate way to put it for me is: I think he'll probably directly be a threat to democracy if he loses, and probably won't directly be a threat to democracy over the next four years if he wins, but might have already tipped the first domino in a progression that leads to an erosion of democracy and might be able to nudge the next domino (or have his allies do so) based on some of his actions during his next term.

might have already tipped the first domino in a progression that leads to an erosion of democracy

This puts me in mind of people who complain, year after year and project by project, that Alien is ruined as a franchise. Have they been in a coma since 1992?

Democracy is not this thing that will crumble at the actions of one actor, even if that actor is ostensibly the leader of the free world. When democracy falls, it will fall by its own hands, with thunderous applause. Macau recently held an election for their chief executive. He won with 98.5% of the electoral vote, a percentage that even the most credulous among us are considering "maybe sus". Is this "a threat to democracy"?

Democracy, "rule by demos", is a piece of alien technology that serves to allow people to tolerate each other and rule over each other without coming to open warfare, having to resort to the awful work of actually having to try and convince each other. If democracy fails in America, it will not be because Orange Man Bad, it will be because most of America prefers shooting the other half to trying to convince them of anything at all.

Ok, but can you explain how Trump is more of a furtherance of democratic backsliding than the democrats(who do after all increasingly support things like government censorship, court packing, etc)?

What erosion of democracy do you believe Donald Trump, avatar of your outgroup, to want?

Steelmanning voting concepts, I have observed that my fellow Americans either want:

  • zero fraudulent ballots cast at the cost of stringent and sometimes onerous requirements that may result in fewer legitimate ballots being counted, or
  • zero legitimate voters prevented from having their ballots cast and counted, even if that may result in a few illegitimate votes being included in the count.

Accordingly, I refuse to countenance the strawman of “Republicans just want to suppress the legitimate vote” without the flip strawman, “Democrats just want to stuff the ballot box.”

What erosion of democracy do you believe Donald Trump, avatar of your outgroup, to want?

Actually trying to peer into his mind and speculate exactly what he wants is difficult. I think he likes power and I think it's reasonably probable that if he thought he could do it pretty easily, he'd appoint himself president-for-life. If he does want to do that, I don't think he will try to do it, because he knows he couldn't get away with it. But the thought that he might want it is concerning. (But I only think it's "reasonably probable" he does. I'm definitely not certain.)

What I do know is that if Kamala wins, the following will happen, with the following likelihoods, whether or not there are any credible widespread fraud allegations:

  • Trump will declare that he rightfully won and Harris only won due to fraud (99.9%)
  • Elon Musk will say it's very concerning and suspicious how many irregularities there are, and use his platform to spread that sentiment as much as he can (95%)
  • Elon Musk will outright declare that Harris's victory was fraudulent and that Trump is the real winner (85%)
  • Most Trump voters will believe Harris only won due to fraud (98%)

That is not good for democracy. The fact that we all know that Trump will declare victory no matter what happens is not good for democracy.

If there's no substantive evidence to support his claims, we all know that Trump is going to say he won when he lost. This is an absurd state of affairs.

I'm just going to repeat this for emphasis. Everyone reading this knows that Trump is going to say "I won" on November 5/6/7, no matter the circumstances. We all know he's going to do this.

People in the intellectual dark web regularly talk about "sense-making", but they seem to (from what I can tell) avoid the fact that if there can no longer be any common agreement on who won an election, democracy is in jeopardy.

I don't think Republicans, or even Trump, necessarily want to suppress the legitimate vote, per se. I do know that Trump is going to say he won if he lost. Basically everyone knows it. That is an erosion of democracy.

This also gives a blank check to any nefarious enemies of democracy who oppose Trump to pull every dirty trick they can. After all, if the media is set up to whitewash any Trumpian accusations of fraud, now’s their last chance to make ballot printers go brrrr.

The other question is, what happens if Trump wins? Will his enemies’ allegations of fraud be treated as beyond the pale as if he’d made them? Or will they be investigated, be brought with standing before a court, go through the discovery phase, and be adjudicated with possible consequences for election, in the ways the 2020 vote never was?

Is this the chutzpah defence? "We made so many demonstrably false accusations of election rigging that we have no credibility left, which means now the other side can do whatever it wants!"

The boy who cried wolf is like, parables 101.

“The boy who cried wolf” was listened to, at first: “The farmers would all come running only to find out that what the boy said was not true. Then one day there really was a wolf but when the boy shouted, they didn't believe him and no one came to his aid.”

By contrast, Trump’s 2020 claims were poo-poohed by the people who said there really is no reason to believe wolves might ever come near, and the boy is a danger for spreading these false reports with no evidence. Then they did a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

I agree with everything that you wrote, but I also think that there's plently of evidence that the left is playing dirty. I give Trump about 30% of winning, because the entire game is rigged against him in a way which I consider fraud. In my view, this fraud is possible in the first place because democracy has been undermined.

Trump will declare that he rightfully won and Harris only won due to fraud (99.9%)

Elon Musk will say it's very concerning and suspicious how many irregularities there are, and use his platform to spread that sentiment as much as he can (95%)

Elon Musk will outright declare that Harris's victory was fraudulent and that Trump is the real winner (85%)

Most Trump voters will believe Harris only won due to fraud (98%)

These odds seem really badly calibrated. I'm not even directionally against these but putting a 0.1% chance on something Trump does being unsuspected strikes me as madness and I'm not sure what Musk stands to gain from supporting Trump once he's conclusively lost. I'd put up money on any of these rates if you're interested.

Fair. I really actually meant 99%, not 99.9%. And sure, I'd be happy to bet you, but I don't have a lot of money spare so we could use a Manifold market (or similar) instead of betting real money. If I had money spare I'd bet you a fair bit of real money. Unless you only want to bet $50 or something, but I don't know if that's worth all the setup. But I'm willing to bet $50 if we can find an easy way to make it work.

I'll change my probabilities to 99%, 90%, 75%, and keep the last at 98%. Skin in the game does indeed help with calibration.

I'm not sure what Musk stands to gain from supporting Trump once he's conclusively lost.

I've frequently seen this sentiment from people - that Musk is supporting Trump purely for selfish and opportunistic reasons and will stop being so vocal and annoying once the election's over. I think this is very likely a complete misunderstanding of him. These are his actual beliefs. I think he's ride-or-die for MAGA, and if Trump loses I think he's very likely going to be making tons of tweets per day either casting FUD about the election or explicitly saying there was fraud and that Trump is the true winner. It's not a matter of what he stands to gain, because that's not his mindset.

I'm afraid the payout ratio for any of these would make the stakes pretty onerous on you, at 99% odds you'd be getting $1 out of a $100 staked bet. I'm willing to escrow some cash or crypto on any of these with a third party or just go off honor. I just made a manifold account, don't see anything exactly right but might be looking in the wrong spot. The 75% musk one would be the most exciting probably if not the most favorable EV to me. I'd be willing to stake up to $200 on that line without demanding an escrow.

Which major president wouldn’t want to make himself president for life? Surely Obama.

Washington, notoriously - which is why the US doesn’t have Presidents-for-life.

Bush Jr probably wouldn't. I'm not sure if Obama would or wouldn't, but I'm pretty sure Clinton would and Carter wouldn't.

I think at least half wouldn't want to. I don't think Obama would want to. If there were no term limits, I don't think he'd run max 2 or 3 total times, and I definitely don't think he'd try to rewrite the constitution to make it so there are no more elections for so long as he's alive.

At the least, I think Trump likely wants to more than all or almost all of the past ones.

The dude decided to hang out in DC and run a shadow presidency during Biden’s admin. I have zero doubt he’d be interested in the lifetime presidency. I do have doubts whether he’d want to run multiple elections.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your meaning.

As I read it, your main concern of Trump winning is that if he loses he'll claim he won and Kamala only won via fraud.

My overall concern is that Trump is a threat to democracy. As I stated in my initial post, I think the immediate harmful effects to democracy will be greater if he loses than if he wins, due to his underlying motivations for not caring about democracy (narcissism). It's not "if he wins, he will do this", it's "as a person, he is a force of destruction when it comes to democracy".

My overall concern is that Trump is a threat to democracy.

As below with "Fascism", can you define what you mean by "democracy" in this context?

What I do know is that if Kamala wins, the following will happen, with the following likelihoods, whether or not there are any credible widespread fraud allegations:

Trump will declare that he rightfully won and Harris only won due to fraud (99.9%) Elon Musk will say it's very concerning and suspicious how many irregularities there are, and use his platform to spread that sentiment as much as he can (95%) Elon Musk will outright declare that Harris's victory was fraudulent and that Trump is the real winner (85%) Most Trump voters will believe Harris only won due to fraud (98%)

Sounds like it would be best for America if Trump wins then, hey?

It's better for the hostages if we negotiate with the terrorists.

It's better for the hostages if we negotiate with the terrorists.

Well yeah, it definitely is -- in this case the hostages are also doing the negotiating, which changes the calculus some.

Optimizing for defection by caving to the demands of defectors is bad.

No, that’s precisely why it’s best that he doesn’t win. Trump is a defect bot for elections. He always plays defect, and everyone knows it. It's only rational that “it’s best for America if Trump wins” because the convention is to cooperate, and we know his opponent will cooperate. When defect-bots start winning elections because they only play defect, then all candidates will eventually become defect-bots and we all lose. So the most rational choice is to vote against the defector to ensure only cooperative candidates have a chance to win.

To play devils advocate here, if the system is completely broken and unable to produce a good result on anything that matters, maybe a defect bot is exactly what you need. Cooperation with a system that doesn’t work doesn’t fix that system. I think that our systems are so broken at this point that we either do the major fixes we need or consign ourselves to the scrap heap of history where future civilizations will wonder how we let it all fall apart.

I don’t like Trump at all, I’d very much rather have anyone else. But on the other hand the hour is late and if we wait for something better we might be doing so in a completely failed state instead of merely a failing one. A third of Americans can’t read. We can’t handle disaster recovery, fix potholes, build aircraft, or fix train tracks. Large portions of most cities are no go zones, often featuring open air drug markets. Is Trump or any other “defect bot” going to actually be able to fix that? It’s one in a million. On the other hand the system that you think we should encourage cooperation with has failed in most respects. Risky surgery or slow decline into death?

I think this only applies if you believe the status quo will cause the society to invariably decline, I don’t believe that. And even if the US does decline in next four years under Kamala Harris, maybe the next president will be able to turn it around. In my head, it certainly beats the 1 in a million chance given to us by Trump.

To play devils advocate here, if the system is completely broken and unable to produce a good result on anything that matters, maybe a defect bot is exactly what you need.

There's no way to even tell if Trump is a "defect bot", because the defection against him started early. The New York Times declared they'd only cover his candidacy in the entertainment section (a declaration they did not follow). Democrats rioted on election day. They proclaimed him #NotMyPresident and declared #Resistance. They rioted again on Inauguration Day. They started trying to impeach him in 2017. They did impeach him in 2019. There's no way you could distinguish between defectbot and tit-for-tat under these circumstances.

A third of Americans can’t read.

Are these yokels from Trump Country, or products of our Democratically-controlled urban school systems?

We can’t handle disaster recovery

Ron DeSantis can.

build aircraft

I doubt either party could fix Boeing.

Large portions of most cities are no go zones, often featuring open air drug markets. Is Trump or any other “defect bot” going to actually be able to fix that?

Most of the things you've mentioned are locally controlled, and Trump can't fix them. But on the other hand, most of those cities are Democratically controlled and the Democrats are the party of "defund the police".

Democrats rioted on election day.

Democratic politicians and Clinton didn't, and I believe almost all of the protests on 2016 election day were peaceful and didn't involve any rioting. Look at what Republican politicians and Trump did on and after election day. Not to mention general Trump voters.

They proclaimed him #NotMyPresident and declared #Resistance.

Look at what Republicans did when Obama or particularly Biden won.

There's no way you could distinguish between defectbot and tit-for-tat under these circumstances.

Compare the top-down leaders and the rabble. Hillary Clinton, although publicly claiming Russia helped increase Trump's odds (which is plausibly true, even if it seems more likely than not he still would've won without the DNC hacking and social media influence schemes from Russia), publicly and privately accepted the election results within hours. No high-level Democratic leaders advocated any tricks to try to keep Trump from being inaugurated. A few very left-leaning journalists suggested such things, and some Democratic voters did, but it was fringe. I'm not going to even bother to contrast with what happened from the other side.

Red MAGA is much less tethered to reality than Blue MAGA is, Red MAGA is a much greater proportion of Red Team than Blue MAGA is of Blue Team, and Red MAGA includes most of the current Republican leadership while Blue MAGA contains little of the Democratic leadership.

More comments

It's not an iterated game though -- the guy's not going to try hanging around for three terms and he'll be insufferable (as will all his supporters) if he doesn't get a second.

Just get it over with man.

I understand your point, but I wish you could see your posts here from a God's-eye view right now. How is it that this is the state of America and so many of us are just speaking of it in banal terms? Do you and others in this thread recognize why so many people on the left conclude Trump is an unprecedented threat to democracy, and why it's so irritating that Trump fans call that stochastic terrorism?

You may even be objectively correct, but the whole situation is ridiculous and abominable.

It is an iterated game, maybe not with Trump, but with future candidates who might think to pull the same thing if the strategy works out for him.

If you vote for him and he wins, he will never know that his strategy was working -- he will just think that America loves him, and you will avoid whatever hassles you are expecting in the case that he loses very neatly.

How are you getting to "always" from an n=1?

N does not equal to 1. He’s done the same thing for his primary losses in 2016, and he refused to say he’d accept the loss in 2016 if he did lose. Also, whether n=1 is not important, unless you believe he’ll accept the loss gracefully this time around?

But that presumes the other side isn’t defect bot. Look at what they did during the Trump Presidency (effectively subverting the peaceful transfer of power through BS like the Russia story). That was much more undermining democracy compared to anything Trump has done. Then add in the other shenanigans by the IC community, NGOs that are cut outs for the deep state, etc that undermine free and fair elections coupled with Dems open embrace of censorship.

None of that is to praise Trump. No, I have not come to praise Trump but to bury him. Yet like Shakespeare’s Mark Antony I cannot help but note Trump’s adversaries are worse by pretty much any measure.

It depends. The health of the state is so bad at this point that I think keeping the status quo might be worse long term. The government we have, the old guard political class cannot actually solve problems, fix things, or come up with new ideas. FEMA can’t handle hurricane, but Cajun navy and private charities can. The government can’t handle education or health or roads. Trump might well be the shakeup we need. But I’m not sure because the amount of state capacity that will be wasted fighting every single step back will likely make it all worse.

He was president for four years. What did he shake up besides many of the establishment norms that are actually good establishment norms? He complained about the Deep State hampering him from doing things that actually should've been hampered, got nothing done, refused to leave, then had to be dragged out kicking and screaming. I'm not a big fan of Bill Maher but he predicted it all exactly right from the start.

If it were Andrew Yang or Mark Cuban or Michael Bloomberg or maybe even Bernie Sanders (despite me very much not being a socialist), and if they hadn't already been president for four years, I might be willing to lend charity to this overall vibe or maybe even vote that way. But I can't understand the people acting like Trump either was going to be the great disruptor and the great fixer or somehow will be now.

He was president for four years. What did he shake up besides many of the establishment norms that are actually good establishment norms?

Massive changes to the federal judiciary, leading to a bevy of court cases that advance conservative policies- most notably the overturn of roe vs wade, but also more limits on the regulatory state and a general improvement in gun rights and state's rights.

If it were Andrew Yang or Mark Cuban or Michael Bloomberg or maybe even Bernie Sanders (despite me very much not being a socialist), and if they hadn't already been president for four years, I might be willing to lend charity to this overall vibe or maybe even vote that way. But I can't understand the people acting like Trump either was going to be the great disruptor and the great fixer or somehow will be now.

Can you name a republican you'd put in that category? Because it very much looks like partisan rancor.

I personally expect Trump to muddle through in a way somewhat better for me and mine than Kamala will, certainly not with a major improvement over the status quo but definitely an improvement over Kamala. I'm willing to concede that he's not good for the health of the republic but don't think he's clearly worse than democrats. To steelman the case for Trump making major changes when he didn't last time, he has a better ability to manage personnel and put out executive orders because the right wing institutions are already helping him make them, and has a much more change-happy inner circle with people like Musk and RFK this time.

Thank you for articulating the same question that's been bugging me for years at this point. It's so bonkers even my wife has started wondering what's up with it. People will flip from perfectly lovely to Dead-in-their-eyes-TDS without any warning and it's terrifically frightful!

Democrat here.

I actually mostly agree with you that Trump would spend the majority of the time doing nothing and passing whatever Republicans put in front of him. From a D perspective that's bad of course, but not unexpected. Though expected or not, his court nominations have had lasting consequences. I think a lot of it is his propensity for impulsive or poor decisions, such as trying to pull out of NATO.

I think a lot of it is his norm-shattering ability to be a complete and utter hypocrite and/or corrupt and for it to be excused. He's a "Christian" that cheats on his wife and no one cares. He calls for locking up Hillary over emails, then has a bathroom full of classified documents and no one cares. Hunter must be punished over corruptly using family connections, but Trump businesses getting a bunch of business and business deals in other countries is a nothingburger. Let's also not forget Jared Kushner.

I expect to see counters about how the entire government is corrupt, and I don't even disagree with all of it. But he is so incredibly blatant about it that he doesn't even try to create plausible deniability.

I think his false elector scheme was a massive attempt at overturning democracy. I don't know how he could do it again since a two-term limit doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. But I also don't want to give power to the kind of person who seems to love trying to see how he can lawyer his way out of anything, especially when Republicans seem to go out of their way to excuse him.

It is ironic that you compare Clinton and Trump whilst making it seem like what Trump did was on par or worse. It seems clear that what Hillary was trying to do was get around FOIA (ie oversight). Clinton was by far worse.

Because I have no interest in defending Hillary. She could be prosecuted for it and I wouldn't shed a tear. I voted Bernie until I was largely forced to hold my nose and vote Hillary. In either case, her guilt or innocence has nothing to do with Trump's. And Trump's guilt when it comes to classified documents is so cut and dried the only thing anyone can do is whatabout Hillary or cast aspersions on the motive on anyone who would hold him accountable.

No you intimated that what Trump did was worse than what he said he’d lock Hillary up for. Yet what Hillary did was worse so there need not be hypocrisy.

Every single president before Trump (except maybe Nixon) was allowed unlimited time to go through his documents and decide which ones to give to the archives. Obama probably still isn't done, if anyone cared to look -- hell if you looked in Bush's basement I wouldn't be surprised if you found some shit.

It's the furthest thing from cut & dried; the people breaking norms on this one are definitely not Trump.

I think the unprecedented part isn't that Trump took and kept documents but that he and his team explicitly lied to law enforcement/DoJ when politely asked to report and return classified documents.

The request itself was unprecedented; no other presidents were asked to do this.

The request occurred because the DoJ became aware of their existence. They are obligated to request their return once they become aware of their existence. At least in the past, what, 30 years, I'm not aware of a situation where they discover a former president has classified documents and don't request them to be immediately returned.

The idea that there's all this collusion against Trump feels odd. Many people working at the DoJ and FBI are Republicans and voted for Trump and will probably vote for Trump again. (Maybe some have changed their mind after starting to prosecute him.) They're not picking on him by going like "those documents you're not legally permitted to have? please report all the ones you're aware of and return them to us". They're not bullying the guy because they hate him. They're following the law and carrying out their duties. It's possible there's some political motivation in the New York case, but many of the people involved in the classified documents case likely aren't putting politics into the mix. It's a pretty straightforward case.

The request occurred because the DoJ became aware of their existence. They are obligated to request their return once they become aware of their existence.

How did they 'become aware of their existence' though?

Many people working at the DoJ and FBI are Republicans and voted for Trump and will probably vote for Trump again.

I'm sure there's the odd one, but considering the polling in D.C. and more direct evidence I suspect that the others are rather more... impactful.

"those documents you're not legally permitted to have?

This is not even a foregone conclusion -- again, he was the President -- he's legally permitted to do anything he wants with classified documents, and ones in his possession when he left office are quite some grey area, legally.

It's possible there's some political motivation in the New York case

LOL -- glad you acknowledge the possibility.

Assuming I believed you, then it sounds to me like the proper thing to do is decriminalize keeping confidential documents if it is apparently no big deal. Hell at that point why even have confidential designation if it apparently means nothing?

It means nothing to the President -- it's legally arguable that he's already excluded from existing regulations, even once his term is up.

Assuming I believed you

You're aware that presidents normally continue to receive classified security briefings once their term is up? There's no need to handle the transfer of documents in a confrontational way, particularly so soon after leaving office -- it's just a fact that this is all completely unprecedented, and completely on the Biden admin.

Congressmen and Presidents get a massive amount of leeway, which is that them still having classified documents is considered a mistake and they're told to give them back. That in fact happened to Trump, and he claimed he was cooperating. This isn't about any information he received after leaving office, or about him simply having documents. This is about him saying he's returned documents and then they come back to Mar-a-Lago and find more that were obviously moved from the last time they searched, meaning they believe he was actively trying to obstruct them. Also he showed classified documents to civilians and admitted on recording that he knew they were classified documents.

Here is a timeline if needed

Do unprecedented things, get unprecedented treatment. Especially if you leave a bunch of slam dunk evidence.

Congressmen and Presidents get a massive amount of leeway

Not Congressmen, but with presidents it's not really leeway but rather that legally it's much closer to a l'etat c'est moi situation, and the norm is to not test this. Again, the request itself is unprecedented; see Biden. Despite his lack of Presidential privilege, nobody was knocking on his door asking for documents during Trump's term; nor should they have been.

Yeah as opposed to I don’t know doctoring emails sent to fisa courts or destroying evidence under subpoena. Who, whom.

More comments

And honestly seemed a bit like a set up (ie files were sent to him and then he was hassled about it).

And Trump's guilt when it comes to classified documents is so cut and dried

Is it? You know that picture with all the classified cover sheets was essentially fabricated by the FBI -- they put those cover sheets there.

Is it supposed to be a defense that the classified documents he had didn't have coversheets?

They had to categorize dozens of boxes of papers, and made a dumb mistake. We still have Trump admitting on recording that he was showing documents to a guest that he didn't declassify.

Then you are being naive. The FBI knew that photo would be on the front page of major news publications. By showing that it makes it appear like Trump was causally keeping things that say Top Secret around — he even had a FOLDER!

And now that it was found out, which guess what, Trump has lawyers whose entire career is catching things like this, they have egg on their face. If it was a scheme, it was an absolutely dumb one. They're still attempting to go ahead with the case even though there's no way it will be concluded before the election.

You are assuming the goal was legal as opposed to political

More comments

It probably would have worked if it wasn't for Judge Cannon.

Oh yes, they added a bunch of classified cover sheets to a photo, and put it in a court filing without mentioning that those cover sheets were added by them. Just your average everyday "oopsie" in the FBI.

I generally believe incompetence over maliciousness.

What's more likely?

An impulsive braggart with a tendency to think he can do anything grabbed some docs as personal trophies or to win arguments?

Or...

Trump normally keeps stacked up boxes of documents in bathrooms and the FBI throws in cover sheets to make Trump look guilty? And the judge is going to accept they they are classified based on this cover sheet and not check? Oh, and also they trick Trump into saying these exact words?

"Well, with Milley -- uh, let me see that, I'll show you an example," Trump says on the recording. "He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this -- this is off the record, but -- they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some -- this was him. This wasn't done by me, this was him. All sorts of stuff -- pages long, look."

"Wait a minute, let's see here. I just found, isn't that amazing?" Trump says. "This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me. As president I could have declassified, but now I can't."

What's more likely?

An impulsive braggart with a tendency to think he can do anything grabbed some docs as personal trophies or to win arguments?

Or...

Trump normally keeps stacked up boxes of documents in bathrooms and the FBI throws in cover sheets to make Trump look guilty?

The later. That's what actually happened, after all, and is consistent with years of prior leaks from the FBI and associated probes pursued for political harm, whereas there is no allegation that Donald Trump used those classified documents to try and win arguments.

Stacks of boxes in odd places is pretty normal. It was a minor- and not prosecuted- reoccurance of both former VP Pence and former VP Biden that they both were found to have boxes of classified documents in their domiciles well after their departures. In Biden's case, they were found being kept in a garage.

Further, there was no practical reason to put classified cover sheets over the documents in question for the purpose of an evidentiary photo. The cover sheet has no evidentiary power in and of itself- it could be any document behind it, so you'd need to take photos sans cover sheet anyways, and if you're doing that you'd need to have a camera and photo-storage planned for the relevant classified level anyway.

The cover sheets were brought for a photo that could be shared without itself being a disclosure incident, the documents were staged for the photo, and the photo was presented publicly and presented in a way to insinuate that the cover sheets had been there from the start. (Which itself was furthered by a major media outlet coincidentally being at Mar-a-Lago for the dawn document raid to report it as it happened.)

And the judge is going to accept they they are classified based on this cover sheet and not check?

The nature of Presidential classification authority is that there is nothing to check, hence why the classified document case got nuked by implications of the official acts immunity ruling by the Supreme Court during the parallel attempt at anti-Trump lawfare.

The Biden Administration's effort to target Trump in the classified document case rested on an argument that Presidents have to go through a formal process for declassification, insist that because Trump did follow the process the documents were still classified, and thus that once Trump left office with them he could no longer declassify them and thus it was improper holding.

However, there is no required procedure, the current White House does not assert it has created a required procedure, and neither the National Archives or FBI ever actually identified a required process that Trump failed to follow to lead to the judgement of 'improper' holding. This is why the charges were under the espionage act for having classified documents, and not for violation of a declassification process in improperly declassifying documents. The case has hinged from the start on the argument that Trump did not declassify them, as opposed to could not do so automatically as part and parcel of the job.

Which has been utterly unsurprising to anyone actually familiar with US classification regulations. The President does not need to justify the decision to declassify to other parts of the US government, does not need to communicate that decision to anyone else, and if the President determines something no longer needs to be classified then- as long as it doesn't derive from Atomic Energy Act- there is nothing and no one to say he can't. There are all inherent aspects of being the ultimate classification and declassification authority of Executive Branch documentation, an authority that the Biden administration has never taken the position that then-President Trump didn't have the authority to do.

This is why the case functionally broke when the Supreme Court made its ruling on immunity for official acts. The President's decision to declassify solely Executive branch information is an official act. It's not something regulated by Congress. It's not something beyond the scope of the Executive to establish limits on itself either in certain ways, but no such procedural requirement was ever alleged.

More comments

"Norm-shattering" is a good description, but incomplete. What trump is is the first person to recognize and reify a wholly new strategy for executing politics. That being: to organize his supporters not as interest groups, not as a cult of personality, not as ideological compatriots, but as a fandom.

Recently, we've been seeing a lot of ink spilt on the subject of the social media-depression link. Particularly where it concerns children, but I hold that the problem extends universally across age groups. Ubiquitous smartphones with social media is (so far) the ultimate realization of the "bowling alone" trend-- where the world inside the screen becomes so addictive that people lose social links outside the screen. Consequently, in-person social links become scarce despite being just as valuable as ever. More valuable, perhaps, because in-person interactions retain all their old benefits while also making you a high-priority person to someone who has potentially valuable virtual contacts.

People on some level realize this, so they still optimize for some level of in-person contact. And they do that by engaging in fandoms. Large, energized masses of people with a shared understanding of a universe easily gel together when they meet in person. That fact that these universes are fictional doesn't matter. In fact, the very fictionality of these universes is what makes them so effective. They can optimize for being interesting and pleasurable over being true. (See: epistemic minor leagues). And unlike traditional social groups that performed the same function (e.g., fraternal societies, religions) they demand very little from you personally outside what you were already willing to give: the free time you already wanted to spend doing something fun, and the opportunity cost of spending time with people who aren't into the same things you are anyways.

Trump is the first modern politician to truly realize the power of fandoms. I want to say, "unwittingly" because I think he's an idiot, but given his success with TV and branded enterprises I can't rule out genuine epiphany. He's creating a shared universe than his fans can all be passionate about, with interesting characters, noble heroes, and evil villains. And in organizing his political supporters into a fandom, he's invalidated all the usual tools of traditional politics. Fact checkers; negative news coverage; research papers-- none of that stuff is effective against a fandom. In fact, it's actively counterproductive. Every youtube video about how star wars physics aren't realistic just keeps people interested in the star wars fandom.

Indeed, the only thing that can successfully oppose a fandom is an equal and opposite hatedom. Whether his enemies deliberately organized themselves into one, or were simply forced by selection pressures to fit the mold doesn't matter. What matters is that when someone says, "Drake and Josh are amazing singers," you don't bother telling them that they're overproduced corporate slop. Instead, you go out and create a powerful social group of your own, by telling them, "look at all these idiots that love something Dan Schneider, a pedophile, created!"

The hate against the clintons for being slimy, the "bush is stupid" people, and the the obama birtherism were essentially prefigurement for this. They cultivated proto-fandoms with their charisma that made traditional policy attacks less effective, and therefore were subject to proto-hatedoms. Bernie came the closest to emulating trump with his own dedicated online fandom, but he definitely didn't consciously understand what was happening, and in any case failed to take advantage of his devotees like trump did.

Until technology dramatically changes the social environment again, I predict that every future president will act like trump and be treated like trump. He is to social media as Kennedy was to television as Coolidge was to radio-- laying out the path for every candidate after.

I think a lot of it is his propensity for impulsive or poor decisions, such as trying to pull out of NATO.

EU has twice the people of US, comparable GDP and whatnot. It totally should be able to match US contribution 50% and have comparable forces.

They don't deserve protection. Saying as an EU citizen.

While it is certainly true that the EU is not sharing their fair share of the NATO defense burden, it would be premature to conclude from that alone that NATO is hence a bad deal for the US and all the pre-Trump administrations were idiots for having the US taxpayer protect Europe.

The way I see it, the relationship between the US and European NATO countries like Germany is an unequal partnership, but not necessarily an unfair one. Germany gets the protection of the US, but it also accepts the US as the hegemon. When the US decides that they want to embargo some country, Europe generally follows them. When the US decides that China should not have extreme ultra-violet photo-lithography machines, the Netherlands make ASML comply with that rather than weighting their alternatives.

With NATO, there is at least a contractual obligation for the Bundeswehr to fight Russia if it were to invade the US, even though nobody is under any illusion about the threat the Bundeswehr poses to Putin. But the umbrella of US protection extends even over countries who are not under formal obligation to aid the US, especially in the Pacific.

I would argue that the US puts up with this because being the leader of the status quo coalition comes with certain perks. If the US had adopted a policy of isolationism after WW2, they would certainly not be the economic powerhouse they are today.

With NATO, there is at least a contractual obligation for the Bundeswehr to fight Russia if it were to invade the US, even though nobody is under any illusion about the threat the Bundeswehr poses to Putin.

There isn't. It's a common misconception, but while there would be massive political ramifications if a country did not step up during an Article 5 invocation, countries are not required to fight. All a NATO member is required to do is "take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked."

So in your 'invade the US,' the Germans could make the argument that 'Americans, with your navy you got this, the Bundeswehr isn't necessary.' It could even point to the sorry state of the Bundeswehr as evidence that mobilizing a non-functional Bundeswehr wouldn't help, would be detrimental even, and thus not only be unnecessary but fully in keeping with the spirit of the alliance to not force the Americans into a two-front war defending Germany as well.

such as trying to pull out of NATO

He never did any such thing though. He said we should pull out if it's not restructured in such a way that other members don't start pulling their own weight instead of just leaving everything to the US. And he was absolutely right to do so, around that same time we had embarrassments from our allies like Germany only being able to field ~10 mission ready fighter jets and ZERO submarines:

https://www.dw.com/en/only-4-of-germanys-128-eurofighter-jets-combat-ready-report/a-43611873

https://www.reuters.com/article/business/autos-transportation/germany-sees-continued-issues-with-readiness-of-submarines-aircraft-idUSS8N20M021/

You're right, but it's still absurd to threaten to leave NATO over it, regardless of how serious the threat is. Other kinds of pressure should be exerted to make NATO members spend more on their military. Combined with his lax at best or friendly at worst attitude towards Putin, it's not reassuring.

Other kinds of pressure should be exerted to make NATO members spend more on their military.

Or maybe whatever pressure was brought to bear, you would say "Not that kind"?

But he is so incredibly blatant about it that he doesn't even try to create plausible deniability.

This is why the people that like him like him and don't like the rest of the government. Honest liar. There's value in knowing exactly how you're being conned.

I also don't want to give power to the kind of person who seems to love trying to see how he can lawyer his way out of anything

That's all well and good, and a genuinely civic impulse. But it's a bit too late to deescalate the lawfare now isn't it? You can't really ask the other side to give up on Teflon Don when you also keep throwing lawsuits at anybody they field that's any good. And your side can't stop throwing out those lawsuits because he keeps dodging them all.

To you and @Cirrus

Is there? Here's the way I see it. I know the elite are screwing me over. I don't like it, but I try to find the one who might do some good in some way that doesn't conflict with their own power. Trump comes along and says "We are absolutely screwing you over and I'm going to keep doing it!" And then he gathers a bunch of people who cheer as he screws them over. The honesty is something, but at the end of the day he's still doing it and actively gloating about it! Why would I be anything but repulsed by that?

Different forms of corruption are easier or harder to get rid of. Trump is to me the guy who snorts coke right in front of the cop and then the cop says that why should I arrest him when other people manage to get away with it? Okay, they probably shouldn't get away with it, but come on, he's right there!

This is why the people that like him like him and don't like the rest of the government. Honest liar. There's value in knowing exactly how you're being conned.

I think there’s ample evidence, from the consumption of cats and dogs to FEMA relief being capped at $750 per household, instead of that simply being the limit on one specific, short-term FEMA aid program, that a nonzero number of these people do not know they’re being lied to.

They certainly don't conduct themselves as if they know they're being lied to. The hard core of Trump supporters are far too celebratory and uncritical for me to believe that he is popular because they view him as honestly dishonest.

Well the cat thing seems to be directionally true even though it isn’t technically true.

https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-cat-eaters-of-ohio

Is "directionally true" the new buzzword that means "actually not correct, but we wish it was"? Might as well say Johnny's answer to a math problem being "three billion" is "directionally true" when the real answer is "five". It's totally meaningless.

Is "directionally true" the new buzzword that means "actually not correct, but we wish it was"?

Its the mirrior of/response to the sort of technically true but misleading brand of "facts" and "fact checking" that has become distressingly common in the current media environment.

Example: so-and-so claims that Candidate Smith is a psycho who tortures puppies. Candidate Smith responds that this is baseless slander. It was a kitten Smith tortured, not a puppy, and it was only that one time.

Smith's supporters will spill gallons of ink going about how So-and-so is a liar and thier claims have all been "debunked", but the people inclined to think that torturing small furry animals is indicative of Candidate Smith being a psycho have had thier perception reinfored rather than rebuked, making So-and-so's claim "directionally correct".

Remember how someone making up a fake hate crime is at least "Raising Awareness" or "Starting A Conversation?" Remember how that's weak bullshit nonsense? This is that.

And yet the WSJ tracked down the woman who made the complaint that triggered the embellished lie — she later found her cat in her own basement — and the at-core intellectually dishonest like Rufo then when looking for “directional” truth to prop up the lie.

And even for Rufo, it’s an African, not Haitians, plural.

Immigrant from third world barbecuing cats is true. Immigrants from third world causing all sorts of problems due to incompatible cultures is obviously true (and the cat thing is merely an extreme example).

That anyone has produced evidence that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating cats and dogs is a lie. And this gets back to the initial point. Immigration does cause tensions and problems. So a non-zero number of Trump supports are happy to swallow the lie, as opposed to the claim they view him as an honest liar.

That anyone has produced evidence that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating cats and dogs is a lie.

It's not cats and dogs it's only cats. It's not Haitians it's Congolese. And it's not Springfield, it's Dayton. Note that what @zeke5123a said is consonant with all of those things.

More comments

I expect to see counters about how the entire government is corrupt, and I don't even disagree with all of it. But he is so incredibly blatant about it that he doesn't even try to create plausible deniability.

Is this a criticism of Trump? Because I see this as a great positive. Would you rather have a public servant who is good at hiding corruption from the people?

Perhaps if you think that brand of corruption is a good thing?

What good will come from public servant being blatantly corrupt? When everyone knows that corruption is against the public mores and generally not done --- some people will choose to do evil anyway, covertly, but the effort not to get caught in public is a tangible cost. Some people on the margin will be uncertain of the cost and choose the public mores. When everyone knows it is permissible and can be done out in the open, within a generation it is becomes the definition of public mores. The rare few who don't do it are those who are weird enough to have their own moral code for no visible benefit. Others will call it prudishness, or soon call them opponents to public mores.

Happens to be one of conservative arguments against licentiousness that I find persuasive.

What you live in a world where corruption is already rampant and the norm? One where you are going to have to bribe your way through no matter what. Consider yourself in that situation.

Do you prefer to deal with the man who is upfront about what he wants, or with the one who obliquely implies it, forcing you to guess what the price may be or if you are ever going to get what you ask for in the first place?

Do you prefer to deal with the man who is upfront about what he wants, or with the one who obliquely implies it, forcing you to guess what the price may be or if you are ever going to get what you ask for in the first place?

I don't think this a useful way to think about the situation. It won't come down to choosing between dealing with two different men, but one man in either of hypotheticals. Keep track of the rest of the society where these hypothetical men can operate, too. If you get a corrupt official who keeps up the pretense that s/he won't take bribes, s/he wants to avoid getting caught. This means they may still process your paperwork, only slower. The official who is openly corrupt will expect a bribe for anything favorable to happen. More open the expectations, more sure there is nothing you can do about it. It would suck when dealing with a low-level clerk. You won't deal directly with POTUS, but openly corrupt POTUS won't likely cause less corruption in the government.

The only good thing about a publicly known corrupt guy is not the public knowledge, it is that public knowledge can be acted on. There is nothing good about a known corrupt authority when everyone knows them to be corrupt and everyone also knows that everyone knows they won't be successfully prosecuted and stopped.

If your argument for voting for Trump comes down to arguing he is publicly corrupt, where does this leave you?

You are not engaging with the core argument here, which is that from this standpoint society is already far too corrupt for overtness to matter except as predictibility.

where does this leave you?

Accelerate.

What you live in a world where corruption is already rampant and the norm? One where you are going to have to bribe your way through no matter what. Consider yourself in that situation.

What if you don't live in that world, but want an excuse to act like a bandit, so you claim that you do?

I'd condemn it in that case. If the US wasn't run by scoundrels me saying this would be evil.

But we do live in that world and you need only look at the headlines of the past few weeks to convince yourself of it.

We have long transitioned to the "loot the treasury" phase of this civilization. If you can't bring yourself to act accordingly, you're not a bastion of virtue. You're a sucker.

Hunter must be punished over corruptly using family connections...

The laptop had some really nasty things on it... It was the cover up that got me.

And why not just compare how both families were treated? That seems more 1-1...

The cover-up certainly was bad, but it seems like the news media, social media, Blinken, and the former intelligence officials mostly or entirely sincerely believed it had a good chance of being Russian disinformation. When more evidence came out that it was real, most serious outlets reversed their stance, and Twitter and Facebook stopped censoring it.

seems like the news media, social media, Blinken, and the former intelligence officials mostly or entirely sincerely believed it had a good chance of being Russian disinformation

You believe this is more likely than the deep state and political actors working in unison to protect their preferred candidate from the truth?

Have any of the 'intelligence officials' retracted their letter?

You believe this is more likely than the deep state and political actors working in unison to protect their preferred candidate from the truth?

When it comes to Blinken, there's a decent shot he might've known it was real and was trying to help cover it up, given he was an advisor to Biden's campaign. But I think there's also a decent shot he thought it had a high chance of being Russian disinformation or real information but a Russia-led operation. Now, could Hunter have told Joe who could tell Blinken that the laptop was real? Very possibly. I'm not going to say with high confidence that Blinken was entirely acting in good faith on the matter. But I think most of the other parties probably were.

Have any of the 'intelligence officials' retracted their letter?

For starters, here is the meat of the original letter:

It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.

We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement—just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.

If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.

There are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.

Such an operation would be consistent with Russian objectives, as outlined publicly and recently by the Intelligence Community, to create political chaos in the United States and to deepen political divisions here but also to undermine the candidacy of former Vice President Biden and thereby help the candidacy of President Trump. For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.

A “laptop op” fits the bill, as the publication of the emails is clearly designed to discredit Biden.

Such an operation would be consistent with some of the key methods Russia has used in its now multi-year operation to interfere in our democracy—the hacking (via cyber operations) and the dumping of accurate information or the distribution of inaccurate or misinformation.

So, to be clear, they carefully hedge the letter to say that it is very possible all of the emails are real. They say "information operation" rather than "disinformation operation", they say they do not know if the emails are genuine or not, they say they have no evidence of Russian involvement, and they refer to one of Russia's tactics being "the dumping of accurate information".

The rest of the letter states past alleged examples of passing of information from Russian intelligence officials to Giuliani and that

According to the Washington Post, citing four sources, “U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.”

This letter was somewhat irresponsible but not that irresponsible. Many of the intelligence officials who signed off on it probably didn't and don't even like Biden or Democrats. It turned out that Russia appeared to have no involvement in it and all the emails were real, but it wasn't ridiculous to assume they could've been involved.

From some quick research, it appears none of the intelligence officials have retracted their signature or said they regret signing it, as recently as a few months ago. Some have explicitly said they don't regret it.

Yes this is how the deep state / PMC lie.

They were careful to tell technically the truth while still creating the impression in the media that this was Russian disinformation. Providing cover for the various social networks to limit / censor the story. They certainly would have known the claimed provenance of the laptop as being abandoned by Hunter at a repair shop. I don't recall their letter rebutting this very directly. Maybe this just means Hunter is a Russian agent leaking his own emails and dick pics.

I'll admit I've very little generosity left for these people. They're the same sort to produce 'intelligence' about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or Russia blowing up their own pipeline, etc.

I think you're right that Trump has a unique effect. He has done on me. I would say in my case he has utterly shattered what used to be an (okay, probably patrician) sense that the average Joe is a basically well intentioned person who is smarter than sometimes estimated and is a canny judge of character. The popularity of Trump has really changed that and made me significantly less confident in the average person's judgement. That so many people can be enchanted by the most naked sociopathy I have possibly ever seen has changed my view of human nature.

If, prior to his first candidacy, you had showed me 100 hours of video of Trump speaking, I would have thought it was some kind of satire.

I would say in my case he has utterly shattered what used to be an (okay, probably patrician) sense that the average Joe is a basically well intentioned person who is smarter than sometimes estimated and is a canny judge of character. That so many people can be brainwashed by blatant propaganda demonizing a bumbling fool into the next incarnation of Hitler and Satan has changed my view of human nature.

If, prior to his first candidacy, you had showed me 100 headlines of fake news about trump, I would have thought it was some kind of satire.

To be honest my mind would have been broken even if I agreed with you that he is just a bumbling fool and not in fact a cruel and mendacious one. The fact that so many people think a bumbling fool is some kind of brilliant saviour would already (then) have been shocking enough to me to break my charity towards them.

Funny that you mention that. I too have had my confidence in the average person shattered; but what did it for me was the way everyone bent over for masks and vaccines during covid. We went through a similar process of disillusion, but for very different reasons.

If you were to ask me how I evaluate people, "being a canny judge of character" is a criteria that would probably not even come to mind. The experience of the last decade has made me irreparably anxious around such phrases. "Judge of character" immediately conjures to mind images of schoolmarm HR types who are quite eager to enforce a set of values that I want nothing to do with.

Much more important is a criteria like "is not an NPC". And too many people have failed the test.

Undoubtedly this distinction in fundamental moral outlook is one of the contributing factors to our "political polarization" today.

The fact that you are lumping together masks (a reasonable public health intervention that had, in fact, worked against OG SARS but which authorities had continued insisting on long after it was clear that they did not work against COVID-19) and vaccines (a personal health intervention which dramatically reduced your chance of death or serious illness if exposed to the virus, which authorities made a misguided attempt to mandate based on secondary public health benefits) says more about you than mask compliance says about the masses.

Blue tribers with room-temperature-and-above IQs did not “bend over” for the vaccine like NPCs - they agentically sought out vaccines for their own selfish benefit (and were right to do so, as shown by the differential mortality and morbidity in red and blue states which only shows up after the vaccines are available). See this accout of highly agentic behaviour, both by the VaccinateCA volunteers and the people using the site to chase vaccines as an example.

but what did it for me was the way everyone bent over for masks and vaccines during covid.

Not even a big deal compared to lockdowns.

Politics being a contest of character is a fable. It's good you were disabused of it, Trump or no Trump.

Yes, that's right, people do not give a shit about the decorum of personal virtue of their political leaders. What they care about is if those leaders are their friends, and if they can take from their enemies to give to them. You can be the most distasteful of human beings and that does not matter. What matters is that you're looking out for me and my own.

America is not special. It's not more magical or anointed than other places. Much more ridiculous, venal, megalomaniacal have ruled over men than Donald J. Trump, and much more will still. You should have believed it. It can happen here. You are not immune to politics.

Now that you've left the poetic notions aside and joined us in pragmatic reality, please consider your feeling seriously and listen to Cicero when he says that contracting Tiberius Gracchus derangement syndrome is a bad idea for your Republic. The rift between the plebs and the patricians will not be mended by the death of their Tribune. Figurative or not.

The rift between the plebs and the patricians

In some ways it feels to me like the previous system was a weird biumvirate between the patricians of the Blue Team, and the patricians of the Red Team. The plebs cheer on their favorite color of chariot racing team, and have their own division, but everyone knows that despite their, well, uncouth plebian political aims (mass deportation, tariffs, reparations, abolishing law enforcement, depending on the tribe) that the patricians, at least, all agree are beyond the pale, but to which they will give lip service to solidify their grasp on their team voters.

To some extent, and without trying to definitively draw out the exact sequence of events, we've found ourselves at a point where Trump represents that the Red Team patricians have completely lost control of the chariot teams, and the patricians generally are realizing that they've lost control of the team. For a bit in 2020, it seemed like this might happen to both teams (maybe aping the other team thinking they had a winning strategy? Maybe just general pleb unrest in all corners?), but the blue patricians are now pretty solidly back in control and want to shout about the dangers of the other team.

From where I stand as a contrarian probably assumed to side with the patricians, I see the point, but I wonder about the entire apparatus that seems, from this angle, purpose built to dangle red meat in front of the masses offering a modicum of control, but, like, not real control. It plays to the sentiments and economic battles of the elites without really much regard for giving the plebs what they're shouting for, and that seems almost exploitive. On the other hand, someone needs to prevent a democratic spiral into voting for exclusively bread and circuses (maybe with AGI).

So I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe there is space for a cooler heads "maybe we should think pragmatically and build a better system that actually cares about the needs of non-elites, rather than paying lip service, while also keeping the budget in check", but that doesn't seem to currently be on offer.

"maybe we should think pragmatically and build a better system that actually cares about the needs of non-elites

I'm hopeful this would be the eventual outcome after all the patricians are dead.

I agree it doesn't seem to be on offer, currently.

I'm hopeful this would be the eventual outcome after all the patricians are dead.

It wouldn't. Hierarchy is a constant, and if you destroy it, it will be re-established, probably sooner than later. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

The plebs can't rule, that's a given. But the patricians can, if they're virtuous men, run the system in the interest of everyone.

Competent government isn't fiction, it's possible, I have seen it. We just can't do it right now.

but I wonder about the entire apparatus that seems, from this angle, purpose built to dangle red meat in front of the masses offering a modicum of control, but, like, not real control. It plays to the sentiments and economic battles of the elites without really much regard for giving the plebs what they're shouting for, and that seems almost exploitive.

I can't find it again, but I remember reading years ago a short passage from an interview with a never-Trumper Republican campaign strategist, which was being passed around online because he got a little too honest with the interviewer. Specifically, in the passage he said — albeit in less blunt language — that the job of Republican politicians is to, as you put it, convincingly dangle enough red meat in front of stupid flyover plebs to get them to vote for you, despite knowing you're never going to deliver for them, but only for the donor class instead; and that his job as a campaign advisor is to help those politicians lie to those low-class rubes more convincingly.

Multiple people have pointed out that our Republic, like most others, began with a very narrow franchise, the vote limited to a fairly small, elite fraction of the population; and, further, every time there was a (nigh-inevitable) movement to expand that franchise, it was accompanied by a movement to transfer some measure of power out of the hands of elected officials and into unelected ones — whether judges, or (temporary) appointed officials, or eventually permanent technocrat "experts." Further, that while most countries managed to make this transition, and keep real power out of the hands of the plebs, we have a few clear examples of states that failed, and made the mistake of letting the masses elect who they actually wanted to offices with actual power, the most notable — the type specimen, if you will — being Weimar Germany.

The patricians all agree that what the plebs want is beyond the pale, because what the plebs want is fascism. The average MAGA voter wants fascism, and Trump is comparable to Hitler because he's honestly appealing (rather than disingenuously baiting) to the same portion of the population that Hitler did to take power — the sizable fraction of the electorate that will go fascist if given any opportunity. Hence why so many on the left have long warned about the grave and looming threat of fascism in America — because there are millions and millions of would-be fascists in this country, and it was the tacit agreement of elites from both parties to maintain a cordon sanitaire keeping these people disenfranchised and powerless that served as the bulwark holding it back. And it is Trump who — even worse than George W. Bush threatened with his "compassionate conservatism" — breached this essential political barrier, and gave those previously disempowered plebs enough of a taste of what they were denied for so long, that it's going to be an immensely challenging political project to put them back into containment.

The patricians all agree that what the plebs want is beyond the pale, because what the plebs want is fascism.

I'm curious, what exactly do you think the word "fascism" means in this context. Can you define it?

what exactly do you think the word "fascism" means in this context

I've had in my personal backlog to look into the etymology there: Fascism pretty clearly draws on fasces, the bundle of wooden rods (sometimes with an axe) used to symbolize the power of the law to punish in ancient Rome. This didn't have the negative associations before the 20th century, and early American leaders were huge Rome stans, so it's amusingly depicted behind the podium in the House of Representatives and on the seal of the Senate. Loosely, people throw around the term "fascism" seemingly to describe any government action to punish (implied: something the speaker thinks shouldn't be punished).

But I've wondered specifically how this relates to another similarly-derived English word for a bundle of sticks that is generally taken as a slur. The evolution of language over time is so weird to me.

Reddit etymologists explain why a fascist is a faggot with an axe: https://old.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/9wt6w2/fascistfaggot_a_common_root/

Interestingly, a “faggot” is also the name for a meat dumpling made of various meats, possibly cognate to the fajita dish: “bundle”.

I've posted on this before here.

Set up a two-axis "political compass." Let the horizontal axis be the social/cultural axis: "socially conservative"/"right wing" vs. "socially liberal"/"left wing." Let the vertical be the economic axis, with upwards being increasing government intervention in the economy, and downwards being towards laissez faire — "fiscally liberal"/"socialist" vs. "fiscally conservative"/"capitalist" (and with the actual space of interest being confined to a much smaller window somewhere in the middle between those far extremes).

In the lower left, we have the Libertarian Quadrant: "fiscally conservative but socially liberal." Low taxes, low redistribution, low regulation, but left-wing social politics. Above that, we have the Progressive Quadrant: high taxes, high redistribution, high regulation of markets, and left-wing social politics. (The trend of the past decade has been for the Democratic party electorate to actually move closer to the Libertarian/Progressive border on economic issues as they move left on social issues.) Over on the bottom right, we have the Conservative Quadrant of the GOP establishment — the people who think the best way to promote traditional values is to lower taxes, reduce regulations, unleash the free market, and "shrink government until you can drown it in the bathtub." (I could go on about this group, and how they respond to tensions between market forces and right-wing social values — but the tl;dr summary is that "low taxes, small government" must always come before "social conservatism" because having it the other way around is fascism.)

Now, what about the fourth quadrant, above the Conservative Quadrant? People who are socially conservative, but also in favor of wealth redistribution and business regulation? Who want to use the government, particularly over the market, as the Progressives, only for right-wing social ends instead of left-wing ones?

Again, I've had people in all four quadrants label that corner the Fascist Quadrant.

To reiterate from that post I linked:

I have a real-life acquaintance who, about half a year or so ago, made a short argument — I don't remember the precise phrasing, only that it was more succinct and pithy than I can manage — that the average post-Trump Republican voter "wants fascism." To try to lay it out here, first, the average GOP voter has become ever-less wedded to worship of free markets and absolute opposition to redistribution over the course of the 21st century. I remember when people made fun of the old lady at a TEA Party protest with a sign reading "Keep Your Government Hands Off My Medicare" for the incoherence of that statement when taken at face value. But I also remember someone arguing that it makes sense if you understand it as a person trying to express support for a portion of the welfare state via a political language limited to anti-government Reaganism. There were plenty of socially-conservative people who were unhappy about the role of "too big to fail" firms in the financial crisis and sympathetic to the economic goals of Occupy Wall Street (and according to one left-wing person I knew, the driving away of such people by the "progressive stack" and embrace of all the usual lefty social causes was not a bug but a feature, because any socially conservative person who would agree with OWS's economic positions is a fascist, and better that OWS fail than let fascists into their movement). Economic protectionism and opposition to globalization — left-wing positions back in the late 90s — are now more popular on the right. You see increasing support for anti-trust laws, particularly with the rise of "woke capitalism," DEI, and ESG scores. Even George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" was a step away from the "drown government in the bathtub" position (which is why classmates at Caltech denounced it as fascist). More and more, younger right-wingers are moving toward the sort of things people of my parents' generation used to denounce as "socialism" — and even that set is coming around to the bits like Social Security and Medicare that they're increasingly depending on.

But they're not exactly becoming truly socialist, are they? They don't want a command economy. As my acquaintance put it, they want a government that intervenes enough against Big Business to let the little guy compete, without outright picking winners and losers. They're looking for something in between unfettered capitalism and Soviet communism — a third position, you might say.

And:

So our straight working class Trump voter wants policies, both economic and social, that improve his or her ability, and the ability of people like him or her, to find a spouse, settle down, and raise a family in conditions that allow them to pass on their values to the next generation. You might say that this group of people — mostly and implicitly white (or "white-adjacent") — want to secure the continued existence of their group and a future for their children.

Or, to succinctly sum up these two points, they want fascism.

More than once, I've seen Democrat voters argue that a key reason not to elect Republicans is that the GOP is so solidly anti-government, so determined to "shrink it until it can be drowned in the bathtub," that when placed in charge of the government, they're incapable of running it competently. Well, once in my college days, I responded by asking what would happen if the Republican party stopped trying to cut government, and focused instead on how to run it when in charge. Would that, therefore, be less objectionable?

The answer was not just no, but hell no. That would be the worst-case scenario. Because no matter how bad the "cut taxes, cut regulation, kill the government" GOP was, any socially-conservative right wing party that didn't embrace this, which actually wanted to run the government, and use it toward right-wing ends, would be a fascist party.

I don't remember the context, but in an argument at SSC, I remember someone replying to me that Imperial China, across the millennia from Qin to Qing, was "basically fascist," for similar reasons.

There's the GOP establishment, particularly the never-Trumpers. Dedicated first and foremost to cutting taxes, cutting regulations, cutting spending that doesn't go to big politically-connected firms, cutting anything that gets in the way of corporate profits. Whose support of social conservatism is limited to fighting attempts by the left to use the government against it. Who are in favor of Burkean incrementalism, moving things in the same direction as the left, just much more slowly.

Why was the party elite this way? Because it's the only acceptable form the "right wing" can take, particularly in a modern, Western country. Because any socially-conservative right-wing that isn't this way (particularly when its supporters are mostly white and/or Christian) is definitionally fascist.

Again, you can find people both left and right, with a variety of economic views, who agree with this definition. Again, I know people who fall into this quadrant who agree with this definition, and thus accept the "fascist" label.

If your right acts apoplectic towards the idea of right + using power, but tolerates much more the left using power, or it self even engages in using power for left wing or foreign nationalist causes, then they aren't really much of a right wing conservative party and at least in part made by people who are a false opposition and identify more with the other side.

Trying to squeeze all politics outside of that into fascism is trying to fit too diverse a political space into too tiny a box.

However, it is true that this behavior is very widespread and it accurately.

But by these standards a lot of countries majority populations, including in Europe are made of fascists. As was much of history.

This is genuinely the model that much of the uniparty ideologues, supposed intellectuals, mouthpieces etc promote.

It is also true that there are people who identify as fascists because they think that it is the only allowed way to be nationalists for their people, and not to be oikophobic, support their own demise, etc. But in doing so they are to an extend falling into the opposition's trap. Although one falls also into their trap if they are too eager to favor throwing everyone to their right under the bus to save their own skin, while helping the far left in the process. I will still promote a politics that isn't fascism though while also being against antifa ideology, because it is both strategically superior but also the morally and ideologically superior option.

But generally I am more interested into what people are genuinely after than how they label themselves although I care about those too. But more so about how the use of labels affect politics.

Part of the antifa extremists trick is to label anything else.

It is absolutely true that throughout its history the antifa movement was not about opposing things like imperialism, attrocities, but also about hatred of the right, conservatives, insufficiently far leftists, non communists too since some of the more notable antifascist regimes, and nationalism and the collective group rights and interests of Europeans especially although it has also affected some other groups like Japan as seen of recent.

Obviously the antifa ideology is also promoted by foreign groups who are nationalists for their own and undermining the native group.

To have a sane politics and avoid then, we simply must reject the antifa ideology.

We need to seperate things like murderous imperialism at expense of other nations which is objectionable from being proud of your own people, supporting and identifying with your nation and opposing what would lead to your people's destruction and disminishment, which if done recirpocably has been a much better working system both in theory and in practice than the antifa hatred of moderates, right wingers, conservatives, nationalists, and of European peoples and people insuficiently.

It simply is true that much of the hysteria about fascism is not about opposing evil things but about opposing right wingers, hated ethnic outgroup, and not having far left oikophobic politics. In fact it is about opposing things that a reasonable person who is moderate would support, in favor of a hysteric far left paranoid anti-intellectual overreacting fanaticism.

Another important issue is the right using power. Well, moderate nationalists have existed aplenty, but they have been failing because they let people like Satre and the decolonize our society types get away with it and brand everyone opposing this as supremacist, fascist. They have in part accepted too much of the framing of the far left. The right being more willing to use power to keep antifa types down would have been a good thing.

So, I think part of the discourse about fascism is about pressuring people to be passive losers. This isn't to say that using power for the sake of power is good. I do think keeping down people like Satre, the weatherman underground group, which also included the guy who founded BLM and their fellow travelers and organisations like that is a moral obligation.

This idea of "all or nothing" that exists about the discourses on fascism, where you either allow the antifa types to take over and transform your country into the treatment that usually is reserved for hostile foreign occupation, or else you are the mega evil fascist, is just a false dichotomy. There is a wise sweet spot on how a country ought to be ruled, and its norms. That sweet spot doesn't exist in never ending doubling down in any direction but it does lie in a more conservative, right wing and nationalist direction, to fix the failures of the current situation that is too far to the left and fails to even have sustainable birth rates along with a plethora of other enormous problems.

Additionally, when theorizing about the better system internationally, neither fascism is good, nor is the anti european, antifa ideology good. A universal nationalist system which hasn't really been that rare ideology, which necessitates respecting the rights of other nation states and therefore other peoples national sovereignty, self determination, etc and some of such foundations even if ignored have been part of the development, while concurently the antifa type of system has been increasing. Obviously the "European collectivism and Europeans and European nationalists are inherently evil and not indigenous" is not good for Europeans and European nationalism, and therefore because it tries to screw over Europeans so thoroughly, it is against International Justice. You can't have utopia no matter what system, but a system that takes into consideration the collective group interests of Europeans and of non Europeans and doesn't try to destroy the first, and make them second class citizens, while demonizing millions of people who oppose this agenda, is really a non starter.

The hatred of the antifa uniparty types towards people who don't share their ideology is also very notable negative consequence and makes the transformation of society into a totalitarian direction inevitable unless they are stopped. Not to mention the legacy of actual murders commited by antifascist regimes like the Soviet Union. So there is a moral obligation for the right wing to use power to stop that.

If your right acts apoplectic towards the idea of right + using power, but tolerates much more the left using power, or it self even engages in using power for left wing or foreign nationalist causes, then they aren't really much of a right wing conservative party and at least in part made by people who are a false opposition and identify more with the other side.

You've summed up my view of the GOP, and why they're useless, pretty well.

But by these standards a lot of countries majority populations, including in Europe are made of fascists.

Which is why elites of the post-Nuremberg regime fear and hate so much of their own subject populations. Why — as well-detailed by Curtis Yarvin — they reduced electoral politics to a sham, use Jacobin arguments to redefine "democracy" as meaning rule by left-wing technocrats, and denounce any actual democracy as "populism," "demagoguery," and, yes, "fascism."

It simply is true that much of the hysteria about fascism is not about opposing evil things but about opposing right wingers, hated ethnic outgroup, and not having far left oikophobic politics. In fact it is about opposing things that a reasonable person who is moderate would support, in favor of a hysteric far left paranoid anti-intellectual overreacting fanaticism.

And that hysteria will continue until the elites that promote it are removed. And, no, there's no voting them out. As Brandon Walsh put it on Twitter, "All of our solutions are fedposts."

Well, moderate nationalists have existed aplenty, but they have been failing because they let people like Satre and the decolonize and destroy our society and brand everyone opposing this as supremacist, fascist. They have in part accepted too much of the framing of the far left.

I'd say less "let people like…" as were "forced to by people like…" But yes, we need to ditch the framing of the far left… particularly the "fascism bad" framing.

Anyone on the right who isn't a useless GOP establishment-style "conservative," who doesn't actually conserve anything, is eventually going to get tarred with the "fascist" brush; so you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

More comments

Setting aside that that's a whacky-ass definition of facism, would you really describe Trump as 'socially conservative, but also in favor of wealth redistribution and business regulation'? AFAICT he's diametrically opposed on all of those things.

He doesn't really fit the actual definition of fascism per Mussolini/Hitler/Franco either, so when the left says that I assume they just mean "popular person that we don't like".

Trump is a social conservative in wanting to protect socially conservative groups to allow them to grow, which is the true long-term threat to social progressivism.

Using this definition of fascist, I’m forced to ask, what’s so bad about fascism?

This reminds me of Scott’s essay, “Social Justice and Words, Words, Words,” specifically this bit:

I think there is a strain of the social justice movement which is very much about abusing this ability to tar people with extremely dangerous labels that they are not allowed to deny, in order to further their political goals.

And later,

If racism school dot tumblr dot com and the rest of the social justice community are right, “racism” and “privilege” and all the others are innocent and totally non-insulting words that simply point out some things that many people are doing and should try to avoid.

If I am right, “racism” and “privilege” and all the others are exactly what everyone loudly insists they are not – weapons – and weapons all the more powerful for the fact that you are not allowed to describe them as such or try to defend against them. The social justice movement is the mad scientist sitting at the control panel ready to direct them at whomever she chooses. Get hit, and you are marked as a terrible person who has no right to have an opinion and who deserves the same utter ruin and universal scorn as Donald Sterling. Appease the mad scientist by doing everything she wants, and you will be passed over in favor of the poor shmuck to your right and live to see another day. Because the power of the social justice movement derives from their control over these weapons, their highest priority should be to protect them, refine them, and most of all prevent them from falling into enemy hands.

If “fascism” is just a neutral descriptor of one quadrant of the political graph, then supporting fascism should be no more controversial or upsetting than supporting libertarianism or neoliberalism or socialism, and it certainly shouldn’t result in people losing their minds TDS-style. But I think that there’s a bait and switch going on here, that labeling the socially-conservative-yet-fiscally-progressive quadrant “fascism” is a deliberate choice to poison the public discourse by tarring your political opponents as Hitler wannabes.

It’s the same tactic Greatest Generation and Boomer conservatives used when constantly decrying their political opponents as communists for supporting even a modicum of socialism, just in reverse. It seems to me that the tactic wasn’t particularly honest then, and it isn’t particularly honest now.

But again, if I’m wrong, and you’re using “fascism” in a neutral, judgement-free, purely descriptive sense, then what’s the the big deal? Why be so upset about fascism?

Using this definition of fascist, I’m forced to ask, what’s so bad about fascism?

Nothing… except that our ruling elites will do anything in their power to stamp it out.

If “fascism” is just a neutral descriptor of one quadrant of the political graph, then supporting fascism should be no more controversial or upsetting than supporting libertarianism or neoliberalism or socialism, and it certainly shouldn’t result in people losing their minds TDS-style.

I agree that it shouldn't be that way, but it is that way.

Why be so upset about fascism?

Don't ask me; I'm not. After all, I'm a far-right monarchist with friends who are literal neo-Nazis.

But I think that there’s a bait and switch going on here, that labeling the socially-conservative-yet-fiscally-progressive quadrant “fascism” is a deliberate choice to poison the public discourse by tarring your political opponents as Hitler wannabes.

The people in that quadrant aren't my political opponents, they're my allies. And it's our ruling elites who are tarring us as "Hitler wannabes."

I'm saying anyone on the right not content with being the "outer party" branch of the uniparty is going to end up so tarred, so we might as well own it. And recognize that the elites doing said tarring, and making with the "Nazi-punching" and "by any means necessary" rhetoric, are our enemies and must be removed. And thanks to their control of the institutions and to our "democracy" being a sham, there's no lawful, non-violent means to do so.

There's (in my view, as a progressive anti-authoritarian liberal) a lot of truth to what the parent poster said, but certainly a lot of truth in what you and Scott said. I think the better way of thinking about it is that the "social conservatism, big government" quadrant is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fascism. When taken to its extreme it becomes fascism or akin to it, just as socialism can range from social democrat to libertarian socialist to democratic socialist to authoritarian socialist to Marxist-Leninist to Stalinist to Juchist, but calling all socialists Stalinists/Juchists is silly.

More comments

I think the thing with Trump is that like or hate him, he’s not beholden to traditional politics or norms. He’s the guy who wants to get things done and build things. Whether or not he’s right about all of this, I think is up to personal opinion. But what scares people is that he sees those norms and systems as obstacles to be overcome rather than rules to obey at cost of doing the thing.

Yes, Trump is the man who flouts traditional norms night, noon, and day. Like that time his administration pressured Twitter and Facebook to censor truthful news stories like the Hunter Biden laptop. Or when he used the FBI to spy on an incoming President’s campaign. Then used his media connections to concoct an elaborate hoax about Russian influence by his opponent. Or those times his cronies indicted his opponent for process crimes on totally novel and unprecedented legal theories. Or how his inflammatory rhetoric caused his opponent to almost be assassinated twice in two months.

But hey, Trump said mean words about people so…

Like the time he threw the book at some protesters who walked into a building, while letting go the people who burned down cities, courthouses, and police stations.

I think the thing with Trump is that like or hate him, he’s not beholden to traditional politics or norms. He’s the guy who wants to get things done and build things.

I am sort of perplexed that you would consider this some kind of statement that one and all would agree with. Does he particularly get things done and build things? I tend to think of him as pure surface and not actually concerned with what he builds at all except insofar as it confirms his self-regard.

He has metaphorically build a multi-billion dollar organization, and literally built numerous hotels, golf courses, etc -- say what you like about the methods he uses to accomplish these things, but 'GTD' and 'TCB' are not weak points for him.

I think his motive is attention and the obeisance of others. He has since learned he can get those things without building anything.

He pretty much had that figured out by the time he started doing TV stuff, if not well before -- are you familiar with his 80s persona? I'm sure he likes those things (don't we all), but looking at the link in the other comment it's pretty clear that he also really likes building things. You can like more than one thing, y'know?

But he did all of that in the 80's. He did basically nothing during his time as president. I mean, he did annoy the hell out of libs on social media. But he didn't actually build anything.

https://www.trump.com/timeline

Didn't he go hands-off on Trump org once elected for COI reasons? Seems a bit unfair to complain that he wasn't personally building stuff during this period; I hear the President is pretty busy?

Anyways it looks like... quite a lot of stuff got built/renoed post-80s, and I'd expect him to do more once he's done with politics in the event that he doesn't get sent to Gitmo or something -- if only more golf courses for him to play on, he thinks golf courses are super-cool.

That might sound weird, given the murderous pedophile thing, but to me supporters of those theories generally just seem like they are stupid and prone to weird fantasies and LARPs but have always been that way, whereas people who are existentially shattered by Trump seem like they might have been different at one point, but then suddenly Trump appeared in the corner of their reality and traumatically inverted it into some new configuration of dimensions.

This epitomizes general differential expectations of conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are regarded (and to a shocking degree, regard themselves) as lacking in agency to the point of being almost animalistic. When a conservative raves about cities are shitholes full of degenerates and criminals, that's just how they are. FEMA death camps, Birtherism, Jewish Space Lasers, etc... They're dumb, they're ignorant, they can't help themselves and we shouldn't expect anything of them. We practically talk about Trump supporters in anthropological terms with all these fucking Ohio diner ethnographies. It's on the rest of us to manage them.

Liberals, though. They're supposed to be better, smarter, more accountable. Apparently. When they think a guy who says he wants to be a dictator wants to be a dictator, they're supposed to exercise some critical thinking and realize he's not serious, that's just him being bold and masculine. They're not supposed to say West Virginia's a shithole full of drug addicts even though it objectively is. They're supposed to be adults in the room.

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible. General groups include things like gun rights activists, pro-choice groups, and environmentalists. Specific groups include things like The NRA, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club. Posting about general groups is often not falsifiable, and can lead to straw man arguments and non-representative samples.

You are absolutely free to relentlessly plumb the problems with some specific politician's take on Jewish space lasers being weather control machines or whatever. I even think there is something directionally correct about your comment, in the sense that I think most people are somewhat low-agency by my preferred standards.

But when you additionally frame all that in a broad swipe at your outgroup, I'm afraid it just becomes a boo light instead of a meaningful contribution to discussion.

But when you additionally frame all that in a broad swipe at your outgroup

I don't think you understood what I wrote. I don't think conservatives are particularly low agency. I think there is a general tendency for everyone to act as if they are low agency. For example, the excerpt I quote from from @Goodguy's post, where he literally says they're too stupid to help themselves. So I'm a little unclear as to what the dividing line here is. You can say conservatives are too stupid to be held accountable, but you can't note that people do this?

You can say conservatives are too stupid to be held accountable, but you can't note that people do this?

While I would not exactly endorse Goodguy's post, (1) other people's behavior is irrelevant to your own and (2) here is what he actually said:

to me supporters of those theories generally just seem like they are stupid

First off, "to me" and "seem" do some work here: reporting on your own perception in a very clear way does not excuse flagrantly bad behavior, but in the interest of encouraging honesty of self-report, it does provide some cover. Second, "supporters of those theories" is a reasonably specific group in this context, in a way that "conservatives" simply is not.

Now to what you said:

They're dumb, they're ignorant, they can't help themselves and we shouldn't expect anything of them. We practically talk about Trump supporters in anthropological terms with all these fucking Ohio diner ethnographies. It's on the rest of us to manage them.

Any time you find yourself slipping into "us" versus "them" language, odds are pretty good you're running afoul of the rules somewhere. At minimum, it tends toward consensus-building or antagonism. You didn't even don the fig leaf of "it seems to me that they are ignorant." Maybe this is because what you wrote there was taking a certain outside perspective--"they" switches from "conservatives" to liberals" in your second paragraph, so you are raising the defense that "this is what some people think, not me but some people." But the level of heat you put into what "some people" think still falls on the wrong side of the rules, I think.

(1) other people's behavior is irrelevant to your own

It's highly relevant, because I am trying to figure out what the actual infraction is, and one of the ways I'm going to do that is by comparing what I did to seemingly similar behavior from others. Right now it looks to me like it is somehow less provocative to say "Trump supporters are so stupid they can't help believing in conspiracy theories" than it is to point out that someone has said this. (The former, while directionally atypical for this forum, is within normal parameters of discussion as far as content goes, but it nevertheless seems to be a more controversial claim than the latter).

You perhaps understand my confusion.

First off, "to me" and "seem" do some work here: reporting on your own perception in a very clear way does not excuse flagrantly bad behavior, but in the interest of encouraging honesty of self-report, it does provide some cover. Second, "supporters of those theories" is a reasonably specific group in this context, in a way that "conservatives" simply is not.

So you're saying that if I'd sprinkled in a few hedging words, there wouldn't be a problem? Or if I'd specified "Republicans" and "Democrats"? Forgive me if I am skeptical.

Now to what you said:

That is me characterizing the pattern of thinking I am talking about, as exemplified in the excerpt I quoted. I really don't know what you want here. If I actually thought that Trump supporters were dumb animals, I wouldn't be objecting to a double standard, I would be enthusiastically affirming it.

It's highly relevant, because I am trying to figure out what the actual infraction is, and one of the ways I'm going to do that is by comparing what I did to seemingly similar behavior from others.

No, don't compare yourself to unmoderated comments; we don't (can't) moderate every rules violation, because we don't even see most of them. Most of the time, a comment has to get reported first.

So you're saying that if I'd sprinkled in a few hedging words, there wouldn't be a problem? Or if I'd specified "Republicans" and "Democrats"?

"Republicans" and "Democrats" is probably still too general, because those are not meaningfully homogeneous groups beyond the fact of their group membership. You need to specify to a meaningful degree. "People who believe in God" is a very general group, but you can say some things about them in a permissible way. And I definitely didn't say "sprinkle in a few hedging words and there won't be a problem," I said something more like "hedging and honest self report can be mitigating factors, provided the rest of your comment isn't too blatantly terrible in other ways."

That is me characterizing the pattern of thinking I am talking about, as exemplified in the excerpt I quoted.

But first, you never say "suppose someone thinks that..." and second, your characterization slips into weak man territory. Remember, you opened with:

This epitomizes general differential expectations of conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are regarded (and to a shocking degree, regard themselves)

So this sets the expectation that you think that conservatives (as well as liberals) think, concerning conservatives:

FEMA death camps, Birtherism, Jewish Space Lasers, etc... They're dumb, they're ignorant, they can't help themselves and we shouldn't expect anything of them.

It's impossible to tell, from your comment, whether you include yourself in "conservatives" or "liberals" so it's impossible to tell, from your comment, whether you are hiding your own views behind a neutral "some people think" point of view, or what. If you're going to run with a "some people think" argument, then you need to be either steel manning it, or proactively providing evidence of what those "some people" actually think.

This epitomizes general differential expectations of conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are regarded (and to a shocking degree, regard themselves) as lacking in agency to the point of being almost animalistic.

Liberals, though. They're supposed to be better, smarter, more accountable. Apparently.

They're supposed to be adults in the room.

As a liberal (both in the classical sense and in the liberal/conservative dichotomy sense), I feel like this is exactly the correct state of things. Because the only good justification I see for picking a particular side is if one believes that that side is, in some real meaningful sense, better than the other side. And liberals being actually responsible for getting decisions right, being the adults in the room who think through their ideas and the consequences of implementing them, while conservatives being animalistic emotional creatures following their base whims and needing faith and tradition and religion to keep them from falling to their base impulses, is one of the most meaningful ways to differentiate the former as better than the latter.

Because you get rid of that, then what do we have left with, just that this set of ideas labeled L are better than this other set of ideas labeled C? But how could I justify holding such a belief, if the process by which those L ideas were produced wasn't, in some meaningful way, better than the process by which those C ideas were produced? Because I've reasoned to myself that those L ideas are better than those C ideas? Why should anyone, especially myself, who grew up in an environment that was biased heavily towards L ideas and away from C ideas, trust that my reasoning on this preference is sound, when the more likely explanation is that I have a set of preferences inculcated in me by my society, which I've used motivated reasoning to justify as "correct" in my mind?

Now, I've seen enough to recognize that most people on any side are just tribalists blindly following their animalistic urges, but even so, in the world of ideology and politics, I'll always insist on double standards, where my side is held to a higher standard than the other one, so as to make myself feel more secure that I've actually chosen the correct side. Otherwise, it's basically guaranteed that I've just chosen the side that happens to match up with my preferences and reasoned my way backwards that it's the correct one (even with double standards, this isn't off the table, but it at least helps to make me feel somewhat more secure in it).

I don't know if this was intended to be taken literally or not, but this is mostly my position.

The blue tribe is the ruling class. They need to be held to a higher standard than rednecks in West Virginia who have no power or influence.

I don't want the red tribe to run things. They would do a terrible job. But I want to keep the blue tribe honest. And we are dangerously close to becoming a one party state.

WV is objectively non-shithole compared to many urban neighborhoods, so maybe you are confusing realities here.

The parts of WV without West Virginians are objectively non-shitholes and actually pretty incredible. The inhabited parts, on the other hand, not so much. Rural squalor is truly an underappreciated part of America, especially in the South. I would say it's tragic, but they mostly seem to prefer it and who am I to tell people how to live? So godspeed and all, but don't try and tout its superiority.

Its not superior to a nice upscale neighborhood, just not as bad as the inner city or rural south, which is of course a different type of rural.

Well sure. But it isn’t as bad as the ghetto.

I’ve always seen that as a perception of social class. The left sees itself as the upper class ruling elites and the conservatives are seen as lower class. They’re “the help” the kind of people who fix your toilet, or install your new energy efficient air conditioner, or the ones who cook in restaurants or make stuff in factories or raise your food. They’ve called it Flyover country for decades because they see it as the places where the losers live.

I think at least half of the conspiracy theories started as jokes. They know that their ruling class sees them as idiots, and they might well choose to have a bit of fun pretending to believe in weird stuff just to annoy their betters. Jewish Space Lasers is certainly a joke — I know of no one anywhere who believes that the Jews have space lasers.

The left sees itself as the upper class ruling elites and the conservatives are seen as lower class.

The left sees itself as a mix of hard-working urban middle class + discriminated minorities, while they see conservatives as a bunch of bigoted country club members.

I know of no one anywhere who believes that the Jews have space lasers

I know an unfortunate number of people who think Obama is a secret Muslim, that the government is trying put them into camps or controls the weather, that the 2020 election was stolen with millions of fake votes. Let me be blunt: both parties have more than their share of cranky stupid people, but the major difference is that the Dems have (correctly) corralled their idiots and generally have more of a problem with the galaxy-brained wing of the party. The GOP, meanwhile, has been taken over by the morons and wishes they had enough smart people to have a galaxy-brained wing. Saying it's just an act is cope.

It’s a lot easier to “corral your radical elements” when you have a firm grasp on most institutions and are firmly in power. They essentially don’t need the votes and vocal support of the far left wing. They can tell them to sit down and shut up because even if that 3-5% of far left tankie communist group stays home on Election Day, democrats will still have substantial power, influence, and support. They will have 240 or so electoral votes in the can. They own the deep state, the university, the media, and so on. The GOP doesn’t have th3 luxury of telling the far right to bugger off. They lose if that faction stays home, and if they lose, a lot of the current project of trying to reconquer the institutions will be put off for another generation or two.

And I would consider Mises and Heritage foundation to be fairly galaxy brained institutions. They put out plenty of projects exploring how a conservative might go on to solve pressing issues in our society. There are also church institutions that give reasons for social conservative ideas.

but the major difference is that the Dems have (correctly) corralled their idiots and generally have more of a problem with the galaxy-brained wing of the party.

You are correct about the GOP, but dead wrong about the Democrats. Sheila Jackson Lee, who was until her death this year a long-serving Democratic congresswoman and a member of several important committees, was shockingly stupid. She recently claimed that the moon is made mostly of gases. She asked, at a 1997 visit to the Mars Pathfinder operations center, whether the Pathfinder rover had taken a picture of the flag planted by Neil Armstrong. In 2010 she asserted that North Vietnam and South Vietnam are still separate countries.

Meanwhile, Brandon Johnson, a police abolitionist and black racial chauvinist, is the elected Democratic mayor of Chicago. Maxine Waters, an extremely politically powerful Democratic congresswoman, is a long-time associate of Louis Farrakhan. The Democratic party is full of dim-witted and politically radical black officials, and is powerless to sideline them because of the stranglehold their constituencies wield over the party.

Don’t forget Georgia Representative Hank Johnson, who famously worried that the island of Guam might tip over and capsize.

Look at the democrat ticket. Two mid wits. Very unimpressive people who are kind of dumb. Maybe even knuckleheads.

Conservatives are regarded (and to a shocking degree, regard themselves) as lacking in agency to the point of being almost animalistic.

Can you expand on this a bit? It runs very counter to my impression, given that conservative discourse is full of self-defense, gun-ownership, homesteading, build your own business, build your own mannerbund, a focus on individual heroic virtue, etc. These things all seem focused on building and developing personal, as opposed to institutional or collective agency. What are you looking at/seeing which leads you to draw the opposite conclusion?

I could just as easily ask where you see that. This sounds like a fantasy version of conservatism peddled by 4channers who haven't seen the sun in weeks. Mannerbund? I have never heard any normiecon talk about this. If you were to ask the average Midwestern conservative what that was, they'd assume it was a niche beer.

It is true that conservatives often fancy themselves rugged outdoors types, and nevermind the fact that they're an insurance salesman who lives in a Dallas suburb. This has about as much credence as the pseudo-intellectual pretensions you get from a lot of college-educated liberals, i.e. none.

It is also true that conservative political narratives tend to play up reactive grievance - Trump was/is present as a natural reaction to disdain from 'coastal elites' - while playing dumb about the phenomenal amounts of bile spewed towards others. And this is what I mean. Conservatives have this bizarre tendency to posture as if they had no choice, as if the unbearable rudeness and condescension of liberals forced them into their positions. And we're expected to take them seriously for some reason.

What are you looking at/seeing which leads you to draw the opposite conclusion?

For example: the quote I quoted. Other things in this genre: McCarthy blaming Democrats for Speakership chaos, as if it were the Dems responsibility to sort out GOP coalition woes. The endless Diner Safaris are another prime example. Or, for that matter, the fact that large swathes of rugged, independent Deep Red America are basically collective welfare cases that would've died out long ago if not for Federal transfers and spending.

I could just as easily ask where you see that.

Right here, in mainstream polling: a majority of Republicans have a firearm in their household. About 25% of Democrats do. (Independents just below 50/50).

Right here, in mainstream consulting research: Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2:1 among respondents in a poll of hunters and anglers.

Right here, in mainstream social science: conservatives live happier, more fulfilled lives, with fewer divorces, less mental illness.

I think that gross polling averages like this often obscure more interesting dynamics. But there's a reason that conservatives have the "rugged individualism" discourse that Supah mentions - they are more likely to have an inner locus of control.

Do we know to what extent these are rural/urban differences vs rep/dem?

I think it depends on the specific question we're looking at – for instance, I could see rural/urban being much more predictive than political affiliation for guessing if someone hunts or fishes. But on the other hand, for another example, a lot of benefits are provided by religion, independent of conservatism, so some of what I describe above is differences in religious belief – but it also seems like together they are a very potent combination (for instance religious conservatives are less likely to report they are mentally ill than equally religious liberals; see my third link above.)

But overall, since rural areas are more conservative than urban areas, I think it shakes out to being close to the same if we're just curious about Team Red and Team Blue.

I'm glad you're asking these sorts of questions, though. Personally, I think there's more than two (or three) "tribes" in America, and there's a lot of interesting work to be done untangling them.

For example, Skibboleth could argue (and he might be right, although I suspect, at least by some metrics, that there are many more hunters and fishermen in the United States than insurance salesmen) that a conservative is more likely to be an insurance salesman than a hunter or an angler. But that doesn't stop the hunter-fisher breakdown from skewing red. And while some people are interested only in the degree to which Red Tribe is comprised of hunters and anglers, I think it's interesting to ask what Hunter and Angler Tribe looks like. The United States is a big place, with room for more than two teams.

Personally, I think there's more than two (or three) "tribes" in America, and there's a lot of interesting work to be done untangling them.

I've posted on this before, but the red tribe is really a catch all term for three main groups and a bunch of small ones- they'd call each other the church crowd, the country music crowd, and the red dirt crowd. The first is kind of obvious, the second is the party-hearty 'conservatives' who don't go to church but admit they should, if only Sunday wasn't the best day to take the powerboat out, and the third genuinely have ties to rural communities.

Hunting and fishing are high status in all three and more popular than in America as a whole, but probably most popular in the red dirt crowd.

You can be both an insurance salesman and a hunter. I knew quite a lot of people like this growing up (admittedly, in the upper Midwest, not Dallas). It was entirely normal for white-collar suburbanites to put on an orange vest, get a little drunk, and sit in a tree during deer season. Significantly, this is a sporting hobby. They may eat the deer meat, but they're doing it for some combination of social reasons, trophy hunting, and just liking hunting. Also significantly: this does not make you a rugged outdoorsman. If you were to make these people to survive in the woods, they would die.

I think it is probably true that the average homesteader is pretty conservative. The average conservative, however, is a suburbanite, and their nods towards that sort of lifestyle are affectation. (And again, lest it seem like I am beating up on conservatives, I think these affectations are mostly harmless and liberals certainly have their own set of silly affectations). They are not cultivating mannerbund or heroic virtue, or even trying to. They are grilling and shitposting on the Hawkeye Report forums.

IIRC hunters who get lost in the woods have a much higher survival rate than hikers, but selection effects based on the kind of hunting are probably part of that. Agreed that lots of the people at deer camp are fat accountants who don't know how to build a fire without gasoline.

Propaganda associates Trump with powerful threats and interests. So Trump comes to represent the thing which most compels a person to be passionately opinionated. We can call these “plots” and different episodes air to different audiences. In Pennsylvania, Obama will call Trump a “generational billionaire” who wouldn’t know how to fix a car. On MSNBC, Trump is criticized precisely for his semblance to the populace of White Pennsylvania — he’s the “hillbilly billionaire” or the spokesman for the racist white crass majority or whatever. In one case he’s a populist and will say whatever the majority wants, in another case he’s a threat to democracy itself and ignores the will of the people. In one case he’s someone alienated from everyday interests of Americans, in another case he watches too much TV and likes McDonald’s too much and was a reality tv star who likes porn stars and telling tall tales. Politics is consequence-oriented, so if something works it will used. Telling different cohorts what makes them most impassioned works, so they do this.

For the “threat to democracy” plot, I there’s a few things going on. (1) It helps to recruit boomer undecideds in key states, because caring about democracy portrays Dems as saviors of American tradition; (2) it makes Dems the clear moral victor, because democracy has connotations of importance in America — people want to be the good guys; (3) Trump being the threat is essential, because Dems represent him as the cause of middle class grievances and an economic oppressor — you don’t want your “leader” to be the archetype of every bad personality trait and financial issue.

Goodguy 9hr ago · Edited 8hr ago

I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.

I lean left on most issues, but I think the Democrats are seriously gaslighting their voter base into believing America will become a dystopia under a second Trump presidency. I think it's always better to have a more realistic perspective. When Trump was in office, it was IMO unpleasant, but government institutions didn't break down. It would be the same thing if he won again, and even then, it would be his last term ever. In that way, it might be better for the Democrats to level with voters and be like, "If Harris doesn't win, we will make it through another Trump presidency, just as we did his first one. The grass will be greener on the other side, especially as he won't be able to seek a third term."

On the one hand I agree that Trump was effectively stymied by checks and balances from doing many things he wanted to do in his first term. On the other hand it's not like got none of his goals accomplished. Trump's election (and subsequent Supreme Court appointments) are pretty directly responsible for overturning Roe, for one example. Many of his judicial appointments issue, frankly, insane rulings trying to enact conservative political priorities. Stopped only by the Supreme Court of the United States. The idea that Trump's presidency had no lasting impact on the United States is simply not true.

On the threat-to-democracy front I think the obvious angle is that Trump tried to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election and regularly disparages the legitimacy of any election he loses. Forget the riot on Jan 6th. Here are some simple facts, not reasonably in dispute:

1. As of December 15th 2020 all states electoral votes had been cast and transmitted to the United States federal government. These votes were sufficient to elect Joseph Biden as the next President of the United States.

2. Additionally, some other individuals in particular states purporting to be those states' lawful electors had transmitted their votes to the United States federal government.

3. Thereafter Donald Trump and some members of his inner circle started a pressure campaign to get Mike Pence to declare that, as Vice President, he had the sole authority to decide which electoral college votes were valid and should be counted. They wanted Pence to use this power to either:

a. Count the votes cast in (2) rather than (1) for particular states, ensuring Trump would be re-elected as President OR

b. Declare that no valid votes had been cast from certain states and therefore neither candidate had achieved the needed majority and the election would be decided by the House. Which Trump would almost certainly win.

Of course, the Vice President does not have the power to decide which EC votes were lawfully cast. No Vice President has ever claimed or exercised this power. The abuses it enables are extremely obvious. Why would any ticket ever fail to be re-elected? Indeed, this is obvious because I suspect approximately none of the theories proponents would accept Kamala Harris doing anything like this with the results of the 2024 election.

I think a lot of people freak out about Trump because there is a perception that there is a Way Things Are Done that he neither does not know or does not care about. Sometimes this leads to our system of checks and balances stymieing his policy goals (see the million cases his admin lost for not following the APA) but sometimes it comes down to the bravery of individual people like Mike Pence. This concern specifically is enhanced by Vance being on record that he would not have certified the 2020 results like Mike Pence did.

Yep. In all other ways, Trump is a candidate I could hold my nose for because the alternative is worse.

But, until he concedes the 2020 election, I will never vote for him or anyone who jumps on the Stop the Steal bandwagon, period.

On the threat-to-democracy front I think the obvious angle is that Trump tried to stay in power despite losing the 2020 election and regularly disparages the legitimacy of any election he loses. Forget the riot on Jan 6th. Here are some simple facts, not reasonably in dispute:

None of that seems much different than the democratic campaign to encourage faithless electors in 2016 though? Both were bad, to be clear; neither shattered the republic. (nor ended up having any impact on the results)

In addition to the various faithless elector attempts on 2016, I'll point to the 1960 Hawaii snafu, and where overturning the first set of validly-issued electors (... by unanimous consent as argued by one Presidential Candidate in his role as Vice President) was accepted.

I don't understand the relevance. Trump's alternate slate of electors were never certified by the governor of their state. It's also important that counting the alternate slate in 1960 was done with the consent of the joint session. The Electoral Count Act contains specific provisions allowing members of Congress to challenge electoral college votes. Trump's plan relied on Pence having unilateral authority because the majority Democratic House was obviously not going to agree to count Trump's alternate electors.

This concern specifically is enhanced by Vance being on record that he would not have certified the 2020 results like Mike Pence did.

Has Harris, who is specifically has the role of certifying the 2024 results, committed to doing so regardless of who wins? The optics of that particular person endorsing "the other candidate is dangerous for democracy" are, themselves, concerning as well.

Yes, Harris has committed to certifying the election results whoever wins.

Absent from this article: literally any quotes from Kamala Harris. "Advisors" say that she believes her role in certifying is ceremonial, and that she would certify even if she lost. Has she ever taken a question (and given a direct answer) about if she would meaningfully accept the results of the election in a timely manner, even if there were minor or moderate oddities?

Is it just that there is a large number of people in this country who fail to agree with me that Trump's chances of becoming a dictator are extremely small, that a man who has most key institutions against him, has the top military brass against him, and lives in a country where the military rank and file are probably not about to try to overthrow civilian authority, has very little chance of ending American democracy?

Yes.

The idea of Trump being the curtain call on American democracy is certainly one of the main things behind his psychological impact on people, but I have seen plenty of people who seem existentially horrified by him for completely different reasons. Some people seem to be driven out of their wits' ends just by the very fact that Trump is crude and vulgar rather than sounding like an intellectual.

A strong indicator that this ain't it is that the vast majority of national politician don't sound like intellectuals.

I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises.

Voting for a candidate isn't just about the candidate, it's about the kind of people you can reasonably expect them to appoint. For instance, voting Harris means you can expect more people in the bureaucracy who are pro-diversity, pro-regulation, etc. With Trump, the appointments are going to be people doing conservative things like anti-diversity, anti-regulation, anti-taxes, etc. Moreover, Trump's last term is a learning point for his side - they are absolutely going to find rosters of people who are loyalists first and foremost to install into the bureaucracy.

It is not that I do not believe in evil. But I do find it odd when liberals perceive demonic evil in Trump, yet make excuses for vicious violent criminals (at least, as a class if not always individually) who are enabled by Democrats' soft-on-crime policies.

Criminals do not threaten the fundamental political order and norms themselves. No bank robber threatens the first amendment, no gang-banger threatens the existence of rule-based law. Democrats believe Trump explicitly wants to put his political opponents in jail and that he has no respect for the law, like when he contacted Pence and asked him to delay the certification of the 2020 votes.

This is a silly point, and it should have been obvious why with even a moment of consideration. At most, you're complaining that liberals are hypocrites for engaging in incendiary rhetoric, but such rhetoric has never been to convey some rational assessment.

they are absolutely going to find rosters of people who are loyalists first and foremost to install into the bureaucracy.

Where are they going to find enough of these, particularly given their general lack of the academic credentials necessary to get through the government hiring process? Plus, for that matter, how are you going to get rid of the masses of old, unfirable bureaucrats to make space for these "loyalists"?

A key part of Project 2025 is to convert a whole lot of "unfirable bureaucrat" positions into political appointments that the president will then be able to fire and replace at will.

The question then becomes whether the power to convert positions in this way exists in reality, or only "on paper." Will they allow him to do this, or will they block all such attempts?

What hiring process are you referring to? Senate confirmations? Those account for 1200 positions, roughly, the president can appoint to roughly 4000, and they are absolutely able to replace people who were there from prior administrations.

What hiring process are you referring to?

However hiring for the million-plus civilian Federal bureaucracy is done, particularly regarding hiring rules and degree qualifications.

Democrats believe Trump explicitly wants to put his political opponents in jail and that he has no respect for the law

I just find it all so tiresome. Trump had the opportunity to jail his political opponents and didn't even try. Meanwhile, the democratic machine is going to extreme efforts to strain legal precedent in order to put their opponents in jail, and have had varying degrees of success. I have to believe that this is purely projection.

Trump had the opportunity to jail his political opponents and didn't even try.

Trump doesn't, in my view, have the competence or focus to get that sort of thing done, and he is opposed not just by people who disagree politically, but people who think you shouldn't throw political opponents in jail in the first place. Not trying is one thing, but not wanting is another.

Meanwhile, the democratic machine is going to extreme efforts to strain legal precedent in order to put their opponents in jail, and have had varying degrees of success.

Trump did things that were unprecedented, what a surprise that you have to "strain legal precedent" to get him convicted.

Regardless, I don't particularly care about how anyone sees Trump and his alleged crimes. The least people like OP could do is not be satisfied by fighting the Democrat in their minds.

Trump did things that were unprecedented, what a surprise that you have to "strain legal precedent" to get him convicted.

So no one has ever before

  • Paid hush money through a lawyer?
  • Retained classified documents after their term in office?
  • Contested an election?
  • Held a rally at the Capitol that turned violent?
  • Reported an arguably-overstated value for real estate they own?

No, all those things have been done before. What hasn't been done before is prosecuting them.

Reported an arguably-overstated value for real estate they own?

IIRC, not even the bank had issue with the valuation.

It's not as if these people go into it blind. If it was anything like when I had to borrow money to purchase land, the bank did it's due diligence and sent out someone to examine the land and do their own valuation to determine how much they were willing to lend.

There were no aggravated or harmed parties. That lawsuit was pure political warfare.

I have to believe that this is purely projection.

TBH I've been toying with the idea that most characterizations of the outgroup are inflected with projection.

Communist revolutions have made use of common criminals to disrupt authority and undermine the legitimacy of the current government.

I’m mostly sure that’s the whole point of the Soros DAs.

That's two separate claims, I'd like a source for both.

The first is uncontroversial. They even coined a word, lumpenproletariat, for this class of society. They emptied the prisons and enjoyed the fruits of disorder.

The second is speculation on why Soros is engaging in supporting DAs that don’t want to prosecute criminals. He’s been doing it long enough that the results are clear, and he’s not an idiot given how he generated his fortune. If he doesn’t believe that the immediate effects of these DAs are achieving a goal, he must think they are instrumental to some other goal.

I'll go for a more psychological take, and I'd be curious what @coffee_enjoyer thinks as well.

Generally though I'd say that Trump's personality represents the aggressive masculine behavior that is most repressed in the modern PMC / progressive class. Direct confrontation, bravery to go against the crowd, and immunity to personal attacks and shaming are all extremely destabilizing to the progressive psyche.

There are complicated reasons for this, but the most basic way I can think to put it is that feminism became a strong force because the masculine side of world society went way overboard with WW1 and WW2. Society psychologically needed a balanced and reacted strongly with fear of the masculine, fear of anger, fear of aggression, etc.

When you see something or someone that represents parts of yourself that you repress, it often creates really judgmental or shameful feelings in you. This is sometimes talked about as projection but that's a whole nother complicated thing.

I think on the flip side the reason the Clintons pissed off the Republicans so much is that the demographic that hated them was also repressing what the Clintons represented - namely rich, cosmopolitan, intellectual, and polished coastal elites. But that's a bit more complicated as well.

Direct confrontation, bravery to go against the crowd, and immunity to personal attacks and shaming are all extremely destabilizing to the progressive psyche.

Direct confrontation happens in progressive spaces frequently; the most typical example would be a black woman haranguing some hapless white “ally” for transgressing some implicit taboo. (In fact, I have a theory that one reason PMC white women worship and defer to black women so thoroughly is because they envy black women’s comfort with direct confrontation.)

Similarly, “bravery to go against the crowd” and “immunity to personal attacks and shaming” are key pillars of the 21st-century worldview and ethos! That’s what “pride parades” and “letting your freak flag fly” are all about! Transgression of “bourgeois norms”, garish expression of difference, etc.

Now, of course I’m familiar with the counterarguments. “When transgression is the norm, the people who think they’re transgressing are actually conforming!” “We’re not talking about the weird antifa freaks, we’re only talking about professional-class white-collar workers who profess progressive politics as a tribal signifier!” Okay, then people need to speak more precisely. Because conservatives can’t simultaneously be the party of normal middle-class people with conventional folkways on the one hand, and on the other hand attack progressives for being too conformist.

Direct confrontation happens, if you have numbers behind you and you are positioned appropriately on the progressive stack. But shaming and personal attacks only go in one direction. I think you're completely wrong that white women envy black women's comfort with direct confrontation. They are afraid of it. That's why white women (and progressives, more generally) lose against cancel culture. Because they are afraid to say "No" (or more pointedly, "Fuck off with your bullshit").

Similarly, “bravery to go against the crowd” and “immunity to personal attacks and shaming” are key pillars of the 21st-century worldview and ethos!

No, those are key parts of a popular delusion. Everyone (including here!) imagines himself a brave iconoclast, not afraid of speaking truth to power, not going along with the sheeple, definitely not an NPC. I totally worked out all my beliefs carefully from first principles and examine all evidence and do my own research and don't just take anyone else's word for it, especially not so-called "experts"! And I totally don't care what people think of me, ima gonna speak my truth!

This is bullshit, of course, for 90% of men and probably 99% of women. But we all like to imagine ourselves brave little cockerels strutting around unintimidated by popular opinion.

Yes, conservatives are delusional when they claim progressives are the conformist ones. But you (soy blue-tribe ex-progressive, by your own description) still seem perversely fond of the mythology you claim to have left behind, that progressives are the "radical" ones who aren't afraid to stand up and thrown down. The confrontation and conflict you describe is mostly petty infighting. No progressive would be brave enough to become a centrist or a heterodox classical liberal (like a lot of us here on the Motte) because he'd be booed, shamed, and forced to grovel unless he actually goes on the "I left the Left" grifting circuit (which requires basically leaving your entire social circle behind). Progressives don't do direct confrontation unless it's a struggle session (a bunch of people ganging up on the designated scapegoat) or in solidarity against an approved enemy (Trump, Israel, heteronormative late stage capitalism, whatever).

Gay pride parades are, exactly as you say, not even remotely transgressive anymore! They imagine themselves to be so- which is why you see people wearing S&M puppy gear or spreading their cheeks to show their rectums on Folsom Street, to try to retain some sense of actually "shocking the normies." But yeah, the early pride movement might have had some claim to be transgressive and brave, when they actually risked bottles and arrests. The vast majority of participants today would fold like cheap suits if threatened with physical danger or actual social disapprobation.

@TheDag's point (which I largely agree with) is that Trump appeals to the voter who wishes he could say "Fuck you" to his HR department and to DEI hires. Here's a guy who is constantly being called Literally Hitler and he doesn't care! Politicians don't do that anymore! The average Republican, even really conservative Republicans, will fold if accused of sexism or racism and mumble something about how unfair such accusations are. Trump doesn't care! He'll laugh and say "I love women! I love black people!" And then keep doing what he's doing.

I think you're completely wrong that white women envy black women's comfort with direct confrontation. They are afraid of it.

I have literally made this exact same point before! (I’m not going to try and sift through this site’s awful search function to try and track down the comment, but I know it made the AAQC list.) The reality is that it’s both! They are terrified when black women’s “righteous anger” is turned on them, absolutely. However, I believe that white women see black women as their avatar - their “anger translator” - who can say to the powerful white men in their lives the things that the white women themselves are too acculturated, too bourgeois, too timid to say themselves.

I work in a pink-collar setting (I’m literally the only man on my team) and I can tell you that the number of “sassy black woman” GIFs shared by the white women on my team daily is staggering. Each of them seems to want to believe she has a little “black woman” inside of her - the unrestrained, unabashedly emotional part of her personality - and that only black (and to a somewhat lesser extent Latina) women are able to reliably access. Note that white women almost never want to actually be black women themselves; they just want to have one (1) black woman around for when some white man is being unpleasant or unreasonable, so that somebody can say to his face what all the white and Asian women have been saying behind his back.

But you (soy blue-tribe ex-progressive, by your own description) still seem perversely fond of the mythology you claim to have left behind, that progressives are the "radical" ones who aren't afraid to stand up and thrown down.

I’m not fond of it, because I don’t think that the “brave iconoclast” is an unambiguously admirable figure. I think that being a contrarian is very often overrated (I say this from experience, because being a contrarian has largely wrecked my life in many ways) and that actually our society would be far better off if we stopped valorizing the archetype of the “individual genius standing alone against the close-minded majority”. Our culture has a dearth of social harmony. Even if the progressives of today were still the real transgressive nonconformists, I’m not sure that would speak positively of them!

They imagine themselves to be so- which is why you see people wearing S&M puppy gear or spreading their cheeks to show their rectums on Folsom Street, to try to retain some sense of actually "shocking the normies."

This absolutely still does shock the normies! The whole “groomer” discourse on the right demonstrates conclusively that the queer left is still successfully scandalizing normal people. Yes, obviously the ratchet has turned significantly since the 70s in terms of how vulgar something has to be in order to shock people. Maybe in fifteen years we’ll be saying, “Man, I wish gays could just go back to the time when all they did was expose their gaping anuses to people.” Maybe we haven’t seen the true depths of depravity people are willing to stoop to in order to maintain shock value. Will every pride parade in 2040 be indistinguishable from a GG Allin concert? Perhaps!

The whole “groomer” discourse on the right demonstrates conclusively that the queer left is still successfully scandalizing normal people.

Yes, but note that the normies pretty conclusively don't give a damn outside of that temporary shock. You can get them to give a damn once the left starts explicitly defending rapists, but they don't press the issue. It's the "well, why aren't Republicans bombing abortion clinics any more?" argument all over again.

The "groomer" discourse is a failure for the same reasons the longhouse is inevitable: simply put, Western society is unwilling and unable to control female bad actors. The LGBTQuestion is just the latest instantiation of "man bad woman good", after all, and the HR and education departments responsible for pushing it are majority female.

and that actually our society would be far better off if we stopped valorizing the archetype of the “individual genius standing alone against the close-minded majority”

European society (that does this) is significantly less wealthy and its individual citizens less powerful than in American society. And that didn't save them from progressivism; in fact, it made them more vulnerable to it due to lacking the inoculation that American society has against that very thing.

It seems worth asking if some people already thought democracy in the United States is dying and Trump was just the right man to pin the message on.

Anyway, I understand why people get all het up about him. Put it very simply, I think he says things you "aren't supposed to say" and so him getting elected means the system "doesn't work." ("The system" is supposed to punish people like him.) People get emotional about the thought of sharing a country with people who would vote for him. The fact that people will vote for him suggests that democracy is broken because a sufficient number of people are stupid/evil or there's some sort of election rigging being perpetrated. (This isn't what I think, but I think it's a reasonable-if-reductionistic model).

But also, I don't think it's true that Trump getting elected means nothing happens. For instance, if Trump wins he's going to keep chipping away at the federal judiciary, which is where the left made a lot of their political gains since the Second World War. He's probably going to try to run foreign policy a little bit differently. It seems reasonable to assume that "the economy" will perform better. His cabinet nominees are going to run their departments differently. He's going to veto/not veto laws that might be significant. Whether or not you view that as good or bad is a matter of perspective, I guess. But I don't think it's right to suggest that Trump being in office will be a nothing burger, even if it may also be wrong to suggest that Trump being in office means the end of democracy, the United States, and civilization.

It seems worth asking if some people already thought democracy in the United States is dying and Trump was just the right man to pin the message on.

Democracy, in the sense you mean, died with Kennedy of an agony that started under FDR. The oligarchy of bureaucrats that make up permanent government or the "deep state" was all too happy to maintain the illusion of a government by consent so long at the governed consented to the rule of experts.

Trump is just a brief loosening of their grip on the more ceremonial aspects of the administration and is thus a symbolic enemy because he represents the lifting of the veil.

Dave Chapelle chronicled this best on SNL I think: Trump is a "honest liar" who tells you that all the dirty things that you knew the elite have been up to is real and that he does them too because "that makes [him] smart".

"Democracy" is "broken" because it no longer gives the correct result. It no longer justifies the rule of experts, which has been its function since the experts took power.

Of course, this leads to a problem because the legacy function of democracy under the post 40s arrangement is also to warn the rulers when they are trampling on the people they rule, it's one of the boxes of freedom, the accountability built in the system. But American (and Western in general) elites have grown to believe that the plebs are too ignorant to have a point and that this accountability mechanism is antiquated, because they know best anyways.

It is therefore no surprise that the fix advocated for is essentially to destroy those remnants of democracy by clamping down on free speech as "misinformation", to fix elections and to arrest dissidents if necessary.

This is simply the transition from soft managerialism to hard managerialism, and the fact that the regime looks more like the Soviet Union every passing day (including in its economic policy) is the natural result of this.

There are only really two ways out of this.

Either the ruling elite gets its head out of its ass and finds a way to produce sensible government again, thus quelling popular revolt. Note that this can be done with or without brutal enforcement. A return to a sort of competent liberalism may actually slot in here. Trump could very well be the system's neatest trick if they are willing to embrace him and subvert his base like they did Obama. But we could also get brutal Stalinism too, that too works if you're willing to go far enough.

The alternative of course is being replaced by another ascendant elite who will "restore democracy" inasmuch as they will fix the system in favor of new patrons who actually listen to the native proletariat. The more afuerist plans of Musk's 80% cuts slot in here. But the implications are much more difficult to read.

Democracy, in the sense you mean, died with Kennedy of an agony that started under FDR. The oligarchy of bureaucrats that make up permanent government or the "deep state" was all too happy to maintain the illusion of a government by consent so long at the governed consented to the rule of experts.

Because Weimar Germany showed us the alternative. "Democracy" is either this sort of illusion draped over expert technocracy, or it's fascism.

But American (and Western in general) elites have grown to believe that the plebs are too ignorant to have a point and that this accountability mechanism is antiquated, because they know best anyways.

Plus, do they really need it? Because who cares if they trample the plebs, changes in the nature of military force, law enforcement, surveillance, financial control, etc. means they no longer have to worry about the masses rising up against them; they're free to trample the plebs at will.

It is therefore no surprise that the fix advocated for is essentially to destroy those remnants of democracy by clamping down on free speech as "misinformation", to fix elections and to arrest dissidents if necessary.

Yes, and what's wrong with that?

There are only really two ways out of this.

Sure, but there's a third option: we don't get out of this. We fully transition to "hard managerialism," and it maintains a hold on power (until civilization collapses). After all, the Soviet Union lasted for decades after it was already clear that the promised socialist utopia wasn't coming. They also had a clear rival system in the west, which matters for a number of reasons. First, it meant that there was a clear alternative model one could point to for comparison. Secondly, it's easier to get people to admit the current system isn't working and let it end when you have a clear answer for what to do instead. Third, while the military build-up of the Cold War arms race with the west was part of what defeated them, it also prolonged their survival in some ways, because it put limits on how far from contact with reality they could get. It also placed geographic limits on the resources available, and on how much they could damage in their fall.

The GAE, as global hegemon, however, will not die so easily. There's no obvious answer to the question "if not this, then what?" Where on Earth can you point to that's doing better than the "hard managerial" current-year American regime? After all, as N.S. Lyons's "The China Convergence" notes, the whole world, including America's top geopolitical rivals (such as they are, given their various issues), are either converging upon or have already reached this same hard managerial system. The plebs might have a lot of complaints, but so long as the Cathedral can keep them convinced that it's the best humanity can do, or least prevent the serious complainers from coalescing around any single alternative — and crushing by state force those who try — nothing is changing.

Further, we don't have a Cold War to limit our detachment from reality — despite the Ukraine and Israel conflicts and fears around Taiwan, the "competency crisis" rolls on unabated. Because which is easier, fixing problems like crumbling infrastructure, immigrant crime, falling planes, and so on; or convincing people that these are no big deal, or at least not problems to be blamed on the state. 'Islamic terror attacks are just part of living in a big modern city' and all that. They say that to someone with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Well, to a regime with a vast system of narrative manufacture and control like the Cathedral (and steeped in postmodernism), every problem looks like a public relations problem.

Suppose you're a shady used car salesman with "the gift of gab", and you've got this lemon of a vehicle, a real clunker, on your hands that you need to sell off. Well, you could spend a whole lot of time and effort trying to figure out what all is wrong with it and attempting to address them with your meager mechanical skills… or you can spend a lot of money hiring a mechanic to so that for you… or you can try to cheaply cover over the most visible issues, slap on a coat of paint, and then use all your skills of persuasion to con some poor schmuck into buying the thing.

Since the GAE is global, the resources it can potentially call upon to prop itself up are far less limited than those the USSR had. Sure, it can't stave off collapse forever, but like a dying star, it will expand and engulf as it dies. Expect the crushing of any attempt by a true rival system to emerge. Expect also "looting" to keep the plates spinning — both domestically of civilizational "seed corn," and of resources more broadly abroad. (We're already doing it to a significant degree population-wise, no?)

So, yes, the Soviet Union collapsed. And if we follow them into maintaining a "hard managerial" regime, so will we. But it will take far longer, be far more catastrophic, and will almost certainly take the entirety of global civilization with it when it goes. Long after our current (mostly childless) elites are gone, so, even if they recognize this, why should they care? Why sacrifice their personal power, in the here and now, for a distant future that won't affect them or anyone they care about?

But we could also get brutal Stalinism too, that too works if you're willing to go far enough.

See above.

The alternative of course is being replaced by another ascendant elite who will "restore democracy" inasmuch as they will fix the system in favor of new patrons who actually listen to the native proletariat.

In other words, a fascist takeover. I can't see our current elites doing anything other than using every tool and bit of power at their disposal to prevent this.

Do you think there's any likelihood of the managerial power being legitimately broken?

The lack of respect for academia seems like a pretty serious blow.

On the face of it, all power eventually gets deposed so it will eventually end. The question is whether that end is close or far to us.

I think that the levels of incompetence being displayed now are alarming and that the loss of belief in the legitimacy of this order is further alarming.

The real problem isn't so much that people stopped believing in academia. They can and have been beaten into submission. The problem is that academia has stopped producing accurate results, which means it will eventually stop believing in itself. Hard managerialism burns hotter but not longer.

The good news (for managers) is that some of their leaders have started to take notice. I could hardly believe seeing Eurocrats admit to themselves that they fucked their economy by overregulating but to their credit they did manage to at least vocalize it. How much of this has actually registered is an open question since their solution is apparently to regulate away the overregulation.

But the looming threat of conquest does seem to have shaken up some people to their duties. The question is now whether they can rein in their instincts and actually produce competent government or barring that whether they have the will to cling to the scepter in the face of everything.

They can and have been beaten into submission.

The people who still believe in academia are currently at the highest seat of power: everyone whose parents benefited from the GI Bill (which was itself a horrific "eating the seed corn" event because it would precipitate this problem- and yes, that was passed under FDR, of course), and for whom academic credentials still meant something.

Those generations that came after academia transformed itself into a destructive welfare system won't rise to power for another 20-30 years; you'll never convince the Boomers that universities or management tracks need to be destroyed because they were the generation who primarily benefited from both the credential boosting their station, and the fact it served as their meal ticket into a new welfare system. These people are responsible for things like high school education rates being targets, and they'll never see the results of Goodhart's Law (that has resulted in swaths of illiterate populations), because illiterates can wipe Boomer asses just fine in the nursing home (and if they die due to medication mix-ups, they'll be too old to do anything about it).

The problem is that academia has stopped producing accurate results, which means it will eventually stop believing in itself.

Academia still produces welfare checks in a time of economic contraction; it is continuing to produce results.

Not everything is economic redistribution. For a society to work it needs a sense making apparatus, if only because the weapons it needs to defend itself have to actually work.

Now sure Academia is well able to produce sinecures, but can it reliably produce or attract and retain the sort of people who worked in the Manhattan Project, designed the F-15 or landed on the moon? And can they actually make their voices heard in crucial matters?

Of course not, those people go where competence is actually rewarded, and so they work for Elon Musk and technocapital now.

Now sure Academia is well able to produce sinecures, but can it reliably produce or attract and retain the sort of people who worked in the Manhattan Project, designed the F-15 or landed on the moon? And can they actually make their voices heard in crucial matters?

There's still people working for Space-X; they're coming from somewhere. I tend to suspect this is simply because STEM got eaten last, but got eaten it did, so this will be the last bunch.

the Democrat elite may hate him, may despise him, may say that he is a threat to democracy, but I don't think I can remember any time that any of them acted as if he was a threat to one's very psychological foundation. Maybe their power and their close understanding of American politics generally inoculates them against such a reaction.

It is far more sinister. It is public secret, that Hillary Clinton wanted Trump as her opponent, she expected to defeat him easily in 2016. While this strategy backfired, Dems had no problem funneling over $50 million to promote MAGA candidates during 2022 midterms, expecting easier opponents while from the other side of the mouth shouting how they are threat to democracy. There is great deal of cynicism and theater in current politics.

Would Trump do many harmful things in office? I am sure.

Why are you sure? He was already president for four years. Did he do many harmful things during his first four years?

Why does Trump have this effect?

It's been long enough that people are starting to forget the actual reasons behind the hatred of Trump.

During the 2016 campaign and his first two years as president, Trump was seen as the White Candidate. Rightly or wrongly, it was assumed by both his enemies and a non-trivial percentage of his supporters that he would prioritize the interests of white people over other groups. This is absolutely forbidden in American politics: white people cannot self-consciously advocate for their racial interests in the way that non-whites can. So Trump became a figure of demonic evil.

Q: Why does Trump have this effect?

A: Trump was seen as the White Candidate.

You're not wrong, but I would expand your frame because just being white isn't the whole picture. Trump is the figurehead antithesis of the ideals of the Democratic party and a large portion of their voter base. He's a white man concerned with his own image as the alpha male, he chiefly trusts his own intuition is skeptical of institutions, he believes there are innate differences between races and sexes, he's bombastic and boastful, he sleeps with models, and so on. These are just observations, I say none of them to be denigrating, though some may warrant it.

Contrast this with Obama, the eight-year darling embodiment of the democratic party, then amplify it by the proliferation of ubiquitous and profitable rage-bait media, and you get the vitriol and hostility of 2016 which will never cease until he retires or dies.

There's a speech from Order of the Stick which I'm just going to quote in its entirety because it's easier than re-inventing it from scratch.

Shojo: I mean The Game, the big one. The one that each of us plays every day when we get out of bed, put on our face, and go out into the world. Some of us play to get ahead, some of us just want to get through the day without breaking character. It's called "Civilization" No, wait, there's already a game called that... OK, it's called "Society." Your problem is that you don't want to play the game at all, you want to sit on the couch and eat Cheetos while everyone else is playing.

Belkar: Well, why shouldn't I? What's the point of their Society, anyway? It never did anything for me.

Shojo: The point is that if you laugh and spit in their faces enough times, they'll kick you out of the house—which in this extended metaphor means killing you.

Belkar: So, what, you're saying that the only alternative is to show up and play by everyone else's stupid rules??

Shojo: Of course not, my woolly friend. You can cheat. Twelve Gods know that I always did. Nudge die rolls, palm cards, "forget" penalties... but you have to sit down to play first. As long as the people at the table see a fellow player across from them, they'll tolerate you. A crooked player is a pain in the ass, but someone who refuses to play at all makes them start questioning their own lives—and people hate to think. They'd rather lose to a cheater, than dwell too long on why they're playing in the first place.

The expectation up until Trump was that everyone serious in US politics would at least pretend to stay within the bounds of Polite Society as defined by the Cathedral or whatever else you want to call it. Trump didn't. He didn't cheat; he refused to play the game at all, and spat in the faces of those that demanded he do so. That was a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of Polite Society/the Cathedral/etc., the same way that the Comics Code Authority was fundamentally undermined when Marvel ran a story in defiance of the Code and got away with it - if people can openly defy you without getting immediately punished and forced to repent, you aren't a consensus authority anymore, just another guy on one side of a controversy.

Now, one can certainly say that somebody like Trump was overdetermined to appear once SJ started drastically curtailing what counted as "acceptable for Polite Society". But that's not quite obvious even to me, much less to someone who thinks SJ is "just common fucking decency", and so he gets blamed for putting a bunch of propositions that had previously seemed like bedrock up for debate.

Did not have "read a decade+-old order of the stick quote at the motte" on my bingo card for today.

Now, one can certainly say that somebody like Trump was overdetermined to appear once SJ started drastically curtailing what counted as "acceptable for Polite Society".

It wasn't SJ. Trump happened because the US was sold out by the 'dead souls'- what Huntington called transnational globalists.

If that hasn't happened, he'd have gotten nowhere at all. But these people didn't care for the US, US power, only their bottom line and staying cool in the globalist crowd.

I think it's a conjunction of forces here. Trump found himself at the head of an abandoned constituency in the native proletariat victimized by globalization and the SJ conflicts boiling over into larger culture created a broad class of young energetic reactionary activists that were also looking for a champion.

In a way his coalition is better represented negatively by the opponent that made him: Hillary Clinton. The avatar of morally bankrupt neoliberal imperialism who was running on being owed the position due to her sex.

The sidelining of Sanders and his "berniebros" is quite instructive here because it congeals, in those being rejected, populism and anti-SJ sentiment. The coalitions had already been drawn out with the failure of Occupy I would argue.

an abandoned constituency in the native proletariat victimized by globalization and the SJ conflicts boiling over into larger culture created a broad class of young energetic reactionary activists that were also looking for a champion.

Or to sum it up in a word, fascists.

populism and anti-SJ sentiment.

In other words, the "socially conservative but fiscally liberal" quadrant opposite the sparsely-populated "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" libertarian quadrant on the "social axis vs. economic axis" political plane, which — as people I've encountered from all four quadrants of that plane argue — is best labelled the fascist quadrant.

The coalitions had already been drawn out with the failure of Occupy I would argue.

As a left-winger once argued to me, Occupy had to fail like it did, no matter how lamentable that outcome, because the alternative was platforming fascists.

Fascism is a lot more than mere socially conservative populism and only a view of politics as hackneyed as the political compass could every lead anybody to such an absurd result.

If your model of the world can not contenance that Francisco Franco was not a fascist, then you are better off refraining from using the word fascism altogether.

No, berniebros do not worship the state or believe in palingenesis just because they haven't totally abandoned the native working class. That is madness.

And yes, I understand you are speaking from a specific point of view here, but I can't let this slide. The flattening of political perspective to this myopic view is precisely what's wrong with the discourse of fascism today in the first place.

If your model of the world can not contenance that Francisco Franco was not a fascist

How was he not a fascist? I ask as someone who thinks Franco was one of the good guys.

then you are better off refraining from using the word fascism altogether.

I'd prefer it indeed if people refrained from it's use, but they won't. Hence, better to just embrace the label, recognize that the "punch fascists" crowd are serious and deadly enemies, and deal with them accordingly (supposing that we have the capacity to, which remains doubtful).

How was he not a fascist? I ask as someone who thinks Franco was one of the good guys.

Franco was certainly better than the alternative, but he struck a balance between fascists and counter revolutionaries(not the same thing) and this would turn out to be his undoing; Spain is now the most progressive country in southern Europe in large part because Franco wouldn't fully commit to one set of ideas or the other.

How was [Franco] not a fascist?

  • Reestablishment of the Church and a social policy of traditionalism instead of the revolutionary element classic to fascism
  • No mass political movement such as the blackshirts/browshirts. The Falange, being the closest Spanish equivalent (and actual fascists I would argue), fought on his side but was sidelined after the war. His base was the military and clergy, not mass politics.

Franco did not believe in the metaphysical state as an idealist concept which is the protagonist of history which the individual must submit to. He was just a hardline Catholic nationalist. He had no aims to remake his polity into new men who could contenance a total revolutionary future.

The difference is important.

better to just embrace the label

Embracing your enemy's frame is a bad idea and a losing gambit. If you want to win you have to make the enemy accept your frame, not submit to his.

Reestablishment of the Church and a social policy of traditionalism instead of the revolutionary element classic to fascism

So you dispute the idea of "clerical fascism"? How would you classify Father Coughlin, then? How about the Ustaše? South Africa's Ossewabrandwag? To quote the latter's B. J. Vorster in 1942: "We stand for Christian Nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism. You can call this anti-democratic principle dictatorship if you wish. In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism and in South Africa, Christian Nationalism."

No mass political movement such as the blackshirts/browshirts.

Did the "Emperor-system fascism" of Imperial Japan — which "advocated for ultranationalism, traditionalist conservatism, militarist imperialism and a dirigisme-based economy" — have such a movement? Would you count the Kempeitai or not? Did they "believe in the metaphysical state as an idealist concept which is the protagonist of history" — or was it more about the divinity of the emperor?

He had no aims to remake his polity into new men who could contenance a total revolutionary future.

Again, did the Japanese?

The difference is important.

According to who? Certainly not the Boomer conservatives of my acquaintance, let alone the libertarians or the progressives. People like the woman (apparently some personage in the video game industry) who say things like this tweet

Don’t let bigots try to convince you that civility is the moral / ethical high ground and that it makes you more credible. If folks are spitting western preservation/traditionalism throw rocks at them - they’re Neo Nazis babe. Don’t tolerate intolerance.

Are they going to listen to your defenses about how big a difference "belief in themetaphysical state as an idealist concept which is the protagonist of history" makes before they start throwing figurative — or literal — rocks your way? Is it going to convince a sixty-something "fiscal conservative" GOP voter raised on WWII movies?

This relates to my effortpost (my second highest-voted post) on the competing definitions of "racism" and why convincing people of HBD won't fix our "disparate impact" regime. You can try to argue that an entire academic field — fields, really — is using the "wrong" definitions for the field's core terms, and that the definition preferred by many uneducated laymen is the "right" one, but like that guy who argued that physicists need to stop using the word "flavor" because "you can't taste quarks," I don't expect it to go anywhere. DR3 hasn't exactly been working. All it does is allow the strategic equivocation through which the moral opprobrium attached to "racism" defined as meaning "invidious racial discrimination against individuals" gets applied to elite usages where "racism" is used to mean "disparate impact in statistical outcomes between groups."

Or you can simply concede to the academic definitions, and then note that under such definitions, the opprobrium no longer attaches to the word, and focus on the questions that fight obscured — do we care about 'judging individuals not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character,' or do we care about whether statistical outcomes are proportionate to population fractions? Is the goal “colorblindness” or is it “racial equity”? Does fighting over labels clarify this, or confuse it?

Take a metaphorical page from judo or aikido. Don’t try to strike against the force of your enemy’s blow, go with it. Lean into it. Don’t try to fight the enemy’s labeling; own it. “Agree and amplify.”

Let the Kendi types have their desired definitions… and thereby empty them of their moral and political weight. If the official definition of “racism” means that “colorblind racism” is a thing… then let us be all for “colorblind racism.” If “anti-racism” means affirmative action and quotas and double standards and otherwise treating similar individuals differently on account of their skin color to equalize group outcomes? Then most people are probably fine with not being “anti-racist.”

While the left draws power from their radicals — you'll find plenty of people who will argue that there's no such thing as "too far left" — and sharply police their rightward edge ("no friends to the right, no enemies to the left"), what does the right do? Constantly police their rightward edge — and cancel anyone who even defends someone "too far right" (see how many people on the Right are denouncing Tucker Carlson for "platforming" Cooper) — while welcoming in every "I didn't leave the left, the left left me" person to be exiled from the left for failing to keep up with the latest phase of the revolution, even while they haven't re-examined any of their leftist priors and still fear and loathe those to their right more than they do those further left that gave them the boot. It's what I've seen called the neocon cycle:

Oh, I got pushed out of the Left, because the Left got slightly too crazy. Well, now I have to be on the Right, but I hate the Right, so actually I’m just going to gatekeep the Right, I’m going to transform the Right, I’m going to turn the Right into the kind of Left I wanted and that got away from me.

You know, how you get right-wing pastors’ conferences inviting and looking to guidance from someone who wrote multiple books about how God doesn’t exist and Christianity needs to be destroyed (who thinks Alex Kaschuta is beyond the pale, and is now ranting about how the right is being taken over by a vast Theosophist conspiracy that seeks to summon the Archangel Michael). How you get right-wingers falling all over themselves to welcome and bestow leadership on exiled Leftists who do nothing to hide how they hate those to their right more than they do those to their left. Taking direction from broken scholars who still respect, and are desperate to get back into, the academic institutions they were banished from.

Is there a left-wing counterpart to Buckley purging the Birchers? You can put up a poster of Che in your office and still be a respected professor, but put up a poster of Pinochet, and see how quickly even conservatives will call for your ouster. You can talk about how Mao, despite the body count in the millions, had some good ideas, like… but try saying something about how William Luther Pierce made some good points, like… and see if you still have anyone willing to be seen in public with you.

There is no political “tent” big enough to hold both the likes of Pat Buchanan and the likes of James Lindsay — if only because when you invite in the latter, they end up “policing” the bounds of the tent to expel the former. We pander to those to our left, and purge those to the right, while the left… panders to those to their left, and purge those to their right. And what has doing that, decade after decade, far longer than I’ve been alive, gotten the right? Can we just stop letting new arrivals from the left decide who gets to be “acceptable” on the right? Instead of trying to make a "big tent" by trying to bring in every Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein, why not try bringing back in the Buchananite paleoconservatives? The Birchers?

All this trying to bring in definitional nuance — "I'm not a fascist, really, you've gotta believe me, because [something nobody outside the non-establishment Right cares about]" — will not defend you from the "nazi punchers"; from a modern order that takes WWII as its founding myth, and seeks to perpetually refight said war. (Which is why, when they cast you into that enemy role, you better be prepared to win that war.) It only fuels the above dynamic.

More comments

Trump found himself at the head of an abandoned constituency in the native proletariat victimized by globalization and the SJ conflicts boiling over into larger culture created a broad class of young energetic reactionary activists that were also looking for a champion.

The Honestly podcast did an episode on Republicans for Harris, and the thing that stuck out to me the most was the tone: the folks in question are perhaps conservative, but what struck me most was their assumption of being elite. It almost felt like "We were okay with those folks voting with us as long as my elites chose the candidate and the proles fell in line behind us." Honestly, as a white collar centrist, the energy there rubbed me the wrong way, even though it probably didn't change my opinions on the candidates at all.

the folks in question are perhaps conservative,

Absolutely not.

Small c-conservatism is extremely rare. Corporate Big-C conservatism is basically the evangelicals plus some neo-Reaganites. The trump to Thiel to Musk continuum is some mix of populism and techno-futurist populism (with weird undertones of benevolent oligarchy).

Small c-conservatism was under attack before WW2, got beaten close to death by FDR, and then had it's life support unplugged by the JFK-LBJ mega-admin. (Side note: Triple letter acronym Presidents are probably Satan).

Reagan fused the last remnants of OG conservatism with a neoconservatism (there's a reason the people serving in is admin coined this term for themselves after they left) that bridged The Greatest Generation with Baby Boomers who, in the 1980s, had mortgages, car payments, and families and so were a little less keen on the Free Love Summer of '68 vibes.

The "conservatives" after Reagan got utterly swallowed up by the 1990s economy, trade liberalism, and the cresting wave of hyper-individualism. These "conservatives" had the same appreciation for the constitution that liberals did, and broadly the same social values - they just wanted lower taxes and kind of thought gays were icky.

Those are now these "Republicans for Harris." Of course they sound elite - they sold out their principles 30 years ago to get in good with the elite globalists who, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, looked, for a time, like they'd Ended History.

1991-2001 was a fat dividend to the west that was almost immediately squandered. 2001-2008 was continuing to trust a foundation of beach sand. 2008 - 2016 - literally the Hope and Change presidency of Obama - was irrational optimism cope (fueled by a Federal Reserve pushing ZIRP).

2016-2024 was the cold plunge into real reality that hasn't been felt by most of society since before 1990. What's old is new again. It's going to get worse before it gets better. We're going to have to work very hard to fix things. Some won't make it.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats