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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30015 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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It's kind of hard to say "Trump is either incredibly dumb or incredibly crazy"

Except the steelman doesn't say that; no matter how many times you assert it, "genuinely believes the election was stolen" does not equal "incredibly dumb or incredibly crazy."

I agree there's another option (given that no evidence of fraud exists): that he always believes what it benefits him to believe but this is actually not dumb but clever in his case because it advantages a political actor to be convinced of their righteousness. In other words his brain is built differently not for truth seeking but winning and that is a good trait in a politician who is on your side.

Personally, this is close my philosophy of Trump (minus the "this is a good trait" part). He has a different relation to the truth.

There's a certain type of boss where he tells his employee to do something. The employee says it's not possible. But he keep telling him to do it and he finds a way to say yes. There may or may not be steelman reasons he tried to say no. It may be possible but stupid. It may come with some major caveats. He might just come up with something that looks vaguely like what the boss asked for thinking it will shut him up. But to said boss, he doesn't care about the details. It's indistinguishable from the employee just not wanting to do it.

I think Trump's way of doing things is that he can get anything with the right amount of influence and schmoozing, and the details can be fudged. An example would be that in his NY fraud case, he argued:

  • That different forms of measurement can come up with different results, therefore it's subjective whether a property is 10,000 sq ft or 30,000.

  • When Trump bought Mar-a-Lago he agreed that the property was for a private social club, and this zoning could not be changed without approval. He listed it without any restrictions, on the basis that he thought he could renegotiate that if needed.

  • That things he own are worth significantly more simply by having his name attached.

I think he doesn't care about facts, he cares about people, because he can get people to do whatever he wants. So when he calls Raffensperger, it's not actually about whether there was fraud. He just has to convince him to find 11,000 votes. Whether those votes exist or not doesn't matter because there's always a way to accomplish something. Claiming fraud exists is no different than flattering your business partner. It's a thing you say that gets you a good result.

Yes, and it means people here claiming that he was acting in good faith when trying to dispute the election results, because he really believes there was fraud, are making a kind of category error. There is not really such thing as 'acting in good faith' for someone with a brain like his.

I asked someone else, but I'm curious your response to this too.

What would it take to convince you that Trump knew there was no outcome-determinative fraud? More generally, what would it take to convince you of any fraud? Say Alice gets a check in the mail signed by Bob. Alice calls Bob and asks about the check. Bob says he didn't sign it. Alice asks her check forgery friend to see if the check is real and they say it is fake. Alice goes to multiple different banks and they all say the check is fake. Alice then tries to cash the check. At what point would you say Alice knows the check is fake? Or do you say Alice still doesn't know the check is fake?

At a certain point, you need to either conclude that Alice is lying about not knowing the check is fake, Alice is incredibly dumb, Alice has some sort of amnesia, or that Alice is crazy in a way where she doesn't trust anything she hears.

Edit: I read your other reply to me after posting this, so I see that the example doesn't really apply since your priors of election fraud happening are much higher than mine. In order to make it actually apply to your world view, I'd have to add "Alice has a long history of receiving checks in the mail that everyone around says are fake, but are actually real", which would match your higher prior on election fraud being a common occurrence (and not match mine)

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