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Very belated followup to a maybe-too-dismissive response and promise for followup here. I feel bad about leaving that branch rudely untaken and not following through.
Bluntly, criticism as from SlowBoy and KMC was correct, 'corruption' in the sense of using power to drive personal gain was the wrong word, and I should have spent more time finding a better way to express the tangle of traits in Trump that I dislike and that drive me away from favoring him for 2024 President.
I would endorse maybe half of the class/aesthetic criticisms laid against him by the total commentariat (crude, boorish, unrefined), the cultural-conservative portion of moral criticisms (venal, dishonest, weather-vane, pandering), all of the epistemic ones, few to none about intelligence and raw perception (stupid, senile, psychotic). I like Ezra Klein's podcast ep "What's Wrong With Donald Trump" as laying out the raw impressions that drive me away, and support his induction of the base disorders being basically narcissism and total disinhibition. These two factors couple to a lack of intellectual humility ("my gut tells me more sometimes than most experts ever have" or something similar in the podcast was a line that struck me) that verges on disconnection from consensus inference and prediction, but not perception, that I think also drives a disgust reaction for me. Practically, his anxiety to be liked drives people-pleasing in historical US competition and opposition that is excessive to the goals of diplomacy, and his refusal or inability to engage with the existing machinery of state and its tribal knowledgebase is a crippling defect, even accounting for parachuting in friendly top leadership like Project 2025 wants to.
I look forward to reading Bob Woodward's trilogy on the topic and believing a third to half of it, and whatever Milley has produced about his experiences and believing two-thirds of it.
I got a notification that I'd gotten a reply to this post from @Belisarius , but when I went back to find it in another tab it didn't appear in Comments or the thread. Are they blocked from posting? Did that post have to be approved?
I can see his post, but it's greyed out which usually means he deleted it. @Belisarius, if you didn't mean to delete it or otherwise wanted it to be up, let me know.
Yes I deleted it because I wanted to change the post. I will add it later after editing it.
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It is begging the question to assume there is a wise class of non narcisist experts and Trump with his narcicism and lack of critical thinking stinks up the show.
Take Ezra Klein the guy you cite.
He is a very woke individual who excuses antiwhite racism and he and his site favors a caste and massive double standards.
So, I am not going to take very seriously his hatred of Trump, and your view of Trump being against expertise when on various issues Klein's views and those similiar to him are far away from what an actual competent, and objective leader would follow. https://www.vox.com/technology/2018/8/8/17661368/sarah-jeong-twitter-new-york-times-andrew-sullivan https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17648566/sarah-jeong-new-york-times-twitter-andrew-sullivan
You are applying an uncharitable mischaracterization of Trump when you present him as someone who opposes expertise, because the deep state, people like Ezra Klein, and many partisan leftists and others promoting groupthink of powerful factions, are not actual experts on various issues. Same applies with narcissism, when part of the complaint with Trump is that he has been willing to be critical of agendas that people that are greater narcissists like Klein who supports enormous group narcicism would approve. Well not really that much, but even the little deviation is part of the outrage. Trump actually goes too far along with the deep state agendas even if he deviates more than many others would in his position.
Whether it is invading the world in disastrous wars, mass migration policies, enforcing anti white cultural agenda, or the idea that Trump's previous term would definetly cause a recession. In many issues, the conventional "wisdom" of people who marched on institutions, captured them and then promote their agenda as if it is the mandate of heavens, is not what a competent, objective and ethical leader ought to do. JOften quite the opposite. Additionally such agendas are often remarkably one sided and in line with group narcissism or the narcissistic tendencies of the politician who wants to gain power even if he sells out the common good over getting the support of donors (which is a much greater problem with Trump too than the fake or even any real quotes of the outrage of the week) or of extreme far left ideologues.
There has been a right wing derangement syndrome pushed in the media with an explosion of use of racism, white supremacism, and other terms. The same media were biased and bad in the same direction before but this explosion of fake news which predated Trump is the problem and what leads to polarization. These factors are the more dominant elements of Trump hatred, and figures that stand against the faction who has this ideology have been hated before (like Buchanan) and will be hated after Trump.
For that manner, Nixon, Reagan and Bush were also hated for being too right wing, even though all of them compromised perhaps even more than Trump too with the cultural left agenda.
What is at play is extreme zealotry that is much stronger than say the fanaticism of most Christians. A religion, or a cult of presumption of science. This ideology of presuming scientific understanding of which scientific Marxism was one of its fruits, has a shared outlook on the world, is extremely conformist, and strongly overreacts and misjudges both its own irrational nature, and the nature of those who don't share their outlook. Rather than defying expertise, the real problem is "heresy" from an irrational faction that is all too convinced without sufficiently examining its own presumed wisdom. Add to that people who are more self aware but are pushing for propagandistic purposes this idea of a wise consensus that "dumbasess" like Trump break the echochamber of wisdom by their politically incorrect talk.
It is a bad idea to be manipulated by these people to be scandalized by deviating from their orthodoxies. Because their orthodoxy is harmful and untrue and deviating from it is good.
As for Trump, the guy has some correct instincts and shows some level of critical thinking, and some courage to say good things that this immoral faction makes to be politically incorrect, but Trump is also a politician who tries to compromise with the establishment and wants to be liked. Political incorectness is a necessary element of following a correct and ethical path, but sure sometimes he does say some things that are both politically incorrect and kind of dumb, but most anger is over either irrelevancies, or over things that he has a big point or even a small one He is more like the half eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.
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I believe that Trump deserves to be in jail for some of the things he’s done. I also believe that a criminal on my side makes for a (much) better president than a faultless war hero on yours. These things aren’t a contradiction.
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Thank you for putting this sentiment to words. I've been struggling with it for the last week as I try to assemble a last-minute appeal to voters.
Every time I see a "they must just hate freedom" or "they're taking off the mask" or especially "anything is justified if they think they're stopping Hitler!" I want to scream. God damn it, you're missing the point! Most people aren't making a utilitarian calculation. They aren't even reasoning from a coherent philosophy. No, they see good things and bad things, you imbecile, you fucking moron, and they vote for the ones that feel right. Two centuries of civics have sculpted their feelings about all these pretty words like "democracy," "freedom," "rights." But millennia of history etched something deeper.
"He can't keep getting away with it."
The modal Trump hater thinks that he is coarse, unstable, and especially untrustworthy. Seeing him avoid consequences is disappointing. Seeing him get rewarded is frustrating. And seeing his supporters construct an elaborate alternate universe where he actually deserves even more rewards is fucking infuriating. That's all there is to it.
But this is like, not a surprise, ever. The politicians could be anyone. Hell, it could be sports teams. "/ourguy/ is good and flawless and perfect, your team is stinky and bad and everything they touch is ruined" thinking will be with us forever.
I mean, it's okay to be frustrated at it, but just realize that if you get frustrated at this, then it's probably better for your general wellbeing if you just either check out or accept this is just the way we are wired.
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It seems to me that we Trump supporters also feel this way, simply with a different referent. Hence, Trump.
Well…yeah.
I was pretty tired when I wrote that, but what I really wanted to convey was the simplicity of motive. Especially on forums like this, people love to concoct their elaborate theories, detailed strategic planning over how the outgroup could possibly come to their conclusion—and no, they just think he’s a tool.
It’s like watching a carjacking and writing an essay about the perp’s home life.
Someone once said Republicans like Trump because he hurts the right people. There’s a lot of Democrats who just want the right guy to get hurt. It sucks.
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I’m not voting for Trump because I love him. I would rather have had Desantis running for President right now.
I’m voting Trump because there are two realistic options, and Trump is the less bad one.
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I least am not supporting Trump because he's a paragon of morality , the most qualified, or effective at his job, but that he is the best option out there. Trump being unable to ingratiate himself with DC power dynamics lessens the likelihood of a major blunder, like another Iraq War or something of the scale. Tax cuts and stimulus are what we can expect, and judicial appointments that will outlast his term. The worst fears of every pundit from 2015-2017 of Trump came nowhere close to manifesting, so this makes me disinclined to take them seriously at anything.
Klein tries to counter this argument from history by pointing out that 4 years of learning and prep by the Trump reelection team makes one of their high-priority goals be vetting top-level staff for compliance with Trump's desires and personal loyalty. Separately, his attempt at moving federal workers to Schedule F to remove protections against firing them and rehiring for loyalty and obedience late in his prior presidency tried and failed to do the same thing in medium- and low-level roles. Klein claims that this would remove the moderating factors that prevented pundits' fears from manifesting.
I don't know how the tension will resolve over time, between the need to maintain continuity in low-level staffing to enable daily operations versus the need to overwrite existing loyalty and power structures, but separately I worry about the damage the attempt will do to tacit institutional knowledge rather than procedural knowledge; cf the various worries about the shallower bench of talent on the right.
Wait Klein wants us to be scared that Trump might fire a bunch of entrenched bureaucrats with whom I have extreme disagreements and thinks that’s a bad thing?
Every time I see this ad on tv, I feel like Kamala is threatening me with a good time. Like I'm supposed to be upset that the young, well-groomed, attractive, upper-middle class white couple has to start having kids? or that old people should get less free money?
how does the federal government ban abortion? that seems beyond their power. i presume the FDA can ban / regulate abortion drugs but the FDA doesn't have the power to regulate surgical procedures. but it looks like commerce clause strikes again. just mention the magic words 'affecting interstate commerce' and the federal government can regulate anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Carhart
the other hilarious thing is if they argued against the federal government having the power to regulate abortion they would have been probably more likely to succeed given the make up of the court.
Birthing new Americans is a hell of a lot more impactful on interstate commerce than Wickard growing slightly more wheat that he's not selling. Interstate commerce can be scaled to infinity given the current standard.
You could make the flimsiest argument that not regulating abortion undercuts regulation on baby strollers and you're probably already there.
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Can't they also criminalize it? I could have sworn it used to be a crime in a bunch of places.
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The 14th Amendment gives the federal government the power to protect the right to life.
Ah but the unborn are not "citizens of the united states" yet are they?
For the right to life part, the relevant question is only whether they are persons: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
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Klein made a compelling case but I still disagree with him. The first Trump admin was a mess, but I don't think it was a mess because of a lack of personal loyalty, it was a lack of ideological loyalty that led to that lack of personal loyalty. Add on to that that personal loyalty is basically impossible to vet (I mean, are you only going to hire ride or die Trump supporters that were willing to storm the capitol?), and that leaves you with a much more ideologically lockstep second Trump term, but I still think will hold back the super crazy Trump tendencies when their personal loyalty to follow him no matter what is tested..
If you operationalize "personal loyalty to Trump" as "conformist authoritarian tendencies", then we've had a profiling instrument for that for awhile courtesy of Bob Altemeyer at U Manitoba: https://theauthoritarians.org/ . You can take a version of his research questionnaire at http://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RWAS/ to get the flavor of personality type that it's trying to detect. (No it doesn't capture every way there is to be authoritarian, yes woke is left authoritarian, it still seems relevant to answer the question at hand.) Couple that with "amount of pushback against direction from superiors" as an item of quarterly personnel review to set up evaporative cooling dynamics, have semiannual shit tests and purity spirals, and I bet by year 3 of a Trump admin you could get at least some of them to rerun Jonestown. Maybe have a not-legally-binding oath to Trump personally, just to engage the monkey brain a bit harder.
This would probably do terrible things to your talent pool, mind! It's basically building a cult around the Presidency, with direct interpersonal dynamics rather than parasocial ones like we've already seen with the Trump cult of personality. Selecting for that trait seems like it starts trading off against general competence, independence, ability to be delegated to, pretty quickly.
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The only way I can see something like that working is if congress repealed the Administrative Procedure Act, putting Trump and his immediate appointees in direct control of federal regulations.
Curtis Yarvin talks a lot about how no president has been truly in charge of the government since FDR. The reason for this is the Administrative Procedure Act.
Yarvin is wrong. The APA was in response to a growing administrative state and was an attempt to put safe guards on it. The biggest problem has been incredible deference to the administrative state ignoring the APA.
Loper Bright (and to a lesser extent Kisor) reduces some of that deference. The major questions doctrine reduces yet more. And the continued vitality of forcing administrative agencies to respond with real thoughts to comments shows the courts are finally taking the APA seriously.
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Which is silly, because the APA is a way of regularising the use of the broad powers delegated by Congress to the executive during the New Deal era. Pre-FDR Presidents had less control over the government, not more - both because the federal government had less control over "the government" viz-a-viz the states, and because the executive had less control over the federal government viz-a-viz Congress.
That the federal government was small enough for one man to control in 1890 and not in 1930 seems entirely plausible. But Yarvin defines the government as "that which is sovereign" - which in 1890 still meant the system of shared sovereignty between the feds and the states.
I’m afraid the ship had sailed by 1881 at the absolute latest.
I agree with you that the Pendleton Act is the point at which the US Executive Branch stops being a one-man show.
But the bigger change over the 20th century is the shift in power from Congress to the Executive.
Even now, the US government is more of a one-man show than it was when an effective House Speaker could have more power over domestic policy than the President did.
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Curtis Yarvin talks about a lot of things. Most of them don't hold up if one doesn't share his beliefs about philosopher-kings.
The President hasn't controlled the government since John Adams.
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Especially with Loper Bright overruling Chevron deference, the president has even less authority to regulate than they used to.
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