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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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we should treat any willingness to speak like Hitler and court the pro-ethnic-cleansing vote as disqualifying

Per my earlier comment, the Biden administration repatriated as many or more immigrants than the Trump administration. By any objective measure, Biden has done as much or more to promote "ethnic cleansing" in the last four years than Trump did in the four years prior. But that's okay says you, because while Biden's actions may have promoted ethnic cleansing, he wasn't "speaking like Hitler" while doing it. He refused to "court" the pro-ethnic-cleansing vote in his speeches or public statements - he merely gave them a significant chunk of the policy package they wanted.

This is politics of the symbolic from top to bottom. You can do whatever you want as President, as long as you're "nice" and "civil" about it, and don't remind people (even inadvertently) of old Adolf.

I'm not sure how to democracy if I can't use "this politician seems like he might do X" to inform my voting decisions. I disapprove of the deportations under Biden, but I mostly attribute them to weakness, not ideology. This ultimately matters, because, again, I don't want the state to kill millions of people due to a very well-known failure mode of ideology. And I don't trust anybody who's unusually willing to tapdance on the edge of that cliff, because even if they don't end up falling, they're betraying a fundamental lack of moral center.

When Trump ran in 2016, I was mainly worried that he was shifting the Overton Window and otherwise laying the groundwork for the next President like him to be significantly worse. Give or take the Grover Cleveland of it all, this is basically still what I'm afraid of.

Of course you can and should use "this politician might do X" to inform your voting decisions. I'm just countenancing you that you ought to consider the fact that Trump has already been in office for four years and nothing remotely like the sequence of events you're describing transpired.

I mostly attribute them to weakness, not ideology.

How convenient, that whenever Republicans do something one disapproves of it's because they're moral mutants, but whenever Democrats do something one disapproves of (up to and including literally the same thing you were just criticising Republicans for) it's because their hands were forced. It couldn't possibly be that Biden (who co-authored the 1986 bill introducing sentencing disparities for crack vs. cocaine, widely criticised as racist; and who once eulogized a former Exalted Cyclops in the KKK) is more racist than he presents himself, or that spending 8 years as VP for a President who got elected on an anti-immigration platform might have rubbed off on him? No, perish the thought.

Fundamental attribution error in a nutshell. Out of curiosity, is there anything a Democrat President has done which you disapprove of and which you believe represents a moral failing on their part?

All of the negative things I've attributed to Biden are ones I see as (partly) moral failings, as well as the big one where he insisted on running for re-election, and still hasn't stepped down from his office, despite being increasingly incapable of performing his duties, out of what seems to be selfish pride. And yes, totally agree that he's at least historically been racist. Most of the immigration policies I hate were put into place under Bill Clinton, and I think that's at best him callously sacrificing people he didn't need to sacrifice in pursuit of largely imaginary gains. I could definitely go on.

I don't know, I feel like I probably don't need to be in this thread anymore since Harris and Trump seem to be making basically the same case as their joint closing argument. I guess I am curious to hear your account(s) of why A: lifelong/devout Republicans who have worked with Trump closely seem to be making the same attribution error as I am, despite coming from completely different biases, and B: why Trump can talk about the degenerate traitors saying he likes concentration camps all day and never get around to saying "concentration camps are bad."

I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you're asking me by questions A and B.