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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   36915 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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and press the button next to the name of the guy who says he'll make the government stop being mean to you, and make it be mean to the other guys instead

Can you link me to that advertisement? Because I'm pretty sure that they very emphatically don't advertise that, that they actually advertise the opposite, and that this is one of the defining differences between liberal democracies and other systems.

If this is what Mrs. Collins told you, she may be more based than you're giving her credit.

That liberal democracies never employ repression against political opponents, or that their doing so immediately falsifies the premises of liberal democracy? I don't think this is really held by anyone. Certainly I think very few defenders of liberal democracy would argue that, though they may argue that liberal democracies tend to pursue political repression less than countries which aren't liberal democracies, or do so less harshly, both of which I believe are true.

Granted that's my fault for glibly talking about "advertisement" as if there's a CEO of liberal democracy. A more important promise of liberal democracy is that if you don't like the current government, including if you think the current government is ineffective, corrupt, or unfair, you can vote it out, and the government you vote in its place will pursue different policies.

I think "being mean to your political opponents" isn't necessarily repression.

Repealing the EV tax credit is mean to EV manufacturers, but it's absolutely not repression. It's a policy that Congress really could decide either way based on their priorities.

Of course, there is a line where "being mean" crosses over into repression. But there is plenty of space on this side of the line where it's just "we don't support that as a priority". For another example, we don't want to log/drill this federal land (mean to the loggers/drillers) or we do (mean to the conservationists that want to keep it intact). Neither are repression.

That liberal democracies never employ repression against political opponents, or that their doing so immediately falsifies the premises of liberal democracy?

More like "something something rule of law...", and "mumble mumble not a tyranny of the majority". Anyway, if some exceptions are allowed without it disproving the broader point, I don't see why we should dismiss Yarvin wholesale.

though they may argue that liberal democracies tend to pursue political repression less than countries which aren't liberal democracies, or do so less harshly, both of which I believe are true

I have never heard a liberal democracy enjoyer say "we totally do political repression, we're just more subtle about it". If this is what you believe, than you may be more based than you think.

A more important promise of liberal democracy is that if you don't like the current government, including if you think the current government is ineffective, corrupt, or unfair, you can vote it out, and the government you vote in its place will pursue different policies.

That's not a promise of liberal democracy specifically, all democracies promise that, including illiberal ones (which I am told are a very very bad thing).

Anyway, if some exceptions are allowed without it disproving the broader point, I don't see why we should dismiss Yarvin wholesale.

It doesn't entirely disprove his whole theory, even though I do think he's wrong. It is a data point against it. He himself admits he's surprised. I threw a jab at Yarvin, but I mostly have in mind actual, concrete predictions that They were so powerful and so well-entrenched, and democracy is such a fraud, that Trump specifically would not be allowed to win.

I have never heard a liberal democracy enjoyer say "we totally do political repression, we're just more subtle about it".

All political systems engage in repression to some degree. But differences of degree are important. Less is better. The repression experienced by the American right over the past several years has been quite mild compared to even the mildest of twentieth century dictatorships, which is why terminology like "the Regime" (obviously chosen to imply an equivalency between liberal democracies and the various states most people imagine when they hear the word "regime," Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, North Korea, and others) is very silly. I expect Trump will exercise some degree of repression against the left over the next four years as he's promised to do, though it won't be particularly severe by historical standards either. And if the GOP loses in 2028 (or even loses badly in the midterms), it will stop.

That's not a promise of liberal democracy specifically, all democracies promise that, including illiberal ones

I don't consider "illiberal democracy" to be a very useful term. All states have some democratic features. Even the Soviet Union in the 1930s did. All states have some non-democratic features. It's also a matter of degrees, and there are edge cases, but that doesn't mean the distinction between non-democracy and democracy is nonexistent, just like there's a distinction between purple and blue despite the seamless blend.

It doesn't entirely disprove his whole theory, even though I do think he's wrong. It is a data point against it. He himself admits he's surprised. I threw a jab at Yarvin, but I mostly have in mind actual, concrete predictions that They were so powerful and so well-entrenched, and democracy is such a fraud, that Trump specifically would not be allowed to win.

Sure, and it's quite fine for you to have that position, and the topic is a very interesting one for a conversation, but your actual position is a lot less bombastic than you started off. Much like this is a data point against Yarvin, there are numerous data points against the "advertised" version of liberal democracy. It's not so obvious to me that Yarvin's theory comes out worse than the naive liberal democrat's, even if Yarvin ended up surprised. Back when I was a liberal I was very surprised by the sudden shedding of liberal principles by supposed liberals, but this doesn't seem to phase you, so why should Yarvinists be phased by Yarvin's surprise?

All political systems engage in repression to some degree. But differences of degree are important. Less is better.

Sure. But if you advertise a certain maximum level of oppression, and you cross it, you cannot than tell me that everything works as advertised. Governments interfering with speech is a particularly important line, given how important the transmission of information is to how people vote. "Other guys are doing it worse" is no excuse for crossing it, and it's actually more egregious to do it when you've promised not to, than to do it more when you haven't made such promises.

Now, stuff slipping through the cracks is a normal part of the real world, and I'm not saying this has to be perfect, but if there's a known and significant case of a line being crossed, that case needs to be punished, otherwise there is no reason to believe the promises were anything other than a lie.

I don't consider "illiberal democracy" to be a very useful term.

I do. Liberalism has certain core principles, and deliberately departing from one or more of them makes you illiberal. I don't even think it's a bad thing, I'm illiberal myself. I also believe it's possible to depart from these principles while being in favor of a democratic system of government.

Sure, and it's quite fine for you to have that position, and the topic is a very interesting one for a conversation, but your actual position is a lot less bombastic than you started off.

Well there were two points in my tongue-in-cheek OP. The first is, again, the specific, concrete predictions that They would not "allow" Trump to take office in 2025 regardless of what the vote totals in November 2024 were, and he would not be allowed to do anything if he did. This seems to have been pretty clearly falsified.

The second is the broader idea that "democracy is fake." Admittedly this is not that well defined, because even many people who agree that democracy is fake disagree on exactly what about it is fake. But in any case, I think under most conceptions of "democracy is fake," (RW ones at least) the Trump victory in 2024 is less expected than under the democracy not-fake model.

Sure. But if you advertise a certain maximum level of oppression, and you cross it, you cannot than tell me that everything works as advertised.

Is there an advertised maximum level of oppression? This is, again, somewhat blurry. If the government was literally rounding up hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters and shooting them into large pits I would say "this is not very liberal." The most egregious actions of the Biden and Obama administrations were pretty far from that. Of course, the governments of liberal democracies interfering with the speech of private citizens is nothing new, and there have been more egregious cases in the past, from all of the various scandals of the Hoover FBI to the internment of anti-war critics in 1917. One response is to say, "and therefore, liberal democracy has never been real." Another, which is the response I would make is, such repression, while bad, is significantly less bad than that practiced by not-liberal democracies, even if it's impossible to point to an extremely specific line where you could say "the repression has gotten so bad that the promises of liberal democracy have been exposed as empty lies."

if there's a known and significant case of a line being crossed, that case needs to be punished, otherwise there is no reason to believe the promises were anything other than a lie.

It seems likely that, various people who participated in anti-RW repression during the Biden administration, for whatever value of "repression" we're using will indeed be punished to some extent under Trump.

Perhaps, as they say, real liberal democracy has never been attempted.

I have never heard a liberal democracy enjoyer say "we totally do political repression

Have you heard anyone in charge of a modern-day country say that? Political repression is what the others are doing; you are just taking appropriate measures against the extraordinary threats the nation is facing.

Have you heard anyone in charge of a modern-day country say that?

Yes, and from my experience they tend to deny that they're repressing anyone, even as they are outline their plans of political repression, which is my point.

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