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Scott Alexander in his recent links post highlights an interesting idea on how to deal with violation of court orders, make them an outlaw , https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-april-2025 (Edit: To clarify, this is most likely not a fully serious idea. Scott would understand how difficult it would be to actually implement, I'm just analyzing it as if it were serious and how that would work with US law.)
Taking this idea seriously, it's hard to see how it manifests in the US. Assuming no change to the constitution, which is possible but I think unlikely to convince enough citizens to go for such a change, the protection of the law is clearly outlined to any person within our jurisdiction in the 14th amendment.
In theory we could radically reinterpret jurisdiction as being "within the law" and thus said "outlaws" being outside the law would not be in jurisdiction but that is a pretty far stretch. It also makes an interesting logical question, if they're outside of US jurisdiction then are they really defying the courts anymore?
Another possible theory could hinge on a different odd and radical reinterpretation of wording,
A radical interpretation of "life" or "liberty" could include removing the status of personhood from violators, therefore removing them from the "any person" line.
Both of these are incredibly radical. The US system is not fully originalist but even the more broader minded living constitutionalists and textualists tend to take the original intent into some amount of consideration and there isn't really any mention of stripping personhood away. And even then, it's still a stretch that one can take away personhood when our definition of person has little to do with one's involvement in the legal system anyway. I don't think many would contest Shakespeare or Genghis Khan as "people" despite being born and dead before the US even existed. And defining outlaws as outside the law could end up suggesting we can not enforce rules on them either if they decide to do something like steal or murder and just hope a citizen takes action to fix it.
Even more so, it remains to be seen if such a thing would even be necessary. I'm not aware of many cases where a ruled upon contempt of court hasn't been resolved in some sort of favorable manner for the courts (an arrest, a fine, obeying the courts after the order, etc) and the ones where it doesn't happen are people who hide away or flee the country. Declaring someone an outlaw and stripping away their legal protections doesn't really help too much in the police not being able to find them, unless we want the outlaw status to allow police to violate the rights of non-outlaws in their search for outlaws.
And even the most famous examples of court defiance tend to be apocryphal historical information, a misunderstanding of the orders by laymen or a mix of the two. Sometimes political leaders will even mislead about their actions, presenting an appearance of "fighting back" for their base while actually pivoting to another strategy that hasn't been ruled on yet. Actually serious major defiance of court rulings just hasn't really happened and thus the need for an alternative solution seems questionable IMO.
Ok but let's assume that the constitution does get changed. Maybe Scott runs for president on the "Let's change the constitution to make outlaws" platform, and the voters all surge for pro outlaw amendment congressmen and governors, and even the politicians currently on the fence are convinced of this idea. What then? That's already been covered decently in depth by Scott years ago and I don't know if I can add too much for this. I don't have much knowledge about the medieval Icelandic system beyond what I learned from this article. But regardless I think the likelihood of such a change is so low the discussion is purely in the hypothetical at this point.
More likely IMO (although still highly unlikely) would be to adopt the punishment of exile. Why do I think this is relatively more likely? It has history in the Roman legal system and British law systems which are already major inspirations for the American legal system so adopting anything from them is more precedented and that precedent may be more convincing to the population for a new amendment.
I think you’d have a hard time with such a system simply because verification could be impossible. It’s perfectly legal to shoot me, im an outlaw. But what happens if you misidentified someone else as me? There are probably several million people on earth right now that look like me, so what happens next? You thought you were going to get me, who has no legal rights, but you didn’t get Maiq the True, you got Maiq the Liar. Do you go to jail? Is mistaken identity a defense? Can you be sued by next of kin? Must you return the wares?
This is all a pretty silly thought experiment, but Scott seemed to suggest making outlaw status exclusively the Supreme Court's last line of defense against tyranny when its dictates are ignored by the über-powerful and the Court cannot get any other branch of government to enforce its will in the matter. (As opposed to bringing it back as a standard punishment for random criminals.) It would pretty much only get deployed against politicians and billionaires - against people the entirety of a corrupt executive branch is refusing to touch. Were Donald Trump declared an outlaw tomorrow morning, I find it hard to believe that anyone would shoot a random suburban grandpa by mistake.
the clause about transitive outlaw-ness complicates that. If my crazy friend Bob starts raving that he's driving over to settle this presidential outlaw business himself and I try to restrain him am I fair game now?
If the supreme court declares Donald Trump an outlaw tomorrow morning, I can picture some plausible cases where a suburban grampa has political disagreements with someone in the house, a physical struggle starts, then a gun gets pulled, and someone dies in a "legal murder"
In these extreme cases some violence across the nation is maybe impossible to avoid, but it doesn't need to be sanctified.
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After seeing Scott’s suggestion, I was thinking along similar lines.
Consider the bill of attainder. The English occasionally used these to strip rebel lords of their lands and legal protections. When we rebelled, we specifically banned Congress from doing anything of the sort. Clearly, the Constitution didn’t want a few dozen (or, today, a few hundred) people to hold such a power.
How would a smaller group be any better?
I don’t think the outlaw status is compatible with a system founded on “certain unalienable rights.” At least not our particular set. We haven’t drifted so far from the founding ethos that we’d throw that away for one edge case.
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The administration was ordered to “facilitate” his return. That’s different.
It’s unclear why SCOTUS should be able to order the president to take a citizen of El Salvador, who is currently residing in El Salvador, and bring him to the US. What if El Salvador just doesn’t want to give him up? Given these facts, it’s reasonable to read “facilitate” as “facilitate only to the extent possible”.
Even SCOTUS has limits on their powers. I don’t think we should expect them to be able to order the president to bomb another country, for example. Their power diminishes rapidly outside of US borders.
This is fair, but Trump has absolutely not met even this lower bar. He hasn't even asked. What 'facilitation' has he attempted?
Yeah, I would struggle to understand how 'facilitate' doesn't mean make a diplomatic request. No need to send in a SEAL team if they're told no.
But it also seems so strange to request an extradition? of an El Salvadorean from El Salvador into ICE custody.
That in itself would be a pretty grave intrusion into the President's authority to conduct foreign diplomacy. If that is permissible, it would be a short distance to e.g., court-ordered economic sanctions or court-ordered economic aid.
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Is there any evidence that El Salvador wanted to imprison this citizen for reasons other than US say-so? I'm not sure that's even been alleged.
...are we ignoring El Salvadorian President Bukele's extremely well documented inclination to imprison known and even suspected gang members, which occurred despite US say-so?
Or Bukele's comments last week?
Trump could've just asked Bukele to say "I won't let you take gang members back, of course" and then Trump would've said "oh well". Instead, though, Bukele said "I can't smuggle a gang member back into the US", implying Trump's stance stance was not allowing him to come back.
Is this a format the judge would have accepted as 'facilitation'? If not, why does it matter as a proposed alternative?
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"El Salvador likes to imprison gang members" just brings us back to the question "Did El Salvador have independent evidence of his gang status or is that the result of El Salvador taking the USA's word on the matter?"
Which is a separate question from 'wanted to imprison this citizen for reasons other than US say-so.'
'US say-so' implies the US wants the man imprisoned. It is agnostic on the reason why.
'This man is a gang member' is a motive that can apply regardless of US desired results. It is agnostic as to the source of the information.
The gang affiliation is also a matter of US record that predates the current Trump administration's deportation push. There's no allegation I am aware of that it was invited in the last three months since Trump's inauguration.
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For anyone else just reading this topic for the first time- the lack of definition of what 'facilitate' entails was the crux of last week's discussion thread on this topic.
If 'facilitate' is used in the sense of 'make easier,' then no change in the person's actual location status is required. 'Facilitate' does not mean 'achieve.'
If 'facilitate' is used to demand a result, this becomes a foreign policy requirement, and especially an international sovereignty conflict, which creates a constitutional issue against the court demanding such a result.
As Prima notes, the Supreme Court did not order a result. The courts that have denied 'make easier' efforts as sufficient facilitation are lower courts. Tthe Supreme Court has not specifically weighed in on their ability to demand a result versus an effort.
Yeah the exact meaning here is really nuanced in a way that most people struggle with and it's not fully fleshed out yet either. Courts are not completely blind, there is flexibility for basic human reasoning and interpretation built into them but they are also majorly concerned with procedure.
A (highly simplified) way to explain what will happen is that the courts essentially go "Ok Trump show us what steps you've taken to help to facilitate his return and what barriers prevent you from achieving that goal", the Trump admin responds "We've done X, Y, Z, and have A, B, C barriers", the judges use their sense to determine how serious that response is and if they appear to be acting in good intentions to follow the order and rule accordingly.
As an example, let's say someone (idk John) has a restraining order on him for domestic violence and he has a stay away provision of 100 yards from Jane. However unknown to John, him and Jane both shop at the same grocery store. This happens sometimes and the restraining order typically accounts for it. As long as John takes action to leave immediately and not engage (that includes not finishing his shopping/pumping gas/whatever) then normally a judge wouldn't really punish for that, they know mistakes happen.
However let's say the court received legally admissable evidence of phone records where John messaged his friend Joe "Hah, I just saw Jane at the grocery store. I think I'll keep going there and maybe she'll see me and freak". The judge can take that into consideration and say "John, you violated your order. This was not incidental, you knew it would happen and continued to shop there for that reason".
Now not all evidence is so explicit as John admitting to it himself in text. It could be just testimony from Joe, it could be certain weird actions John took like always hanging around the store on the days and times Jane normally went shopping, whatever. Or maybe John didn't leave immediately and even worse went up to Jane to talk, which is now breaching the order with intent. Quite a few people end up violating restraining orders (to them "unfairly") because an accidental encounter was turned into an intentional breach by their choice to not disengage and make distance. Whatever it is, the judges take context into account.
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This is currently a moot point given that the Trump administration hasn't put in any effort whatsoever. If he asks Bukele to send him back and he says no, then we can move to the question of whether that is sufficient attempt at 'facilitation'.
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This is one of those - please adopt it. Since the easiest people to be declared outlaws are the visa overstayers and people entering not at point of entry.
Yeah, adopting this at the present time would seem to be a huge loss for the left: it provides an obvious way to convincingly argue against birthright citizenship because "outlaw" seems to pretty clearly to imply "not subject to the jurisdiction thereof" even within the physical borders of the US.
In this case, I'd be pretty uncomfortable with it regardless.
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Because if there's one thing that will make this country great again, it's the existence of a precariat underclass with no protection of law who exist at the whim of their criminal masters.
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Scott of course shows his true colors again as a rabid partisan, by advocating literally unpersoning his political opponents.
In terms of the actual proposal, I don't see him argue in any sensible way why contempt isn't an adequate method of enforcement. Sure the courts may be slow sometimes, but they can be fast when they want to be. And his proposed "unpersoning" would also require the courts to make a move, so no reason for that to be any faster.
Scott knows full well which team would win the ‘legal personhood isn’t universal’ game. He’s spitballing crazy ideas.
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I'm pretty sure it's just dark humor there, nor did Scott ever argue for unpersoning them (unless you think outlaws are unpersons by definition?). Those bits about how we might go about limiting a human's protection under the law are theoritical ideas from me, ideas that I disagree with.
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In your eyes, is there any threshold that Trump could cross with his actions whereupon making a show of being opposed to them would no longer show one's "true colors as a rabid partisan"?
As I see it, the unpersoning thing is a valid, if silly and ill-thought-through, answer to the question of what the judiciary could do if its orders are ignored by someone too powerful to go after with the forces at its direct disposal. If you think it's an "rabid partisan" thing to consider, then, it seems that you think that someone who is not a partisan or not rabid should not be thinking about ways the judiciary could enforce its will in this case at all. Do you believe that Trump has a mandate to power uncircumscribed by the judiciary?
One can think that the president ought to be circumscribed by the judiciary whilst also thinking that the ways in which the judiciary acts is worthy of ridicule and contempt (in both senses). To make a silly example, if Trump stopped deporting illegal El Salvadorian gangbanger wifebeaters and starts deporting all-American people who can trace their family back five generations for innocently coughing in his presence, that would indeed be considered a step too far.
The woman went back to the man who allegedly abused her, resumed having sex with him, and doesn't think it's a big deal. I don't understand why internet people care so much.
Because wife beating is a SERIOUS character flaw, and not something that majority of people condone. That, plus all of his other flaws makes this specific Culture War Front very revealing.
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Scott Alexander is hysterically overrated just because he actually criticized wokes a bit back during the era where the spineless techies that make up his fandom were busy cowering and licking progressive boots.
That's not fair, he used to be a good writer that used to be able to show he properly understood the arguments he disagreed with.
He's a college educated white man and college educated white men have moved away from the Republican Party over the last decade. See Hanania and Spencer for other examples. On the other hand, the Right has gained no-college whites like Tim Pool and Joe Rogan.
Maybe, instead of complaining about being betrayed, you could modify your political platform to make it more appealing to high-income, educated white people?
I don't want either of them to be Republican. Hanania actually is ridiculously overrated and, in contrast to Scott, always has been. Having him on my side would be a liability.
As for Scott, I just want his arguments to be as high quality as they used to be. He was never on my side, but he used to be able to show that he understands it. Maybe it's the Republican party platform that caused the severe drop in his competence, even though he was always a Democrat, but I think we should look for causes elsewhere.
That's true for me as well, but I really liked "The Colors of her Coat" a lot, and do enjoy seeing aesthetic takes from Scott, more than political lately.
Makes sense. I remember hearing that back in the Soviet days some artists working on children's animation happily traded in any prestige that might have come from on working on something more serious, precisely because the field's lack of political importance meant you didn't have to justify yourself to a political commissar all the time, and could enjoy the art for what it is.
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Has he ever been a Republican?
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Isn't Scott jewish?
Moldbug is half Jewish and his writings did more for reaction than most people around him.
The logic here being that, since Scott wrote a lot of nice things, he can claim a different ethnicity?
Or is this just some kind of kneejerk ethnocentric defense mechanism that was accidentally triggered?
I'm an out and out reactionary and have seen people summon da joos anytime anything get bad, to the point where any discussion can be halted and sanity excused by blaming them for everything under the sun.
I apologise if I came off strong, I'm used to twitter.
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He used to be a somewhat ordinary young man with an eclectic reading habit, allowing him to mix weird rationality ideas while still understanding the opposite perspective. Then he became an incredibly successful and popular writer and moved to San Francisco where he now lives with his wife, children and mistress.
No matter how much he tries, if he does still try, he can’t really empathise with the people outside the blessed circle. They’re just too different from him now. At the same time, general political polarisation has continued to the extent that I doubt he ever meets any right wingers any more, even the weird kind.
It’s the same problem that’s occurred since time immemorial and is the reason why (as I understand it) Republican politicians were discouraged from spending too much time in Washington.
When Scott was taking Moldbug that seriously, I don’t think he was living next door. The whole point of the Internet is that discourse happens at turbo-speed regardless of distance.
Right, but this is my point: times changed. The kind of places where left-wingers might occasionally bump into right wingers have mostly ceased to exist, online and offline.
I don’t think this is strictly true. Especially not for somebody as motivated as Scott. His “Bay Area House Party” series is parody, but San Francisco is ridiculously high-variance. It attracts all sorts of weirdos, especially if they’re making a lot of money.
All sorts of weirdos, as long as they aren't conservative
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Berkeley, actually, but yeah.
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Wait, mistress?
Quote from Highlights From the Comments on Polyamory:
Every time I'm reminded of that quote, I'm reminded of a person who insisted with a straight face that they were mature enough to sleep with a subordinate without it compromising their leadership of their team.
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Wait, there's only one mistress? I thought it was mistresses, but maybe it's serial bigamy instead of of polygamy
Last I heard there happened to be one but I don’t think this is a matter of principle.
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I mean from where I'm standing the opposite has happened - he has been pretty resoundingly cancelled (mostly for the lukewarm HBD support) and is pretty permanently persona non grata in actual leftist spaces. I don't know what sort of people make up his social circles these days - other techie libertarians, probably - but it's very unlikely to be anyone actual leftists, let alone wokes, would recognize as allies they'd give the time of day to.
I don’t mean he spends time in left-wing activist spaces as an ally, I mean that I imagine his friends mostly take cultural left-wing fundamentals as a given. Trans stuff, race stuff*, homelessness, etc. I would be very surprised if he had friends who were actually right of center, let alone someone like Moldbug or Diseach. So he isn’t exposed to those perspectives any more except when he wants to be, and he’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t want to be.
*Yes, he hid his stance on HBD for a long time but even now he’s more open I doubt it actually makes any difference to his day-to-day behaviour.
Has it ever been different? The change in Scott's attitude is pretty clearly because liberals(ok, progressives[ok wokes]) were the main people who could hit him and then Trump started going after progressives, which he is and always was.
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Again, I'm just not sure how his friends could take the mainstream left-wing view of e.g. race and remain his friends. The mainstream left-wing view of race demands that you cut off anyone who gives the time of day to race science. And defines anyone who does as right-leaning by definition. Anyone who goes to parties with Scott is either not paying attention, or a very heterodox leftist indeed. I think accepting the premise in the original Red Tribe Vs Blue Tribe post that the Grey Tribe is a third, neutral entity is the only real way to describe what Scott's friends are like. He might very well be living in a tighter bubble than before, but it's not a left-wing bubble, because no actual left-wing bubble would tolerate his presence within itself.
(It's not just race, either, though that's the most prominent Schelling point. A mainstream leftist does not tolerate a friend who is outspokenly well-disposed toward capitalism - or indeed, one who casually, openly criticizes "wokeness", by that name. As an actual heterodox. This isn't to say all leftists are actively anti-capitalist and pro-cancel-culture, but nevertheless they treat it as a point of etiquette that the reverse opinions should not be embraced in public, for fear of looking like Those People. Scott, as a good Grey Triber, happily takes potshots at wokeness's illiberalism while taking it as a given that Capitalism is Good.)
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That was part of the 1994 Republican Revolution under Newt Gingrich. It wasn't just 'discouragement' either- it was a organizational-restructuring, as the rules of Congress were changed to facilitate frequent travel out of DC. Most notably, Congressional business workflows were centered on the mid-week, so that key votes were Tuesday-Thursday, to make Monday/Friday travel days more viable.
It was part of 'proving independence from Washington' and 'staying in touch with your constituents.' It is the oft-forgotten root of regular complaints that Congress spends too little time in Washington compared to the past, and the associated complaints that Congress gets less done (because they are present less) and don't know eachother as well. On the other hand, it arguably contributes to the dynamic of voters loving their congressperson but hating congress.
It was also, critically, a period where Republicans were also incentivized to not bring their families to D.C., which in turns means the wives and children who stay behind aren't culturally socialized into the blue-tribe-dominated national capital region. But it also means, by extension, that Democratic representative families under the same dynamics aren't socializing with more red-leaning counterparts, and are free to be even bluer influences on their Congressional-spouses.
This is an oft-forgotten / underappreciated rules-level dynamic of national-level political centralization and elite-consensus.
Keeping key elites spending time together and away from their own power-bases that could foster a sense of disconnect from the central authority has been a national cohesion strategy since before Louis XIV and Versailles. This helped political centralization by giving the monarch an easier time keeping an eye on everyone if they were in one part. But it also allowed for political homogenization/consensus-building/shared-identity cultivation of a common French identity amongst elites, as the French nobility were forced by proximity (and tactical political interests) to get along and socialize. Court politics is infamous in fiction for political infighting and drama, but it does create paradigms for collective understandings, interests, and identities, hence the divide of the french estates leading to the French revolution. Nobles infight against eachother, but unite in common cause against challenges to their collective interests and privileges.
Congressional committee placement politics isn't an exact analog to the French Monarchy making appointments dependent on remaining at court, but there are more than a few parallels. If you're not missing key votes because you're spending time with constituents- because Congressional workflows are focused on Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday execution- then you're not losing your chance at valuable appointments to powerful Congressional committees. The lower the opportunity cost of not-being in the capital, the greater the opportunity-gains of being elsewhere for fundraising / political events / etc. And, again, you're away from your family less if you're free to return to them more often.
These are changes that the Congressional Democrats have kept even when they recaptured Congress. They get many of the same benefits as well. And as the D.C. area is something like 90% Democratic for a variety of reasons, it's hard to see them convincing (or, frankly, forcing) the Republicans to revert to the pre-Gingrich status quo in the name of homogenizing them in an expected blue direction.
Interestingly, it's also a dynamic being actively pursued in the reverse by the movement of property, and not just people.
You can arguably see an implicit effort-to-reverse Federal consensus-centralization ongoing right now, as Trump attempts to push the federal bureaucracy away from the capital region.
One of the less-commented efforts the Trump administration is pursuing is moving federal agencies outside of the DC area and to other states. This has been overshadowed by the media coverage of the personnel management, but the property management is (almost) as important.
Among the earliest executive orders was a direction for agencies to propose relocations away from DC and to other states. This purportedly on cost-reasons. DC property is expensive to maintain, employee allowances are higher to make up for the regional cost of living, etc. The actual cost of moving has to be balanced against savings are likely to provide, but states have an incentive to take some of that cost for their own long-term gain in getting the relocated agencies.
Almost as importantly, Congress persons have an incentive to approve federal agency relocations to the benefit of their own state. Even Democratic politicians who might personally hate Trump. Which is to say, Federal government divestment from DC offers bargaining chips / horses to trade in the upcoming year(s) of budget negotiations.
That this is also is likely to have an employee-composition impact, as the hyper-blue DC environment those agencies recruit and socialize and network within get replaced with more purple environments that are geographically dispersed, is probably not going to be a publicized or recognized until it's as locked-in as the Gingrich Congressional travel changes.
As has been seen with some shutdowns like the USAID shutdown, DC-based federal employees have often indicated they want to stay in the DC area. This is natural. Even if they were offered an opportunity to keep their jobs if agencies were relocated instead of shutdown, some percent would refuse and seek other employment in DC. This is just a matter of statistics. It is also an area of precedent. In the Trump 1 administration, nearly 90% of DC-based Bureau of Land Management employees retired or quit rather than relocated to Grand Junction, Colorado.
That's bad if you think an equivalent dynamic to, say, the DC Headquarters of the Justice Department would lose vital experience and expertise and informal coordination with other agencies. On the other hand, if you don't think the headquarters of the US Justice Department should be rooted in the swamp that is 90% blue, and less than a mile from where a 'Black Live Matter' mural used to be maintained on the street...
And once departments are separated, the sort of informal coordination that can occur if you and a friend/ally you know in another part of the government can meet in the same town also goes away. Inter-government lobbying is a lot harder if you are cities apart. Inter-department coordination is also, and almost as importantly, a lot harder to do without a document trail.
And this is where one could infer a non-stated motive for the resistance-shy Trump. One of the only reasons the US electorate learned that the Biden administration white house was coordinating with the Georgia anti-Trump case despite denials was because one of the Georgia prosecutor assistances invoiced the White House for the travel expenses for in-person engagements. In-person meetings, in turn, are one of the ways to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests or Congressional subpoenas for communications over government systems.
This is where the Versailles metaphor comes back, but as an inverse of sorts. It was easier for Louis the XIVth to keep an eye on and manage the nobility when they were in one place. They were scheming, sure, but he could keep watch of them in a single physical location where he controlled the coordination contexts. Trump / the Republicans do not control the coordination context of DC. They can, however, increase political control over the bureaucracy by physically separating it across multiple physical locations, where they have easier means to monitor inter-node coordination.
It is also an effort that will be exceptionally hard for the Democrats to reverse, if they try to. It is a lot easier to divest and reorganize government institutions when you have a trifecta than when you don't. It is also much easier to give up federal property in DC to the benefit of states than it is to get state Congressional representatives to vote to strip their states of jobs and inflows for the sake of DC.
Which means that federal agencies that depart DC will probably not return in the near future. And the longer they stay away, the longer that local employment hiring filters into organizational cultures at the lowest levels. The more that Federal employees have their spouses and children shaped by the less-blue-than-DC environments, and thus shape them in turn. The less engaged, and involved, they can be in the beltway culture.
The Trump administration DC divestment are arguably going to have long-term effects on affected parts of the federal bureaucracy on par with Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution affects on Congress in the 90's. Affected agencies will be less compositionally composed of, less socially exposed to, and less culturally aligned to Blue-dominated DC in ways that will only become apparent decades from now.
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I think people were literally warning him this would happen if he moves back to California.
There are plenty of us in California who are capable of understanding, and even believing, modern right-wing arguments. We just don't mix in San Francisco techie society.
But putting aside the relative bubbles, I think the background temperature matters a lot for determining what stuff you have to engage with.
As you get older and get more power over your personal life, you tend to stereotype yourself. In practice people rarely choose to encounter things that make them feel uncomfortable. So if the background temperature is ‘bringing up right wing arguments is socially awkward’ and the bubble is ‘comfortable techie’ then it’s not a surprise that Scott isn’t hearing right wing ideas even if the possibility theoretically exists.
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They did. But it worked for him, he’s fine. He doesn’t need influence with conservatives and frankly I don’t think he wants it.
I think also that he just made his peace with woke. It’s less confrontational than it was, and he agreed with most of it to start with, and the main issue he had with it (feminism) is no longer an issue for him.
Based on my life experience I think there's a good chance that if he sends his kids to school (as opposed to homeschooling) that he may again confront issues. (Or maybe not, he seems to have done fine in school despite hating it...)
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In other words, he betrayed us once it was no longer in his interest to oppose the woke.
He got rich and famous enough that he managed to get married despite being a textbook beta nice guy; what does he care now about the plight of the incel? He makes his money in the normie-ville of substack and his psychiatry clinic; what use does he have now for cultivating a following by spreading heresies? Being controversial now would only threaten all he has.
Telling heterodox truths is a game for anonymous young single men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Established men become assimilated into the system.
Betrayed? The man wrote hundreds of pages of content and gave them out completely for free. I guess you could make a case that he owes something to the people who defended him against being cancelled. But I figure that giving people hundreds of pages of writing for free has already paid for that. I don't see why Scott would owe anything to his readers at this point.
Also, as far as I know, Scott has never claimed any sort of alliance with either other anti-wokes or with incels, so there is no alliance to betray.
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The eternal problem of a theoretical incel revolution: anyone with the get-up-and-go to be of any kind of value will get laid.
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Who's "us"?
I agree Scott got soft, but stability and family making you more mellow and less of a firebrand is an eternal cycle, it's how things are supposed to be. It's why Kulak in his incessant calls for violence never actually talks about building things, starting families, falling in love, having children. Men who have lives and families to care about don't want to burn down the world.
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He did? Did he make us any promises?
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That’s where I was going with that, yes. I have no illusions that I wouldn’t do the same but it does kind of make me feel used. I wrote to the NYT on his behalf - I can’t imagine modern day Scott returning the favour.
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Sounds great. Then I could scream "Outlaw Country!" and mean it! As a declaration of intent.
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Come to think of it, where does David Friedman post now? Last time I spoke to him was on DSL, ages ago
He's still regularly posting on DSL, and he's also got his own Substack.
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I think what you're missing is...
Contingent on the supreme court actually deciding to go for the outlaw thing (which is won't, and probably shouldn't), a court declaring someone an outlaw would be the due process of law. If you want to talk about traditions, americans have historically been a great fan of lynchings, and very often none of the perpetrators ever faced trial. If one branch of government can simply decline to use its powers because it doesn't like what another branch is telling it to do... well, that's pretty generalizable.
I think you have completely misunderstood the point. Scott's (somewhat jokey) proposal is for outlaws to be outside the protection of the law, and my point is that this would be incredibly difficult to implement in the American legal system as the protection of law applies to any person and that particular bit does not contain any exception to its removal.
See the reading of this gives an exception for removing life, liberty or property through the due process of law. It doesn't give one for denying equal protection of the laws.
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At best it manifests in a dictatorship where the victorious side murderously purges the other from any position of leadership, civil, military, or social. At worst you get something like the Spanish Civil War, but in a much larger country.
But it’d be a mistake to take it seriously. It’s a bit of dark humor from Scott.
I don't believe it is serious, Scott at least would be definitely aware of how unlikely it is to implement such a change. Still an interesting idea to entertain.
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I don’t know enough about Scott’s current politics to be sure, but it sounds like a piss-take commentary about the court getting too big for its britches.
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