Ohio
It's Different When We Do It, Chapter 27
or
Did I Just Get Trolled?
tw: old news, unapologetic whataboutism
Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have a free essay at the (reportedly centrist!) Foreign Affairs: "The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown." (Archive link.) You may notice the URL has "trump" in it, despite that word not appearing in the title. Curious.
But wait--who are Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way? After all, one can scarcely throw a cursor across a website these days without hitting, say, six or seven hyperlinks to "think pieces" about Trump, fascism, fascist Trumpism, or even Trumpist fascism. But never fear--this is no Average Andy/Joe Sixpack collaboration. This is professional work by a team of scholars whose most famous contribution to the canon of political scholarship is the term "competitive authoritarianism." What, you may ask, is competitive authoritarianism? Read on!
Steve Levitsky, according to his employer (Harvard University, naturally), is a
Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America.
His focus is not exclusive--he also writes on Israel policy while calling himself a "lifelong Zionist" (admittedly, in an article endorsing something like BDS)--but his interest in Latin America is apparently more than skin-deep:
Levitsky is married to Liz Mineo, a Peruvian journalist with degrees from the National University of San Marcos and Columbia University who currently works at The Harvard Gazette.
Lucan Way is no less distinguished. Well, maybe a litte less--the University of Toronto is not even the Harvard of Canada, much less the Harvard of, well, Harvard. But his title--his title! He is literally a Distinguished Professor of Democracy. Where Levitsky's focus is Latin America, however, Way's might best be described as "Cold War and Cold War adjacent." He credits at least some of that interest to family ties to historical events:
My stepfather's family were Jewish socialists, and his grandfather, Henrik Ehrlich, was a Menshevik during the 1917 revolution. This familial link to such a pivotal historical moment gave the chapter on Russia a deeper, more personal resonance.
This is an academic power couple, right here. Get one expert on authoritarianism in the New World, one on authoritarianism in the Old World, and baby, you've got a stew going! A book stew. An article stew. A bottomless cornucopia of cosmopolitan political commentary and analysis. Their 2010 text, "Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War," focuses on democratization (or its lack) under authoritarian regimes. David Waldner gave a blurb:
Regimes that blend meaningful elections and illicit incumbent advantage are not merely resting points on the road to democracy; Levitsky and Way guide us along the multiple paths these regimes can take and provide powerful reasoning to explain why nations follow these distinct paths. This deeply insightful analysis of an important subset of post-Cold War regimes is conceptually innovative and precise, empirically ambitious, and theoretical agile, moving fluidly between international and domestic causes of regime dynamics. Read it to understand the dynamics of contemporary hybrid regimes; then read it again to appreciate its many lessons for our general understanding of regime change.
So: you've literally written the book on how democracies are (or are not) born. What are you going to do next? No, no, you're not going to Disneyland--you're going to witness the election of Donald Trump and stop telling people that you study the birth of democracies, but instead the death of democracies. From the Amazon page for Levitsky's (but not Way's) How Democracies Die:
Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes.
That's the preliminaries. This week, Levitsky and Way published an article, and I have to say, I found it... kinda convincing? Except, I couldn't help but Notice some things that gave me pause. The thesis of the piece, as I mentioned, was that the United States is headed toward "competitive authoritarianism." The article provides a small explainer:
The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country's professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.
But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism--a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent's abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori's Peru, Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey. Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.
(As an aside, Way seems to think India is doing alright, actually? Not sure where that fits in with the above but, co-authored pieces do sometimes result in these little puzzles.)
What actually struck me first about this description was my memory of posters here in the Motte discussing "Brazilification," the process by which the U.S. is, as a result of economics, immigration, and identity politics, gradually adopting the political norms of South and Central American nations. But my experience has been that it is usually more conservative, even arguably nationalist people expressing this concern. While Levitsky and Way do not use the term "Brazilification," they definitely seem to be placing the United States on that trajectory.
They elaborate on the problem at length:
Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably: Democratic Party donors may be targeted by the IRS; businesses that fund civil rights groups may face heightened tax and legal scrutiny or find their ventures stymied by regulators. Critical media outlets will likely confront costly defamation suits or other legal actions as well as retaliatory policies against their parent companies. Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it.
This is where I started to wonder, just a little, whether I was being trolled. While Trump's second term has indeed set a record pace for executive orders, Joe Biden's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders was a greater departure from the norm. Most readers here will be well-acquainted with the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Many will also be aware of the time regulators inappropriately targeted the NRA. Conservative media outlets faced expensive defamation lawsuits (losing some, winning others). The fit with the Biden administration just seems too close in this paragraph, to be pure coincidence... but what am I supposed to conclude from that? Am I supposed to be doing a Straussian reading?
The piece continues:
[M]uch of the coming authoritarianism will take a less visible form: the politicization and weaponization of government bureaucracy. . . . Even in countries such as the United States that have relatively small, laissez-faire governments, this authority creates a plethora of opportunities for leaders to reward allies and punish opponents. No democracy is entirely free of such politicization. But when governments weaponize the state by using its power to systematically disadvantage and weaken the opposition, they undermine liberal democracy. Politics becomes like a soccer match in which the referees, the groundskeepers, and the scorekeepers work for one team to sabotage its rival.
Republicans have long complained against the weaponization of government against conservatives, and Democrats have long ignored those complaints. Whether it's a county clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses or the throw-the-book-at-them attitude toward January 6th protesters, conservatives regularly find the scales of justice thumbed against their interests. Similarly-situated Democrats need fear no prosecution at all.
Levitsky and Way have more to say about this sort of thing:
The most visible means of weaponizing the state is through targeted prosecution. Virtually all elected autocratic governments deploy justice ministries, public prosecutors' offices, and tax and intelligence agencies to investigate and prosecute rival politicians, media companies, editors, journalists, business leaders, universities, and other critics. In traditional dictatorships, critics are often charged with crimes such as sedition, treason, or plotting insurrection, but contemporary autocrats tend to prosecute critics for more mundane offenses, such as corruption, tax evasion, defamation, and even minor violations of arcane rules. If investigators look hard enough, they can usually find petty infractions such as unreported income on tax returns or noncompliance with rarely enforced regulations.
Tax evasion, you say? As for minor violations of arcane rules and rarely enforced regulations, well, the whole "Trump committed a felony" charade in New York was recognized well in advance as "novel" and "built on an untested legal theory."
The argument continues!
Moreover, much of the Republican Party now embraces the idea that America's institutions--from the federal bureaucracy and public schools to the media and private universities--have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies. Authoritarian movements commonly embrace the notion that their country's institutions have been subverted by enemies; autocratic leaders including Erdogan, Orban, and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro routinely push such claims. Such a worldview tends to justify--even motivate--the kind of purging and packing that Trump promises.
Why would the Republican Party embrace the idea that America's institutions have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies? After all, just 63% of senior executives in government posts are Democrats; only 58% of public school teachers identify as Democrat; fully 3.4% of journalists identify as Republicans, and the ratio of liberal to conservative college professors is a measly 17 to 1!
I guess "believing facts about the ideological makeup of our country's institutions" qualifies as authoritarian, now?
There's more to the article--I invite you to read it. But maybe some of you want to ask, in total exasperation, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Maybe none! I am not here to do apologetics for Trump. I was just really struck by the idea that this article could have been written, almost word for word, about Biden, or even Obama. Maybe Bush! Maybe others--FDR for sure, right? But I can find no evidency of Levitsky or Way ever actually noticing, or worrying, about American competitive authoritarianism, until Trump. They think he's special. I don't think he's special! I think that, so far, he has actually committed far fewer of the sins on their list, than Biden did. That doesn't mean I endorse Trump's actions, so much as I am confused that a couple of highly-credentialed experts on the matter only seem to recognize American authoritarianism when it is coming from their right (or, more accurately, even when it might eventually be coming from their right).
Aside from that, I don't see any obvious problems with the picture that they paint. Having pundits on both sides of the aisle say similar things about our nation's political trajectory serves to increase my worry that "Brazilification" might be a real thing, and makes me wonder how quickly it might happen, and how seriously I should take the possibility.
(Insert butterfly meme: is this authoritarianism? Insert spaceman meme: always has been.)
IMO, it depends on what specific kind of freeway driving you do. My commute spends just twenty minutes each way on a busy freeway, where my speed changes all the time and cruise control is worthless. But I once took a drive through the featureless wastes of rural Ohio on US 30, with hardly any traffic on the road, and being able to rest my foot for two hours on an eleven-hour drive (each way) was nice.
Rov_Scam
23d ago
Oh boy. As you may know, I'm an attorney, and before I proceed I want to give some general disclaimers. First, I'm not your attorney and none of what I'm about to say should be taken as legal advice. I don't know your exact situation or even the state in which you reside, so I'm not in a position to give specific advice. As for my qualifications, I had my own practice between November 2019 and May 2023 and I did estate planning and administration work, but not exclusively. This work was in Pennsylvania, which does not have ToD deeds. For a decade, includign when I had my own practice, I did oil and gas title work. While this may not seem like it has much to do with estate planning, a large part of it was dealing with the consequences of poor estate planning and figure out how to clean everything up. I did this in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. OH and WV have ToD deeds, but I didn't see them much, for reasons I will make clear below. I currently do litigation in PA and WV primarily and still do estate work very occasionally, but it's more of a side gig where someone will ask me about a will and I'll do it through my firm or a coworker's friend will ask them and I'll get it because I'm one of the three people here who have done that kind of work. I don't mess around with anything that involves the Federal Estate Tax or the word "irrevocable", but I've been to plenty of seminars involving this kind of stuff so I have a decent working knowledge. Basically, I know enough about it to know that it's a liability minefield I don't want to get involved in.
With that out of the way, I'd generally recommend against ToD designations for real estate. Certain charlatans like Suze Orman try to convince everybody that probate is the worst thing in the world and is to be avoided at all costs, but that's not necessarily true. One of the most common questions I was asked when I did estate planning is a variation of the following question I actually got a call about a couple months ago: A woman's husband recently died. She had three children, including a 36-year-old unmarried son who was living with her. She already had a will that left the house to the son, but asked me about possibly conveying the house to the son. Her intention was to avoid the 4.5% inheritance tax.
My answer was an immediate and unequivocal "no". Her plan would only work if her son stayed in the house and continued to live there indefinitely after her death, and he continued to be a responsible single guy in good health with no financial difficulties. The most obvious issue, though, was the tax issue. If the son continues to live in the house after she dies then it's not a problem. But the woman is only in her 60s; she could easily live another 20 or even 30 years. Suppose the son buys his own house in the meantime. When his mother dies, he now owns a house that he doesn't live in. If he sells it, he takes a short-term capital gain that is taxed as regular income since he isn't entitled to a homestead exemption. To make matters worse, the capital gain is on the entire sale price, since he got the house for free. On the other hand, if he inherits the house in that situation and wants to sell it, he can take advantage of the step-up in basis and only pay capital gains tax on the difference between the sale price and the market value at the time of death, which is likely to be zero. He'd still have to pay inheritance tax, but this is only 4.5% as opposed to the 20%+ he'd be paying in capital gains tax.
Beyond tax considerations, though, this woman would risk dealing with what I call the five Ds:
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Death: If her son dies before she does, the beneficiaries of his estate will become the owners of the property. The woman probably assumes that she'll outlive her son and even if she doesn't, he'd leave his estate either to her or another family member, but he could leave it to anyone. It could end up in the hands of a charity or an ex-girlfriend who is disinclined to let this woman keep living there for free.
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Divorce: If her son were to get married, the house could be an asset subject to distribution in any subsequent divorce proceeding.
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Disability: If her son becomes disabled, owning a significant asset will affect his eligibility for SSDI, Medicaid, and various other benefits.
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Debt: If the son were to file for bankruptcy, the house would be an asset subject to distribution to creditors. Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows debtors to protect equity in a home by entering into a payment plan instead of liquidating the estate. The catch is that the payment plan has to raise at least as much money as the creditors would get in a Chapter 7. This realistically isn't an issue, since most people filing for bankruptcy don't own their houses free and clear; they've already mortgaged them to the hilt. If the house isn't complete shit it probably forces him into a 100% plan, which could be unfeasible depending on the amount of debt. Worst case scenario he's forced to sell the house to cover the debt. On the other hand, if he doesn't own the house it's likely a no-asset Chapter 7 or a straightforward Chapter 13.
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Dumb: People do dumb things all the time. He could mortgage the house to buy a boat and leave her vulnerable if he can't make the payments. He could neglect to pay property taxes. He could try to save a little money by not insuring the property. He could decide to rent out an extra bedroom to a hobo. Those examples are downright idiotic, but even well-intentioned gestures can fit this category. Say he wants to do some kitchen renovations. His mother thinks he's just paying for them, but in reality he took out a home equity loan. Six months later he loses his job and can't make the payments. Now she's looking at foreclosure as the result of actions she had no control over.
ToD deeds were created as an attempt to mitigate the effects of the five Ds. By creating a revocable future interest in the property instead of an irrevocable present interest, the beneficiary can't really do anything to affect the property while the grantor is still living. Sounds good, but this creates its own problems; by taking assets out of probate, any issues must be dealt with outside of the probate process. Probate isn't a boogeyman. It's a process specifically put in place to deal with these kinds of issues. Wills allow you the flexibility to provide precise instructions regarding your intentions, and allow you to appoint an executor to ensure that these instructions are carried out. Probate courts provide a forum to resolve any issues that arise. Outside of probate court and it's centralized process; you're out of luck. Just a few issues I can think of the top of my head, using the above case as an example:
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Instead of conveying the house outright, the woman executes a ToD deed naming her son as the beneficiary. Several years later, the son becomes disabled and cannot work, and relies on government benefits. The mother then dies. The son now has an asset that cuts off his eligibility. Hod the house been transferred by will, she could have created a provision that created a testementary trust in the event that any named beneficiary were receiving benefits at the time of her death, and the trustee would have been able to ensure that the house would remain property of the trust for the son's benefit and that he could continue living there and receiving benefits.
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The woman executes a ToD deed conveying the house to her son and two other children in equal proportion upon her death, at which time the house is worth $300,000. Two of the children want to sell the house and get their $100,000 share. But the son, who is still living there, doesn't want to sell, and correctly claims that as part owner he has the right to the premises. He further refuses to buy out his sisters' interests. If the sisters want anything out of the deal, they'll have to file a partition action, which will cost 5 figures and could take years to resolve. They're also unlikely to get their full shares, since the son will be able to claim any mortgage payments, taxes, repairs, insurance, or any other allowable expense he made towards the house over the course of his time living there. The house will be sold at auction, invariable resulting in a lower sale price than could be had if it were properly marketed. A will could expressly include buyout provisions (I usually included these if a child was living in the family home), expressly direct the executor to sell (though he could sell to the son), or give any number of other guidelines. Even in the absence of these, this is a dispute the probate court would be able to resolve before title ever transfers. It could get complicated, but nowhere near as complicated as a partition.
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The son gets married and has a child. The woman executes a ToD deed naming the son as beneficiary and the child as contingent benificiary. The son predeceases the woman. The woman then dies while the child is still a minor. The mother is still alive. The mother now has to petition a court to establish a legal guardian for the child's estate, so that the real property can be managed for the child's benefit until she is of legal majority. This is a complicated and expensive procedure. If the guardian wishes to sell the house to use the money for the child's ongoing support, they need to get a court order. If they sell the house and get the cash, they're required to invest the money and only spend the interest; if they need to dip into the principal, they need a court order. They need to file an annual accounting with the court. It's a complicated process. On the other hand, and will would contain automatic trust provisions for the event that a minor had to inherit a major asset. The trustee could be named in advance, and the trust set up shortly after death without court involvement. The trustee doesn't need court approval to do anything, and the accounting requirements are much looser.
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The woman executes a ToD deed with her three children as beneficiaries in equal proportion. The house is the only item of value in the estate. Shortly after the woman's death, the children sell the house to a third party. They do not consult an attorney because they believe that since they aren't opening an estate and there's only one asset they don't need to. A year later, a man claiming to be a creditor of the woman calls the son, asking about the money he is owed. After the son tells him that his mother passed and no estate was opened, the man discovers the ToD deed and subsequent sale to the third party. He then sues all three of the woman's children for their pro-rata share of the debt. If the woman had a will, or died intestate, the estate would have been advertised and the creditor would have had a chance to make a claim. The executor could have settled the matter out of the proceeds of the sale before the money was distributed.
These are just a few things I can think of off the top of my head. The point is, DIY estate planning is a bad idea. I talked to a lot of people, smart people, who thought they were doing something really smart by avoiding paying a lawyer to have a proper estate plan done. These people usually ended up doing things that would cost their estates significantly more than the most expensive estate planning lawyer in the area would charge. A couple thousand bucks may sound like a lot, but you have no idea how easy it is to spend that much when an estate goes haywire. People who tell horror stories about probate are usually referring to instances where something got fucked up and the matter was held up or needed to be litigated. These are unfortunate circumstances, but in no case was there some easy self-help fix that could have avoided the situation. Please, consult with an attorney as soon as you can.
oats_son
24d ago
So I got into an Elon argument. I said that he's autistic and made an unusual hand gesture to convey the idea he said at the time, which is "my heart goes out to you". I failed to mention Occam's Razor, which is the most obvious to me, and in this case it goes "but wtf would he even gain out of doing a dogwhistle here?" Hitler worshippers aren't worth many votes, even if they did like lip service... I guess you could argue he did it for Moloch and engagement, which seems to be why Trump says all the outrageous things he says.
But I digress. In the incredulous argumentation by the other parties that Elon was obviously a neo-Nazi and this wasn't accidental at all, I was linked five articles that they themselves got from someone else, so for all I know, these are making the rounds in a ton of spaces. I was not satisfied with any of them, but we'll go through 'em, mmkay.
I. Business Insider: Musk Faces Consequences for Calling Antisemitic Tweet 'Actual Truth'.
This was paywalled for me at the time of the actual argument, so I said as such and moved on. Reading it now, I suppose I'm glad it was, since it's more difficult to defend to a normie lib than the others were. If it's paywalled for you, it's about Musk's affirmative reply to this tweet. It's been written about before here, but I think progressives like to apply identity politics to many different groups, but do not appreciate when it's applied to white people.
However, I don't think I agree with its framing, taking such a wide swathe of Jewish groups and then saying that those same Jewish groups are appealing for help from, I dunno, the Muslims? I certainly wouldn't have agreed with it on social media, because it's a Bad Look. I'm not here to say Elon Musk is innocent or anything, in fact, I think he's dumb as hell, at least politically. I just don't think he's a Nazi, neo or otherwise. Certainly some neo-Nazis I know would be happy if he was.
Anyway, I don't think applying group status to white people is a Nazi thing to do, nor is it a Nazi thing to admit that Muslim communities have problems with anti-semitism, nor is it a Nazi thing to say that Jewish groups tend to slam white people because it's safe to do so and because half the time, they don't even mean white people.
II. Futurism: Elon Musk Deletes Nazi Apologist Tweet After Near-Universal Backlash.
The flailing executive deleted a quote-tweet in which he called a Tucker Carlson podcast featuring a Nazi apologist "very interesting" and "worth watching" after near-universal backlash.
In the original Carlson post, which is still live, the ex-Fox pundit interviews purported historian Darryl Cooper, an apparent Holocaust denier who says, among other things, that then-UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the "chief villain" of World War II.
Okay, he shared a Tucker Carlson interview. Who gives a shit?
Okay, but he interviewed a Nazi apologist. Okay. I've done that too. I was sent a podcast called Stone Choir telling me about how the Holocaust was faked, and I linked it elsewhere and shared clips of it to mock it. Damn, that's crazy! I've shared Holocaust denial podcasts. Who gives a shit?
Okay, but he called it very interesting and worth watching. Well, in Liberalism World, it is not a requirement to dismiss everything someone says just because they're part of a group that is disliked. Certainly, it is not only neo-Nazis who like dunking on Churchill. Slaughterhouse Five bordered on outright saying Winston Churchill was wrong to bomb Dresden, and it even used the inflated statistic of current-but-not-at-the-time Holocaust denier David Irving. I've also seen numerous articles on Lew Rockwell slamming the guy, though frankly, they're anti-establishment to the point of insanity, and certainly not above conspiracies themselves. But Tucker Carlson wouldn't have done the interview if it wasn't going to be interesting to anyone who wasn't a neo-Nazi.
Furthermore, Elon Musk probably didn't even know he was a neo-Nazi when he shared that podcast and said he liked it. How do I know? Because he deleted it. Why would he delete it if he already knew all the facts when he made the post? Occam's Razor, again! Please! But I don't really know for sure, I guess. Whatever, man.
III. International Business Times: Europeans Rebuke Elon Musk's Proposal For 'MEGA: Make Europe Great Again': 'Stay Away From Europe'.
I actually didn't even see a need to defend this one. He said Make Europe Great Again? Okay? Who gives a shit?
At the time, it felt like the baffling extension of the sentiment on /r/europe lately of "Elon, stop interfering in our elections, we're going to ban X if you don't." To which I call them vile hypocrites! Certainly no one cared if Biden or Harris or whatever establishment liberal institution endorsed whatever establishment liberal institution in Europe. Why is Elon any different? Leave Elon Alone!
Now, I see it was supposed to be a point that he's imperialistic or something, and the article compares saying MEGA to some rhetoric Viktor Orban used once. This is kind of a Trump situation for me, in that I don't really take him seriously. Who the hell would want Europe? Besides, MAGA has been memed to death at this point. And Elon likes memes.
IV. truthout: Elon Musk to Host X Event Promoting Neo-Nazi AfD Party Ahead of German Elections.
I feel like it's worth mentioning at this point that some of these links are pretty questionable and are only being talked about because they're with the right people. This sounds like a left wing tabloid? Have any of you heard of this site? Who the hell uses it? Anyway...
Mega-billionaire Elon Musk, owner of the social media site X, plans to hold an online audio discussion on the platform with the leader of a far right German party, amplifying the party’s fascist and neo-Nazi ideology.
The discussion between him and Alice Weidel, a leader for Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the party’s candidate for chancellor in the February 23 snap elections, will take place”very soon,” a spokesperson for Weidel said, indicating that it will “definitely” happen before the elections. The German-based newswire agency dpa reported that the talk between Weidel and Musk would occur on January 10.
Musk signaled his support for AfD in mid-December, writing in a post on X that “only the AfD can save Germany.” He also penned an op-ed in a German newspaper last week, describing the party as the “last spark of hope” for the country.
That sounds pretty bad! At least, it does to me. But I know from reading here and elsewhere that the AfD only made the headway that it did because it is basically the only party that doesn't support immigration and that people trust to stop the immigration, and possibly even "Auslander raus!" them. And to me, since that's the only thing I really know that the AfD supports, Elon Musk may have endorsed them based off of that alone. Or he may have wanted to signal boosted them since he saw other right wingers signal boosting them, and didn't look at their signal boost critically at all.
Whatever the case, I haven't actually heard him say what he likes about them, other than say that they're the last hope of Europe -- which they very well could be, if you take immigration as a serious issue (which people do, or the AfD wouldn't be where it is now). Frankly, I don't think Musk actually probably agrees with all their stances, because if they're actually far right, then they probably disagreed with his H1B stance pretty vehemently. You don't get a whole lot of white supremacists or xenophobes or Jew haters say that we need to import more engineers because Americans aren't good enough.
V. NBC News: Before Trump, neo-Nazis pushed false claims about Haitians as part of hate campaign.
You actually have this article to thank for this long wall of text. There was just too much to rage about and talk about with just this article to leave this post unwritten.
The day after the presidential debate at which former President Donald Trump spread a false story about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Christopher Pohlhaus, leader of the national neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, took to his Telegram channel to take credit.
Pohlhaus, a Marine-turned-tattoo artist known as “Hammer” to his hundreds of followers, wrote Blood Tribe had “pushed Springfield into the public consciousness.”
Members of his hate group agreed. “The president is talking about it now,” a member wrote on Gab, a Twitter-like service popular with extremists. “This is what real power looks like.”
Whoa! You mean to tell me that far right wingers were the originators behind the hateful Haitian rumor that Trump mentioned during the debate? Are Trump and other right wingers like Elon and Right Wing Twitter really sanewashing the hateful screeds of skinheads on Gab and Telegram that aren't even visible to normal people?
Trump’s line at the debate was the culmination of a weekslong rumor mill that appears to have at least been amplified by Blood Tribe, which has sought to demonize the local Haitian community online and in person. The debate drew more than 67 million viewers, according to the media analytics company Nielsen.
As with most rumors, the beginning of the baseless claims about Haitians eating pets in Springfield is hard to pinpoint, but Blood Tribe undoubtedly helped spread it.
Oh, they didn't. Actually these are just some crazy assholes online who probably just fed into a preexisting narrative. Good God, man, I thought we were onto something interesting.
This is actually fucking incredible coming from NBC News. Tying Trump's talking about this to this random far right group that talked about the same thing is one of the most tenuous connections I've seen in a news article. It's a very "Trump drank water, so did Nazis" news article. This may even have gotten modded on The Motte. "Ah," says NBC News Commenter Amadan, "it appears you're trying to tie the actions of a reprehensible group to some mostly unrelated group in order to make statements about the mostly unrelated group. Stop it! You're better than this! Drop the knife! Drop the knife!"
At the time, someone pulled this quote from the article, only copy pasting the bolded part:
In response to a request for comment sent to Pohlhaus, Blood Tribe said in an email that it stood by its claims and that it would continue its activism, “making sure” Haitian immigrants “are all repatriated.”
I didn't even know who that was referring to, but I could tell that it was a horrible quotation. Why are "making sure" and "are all repatriated" in quotes, but "Haitian immigrants" is not? Because "Haitian immigrants" not being in quotes tells me that that was substituted into the original, and I really don't trust these journalists to make determinations on what the original author was saying. Maybe they could have linked the original email? It gets my hackles up, because the original could have been talking about asylum seekers in general, which is very much not a neo-Nazi thing to say. But it turns out I didn't even need to make sense of it, because Elon Musk is probably like me and has never even heard of Blood Tribe.
To cap it all off, making racist, baseless remarks about foreigners is far from being exclusive to Nazis. Dude, take any country on the fuckin' planet. That's how widespread it is. It goes higher than the ADL ever knew. Nazis have gone global.
I really thought NBC News was onto something here, but they blew it. But it's okay, because I'm better than NBC News. Where they failed to make the point, I will try to make the point that I wanted them to make non-frivolously.
I liked the Inverse Florida article about Hamas loving tumblr people for making the very excellent point that a lot of center left rhetoric is just sanewashed from insane left wing people. I am somewhat afraid that the center right may be similar, and their rhetoric is just sanewashed from insane right wing people. But I don't have any evidence. So I guess I'm actually not that much better than NBC News. Then again, at least I'm asking the question instead of just suggesting it.
Do you think that that NBC News article was closer than I give it credit for? And do any of you think that Trump or Elon take cues from people farther right than them? If so, why?
DoctorMonarch
♬We're so happy that we live in 1800's Alabama 'cause it's sunny and there is no crime!♬
27d ago
Adding to the already odd protocol, it appears that Vice-President elect JD Vance will not even be present in Washington DC for the inauguration and will be sworn in at an undisclosed location somewhere else.
What are the chances that he does what he joked about?
"Hopefully everyone is cool with me skipping the inauguration so I can go to the national title game"
(For those unfamiliar or uninterested, the college football team of his undergrad alma mater Ohio State is facing Notre Dame roughly 7 hours after the inauguration)
gattsuru
29d ago
As a metaphor, from Ames v. Ohio:
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars employment discrimination against "any individual"—itself a phrase that is entirely clear—"because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin[.]" 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1). Thus, to state the obvious, the statute bars discrimination against "any individual" on the grounds specified therein. Yet our court and some others have construed this same provision to impose different burdens on different plaintiffs based on their membership in different demographic groups. Specifically—to establish a prima-facie case when (as in most cases) the plaintiff relies upon indirect evidence of discrimination—members of "majority" groups must make a showing that other plaintiffs need not make: namely, they must show "background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority." Zambetti v. Cuyahoga Cmty. Coll., 314 F.3d 249, 255 (6th Cir. 2002) (cleaned up) (quoting Murray v. Thistledown Racing Club, Inc., 770 F.2d 63, 67 (6th Cir. 1985)).
To be fair, SCOTUS is hearing this matter on appeal in February.. To be less naive, I included those very long citations because Murray v Thisledown dates back to 1985, aka over forty years of Some People Are More Equal before SCOTUS might slap their wrists.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
Right now I prefer the term "gender & race communism" to "wokeness." And as such "wokeness" did not start in the 2010s or in the 19080s as Paul Graham posits, but was a growing trend the entire last two hundred years.
I'm not playing this game. Sure, you can trace the roots of any political or intellectual movement back hundreds of years or even further. But that's not what anyone is talking about when they mean "woke". I've been in enough online discussions to recognize that this is just an entree to claiming that Marbury v. Madison / The 14th Amendment / Women's Suffrage / The Progressive Era / The New Deal / The Civil Rights Act / any number of other things is the moment the true spirit of the founding was lost and America started to go to hell in a handbasket, but I'm not buying it, not least of which because most of the people complaining about wokeness aren't buying it either. Not least of which because a colorblind society a la Dr. King was anathama to a large enough segment of the population as to be a progressive idea for the time but is the essence of anti-woke ideology today.
The curriculum of the school system in the major US city where I live is a near total wreck. Up through eighth grade, they basically don't teach a single classic American text, they don't teach anything that would inspire a white American boy (and frankly the curriculum probably isn't that inspiring to the people of color it is supposed to represent). Even the unit on space exploration -- uses Hidden Figures as the main text -- the school is flat-out teaching "misinformation." The magnet schools that were previously a great option for the better students have been greatly harmed by the post-2020 equity craze that lead to a change in admission rules. The administrators talking about these changes explicitly said that these changes were a result of making equity and anti-racism a central focus of their mission.
I've been hearing complaints about the alleged intrusion of wokeness into the elementary school curriculum for years, but there's been a paucity of concrete evidence. It's never anything that anyone's kids are bringing home, but what they heard is going on at a school district that's close enough to seem familiar but not so close that there's a good chance of actually knowing anyone whose kids go there. I'd expect that in this era of cell phone cameras and social media that the people who are outraged over this would have no problem coming up with examples of worksheets, reading materials, etc. that is supposedly indoctrinating our children, but somehow the only things I've ever seen produced are copypasta obtained from Google Images.
As to why kids aren't reading the classics of American literature anymore, my cousin, an elementary school teacher, gave me the answer, and it's more boring than some communist plot to make every story about black people. Basically, the so-called "curriculum experts" who decide these things came to the conclusion that the reading material needed to be specially tailored so that conformed to the precise reading level that was expected of the children and contained all the necessary vocabulary words but not any that were too hard. The result was that none of the existing children's literature filled all of the specific requirements, so they essentially had to commission a lot of stuff that did.
Anyway, this isn't a new thing. I was in elementary school in the early 1990s, and while we read some of these books, it was always apart from the standard curriculum. In any event, most of the stuff (like Charlotte's Web, for instance) involved all animal characters, so I'm not sure what was supposed to have especially inspired me as a young white boy. the stuff we actually read from the provided textbooks had no shortage of multicultural influence, so I'm not going to chalk up the mere existence of stories that center around black characters and traditions to some woke mind-virus.
The police were told to stand-down, a huge crime wave ensued, and urban public safety in the major cities has not come close to returning to 2000s levels, far less 1950s levels (Don't talk to me about crime rates -- due to police capacity and risk homeostasis, crime rates don't actually measure changes in public safety in the medium-term -- you have to look at how people's behaviors have changed).
If you're going to jettison statistics in favor of vibes, you also have to consider how much the narrative contributes to those vibes. When I was writing the entry on the South Side for my Pittsburgh series, I discussed the increased perception that the South Side was unsafe, a perception that wasn't really supported by the statistics. At first, I thought that maybe the perception was being influenced by high-profile shootings that made the news. But I was surprised to find a similar number of high-profile shootings in 2014 as in 2022. The difference was that in 2014, there was no narrative about how the South Side was becoming increasingly unsafe in the wake of a post-pandemic crime wave. With the overall crime rate having gone down the previous few years, there was no reason to believe that anything was out of the ordinary, so the shootings were reported on, chalked up to bad dudes hanging around nuisance bars after-hours, and quickly forgotten about.
In 2021 and 2022, after a summer of protests, rising crime rates, and being told that police were at the end of their rope, a similar number of instances caused the widespread perception that the South Side was unsafe, at least late at night on weekends, and it accordingly prompted various police strike forces and visits from the mayor. Never mind that the crime rate in the neighborhood was roughly similar to 2014, including the number of shootings that made the news. Now it was dangerous when it wasn't before. Are people really responding to increased risk of crime victimization, or to a conservative narrative that says woke policies are sending our cities to hell in a handbasket?
The demographics of our elite colleges were greatly changed as a result of equity focused changes in admissions. This matters a lot for the future leadership of our country.
Just out of curiosity, I checked the demographics of Harvard. The class of 2010 is roughly similar to the class of 2023. The biggest gains for blacks in university admissions overall seemed to happen in the 1980s. But this is also concurrent with the biggest gains made by Asians. Not only did this change happen in the pre-woke era, it happened at a time when blacks made huge gains in closing the high school graduation rate gap. It's no surprise that the percentage of blacks in a certain college will increase at a time when the college-eligible black population is also increasing.
The nature of campus social life and dating has fundamentally changed, partly because of Title IX investigations and metoo, but of course, also for many other reasons.
Fundamentally? I can't speak to any changes that have happened since I was there in the early 2000s, but I'd bet they're nothing compared to the changes made in the 1960s, prior to which men couldn't even get into women's dorms and people had to sign in and out, or since the 1940s, when you add to that the fact that the overall college population was 75% male, and all-girl's schools were much more prominent than they are today, meaning that if you went to a big college like Ohio State or Notre Dame, you probably weren't dating any fellow students.
The demographics of the entire country changed because it became racist and xenophobic to do any border control which produced bad optics or "violated human rights"
Hispanics were 5% of the US population in 1970, 6% in 1980, 8% in 1990, 12.5% in 2000, 16% in 2010, and 19% in 2020. The demographics seem to be changing at about the same clip as they have for decades. As an aside, this is why people who are anti-immigration are often accused of being racist. the official explanations range between worrying about them taking American jobs (if you assume they work), and leeching off of the welfare state (assuming they don't work), which at least are credible economic concerns. But here you make it sound like the real concern is demographic, which is as much as most Trump critics suspect.
The replacement of merit-based hiring with DEI hiring has not been rolled back, our institutions are continuing to crumble as a result. We do have people claiming they saw explicit anti-white-male discrimination in hiring at companies like Google and Intel and I think it has something to do with the stagnation and decline of those companies.
If this really happened then Mr. Magire was a fool to not take the statement to an attorney. If Google was actually using minority hiring quotas then they would have settled for a pretty penny to avoid discovery and the attendant publicity. Even the all-in DEI grifter employment law firms around here are quick to warn that DEI is not affirmative action and that private companies need to focus their efforts on recruiting and "fostering an inclusive atmosphere" and steer clear of anything that could be construed as a Title VII violation. I'd be surprised if a company that can afford the kind of attorneys Google can would be this stupid about the whole thing. And who are these unqualified black senior executives I keep hearing so much about?
Cross-dressers went from being a joke, to something that will get you fired and ostracized if you don't play along with their false beliefs. School systems now teach multiple genders and you are a bad person if you don't acknowledge someone's chosen gender. Code-of-conducts across an enormous number of projects, conferences, and other institutions, now ban "misgendering" someone. Mandatory denial of reality across many institutions of society is an enormous concrete change.
School systems encouraging this kind of trans-affirmation or whatever you want to call it isn't so much a symptom of woke ideology as it is of administrators who are spineless when it comes to discipline. I hear it from high school teachers and parents in several districts that administrators are loathe to discipline all but the most troublesome students, because the parents all think their own kids are angels and can't be inconvenienced by after-school detentions or suspension. The teachers are basically told to stand down; they can send the kid to the principal, but he just comes back without punishment. The result is that bullying is rampant, and the bullied kids end up going trans because it at least gives them leverage over the teacher that they didn't have before. And this isn't happening in highly-rated PMC school districts in the suburbs; it may be happening in urban areas, but the stories I'm hearing come from rural parts of the rust belt where the parents in question aren't voting for Kamala Harris.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
You can talk about dubious IQ studies you read about in online articles all you want. As someone who has had to deal with them professionally for over 20 years at this point, everyone in West Virginia is fucking retarded. Okay, not everyone, but a high enough proportion that in order to accomplish anything you have to start from that assumption or else you're bound to be incredibly frustrated. My first encounter with this was when I was in college, and got a summer job delivering ice to convenience stores and the like. We were based out of Pittsburgh, but the college kids all got the shitty routes, drivine to far-flung rural areas and the 'hood. There was one week when they put me on service duty, which basically consisted of me taking a minivan around to our sites with an air compressor and blowing dust out of the mechanicals of the boxes and cleaning them up a bit. To avoid any confusion of why a guy in an ice uniform was there poking around the box and not delivering ice, I'd stop inside to tell the clerk what I was doing.
I started with the urban routes and worked my way outward. I never had any difficulty explaining that I was just there to clean the box out to anyone of any ethnicity. Some people would tell me they were low and ask if a delivery was forthcoming or if I could call someone to come out (I don't know and no), but no one was ever confused by my presence. Then, at the end of the week, I hit West Virginia.
"Just so you know, I'm not delivering any ice today. I'm just going to clean the box out with compressed air and make sure everything is working okay."
"Heh?"
"I'm not delivering ice, just cleaning the box."
"Heh?"
(repeat ad nauseum)
I understand that convenience store clerk isn't the most intellectually demanding position and that some places will hire people of limited cognitive capacity to do this work; if it happened once or twice I wouldn't have thought much of it. But it happened at every place I went to in West Virginia. One guy was confused why I was there because he'd already gotten a delivery earlier that day. It got to the point where I stopped telling anyone what I was doing because they were too dim to understand. Then I crossed the river into Ohio and went in as an experiment and everything was suddenly normal again.
After becoming a lawyer, I was told that if I got licensed in West Virginia it would increase my prospects, so I did. I assumed this was because, since Pittsburgh is close to West Virginia, companies in Northern WV or the Panhandle would use Pittsburgh firms. I soon came to realize that all West Virginia companies of a certain size, or foreign companies operating in the state, use Pittsburgh firms for their WV work. When these companies are sued it's common for hearings and the like to be held in Morgantown or Wheeling so the lawyers don't have to drive to Charleston or wherever. During the oil and gas boom most of the legal work was given to Pittsburgh firms. Even ones that opened satellite offices in West Virginia were almost exclusively staffed by people originally from Pittsburgh, excepting maybe one or two locals (usually higher-ups who got sick of having to drive to Pittsburgh).
Now that I have to depose a lot of people from West Virginia, but none of them know anything. I mean anything. Trying to get basic personal information is like pulling teeth. They remember their name, dob, address, wife's name, and maybe their kid's names and ages, if you're lucky. They'll know that their parents are dead, but won't be able to tell you when they died. And I mean that; it's pretty common that they can't even narrow it down to the decade. One guy said he thought his father died in the 1980s; I pulled the obituary and he died in 2016. "Well, I know it was a while ago" was his response. One guy was on disability but he didn't know what for. West Virginia judges are more or less forced to have lax evidentiary standards for the simple reason that if they didn't, no one could provide enough evidence to maintain any kind of lawsuit. I struggle to describe it properly, because it's literally ineffable how utterly moronic these people are compared to those of similar socioeconomic standing in Pennsylvania.
jake
1mo ago
Let's look at that Pew poll.
Overwhelmingly support deportation, overwhelmingly oppose "maintaining a diverse immigrant population," majority oppose "illegals gaining citizenship by marrying Americans," basically split on refugees, slight support for "filling labor shortages," supporting international students staying, and mostly supporting more "high skilled immigrants."
They support these things in the plain text, though that's not what's meant by the poll-makers. Let's update the poll to address the literacy issue on the topic by asking honest questions.
"Should we let literally anyone into this country who claims to be a refugee?"
I wonder how that one would do, because that's pretty much our current policy for people trying to get into this country except, just an example, white South Africans.
"Should we allow immigrants to fill labor shortages, even where 'labor shortages' include 'Indian hiring managers who will only hire other Indians' and 'employers who don't want to pay American citizens a living wage'?"
Something tells me that won't do so hot.
"Should universities be allowed to admit international students with worse applications than the American citizens whose spots they took? Should those students be allowed to then stay in the country?"
Might be a bit suspect.
"Admitting more high-skilled immigrants, and by 'high-skilled' we mean literally any foreigner with the equivalent of a bachelor's degree."
Probably a "let's not."
You take a poll question as indicative because for whatever reason you want or need it to be, but these are each a pinnacle motte and bailey. What a conservative thinks by "legal immigration" is not in any measure what the left has actually pursued, in America and in Europe. They are open to the idea of an easing of the rigorous legal process that culminates in naturalization because they still have the idealistic and decades-exploited view, but the essence of their opposition that can be seen through their view of mass illegal presence in this country would be applied exactly if informed on what people like the writers of this poll mean when they say "legal immigration." Because what the left means when they say that, after the examples above, includes but is by no means limited to something so bereft of effort as a rubber stamp on 20,000 Haitians dropped in Ohio or a group of young male "refugees" crossing the Mediterranean on an NGO-provided boat. (Both examples of the majority-opposed.)
They're "legal." Uh great, they think, so "legal" doesn't mean anything.
SSCReader
1mo ago
Not really centuries though. If you are segregated you aren't going to assimilate into the culture you are segregated from.
"Restrictive covenants blocked black entry into many neighborhoods. Schools were openly segregated. Shopkeepers and theaters displayed “whites only” signs. Sugrue writes, “Even celebrities such as Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Dorothy Dandridge and Marian Anderson had a hard time finding rooms and faced Jim Crow in restaurants when they toured the North.”"
"In 1964, he tried to open public construction sites to black workers by suing New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and New York City Mayor Robert Wagner, charging they were turning an unconstitutional blind eye on craft union discrimination. New York’s highest court, however, was unimpressed, ruling 7-0. But three years later, our office won a similar case in a federal trial court against Ohio’s Gov. James Rhodes."
Even now many northern cities are de facto segregated, even if it does not have any legal backing. You can only assimilate into a culture if you are spending time in that culture (and that culture is willing to spend time with you). As mentioned by other's Italian-American culture only began to assimilate as other groups shared space with them.
African-American culture is the result of assimilation, it just wasn't assimilation into the broader American culture, but one picking up what little came across from Africa, plus from the poor borderers and the like they were surrounded by. It certainly isn't much like actual African cultures (hence why you get clashes between newer African immigrants and ADOS).
So now to assimilate them, you would have to have them exposed on a daily basis in and around the culture you want them to take on, and undo the previous behaviors that have been internalized. But that does have costs to the broader culture and there will be frictions due to historical racial grievances. Or to put it another way, very few people progressive or otherwise want black kids bussed into their schools, for quite understandable reasons in many cases. So we're stuck.
My wife is black and when I got to family events, I am usually the only white person there, or perhaps one other at most. When I stayed at her mother's house I might see one or two other white people within a couple of blocks. You can't assimilate to a culture you barely experience.
ADOS had a very different path to where they are now than any voluntary group of immigrants. So we shouldn't expect them to integrate in the same way.
erwgv3g34
1mo ago
From "Mormonism: The Control Group For Christianity?" by Scott Alexander:
One common apologetics tactic is the argument from the historicity of Christ and the Apostles. That is, the Apostles said they saw the Resurrection of Christ, and it would take quite a conspiracy to make twelve different people lie - not to mention to make them stick to the lie even after Christianity became unpopular and it became clear they would be persecuted or even die for their faith. If the Apostles had been making the story of the Resurrection up, there were ample opportunities for them to say so. Yet either they never did, or it never made it into the tradition.
...
One way to knock down this argument is to find a case of twelve people who said they saw something miraculous, didn't recant despite persecution and strong self-interested reasons to do so - and yet everyone, atheist and orthodox Christian alike, agree they were wrong. Ever since I left Utah I've been slowly making my way through The Mormon People, and I was very excited to find a case of exactly that.
If you're not familiar with Mormonism, it was founded in the 1820s by an American prophet named Joseph Smith, who claimed that an angel led him to a series of golden tablets written in hieroglyphics which, when translated by means of a magic stone, contained various revelations. He attracted various followers despite persecution and today there are over ten million Mormons who believe the insights he took from these tablets and various other angelic encounters form a new testament of the Bible called The Book of Mormon.
During Smith's lifetime, there was obviously a lot of curiosity over whether his story about angels and golden tablets and hieroglyphics was true. This was compounded by his insistence that he had given the golden tablets back to the angel when he was done translating them and so couldn't produce the originals for scholarly review anymore.
However, Smith was able to produce eleven witnesses (besides himself, for a total of twelve) for his story. Three witnesses claimed to have seen the angel holding the plates and heard the Voice of God tell them Smith's story was true... Eight others saw the plates later, and although they did not encounter God or any angels, they confirmed that there were a set of mysterious golden tablets with hieroglyphics on them... All eleven signed official legal statements swearing their testimony, which were later incorporated into printed editions of the Book of Mormon.
What are we to make of this?
One obvious possibility is that Smith made some fake tablets and showed them off to few enough people for a brief enough time that the fake couldn't be investigated closely. I don't like this explanation for two reasons. The first is that it would be really hard for a dirt-poor farmer to construct a book seemingly constructed of gold tablets inscribed with hieroglyphics. He would need the cooperation of a couple of professionals, and he would have to rely on them keeping quiet. Even moving the tablets - they were said to have weighed several hundred pounds - would have been a production. No goldsmith or wealthy backer has ever come forward claiming a part in it, nor have any likely candidates been proposed. And second of all, this is less parsimonious than most alternative hypotheses. It would require Smith to be pushing two totally different plots at the same time - whatever plot got the first group to testify to angels and divine voices, and the plot to fake a golden book for the second group.
A second possibility is that Smith found a bunch of people who were willing to lie for him. But this suffers from the same problem that the "the Apostles lied" theory does. Several of the witnesses later had very public fallings-out with Joseph Smith and the incipient Mormon Church. Oliver Cowdery, one of the three who saw the angel, got into a fight with Joseph Smith over polygamy and some money matters and got excommunicated from Mormonism. He ended up moving to Ohio, becoming a Methodist, and declaring that he was "ashamed of his connection with Mormonism". However, he always stuck to his story about seeing the angel and the Golden Plates, even when, according to Wikipedia, "that confession cost him the editorship of a newspaper".
David Whitmer, another of the three witnesses to the angel, also got in a spat with Joseph Smith and was part of a coup attempt in the Mormon church to expel Joseph Smith as leader and replace him with himself. Smith excommunicated him and then sent a militia to harass him and his family; eventually he was forced to leave the state. Although he denounced Smith for the rest of his life, he continued to swear that he had seen the angel and the golden plates.
Further, the Mormons were getting persecuted ad nauseum by this point. On three different occasions, Mormon towns were burnt, the Mormons lost their land, and a bunch of Mormons were killed or jailed. Joseph Smith himself was killed by an angry mob. Eventually the Mormons got so sick and afraid that they all packed up and fled to Utah, which as anyone who's seen Utah knows requires a special level of desperation.
This presents a serious problem for the Christian apologists, at least if they're not Mormon. Their argument is that there's no way twelve people would simultaneously hallucinate a mystical experience, and although twelve people might agree to lie about the mystical experience there's no way they would all keep that lie throughout decades of church politics and terrible persecution. But now they're faced with a dilemma. Either they have to throw out the argument that a dozen people testifying to something and holding to it means it definitely happened, or they all have to convert to Mormonism.
So what did happen with all those witnesses to Mormonism? Well, there are a few helpful hints. All of them were strongly predisposed in Smith's favor to begin with. Some were his family members. All had a background in the sort of folk mysticism that was common in America at the time.
(notice none of this differentiates it from the Jesus case; those who saw the resurrected Jesus were his disciples, some were members of his family such as his brother James, and they were all steeped in the folk mysticism that was common in Palestine at the time. But I digress)
A number of the Mormon witnesses sort of change their stories in weird ways. One, Martin Harris, supposedly admitted later he saw the plate not with his earthly eyes but with his "eyes of faith", and a neighbor said he "never claimed to have seen the plates with his natural eyes, only spiritual vision". Then Harris totally denied ever saying this and said they were definitely literally real in every possible way. Another witness is supposedly on the record as saying the angel had "no form or shape" and was more of a "vague impression", although again he's also on the much more official record as totally denying this and saying it was all definitely really real. Apparently in contradiction to these, there is a record of one witness insisting he hefted the (quite heavy) plates and held them on his knees and felt the weight and so on.
The Jesus story also has some weird incongruities. In many cases, the disciples originally thought they were talking to someone else (a gardener, a traveler on the road), and later "realize" it is Jesus. Jesus tells Mary not to touch him, suggesting some kind of belief he might be a vision or apparition, but then Thomas very specifically does touch him, suggesting an attempt to dispel this belief. Although the Christ story admittedly does not have the sort of guarded-then-retracted attempts by the witnesses to say maybe it was really spiritual after all, we also have only about a thousandth as much material in the Jesus case as in the Joseph Smith case, and we totally lack any independent testimony from the Apostles involved let alone any evidence that they were ever questioned harshly by skeptics or had things they mentioned to their neighbors come back to haunt them.
Overall I think the Mormon experience proves (if you're not Mormon!) that the sort of psychological forces surrounding mystical experiences can be more complicated than we naively expect. We wouldn't expect twelve witnesses to swear up and down that they saw angels and magical golden plates and so on, and then stick to the story despite a host of opportunities to profit by denying it - and yet if we are to continue denying Mormonism we must admit exactly that. And coming to that conclusion should make us update our probabilities in the case of the Apostles as well.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I think it's the portal more than NIL, at least for teams that don't have a ton of money available. You figure every 17 year-old kid who's being heavily recruited thinks he can just walk into Ohio State or LSU or Clemson and prove that he's worthy of being in the starting lineup and on the fast track to the NFL, and the recruiters do little to disabuse them of this notion ("Well, it's competitive but if you work hard..."). Instead, they find themselves buried on the depth chart behind two other guys, and when they think they'll get a chance at a promotion some other guy comes in to take their place. They only get playing time during blowouts, and the coaches aren't paying them much attention. Then they put their name in the portal and Iowa State or Georgia Tech or whoever comes calling and now they're suddenly in demand at a school that's not as big but big enough to get them national exposure if they're good. Or they're tearing it up at Kent State and have a chance of moving up in the world by transferring to Purdue. Schools that can't recruit as well can still compete by getting the big schools' castoffs and the small schools' surprises.
As NIL and soon, direct payments, become involved, I think this calculus changes. Pitt already saw Jordan Addison leave because USC simply offered him more money than any Pitt booster could match, especially in the early days of NIL payments. I was listening to a discussion on the radio yesterday about how colleges shouldn't even waste money on recruiting when you can just buy a team or get it through the transfer portal. The argument was that you can talk about the history and facilities and campus environment all you want, but they're always going to go to the school that can write the largest check. And if you can't afford to write that check, then sit back and wait for the inevitable transfer.
One thing I would add to my above comment is that while the article points out that the ruling isn't final, in reality I wouldn't expect the court to reverse it. One of the requirements for obtaining a preliminary injunction is demonstrating a high probability of success on the merits, and while the arguments probably weren't briefed as fully as the will be later, an appellate court granting an injunction is a strong indication on which way they're moving. This is in line with the general trend that has seen courts striking down any restrictions relating to NIL payment. One article I read suggested that the NCAA needed to settle all of the lawsuits before they were made completely powerless, but this only delays the inevitable. In a sport where there's no collective bargaining and athletes cycle through every few years, any settlement is only going to apply to a limited number of people.
There are some proposals out there by academic types who claim that the problem would be solved if only courts would rule that student athletes were employees, or if the NLRB would institute rules allowing them to collectively bargain. This is a pipe dream. First, the NLRB can make all the rules it wants, but there's currently no incentive for the student athletes to collectively bargain. Even if we limit the unions to single sports, we're talking about thousands of athletes, none of whom are staying more than a few years, so organization is a problem straight away. Classification as employees doesn't solve this problem but creates more, in that now they have to be paid minimum wage (which wouldn't be that expensive under the current system) and abide by all the other HR bullshit that workplaces have to abide by. Getting back to the incentive problem, though, even if you could bargain, why would you? Collective bargaining units are usually formed when employees have grievances with their employers that can only be addressed by power in numbers. What grievances do student athletes have? There were student athletes in the Northwestern case who wanted to form a union, but that was before the NIL ruling. We're in a situation now where athletes can sell their services to the highest bidder on an annual basis, and courts are hesitant to uphold any restrictions. When commentators say that the mess can be solved by collective bargaining, what they really mean is that it would be easier for the schools to impose restrictions if there were a union to negotiate with. But who is going to form a union for the purpose of allowing the boss to implement more restrictions?
The only way I can see this ever being addressed is if the NCAA were to eliminate the student athlete protections from its bylaws. The courts seem intent on eliminating anything else that isn't related to scheduling or rules or officials, so what do they have to lose? The first thing I would drop is the limits on practice time for football and basketball. They're currently limited to 20 hours per week in season and 8 in the offseason, but if they're getting paid like employees they can work like employees. Schools that want to win will start implementing more intense practice schedules, and the athletes won't be able to do anything about it. If they flunk all their classes, well, that's a fringe benefit; if you're here to get an education, you can pay tuition. Stop coddling them with tutors and lounges and multi-million dollar locker rooms (seriously, the difference between Pitt's locker room and the Steelers locker room in the same building is astounding).
Teams that were serious about winning would accordingly practice more, and with the money involved, some would want their teams at the practice facility the 10–12 hours per day that NFL teams expect. There will obviously be some kids who are dead serious about their careers and will want to spend as much time on the game as possible. But few 18-year-olds with no shot at the NFL want that kind of commitment, especially if they're still ostensibly there to get an education. Taking online classes in a cubicle adjacent to the locker room in between workouts probably wasn't what they had in mind. Not having a social life during the season because you have to get up at 6 am for practice every day except Sunday and Friday probably wasn't what they had in mind. The schedule of the average NFL player doesn't have much appeal to someone who isn't playing football for a living. But any program that adopts such practices will probably have an advantage, and in a market where more wins equals more money, few schools will be content to be left behind.
One possible counterargument to this theory is that some schools will adopt less demanding schedules and use that as a selling point to recruits. But I don't see it happening that way. Such a school would attract lazy players, and, combined with the built-in lesser amount of practice, would make it hard for these school to be competitive with the tougher ones. With so many schools looking for a piece of the pie, and so many roster spots to fill on college teams, it's now a race to the bottom to see who can work the kids to the point of diminishing returns. At this point, the only way out for the athletes is to make concessions about payments and transfer rules, and you need a bargaining unit for that. I doubt this would actually happen, but it's the only way I see collective bargaining entering college football.
Pitt19802
1mo ago
Bit of googling came up with this article about athletes and online classes - https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2019/12/23/online-classes-keep-football-players-out-of-academic-fray/40878105/
"Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow is a hero on LSU's Baton Rouge campus, but he hasn't seen much of it because he took graduate courses online. Justin Fields rarely has to step inside an Ohio State classroom building because he also does most of his school work online to accommodate his grueling football schedule.
...
Of the 46 Power Five conference schools that responded to an AP survey, 27 have no limits on how many online courses athletes may take. A dozen others have few online course offerings or limit how many athletes may take. Just six have no online offerings or prohibit athletes from taking them, including private schools Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Southern California, Texas Christian and Notre Dame. Michigan is the only public school among the Power Five conferences that doesn't offer online learning."
(Article is pre-Covid)
I suspect they still spend a lot of time with the academic support tutors, especially the younger athletes.
So, when we are trying to decide who the liars are, it seems likely that Trump and Vance were speaking closer to the truth, even if the specifics were off, than everyone else screaming "THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE!
I think this is an underappreciated point, and I suspect it even reflects a psychological difference between the right and left wing's approach to empiricism.
I'll even 'steelman' Pizzagate, for that matter.
We've seen plenty of credible reports and even some actual convictions showing that Politicians do in fact get up to all kinds of sexual deviancy, up to and including in the halls of congress.
And now we're seeing the various dominoes falling with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell (remember they found her hanging out in New Hampshire surrounded by armed guards?), Diddy, and Jay-Z, and we can be all but certain there's celebs and politicians caught up in all this. The biggest hit song of the summer was by Kendrick Lamar accusing one of the most popular musical artists alive right now of being a pedophile.
Pizzagate gets the specifics wrong (there's probably no child dungeon underneath a pizza restaurant) but is still getting at the 'shape' of the truth. And if they kept fumbling around in a very misguided attempt to uncover these truths, they'd probably grab hold of the actual conspiracies eventually, and bring some heinous stuff to light.
Whereas the lefty impulse seems to be to reject the existence of a given conspiracy simply because some aspect of it is debunked or proven false. "Haha silly Qanon thinks there's a Pedo ring operating out of a Pizza shop, how stupid to believe that politicians would be hiding an organized child sex operation." And thus they don't have to follow that thought any further and can return to blissful ignorance, which would allow whatever hidden activities are occurring to continue along.
This was especially blatant with the Hunter Biden laptop stuff. Its utterly obvious the Biden family is covering up some serious stuff, and the more recent pardons are almost tacit admissions of such, but the liberals have their head jammed so deep in the sand that they denied Biden's senility, let alone his potential corruption, for so long it may have just cost them control of government.
Likewise, maybe there are at best isolated incidents of Haitian immigrants taking animals they find outdoors and cooking them up in Ohio. But the larger point that they're causing, e.g. increased traffic accidents and increased burden on social services and possibly crowding out the locals for employment is likely more true than not.
it seems obvious that Haitians really do eat dogs and cats in Haiti (Those links are SFL, but there ARE videos out there if you wish to be convinced further), so the larger point the righties are making is getting at the shape of the truth.
The lefties, of course, will use the debunking of individual incidents to claim that Haitian immigrants are causing no issues whatsoever and we should be inviting more of them in.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
You know, a fascinating post-script to the whole "Haitian are ruining Springfield Ohio" claim...
Yes, what started off with salacious stories about immigrants eating pets morphed into more defensible claims about mass migration overrunning local institutions and destroying the quality of life for residents who've been attached to the area for generations.
Yes, many local political leaders came out, even Republican political leaders, to denounce the claims that Haitians are eating pets.
Springfield Ohio also flipped red in the election in a major way.. Biggest Republican margin in 40 years, and that's only because the records only go back to 1984 when Reagan won 49/50 states, and Trump had a bigger margin than that in Clark County.
So, when we are trying to decide who the liars are, it seems likely that Trump and Vance were speaking closer to the truth, even if the specifics were off, than everyone else screaming "THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE HERE! Actually everyone loves that one out of every three people in their town is now a 70 IQ third worlder on welfare!"
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
Captain Planet was never particularly subtle about being political agitprop for kids: I think I understood that even at the time, and I'm not even one opposed to rational environmental protection laws. I think this to some extent merits the Ohio meme: "Wait, all kids shows have some element of propaganda to them?" "Always has been."
I remember my parents looking down at Power Rangers because it was kinda violent (dunno, haven't watched much because of that, although kids really do act out scenes from TV shows and such). And The Simpsons because the humor was often lowbrow, which I have more complex thoughts about.
Although I would highly recommend Bluey if you're looking for something modern.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
2mo ago
I mean, I'm not going to have a kneejerk egalitarian response and discard your proposal wholesale. But if we're going to have a widespread public university system, then I don't see why we would intentionally handicap all but a few of those institutions. If Ohio State has a right to exist at all, then I don't see why it shouldn't have English and philosophy faculty as well, all else being equal.
On a personal level, there are also certain academics scattered around random state schools whose work I greatly enjoy and follow closely, so I have a personal interest in perpetuating the current system roughly as it exists now.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2mo ago
But then it turns out they apply a wholly different standard when discrimination against white people is involved (linked in a top level post) and your steelman collapses into a pile of rust.
desolation
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
2mo ago
Are there still Advisory Opinions listeners around here? Overall I enjoy the podcast, despite David French being... David French. If I never hear "Brahimi" again it will be too soon. Just say the two cases instead of wasting 10x as long talking about the other David coining the portmanteau! Moving on-
Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services has come up on the pod, and will be heard in the upcoming SCOTUS term. This concerns a circuit split on the matter of proving discrimination, in this case in employment, where a "member of the majority" is held to a (considerably, IMO) higher standard to display discrimination. I continue to be baffled by the judge who wrote the opinion. It has gotten a little airtime, especially since the Sixth Circuit was French's stomping grounds, and one assumes it will get a lot more after oral argument and the decision next year. Interesting case, Motte-fodder, looking forward to the decision. I will be pleasantly surprised if it's 7-2, unsurprised 6-3, 5-4 irritating but also not too surprising; unless it gets wiggled out or mooted on a technicality instead of a substantive decision in which case just irritated.
In the most recent episode they spent a few minutes, much less than they've spent about engagement ring law, on B. W. versus Austin Independent School District. If you're having a good day, do not read this case. If you are easily outraged, do not read this case (that was my mistake). If you are a court nerd who wants to see how the Fifth Circuit decides what constitutes harassment, want to look at 9 judges for each side who are likely to be on shortlists for the Supes (Ho and Oldham already are for the right, they're in the dissent here, and Ho makes a showing with his own flashy dissent, even citing Ames), and can read absurdity without sparking an aneurism, go ahead. I am tempted to suggest skipping the standing decision entirely and starting on page 6 for the dissent, but that is an incomplete picture even if the standing decision says so little.
The TL;DR is- a student was bullied over the course of years, and the case basically asks two questions. One, does racial animus as an expression of political animus become, more or less, acceptable because political affiliation is not a protected class? Two, as the only prong of Title VI harassment contested by the AISD, does this meet the standard of harassment pervasive enough to "deprive the victim of access to education opportunities or benefits provided by the school"? The answer to the first seems to be yes and the second no, though I confess my charity burned to a crisp about three sentences into the standing decision so it may be a less than perfect summary.
David and Sarah believe SCOTUS will not take up this case, because of the question of political animus overlapping with racial. How unfortunate, as that is the interesting part to me. This generates quite a loophole in harassment law, even more so than the Ames differing standards of evidence. If you can smuggle protected-class-harassment in under another excuse, what's the point of the distinction?
They also bring up the two gender tshirt case and predict that when one of these cases does make it to SCOTUS, the result will be a lot more school uniforms and stricter dress codes. Like Hamtramck, I consider this superior to the alternative though worse than ideal: uniforms are a nice solution to "your rules applied fairly" where applicable.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2mo ago
If, as the right (persuasively) argues, it is racist towards Anglos / French / Germans to flood these countries with migrants, ending their former status as (de facto) ethnostates, then opposition to Israel as a Jewish state is likewise antisemitic.
This is funny to me because I usually approach the thought experiment here from the other side: If, as the left (IMO not completely persuasively) argues, that it is The Right Thing (tm) for the residents of Springfield, Ohio to accept a bunch of Haitian refugees seeking asylum granted by a far-off government and to think otherwise is obvious bigotry, then why can't we tar Palestinians who reject living next to Jewish refugees (who were in 1948 fleeing far greater persecution than Haitians in 2024) granted part of the land by a far-off government (the UN in New York) similarly? Surely only an antisemite doesn't appreciate whatever the Israeli equivalent of a taco truck is!
Of course, in the real world these things are more nuanced, and I don't really find either case completely compelling: there are legitimate arguments against poorly-controlled immigration, but IMO far fewer in favor of violent ethnic cleansing campaigns against immigrants. Although the parallel between Hamas and the Klan as anti-immigrant militias seems at least interesting to consider.
SlowBoy
3mo ago
The polls did better this time than 2016 and 2020. At least, in general.
The controversy about polls starts in 2016. I think this is worth emphasizing, because there are still arguments floating around that the polls in 2016 were fine. And thus every subsequent argument about polls is really a proxy war over 2016. Because 8 years later we're still talking about Trump, we're still discussing how the polls over- or under-estimate Trump. We're still discussing how the polls do or don't measure white rural voters.
In 2016 the polls were entirely wrong. For months they predicted Hillary winning by a large margin blowout, sometimes by 10+ points. (I remember sitting in class listening to a friend excitedly gossip about Texas flipping blue.) Toward election day itself, the polls converged, but still comfortably for Hillary. And when Trump won, and the argument came around that the results were technically within the margin of error -- it missed entirely that whole states were modeled vastly incorrectly. The blue wall states of Pennsylvania Wisconsin and Michigan were not supposed to have gone red. Florida was supposed to have been close. States that had once been swing states were not even close. (To. me, this was the smoking gun that Trump had a real chance in 2016: Iowa and Ohio were solidly predicted for Trump from the very beginning, and no one offered any introspection on what that implied as a general swing.)
2020 was not much better. Without getting into claims about fraud and states: Biden was also supposed to win by larger margins than many states in fact showed. There were still lots of specific misses (like Florida redding hard). And again a series of justifications that polling did just fine because, technically, everything was inside some margin of error.
2024 is actually much better. AtlasIntel and Polymarket both broadly predicted exactly what happened. Rasmussen was fairly accurate (after taking a break in 2020 if I remember correctly). There's also a lot of slop. Selzer's reputation is destroyed (actually people may forget all about it by 2028). The RCP national average was off by a few points. Ipsos and NPR and Morning Consult and the Times were all wrong. Well, maybe that's not much better than 2020 -- but mixed in with all the bad data were predictors who got everything exactly right.
So Nate Silver's problem is that his method is junk. He takes some averages and models them out. The problem is that a lot of the data he relies on is bad. A lot of the polling industry is still wrong. And unless Silver is willing to stake a lot of expertise on highly specific questions about counties and polls, he can't offer all that much insight.
nomenym
3mo ago
But why should we expect to find any proof? The nature of the act tends to leave little evidence, and that evidence is likely not on public display and is probably circumstantial and inconclusive. The people who are in the best position to find any evidence also have very little incentive to do so. Besides, I also believe Haitian immigrants in Ohio are continuing to practice other culinary traditions and habits they have brought with them, but I also have no proof they are not subsisting entirely on Big Macs. So there's that.
Blueberry
3mo ago
Just hearing this month old banger:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3BrCvZmSnKA
Was there now proof that they were eating the pets of people that live in Ohio?
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Sherrod Brown got the boot here in Ohio, after 21 years in Congress. Obama won Ohio both times, and the state has almost always had one Republican and one Democratic Senator; now all statewide elected officials are Republican. Not a bellwether anymore, I don't guess. I don't know how interesting that really is, but I'm always fascinated by how states flip over time. When I was a kid, it was utterly unimaginable that North Carolina or Georgia could ever be play for the Dems; in future years, they probably will be blue from time to time.
Who is spending money on winning California or New York? Republicans haven't broken 40% in 20 years in California, and except for the last election, ny is the same.
In fact the classic criticism of the electoral college is that if you live in CA or NY then your vote doesn't matter. The ad spending bears this out. And this isn't a new trend - twenty years ago candidates were also focusing little on California and New York and way way more on Ohio.
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