naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
2d ago
They appear to becoming more like performance art with time, which is likely the product of a growing audience.
This is absolutely my impression also.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2d ago
Buddhist or Shinto or something - I don't know, and I assume the creators of the ad didn't know either
I would assume Jainism! They sweep the ground in front of themselves as they walk, and wear facemasks to avoid inhaling bugs. You beat me to it by about 15 minutes.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2d ago
Adelstein ("Bentham's Bulldog") is a gifted philosophy grad student (I think--he was last year identified as a second year philosophy student in a well-regarded program). It's very impressive that he has multiple publications in top journals as a student. But his particular gift seems to be finding implausible positions and developing intuition pumps for them while neatly evading all the reasons why they are, even so, implausible. This is a good way to garner notoriety in the field. It is, not coincidentally, how Peter Singer really got famous. It is arguably why Jeremy Bentham is famous.
But I have to say that it is always disappointing to me when philosophers optimize for notoriety over the love of wisdom.
I think that all utilitarianism is mistaken, of course, because I am a contractualist who rejects aggregation. But Adelstein's take on veganism strikes me as aggressively, surely willfully obtuse--my priors are that it is more likely Adelstein is engaged in a kind of extended performance art, driven by the attention and notoriety he is accumulating, than that he is doing serious philosophy about the way the world really is. These are luxury beliefs par excellence--and maybe also anxieties of the sort that make people mentally ill. I guess I might be more willing to believe Adelstein was serious if I saw him walking around everywhere with a broom and facemask--and if he does, he's still wrong, but at least he's not performatively wrong.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7d ago
I've seen firsthand that the "trad" lifestyle does not always work out.
I'm always a little arrested by this observation, particularly when it is offered as if in refutation of something. Have you seen a lifestyle that does always work out? If not, then surely this is no objection at all!
The grass is always greener on the other side; as always, the trick is finding the reasonable middle ground.
It seems rather to me that the trick is accepting that whatever your problems are, they are your problems, not someone else's--and are substantially the result of your own actions. Whether your own actions are, in turn, the result of some biological or cultural impetus, is a purely academic question. You can't just opt to take the good parts of trad life while never facing any possible negative results.
(Alain de Botton's Atheism 2.0 TED talk is a benighted classic for this very reason; he thinks we should find a way to incorporate all the good bits of religion into our lives, while keeping all the ridiculous nonsense at bay. It's not a terrible thought, but not only has that not worked out, I would argue that Wokism accomplished exactly the opposite--incorporating some of the worst ridiculousness of religion, without bringing along any of the tangible benefits.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
15d ago
Why would I have a problem with it?
I don't know, because you aren't speaking plainly.
I am a pronatalist, eugenics-supporting, 4chan-brained guy with "Alt" in my flair.
That doesn't have any particular bearing on why you were moderated, which is that you were not speaking plainly, and appeared to be weakmanning.
I am you, the difference is I can see Winters for what she is rather than what I want her to be.
You're certainly not me, and before your post I had never heard of Winters. It's still not clear to me why I should care who she is at all, or why you care who she is at all. Because you have yet to speak plainly.
The story featured a woman in a Right-wing space assumed by its denizens to be liberal, who by the end realized she wasn't.
This does not appear to have any particular bearing on my moderation of the post.
Almost as if there's an analogy there.
Speak plainly.
naraburns
nihil supernum
15d ago
At eight user reports (seven of them negative) and meta-moderation landing on "bad" (but with low confidence), I feel obligated to actually say something about this post. Unfortunately, that meant I had to read the post, which I was unable to power through last night, I simply did not have the stamina for it.
While I appreciate the apparent effort that went into this post, I think it ultimately fails both "speak plainly" and "do not weakman." If you wanted to criticize Winters, specifically, or fisk the interview, that would be fine. But removing quotes from their original context to insert into a work of parody (or is it satire?) doesn't really meet the appropriate threshold, especially when your apparent intention is to smear "“BASED” subculture," which does not sound like an appropriately specific group.
I am getting the idea that you are very interested in criticizing (or mocking) certain very broad groups of people, most particularly anyone who is to your political right. I understand that is what most social media is used to do today. However, that is not really the purpose of this space. If you have a problem with the idea that some women think acting the part of a "girl boss" is stupid and exhausting, ideally you should talk about that idea, or charitably engage with the ideas of some specific person who said it. If you think that person is stupid or misguided, you can say that, provided you can explain why beyond just the fact of your disagreement. If there is some specific group that teaches the idea to which you object, you can complain about that, too!
The fact that 38% of liberal women aged 18-29 identify as LGBT is interesting and specific and warrants more than a throwaway line. The claim that "we shouldn't vaccinate children" is open to all kinds of thoughtful criticism. You have plenty of material here to plainly state your own views, and to criticize (with evidence!) the views of some specific people with whom you disagree.
But nakedly asserting that "'BASED' subculture is not Khan, it's Winters" doesn't get you anywhere. At best, you're just trying to shame people away from certain ideological influences, instead of persuading them. You've got the right level of effort! You just need to lose the disdain.
naraburns
nihil supernum
15d ago
If you read Tribe's comments in context it's clear that he's referring to her having a certain arrogance where she thinks she'll be able to persuade conservatives where she's more likely to put them off.
This does not seem clear to me at all.
In any event, Tribe later said that he was proven wrong.
He's a partisan. I trust his unguarded opinion about someone whose status was in the moment unimportant to his tribe, above anything he said later in public when he was likely to be speaking more to save face or engage in "yay ingroup." I'm applying something like a Bayesian version of the "statements against interest" rule, I guess.
As for Jackson, she didn't ask that question,
Sorry--looks like I dropped a word ("was") from that sentence, mea culpa. You are correct; she was asked "what is a woman" and her answer was "I'm not a biologist," which is a stupid answer even assuming she is a hardened partisan. Someone who believes "woman" means what trans advocates want it to mean ("a person who identifies as a woman"), should have answered in a way that would not imply that the answer was grounded in biology at all. Her answer wasn't just a pointless dodge, it was a bad dodge. If you think it would be more charitable to characterize her answer as a lie than as stupidity, like... okay? But that's not actually clear to me. (I also disagree that the question was a "gotcha." It's not a "gotcha" to ask someone a question that requires them to either admit to the force of biological reality, or speak lies and prevarications in service of one's ideological paymasters. But that is a different discussion I think.)
Yeah, she gave an idiotic answer, but it was an idiotic question.
Two people can be idiots at the same time!
it comes across as below the standards of this board to imply that someone who has risen to the rank of Supreme Court Justice acts the way they do because of low intellectual capacity
I am opposed (and increasingly opposed every passing year) to the deference shown the judiciary by lawyers, journalists, and the public. Specifically, you are probably familiar with attorneys being disciplined and sanctioned for impugning judicial integrity in court proceedings; I regard that as a blatant violation of the First Amendment. My experience with law practice and legal academia is that there is a prevalent attitude of deference to the judiciary, not only to its supposed impartiality, but to its competence. I think that is both mistaken and a little bit disgusting, especially as the judiciary has become increasingly professionalized. One does not "rise" to the rank of Supreme Court Justice, because these people are not above anyone. Especially when they are explicitly affirmative action selections. Even the brightest SCOTUS justices are approximately comparable to your typical tenured professor in an R1 university (except that university professors do more real, actual work than appellate justices, but again--different discussion). SCOTUS justices just are not that special--and even then, Jackson would not be a SCOTUS justice if she were a white man. Probably she would not even have been admitted to Harvard Law, though we don't know for sure because apparently it's "racist" to ask about her LSAT scores--even though legislatures often demand such information from judicial appointees. (Seriously, have you ever listened to a state legislator who graduated from Fly By Night Law with a 2.1 GPA harangue an appointee over going to State Law with a 160 LSAT? The chutzpah of elected officials really is something else!)
Whenever I see someone people tying themselves in knots trying to explain and/or justify Trump's latest Outrage of the Week, I'm tempted to respond by simply saying that Trump is obviously too stupid to engage in anything approaching coherence and that his supporters, almost without exception, are too stupid to notice that he's incoherent, and that if you want to bemoan the decline of conservatives in academia then maybe it's time to consider that it isn't so much persecution as it is proof that conservative ideas are simply unappealing to anyone with half a brain.
I think it's important to be able to discuss people's intelligence, not just in absolute terms but relative to the intelligence of others. I am not a blank slatist. Apparently you're not the one making them, but I know I have seen posts here discussing Trump's intelligence and mental functioning, and in the past those conversations were also had about Biden. "Trump seems to be showing himself less intelligent than past U.S. Presidents, and here is why..." is an argument I would identify as within bounds, provided the rest of the post were sufficiently backstopped, not needlessly inflammatory, etc.
Now--very importantly--generalizing that to the intellect of "his supporters, almost without exception" or to "conservatives" generally, would be out of bounds. Why? Because of the rule about focusing on specific individuals or groups rather than general ones. Arguing that a person is stupid, and providing evidence for why that is the best explanation of what they said or did (in particular, explaining how you are not using "stupid" as a stand-in for mere disagreement), is a very different thing than characterizing an entire group (especially, an ideological group) as stupid.
despite the fact that I can point to all kinds of evidence supporting the idea that Trump and Trump supporters are generally all morons
I also am of the view that Trump is not very smart (though he does sometimes seem to possess remarkable cunning). You're welcome to say it, when it seems relevant, and I doubt you'll get many reports for doing so (though I couldn't say for sure). Frankly, if you brought real evidence that "Trump supporters are generally all morons" that might be an interesting post! But it would require you to actually bring such evidence, and it would have to be pretty strong to counterbalance the "bring evidence in proportion" rule, and frankly "Trump supporters" are a sufficiently diverse group that you would be on very thin ice. But hey, we've had Jew-obsessed posters manage to get away with quite a lot of bullshit by adhering to the letter of the law; if you wanted to become a raving anti-Semite but with MAGA instead of Jews, that could be novel and interesting. (With apologies to my fellow mods for even suggesting such a thing.) Just notice that most of the raving anti-Semites here do eventually get themselves banned over it. Very few manage to keep the touch sufficiently light.
So when I see it coming from a mod it's disappointing, and when I see it trying to be justified on the grounds that Larry Tribe once said this and "Did you hear what she said to the Senate Judiciary Committee?" it makes me wonder if I should just say "Fuck It" and see what I can get away with.
Those aren't the only grounds, those were just the easiest and most obvious grounds. Other posters have fleshed out other relevant concerns.
Now, having laid all of that out--I could have written that post better. Your concern is valid, and I will try to adjust accordingly. For whatever it is worth, I regarded my mention of the low-IQ wing as a bit of throwaway flavor text expressing my respect for Kagan (despite disagreeing with her). I really do have no respect at all for the intellects of Sotomayor or Jackson, based on many hours of reading and listening to their words, and I think that they are excellent examples of how the "affirmative action" approach to political appointments genuinely harms real institutions. But as that was not the point of my post, I probably should not have included it as a throwaway line, at minimum because it apparently created significant distraction from the actual substance of my post.
you can count on me referring to Alito and Thomas as the "low IW wing" in the future
I... think that's a typo? Maybe? If not, you'll have to tell me what IW is. Assuming you mean IQ--I have seen many people on the Left criticize Thomas as an affirmative action appointment, and maybe that is true; partly I have a less firm opinion of him because he stayed quiet in oral arguments for so many years. But Alito is quite sharp, this just would not be a plausible criticism of him. If you wanted to plausibly identify a "low-IQ wing" on the right it would need to be, like, Kavanaugh and Thomas, and off the top of my head I can't think of any cases where they went in together against the rest of the conservatives.
The far-right (which includes most people on this website)
I'm gonna go one step further than Amadan on this and actually give you a (mild) warning here: bring evidence in proportion with your partisanship, but be particularly careful about how you characterize "this site," as doing so tends to fall into the problem of consensus building.
It has been a while since we had a thorough demographic poll, and "far-right" is probably a moving target, but the mainstream meaning is something like "identitarian right" or "authoritarian right"--white nationalists, especially, though probably not exclusively. I do think there are some white nationalists who post here, but they are a small minority. All the demographic information available to me suggests that the site 's userbase has a "grey tribe" plurality, which is tough to classify but most often shows up in approximately "centrist libertarian" land over on /r/politicalcompassmemes.
It's possible that you have fallen into the same trap that many blue tribe institutions have fallen into, basically using "far-right" as a sloppy shorthand (or outright smear) for literally anything to their right, or even just anything that they don't like. I don't know whether you have used the term purposefully, or incorrectly, or sloppily, which is why you should consider this a mild warning, but in general you're better off just not characterizing the userbase here at all: address individual arguments, then individuals, then specific groups if necessary, then general groups only with extreme care and much evidence. "This site" is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.
Presumably the reason they're low-IQ is because you disagree with their reasoning
I often disagree with Kagan, but she's clearly not an idiot. Sotomayor and Jackson appear to actually be of noticeably below average intelligence within the profession, and certainly among appellate justices. Jackson in particular told us everything we needed to know about her intelligence when she [EDIT: was] asked, "what is a woman?" Tribe's characterization of Sotomayor (linked in this thread) as "not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is" is also widely shared by people who "have access to information that hasn't been made public," as you put it.
To be quite clear: this is not, at all, about substantive disagreement (I also regard Kavanaugh as of sub-par intelligence for a SCOTUS justice). I don't say they're low-IQ to boo-outgroup them; Kagan is definitely my outgroup. Sotomayor and Jackson are dim bulbs. I'm not evaluating their politics, I'm evaluating their apparent intelligence, and I find it noticeably and objectionably lacking.
naraburns
nihil supernum
16d ago
I agree with @gattsuru and @ArjinFerman here. This is not a major victory for the red tribe, or a major loss for the blue. It's probably valuable, politically, for Republican politicians to be able to say to their base both that this is a win for "state's rights" and a win against "the trans agenda." I expect red states to increasingly adopt anti-hormone and anti-puberty-blocker legislation, and blue states to explicitly protect it, and probably we will also start seeing "trans your kids by mail" services not unlike what we have with abortion. So the victory will be mostly symbolic (which may count for something, but may not).
It's worth noting that Kagan, though she agreed on heightened scrutiny, declined to join the Court's low-IQ wing to assert that also the law failed under heightened scrutiny. Once again she shows herself to be, by a wide margin, the most competent jurist on the Court's left wing.
It's also worth noting that this is not quite correct regarding intermediate scrutiny:
laws containing sex-based classifications to intermediate scrutiny
Intermediate scrutiny applies to laws that discriminate on the basis of sex. Merely containing classifications is not sufficient. What's the difference? Well, the minority tries to claim that there's no difference; the law mentions sex, therefore the law is about sex, therefore intermediate scrutiny. But the majority points out that there are many laws obviously dealing with sex, that do not warrant intermediate scrutiny. The most obvious, of course, is any law dealing with pregnancy. Only women (sexually mature human females) can get pregnant. Every law dealing with the classification of "pregnant" contains a sex-based classification. But the discrimination in such laws is grounded in a medical status (pregnancy) rather than in sex. In this case, the discrimination is based on age (the state is denying both minor males and minor females cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers) and medical status.
Incidentally, this is why the late Justice Kennedy's opinion in Obergefell is and has always been such a mess. Laws denying males the right to marry males don't discriminate on the basis of sex because everyone has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. No one was being denied the right to marry on the basis of sex (any gay person could legally marry someone of the opposite sex...), but on the status of not being part of a consenting heterosexual dyad. What the left wanted out of that case was for intermediate (or even strict!) scrutiny to be applied to sexuality, which is obviously a different status than sex. But Kennedy didn't write the opinion that way (he didn't use "scrutiny" analysis at all, instead using history-and-tradition, which is transparently nonsense). Even post-Bostock, sexuality still hasn't been formally adopted by the Supreme Court as a "suspect class."
Despite the utterly bizarre attempt by Biden and Harris to declare the "Equal Rights Amendment" passed (how was he not called an attempted dictator for that?), the fact is that even "heightened scrutiny" on sex is utterly without grounding in the Constitution of the United States. Which brings us back to Skrmetti: a real win for conservatives here would have been a majority declaration that sex and gender are not suspect classifications at all, that sex and gender relevant regulation all belongs in the "rational basis" bin.
Never going to happen, I know. But that's what an unqualified victory would look like, here. This decision ain't it.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
Harris is definitely a "Boomer," culturally, even if it might sometimes be more helpful to call her a "cusper." (One of my students this past year referred to Obama as our first "Gen X President" and I was like... uh... no, but I can understand why you might think that.)
Remember that Harris made her childhood participation in the civil rights movement the centerpiece of her political identity, to the shocking degree of actually endorsing race-based busing not only in the past but also in the present. The civil rights movement was a, maybe the signature Boomer movement. GenX is as close to race-blind as an American generation ever got; Millennials manifested the pendulum swinging back toward identitarianism.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
The good argument is that serious attempts to enforce such a law involve criminal investigations of miscarriages to see if they were induced deliberately
I'm not actually sure whether this is a nitpick or not, but when a baby dies after more than 20 weeks of gestation, it's no longer a "miscarriage," but a "stillbirth." By definition, you can't have a "criminal investigation" into a miscarriage after 20 weeks. You could still, in theory, have a criminal investigation into a stillbirth--hence possible nitpick--but the distinction is important in part because miscarriages, especially early miscarriages, are both physically and emotionally distinct from stillbirth, not only for pregnant women but also in public perception.
naraburns
nihil supernum
17d ago
Earlier today I was looking for a particular high resolution image. I don't know when Google removed resolution information from the results it returned, but I had to use DuckDuckGo and then TinEye to actually find what I was looking for--and even then, the level of linkrot I encountered was astonishing. A few weeks ago, I was looking for the source of a specific text string, but Google kept ignoring the way I put the string into quotation marks.
The enshittification of Google has been underway for a while now, but I feel like over the past few years it has accelerated precipitously, and AI is just the tip of that iceberg. Google search no longer exists to return useful results (even if that was not its main purpose to begin with, I at least got results as an acceptable tradeoff for having my privacy sold). Google search now exists exclusively to sell me things, or to sell my attention, so increasingly it gets to do neither.
naraburns
nihil supernum
21d ago
So I ask again- why bother? Is the time for talking over?
Well... it isn't 100% on point, given the different context, but I would invite you to read what I wrote to Kulak's exit and imagine how the substance of my post might apply to you.
naraburns
nihil supernum
22d ago
It appears that this forum is filled with city slickers in fancy German cars.
Really? I feel like last time someone asked for car buying advice, the answers were all Hondas and Toyotas. Although even with those, "expensive" is relative. I regard Hondas as "expensive" in that they cost more than a similarly-sized Ford or Subaru or the like. But in my experience it's difficult to go wrong with a Honda daily driver. Though my household currently hasn't got a single vehicle less than a decade old, so it's possible my impressions are out of date.
I would like to have an electric car for commuting, but I need the all-in price on a gently used electric car to be much closer to $15,000 than $50,000 before that can happen. Ten years ago, I really had hoped to have a full self-driving car by 2025. But as near as I can tell, for the foreseeable future I will be driving a standard transmission Honda.
I have driven the following cars.
This is a fascinating list because it is so short. I can't even tell you the models of all the cars I have driven, much less the years--too many rentals to count! I would be hard pressed to remember with accuracy the year of every car I have personally owned. I will say that the overall "feel" or "comfort" of consumer-model cars mostly scales linearly with price, but whether you're willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars for "oh wow they really got those knob clicks dialed in, didn't they, and this steering wheel feels amazing" naturally depends a lot on how many dollars you have. And the linear comfort scaling does not apply to sports cars; cars built to go very fast are often quite uncomfortable to drive.
If I had infinity dollars right now, I would probably buy a Tesla S and keep a gas-fed Honda parked alongside it.
naraburns
nihil supernum
29d ago
Are you saying that to live a valuable life you need to only do what is "reasonable" as in the bare minimum of not harming others? Or "reasonable" as in "make the world a better place but you can spend moderate/reasonable costs and don't have to spend severe/unreasonable costs"?
More like the latter. Contractualism is the view that we should never violate a principle of action that no one could reasonably reject as a basis for informed, unforced, general agreement. In practice, we want to be able to justify our actions to others within our moral community. A principle like "always act to make the world a better place" seems reasonably rejectable; not only will I rarely have any idea which of my actions will "make the world a better place," even if I have a very good idea that it would actually make the world a better place to torture a certain innocent child, I have compelling reasons to not do that. In particular, innocent children have a weighty interest--a right--to not be tortured, and making the world a little or even a lot better for millions of people is not sufficient to overcome such interests.
Of course most choices are not so stark. There is often value in doing more than is strictly required of you, but even so it's very important to notice the difference between what is optimal and what is obligatory. If morality required us to always do the optimal thing, it would be impossibly demanding. Very likely no one would ever actually do the "right" thing, on such a view--there are simply too many unknowns. It is much more reasonable to expect people to act in ways they can justify to others. Deliberately making the world a worse place is not generally something we can justify to others. But it's not hard to justify to others, say, spending some time chatting about politics on the Internet, provided your other immediate obligations have been met and you find this sort of activity interesting or relaxing or fun. Is it the optimal way to spend your time? Perhaps not! But you are not actually under a moral obligation to spend your time optimally. So long as posting on Internet forums does not violate a principle of action that no one could reasonably reject, it's permissible.
Happy Independence Day to those who celebrate!
First they came for the Nazis, and CNN did not speak out--because CNN reporters are not Nazis.
From CNN Politics today: Law used to kick out Nazis could be used to strip citizenship from many more Americans
This is not a meaty article--it seems like "the news" these days is mostly breathless speculation over the worst possible outcomes of things the Trump administration might be thinking about doing. As a rule, the "unprecedented" things Trump does are in fact wholly precedented--just, you know, not like that! But the substance is approximately this:
The article is light on numbers--well, it's a speculative article--so I went poking around and was surprised (not surprised) to discover that this is nothing new. An AXIOS article from President Trump's first term (but updated just two days ago, apparently) suggests:
This sounds about in line with the CNN article's suggestion that
The CNN article does at least include information about the history of denaturalization, which is more bipartisan than you might initially imagine...
That's more direct quotes than I intended to use, but the point is that I was really struck by the article's framing. Yes, the law has been used to "kick out Nazis," though it was originally intended to kick out Communists. But it has also been used to kick out e.g. scammers and child pornographers. Basically, the weight of history and legal precedent is that naturalized citizens absolutely can be denaturalized and expelled from the country for a variety of reasons, substantially at the discretion of the executive.
Several thoughts: first, even if aggressively prosecuted, I have a hard time imagining more than perhaps several thousand naturalized Americans being returned to their countries of origin in this way. This is not an approach intended to change actual demographics; rather, it is a way for the government to influence public attitudes and perceptions by identifying "enemies" and distinguishing them from "friends." Deporting Nazis, even after naturalization, sends a strong signal that we don't take kindly to Nazis around here. And who would object to that? Object too strongly, and you might start looking like a Nazi yourself...
I don't think this is a deep or surprising point, but as a consequence I was a little surprised to run into such a self-aware wolf moment on CNN this morning. "We made a law to expel Nazis, but now it might be used to expel Hamas supporters! Everyone: clutch your pearls now!" What I think of as the obvious question--"should we maybe have been criticizing the ideological slant of this law when it was being used to expel Nazis?"--never even gets asked. From the perspective of the CNN reporter, it's not the law that is bad, it's just that Trump is the one using that law, and against people CNN would prefer it not be used against.
"I can tolerate anything except the outgroup," indeed!
Anyway, add this one to the "Trump opposition continues to be mad at him for enforcing their favorite laws against them" file. I feel like, in a sane world, this would be inducement for Democrats to reconsider their historic commitment to infinite expansion of federal power. Imagine how things would look right now if Joe Biden (or his handlers, whatever) had made it his mission to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible. The easiest way to prevent a "Trump Tyranny" would have been to make law in a way that precludes tyranny, rather than to insist on empowering the executive and conspiring to ensure only the "right" tyrants ever ascend.
Why is it so hard for people to take the libertarian lesson from such events?
As I said--neither deep nor surprising. But I thought it was at least a thematically appropriate question on July 4th (even if Constitution Day might have been a better fit). The document of "enumerated powers" that is the putative core of our government practice is... "dead letter" might be an exaggeration, but maybe not. I do not usually perceive the federal government as in any meaningful way limited. Those bothered by Trump I would invite to consider the possibility that Trump is only a symptom; the disease is the statism toward which the United States has been creeping since, oh, probably July 5, 1776, but certainly since the Civil War, and more recently without even token opposition from any of its major political parties (since, I suppose, the Tea Party of 2007). DOGE makes many of the right noises, but the Big Beautiful Bill looks at best like one step forward, and one step back. (Republicans do not appear to have learned the lesson, either!)
Whether a reduction in liberty is worth the occasional schadenfreude of seeing one's ideological opponents kicked out of the country, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
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