ApplesauceIrishCream
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User ID: 882
ApplesauceIrishCream
10mo ago
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and Neverwinter Nights, respectively.
ApplesauceIrishCream
11mo ago
There was no "flip," is the point. There was a multi-decade trend across the South from one-party Democrat control to mostly one-party Republican control, but this trend happened at different rates in different states, and even more so, in different electoral contexts. Bill Clinton represented the last major effort at retaining the South in Presidential elections in 1992 and 1996 (and his running mate was even from a different Southern state!), and for all that--and Ross Perot's third-party candidacy--he only got about half the Southern states. In 2000, Al Gore did not win a single Southern state, not even his home state of Tennessee.
Let's take a look at the state governments:
Alabama's governor's mansion flipped from R to D to R to D to R in the 90s and early 2000s, and has only been solid R since 2003. Both houses of the Alabama state legislature were controlled by the Democrats from the end of Reconstruction until 2011 (!...also, this pattern will recur), and they have remained in Republican hands since then.
Arkansas' governor was a Democrat to start the 90s, then a Republican from 1997-2006, a Democrat until 2015, and a Republican since. Both houses of the state legislature were controlled by the Democrats until 2013 and Republicans thereafter.
Florida's governor was a Democrat (with a couple of Republican exceptions: one in the 60s and one in the 80s) until Jeb Bush took over for the Republicans in 1998, and except for some weirdness in 2010 with Crist, has remained Republican since. The state legislature was split in the mid 90s, with the Republicans taking over the Senate a couple years before adding the House in 1997.
Georgia's governor's mansion and state Senate flipped from solid Democrat to solid Republican in 2003, and the state House in 2005.
Kentucky and Louisiana still have not solidified as one-party Republican states--both have had repeated exchanges of power in the governor's mansion over the past three decades (and are currently controlled by Democrats). Kentucky's Senate went R in 2000, but the House did not go R until 2017. Lousiana's state legislature was solid D until 2011, and solid R since then.
Mississippi started the 90s with an R governor, succeeded by a Democrat in 2000, and back to R from 2004 to the present. Except for a brief exchange in 2007, the Democrats controlled the state Senate until 2011, and the House until 2012, while the Republicans have controlled both since then.
Missouri started the 90s with an R governor, went D in 1993, R in 2005, D in 2009, and back to R in 2017 until the present. The state Senate was solid D until 2001, and the state House similarly until 2003, and the Rs have maintained control of each since then.
North Carolina currently has a D governor, and the Republicans have only held the governor's mansion for a single term (2013-2017) since the early 90s. Aside from a short span in the late 90s (1995-1999) when the Rs held the state House, the Ds held both the state Senate and state House until 2011, and the Rs have controlled both since then.
South Carolina's first Republican governor since Reconstruction was elected in 1974. Since that time, both Rs and Ds have been governor, though the R's current winning streak goes back to 2002. The state House went R in 1995, and the state Senate in 2001, and have remained in R hands since.
Tennessee started the 90s with a D governor, switched R in 1995, back to D in 2003, and back to R in 2011. Except for an oddball period in 1996, Democrats held the state Senate until 2005, and Republicans since then (though there was split control in 2007-2008). The state House was solid D until 2010, and solid R since then.
Texas elected its first R governor since Reconstruction in 1978, and exchanged parties back and forth until George W. Bush was elected in 1995. In the past 28 years, Texas has had three governors--Bush, Perry, and Abbott--all Republicans. The state Senate went R in 1997, and the state House followed in 2003.
Virginia has had split control of the governor's mansion and both houses of the state legislature across the past three decades in various configurations. Currently, the governor and state House are R, and the state Senate is D, but if the state is going to solidify its political lean, that will happen in the future. The governor and state House were last D two years ago, and the state Senate was last R four years ago.
So while Republicans mostly control the state governments of the South today, in most cases that takeover happened in the last decade or two. A heavily recurring pattern--particularly in the houses of the state legislatures--is persistant control by Democrats lasting a century or more, followed by a switch to persistant Republican control at some single point within the last 30 years.
Paralleling this development is the regional decline in racism. The South of 50 years ago is not remotely like the South of today in terms of race relations. For example, multiple states in the South have elected racial-minority candidates in statewide races, though in general, those candidates have been Republicans.
ApplesauceIrishCream
11mo ago
Off Armageddon Reef (and the remainder of the Safehold series) by David Weber is one example.
ApplesauceIrishCream
11mo ago
My first QC! Thank you for the nomination; I think Mead's framework does a good job of capturing the competing strains of thought that inform American foreign policy. Congratulations to all of the nominees!
ApplesauceIrishCream
11mo ago
Fun framing story. I'll take a stab at explicitly stating the point of the narrative so that people can correct me if I missed something, or as a starting point for those who found the intent here to be a bit opaque.
Is there ethical consumption under capitalism? In each case, the narrator/purchaser is collecting Funko Pops solely to fill out his collection--I'd say this is pretty morally neutral as motives go--but the consequence of each purchase will be different, based on how the seller intends to spend the money received. The ultimate question raised is whether the narrator/purchaser is morally responsible for any of the known ends that his money will help finance, and whether there are intuitive break points where an observer should say, "By making this purchase in this context, you have done something morally wrong."
In the first case, we've got animal rights/animal cruelty/meat consumption, where the purchaser is a vegetarian/vegan. The second exchange concerns two oppositely-coded political figures, both of whom are known for a long history of good deeds, and a much more recent highly-controversial action, where the purchase/ownership of the figures will stoke up the culture war. The third instance depicts a controversial single figure (J.K. Rowling is the obvious example), where the seller is not a supporter of the figure, and proceeds from the sale will not in any way return to her. The fourth deal is another controversial figure, where some of the funds will go to the political support of his views. And finally, we've got literally Hitler, fundraising for his local death squad.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
It's not implausible. Assuming minimum values--"tons" being at least two, "tens of people" being at least 20--that works out to 200 lbs. per person.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I'd like to second @HalloweenSnarry and say your post was genuinely interesting. Your view of German politics and @Stefferi's take on Finnish politics is something I'd have to put some effort into finding outside TheMotte. American politics gets so much attention--and admittedly, it's important on some level, even for non-Americans--that it tends to drown out the collective opinions of other peoples. Thanks for providing this window into Germany.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Probably "Pacific" + autoincorrect to "specific."
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
An intended irony--Jefferson was a brilliant and creative man, but consistency was not among his virtues. See also his criticisms of centralized federal power, until the topic became "Louisiana is temporarily available at a low low price, act now!"
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Broadly speaking, I agree (though I might characterize a few of the details differently). One thing to note, though, is that Hamiltonians are not simply "dovish internationalists." They are an American tradition of free-market, business-oriented dovish internationalists; a hypothetical French tradition of dovish internationalism might not have the same trade/economic focus.
IMO, GWB campaigned as more of a Hamiltonian--he made public comments about returning to a "humble foreign policy" in reaction to the Wilsonian bombast of the Clinton presidency. 9/11 changed rather a lot very dramatically, and the immediate Jacksonian demand by the public to do something about Osama bin Laden led to Afghanistan, and the second generation of neoconservative Wilsonians in his administration were a significant factor in getting involved with Iraq. I'd caution against painting Iraq as monocausal, though; there were several goals and motivations involved, some of them at odds with others.
Obama is an odd case; I think he's a relatively rare example of a Jeffersonian President. The problem with that combination is that foreign policy is one of the strongest points of Presidential power, and Jeffersonians are disinclined to wield foreign policy influence, so you have to refuse the temptation to pick up the hammer that is right there and go in search of nails. This is not to say that Jeffersonians are rare--they just show up more often in Congress or think tanks. Also, Obama's administration was not Jeffersonian; a major example that points out these tensions was Libya, where the combined force of Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice lobbied internally to support the French in the face of Obama's initial indifference.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
I've been trying to get myself to do a writeup of Walter Russell Mead's four traditions of American foreign policy, because he was confronting exactly this question in the late 1990s--the various conflicts involving the breakup of Yugoslavia produced an anti-intervention movement on the Republican side of the Senate, which lost to the pro-intervention faction led by President Clinton. This also seemed, on first blush, to be a reversal of the left-coded anti-war movements in earlier decades.
In short, Mead proposes a two-axis framework, where each quadrant contains the interplay of the axes and also an intellectual pedigree particular to the US. One axis is the usual hawk/dove; the other is nationalist/internationalist. (Here, "internationalists" favor more widespread and ongoing engagement with other nations, while "nationalists" prefer to interact with other nations only when necessary, and reserve most of their attention to domestic affairs.)
Hamiltonians are the dovish internationalists, who have a particular interest in expansive trade and the promotion of American business interests abroad. They don't have strong opinions about how other countries run their own affairs, so long as Americans have robust access to foreign markets.
Jeffersonians are the dovish nationalists, whose central ideal is perfecting democracy at home and avoiding foreign entanglements that might distract or corrupt American national purpose. These are your classic anti-war isolationists.
Jacksonians are the hawkish nationalists, who mostly don't care to have extensive involvement with other nations, but react with vigorous force to assaults on American interests and especially American honor. Unlike the other traditions, Jacksonianism is predominantly a grassroots/populist tradition, not elite.
Finally, the Wilsonians are the hawkish internationalists, who want to promote democracy, human rights, and other American ideals abroad whenever possible. The neoconservatives of the late 70s are a central example, but so are President Clinton's interventions in the former Yugoslavia in the 90s.
At different points in history, these traditions have individually been more or less popular, and have allied with each other in varying combinations. I think the overall framework makes a fair amount of sense descriptively, and a few thoughts towards refinement/critique.
In a different context, this is "rubber-duck debugging." Sometimes putting yourself into a context where you need to make the problem concrete by explaining it out loud in detail is enough to track down the error or resolve a conflict of priorities.
Edit: @FCfromSSC beat me to it.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
The word "negro" is chiefly used by vile racists...and extremely clueless old people. The two types of people who use the word "negro" are vile racists, extremely clueless old people...and those who want to finance college for black students. The three types of people who use the word "negro" are vile racists, extremely clueless old people, those who want to finance college for black students...and parodists with an almost fanatical devotion to irony.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
There's also value based on scarcity. If I own a piece of real property near Disneyland, the value of that property is not merely based on the utility of being-near-Disneyland, but also the reality that this proximity is rare--if you could create "a functionally-identical piece of land...including contiguousness with the surrounding terrain" then the value of my property would be markedly reduced, even though the baseline utility of being-near-Disneyland hasn't changed.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
If you look at the right of property ownership, a useful way to conceptualize it is as a bundle of collateral rights. 'Intellectual property' is a wonky case, because some of the analogies to physical property don't hold up--as you say, if I copy a work that you created, I have not removed the original from your possession. But some of the other collateral rights do hold up in analogy: in this case, the 'right to exclude.' If I own a piece of land, I generally have the right to exclude others from it--if you want to get from one side of my property to the other, you need to go around, otherwise you are trespassing. If there is an easement that generally lets people cross a corner of my property without being liable for trespass, that is one stick out of the full and complete bundle of rights that I'd otherwise have to the property.
IMO, the maximalist positions both ways have flaws; I think there's something to the 'intellectual property is a form of property' position, but it's a substantially non-central example of such.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Traditionally, parents exercised control via elected school boards, whose entire purpose was to provide oversight of the local education establishment. Now, those boards very often got institutionally captured by a combination of the teacher's unions and the administrative bureaucracy, neutering their oversight function, but the boards are properly the agents of parents, and have sometimes even acted as such.
Some years back, someone local suggested that it must be an advantage for a school board member to have a school-age child, because the board member would be better informed of what was going on in the school. The response was no, quite the opposite: a school board member who was also a parent knew better than to cross the administration, because her child was a hostage to her 'good behavior.'
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
This is at least closer to accurate, but still not right. Milo was involved in an extended discussion; the cancel squad clipped two separate comments out of context and slapped them together. The first was a bit of dark humor thanking the Catholic priest who taught him how to perform oral sex at a young age (about 13, IIRC), and the second was discussing in sincerely positive terms his relationship with an older man (not a priest) when he was 17ish. The edited version conflated both the tone and topic of two quite separated statements, and framed Milo as an advocate of child molestation.
Milo's comments are open to criticism (and should be criticized, IMO), but the deliberate misrepresentation behind this particular bit of character assassination was vile.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
one theory I've toyed with is that males tend to style themselves trans in hopes of getting a certain kind of attention, while females tend to style themselves trans in order to avoid that exact same kind of attention,
Yeah, I've had much the same thought.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
125ish sounds reasonable to me. I'd estimate U.S. Presidential IQ to fall within a 120-140 band, with rare exceptions above and below. I'd put Trump below the median, but not by a lot. Joe Biden might be an exception a bit below 120, and Bill Clinton is probably the highest-IQ recent President, though not above 140. For the highest-IQ Presidents, I'd look at John Quincy Adams and maybe a couple other not-recent candidates.
I won't pretend to any special expertise here, but will note that many of those who do are very often hilarously wrong with political bias swamping any actual signal, especially with recent Presidents. Neither Trump nor GWB is a drooling idiot, and Obama is far from an unparalleled genius, to take the most obvious examples. All three are...pretty average, as Presidential intelligence goes, and markedly above average compared to the general population.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
Joseph Rosenbaum was the poster child of exactly this dynamic.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
No, it's that a normie American doesn't care about liberty to the exclusion of all other values, including second-order impacts. Sure, decriminalizing cocaine would allow more liberty to use cocaine, but it would also have second-order effects on safety, which directly impinges on other people's liberty to make choices unimpeded by crackhead violence. Posing this as a simple "yes/no" on the liberty question is a false dichotomy; the value that normie Americans place on a particular choice being available or not depends on a substantial amount of context.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
While there are characters with anti-Catholic sentiment (and any number with a pretty fierce hatred of Catholics, as you should expect in the middle of the Thirty Years' War), the 'series' is definitely not anti-Catholic.
A major protagonist of one of the branching sub-series is Father Larry Mazzare, Grantville's local Catholic priest. Turns out, it's kind of a big deal when Urban VIII gets a written summary of Vatican II. What follows includes a fair amount of swashbuckling drama--because that's part of the genre--but also an in-depth exploration of faith, obedience, and consequences, both by Father Mazzare and Urban VIII. Urban is not a villain, and neither (despite the visual cues) is his black-robed vizier, Mutio Vitelleschi, sixth Father General of the Society of Jesus. The Spanish, on the other hand....
The 163x collection of books ('series' is a bit inapt, as many of the later books occur in parallel, though in different areas) has several very solid entries, particularly near the beginning. IMO, 1633 is better than 1632, for instance. But the quality of the various branches varies pretty widely; the Catholic/Southern European branch that follows Larry Mazzare and starts with 1634: The Galileo Affair is one of the better ones, but I'd avoid the ones involving Virginia DeMarce.
ApplesauceIrishCream
1yr ago
In this particular case, I believe the "novel theory" concerns an aspect of campaign finance law. That entire field of law is about fifty years old. I make no promises how that will (or should!) move your priors, so take it as you will.
Are you thinking of Scalia's long friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg? I wasn't aware of him being close to Elena Kagan.
(That said, I agree that Justice Kagan is both quite intelligent and a good writer.)
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