Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being a post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man. No one yet has guessed multiple people, or a scholar. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
A slippery slope argument rests on the premise that you aren't already at the bottom of the greater warned costs.
I am not arguing that if you spend 1.59 on libraries, you will spend 60k on more. I am noting you are already spending 60,000.00 on more if you are a taxpayer, of which 1.59 on libraries is one of many, many such 'small' costs.
The attempt to separate 1.59 from 60,000.00 is simply budgetary salami slicing. Who takes issue over one slice of salami?
How many other distinct topics are you willing to let others obligate you for $1.59 each before you consider it a not-small price below the level worth arguing over?
Ten line items? Hundred? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
Naturally, each and every one could use the same defense- it's only a few pennies or dollars.
In time, though, you reach the total government spending / # of residents, which in the US is somewhere north of $30,000 per citizen... or roughly $60,000 per taxpayer, going by your taxpayer estimate versus rough American population.
Yes. I would re-emphasize the 'part' as in 'is not the whole,' but I would consider it a significant part of the rise of Trump in the Republican party, and later Trump's rise in the broader American electorate.
I don't think you're asking if such tactics were used in the culture-war, so I'll just gloss over the basic point with re-stating that emotional pressures were not only used, but often major elements of the culture war. One of the psychological points of a twitter mob or cancellation campaign is the public shaming ritual dynamic, a significant point of the progressive stack concept is to re-align emotional sympathies for whoever claims the best position deserving of public support against others, and a key function of the 'lived experience' justification was that one's personal views and emotions were on their own basis for deferrence and grounds to dismiss counter points.
For the Republicans, Trump's rise in republican circles was part of a voter-base revolt against what one of our former posters called the Republican patrician class- the Republican elites including the Bush-Cheney dynasties, the Romneys, and other dominant parts of the party in the pre-Trump era. They had been dominant in part because of their alliance with the evangelical / religious-interest wings of the party, i.e. the moralizers of the right. Just from an intra-republican power struggle perspective, Republican party culture would need to develop cultural antibodies to defy and dismiss the religious right moralists (who were a very significant force in the early 2000s, albeit running out as a national movement by that point).
What made the Patrician class discredited to the Republican base, beyond just technocratic failures such as Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis, was their reputation / perception for compromising on Republican base positions for the sake of left-framing media coverage. This was the model of Republican Party wants position A, left-aligned media raises sympathy argument against position A and dares patrician polity to do the unsympathetic thing, Patrician folds / strikes a compromise legislation which trades away base interests for [thing the base doesn't care as much about]. Base was then told it was necessary / just / moral / the best they could expect.
Trump's surge in the Republican primaries for the 2016 cycle was in large part because he was willing to fight on despite to moral condemnations. This was most notable on the topic of immigration, where Trump would do things like counter 'think of the innocent and desperate refugees' with 'rapists and criminals.' This itself was a politized distortion of the full quote, but the reason the quote was a Trump success rather than a slam dunk is because it demonstrated Trump was willing to defy the sympathy-paradigm that was trying to be used. A similar point exists for the failure of the Clinton campaign's October surprise of the lockerroom talk tapes. It could only fail because the electorate was not moved by the attempts to incite and manipulate them via emotional instigation. In other words, the American electorate was sharing in the cultural antibodies against that sort of shame-and-disavow technique.
As the culture war continued, my view is that this tendency got stronger. It's been further by the discreditation of technocrats in the COVID crisis, and with it those covid policy justifications that often ran on emotional appeals (hug a chinese person to show you're not racist; don't protest against covid restrictions because think of others; protest despite covid restrictions for cause more deserving emotional support). But it was also discredited by the people often conveying those emotional appeals (particularly media intermediaries) themselves being discredited as a class, for- among other reasons- pretty transparent attempts to manipulate for political interests. (The conformist pressures against anyone who raised the Biden age-electability issues; the manufactured joy to try and build Harris support during the period of the campaign which ended shortly after she had to commit to public speaking.)
It's a viewpoint I feel is being viewed now with Trump's disruptions to the American federal government, like the shutdown of USAID. This is a policy that is popular despite the stories by anti-Trump/pro-USAID medias about those in desperate need abroad, or think of the former government workers who are living in uncertainty, and so on. These are empathy / sympathy appeal stories. They also are not changing the general electorate- and by extension cultural- willingness to press on despite them.
Because the appeal to emotion is, while not dead, has been scarred as a result of it being used to flagellate the non-compliant. Now the formerly non-compliant are moving against the interests / preferences of those who did, and in many cases still are, attempting to use it.
It is not that 'cruelty is the point'- it is that the accusation of cruelty is no longer sufficiently deterring.
It may not be a central part of the electorate revolt, but I would consider it a part of it, in the same sense that destroying the method of abuse is a part of the revolt against an abuser, even if there are more central reasons for the revolt in general.
Why do you believe this would be a reasonable- as in, reason-driven- as opposed to a pathetic- as in, pathos-driven- compromise?
Keep in mind that weaponized emotional appeals- including appeals to sympathy for social compact violators and shaming campaigns against those not showing enough pity towards preferred beneficiaries- have been a hallmark of the American culture war for decades now, and which the current political context is part of a political revolt against.
This is particularly relevant to this example, as a 'let's compromise on amnesty for immigration reform' was bargained in the past, except that the amnesty given did not lead to actual immigration enforcement afterwards.
Now your proposal is a compromise of further amnesty instead of enforcement for... what, exactly?
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
I am fairly sure American conservatives were not in the cultural driver seat for the other 5 thousand years of human history either.
Do you simply concede that it's not going to survive and the US accepts that since its continuation is not worth or not feasible fighting for?
No. I tend to not concede to strawmen of arguments I did not make.
Do you argue that people like Palmer Luckey, Alex Karp, Alex Wang, Dario Amodei, Sam Altman are, similarly to me, clueless and in disconnect with your political culture?
A second no. I thought it was clear that I argue that you do not understand how well connected people like they are or are not to the dominant American (or western) political cultures.
Do you write it off as inconsequential self-interest of individual players, because the vote of salt-of-the-earth rednecks is more influenced by price of eggs?
A third no. Though I do applaud you for ever-consistent efforts for an acerbic condescension, Ilforte.
It's particularly perplexing that @Dean claims my "economic narrative waves aside the property bubble" when I specifically wrote about it.
Perhaps it perplexes you that you were not the subject of that comment?
Your own comment on the subject of the property bubble was certainly wrong- the overproduction of buildings and ghost cities were not issues that were resolved by 'filling them up'- but I did not make a claim about your specific argument because I was not addressing your specific argument.
Isn't OP's very point that we, the West, have lost, because we can't get our heads out of our asses, honestly look at the world and act?
Is it? I've known the poster formerly known as Ilforte for years, and the fact that he defined 'theory of victory' in terms of-
And by victory I mean retaining hegemony, as the biggest strongest etc. etc. nation on the planet, and ideally removing all pesky wannabe alternative poles like Russia, China and Iran. Russia and Iran are not much to write home about, but what to do with China?
-strikes me as both characteristic enough of him and disconnected enough from American political paradigm to move on without further engagement or consideration, had you not invoked me by name.
The OP certainly has enough viewpoint differences with members of this forum and broader political coalitions that I would doubt his ability to characterize, let alone speak for 'we' or 'the west,' let alone defer to his judgement or assessments on the world. For example, it is certainly a common enough perspective to believe the American end-state is hegemony as a goal in and of itself. But that perspective demonstrates a general lack of cultural awareness of how dominant American political conceptions often view American geopolitical power as a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself. There are certainly elements of American politics which value geopolitical power for power's own sake, but the reason that the American electorate has gone for the domestic-priorities President for every election for the last 30-odd years is because those foreign-affairs interests are not dominant. It is a cultural inclination which almost only the Americans get to afford thanks in no small part due to geography and geopolitical separation from revanchist and ethnic-solidarity cultural paradigms.
At which point, consideration of what that the goal of US policy and thus 'victory' would be needs to be something 'the West' would agree upon. Whether that is Americans in a comfortable isolationism even if the world burns, or America ensuring other states don't get devoured by blobbing neighbors, or any other American paradigm of what the American goal is- would be rather relevant to what a theory of victory would be.
Put another way-
IF American victory is being the hegemon, then lack of hegemony is failure and China wins by being individually strongest.
However-
IF American victory is China not establishing military domination of eastern Eurasia, then raising potential costs of Chinese intervention to degree that China doesn't engage in territorial conquest on revanchist grounds against its regional neighbors / military intervention spree in east asia is victory, regardless of whether China or the US is individually the strongest.
It could even be regardless of a Taiwan scenario outcome. A loss over Taiwan / successful Chinese conquest over American objection would certainly be a defeat, but if the Chinese experience is bad enough that the next 50 years are spent on Chinese internal stability issues rather than trying to blob like Russia when it thinks it has a shot against the former soviet sphere, that would still be a begrudged 'victory' by a 'China doesn't dominate eastern asia' standard. It would be a victory even if the Americans are globally considered a secondary power compared to the glorious China. It would be victory even when people who insist that the American position is just cope for having lost hegemony weigh in.
Victory conditions are typically pre-defined if they are to be useful. Pre-definition requires accurate characterization of a party's goals or objectives.
This is the distinction from judging victory by a relative power relationship paradigm rather than an outcome paradigm, and more specifically which outcome. And this distinction, in turn, leads to different considerations- such as whether the US needs to be Number 1 at all times, or just be close enough for China's long-term issues to constrain its middle kingdom ambitions.
Now, presumably OP believe more of the former- it's hist standard that requires hegemony. However, it is not clear at all to me that 'the West,' or at least the Americans and their Asian allies who matter in Asia, do not believe the later. And if the OP believes one way, and 'the West' believes another, it is not obvious that it is only heads-in-asses to blame for not deferring to the OP's paradigm.
Which will probably be taken as some hostile insult by the OP, when it is not, since we get along like that.
(I love you too, Ilforte, and I'm glad you're safe and still writing even if I am unconvinced by you.)
Legally for various civil servants and state-owned enterprises (which dominate the economy in general), generally tacit for the rest.
China approaches foreign travel of citizens as a necessary risk / national security issue to manage in general, and so isn't adverse to curtailment on any number of grounds. Like with many governments with tight business connections, if a business can frame an action in terms favorable to the state's interpretation, it can often get away with things that might have an ulterior motive. Businesses in turn can have their own interests in demanding someone turn over their passport, though I'm not aware of it being any sort of widespread business abuse in China.
Since part of Xi's model for China is that every business or organization of consequence needs strong ties to the party-state, this implicitly favors a two-party veto on foreign travel: the government can restrict passport-travel for its reasons, and/or businesses can restrict it for their own.
Dean
Flairless
5d ago
In addition to the primary role of population control purposes (it's easier to monitor foreign activities by domestic individuals if more stay domestic and fewer go abroad), it's also a (small) part of the post-2010s Chinese capital control policy.
Back in the mid-2010s there was a major surge in capital outflows when China announced a surprise devaluation.. Because the devaluation wiped out the value of the Chinese-held savings, as such devaluations do, it prompted a major exodus of Chinese privately-held wealth as people wanted to get it outside into 'safer' investments less subject to devaluation (or, in the Chinese property market's case, crash).
There are indicators there is currently an... I don't want to say identical, but analogous, outflow. Rather than devaluation, however, this is being driven more by market uncertainty of the Chinese in the domestic economic prospects which- while already heavily dependent on state-led investment for growth- is also dealing with things like, say, the Trump trade war policies, which became more and more credible as last year went on.
Passport control is a (small) part of limiting private savings going abroad, rather than staying inside China. Chinese citizens have relatively limited ability to legally move major sums of money out of the country. For various reasons, it's easier to do so if they are able to go outside of China more easily. Withholding passports is how you can limit things like citizens carrying hard drives of crypto-currency bought inside of China to cash out outside of China.
This isn't the sort of capital control countries boast about, but it is part of why China's foreign investment action plan plan for facilitating foreign investment includes one-way movement improvements under point 19, Facilitate the movement of personnel. The goal is to facilitate the movement of people with money into China, not out.
Dean
Flairless
5d ago
Badly written, badly delivered, and thus a bad message to share regardless of content.
Presentation matters. 630 words without a rhetorical pause for breath and change of sub-topic isn't a message- it's a filibuster.
Dean
Flairless
5d ago
Well, they (China) could also have initiated mass immigration (which they did not), or also started destroying the excess (which they have been to limited extents).
It is certainly a significant fly in the ointment of the China economic narrative, however, particularly the impact it had on private Chinese savings/investments when the market value of housing investments went kaput. Any Chinese economic narrative that waves aside the property bubble is like trying to discuss the 2008 financial crisis without acknowledging that property bubble.
Concurred. Nate is thinking from a polling / historical repetition perspective, but not a policy / 'what might have been learned from history' perspective. Schumer recognized the distinction, including the difference of who is in what position of power between now and the last major shutdown-sequestration in 2013.
One of the lessons learned from the Great Government Shutdowns of past was that sequestration- what happened in the US during in 2013 shutdown when government agencies had to lower spending to much lower caps- should not be executed as a 'everyone takes an equal hit' untargeted dynamic. The decision to do so was a policy choice, and generally considered a mistake, because not all things suffer equally by taking the same sort of untargeted cuts. It allowed high-profile / high-political-cost programs to dominate the perception of the cuts, while also disrupting uncontroversial efforts. That is what provided the polling / perception results Nate alludes to.
However, anyone going into another sequestration-shutdown should not expect that to repeat if the party who makes the decisions on what to cut actually wants to cut things (the Republican position), as opposed to wants to avoid any cuts (the Democrat position). Any future administration should, at the least, expect prioritization of most-desired programs and agencies, unless the goal is to maximize the political pain of an across-the-board sequestration (i.e. an untargeted approach).
An untargeted-sequestration is a tool to use across-the-board program disruptions to push back against a Congress that wants you to request less money, It was a tool presenting cuts as 'this is what you want, right?' It works by making Congress bear the burden or arguing that the government actually does not need the money it's clearly suffering from a lack of, which can provide the Executive leverage to argue for higher funding than the Congressional-cutters want it to ask for.
A targeted-sequestration is a tool to label unwanted programs as unnecessary and cut them down against a Congress that wants you to spend more money than you want to. It is a tool presenting the non-funding as 'this is what you want, right?' It works by making Congress bear the burden of arguing that the government actually does need the money it's not-as-obviously clearly suffering from a lack of, which can provide the Executive leverage to argue for lower funding than the Congressional-raisers want it to ask for.
Similar archetypes, but substantially different implications.
Dean
Flairless
7d ago
You're neglecting another aspect of the conspiracy and motive of dismissing the lab-leak theory as a conspiracy, which would be ass-covering. This would be a motive even if it was all above board- lab leaks as a result of incompetence rather than malice- but particularly if not everything was above board- such as attempts to circumvent gain-of-function research prohibitions by outsourcing to a facility with known safety issues.
Some of the earliest and strongest organizers (i.e. Fauci) denouncing the lab-leak theory as a baseless conspiracy had significant professional, reputational, and personal interests in publicly denying any link between the virus and the lab due to the links between the lab and themselves. 'We just want to reassure people that this virus was not an engineered bioweapon' is not a particularly compelling motive if the root of public concern is if was engineered at all (such as gain-of-function research) as a result of misconduct.
Your appeal to your own credulity and counter-proposal is committing forces where the enemy is strongest, already had advantageous positionings which enable a preponderance of fires, where counter-attacks would have been into their fortifications and air defenses, for a straight up fight in unfavorable logistical contexts.
Oy vey, someone did not pay attention to Art of War.
All in all it was not a smart move to begin with.
If you forget to factor in the last six months, I suppose.
The fact that you are talking about troubles in a pocket on the Kursk front more than half a year after the initial offensive, and not some pocket on the Donetsk front like where the supposedly imminent fall of the strategic town of Pokrovsk at the time of the launch of the Kursk offensive was supposed to throw the Donetsk defensive line into shambles, is rather simple counter-point of why it was a good idea. The Russians are continuing to spend a considerable amount of their offensive capabilities trying to dig Ukraine out of Russia, which was not expected to be kept by the Ukrainians regardless, rather than out of Ukraine, where the Russians have very clearly demonstrated an intent use the front lines as teh boundary of control. Front lines where they could have been making greater advances with greater forces under the umbrella of the greater buildup of defenses on their side of the line, had strategic priorities not shifted more to the Kursk pocket.
Your article raises this point-
the campaign aimed to divert Moscow’s resources from the front lines in the east.
-and, low and behold, six months later resources are still being diverted from the front lines in the east, and Pokrovsk still hasn't fallen, despite its imminent fall being a reoccurring topic of discussion since late last summer.
Even if you want to present an argument that once the Ukrainians in Kursk are defeated the Russians will return and finish the job there (or elsewhere) and collapse the front immediately because the Ukrainians all died or lost the will to fight over Kursk, the fact of a six-month delay in not-taking a city on the 'cusp' of falling is a fact that there have been six months of additional time for fortification work along that front, and six more months of higher attrition against that entire front from the front not-collapsing while the Russians kept pushing (in part because they used continuing pushes there to drive propaganda that the Kursk front wasn't diverting any resources).
The value of diverting resources isn't lost even if another line of benefit (trading away Russian territory for Ukrainian territory at the negotiating table) is lost because the Russians prioritize taking back Russian territory over taking more Ukrainian territory. That is, in fact, the same effect- it's the same principle, regardless of whether that trade is at the negotiating table or the battlefield table.
At which point, whether it was a smart move to begin with is going to be a claim that has to compare with the alternative- and the alternative at the start of the Kursk Offensive about six months ago was a steady Russian grind under the cover of substantial advantages in airpower and artillery superiority due to its own pocket-effect that was, reportedly, about to throw the entire front into chaos.
Put another way- would you have expected fewer potential Ukrainian encirclements by this point had the Donetsk line destabilized further?
By far the worst aspect, though, is Claude’s inability to navigate. It gets trapped in loops very easily, and is needlessly distracted by any objects it sees. The worst example of this so far has been its time in Mount Moon, which is a fairly (though not entirely) straightforward level that most kids probably beat in 15-30 minutes. Claude got trapped there for literal days, with its typical loop being going down a ladder, wandering around a bit, finding the ladder again, going back up the ladder, wandering around a bit, finding the ladder, going back down again, repeat. It’s like watching a sitcom of a man with a 7 second memory.
If you think this is bad, wait for Sylph Co (edit- actually Rocket Hideout), the level that fundamentally broke Twitch Plays Pokemon so bad that the managers had to change the play process. Either the LLM is going to ace it insanely fast, or it is going to be very, very slow.
Has Musk's DOGE Capacity to Cut Been Reined In By Trump?
Less importantly- did a prediction from a AAQC from last month play out already?
Last month (February 2025- it feels so long already), Elon Musk made the news and Motte discussion when he sent out an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) email where it directed employees respond back with 5 bullet points on what they did in the last week. Implicit in the demand was an 'or else' if they did not, or if their answers were unsatisfactory.
This caused what I believe is technically terms a 'kerfuffle,' and confusion across the US Federal Bureaucracy, which subsided (a bit) when institutional leaders provided their own guidance clarifying who did need to respond, and how. For example, the Secretary of Defense issued two rounds of guidance- first telling DOD civilians to not respond, and then later giving guidance on how to.
During the Motte discussions on it, I opined that I thought it might have been Musk overplaying his hand rather than 5D chess, since it started to establish boundaries on what Musk could, and could not, do without the support of the Secretaries and institutional heads that make up the rest of Trump's Cabinet.
Well, if a new New York Times article from yesterday is to be believed, that may have been what happened last Thursday- though the way the NYT tells it is emphasizing a lot more about fireworks between Musk and Secretary of State Rubio, who as I noted in a post on Dual Hatting government positions is the one who 'really' has been taking apart USAID.
(Yes, trusting the NYT is a bar to clear... but there is a reason why when people within the US government want to air dirty laundry that would be embarrassing to Republicans, they'd often like to go there first.)
Marco Rubio was incensed. Here he was in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the secretary of state, seated beside the president and listening to a litany of attacks from the richest man in the world.
Seated diagonally opposite, across the elliptical mahogany table, Elon Musk was letting Mr. Rubio have it, accusing him of failing to slash his staff.
You have fired “nobody,” Mr. Musk told Mr. Rubio, then scornfully added that perhaps the only person he had fired was a staff member from Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Mr. Rubio had been privately furious with Mr. Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr. Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting on Thursday in front of President Trump and around 20 others — details of which have not been reported before — Mr. Rubio got his grievances off his chest.
Mr. Musk was not being truthful, Mr. Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr. Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.
Mr. Musk was unimpressed. He told Mr. Rubio he was “good on TV,” with the clear subtext being that he was not good for much else. Throughout all of this, the president sat back in his chair, arms folded, as if he were watching a tennis match.
And how did Trump (allegedly) respond?
After the argument dragged on for an uncomfortable time, Mr. Trump finally intervened to defend Mr. Rubio as doing a “great job.” Mr. Rubio has a lot to deal with, the president said. He is very busy, he is always traveling and on TV, and he has an agency to run. So everyone just needs to work together.
The meeting was a potential turning point after the frenetic first weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term. It yielded the first significant indication that Mr. Trump was willing to put some limits on Mr. Musk, whose efforts have become the subject of several lawsuits and prompted concerns from Republican lawmakers, some of whom have complained directly to the president.
Cabinet officials almost uniformly like the concept of what Mr. Musk set out to do — reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government — but have been frustrated by the chain saw approach to upending the government and the lack of consistent coordination.
Thursday’s meeting, which was abruptly scheduled on Wednesday evening, was a sign that Mr. Trump was mindful of the growing complaints. He tried to offer each side something by praising both Mr. Musk and his cabinet secretaries. (At least one, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has had tense encounters related to Mr. Musk’s team, was not present.) The president made clear he still supported the mission of the Musk initiative. But now was the time, he said, to be a bit more refined in its approach.
From now on, he said, the secretaries would be in charge; the Musk team would only advise.
Now, these are claims. But there are some claims that may (or may not) bolster your view of the article's claims, if you want to verify them yourself.
In a post on social media after the meeting, Mr. Trump said the next phase of his plan to cut the federal work force would be conducted with a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet” — a clear reference to Mr. Musk’s scorched-earth approach.
Here's a link to an Axios article covering that.
Mr. Musk, who wore a suit and tie to Thursday’s meeting instead of his usual T-shirt after Mr. Trump publicly ribbed him about his sloppy appearance, defended himself by saying that he had three companies with a market cap of tens of billions of dollars, and that his results spoke for themselves.
This would be more telling, given Musk's signature style to date, but I'll admit I haven't gone diving for image evidence. I haven't seen any counter-claims that that suit-claim is false as a disprooof against these stories, however.
The article does not claim that Musk was only at odds with Rubio either.
But he [Musk] was soon clashing with members of the cabinet.
Just moments before the blowup with Mr. Rubio, Mr. Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Mr. Musk.
Mr. Duffy said the young staff of Mr. Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr. Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?
Mr. Musk told Mr. Duffy that his assertion was a “lie.” Mr. Duffy insisted it was not; he had heard it from them directly. Mr. Musk, asking who had been fired, said: Give me their names. Tell me their names.
Mr. Duffy said there were not any names, because he had stopped them from being fired. At another point, Mr. Musk insisted that people hired under diversity, equity and inclusion programs were working in control towers. Mr. Duffy pushed back and Mr. Musk did not add details, but said during the longer back and forth that Mr. Duffy had his phone number and should call him if he had any issues to raise.
Trump did allegedly have a characteristically Trumpian thing to contribute to this point- an expression that I wouldn't actually expect the NYT to be able to invent on its own.
The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from M.I.T. as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.
There are a few bits more, but the NYT article concludes-
Most cabinet members did not join the fray. Mr. Musk’s anger directed at Mr. Rubio in particular seemed to catch people in the room by surprise, one person with knowledge of the meeting said. Another person said Mr. Musk’s caustic responses to Mr. Duffy and Mr. Rubio seemed to deter other cabinet members, many of whom have privately complained about the Musk team, from speaking.
But it remains to be seen how long this new arrangement will last.
So. Thoughts.
Is this story true?
I find it plausible enough, though reasonable people may differ and I wouldn't be surprised if some distortions are in. Even setting aside credibility of the NYT as an institution, this is a pretty typical 'leak to the press to air grievances for personal advantage' type of story, and the person who is providing their own information has their own interest, even if the NYT reported what they heard 100% faithfully. It's not the NYT alone that's reporting the story either, for what that's worth.
Part of why I find it plausible is that I have been expecting something along these lines regardless- which might make it a confirmation bias vulnerability, but a bias is not the same as a fallacy. Musk has been making moves, but he has also been making moves against the interest of other secretaries and cabinet members. People taking that to the press should be expected, since Musk has rivals inside the government and not just outside.
Is this outcome expected?
I'd also say yes. The idea that Trump was going to side with Musk over everyone he paid political capital to appoint was about as reasonable as expecting Trump to fire those same people for not going along with DOGE. DOGE was not a blank check for Elon Musk.
I'd also say reining in Musk was also a way for Trump to assert himself in a not-burning-the-bridges fashion. The suit would be one such, as was discussed last week about the Ukraine-Zelensky respect/disrespect theme. Siding with Rubio or Duffy is another. Yes, it stings for Musk... but at the end of the day, Musk has had no formal government power beyond Trump's favor.
At the end of the day, DOGE's only power is the power that is inherent to, and supported by, the Chief Executive. But said Chief Executive also put other people in key positions for his purposes. Trump is always going to prioritize Trump's vision over Musk's, and those Secretaries will stay as long as they advance that, and so while Trump has a role for Musk, it will be on Trump's terms.
What does this mean going forward?
As predicted last month, expect to see DOGE working with and through, not around or over, the Cabinet Secretaries. Expect DOGE to shift from government destabilizer (your employees owe reports to us... or else) to external consultant (DOGE comes in, looks at data, and proposes things that the heads may or may not take up). DOGE will not go away, but it's relationship to agencies, and thus their federal employees, will change.
Elon isn't out, but he may be increasingly sidelined going forward. With the Secretaries being prioritized over DOGE, DOGE- as an institution- may have more visibility and presence than Musk himself. As long as it is the Secretaries who have the agenda-accepting, and thus agenda-setting, power of DOGE, Musk can't force the agenda. If he can't force the agenda, he'll only be present where he and the Secretaries agree he can / should be. And that, in turn, will depend on Musk's relationships... which, unsurprising in a field as full of primo donnas as politics, isn't ideal.
Watch out for a flame out- and encouragements for a flame out. While the articles on this cabinet meeting seem to emphasize that Trump isn't trying to push Elon out, that doesn't mean Elon won't self-combust on his own, or be 'encouraged' to it by hostile media coverage. Whatever you think of Elon's emotional stability on his medical routine, you should expect every disagreement to be a crisis, and every difference a chasm in coverage going forward. Elon's made political enemies on the left, and while he seems aware enough of Trump's political patronage, that doesn't mean he won't lash out if prodded, or even if not. As with many Musk achievements, expect it to be great and glorious and worse all in one.
And that is all. I was just surprised we hadn't covered this story yet here on the Motte, and- while not unexpected- might update some people's views on Trump's strategies as a disruptor, and the value of coming in with a big shock to make later and smaller measures easier to make.
And the premise of the response still applies- if the goal is to illuminate the prevalence (or lack thereof) of Russian Propaganda, then you should solicit Russian Propaganda or adjacent views to invite observations of the contrast, not invite people to maximize attack vectors for Russian Propaganda (or adjacent) arguments-as-soldiers upon themselves.
I am informed, in fact, that this forum is overrun with Russian Propaganda, such that some no longer wish to participate. This is lamentable if true, so I thought it might help to prompt some elaboration of the pro-Ukraine case.
If the doubt over Russian Propaganda is the basis of raising questions, then you have an odd way of going about clarifying the potentially lamentable situation.
For example, your first 8 questions are-
How much aid would you provide? Weapons? Money? No-Fly Zone? Air support? Troops on the ground? Nuclear umbrella? Something else? What is the end-state your policy is aiming for?
Set aside that many of these are badly structured questions in and of themselves. More importantly, what possible answer could any of these questions provide from a pro-Ukrainian supporter that would or would not illuminate the prevalence of Russian Propaganda in this forum?
If your theory that the forumites answering are only saying [Big Amount] because of Russian Propaganda on this forum, as opposed to other sources of information or non-Russian Propaganda? Would [Smaller Amount] provide any meaningful contrast? If a pro-Ukrainian says 'no, I don't support a No-Fly Zone,' does that... mean anything regarding the forum propaganda that a pro-Ukrainian saying 'yes, I do support a No-Fly Zone?' would indicate?
If not, why are you asking the question as a means to gain elaboration about the thing that would be lamentable-if-true? Where is the light? A 'just asking questions' inverse gish-galloping- demanding a host of extensive answers from low-effort questions- is certainly a technique, but it would be a technique far better suited for generating heat, particularly given the ease of anti-supporters to selectively pick at the answers they find most vulnerable and ignoring the rest, without having to justify (or provide) their own views to the same questions.
Moreover, and this is an even more basic structure question, why aim the question at the supporters of Ukraine aid, as opposed to the opponents of Ukrainian aid?
Again, if your stated basis of concern is to believed, then the best survey audience with whom to evaluate the prevalence of Russian Propaganda on the forum is to start with the people most likely to have adopted Russian propaganda. Then you could ask questions where you know what a Russian propaganda line answer, and then compare the answers that align with the Russian propaganda line versus those that differ. This, in turn, could allow comparison and contrasts, and see how much of opposition to a thing is due to reasons aligned with propaganda versus those that are not.
This wouldn't be the end of a genuine search for truth, of course, as not all capital-P Propaganda is false. Sometimes Propaganda boosts rather than causes the narratives of the target audience. Independent convergence is a thing. But you would at least have chosen a more appropriate survey audience.
And this is without poisoning the well with a bad question like-
Is there an end-state or a potential event in the war that you think would falsify your understanding of the war, and convince you that providing aid was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
Yes, this is a well-poisoning question. We are both aware we are on a rationalist-adjacent forum where intellectual integrity is prioritized. Most of the audience has internalized the principle that good theories need to be falsifiable, because non-falsifiable is itself evidence that no amount of evidence or reason can reverse the premise. which is Bad in a community that prioritizes pursuing Truth and Reason. This is also a cornerstone of the scientific process, practically an axiom of rationalist discourse, and anyone reading this can recognize the follow-on insinuation. If someone says no, they are being unreasonable since reason demands being open to being disproven (falsification), and if they are being unreasonable in this they are being unreasonable in the rest as well.
What not everyone will recognize is that you are not only asking a leading question, or that you are leading with a variation of the hindsight bias (the mental error of looking back and thinking an eventual result was obvious all along), but that you are insinuating an axiom outside of its appropriate paradigm. The Ukraine War is not a laboratory hypothesis for the scientific method. It is a strategic conflict between multiple strategic actors, and this means that paradigms of strategies and game-theory apply.
And because fewer people are familiar with those paradigms than they are rationalist-adjacent forum norms or maxims regarding the scientific method, they wouldn't recognize that the premise of the question doesn't make sense. Or even that 'yes' is the irrational answer that should invite doubt. Not just because doing so would reveal susceptibility to the hindsight bias invitation- the validity/soundness of a decision is the decision made with the information at hand on the time, not information unavailable to them- but just on the matter of strategic paradigm itself.
Outcomes do not falsify strategies.
Outcomes are results, but results are not a strategy, nor are strategies predictive devices in and of themselves. Strategies entail predictions, but equating the two is a compositional fallacy, believing what is true of a part of a thing is true of the whole of the thing. Even ignoring that potential fallacy, believing that results falsify a process (strategy) that leads to them is a first-order mistake. It is a common mistake, particularly among the sort of people who believe that a strategy that fails is axiomatically a falsified strategy, but this is a bad axiom. And like bad axioms in any field, anyone whose theoretical understanding of a field rests on bad axioms is building their understanding on poor foundations, whether the user acknowledges it as an axiom or not.
This is much easier to see when politically loaded topics are substituted by less political topics, which can be done by some basic coding to produce less politically contentious analogies that rest on the same argument structure and axiom of outcome-falsifies-strategy.
For example, this-
Is there an end-state or a potential event in the war that you think would falsify your understanding of the war, and convince you that providing aid was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on the Ukraine war are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
-could be represented for an axiom test as-
Is there an end-state or a potential [outcome of a high-stakes process] that you think would falsify your understanding of [the high-stakes process], and convince you that [engaging in the high-stakes process] was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on [the high-stakes process] are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
-because the axiom has to apply to all models for it to apply as an axiom. The Ukraine War, in turn, is a [high-stakes process], and events including but not limited to how the war ends are outcomes of that process.
However, the axiom-test is just as valid if applied to-
Is there an end-state or a potential [outcome of a high-stakes process] that you think would falsify your understanding of [the high-stakes process], and convince you that [not engaging in the high-stakes process] was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on [the high-stakes process] are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
-because despite flipping the 'engage with high-stakes process' with a 'not engage in high-stakes process,' the axiom of outcome-falsifies-strategy does not depend on what the actual strategy is. That is why it is an axiom, as opposed to a special pleading rhetorical device / argument-as-soldier to advance the strategist's favored (or dis-favored) positions.
Now consider this in a less ideologically charged- or propagandized- process where a strategic paradigm applies... like gambling. Which has substantial literature overlap with issues of strategic competition, risk-management, and so on. The field of game-theory was named because of the various meta-analysis commonalities, and has been foundational to the field of international relations and conflicts, including the school of Realist theorists.
Now just as we substituted [Ukraine War] for [high-stakes process] for the purpose of the axiom, we can substitute [high-stakes process] for something like...
Is there an end-state or a potential [outcome of high-stakes [gambling with your life's savings]] that you think would falsify your understanding of [high-stakes [gambling with your life's savings]], and convince you that [not engaging in high-stakes [gambling with your life's savings]] was a bad idea? Another way of putting it is, do you think your views on [high-stakes [gambling with your life's savings]] are falsifiable, and if so, what evidence would be sufficient for you to consider it falsified?
Somehow, it is less pejorative if someone says 'no, there is no result from gambling with my life's savings that would falsify my understanding that gambling with my life's savings is a bad idea, and convince me that my strategy of not gambling with my life's savings was a bad idea.'
And that somehow is because people will reflexively drop both axioms- the axiom that outcomes falsify strategies, and also that they must be willing to falsify their theories of strategy to be logical and reasonable- on topics of strategy or risk. Not least because they are not valid axioms on topics of strategy and risk. Which is really not surprising to anyone with any notable experience in games of strategy of uncontrollable factors, or risk management.
As anyone with experience in games of cards or dice should know, even dominant strategies don't always win. Sometimes the other party has a better hand, and statistically improbably things happen all the time. Similarly, there are times where high-risk/high-reward strategies are the only plausible strategies for [victory], whether it's because you're making up a deficit or because playing safe is a guaranteed loss. There is no axiom-level 'your strategy is falsified if you lose' principle in play- there are only disputes about the sort of assumptions should go into evaluating the tradeoffs. And, as with most subjective value systems, there is no axiom that people must agree on shared valuations, or defend their own valuation system to your own, regardless of whether you find it convincing or not. The player who tries their hardest to maximize their probable draws or avoid a lose condition, and the player who throws hands to keep a weaker player in the game because [reasons], are playing fundamentally different games for what [victory] even is, even as they play by the same nominal draw rules.
Similarly, a strategy of risk management doesn't get disproven if the risk manifests regardless. Most forms of risk mitigation are about mitigating the frequency of a negative outcome, not the total impossibility, and so it could well be worse to change strategy after a bad-outcome than to stick the course. Again, examples are not hard to find. The negative consequences of false positives driving unnecessary (and sometimes deadly) medical interventions does not disprove the value of screening for deadly diseases at a point where the risk of surgery can pre-empt the risk of no intervention. If someone asked what sort of outcome from a car crash would make someone falsify their belief that safety belts are a good idea, they would be looked at with suspicion and rightly so, regardless of whether they were a bad-faith actor for [special interest group against safety belt laws] or merely incompetent. Nor are the suspicious being irrational or unreasonable for not engaging with a question about what sort of result of [car accident] would make them falsify their strategy of [maybe we should make seat belts mandatory by law], even if there are possible negative outcomes like malefactors trying to race away from the cops and running over children and wouldn't someone think of the children?
Because, again, outcomes do not falsify strategies. Even emotionally-evocative outcomes chosen to try and shift the strategic choice.
Outcomes can justify a re-evaluation of strategic assessments. Outcomes may reveal new information to update strategic assumptions. Outcomes may even drive changes in strategy as decision-maker's tastes change rather than anything underlying information in and of itself. But outcomes do not 'falsify' strategies. The fact that a strategy turns out poorly (or well!) is independent of the validity of the strategic choice, as good strategies can still fail, and bad strategies can still succeed. And this is because judging the ultimate outcome is judging by [information] that- by its nature- is not available at the time of decision about the strategy. It could only be included if one used that as an assumption.
Which- since the point of a strategy is to try and manage risks and opportunities for the future- is assuming the conclusion to justify a decision on how to approach the future.
Which also is not a good practice as a general point of strategy. But it can work well as a propagandistic frame-setting trick when paired with discrediting pejoratives that dares the target audience to self-identify themselves with the alternative.
...?
Elaboration- you are all over the place in that, so much so that I don't particularly see any particular place to begin. You certainly aren't describing 'my' position in any meaningful sense, currently or over the last few years of re-giving it, but I also don't think you're particularly interested in it either, given the length you go to not describe it and then raise issues I have repeatedly raised myself in various forms over the years. (To pick one- Gaddafi. My thoughts on the Libya intervention have never exactly been circumspect. I believe the closest I have ever come to a positive word for it was along the lines of 'I understand why some of the European states wanted it.')
So if you're not going to address my position, and just want to raise history with many ?-marks on issues we have been known to agree on, I will go...
...?
...and, for the sake of your final question, point you back to what you quoted.
I have not seen any particular evidence or compelling reason to believe that Ukraine was/is a forever war, given how the Russian sustainment has been by the very much finite depletion of Cold War stockpiles and generally observable quality issues.
This has two parts- a position statement (I have seen no particular evidence or compelling reason to believe that Ukraine was/is a forever war), and a justification statement (finite and depleting Cold War stockpiles enabling Russian sustainment of their invasion and large-scale combat operations).
And looking at what you've posted, the most direct response to it was-
To me, one of the most reliable indicators of a Forever War is attempts to engage in "limited" warfare in pursuit of a nebulous goal. Ukraine certainly seems to be an example of "limited" warfare in pursuit of a nebulous goal, so it trips my Forever War sense.
-and a variety of paragraphs that ignore the justification statement's premise, which is a shortage of soviet stockpile equipment to sustain the current war indefinitely.
Ukraine has burned through 10 percent of all the Patriot batteries that exist in the entire world.
Which, in turn, are not exactly part of the US Navy or the indo-pacific stockpiles, unless you think 90% of all Patriot batteries are intended for a war with China and not also for a war with Russia.
Which, also in turn, goes back to the armament production base requirement, and not simply stockpiles.
Which, in turn, goes to the fiscal affordability flub, now with new variation.
Why exactly does Trump thinks it is so important to take this option as early as possible is a whole different question.
One thesis is 'the US should always arrive a few years late to any world war, rather than be in it from the start.'
Particularly in the more modern technological era, the opening period of any great power war is going to be the costliest- the use of long-range precision munitions that are expended faster than they are produced, the utilization of 0-day exploits in cyberattacks before they can be patched, the shutdown of critical infrastructure to make any major conflict go to a negotiating table of 'do you really want to continue'
This is a not-particularly-quiet part of anti-American strategies for the last few decades- that you present a fait accompli and then threaten such high costs that the (American) adversary chooses not to counter-escalate. And as technology has increased, so has the ability to inflict those front-end costs.
IF you are going to enter a world war at all, the best time is a few years in, after the primary belligerents have battered eachother first and used up most of their means of devestation.
And thus you have abandoned the small-quantity defense, in favor of a qualitative difference defense.
Which is fine. But this is still a retreat from the bailey back to the motte, and still doesn't answer the question you tried to dodge.
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