Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being an insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
Are there enough Dems who genuinely want infrastructure / railroad / whatever funding to pass a bipartisan budget?
My recollection of the last decades was that the Democratic Congressionals were more than happy to raze the commons they might have shared with Trump, and that this inclination has only gotten stronger.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
It wouldn't be a singular benefit, but benefits. As long as both parties have their own interests being advanced, they don't need a singular.
As for specific potential benefits: the clearest benefit is for Elon getting to politically distance himself from Trump and Doge as he returns back to being 'just' a business man and the various other actors who might want to capitalize on a Trump-Musk 'split.' Benefits to Trump are more nuanced, but could serve an internal political party management- the nominal straw that is breaking Trump-Musk is the budget, annd this could be used as a circle-the-wages call (demand) to get the Republicans on board to pass the bill despite the fiscal conservative objections.
If this was a coordinated break, however, I imagine it would be to bait the Democrats in Congress towards the Epstein file that Musk called attention to. This feud is the insinuation that it incriminates Trump, which is catnip to the Dems, but if this were coordinated, then both parties could know that Trump himself is not condemned, but also that other (mutual) political opponents might be. If the Epstein file was released by Trump directly, it could be dismissed as a political attack fabrication. If the Democrats 'force' it open during Congressional hearing discovery, they'd be owning the responsibility / consequence for any fallout. When you consider how MeToo ended up scalping more notable Democrats than Republicans....
(And- at the same time- the previous individual benefits listed above.)
To be clear- this isn't saying/claiming this is the reason. Merely that this is an example of a political ploy a fake falling out could serve.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
If the Democrats were capable of that level of self-control, they would have worked with the 90s-era democrat who got elected in a repudiation to the Republican establishment a decade ago.
This, more. Seeing the Bannon position (which- to be clear- is really old) being passed / smuggled as 'Trump is seriously feuding with Musk' has put this firmly in the 'can't trust initial reporting: ignore for now and come back in a few days to see what, specifically, has changed' zone. Both Bannon and the democratic media have been trying to meme a Musk-Trump blowup into happening for some time, and the information environment is already contaminated. Maybe that's what's happening now, but then Musk has been distancing from DOGE since its disruption phase was done in the first two months, reporting already indicated his allies were/are still there, and he's been reportedly wanting to go back to focusing on his business. It's not exactly hard to think of various kayfabe reasons* for a quote-unquote 'staged' breakup fight in a way that serves both his and Trump's political interests.
Or he could be ketamine-influenced and this will spiral. Who knows. I'll wait regardless.
Key things I'll look for to validate this being a Big Deal include-
- Are Musk's allies purged from DOGE?
- Are Musk's contracts frozen / suspended?
- Any immigration-specific action against Musk.
*One amusing proposal from a friend: the Dems demanding the Epstein file log, which will be less damning to Trump than hoped, but catch some Democratic VIPs in a way that leads to inter-Democrat fratricide.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
Say what you will about them, but what they were not lacking in is/was ideology.
I note you conspicuous avoid attesting to any of us having 'morality' here.
(Wink / nudge / laughing at self in good humor.)
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
This is all occurring while the Democrats have loudly signaled, and been mocked relentlessly for, plans to find inroads into the minds of young men.
On one hand, I can understand this, but on the other, I have to question the idea that somehow young, disengaged, skeptical men will respond positively if the Democrats only... checks notes... force paid advertisements into youtube videos, in-game video game ads, and sports and gaming podcasts.
These are three hobby spaces that are notoriously known for being escapist hobby vectors for people who do not want to be bothered with Serious Things. Paid ads are not exactly popular in any of them, and the anti-ad industry that, by its nature, is skeptical of establishment forces (that would prefer such bypasses not exist).
One of those spaces in particlar- video gaming spaces- was the subject of a multi-year culture war in which Democratic party allies circled the wagons against a non-trivial part of the consumer base who, among other grievances, felt their hobby space was being encroached upon by partisans who didn't care for them.
It really begs the question of if the person making the proposal had any awareness of Gamergate back in the day, or if they remember the progressive framing but think this is a good idea anyway, or... just what this is supposed to be besides a grift for a wave of blocked/skipped ads that people allready block/skip in mass.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
A number of people did, but DOGE being bounded and only able to work in a department with the consent of the department secretary was the thrust of a couple of AAQCs in February / March.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
Assets that, if some reports are to be believed, were in some locations recently relocated and possibly preparing for an upcoming major strike that would coincide with the peace talks ongoing offensive.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
I had to get this done a day early, or it wouldn't get done until several days late.
Thank you for doing so. The 1st of the month roundup is, well, a highlight of the month. The new month wouldn't start off right without it.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
Why does it seem like so many conservatives
Glenn Greenwald is a 'conservative' in the same way that Cindy Sheehan was a conservative for running against Nancy Pelosi.
Which is to say- he was a highly acclaimed / respected public voice when he was criticizing the Bush administration and Iraq War, and then quickly lost support when his criticisms continued despite the party in power changing.
Can you quite where anyone said that Unikowsky's argument is correct based on who he is?
Can you quote where I made any claim that Unikosky's argument is incorrect based on who he is?
Congratulations on wasting so much of my time. I sincerely believe that was your sole intent.
And this is why sincere belief is no a substitute for accurate understanding.
You just chose to ignore in favor of arguing their identity.
Questioning who the OP is appealing to and why they should be is taken as an arguer-by-proxy is the antithesis of an argument over their identity. It is an invitation for their identity to be established in ways to improve their credibility beyond poor stereotypes.
Variously people have done so poorly, appealing to credentialism of a distrusted profession or the smuggled assumption of a former employer, but that is the issue with poor stereotypes instead of individualized endorsement.
Blah, blah. Still refusing to make an argument that 12 hours is sufficient for the Supreme court's order. Shame on you, and shame on the Motte for not having drummed you out with laughter.
'Blah, blah' is certainly an amusing dismissal warning of increasing habeas harms to people claiming a need for habeaus relief for non-habeas motives.
It truly is absurd to expect people to explain why a source is good and should be taken at face value. It's not like anyone with experience in the field might recognize the source as less-than-credible and inclined towards motivated reasoning. Or to have made critiques of the source more than a year ago, before the current culture war subject of discussion.
Thankfully, this is the Motte. Positions are for defending, and that includes positions based on outsourcing an argument.
I think not, but I'd like to hear an argument for why it is a reasonable amount of time.
Because there has not been an argument for why twelve hours it is not a reasonable amount of time for due process in the context of deportation, besides that it interferes with a habeas relief process, which the law does not require occur for due process in the context of deportation.
So I return to my question: is 12 hours a reasonable amount of time for them to seek relief?
Do you think it is reasonable to demand that people should be detained longer against the inclination of a government that wants to release a person sooner, even though this will increase the amount of time people are detained overall instead of free?
Remember- [habeaus relief] and [due process] are not synonyms. [Habeaus relief] is a specific relief against wrongful detention. As a matter of heabaus harm minimization, less time in wrongful detention is better than more time. This principle even applies to rightly-detained individuals- hence the right to a speedy trial. A 'more reasonable' time period for involuntary detention is shorter, not longer.
An habeas-based argument to extend a 12 hour limit is saying a 12 hour potentially wrongful detention is too short, and that everyone wrongly (or rightly) detained should be detained longer.
If this seems a weird, this is because [habeas relief] is in this case being instrumentally treated as [deportation appeal]. The habeas concern itself is resolved upon deportation. Extending the habeas harm (the effect justifying habeas relief) is the tool to try and prevent deportation.
At a minimum, "scalia clerk" means "Justicr Scalia, hero of the conservative legal movement, thought this person was smart enough to aid him."
Scalia was also well known for hiring people he thought were wrong on substantial political issues. 'Smart enough to aid him' does not mean or imply 'political judgements were considered sound and trusted by even Scalia's standard.'
This would be a smuggled insinuation, both invalid and dishonest if claimed explicitly. (Which it has not been, hence pressing for further clarification).
If I go through your posting history, how many examples am I going to find of you demanding an explanation of the significance of a commentary source?
Not many. Most people do not hinge their opening posts on a non-characterized source, or happily clarify when asked.
It does happen from time to time, though. Even got an AAQC for a frisking the Seymour Hersh claims that the US blew up the Nordstream pipeline, which was largely based on critiquing the (claimed) source of Hersh. Casting shade on sources is on brand, though in this case I pressed the OP to justify the source he was using to argue by proxy for an argument conclusion the source didn't justify.
Will they all be sources critical of Trump?
Heavens no. Feel free to look for yourself, though.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
There are a lot of people jumping through hoops to not to validate a source, true.
Dean
Flairless
4mo ago
Perhaps!
...but this is not the argument the OP made for their source.
12 hours doesn't seem like enough to me.
'Enough to what to what purpose?' is the natural question.
'To deliver due process' is a predictable response, but this itself isn't defining what 'due process' actually entails in a deportation case. For something to be 'insufficient,' there must be a standard of what 'sufficient' is. However, what is sufficient due process in one context is not sufficient in another.
This has been why a lot of the political opposition to migrant deportations has been on trying to equivocate deportation due process to other due process contexts. Consider the media focus several weeks ago of an illegal migrant mother who was deported and took her infant US citizen child with her. This was raised and framed as 'administration deports American citizen without due process!', as if the due process was a US child custody court case between US citizens, rather than the due process of letting a foreign citizen keep custody of their child when there was no immediate US family. Naturally, that line of argument fell quiet soon after when the 'just give the father custody!' process arguments ran into the issues of the father's legal relationship to the mother (and for being in the US).
The political struggle / contest is who gets to define due process requirements when.
If I directly asked you if you thought due process required being defended in court by a crusading ACLU lawyer, I doubt you would say yes in those terms. Certainly the law does not require that. If it did, there would be no 'you can ask for it with your phone call' option, because it wouldn't be an option, it would be the requirement. However, arguments of 'you are violating due process if you do not give them that' are in practice demanding a procedural requirement.
The issues with this are multiple. First and most importantly, it tends to be a bad idea to let people who are not in the position of creating legal requirements for the state to create legal requirements for the state. Similarly, institutional and professional legitimacy can easily be burned in advancing institutional power increases as a means to win political arguments- see the (probable) result of national injunctions, or the long-running Democratic attack on Republican partisanship in the Supreme Court (pick your preference).
But a third point is that process demands are not inherently legitimate when arguments are used as soldiers, and can gradually undercut the nominally claimed principle's value to/from/by society.
This has already happened globally in terms of how global views of refugee and asylum laws has evolved over the last quarter century. Asylum and refuge was a principle won from the post-WW2 context, it was leveraged to advance economic migration, and public support has declined as people bite the bullet and diminished asylum's social / political sanctity to prevent it's use as an argument-as-soldier for a cause. Similarly, free trade was a political value, until the costs were increasingly untenable, and now market efficiency arguments are hobbled as the people who justified their preferences on the basis of free trade have discredited themselves and the arguments they used as soldiers.
There is no reason it cannot or will not happen with other dynamics.
The point of this isn't that you shouldn't feel that 12 hours and a phone call is enough due process for illegal migrants. The point is that you should be clear what is enough due process for illegal migrants, and where it ends vis-a-vis due process for legal migrants, and where that due process compares to citizens.
There are (well established) distinctions. Careless equivocation will be indistinguishable from those who would use that argument as soldiers, and it stands to lose if / when they lose the social argument as a whole, and take their supporting arguments with them for all others who might have wanted that (no longer shared) principle.
That is a credentialism argument for a trusting a member of a profession that, in the US at least, has been long and broadly considered untrustworthy on matters of ethics, prioritizing the public good, or holding their own accountable.
In a year where extremely partisan use of the judiciary, with substantial support by members of the legal profession in good standing, is a topic on the supreme court docket, and where good-standing in the legal profession is tied to the not-necessarily-apolitical interests.
Which is why the question was not for a resume, but for a reason to trust, and why their characterization of a live culture war topic should be deferred to. "He is a capable lawyer in good standing" is an anti-endorsement.
This says more about your ability to recognize sources that regularly include slop than your ability to avoid sources that routinely include slop.
Foreign Affairs as an opener was a good joke, I will give you that.
That is a fully general counterargument. Quite frankly, if you do not like to read opinions on culture war topics by people who may in fact not be 100% neutral observers, The Motte might not be for you.
Who says I do not like to read opinions on culture war topics by non-neutral observers?
Fortunately, the counter-argument is not fully generalizable. It can be countered by providing an introduction of a source, characterizing the source regardless of its level of bias.
If you bother to click on the substack link, you will find that Unikowsky did for example link the court document detailing the procedure.
And if the OP (sockpuppet) had bothered to introduce their argument, no one would be expected to conduct their own internet archeology to find it. I have a similarly dim view of people who link to long youtube videos for supporting context in lieu of their own arguments.
As a matter of practice- both in terms of advancing an argument and as as a framing device when introducing someone else for an argument- it is incumbent on the opener to provide some level of contextual justification for the audience as to why. This is particularly relevant if the opener is going to outsource their argument to someone else.
If OP's argument is going to be based on Unikowsky's views, then it will behoove the OP to justify why Unikowsky's views are significant.
Sure, not every claim is backed up by evidence of that level. But if your suspicion is that -snipped-
My suspicion is that the the OP is making a broader culture war argument by selecting a take they agree with, but do not want to make themself, and so are attempting to smuggle in an insinuation of authoritative neutrality by presenting someone without characterization to make the argument by proxy, even if that person is more biased then the OP might care to admit and would undermine their opening position.
I base this suspicion in part by how the OP introduces Unikowsky to make an argument about deportation process, but then concludes with an appeal to HL Menken on the nature of resisting oppression. This is not Unikowski's position from the position of what is cited, but it is the conclusion that the OP cares to focus on using Unikowski as the buildup.
This suggests the OP is conducting a bait-and-switch argument, using Unikowksy's position as the opening bait (neutral observer on deportation process) for the concluding switch (deportation is a part of Trumpian oppression that must be resisted).
The way to test a bait-and-switch argument is to challenge the presenter to justify the bait.
From my own priors, I think that the story as presented -- the Trump administration engaging in malicious compliance to get a few more immigrants out of the country before the courts stop them -- would not be very surprising.
Neither would I, but this in and of itself is not a reason to trust / care about the views of Unikowsky, absent further argument about why Unikowsky's framings should be believed or cared about.
Indeed. Which is why their former employment does not suffice for why someone should care about their explanation / interpretation on a culture war issue.
'They worked for a smart person' is not a credit that bolsters one's own credibility, particularly when said smart man was known for routinely hiring people he thought were substantially wrong on major issues.
National law enforcement is 'interfering' now?
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