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
Are any of us?
Sure.
I'm surprised this isn't consensus?
If you are surprised, that would be indicative.
The continued and future viability of the Republican party in the mid-teens was so evident that Obama spend the later half of his time in office trying to reverse his down-ballot impacts on the Democratic party, including a multi-year court and supporting media-campaign trying to prevent Republican-drawn redistricting maps in states that saw Republican takeovers in the 2010 elections. Half a decade later, the Hillary campaign actively attempted a pied piper campaign to pump up what she thought would be the only candidate in American history to be even more unpopular than her.
Yes, "the space of three words", also known as a "list".
A list of unlike things that can only collectively be equated in broadest boo terms is not a useful list.
It is a useful basis for judging the quality of the argument which presents the list as a serious supporting argument.
You seem to be implying that you think Trump's appointments / retentions at the levels relevant to what I'm calling "wargaming" must be more competent than the people whose positions are more visible? I would say that's a pretty generous assumption.
The argument that Trump purged the people who conduct "wargaming" does not understand that the political-appointee layer and the "wargaming" layers are different. This is an actor-to-role mismatch that suggests a misunderstanding of how the US government works.
It also neglects the role the 'loyalty,' or lack of it, plays in the ability of the executive branch to achieve a president's policy objectives. An analysis that condemns loyalists as incompetents without addressing the relative success or subversions by an ideologically opposed bureaucracy, particularly with examples from circa 2017-2020, is not a sound analysis.
To bring a historical metaphor: once upon a time, a Roman governor of egypt was advised that sheep were for shearing, not flaying. A province must be in a certain state to be productive. The inverse extreme is not better, though. A province in revolt is not a productive province either. A revolting province is also not led by capable administrators, no matter how fine their noble or academic pedigree or how loyal they were to another consul.
That's a digression, though, because replacing leadership with someone lacking not only any expertise, but any credentials at all, seems like a juvenile retribution, no?
Framing the consequences of a breakdown in trust and credibility as juvenile retribution would be demonstrating the flaws that led to the vulnerability of credentialists.
My point was to bring something new to the table,
You really, really did not.
And I think the root of the reason why he's doing that is because he lacks the humility to realize that he is not special.
I am not convinced you have any particular idea what he trying to do, or under what model he might be operating under, let alone how well specific actions do or do not move to that position.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
...is that it?
This point on facilitation, for example-
"Facilitate" is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear. See Abrego Garcia, supra, slip op. at 2 ("[T]he Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps."). The plain and active meaning of the word cannot be diluted by its constriction, as the government would have it, to a narrow term of art. We are not bound in this context by a definition crafted by an administrative agency and contained in a mere policy directive. Cf. Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 400 (2024); Christensen v. Harris Cnty., 529 U.S. 576, 587 (2000). Thus, the government's argument that all it must do is "remove any domestic barriers to [Abrego Garcia's] return," Mot. for Stay at 2, is not well taken in light of the Supreme Court's command that the government facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador.
-does not actually provide a definition that serves as an alternative to the administrative agency on what 'facilitate' means. Saying "Facilitate is an active verb" does not say what sort of verb, which is required for a categorical basis to say that no facilitation has occurred.
Without criteria, it would seem the only proof of facilitation the court would accept is the successful return of Garcia.
However, that would seem to contradict this position on executive versus judicial role.
And the differences do not end there. The Executive is inherently focused upon ends; the Judiciary much more so upon means. Ends are bestowed on the Executive by electoral outcomes. Means are entrusted to all of government, but most especially to the Judiciary by the Constitution itself.
This claim reverses what the previous lack of specificity implies. A position that the government must facilitate the return without specifying the means is an argument of ends, not means. The court in this quotation is again not addressing what actual means are required to constitute facilitation short of achieving an ends- i.e. the return- which is, per this section, the focus of the Executive.
Put another way, the court in question is demanding an ends, without accepting there a means that legitimately constitutes facilitation but is insufficient to achieving this end. This is a direct inversion to the self-declared role of the judiciary of concerning the means, even if it frustrates the executive's ends.
Similarly, your choice of moving quotation has a notable case of bolted horses and barn doors.
If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?" And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive's obligation to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" would lose its meaning. U.S. CONST. art. II, § 3; see also id. art. II, § 1, cl. 8.
The answer is presumably related to the same assurance that relates to the war on terror programs taken by (both of) Trump's predecessors that allowed targeting of actual American citizens, up to and including killing them abroad, without requiring assurances that it would never happen again.
This is notably not factoring in the security state abuses against political opponents that actually did occur during previous administrations, which to my knowledge neither judge or prior administration conceded were improper, let alone offered assurances.
Now, if this judge in question would like to argue that those mean the obligation has already lost its meaning, then well and good. You cannot lose meaning if meaning was already lost. But if the judge maintains that the meaning is currently held despite prior and reoccurring abuses, the judge needs to explain why this case, which does not involve an American citizen, is more concerning than prior cases involving American citizens.
This connects to the authority and/or responsibility issue, which the court similarly doesn't actually seem to address.
Today, both the United States and the El Salvadoran governments disclaim any authority and/or responsibility to return Abrego Garcia. See President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of El Salvador, WHITE HOUSE (Apr. 14, 2025). We are told that neither government has the power to act. The result will be to leave matters generally and Abrego Garcia specifically in an interminable limbo without recourse to law of any sort.
This is not a contradiction. The US does not have the authority to demand a sovereign state turn over its citizens to the US, absent some bilateral agreement between states enabling it. The court does not identify a basis of authority to demand sovereignty over this over El Salvador's objections. In turn, El Salvador has no legal responsibility to turn over Garcia, regardless of the US mistake in deporting him. The court does not identify any basis of a legal responsibility to turn over Garcia.
The consequence of this- that Abrego Gardia has no recourse to US law- does not imply that the US government or judiciary has jurisdiction over him. Garcia's legal prospects in El Salvador also have no implication on US legal jurisdiction. If the court wanted to cite US law that Congress passed to provided the president or even the courts jurisdiction, it certainly could... but if it can't, because no law exists, then prior court precedent recognizes the implication. When Congress can provide authorities in an area, but does not want to, that is indicative of Congressional intent.
The confusion of the limits of american national law to non-American citizens in foreign states has been a consistent theme of the critiques of the judges to date, and this is no different. Appeals to Eisenhower and a domestic internal policy issue furthers the apples-to-oranges comparison.
If you ignored what it could or could not compel the participant states to do or not do.
Unless you care to cite the chapter and section providing the punishment mechanisms?
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Forgive me in advance for what is mostly supposed to be a cathartic post, but also a request for criticism because it's how I'm making sense of the my observations right now, as well as the conclusion that I think is most likely.
Okay. How about this- are you competent enough to judge competence?
Your choice of political metaphors is all over the place, and your choice of partisan framings are not exactly indicating great insight. You start off early with a claim that the mid-2010s the Republican party was on its death throes. This, uh, is a way of describing a party that was the House Majority for 6 of the 8 years of the Obama Administration, and swept out 10 state governors (a 20 state swing) in 2010. The pitfalls of the emerging democratic majority theory haven't exactly been a secret for the last decade either.
This seems typical for your level of political metaphor. In the space of three words you make a pejorative equivalence to... Mussolini, Pincohet, and Stalin. Not exactly Bad People known for having the same sort of flaws, beyond historical category of Bad People. You raise wargaming... but cite as proof of failure a leadership level that wouldn't actually be involved in running wargames. You raise the spectre of the new administration mishandling a mechanic... without addressing how the most recent pandemic squandered public trust and credibility in the experts that RFK is known to be at odds with.
If all you want to do is 'Trump is dumb, lol,' you certainly put effort into that post. Consider catharsis achieved. If you want to make sense of the Trump administration, 'they are all idiots and I'll use the political language of their political opponents accusing them of all being idiots' is probably not a good place to spend time.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
The TPP did not include anti-defection options for a common trade war block.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
I don't think that the argument that Republicans who have previously campaigned or voted based on purported religious principles can now shift to not caring about marriage without abdicating their moral authority, including retroactively, holds water. These principles should be firm.
Why?
This presumes the religious beliefs are the principles that govern political, as opposed to principles of co-existence that allow certain stridency in some topics that have a consensus, and more restrained actions in more controversial issues. Or that actions were properly executing principles in the first place, when additional information- such as increased visibility/exposure/familiarity- would dispel misconceptions and allow principles to be expressed differently. Or that these principles expressed in the past were the primary principles in all contexts, as opposed to always having higher principles but with conditionalities that were not present in the past but are present now. Or that the principles expressed were actual principles as opposed to preferences- the whole principles according to who is in power dynamic, but reversed.
It even presumes that individually-held principles should hold across generations, regardless of time and turnover. Many of the Republicans who made up the religious right as leaders or influencers are no longer Republicans. Some died. Some defected with the ongoing political realignment. Some have disengaged from politics entirely. People voting Republican today are often quite literally not the same people voting Republican a generation ago during the Clinton years and then into the Bush years. The majority of the war fighters in the US, literal and cultural, were born after 9-11.
Why should they hold firm to the principles that different people held in different decades?
'Republicans' and even 'the Republican party' are not some singular collective hive mind, anymore than anyone else. They certainly aren't trans-temporal.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
The Kamala joy strategy was certainly a vibes strategy. However, the general sentiment calls to mind the recent talk from the American left about how they needed to create their own Joe Rogan to compete with the American right. The issue isn't a lack of signal or signallers in the media sphere- it's that pushing a vibe-message doesn't make the vibe occur.
People should be allowed to choose their gender, because more freedom is better than less freedom.
Why?
It's trivial to identify examples of freedom that are not better the more people are free to exercise them. It's equally trivial to identify ways in which increasing certain types of freedoms in one respect creates direct or secondary tradeoffs in another. Therefore, 'more freedom is better than less freedom' is not a self-proving axiom, particularly on a single metric of comparison.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Given how populism has been handled in western media over the last decade, I would absolutely consider that a partisan flag, even if it's a partisanship that's willing to shoot members of a broader policy coalition. Establishment partisans are still partisans.
If you wanted to isolate China, you wouldn't immediately tariff their neighbors, you'd try to woo their regional neighbors to join your own aligned bloc. Ideally you'd do it in a group fashion to present a unified bloc and get more leverage -- a kind of organization of countries in the area.
Interesting proposal, except the obvious counter-point that the parties involved would have obvious incentives to expect bribes in various forms in the name of being wooed, but then defect against a common tariff front against China in exchange for Chinese bribes. 'Play both parties off eachother for personal gain' is not exactly a hidden policy preference.
Breaking this defection option is why the EU makes surrendering trade sovereignty a precondition of the unified block, uses coercive instruments regularly against less powerful constituent members to punish/deter cheating, and is generally understood to be dominated by the more powerful members and regularly advances reforms to further centralize power to the net benefit of those central leaders.
Perhaps your read is different than mine, but I see no particular reason to believe the asian countries in mind are inclined to be bribed into a trade conflict with China, or into a EU-style trade block.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
I'm not clear what context you're thinking of. For example, my perspective on the context of the Republican's reaction to the Clinton affairs is that the Democrats largely won the social argument on sexual impropriety even before Trump showed up. Marriage was not that important as a special/sacred thing, and it was so not-important that it was subject to redefinition a decade and so later. The Republicans lost that, and so 20, let alone 30, years after Clinton, the Republican party is not exactly campaigning on marriage issues.
That makes him a statistically uncommon person. Statistically uncommon people come up in random person pulls all the time.
It certainly isn't a counter-argument to him being a partisan hack. Being a hack would go a long way to explaining why a notoriously dry, convoluted, and highly technical subject matter is keeping enough non-expert attention to justify a claim of fame. Another famed economist and partisan hack was Paul Krugman from the NYT. Krugman wasn't the NYT's go-to economist because of his economic insight and objectivity- he was the go-to economist because he would reliably tell the readers why [current democrat thing] was good and smart and why [current republican thing] was dumb and evil.
Krugman was certainly an uncommon partisan hack, but he was indeed both a partisan and a through that partisanship a hack. What separates Scott Sumner in nature, if not scale of popularity?
Is this a sign that the religious right is meaningfully dead
Has been for approaching decades. The religious right was a dying force during the Bush 2 administration, and was regularly losing culture war fights during and before that.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
There's also a broader points of rejecting axioms of expectations and substituting their own.
The Abrahamic theological promise is that genuine faith promises safety and comfort in the next life, not the current. The nature of discomfort in this life varies- the old testament has more than a few example of God allowing collective punishments / humblings of worshippers for collective failures- but even New Testament Jesus was more 'give up your worldly wealth (and by extension the comforts it brings) for the time before you die.' The reward of heaven after death is premised on death after a virtuous- but not ideally comfortable- life.
By contrast, nearly each and every scenario in anon's comic ends and begins... at the worldly death. This rests on an implicit understanding / expectation that 'reason' / God's Plan should result in good things / not-having bad things in life, including not dying.
It doesn't address the requirement to live a good life before death. It doesn't address the premise of judgement after death. It doesn't address the rewards (or lack of rewards) afterwards. In a four-stage process- live a good life, die, judgement, afterlife- the comic treats stage 2 as some sort of ironic commentary or disproof.
A structural parallel would be a comic mocking advice that overweight people should work out - lose weight - feel better by depicting fat people struggling and being uncomfortable at the gym.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
'Science funding' isn't what is cancelled. Existing contracts allocating science funding to specific organizations gets cancelled.
The distinction is that- with the bureaucratic cycles- the funding that previously went to organization A can now go to organizations B, or C, instead.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Claas Relotius did the Atlanticist media no favors.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Creating fake sources is generally out of style, but using fake sources- which is to say, giving attention, focus, and treating suspect sources as credible is on-brand.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
There's reporting that Colombia basically internally started messaging that nothing would change despite the deal. IE, that they weren't actually conceding to the Trump demands, and that business would continue as before.
That sort of messaging is a lie in at least one direction- either that the Colombia administration was lying to the Federal government, or that it was lying to the people it was telling nothing would change for. I could believe the later, but would understand why people would believe the former.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
'I did not intend for a word used routinely for things less miserable than hell-characterizations to be less pejorative than hell-characterizations' is certainly a denial of a motte-and-bailey argument.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
The rivalry with a Schism.
Who most would not realize there was ever a rivalry with.
Because we won so hard.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Is or isn't El Salvador being paid by the US government to imprison non-El Savadorians accused (never mind convicted) of crime in El Salvador?
Neither answer makes the relationship between the US government and the El Salvadorian government into an agent relationship subject to judicial or executive directions from the United States.
Garcia happens to be El Salvadorian
This is not a matter of happenstance- this is a critical attribute as to the nature of the legal issue. Were Garcia a different citizenship- particularly American citizen- the nature of both American national and international law would be substantially different.
not because El Salvador requested his extradition.
El Salvador does not have to have requested his extradition to have a sovereign right to apply sovereign jurisdiction over an El Salvadorian citizen on Salvadorian sovereign territory.
Thou shall not attempt a managed opposition strategy in which the ruling party, or would-be ruling party, tries to interfere with internal-party processes of other parties.
Granted, it is telling indicator that a party-of-government may not feel a political party faction is actually a threat to democracy if it donates significant aid to boost that faction's political prospects. However, there's far more costs than just the 'oops, we succeeded too well' tradeoff.
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