EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
Unavoidable long-term yes, but short and medium term?: Quite preventable. The US rolled over to China and allowed IP theft on industrial scale, strategic acquisitions of US and global companies in key industries, ignored blatant limitations on foreign companies within China, ignored massive targeted state subsidies, and failed to support manufacturing in other more friendly and allied low-labor-cost countries, all because US companies were convinced that they could double their profits by getting access to the Chinese market - which, and the real kicker of it all, obviously did not work in any way, shape, or form for anyone in the West, at least beyond a decade or two. Sadly nothing too new; I still regularly curse Nixon's name to this day over leaving us with the Taiwan shitstorm because he was too busy trying to reap short-term political benefit at home - sound familiar?
There's an alternate world where Taiwan, Vietnam, Mexico, Thailand, etc. (possibly India but that's a different can of worms) all picked up significant amounts of manufacturing slack which we could play off of each other, and China's technological acceleration was delayed by a full additional decade (and thus also their military, political, and economic clout). China really backstabbed us when it came to the "promises" made on joining the WTO in the leadup to 2001, Bush should have taken action by the mid-2000s to give them a warning, and Obama shouldn't have taken so long to bring about the TPP (2016!) which ended up both shitty and even worse, sailing without us. Even worse, especially under Obama's watch, the forced technology transfer, ownership restrictions, and outright theft reached critical proportions with essentially zero real response. I personally think that will go down in history as one of the worst economic blunders of all time.
What hath this wrought? There's a strong chance we're war with China over Taiwan within two years after Trump leaves office, and if so we will lose. Badly. It won't even be all that close.
I think that's uncharitable. I lived in Oregon at the time, where I also grew up, and I remember quite a few (though definitely not a majority!) of leftists quite upset at the drone-strike era Patriot Act stuff only getting worse under Obama. The problem here is that in general, privacy-minded people are small minorities in both parties (there's pretty notably only a single Rand Paul in the Senate, for example). In fact leftists were the ones most loud and annoying about hating the TSA stuff, as a smaller example, and leftists also the ones feeling more warm towards Snowden even though it also happened on Obama's watch, but again libertarians are a weird cross-axis group (almost a horseshoe theory thing)
J Edgar Hoover era stuff also doesn't map neatly onto modern political orientations, so I don't want to overemphasize it in that sense, but it's nevertheless worth noting that in that era the leftists also were eventually targeted the most by his apparatus (and which was far, far worse than the kiddie shit everyone gets worked up about regarding the like, two lower level dudes in the Trump campaign getting wiretapped. And I mean for heaven's sakes Nixon had people literally break into the Democratic headquarters). So maybe my more broad point is that I'm often confused by people being so accusatory about anti-authoritarians being too loud or annoying...
...because virtually the entire history of the United States is one giant concern about authoritarianism! Think what you will about the modern No Kings rallies, but the idea is super-duper-mega-American. Modern people are often very surprised at how passionately Americans often felt about the issue. Even now-beloved people like Lincoln were very, very often accused or suspected of being tyrants in disguise.
In that sense, it feels like a partisan psy-op that so many people are convinced that it's purely a partisan TDS thing alone. It's not. Sure, I absolutely and completely agree that Biden and Harris over-milked it as a talking point, to the detriment of their own ideas for governance. There is an element of chicken and egg too (is Trump's far more extreme second term a counter-reaction to alleged Democratic misdeeds, or was this his true character all along that Democrats were warning about? Even granting that binary presentation of the question, causality is not so easy to tease out). Yet still, saying it's all bad faith is a severe misattribution error.
In other words, the majority of Congress has sided with the President against a minority of Congress in a common dispute
No. Actually, big no. Congressional inaction is not the same as congressional action. Votes are required for action to take place for a reason. A lack of official and formal votes cannot possibly be construed to actually be the will of Congress for what I hope should be obvious reasons. Congress' actions are affirmative only, by definition! A law or expression of will, once passed, should not and cannot be ignored. It must be actually repealed.
But at any rate this is moving the goalposts (freely forgiven because of OP's formulation of the question) because Trump has done more things against the explicit will of Congress and its explicitly granted power over spending than just the ICA episode. And before you point to the vague SC decision about it, this also didn't come even close to resolving the issue because it was loosely hand-woven over foreign-policy adjacent powers, which other illegal and unconstitutional acts do not concern.
Congress did not pass a budget
This is a bit weird overall and I'm not sure what to think. Congressional spending is, admittedly, often done in an infuriating pretzel-like twisty manner and so things aren't super duper clear cut in all cases. It's not totally clear what, if anything, can or should be done in the face of genuine inaction. I do tend to think that eventually and generally, absent any and all budget, the government should fully and completely shut down even if this results in critical services going undone as a matter of law if Congress truly does nothing to apportion funds, though, and that the President can't stop it even if like, pragmatically he probably could do something.
SCOTUS has helped this along
Some kind of SC reform is needed but it may need to take full amendment form for the deeper reforms. I personally believe that bureaucratically at least the SC's processes are dysfunctional. Their current pattern of handling things via incomplete orders, shadow dockets, being overly pedantic about standing, etc etc is bad.
have also declined to actually try and stop the R&D transfer or private donations to troops they refuse to allow to be paid
See above for my objection regarding lack of action not being at all equivalent to actual affirmative action by Congress. Most of your comments here are playing a political blame game, but that's not the question at hand here, it's more a general constitutional question, and so of only minimal relevance.
However. Admittedly it feels icky and gross and probably bad practice at a minimum to allow private donations to substantially prop up core government sovereign functions (and there is I believe a Constitutional argument that certain functions are not permitted to be fully privatized) but going further back in history I'm pretty sure similar-ish stuff has happened without too much fuss. In theory however the Appropriations Clause seems to suggest that there is some limit, though the contours are probably poorly understood on this issue. My opinion here also applies to the ballroom thing. (As as practical matter though, this is uncomfortably close to legalized bribery and so combined with a turbocharged presidential immunity, I find concerning, though I'm trying to keep things relatively nonpartisan on these questions)
In other words, the President applied a legal tariff, did not do an export tax, using trade authorities granted by Congress. Congress, in turn, has not passed a budget to incorporate this revenue,
I am not currently qualified to opine on if it's an illegal export tax. I will say this: Trump is stretching and pressing powers explicitly intended for emergency use into more "normal" tariffs. I think that's terrible precedent and likely illegal (but on normal, not constitutional, grounds - the distinction matters). To his credit, some of these tariffs seem to be directly connected to foreign policy and trade deals, so that offers him some leeway (i.e. they in many cases do not appear to be intended to be permanent policy). But that latter point is the rub, right? Trump is not allowed to set permanent tariffs. Whether Trump's actions constitute a violation of, say, the Nondelegation Doctrine I'm happy to leave to the courts. Yet again however it doesn't matter if Trump is more proximately responsible for raising the money... it's not his to spend!! Only Congress can, via official vote, decide where and when to spend the Government's money. Period. Trump does not get special benefit of the doubt here. He's got some minor latitude within existing structures and programs, but Presidents of both parties have been playing way too fast and loose with this. The government is NOT one enormous slush fund, nor could Congress make it perform that way even if they tried, they are not allowed.
Maybe the more informative question in all this is - how wide do you consider the Nondelegation Doctrine? And what do you think the whole check/balance behind giving Congress explicit power of the purse and to tax is even for? Reading between the lines you don't seem to think it's all that important.
I think even Republicans, if they were thinking more clearly, should have great cause for concern. As the supposed originalists, they should be extra aware of the original Constitution's ideas for how the branches' relations should be. And there are objectively several gigantic fractures in the original Constitutional checks-and-balances design (who you blame for this is a separate discussion). We have:
- Presidential legislation (increased direct-influence federal rule-making, executive order overreliance, manipulation and selective proposal of federal grants and funding to coerce local, state, and even private entities)
- Presidential power of the purse (unilateral rescissions, manipulation of budgetary estimation, and attempts to shutter entire Congressionally-mandated departments)
- Directly bypassing and undermining Constitutionally-mandated requirements for Senate-confirmed Cabinet (and similar) leadership (via "acting" heads sometimes even appointed unilaterally from outside the organization and often in place for very extended periods of time, plus other runarounds, and certainly not much "advice and consent")
- Substantially defying Congressional power over declarations of war (provoking wars, unilateral first strike decisions, and even an AUMF being used for a literal and actual war)
- Constitutional amendments, which virtually everyone seems to agree are needed and were explicitly designed to be possible to fix problems in the core design (or new situations meriting new solutions), are not forthcoming nor seem practical to implement
- Diminished prosecutorial discretion and increased direct political influence on law enforcement (I don't believe there is true equivalence here but both sides at least facially agree this is strongly weakened)
- Almost forgot, the Senate is supposed to ratify (or reject!) major foreign policy treaties. This is, quite frankly, no longer done almost at all. There are massive and impactful agreements regularly made by Presidents with zero Congressional input or say.
Again, these are not really partisan spin-type allegations, they are very strongly rooted in fact. I can't emphasize enough that all of those problems are fundamental and direct threats to the checks and balances system. There's also some federal-vs-state stuff too but I tend to view that as less important.
Also, you have varying degrees of extra-Constitutional but still foundational stuff like:
- Weakened military-political noninterference, for example as argued here that the grand bargain in America has been that "the military agrees not to insert itself into (internal) politics broadly construed and in exchange the civilian authorities agree not to use the military in internal politics and finally in turn the military occupies an elevated place of trust in the citizenry."
- Durable and influential political parties, infamously
- Compromise is seen as weakness and is increasingly rare despite playing a major role in historical precedent (although historians don't agree on whether those major compromises were all good)
- Gerrymandering's disproportionate impact on election dynamics
- Litigation and obligation and force as regular checks w/r/t the judiciary, rather than more holistic/informal/mutually respectful understandings
- Judiciary checks expected to be quick, wide-ranging, high-volume, and other non-ideal expectations or flaws and disagreements about their role
- I would include abuse of the pardon power here, but I acknowledge that considering this a broken piece might be a minority view
- Clashes over the timing of Supreme Court nominations (e.g. Merrick Garland) and also other especially-judicial nominations (Congress here is possibly the breaker of this check/balance)
- Whether Congress is allowed to set up presidential-influence resistant mechanisms like the Fed
I'm still a believer in the system, but... shit's bad. That's not an exaggeration. While political polarization is overblown (historically), the checks and balances are I believe in a worse state than they have ever been in the entire history of the state. I do fear for an American Empire era. Not in the next 10 years probably, but in the next 30, absolutely. Weirdly, I actually kind of think that making Senators directly elected (done via amendment) might have been a mistake, that the original idea of making them appointed by legislatures was more conducive to the role they were expected to play.
Again, let's step back for a moment: that's SEVEN major failures of critical pillars of the three-branch system to sustain itself properly (as originally envisioned). That's very concerning. Only so many checks and balances can be nullified before the system functionally collapses. (In fact, an argument could actually be made that Congress allowing too much federal rule-making many decades ago has created a vicious downward spiral as the responsibilities became increasingly easy to evade). This is, again, just simple facts and logic so to speak.
Now, to your original point, does dysfunction in one place justify dysfunction in another? I say no, two wrongs don't make a right. IF, and that's a big IF, major and fundamental stuff is going undone due to failings of Congress, I think the President is probably allowed some latitude. But that in my view is not broadly the case here, not now and not historically either. Executive rule-making infringing on legislative turf, the whole rescission stuff, presidential military encroachment, at least all of those have a long history of occurring independently even when Congress isn't dropping the ball. Like, the President is probably within his rights to move money around to pay the troops in a government shutdown like this, even if I don't like it. But the President is NOT allowed to deliberately, for example, decline to nominate someone to a Cabinet-level position on purpose because he prefers the current non-confirmed dude, as he recently did. I'm not quite sure what the ideal remedy for that failure is, if any, but it IS still a failure.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
That's slightly unfair - they've also done things like tweak fine tuning and post training so that ambiguity isn't penalized so much, and also there's some smaller advancements with the mathematical underpinnings regarding what to do in certain "low-confidence" scenarios, for lack of a better concise descriptor. That means that even some no-tool-use models are also moderately better at hallucination resistance, though it's obviously very far from a solved problem (the most obvious confabulations however usually aren't happening anymore, unless you're a shit model like Grok prioritizing different things like Grok)
I hope you knew what you were getting into bringing up Sleeping Beauty, haha. I have a degree in statistics (which doesn't necessarily grant me as much insight into probability theory as you might imagine) but I usually avoid getting into the weeds by simply stating that the question: "What does probability mean in real life?" is NOT a settled question, at all. You cannot escape bringing in philosophy. I recommend this Stanford encyclopedic entry for a pretty nice and thorough treatment/overview of some of the difficulties involved in what initially seems to be a simple word.
Broadly speaking, there are arguably three main concepts of probability:
- An epistemological concept, which is meant to measure objective evidential support relations. For example, “in light of the relevant seismological and geological data, California will probably experience a major earthquake this decade”.
- The concept of an agent’s degree of confidence, a graded belief. For example, “I am not sure that it will rain in Canberra this week, but it probably will.”
- A physical concept that applies to various systems in the world, independently of what anyone thinks. For example, “a particular radium atom will probably decay within 10,000 years”.
Some philosophers will insist that not all of these concepts are intelligible; some will insist that one of them is basic, and that the others are reducible to it. Moreover, the boundaries between these concepts are somewhat permeable. After all, ‘degree of confidence’ is itself an epistemological concept, and as we will see, it is thought to be rationally constrained both by evidential support relations and by attitudes to physical probabilities in the world. And there are intramural disputes within the camps supporting each of these concepts, as we will also see. Be that as it may, it will be useful to keep these concepts in mind. Sections 3.1 and 3.2 discuss analyses of concept (1), "classical" and "logical/evidential probability"; 3.3 discusses analyses of concept (2), "subjective probability"; 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6 discuss three analyses of concept (3), "frequentist", "propensity", and "best-system" interpretations.
Put more simply, it's not fair to imply that there is a mathematically "correct" interpretation of probability. This is wrong. In fact you can axiomatize something mathematically in several different ways while still retaining most if not all desirable math traits we want out of "probability" (see link), even if many end up being fairly similar... with that said, however, you are correct as far as I'm aware that Sleeping Beauty is better seen as a semantic or definitional disagreement than a mathematical one per se. Even there, though, you go too far. You can make the math satisfy your basic probability axioms of your choice, whether you're a halfer or thirder alike, once you've defined a sample space (and thus what counts as a "trial") and any other relevant definitions have been clarified (especially clarifying what, precisely, is being conditioned on!!). In short, no experts consulted are making math mistakes, they merely are speaking in scissor statements, as we might say around here.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
Polarizing and niche appeal people like Musk often doom their own projects to niche appeal by the very fact of being involved, for one. Nearly any other mainstream tech-famous figure would have far more cachet right away, or even a determined but unknown media whore. This matters not just for getting users to the site and retaining them (obviously important - see the failure of Truth Social), but also because at the current state of AI to do this you functionally need human volunteers to supervise said AI, and so you want to cast that net more widely. You want curious and motivated people, not tech castoffs with an axe to grind against the “establishment”. Making an encyclopedia is foundationally an establishment thing to do anyways, the ideas are not very nicely compatible. Wikipedia’s faults are in execution, not a flaw in the core mission or even necessarily in its processes. One reason why all challengers have failed was attempting to reject that - more similar projects have their oxygen stolen by the more mature free product, but that’s obviously not a concern for an AI encyclopedia which is a novelty in and of itself, and at least theoretically could offer some things Wikipedia cannot.
And don’t get me wrong, given the recent history of Grok models, not only would Grok need a lot of hand holding, it’s quite possible even with said help it would be flatly incapable of obtaining an acceptable final product. Some smart engineering might allow current gen models to achieve some sort of success, but that’s again something where the engineering is often the point, not the final output. As an example, it would be genuinely interesting to see if a horde of slightly differently tuned and varied models are able to produce an emergent AI “wisdom of the crowds” equivalent, or would get stuck in certain fail states. Musk gets this paradigm all wrong, because he is plainly treating the project as both advertising for his specific shitty model, as well as a partisan vehicle to launder his sociopolitical complaints into greater coherence or acceptability. These are not sustainable directions on multiple fronts.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
Something like Grokipedia is a good and valuable idea, even if poorly monetizable and requiring a lot more money and effort than was spent here. In fact setting up agentic loops to produce Wikipedia would be a fascinating and useful study and playground for AI models.
Musk is the wrong one to do this and Grok is the wrong tool for the job besides.
However, I expect something like it to eventually exist.
“Very few other reasons” is also not a good standard for regular use of deadly force. If you’re not actively at war, which we are not (certain Mexican cartels are functionally at war with the Mexican military but not our own), then if not a beyond reasonable doubt standard, you need to be in that similar ballpark. That innocent reasons are unlikely does not make them impossible.
The entire point of having a different standard for actual war is that different standards inherently apply. But philosophically and legally, using wartime standards because you’ve used some kind of indirect killing logic is a terrible, terrible precedent. Actual terror groups have histories of directly and intentionally killing Americans, and so there is legally and philosophically more latitude. Drug cartels sell drugs to other people, who sell those drugs to Americans, who occasionally misuse the drugs and kill themselves (which the cartels don’t even want to happen because it deprives them of ongoing revenue)*. That’s… morally still somewhat direct, but the famously law is about far more than just morality. Doubly so when it comes to lethal force, something which definitionally is irreversible in multiple ways. Which, weirdly, is under appreciated in our society today.
(*Vertical integration among cartels varies widely and intentionality can vary, so there’s a theoretical maximalist case where a completely vertically integrated cartel deliberately laces their drugs with lethal doses and use false marketing to directly sell them to Americans only, but that’s not even something the Trump admin has bothered to argue and is highly implausible to boot).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
I see two main issues. One, is that actually a fair characterization of all SYG laws, that they only narrowly remove avoidance? I remember seeing it strongly argued that #1 was often directly undermined or made irrelevant by such laws, though I’m not sure about the truth of that. Related, and you see this a bit in the thread, is that SYG sort of “begs the question” in a sense where the very presence of a gun re-interprets a fight as lethal disfavorably to a would be assailant quite often. I realize sympathy for assailants is low around here, but common law does usually support the idea that e.g. a fistfight or an unarmed mugging is usually not a fight to the death (of course intentionality matters). The presence of a gun obviously changes the calculus. But who assumes this extra risk, is the operative question? I appreciate what SYG laws are trying to do but I do wonder if the matter is quite as clear cut as you say. As an example, should a conscious decision to bring a gun to an otherwise nonlethal dispute have any bearing on the legal responsibility, and do SYG laws impact that kind of finding?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
You can tell civil war is not the trajectory because of a few things. A non exhaustive list includes the simple fact that the George Floyd protests eventually stopped. That kind of street protest is not the new normal. Even slavery which was a far more potent issue than all of those today took decades and decades and decades to result in war.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Isn’t that just MLK-ism? The whole “unjust laws” bit, how it doesn’t challenge the legal legitimacy but rather the moral legitimacy, and despite the time worn temptation is to conflate the two they are not the same. I’d want to see more elaboration of this point than jump to that assumption. Unless you have an actual issue with MLK-ism?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
This is a shooting based on anti police sentiment. There’s no strong connection between that and the debate here, which is about anonymity.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
But not, notably, targeted ambushes. A 2014 report claimed somewhat lazily that about a quarter of all ambushes had an assailant that had a prior relationship (broadly and vaguely defined) with the officer. Two thirds were spontaneous. Reading between the lines, the reasonable assumption is that it’s probably more like 1 in 8 ambushes that loosely fits your profile (ambushes themselves seem to be maybe a quarter of all “officers get shot at”). And I suspect ambushes where a very specific officer is the actual and only target is small, even there I’m not convinced their name being public is moving the margins much.
Dont get me wrong policing in general is “fucked”. I wouldn’t want to be one. In the general sense though, we do trade cop deaths for other benefits, much like we trade other deaths for other benefits all the time. It’s normal in a society. Cold as it may sound, it seems the marginal drawbacks to no-mask policy are worth the non-marginal gains in trust. And for that matter, at least naively my first assumption is that ICE agents are more, not less, safe from targeted retribution (presumably mostly gangs and cartels) because they know escalation doesn’t benefit them (stateside).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Words are words, and actions are actions. If ICE agents actually come to major and life threatening harm as a direct result of city-mandated inaction, that’s one thing. If the Chicago mayor says inflammatory things that’s another. Trump floated using the Insurrection act, but it’s a major stretch from the actions POV (which is what matters way, way more in legal matters) to jump straight to claiming actual insurrection and rebellion. Trump has gotta sit and wait for evidence. Much like I disapprove of “declaring” emergencies (IMO you need to have, you know, an actual emergency and not just a political agitation) I strongly disapprove of that kind of crackdown based on what “might” happen. I know it kind of sucks if you’re convinced overreach is inevitable (on either side!) but the simple sucky fact is that usually you need to wait for things to actually happen (or not happen) before you can take the next step. Perception of inevitability is time-proven to be not at all equal to actual inevitability.
And on the facts the local government will always be reasonable for preventing the feds from setting up in school district parking lots (the practical and contextual issue at hand, less so some kind of Seattle lawless zone 2.0). It’s reasonable for the city to object to these actions hindering the normal and peaceful operation of their city. Even if you’re a “make immigrants uncomfortable on purpose” type, there’s a compelling public interest in making schools off-limits.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
I am terrified of wasps and yellow jackets. But ticks are not to be underestimated - I say, out of maybe irrational fear, because I don't live and haven't lived in major tick-infested locations, but the idea that I could go hiking and end up with a life-changing inability to eat meat without even realizing is scary
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Honestly I don’t mind EA as much as some of the other mega studios. They put out some decently fun Star Wars games, BioWare was BioWare’s own fault apparently, Apex is okay, Split Fiction and It Takes Two are examples of creative games rare elsewhere, their bombed games rarely break my heart. I’d like them to be a little looser with owned but semi dormant IP, but that’s every big company.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
I mean, they already did this in the 2010s with Battlefiled One, did they not? I don’t think it will happen again for a bit. Their next game is maybe 50% likely to be another Bad Company or Vietnam era one, 30% it’s a Cold War one, 20% something else (maybe 10% space age and 10% a 90s/2000s confused middle)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
It’s a play for hearts and minds of current young Americans, and it’s probably working. Youth today probably don’t think of Saudi Arabia in the same breath as Iran, and that’s what they want.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Look, I don’t know about inner circles or whatever, but on a practical basis if China had control over TikTok then if war ever actually was threatened (eg Taiwan, and I’m a doomer there) TikTok would become overnight one of the single most powerful and effective propaganda weapons ever known. Yes, it’s a national security threat. At the very least if the algorithm is in Oracle’s hands, it’s a lot easier for the US to take further steps if, for example, Israel actually became an opponent or whatever.
True, but our belief in a single authorized baptism is also accompanied by a belief that said baptism can be accepted even after death, so it’s not exclusionary as a complete package! And you really do need to include both, seems to me. It’s not as if this is the only very significant theological difference among Christian sects.
Well, qualified in one respect. It’s not as if we think that God ignores the prayers or genuine authentic intentions toward God of others. Functionally someone who confesses a sin to a Catholic priest, exercises faith in Christ, repents of their ways, is essentially forgiven (or will be) - just the priest didn’t actually serve an official role in it. So I guess I still don’t quite see it. Perhaps similar to how many Christian sects have walked back beliefs that the unbaptized can literally never enter heaven and won’t get a chance to, Mormons have also toned back the emphasis on how other sects are all extremely misled people. Early LDS history, (in)famously, was not quite the same - many especially older Mormons even thought of the Catholic Church as a somewhat devilish deception. So in that sense there’s an argument to be made that this distinction is no longer as true as it used to be.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Not Tenaz but my take, and I think you even concede this at one point, is that the word Christian itself is best understood as a perspective looking from the outside, not an inward one of self-identity. A Muslim or atheist will feel labeling Christians as such quite natural, because the doctrine emphasizes, well, Christ. I feel even better about this definition because it’s the one the Bible itself uses! At least initially. Note Acts 11, the first usage, is strongly implied to be a moniker given by the crowds to these new-breed not-quite-Jews, and even predates the official expansion to Gentiles.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
I think it’s more accurate that we think of God the Father as… a father. Parents want their children, broadly, to grow up and become good people and raise their own families. Why would our Father be any different? Partly why our doctrine so highly emphasizes family, while some Christians even believe that all family bonds are meaningless and dissolved upon death. Thus “growing up” is not disrespect to a father, and it also doesn’t dissolve those relationships, so the idea of being Jesus’ equal still feels sacrilegious to most Mormons, even if the doctrine implies something of the sort (and there are plenty of doctrinal implications, but not as much hard official doctrine, so that’s all they usually are, at the end of the day all Christians can but speculate about certain aspects of heaven and eternal life).
I’m trying (was trying?) really hard not to explicitly litigate the Christian point unless someone wants me to, but I do want to register that part of the Mormon dissatisfaction with your reading of the situation is that while any Mormon will freely concede the first point about the Trinity beliefs being decently different, the point about seeing Jesus as insufficiently divine is seen as rooted in a false and/or bigoted understanding of our doctrine. As a trivial example, we believe Jesus to be Jehovah of the Old Testament. So while we might call ourselves, I dunno, 80% the same about Jesus’ role and identity, maybe higher, others seem to feel that the figure is something like 10% - which, wherever you put the actual figure, it’s definitely not there. As a matter of “general religion”, viewed broadly, we LDS consider Jesus’ atonement and assumption of our sins an absolute and pivotal requirement to get to “heaven” and in fact to avoid eternal death. Sure there are some divergent ideas about what heaven looks like but isn’t that a bit… academic? Especially when traditional Judaism doesn’t even stress a concept of Heaven and Muslims specifically reject Jesus as having a special role altogether, so when people lump us in with them it feels even more strange and absurd. And even more so when you consider that the internal model one has of the true nature of God debate has, in practical terms, almost zero outward manifestation. We even use the same key phrase that Catholics and many other Christian churches require to mutually recognize baptism. And it’s not like if you talk to a regular Christian about the nature of God, they won’t say something that violates the Nicene Creed is a not insignificant number of cases in pretty short order.
I did the math about a year ago and guess what? At least if we're talking about amnesty creating eventual citizens who eventually vote and vote Democratic at disproportionate rates, the numbers simply don't work and would have had only a minor impact at best in turning California blue. So, I'm sorry if that's a long held belief of yours but it doesn't seem true.
It's probably more a mix of tech boom + urbanization + marginal changes in demographic makeup + a few more local concerns + national trends. It's worth noting how fast this was, though, and that makes me suspect the last two especially: +16 R for Reagan in the 1984 wave, to +3.5 R for Bush Sr 1988, to a total collapse to -13.5 (Ross Perot shenanigans though) as Clinton took the state for good in 1992 with about the same margin again in 1996. A bungled post-Reagan, post-amnesty GOP push for a 1994 anti-immigrant bill is often cited... but that post-dates the first massive swing against Bush and Republicans. So unless you mean that somehow that amnesty almost singlehandedly turned pre-existing Reagan fans against Bush Sr, I don't see it. California only went about 2 to 3 points more Democratic than expected (the 4-year swing as compared to national trends) in 1988, the closest election after the 1986 amnesty. Even if you think that "unique" delta is purely the result of amnesty, it's still only a drop in the pond compared the overall swing and certainly wasn't the sole difference even remotely. An easier holistic explanation is right there: Bush was an East Coast insider. And you probably had some early stirrings of social liberalism gaining ground. Looking again at the numbers, it seems to me that a mix of Bush Sr's weaknesses plus the Clinton era is more responsible than anything else (in 1996, actually, since Clinton did better than 1992 generally, you could actually characterize it as a small amount of backsliding, but 2000 seemed to cement the vote differential as noticeably Democratic).
I'm sure you could do more analysis with more local knowledge and county data, not just presidential numbers, but I'm pretty sure the explanatory power of the lazy equation above is pretty high, and doesn't leave much room for a uniquely amnesty blame-game.
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