Goodguy
4hr ago
The use of "literally" for emphasis annoys me. So does saying "everyone" when you mean "most people", or "literally no-one" when you mean "almost no-one". Oddly, I find that even here where most people have above-average verbal skills, I see this quite often.
Goodguy
7hr ago
Linguistics is inherently descriptive rather than prescriptive because it is a science, the attempt to study and understand the reality of language as it actually exists. However, that does not mean there is anything wrong with trying to advocate for language norms or trying to shape language so that people use it the way that you prefer it to be used. It's just that when you try to shape language, you are not doing linguistics, unless the reason you are trying to shape it fundamentally scientific - for example, as some kind of experiment to gather more data for linguistic analysis. You are doing some kind of social activity, but not the science of linguistics.
Both linguistics and trying to shape language norms to make language more effective are worthy activities, they're just two different things.
Goodguy
11hr ago
Maybe I'm just not awake yet but what did Reilly get wrong exactly? Trump is still married to Melania and she continues to serve as the woman by his side on public appearances.
This is speculation of course, but when I watched Trump and Melania at the RNC, to me they pretty clearly had the body language of two people who are not having sex with each other anymore. And knowing Trump's life-long appreciation of beautiful women, I doubt that he has simply stopped having sex altogether.
Goodguy
11hr ago
Repeating an idea in multiple comments is common because people will naturally want to say the same thing multiple times if they believe it, it does not imply some kind of deliberate effort to shift opinion.
Goodguy
11hr ago
Yep. Also, I am sure just from simple probability if for no other reason that most people here do not live in swing states, which adds to the difficulty that we have in figuring out how various kinds of optics might actually impact the election.
Goodguy
11hr ago
It really is amazing how much, in American political psychology, the last 9 years have been The Age of Trump. It's not that America's actual political policies have been dominated by Trump - I think for the most part, if you had no idea that Trump existed and just looked at what the American government does in terms of policy, you could easily believe that the last few Presidents have all been normal establishment types. But his presence in politics on an attention-dominating and psychological level has been massive. I don't know who the last American political figure was who had such a hold on the public mind both in terms of attracting love and hate. Bush was widely hated but was never loved in a Trump-like way except maybe briefly after 9/11. Obama was widely loved but most of the really emotional "hope and change" fervor that helped him win in 2008 went away when even his supporters saw that for the most part, he was a standard politician.
Goodguy
11hr ago
Hey, to be fair the reason why I assumed Trump wasn't very good at golf isn't because I have TDS. I don't. It's just that he's a pretty old, out-of-shape man who is busy with a lot of other things besides playing golf. But then, I don't know much about golf and how age affects skill.
It is an interesting video. On the one hand, it does humanize Trump a bit, shows you a side of him that isn't the showman-entertainer-populist Trump of his rallies.
On the other hand, you can really see his age in the video. I think part of it is the natural lighting and the lack of his usual bronzer or whatever it is that gives him the "orange" look. He does look more affable than usual in this video, but he also looks older than usual, full grandpa mode. Which might not be good for him given that he is now running against Harris.
The famous failed assassination photos and videos are, of course, probably his best look ever from a pure PR perspective.
Goodguy
1d ago
Hanging out with a boss as an employee is often very different than hanging out with the boss as just some random person.
Goodguy
1d ago
True, I should have said "the presidency", not "presidential administrations". In any case, I think that my point stands. If progressives really had an iron grip on US institutions, the country would be very different. There would be much more redistribution in the economy, with much stronger welfare programs. The justice system would look different, with more emphasis on rehabilitation. There would be much more state-funded healthcare. There might be even more public funding of education than now. And so on. In general, the US would be a lot more like Europe.
Goodguy
2d ago
Kamala just seems like she would be more fun to have a beer with than Hillary. She's awkward and weird in a fake politician way, but somehow manages to seem more like a human being than Hillary did. Kamala bullshits in public and is a hypocrite but seems like she might actually be oddly fun to hang out with, which might appeal to right-wingers because that's basically Trump's energy too. Even the allegations that Kamala used sex to jump-start her career, in a way, help feed into this impression because it would be hard to imagine 2016 Hillary having sex at all. And if Kamala did sleep her way into her career, it doesn't even make her look weak because well, at the end of the day she became a Senator and then a Vice President. Her having been a prosecutor also probably appeals to the typical right-wing mind on some level.
Goodguy
2d ago
I expect actual reform to happen simply because if there's one thing that politicians on both sides of the aisle can unanimously agree on, it's that they don't want to get shot.
This video makes the shooting cop look pretty bad. Not just because he shot her, since she really could have done some major damage with the water. But because the cops did not just leave the room and/or the house as soon as one of them first became worried about the possibility of her using the water, at which point the distance between the cops and her was great enough that there was no way she could have reached them. After all, she was no threat to any bystanders, so leaving the house and then trying to re-engage her in a different way a bit later would not have caused any problems. The decision by the cop is kind of understandable how quickly everything happened, but it is pretty obviously sub-optimal given other options they could have taken. Instead of withdrawing, the cop actually moved closer to her, which is what put in him in range of her possibly using the water against them. The cop saying "you better not, I swear to god I'll fucking shoot you right in your fucking face" is also a bad look.
Goodguy
2d ago
Yep, given Biden's age when he took office plus the fact that Kamala is the VP and so would have a good chance of eventually running for President even if Biden was younger, Republicans should have started devoting massive resources to building effective anti-Kamala messaging as soon as her and Biden took office. As we now see, it is not safe for them to rely on Kamala's terrible primary performance and just write her off. Her being a woman, a prosecutor, and to some extent even her being an occasionally awkward public speaker all play different in the context of her running against Trump than in the context of a primary race against other Democrats. Her being a woman plays different because Trump has a history of sexual assault accusations. Her being a prosecutor plays different because the Republicans like to act like the law-and-order party. Her being an occasionally awkward public speaker plays different because Trump himself has a weird and unorthodox, though obviously very effective, speaking style.
Goodguy
2d ago
Progressivism doesn't really have an iron grip on institutions. It has an iron grip on a subset of institutions. For example, academia and Hollywood. Probably also large parts of the federal bureaucracy. But it doesn't have an iron grip on presidential administrations, Congress, the Supreme Court, law enforcement, the military, the national intelligence agencies, or even the news media.
I started to feel better about the current state of political discourse when I realized that probably a large fraction of the online political discourse is created by astroturf campaigns, not by people arguing in good faith. This is probably part of the reason why one sees so many online accounts make stupid arguments that fall apart after just an instant of thinking. It is not just because there are many stupid people, it is also because, since there are many stupid people, astroturfers have an incentive to craft the kind of simple, catchy arguments that appeal strongly to emotions even if they do not hold up to rational analysis.
Besides astroturfing, another issue is that actual organic online political discourse on both sides is dominated by people who sit online for hours a day making political content. And people like that are not representative of the overall US population. I think that on average, they are less mentally stable and more prone to wild irrational theories. After all, you're probably more likely to spend hours a day writing about politics if you actually think* that Project 2025 will put gay people in concentration camps or if you think that the Democratic Party is a front for a cabal of pedophiles who communicate by talking about pizza than if you think that no matter who wins, it doesn't really matter that much. It also goes the other way. Being constantly exposed to other mentally unstable people's political arguments online can have a radicalizing effect, especially if one gets caught in an echo chamber.
*Or if you have LARPed yourself into almost-thinking it, into enjoying it as an exciting fantasy while perhaps not truly believing it in the depths of your mind. Which I think is probably true of many people.
I think that Trump might be in a bit of trouble because many voters are probably tired of politics discussion being dominated by him for almost 10 years except for a brief interruption during Biden's first couple of years in office, and Kamala seems shiny and new in comparison to both him and Biden. Kamala can also be pretty articulate and well-spoken when she needs to be, and while she has some off-putting mannerisms, watching her doesn't have as much of a "nails on chalkboard" effect as watching Hillary Clinton.
The Democrats have been doing a pretty good job of putting a pause on the kind of radical culture warring that turns many people off from them. Instead they are focusing on things like abortion, Trump's age, 1/6, and the fact that Trump is technically a criminal. Those are all fields in which they have a good chance of winning the battle for public opinion in swing states.
There are still months before the election, and the Democrats could easily fuck things up. But their chances seem much better right now than they did a week ago. The Republicans need to develop a strong anti-Kamala message and they need to do it ASAP if they want to win.
One way or another, it will be a close election that is decided by a few states.
The only top-level-ish comment I feel like making at the moment is that both Reddit and X are insane right now when it comes to politics, even more than usual. For X of course part of it is the algorithm showing me highly charged politics stuff based on my previous choices, but still. Both platforms seem to be overrun by some combination of delusional, hysterical partisans on both sides of the political spectrum, astroturfers paid by one or the other side, astroturfing bots, and fervid conspiracy theorists who do not understand how basic reality and politics work.
Reddit is mainly overrun by "If Trump wins, the orange traitorous insurrectionist Putin agent failed businessman will put all the LGBTQ people in camps and bring about Christofascist dictatorship" types of posts.
X is overrun by a variety of wild shrill nonsense... or, most charitably, rampant poorly-argued speculation... such as "The Democrats killed Biden and are hiding it", "Biden hasn't been told that he's been dropped out against his will", "The Dems pressuring Biden to drop out is equivalent to a coup", "The Trump shooting was a false flag done by the Republicans", "Kamala is not African-American because her father is Jamaican", "Trump should resign because he is the oldest candidate in history (haha I'm only saying it because you said it about Biden)", "Biden dropped out because he was behind the Trump assassination plot and it failed", "The New York Times is a right-wing organization that is responsible for forcing Biden out", and so on.
Reddit has been delusional and probably compromised for years. I had high hopes for X, but in practice, while I think that it's better than Reddit, it seems to be at the mercy of political campaigns that drown out organic discussion.
It's all kind of amusing, but tiresome, to expose myself to such a high level of inanity, insanity, and astroturfing. But I seem to be addicted to it on some level.
Goodguy
4d ago
Notice that the little COVID bump is bigger than the bumps under any of the three arrows showing the "Severe Flu Waves". It's just that the general level of deaths per capita was higher in the 70s and 80s, not that the flu waves were worse than COVID.
Goodguy
4d ago
It was on the level of flu outbreaks in 1970s.
Give an example of such a flu outbreak in the 1970s.
Goodguy
4d ago
It's the worst pandemic in the US since the Spanish Flu even in per-capita terms.
Goodguy
5d ago
We might just be seeing different Twitter posts because of the algorithm, from what I am seeing it seems to me that the people who were against removing Biden yesterday are largely now grumbling about how their guy got unfairly forced to quit, not celebrating him leaving.
Goodguy
5d ago
He knows. If you watch his last few press appearances, he's slow and he loses track of his thoughts frequently but he's clearly not so far gone that he wouldn't notice if people dropped him out of the race without consulting him.
Lack of eye contact, stiff body postures, awkward kiss on the cheek.
More options
Context Copy link