Goodguy
2mo ago
I think that many of us thought that he was just saying it to get swing state votes and that he wouldn't actually do it. After all, he has a long track record of saying that he will do things and then not doing those things. Oops. I forgot that he also has a track record of, sometimes, saying that he will do something and then going ahead and actually doing it.
Goodguy
2mo ago
The "we" is doing a lot of work there. Maybe in some ways the country as a whole would benefit from a recession, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't benefit from one. And if Trump causes one, then despite despising the Democrats I might be compelled to put aside my objections to the Democrats' many many insanities and vote for them in 2026 on the principle that yeah, the Democrats care more about violent criminals than they care about me, but even in Democrat cities the chance of being the victim of a violent crime is pretty low, whereas the chance of being poor if the Republicans destroy the economy is relatively high.
Goodguy
2mo ago
I think that some moral notions are close enough to being objective that only a genuine psychopath would seriously question them. For example, all else being equal, it is more moral to not torture people for fun than it is to torture people for fun. This was as true 2000 years ago as it is now.
That said, I agree that history is best when it is amoral. It is interesting to study the history of morality, but high-quality history does not base itself on moral arguments. It should be the study of what happened, not whether what happened is right or wrong.
Actually only about 16 million Americans served in WW2, out of a total population of about 132 million. So the fraction of able-bodied adult male Americans who served in WW2 is probably about 50%, unless you count working in military-related factories as serving.
Also, about 60% of the Americans who served were drafted, so really less than 25% of able-bodied male Americans served willingly. Of course, that is still enormous compared to the fraction of today's able-bodied population that serves in the military willingly.
That said, in modern war having tens of millions of soldiers would probably be more of a hindrance than a help, given how highly technological it is compared to WW2 standards.
Goodguy
2mo ago
But China is basically our factory. I don't see the benefit of devastating one's own factory.
There is this argument that by decoupling from China we can re-shore American manufacturing. However, as long as steps are not taken to address the housing crisis, no realistic increase in American manufacturing jobs will bring substantial quality of life improvements to Americans. The jobs that became available as a result of decoupling from China would, I think, simply not pay enough for that. Correct me if I'm wrong of course. And the Trump administration seems to be doing nothing to tackle the housing crisis. As far as I know, housing is not even a major part of their messaging.
Goodguy
2mo ago
My heuristic for figuring out whether DOGE is actually motivated by getting rid of waste involves seeing whether they are willing to cut military spending. Republicans tend to love the military for all sorts of reasons, and are usually very happy to spend a lot of tax money on it, so DOGE being willing to touch the military budget will go a long way to telling us whether or not they actually care about efficiency. My guess is, no.
Goodguy
2mo ago
Well sure, many of the "experts" are ideologically motivated liars, but Trump and many of his people are also ideologically motivated liars. And I think that the tariffs are nonsensical not just from some complex ideological "expert" perspective... to me, they also seem nonsensical just from a common-sense perspective. I understand hating the "experts" and wanting to just push buttons, but that doesn't mean that we should abandon all sense of what buttons might be good or bad to push. I understand being frustrated with mainstream economists' consensus, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Trump's alternatives will be any better.
I like that Trump did a lot to stop wokism as a political force but at this point I have no idea what he's doing, lol. I don't know much about economics, but two things seem clear to me:
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Tariffs as a partial replacement for taxes might be cool, but keeping the existing US tax system in place and adding tariffs on top of that is basically just a massive tax increase on the average American.
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The only ways I can think of for the tariffs to help the US as a whole is to help US companies be competitive and to advance national security. However, I notice that Trump's administration is doing nothing to address housing shortages. And bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US isn't really going to help people if housing is still extremely expensive. As for national security, I'd much rather address it through diplomacy with China, not by falling into the Thucydides trap and mind-fucking yourself, out of a sense of fear of being overtaken as the world's superpower, that a war with China is inevitable, which could unfortunately prove to be a self-fulfilling assumption.
Speaking of helping the US as a whole... of course, I have no reason to believe that this is actually Trump's motivation. He could well just be aiming to help his own supporters. But even then, I don't really see how the tariffs do that. It plays well with some unions and will help consolidate union votes for Trump, but it also seems to have a pretty high chance of economically screwing over a bunch of people, including actual and potential Trump voters.
Edit: After thinking about it some more, I guess the answer that makes sense to me is that Trump is bluffing and trying to get other countries to drop their tariffs on US goods.
One thing all the drama teaches me is that a less strict version of the one-drop rule is still very much real in American society.
Rachel Zegler, even though she is probably about 3/4ths European genetically, is viewed as a brown woman both by the left and the right.
Obama, even though he is 1/2 European genetically, is almost universally viewed as a black man both by the left and the right.
It really is sort of strange if you think about it.
To be fair, the fact that Zegler probably identifies as brown and Obama at least publicly tends to identify as black muddies the waters a bit. It's not just how American society defines people, it's also how they define themselves.
And to be extra fair, it's not like Obama ever had a real choice about publicly identifying himself as black. Realistically, given how American society views race, he never would have been able to pass himself off as a white man. 99% of Americans look at him and immediately think "that's a black guy", they don't think "that's a half white, half black guy".
Goodguy
2mo ago
But if women were just as strong as men, an appropriate response to women complaining about male violence and oppression would be "sounds like a you problem. Git gud."
I don't think that would be an appropriate response. If that's an appropriate response, then it's also appropriate to tell a man who gets punched by another man in the street that he should just git gud. But part of the whole point of society is that we are supposed to have a dedicated force that prevents people from physically assaulting each other, instead of every single man having to be a martial artist or having to find some kind of mafia to defend him.
Goodguy
2mo ago
The most likely explanation is that they just fucked up. There is no possible benefit to deliberately leaking the info to Goldberg that would make up for the embarrassment of him going public with how he obtained the information.
To end, VP Vance reportedly typing “a prayer for victory” after a course of action was decided upon.
To me this is kind of funny given the enormous discrepancy in power between the USA and the Houthis. It's kind of like if a grown man prayed for victory just before getting into a fist-fight with an infant.
Goodguy
2mo ago
The simplest explanation, though not necessarily the correct one, is just that many large corporations have huge numbers of people who genuinely hold progressive political views, including on the higher levels where they can make policy. In other words, it's not that they bent the knee to the crowd, it's that they agreed with the crowd.
Many prominent tech industry people, for example, grew up in progressive households and held/hold a mix of libertarian and progressive views. It's only very recently, once the woke really well and truly overstepped their bounds, that some of them began to change their minds. I think some people might overestimate the degree to which these shifts are just staged for mass consumption. For example, the simplest though not necessarily correct explanation for why Musk went from a somewhat Democrat-leaning moderate to a full-on Trumpist over the course of the last few years is that he genuinely changed his mind.
Goodguy
2mo ago
I really would have to know more about her to figure out what her motivations are. One possible motivation that no-one else seems to have mentioned is that she simply just actually believes that we are headed for a fascist dictatorship that will take away women's rights and so on.
In the course of the last few years I have seen several very smart friends of mine become rabid Trump-haters who genuinely, not in a virtue signalling way, but genuinely are worried that Trump is taking the country towards dictatorship and that there are plausible mechanisms by which Trump could create such a dictatorship. These are well-read, sharp people who do not normally display any sort of cognitive derangement or hysteria.
I myself have some worries about Trump and dictatorship and so on, which I have expressed here before, but not to the level of these friends of mine. I think that Trump would absolutely love to be a dictator, I just see no plausible path by which he or any other politician could accomplish this. Any major steps that Trump took towards dictatorship would literally cause a civil war. For example, California wouldn't sit around letting it happen, it would secede from the Union. I don't know, maybe I am overestimating the left's willingness to resist, but in any case I just can't imagine any plausible path to dictatorship as long as the politically non-apathetic Americans are split about evenly 50-50 between the left and the right. This isn't like Russia, where basically 80% of people supported Putin in the early 2000s, which gave him an opportunity to consolidate a dictatorship while backed by a huge fraction of the population.
Some of my smart friends, however, very much disagree with this.
Anyway, my point is that it's perfectly possible that this woman just genuinely feels like she has to do something, anything. Do I think that's the most likely explanation? No, but it's a possible one.
Goodguy
2mo ago
I'm not fully convinced, but that's an interesting theory. Trump does seem to really love size, he constantly uses the word "big" and he likes big buildings and so on. Although to be fair, who doesn't? A USA that includes Canada and Greenland would look gigantic on the map, and Trump would then be sure to have gone down as one of the most significant US Presidents of all time. Even more than he already is, I mean. From a purely aesthetic point of view, the map would look even better if the US also expanded all the way down to the Panama Canal. There would be something aesthetically satisfying about one country's color painted over the entirety of North America. But then, if the US absorbs not only Canada, but also Mexico and Central America, well US politics would become completely unrecognizable.
Goodguy
2mo ago
I still have no idea why any Republican would want to make Canada the 51st state and thus add tens of millions of people who tend to lean significantly further left than the GOP to the US electorate.
Goodguy
4mo ago
I agree, I actually had the same thought when I read it... this doesn't sound like Trump.
Goodguy
4mo ago
this all happened because Scott platformed Mencius Moldbug back in 2013
Did he? I'm not aware of this part of the rationalist-sphere lore. Do tell.
Bro you're being way too sensitive, to be frank. Yes, I'm completely fine with you calling them trans men, I just used the term "trans women" because that is the most common and thus least confusing term these days. And yes, you can refuse to hire them if you want to. I lean in favor of freedom of association overall. Although, you might want to be careful with that principle, since the same principle will cause some people to refuse to hire anyone with views that are seen as too right-wing, which indeed we have already seen happening.
As for the CRA, I think we can agree that it was in many ways a bad idea for the country. But that does not mean that it is a good thing for fervent, resentment-driven right-wingers to take over the country. Those are two somewhat separate conversations. CRA and Trumpists can both be bad.
Goodguy
4mo ago
You are still not giving any concrete reasons, based on my numerous writings on this site, to think that I am a leftist. As for "framings of leftists", that's highly subjective. As far as contrarianism, no, I am not writing these things out of contrarianism. Not sure what would convince you. You seem to be a smart guy based on some of your posts that I have read, so I don't know why you make these assumptions about me, but the assumptions are incorrect. To be fair, I am also a smart guy and I make unwarranted assumptions all the time. I'm just trying to let you know that you're not only wrong about where I'm coming from, you're on an almost flat Earth level of wrong in your mental model of me. If you insist on disbelieving me, well... you still haven't pointed out any of my writings that would show that I am a so-called leftist. Feel free to do so, but you will probably be disappointed, unless you think that because I am a social libertarian with some mild questionings of modern capitalism it means that I am a leftist.
Goodguy
4mo ago
I mean it's pretty simple, my ideal world is one in which you can talk about the fact that different ethnic groups have different intelligence levels and that trans women are more like men than they are like women, without losing your job. But at the same time, individuals of whatever ethnic group would be judged based on their individual characteristics rather than based on their group averages, and politics would not be dominated by resentment-driven fanatics of either a left or a right persuasion. This is not some weird abstract ambivalence between left and right, it is a genuine solid third view that is opposed to both the left and the right, and it is my view.
Goodguy
4mo ago
Wait though... you're still not giving any actual specific reasons based on my writings to show that I am a leftist.
I mean, if I was a leftist it's not like I would be embarrassed by being a leftist. I would proudly wave a leftist flag high, since I am pretty straightforward as a person (sometimes too straightforward) and I would have no good reason to lie on this site. It just so happens that I am not a leftist, lol.
Goodguy
4mo ago
Because I disagree with the left on many crucial, definitional issues. If you think that I am a leftist, I think you should probably explain specifically why you think that I am a leftist.
Goodguy
4mo ago
About the assassination attempt: look, it's just clear to me that there is nothing necessarily surprising or conspiratorial about the Secret Service fucking up after successfully protecting one of the most hated figures in US history, who also constantly does outdoor rallies, for 10 years. It would be surprising if they didn't eventually fuck up.
As for your second paragraph, I think that you profoundly misunderstand where I am coming from. I have spent years regularly arguing against people who engage in anti-Trump hysteria. As recently as a few months ago, I was telling lib friends that their horror of Trump was overblown and misguided. I'm not some kind of crypto leftist who is here to convince people to hate Trump, for fuck's sake. I am telling you the truth, which is that until recently I thought Trump was part good and part bad but I felt he would be effectively contained by checks and balances, but I am now worried because I am beginning to see the checks and balances waver. You may agree with me, you may disagree with me, but the reality is that I am not making a bad faith argument. I am literally just telling you about the evolution of my political thought. A few months ago I really thought that Trump's second term would be a nothingburger, both because Trump's first term was a nothingburger and because I assumed that libs and leftists would put up more resistance than they actually are.
The idea that I "inexplicably trust" the media is absurd to me. I have spent years criticizing the media to anyone who will listen. If you assume that I am some slavish devotee of the media, you are just plain wrong. I hate and distrust the mainstream media, but that doesn't mean that I have to like Trumpism.
The problem is that the proles seem to be voting for stupid forms of economic nationalism. Realistically, Trump's tariffs are not going to do much to help the proles. What would help the proles a lot more are things like mass housing construction and cheaper healthcare, which are barely even parts of Trump's program.
I sympathize with people's desire for economic nationalism, but there are probably much more effective ways of doing it than whatever Trump is doing. It's unfortunate that the Democrats and progressives threw away their cachet with the working class by turning into snobby, wimpy elitist scolds and that as a result, there is currently basically no serious and influential political movement that is based around doing economic nationalism in an actually effective way. Right now, Americans more or less just have the choice between the Democrat mainstream, on the one hand, which delivers occasional wins to the working class but is also firmly committed to neoliberalism... and Trumpist economics, on the other, which promises economic nationalism but increasingly seems batshit crazy to me when I look at the actual implementation details.
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