HaroldWilson
4d ago
Imagine a Trumpist asking progressives to publicly admit that DEI is a scam designed to unfairly siphon away resources from white and Asian men but that they just like the Democrat's plan for health care a little bit more
Perhaps they don't use precisely those terms, but this sort of thing gets said by Democrats/progressives way more than Trumpists would ever criticise Jan 6. The whole post-election period has seen quite a lot of hand-wringing over perceived excesses of wokeness costing Democrats, from many people firmly within the progressive/Democratic/left-center-left coalition, far more at any rate than Trumpists are willing to say 'I think Trump behaved poorly in re Jan 6 but my agreements with him elsewhere overcome that objection'.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
The coup and the War in Donbas, at minimum, happened and were upsetting to Russia, and it is not even remotely outside of the historical norm for such situations to eventually escalate into a full-blown war.
Fine, but if you're going to go down this road, we can equally say that it is not remotely outside the historical norm for nations to respond threats to their territorial integrity with the strongest possible response, nor is it out of the historical norm for major powers to support parties engaged in conflict with their geopolitical adversaries. So this kind of analysis gets us nowhere in assessing the moral standing of the parties.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
This is unfair because it forces people to take the subways and the subways are full of murderous lunatics.
What I find rather odd is that when it gets pointed out that objectively public transit is safer than driving the usual response is to say that the subway feels less safe/salubrious and is therefore a qualitatively worse experience than a car. This is a reasonable line of argument, and I am all in favour of stronger law enforcement in public transit, precisely because I so believe in it, but so often the people making that argument are those who would never tolerate such wishy-washy lived experience arguments in any other setting.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
Even in Europe nobody takes public transport if they can avoid it.
As others have said, this is total nonsense. The vast majority of even the highest earning city lawyers and bankers in London take the tube or suburban rail to work, and to get around to other leisure pursuits too.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
In the first place all those except tradespeople who require a van can, and indeed mostly do, commute in by transit - in the second place, all that will happen is that for things like plumbing in the area prices will simply rise by the cost of paying the charge, so in the end all the costs get passed on the users of the services, which would seem ideal.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
While America obviously has a particularly unique relationship with cars, I think like every other congestion pricing system people will moan for a while but very quickly the outrage will die down and no-one will care. It's nice for once for politicians to ignore the whiners who shout the loudest and have the foresight to realise that you should just do good things and not worry a great deal about transitory unpopularity.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
Surely though this argument essentially boils down to 'we have very strong norms and institutional safeguards against threats to democracy, so it doesn't matter when people try to undermine or destroy them', which is obviously absurd - the norms are strong because they have been beyond reproach for so long! Every 1/6-like event undermines that which prevents them from succeeding.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
Kamala Harris became the presidential nominee without without participating in or winning any primary elections. They essentially just made her the nominee and everyone kind of went along with it.
This is absurd. Intra-party democracy is not an essential part of a democratic society. The open (in the broad rather then technical sense) primary is a relatively recent development in relatively few nations, so unless you believe the near every democracy except America since the 1970s was in some way deficient or illegitimate these two are not at all equivalent.
They're not gonna stop. And this is a movement, I'm telling you. They're not gonna stop. And everyone beware, because they're not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they're not gonna stop after Election Day. And that should be—everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they're not gonna let up, and they should not, and we should not."
Even if this was contemporaneous with the riots, it was not about the riots, it was in context clearly about protests - and crucially, unlike Trump she was totally unambiguous when she condemned violence, unlike Trump who, even when he told people to go home, still spent 90% of the time whining about losing the election.
We must always defend peaceful protest and peaceful protestors. We should not confuse them with those looting and committing acts of violence, including the shooter who was arrested for murder. And make no mistake, we will not let these vigilantes and extremists derail the path to justice.
Here she makes a clear statement that rioters have no part in her coalition. Trump treated the Capitol rioters as misunderstood patriots.
This year, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 death row inmates.
This is such a strange comparison to make I can't tell if you're being serious.
HaroldWilson
5d ago
The problem with January 6 has never been that the rioters actually had some chance of overturning the election or overthrowing the government, the central outrage was Trump's behaviour. Even as the rioting inside the Capitol was ongoing he was still trying to marshal support for overturning the election! And when he did finally call for people to go home it was pathetic non-condemnation. It was a fairly pathetic attempt at an insurrection, all things considered, but the salient point is that Trump almost certainly wished they had succeeded
HaroldWilson
19d ago
A man on the path to a successful career. A man who has high-status interests and tastes A man who has his own apartment, which he fills with nice (expensive) furniture and spends lots of time keeping clean and tidy. A sophisticated, interesting man with good social antennae. A man who needs no real help from a significant other.
I mean this is putting it a lot stronger than OP did. Its more a question of direction of travel than anything else - no-one's expecting Wildean wit or an appreciation of avant-garde jazz, but you know just pick up a book or go to a museum sometimes. Most people aren't that well read or informed so it really wouldn't take much to be comparably so.
HaroldWilson
23d ago
I think it's more prosaic than that, they presumably say all the outrage about that judge in the last batch of commutations/pardonings and decided they couldn't be arsed to go through with all that again (and potentially hurt the Democratic brand) with Roof et al.
Absolutely none of the usual reasons for opposing the death penalty even begin to make sense for these guys. People worry about sentencing someone that's wrong accused to death - did they get it wrong in these examples?
This is just silly. The whole reason people justify a blanket principle of abolitionism grounds that instances of wrongful execution occur is because it's always going to be too fraught and stupid to have an 'oh well these guys are some extra special category of really definitely guilty' category.
that preteen girl why their child's life wasn't every bit as sacred as the victims of Bowers and Roof
It was, of course, but the whole reason this has happened in this ad hoc and stupid way is precisely because of people like you whining 'how could you let that one off the hook!', so they just didn't want the political fallout of commuting the most high profile and emotive cases. I'm afraid the voters are to blame, again - see the reaction to the commutation of the sentence of that judge. I think in his heart Biden probably wanted to pardon Roof but his political advisors were worried about the fallout for the Democratic brand more broadly.
How many people, knowing that information, would say that it's important for the President to spare these guys from execution?
As above, the point isn't about them specifically - it's that making ad hoc exceptions to the exercise of a principle would have been dumb, and it continues to be dumb about Roof (though I don't blame Biden too much for not following it all the way through in light of the whiners).
There is no coalition that I have more sincere contempt for than people that spend their lives trying to avoid the execution of men like Kadamovas
If anything I think the reverse. If one has a principle that the death penalty is wrong, it would be - and is - a bit cowardly not to extend that even to the most contemptible criminals, otherwise what kind of principle is it? One has to respect people who bite unpopular bullets in order to remain morally consistent.
HaroldWilson
28d ago
If the change is over the last five years, surely race can be of only marginal relevance in explaining that change?
HaroldWilson
29d ago
the movement
What movement? Trump heads no movement (no global one anyway), he has no ideology other than narcissism and vague sentimentalism about the past. He has no coherent ideal or theory about how the world system ought to work in the way that Wilson, FDR, H.W. Bush or Churchill did, certainly none that can be reconciled with his actions - or inaction - as President first time round.
Trump was a spent force
In a sense, is he not? Slim congressional majorities mean that, outside of the most conventional Republican priorities, he would seem to be limited to that which is exclusively within his competence. That would seem to largely restrict him to tariffs, which would be anathema to this very class of economic elites which find themselves reconciled at least in part to Trump, and foreign policy, which if it's anything like last time will consist of some vague populist signalling, and an occasional impulsive and out-of-range but ultimately minor decision like Soleimani or northern Syria, but no fundamental change. Maybe he pulls the rug from under Ukraine? But surely anything too drastic threatens to seriously damage Republican unity. It's all looking a bit like 2016 again - a major political triumph, but it's hard to see that, unless he really goes all in on tariffs (in which case his reputation will survive about as well as Messrs. Smoot, Hawley and Hoover) the country in 2028 looks any different than if, say, Marco Rubio had been in the White House.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
Universities went from being places where autists can engage in niche hobbies to being to taking most people and people who have no real interest in the subject. How many english majors really want to spend four years engaging in bizarre books? They are there to party, please their parents by getting a degree and get an office job.
I don't think this is really true, certainly not of elite institutions. Oxbridge used to take all sorts of dullards who had the right background but were of limited disposition towards academics - think Bertie Wooster. Hence the gentleman's third
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
I'm pretty confident that if the average person met McBride they wouldn't think she was a trans woman, partly because there are so few of them that the thought just wouldn't cross most people's mind. They certainly wouldn't bat an eyelid if they saw her in the women's toilet.
is it mere grandstanding?
Yes. There is no way anyone in Congress actually feels threatened by McBride (and if they did that would be a sufficient display of neurosis as to be disqualifying for a legislator).
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
The point is also to keep men out of women's shelters and prisons, men out of women's sports and dressing rooms, and men out of women's spaces in general.
Well that's patently not the point of a rule specifically addressing the toilets in Congress. It may be political signalling conducted with those issues in mind, but this rule obviously has no impact on prisons and sports.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
Perhaps so, but at those times there probably weren't cities of millions of people lying more or less at sea level.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
Because riot games was forced to pay 100 million for gender discrimination when it hired people on the basis of whether or not they even played riots games.
Ludicrously uncharitable reading of the lawsuit. While the complaints ranged much more widely than the dispute over the 'core gamer' criterion, even on that point this wasn't a disparate impact claim of the form 'women are less likely to be gamers therefore hiring on the basis of playing Riot games is discrimination', the argument was that 'core gamer' was a nebulous and fake term that was the fig leaf management used to avoid promoting women, rather than actually having anything to do with playing games. Now I'm sure you disagree with that reading, but that was the thrust of the case they made.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
(like maybe trans women shouldn't compete in women's sports, and it's just possible that some sex offenders with penises who want to be sent to women's prison are not sincere about their gender identity, and also they are like 0.5% of the population so maybe everything doesn't have to be about them!). Like, I can say this (and I do), but I know I am picking a fight when I do, so I have to decide if it's worth it, and which people I am going to alienate.
Isn't this just part of the 'no politics at work' taboo? Now I know you're complaining about the asymmetry that you're frowned upon for expressing your views but a certain kind of affirmation politics is permitted. But I don't think they're necessarily equivalents. I doubt even a DEI seminar would ever take an explicit position on policy questions like prison or sports legislation.
everything doesn't have to be about them
I don't think everything is...
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
Not in such basics as 'not loading', but qualitatively the twitter experience is now way worse, to the point I don't really use it anymore it's so bad. The prioritisation of blue check replies has made replies on any post that becomes popular totally worthless, since it's mostly bots/meaningless garbage. For You is totally worthless as it just serves up the worst kind of lowest common denominator internet slop, and while one can (and I usually did) just use the other tab for accounts you follow, twitter alongside mostly giving me my own follows' posts used to regularly suggest interesting and worthwhile smaller posts and accounts. Now the garbage rises to the top, the cream to the bottom. Checking back now having been away for a few weeks I've been followed by 50+ scam bots.
So while it still functions what made the app useful and good has basically been totally ruined. I think monetisation was a dreadful idea since it gives strong incentives to post slop in order to rise to the top, and the same goes for allowing people to pay to boost their nonsense. No doubt the slop existed before Elon, but I at least never really had it pushed to me by twitter before, it became relentless so no I don't bother. Elon's own account is really the embodiment of the kind of place twitter has become. It would probably be good again if they summarily IP banned anyone who had ever bought a blue check.
I have no idea whether any of this has anything to do with the staff that were sacked, but I think it's a cautionary tale against tech bro 'disruptors' and the 'move fast and break things' philosophy. For all people rightly say 'twitter isn't real life', it used to be a pretty important gathering place for influential and interesting people in the UK politics, policy and journalism sphere. Now it tends to be like scrolling a big subreddit in 2014.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
They have completely different standards from what constitutes "unfit" from the mainstream Republican voter. It's a two-party system, you vote for your guy and against the other
They should have different standards. They owe the voter their judgement, not their obedience. Also, Murkowski and Collins are not 'defecting' from anything because they were never part of the Trump coalition. 'Republicans' might have lost the presidency without Trump, but for Collins particularly he is a liability who will probably sink her in 2026. Tulsi is not 'their guy' for moderate or hawkish Republicans, they hold her views in total contempt - why would they ever vote for someone who is very nearly the last person they would ever choose to fill that role? Politics exists outside of the eternal horse race. They think she would be a disastrous DNI, so they won't vote for her. Simple as.
Calling cabinet appointments fundamentally random, as OP did, is an anti-explanation.
They are obviously not random in the most literal sense, what he likely meant is that appointments are being made without any cohesive overall strategy, on an ad-hoc basis. Individual picks have their rationales, but out-of-range disruptive picks like Tulsi and Gaetz destroy any chance of it being some sort of compromise, unity cabinet. I don't think this is an unreasonable perspective to take on Trump of all people, someone who managed to drift fairly in a fairly directionless manner through a whole four year Presidency. Perhaps if he did have strategies he might have achieved something other than tax cuts.
She has more experience in politics than Obama or Trump did when they assumed office.
She does, but roles like DNI require more experience than President, and I mean that very seriously. Since a President can by definition not be an expert on all of his briefs, it doesn't really matter if he's expert in none of them. Advisors and officials like the DNI however are there precisely to provide expert and experienced guidance from a like-minded political perspective. Even Trump's longest serving DNI last time round had been in politics since 1976, had a strong interest in foreign affairs throughout his time in Congress and was a former ambassador to Germany.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
I think the real lesson from 2012 is that pundits are wont to proclaim realignments, because they desperately want to live in interesting and historic times. But seldom is it really so. The last realignment happened slowly over the course of several decades and is still ongoing.
Something approximating the left-right divide has now been with us for approaching a century, and it's not going away easily. This is something I think the reality of another term of Trump governance will expose. Left-disposed 'outsiders' are mostly not going to like what they get, which will probably consist of the usual Republican fare with the exception of tariffs, which will probably be as haphazard and anti-climatic as his first effort, and a higher degree of meaningless culture war bluster. Maybe he does meaningfully roll back support for Ukraine, but plenty of 'outsiders' are actually pretty pro-Ukraine, including the vast majority of former Bernie supporters.
That certain companies are drifting away from DEI doesn't imply that that the relative prevalence of DEI policies is largely a function of government disposition, nor even that those programs were uneconomical or counter-productive. In many ways it seems likely that extensive DEI stuff was a zero-interest rate phenomenon. When capital was scrambling about for productive uses, putting some of it into DEI to try to improve hiring/retention/productivity may have been perfectly rational, even if it has ceased to be now interest rates are higher.
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