HaroldWilson
5mo ago
Will we have to have another World War (or perhaps two as last time) to prevent the American relapse into the fiction that they shouldn't care about anything or anybody abroad?
HaroldWilson
6mo 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
6mo 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
7mo 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
8mo ago
Most liberals take this libel suit as evidence that Trump has been proven of rape in court.
I suppose this depends on the semantics of 'proven'. But the jury did in fact find that Trump had sexually abused Carroll (though not raped her), so in that sense he has been proven of sexual abuse (and of actual malice in his statements) in (a) court.
https://www.scribd.com/document/644110955/gov-uscourts-nysd-590045-174-0-1
But if I was also publicizing a book at the time, then you could reasonably infer that I made up to sell the book.
If you want to make the case that Trump was reasonable to accuse her of lying, fine, but that's not the argument @WhiningCoil was making, who said that Trump had merely denied the accusations and that counter-accusation of lying was merely something people had read into his initial denial, not something he had explicitly done himself. However that would be merely a critique of the factual findings of the jury, not of their logic or of that of the trial/libel laws/judicial system themselves.
HaroldWilson
8mo ago
There is already reference to an idea, the 'garbage' - as in the garbage his supporter(s) are putting out. Put without using an apostrophe, 'the only garbage I see floating out there is that of his supporters'. As above not saying this actually is definitely what he said, but it's definitely not impossible.
HaroldWilson
8mo ago
The fact people actively resist setting up something that's at least as secure as Athens' pottery shards tells me they're more interested in the result than the security of elections.
Stupid and uncharitable. There are undeniable trade-offs to many of these ways of making voting systems 'more secure'. Not saying you can't think they're worth it, but 'my opponents have contempt for democracy' is not in fact the only conclusion you can draw. As it happens I am pro-paper ballots and human counters but this doesn't seem to have any recognisable political valence - in fact hand-count states are mostly Democratic.
HaroldWilson
17d ago
the left worshiped him.
Maybe for a short while but left-wing opinion turned cool on Obama surprisingly quickly, and the 'anti-imperialist' Chomskyite left never liked him. As early as 2009 not-exactly-radical-lefist Bill Maher said that:
Barack Obama is not a socialist -- he’s not even a liberal....this country needs a left wing. It doesn’t have it, and part of the reason is the media... I don’t know if this administration has really caught up to the idea that Americans are a lot more liberal, perhaps, than we think they are- or they think they are
More importantly, I think the election denial/J6 clearly puts MAGA a class apart from any other modern American political movement in terms of cultishness.
HaroldWilson
2mo ago
As others have gestured at, this is just a rehash of the sanctuary cities arguments from Trump 1. The problem with using state courts/police as a convenient piggyback for immigration enforcement is that is encourages illegal immigrants to never show up at court or co-operate with police ever, either for their own minor offences or as witnesses etc.
HaroldWilson
5mo ago
You don't have to 'jump' at anyone's command. Just come to the conclusion about his suitability for the role in light of his behaviour yourself.
HaroldWilson
2mo ago
This might be more compelling if MAGA ever criticised Trump when he goes the other direction. When the tariffs came out MAGA defended them as sound economic policy. When he backtracked they still defended them as a brilliant negotiating tactic, despite having supported them in substance days before.
HaroldWilson
5mo ago
This is obviously not a principle without limits though, and for a lot of people being avowedly racist is beyond that limit. How would it even be possible not to take that attitude into the workplace?
HaroldWilson
5mo ago
based on whatever definition of what's appropriate
There isn't a single mainstream workplace in the Western world where saying 'normalise Indian hate' would not be considered unprofessional.
HaroldWilson
7mo 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
8mo ago
I think the intonation is definitely consistent with "the only garbage I see out there is his supporters'", as in the garbage of his supporters in terms of rhetoric in reference to Puerto Rico or just generally.
HaroldWilson
9mo ago
This line of thought is actually highly atypical. Even in 2022/2023 iirc a majority of Americans rated their own economic circumstances as good/improving, they just thought the country as a whole wasn't.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
How many is a 'small' amount is a how long is a piece of string question of course, but the point is that there is more than enough high quality 'mainstream' (as in conventional or establishment rather than mass market) journalism to satisfy even the most voracious reader. Which is to say that the problem I think is mostly with the audience rather than journalists. Most people want slop so that's what they get given, especially on television. Idk about the situation in Finland (and obviously in smaller markets there'll be less choice) but for an American or Briton there is ample very high quality mainstream journalism out there if only anyone would be bothered to pick it up.
HaroldWilson
1mo ago
That would take forever so to get an idea of what I mean I'll give some examples from a single subgroup, say foreign policy/international affairs (for no particular reason): Foreign Affairs, the Economist, ISW, World Today (Chatham House's magazine), the World Service, Brookings, the aforementioned FT and WSJ, Foreign Policy, JDW etc. etc.
HaroldWilson
2mo ago
naked attacks on suburbanites by urban enthusiasts
If you like the suburbs so much then don't go to Manhattan, nobody is forcing you to do so.
HaroldWilson
3mo ago
Why should my state put the interest of someone who has zero right to be here above mine?
The point is that the same logic which is being applied here could be used to deport and abandon citizens. Just ignore due process, do what you want and then, oops, looks like you're in a tinpot dictatorship now so nothing we can do because there's no way to redress your grievance.
'I don't care about due process because this guy was guilty anyway' is not a very coherent position.
HaroldWilson
5mo ago
some tactic is fine whilst its counter is off limits.
I mean some things really are just good or bad, or at least legitimate and illegitimate. I have nothing against NY's sanctuary policies because there is no credible threat there to the rule of law - you can criticise it on substantive grounds obviously, but in terms of process it's the normal rough and tumble of politics. I don't think it's anti-social, and this isn't partisan - I also wouldn't object to a red state making life difficult for federal officers enforcing gun control on procedural grounds, only substantive ones. Very explicitly blackmailing your political opponents with 'we will withdraw charges against you if you do what we want on this totally unrelated issues' is not normal.
HaroldWilson
5mo ago
We cannot sustainably be the world’s sugar daddy, protector, doctor, infrastructure manager and nature conservator.
Are you really suggesting that the <1% of GDP the US currently spends on foreign aid is some kind of unsustainable luxury? It's a rounding error as far the deficit is concerned.
HaroldWilson
5mo ago
Fairly obvious. If someone had tweeted [terrorist] did nothing wrong even on their own time it would be disqualifying. It's not so much the act itself but the attitudes it betrays, attitudes which are (or rather ought to be) incompatible with his position.
HaroldWilson
7mo 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.
'Twas ever thus. The idea that states not co-operating with or even obstructing the Federal government in the exercise of its powers is some sinster and unchartered political development is obviously absurd. The Fugitive Slave Law, Reconstruction and the black codes, prohibition, desegregation etc. etc. What is actually the problem, and more abnormal, here, is the federal government using the legal system to intimidate and blackmail political opponents into doing what they want (and before some retard starts moaning about the Trump cases, they were not conditional on anything, they were just prosecutions that were attempted to be carried through to their conclusion, and stood or fell on the merits, not on political cooperation). If the charges are real and would stand up, they should be carried through, not dismissed to get a quid pro quo.
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