MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
11mo ago
In normal conflict situations, the two are mutually contradictory. Someone who is actually planning to attack just does it. Someone who is making a real threat to attack unless you to submit just does that. Someone who is noisily posturing about their willingness to start a fight isn't "about to throw fists" unless someone else accepts the challenge.
And don't "Jan 6th!" at me, this kind of hysteria was in full flow before ever that happened.
There were warning signs before the 2016 election. At the time I didn't take them seriously, but someone who was better calibrated than me could have done, as could someone who was looking for excuses to hate on Trump. But with hindsight, I think it should have been obvious that Trump was more likely than most other Republicans to do January 6th.
- Trump jump-started his political career by being one of the most prominent people to stick with birtherism after Obama's birth certificate was authenticated by the State of Hawaii - and he didn't finally concede that Obama was born in the US until after he had the 2016 primary sewn up. Falsely claiming that the President is ineligible is an attack on US democracy.
- Trump engaged in mild brownshirt behaviour during the campaign, like leading chants of "Lock Her Up" and encouraging supporters to beat up protesters. This isn't anti-democratic in itself, but empirically brownshirt behaviour is correlated with someone being a threat to democracy.
- Trump either joked about or actively solicited (the GRU didn't get the joke) Russian help in hacking his opponent's e-mails. I don't want to rehash the argument about whether this is collusion or not, but even if it isn't, thinking that attacks on American democracy by a hostile foreign power are a joking matter says something about Trump.
- Trump said in the 3rd 2016 debate that he would "keep you in suspense" about whether he would concede defeat if he lost.
- Even after winning, Trump falsely claimed that millions of people had voted illegally in the 2016 election and that he was the legitimate popular vote winner.
- As President, Trump continues to transgress various norms in a way which constitutes weak circumstantial evidence that he is the sort of person who would transgress the norm that defeated Presidential candidates concede. Notably, he tries to strongarm Zelezny into launching a (probably bullshit) criminal investigation of the Bidens, and to share nonpublic information about said investigation with the Trump campaign.
- Before the 2020 election, Trump again refuses to commit to accepting the results.
Trump was a transgressive candidate - for many of his supporters, that was the whole point. The people who said that this transgressiveness was a threat to American democracy were right, for the right reasons - as confirmed by the events leading up to Jan 6th, even more so than by Jan 6th itself.
Immediately after the 2016 election, everyone knows that Trump is publically badmouthing America's democratic institutions. The Orange Man really is saying Bad things. The question is whether he means them, or whether this is just his schtik. "Orange Man Bad" and "Trump Derangement Syndrome" are memes used by the right (and by the centrist punditocracy which is on its last legs before finally being booted out after George Floyd ODs near a cop) to imply that taking him seriously is cringe. But Trump was serious.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
3mo ago
Any candidate without Trump's negatives running against Biden would poll well.
I don't know why Biden is doing badly enough with swing voters that his losing to a coup-plotting serial bankrupt rapist is a serious possibility, but he clearly is. Haley is clearly sane, hasn't wrecked the economy (whether the Biden economy is actually wrecked is controversial, but the median voter definitely thinks it is), and doesn't have a junkie failson in the pay of the Red Chinese. Given what the voters think about Biden, that makes her a good alternative.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1yr ago
You don't have to be morally deformed when you torture the first prisoner. You just need to believe that this time there really is the ticking bomb in the school, and that you are being morally serious and avoiding Just World fallacy and all the other things torture apologists have said on this very thread. So you hold your nose and turn the handle.
Then you hear the screams. The screams of the hated, defeated enemy. It feels good. An better still, he screamed a name. You got actionable intelligence - you did the right thing. (You don't know at that point that he gave the same name to the FBI in exchange for coffee and a hot meal three weeks ago). And you did this. You had to overcome your fear of the tofu-eating wokists of North London to do the right thing. Actually, you're kind of a hero. The sense of power is good for the ego too. Your testosterone levels go through the roof. The sex with your wife that night is special.
They bring the guy he named in. The second time is easier. You get another name. But perhaps he is holding back - he is supposed to be the higher-up after all. So you arrange another session. Nobody broke after only one round of torture in the old books, after all.
The third time is even easier. You tell him he needs to name names to make the torture stop. In between the cries, you get name after name.
They bring those people in. You start to realise that they don't talk as easily. They must be particularly hard cases - you have hard evidence that they are baddies, after all. The second guy said so under torture, and if he was lying you would have put him through another session, and he wouldn't want that. You don't consider the possibility that they aren't talking is that they weren't baddies and don't know anything. It would mean you are out of a lucrative job. So you dial up the pain.
Two days later you hear that one of the guys you left in the cold cell overnight died of hypothermia. Can't make an omlette without breaking eggs, after all. But you aren't morally deformed. You are just doing a difficult, unpleasant job that most people are too prissy to do. And you have also tortured an innocent man to death.
You have also booked a one-way ticket to the eight circle of Hell and your family is accursed down to the thirteenth generation.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2d ago
I don't. Jews who are paying attention can see the rising anti-semitism on the right. (And in particular, Jews who care about Israel know who was blocking the aid bill). Left-wing anti-semites are more dangerous individually (because they are more violent) but the anti-semitic right arguably includes people like Elon Musk and has far more access to the corridors of power than the Columbia protestors do.
Will more anti-semites be invited to the White House in a second Trump term or a second Biden term (not counting Gulf Arab diplomats etc. who are discreet about their anti-semitism)? It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
Indeed, it's a humiliation ritual. Again, I cannot even name one statue of Stalin or Lenin that suffered the same fate.
Neither Stalin nor Lenin betrayed their country. This kind of ritual humiliation was SOP for traitors, which Lee was - or at least an unsuccessful rebel, which counts as a traitor under the traditional rules. You can argue that Lenin was a traitor to the Kerensky government, but he was a successful rebel so it doesn't count.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
5mo ago
No. I am applying the morals of his own time. Lee knew that slavery was evil, and fought to defend it anyway out of a misguided sense of patriotism. Given the many positive aspects of his character, I hope he gets to spend eternity slightly further away from the Fire than, say, Jeffrey Epstein.
Given that the Russians did in fact hack and leak John Podesta's e-mails on behalf of the Trump campaign, why should I believe people who say he was joking when he asked them to do the same to Hillary Clinton? I think Henry II was probably joking when he said "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" but he doesn't get the benefit of the doubt after Thomas a Becket is murdered.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
4mo ago
it would eventually have to also make a finding on the free speech issue
Baude's original law review article advocating disqualifying Trump points out the 14th amendment is also part of the Constitution, so the 1st amendment doesn't automatically apply the way it would to a normal criminal law. Under the normal rules for resolving conflicts between two laws of equal authority, the 14th overrules the 1st, both as the more specific provision and as the after-enacted provision.
So it is entirely possible that Trump is disqualified for inciting an insurrection, but is still protected by the 1st amendment from criminal prosecution for inciting a riot.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1yr ago
Jefferson was sufficiently lacking in the rural virtues that he preached that he died bankrupt and his children (by Sally Hemmings, who he had intended to free) were sold by auction.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
4mo ago
There is a big difference between using recount laws for the purpose for which they were intended (even if those recount laws later turn out to be unconstitutional) and filing lies with the court. Neither Bush nor Gore was ever accused of filing briefs containing false factual claims - the key facts of Bush v Gore (that recounting punch card ballots accurately was sufficiently difficult that there wasn't time for an accurate statewide recount before the electoral College deadline, and that the margin of error of the original count exceeded Bush's margin of victory) were never disputed.
Trump's State court challenges to the 2020 election are criminal if and only if they were based on knowingly false factual claims. Both the Federal and Georgia indictments promise to bring evidence that they were.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
5mo ago
The white South didn't accept their defeat and try to live an honourable peace. They launched an insurgency (the 1st Klan), and when that failed they waited out the presence of federal troops in the South and then staged a series of coups against the Reconstruction-era State governments (elected by multi-racial electorates) in order to introduce Jim Crow. The North, to their shame, tolerated this due to exhaustion during the Gilded Age, and enthusiastically embraced it due to political corruption in the New Deal era.
Jim Crow was a dishonourable peace, and the Civil Rights movement was right to seek to overturn it.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
8mo ago
There are plenty of people in the UK who campaign against airport expansion on climate grounds but whose lifestyles rely on cheap flights - I don't think the climate movement is excusing leisure air travel.
I have been in two fist-fights in my life. One was over cheating at cards in middle school. The other one happened because someone nominated my sister as a candidate to marry, shag, or kill. The game is disrespectful, and it is only safe to play with casual acquaintances if you stick to nominating women who are known not to be respectable, such as actresses.
Playing with close friends, or with people who are equivalent such as team-mates on an all-male team with an appropriate level of team bonding, is part of the way groups can bond by engaging in mildly transgressive behaviour. Even so, there are limits, and a female politician who was not clearly outgroup would be pushing them.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1yr ago
You are correct. I should have scare-quoted something like "classified documents crime"
The crime shouldn't be scare-quoted either. Sandy Berger was prosecuted for mishandling classified documents as Clinton left office - he got a plea deal for a $50k fine plus probation, and lost his security clearance. The Trump case seems analogous. I agree that trying to jail Trump for the document-related crimes would be an escalation, although jailing him if he refuses a plea deal and loses at trial would not.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1yr ago
Except these same urbanists then turn around and say we need to stop building suburbs, or start building denser suburbs or mixed-use neighborhoods or whatever you want to call it,
There is an important distinction between "we need to stop building suburbs because there are already too many suburbs, and what people want is more urbanism and less suburb than we have now" and "we need to stop building suburbs as a first step towards demolishing the ones that already exist, because nobody should live in a suburb". My impression is that the vast majority of online urbanism hold the first view, and definitely that the YIMBYs do - the whole point of YIMBYism is that places need to build more of what they don't have, not demolish what they already do. Of course, the American culture war is perceived as zero sum in a way which means that "we need more urbanism", "we need less suburbia" and "we need zero suburbia" all read to a moron in a hurry as "I stan fixed gear bicycle owners and spit on F150 owners".
My view is that America has too much suburbia, as demonstrated by the very large price premium housing commands in the small number of less-crime-ridden, less-car-centric places. America needs to build more less-car-centric places, and fix the crime problem in the existing ones. The UK, on the other hand, has a shortage of competently executed auto-orientated places - so Milton Keynes commands a price premium. In the British context, I am a housing maximalist - I favour more dense urbanism AND more suburbs (but please no auto-orientated suburbia in zones 1-4 of London or within walking distance of railway stations in the London commuter belt). The problem in the London commuter belt is that too much land is reserved for golf and horses, not cars.
There is a separate issue that the American model of one-car-per-adult suburbia sucks above a metro area population of about 5 million. If you look at the top-10 CSA's by population (I am using CSA's instead of MSA's because otherwise the Bay Area gets broken up which borks the statistics):
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New York, Washington-Baltimore, Chicago, the Bay Area, Boston and Philly are all less-car-dependent by American standards.
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LA is notoriously unlivable due to traffic and smog, and everyone agrees that further auto-orientated growth is a bad idea. In fact, you can make a decent argument that the financial failure of inappropriate auto-orientated growth in the LA exurbs was a major cause of the 2008 financial crisis - the mortgage bust began in the Inland Empire.
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Houston is well aware that need to do something to stop their city turning into LA. Texan Republicans in the Houston suburbs are not willing to use public transport, but they are willing to vote higher taxes on themselves to subsidise other people using public transport. The success of Houston's light rail scheme suggests that there is unmet demand for public transport there. Greater Houston is also YIMBY in a way which makes densification of the core easier.
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DFW is blithely turning into LA. For whatever reason coverage of DFW traffic jams doesn't cross the Atlantic the way it does for LA, Houston or Atlanta, but published surveys suggest that DFW traffic is actually worse than Houston.
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Atlanta is in the middle of a political battle between the core and the suburbs about whether or not it wants to turn into LA, but so far a de facto alliance between the core and suburban NIMBYs seems to be slowing suburban growth, while the core is gentrifying and densifying.
So if you want to live in a large metro area and enjoy the benefits thereof (which by no means everyone does, but the most productive places are generally large metros) then urbanism is essential because suburbia doesn't scale. But at a national level, the whole point of YIMBY is that non-zero-sum outcomes are possible. More urbanism and about the same amount of suburbia is a thing that can happen, that would make both America and the UK better places, and that online urbanists would take as a win.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1yr ago
Providing academically segregated primary schools with extended hours (so mums can work a regular 40hr/wk professional job without paid childcare, even if they can't work a 50+hr meritocratic elite job) would be the simplest option. You can identify the top 20% of the IQ distribution at 4-ish - you need to wait to identify the tip-top, but I don't think you even want to distinguish between the 1% and the 19% if you are doing eugenics.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1yr ago
It is if the marginal campaign dollar is going on paid media (which, in America, it probably is)
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1yr ago
If "rough neighborhood" means a rough part of a generally functioning city, then the unanimous view of people-who-are-not-Americans is that cleaning it up is a job for the police, not for armed gentrifiers. If the neighborhood is so bad that even the police won't go there then
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You are probably in Sweden and your problem is immigration policy (and housing policy as well, as far as I can see), not self defense law
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Sane people are not going to move into the neighborhood because "It is okay if I get mugged, the law lets me defend myself."
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
28d ago
She's 5. I went to the kind of English prep (i.e. private primary - different meaning to the US) school where team sports is as important as academics, and we didn't play "real sport" until year 3 (September after 7th birthday). If getting 5-year-olds into team sports was a good idea then traditional English schools would have done it.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
4mo ago
If you want to burn down the District of Criminals, do it yourselves this time. No need to involve the Canadians. Plus an all-American DC fire would probably have better music.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
4mo ago
Houses are part of the means of production (at least according to the people who compile GDP statistics) because they are used to produce housing services. Firmamenti is advocating a system where houses can only be built with the permission of the local government (and where that permission can be granted or denied at a granular level) and can only be used for purposes approved by the local government. That is a system where housing is controlled by the government.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
5mo ago
Lee was regarded as a true Southern gentleman
And Rommel was regarded as a true German gentleman. But if a statue of Rommel stood in a place of honour in central Stuttgart as part of the pantheon of military heroes of Baden-Wurttemberg, and it was melted down at the request of the local synagogue, we wouldn't be complaining about "teabagging the outgroup". In fact, part of the "Reconstruction" process in post-WW2 Germany was the removal of Nazi monuments.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
5mo ago
For me personally, "Paedo guy" and "Funding secured" were enough to push me from "Hooray for the eccentric genius" to "This guy may be smart, but he is not a fit and proper person to be CEO of a strategically important company". That applies for different reasons whether he was on drugs at the time or not.
At the time, this combined with the obviously dishonest SolarCity deal and the rapid turnover of Tesla CFO's to make me suspect that Tesla was the next Enron. I'm happy to admit that I was wrong there.
The line from Trump's speech to the riot is that Trump's speech is a but-for cause of the riot. If Trump doesn't assemble the mob and tell them to go to the Capitol, they don't go to the Capitol. No mob, no riot.
The questions "Did Donald Trump incite a riot?" and "Can Donald Trump be criminally prosecuted for inciting a riot, given the 1st amendment?" are not the same question - "incite" has an ordinary English meaning, and on the ordinary English meaning of "incite", Trump so did. The 1st amendment is, for the obvious good reasons, over-protective of political speech - it isn't surprising that it is possible to incite a riot while (just) staying within the boundary of protected speech. Trump shouldn't be prosecuted for inciting a riot, and he isn't being prosecuted for inciting a riot (both the Federal and Georgia indictments focus on his various attempts to overturn the election before Jan 6th). That doesn't mean he didn't incite a riot.
Growing up in the UK, our pro-free speech tradition has tended to rely on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty for the moral (not legal) limits of free speech in contexts that look like incitement.
Trump assembled an excited mob at the Ellipse, told them that the politicians in the Capitol were stealing an election, and then told them to go to the Capitol and "fight". On the John Stuart Mill test, he has (just) exceeded the bounds of protected free speech. Under the Brandenberg test, he (just) stayed inside it. On this point, the law is on Donald Trump's side, so I am going to pound the facts. Donald Trump did, in fact, incite a riot on January 6th.
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