Shakes
2mo ago
Massie was against funding ICE in the BBB. Immigration is still the most important issue to the conservative and Republican base. You can make some show of opposing the party on certain issues but Massie opposed the party on the issue it cared about most.
And ultimately the base cares more about deportations and immigration than Israel and Epstein. Those issues are still extremely online. Posters getting their ideas about MAGA from such ideas should probably recalibrate.
Shakes
2mo ago
The GOP primary voter doesn't really have any meaningful beliefs beyond "whatever Trump wants" anymore.
This is what you say when you’ve failed to model someone’s views correctly.
He did the crime of opposing Trump in trying to expose the elite pedophile ring that Epstein ran,
The irony is that this doesn’t even need an explanation. Massie making Trump an enemy is the most obvious explanation for Trump working against Massie. That’s as basic as the friend-enemy distinction gets.
Shakes
2mo ago
He ran on being a part of the swamp and therefore knowing more than anyone how to deal with it.
Shakes
2mo ago
What’s your opinion on the IRS illegally leaking Trump’s tax records in the first place?
Shakes
2mo ago
That kind of logic would go a lot farther if you could start it by admitting when your side does something bad. This conversation starts with the IRS illegally leaking Trump’s records and those of a hundred of his allies and we’re supposed to quickly trot past that so we can discuss the latest Trump Bad crying wolf.
Shakes
2mo ago
Let’s accept for the sake of argument that Donald Trump was targeted by the federal government or agents within the federal government. (This is my position.) What does a “non-corrupt” settlement look like? Money is typically what’s awarded to victims in such cases. This is not a hypothetical or meant in a sarcastic spirit: I believe that Trump and conservatives have been targeted by the federal government over the last decade, so what’s the alternative mechanism here that would make them whole that would not be labeled corrupt? Is there one? If you can imagine one I’d like to hear it. Because to me it seems that to believe that Trump was targeted makes this settlement a priori not corrupt. Unless you can envision some other settlement that threads this needle.
Shakes
2mo ago
I think I can imagine a hypothetical where the government used a thin pretext to use the power of the law against Trump
Shakes
2mo ago
Eric Holder already did this. The government sued companies over disparate impact then made them settle by paying into a DOJ slush fund they used to impose DEI rules across the private sector. For that reason your sarcasm falls flat: this post-Trump hypothetical you want to imagine is literally already the status quo. That horse left the barn ten years ago.
Shakes
2mo ago
Obama blazed this trail. Eric Holder would sue companies over disparate impact (which is an impossible standard to follow), then make them pay out a big DOJ slush fund in settlement. Which itself is just an extension of the NGO-government pipeline Democrats long-go pioneered. There is no new precedent here, the government has been suing itself to achieve ends it could not achieve democratically for a loooooong time now.
Shakes
2mo ago
First of all a large part of this settlement is wrapping up lawsuits of Trump allies suing the Biden IRS for unfairly targeting them.
Second of all, obviously in a system of separated powers the president can’t just unilaterally impose his will. We allowed American democracy to become this frankensystem of empowered bureaucrats and who answered to no one. We called it the “Deep State” although when we used this term people imagined that we meant secret council conspiracies and complained. But now, of course, Trump has won and is being allowed to remake the government. What you call “incompetence” is the consequence of a big dramatic fight that has lasted the last ten years.
Shakes
2mo ago
4D chess is itself a bad meme that fails to explain anything about Trump. (You wouldn’t say have faith that LeBron James will win because he’s playing 4D chess, although in a literal sense that’s what basketball is.)
But also, Trump did not pretend to fight his persecution so he could do this later. He fought and won, that’s all.
Shakes
2mo ago
something the federal government did under Trump.
You mean things that Trump tried to stop and complained about as they were happening?
Shakes
2mo ago
The IRS under Obama targeted conservatives. They looked at your political action group and determined if you were conservative before deciding if you would get an audit or not. This is all public knowledge and nobody was made to suffer for this except Lois Lerner eventually losing her job.
We even had a fight a few years later in the Biden years over expanding the IRS and adding more agents so they could audit more people. Nothing was ever done to make sure they won’t target conservatives again, but we will just pretend that that isn’t related because those are two separate storylines so connecting those two dots is a non-sequitur. Result: the IRS that targeted conservatives and was never punished for it got more powerful.
Now that the government reaches a settlement every Trump critic wants to call this a Trump corruption case. ? Well, what is the federal government supposed to do? In fact, we now have a richly-established norm of NGOs and activists suing the federal government and so that their political allies who run the government can settle. Welcome to the world you made. This kind of thing happened all the time under Obama, all the time, all the time! — remember when companies were made to pay settlements directly into DOJ slush funds?— and I still hear about how the only scandal Obama ever had was his tan suit.
It is also very unusual for a sitting President to be suing the government he is in charge of.
It’s very unusual for the government to target conservative political groups! And the sitting president over made-up stories that he colluded with Russia. And all of his allies for process crimes such as entrapment while being interviewed by FBI agents who didn’t tell you they were investigating you. And et cetera et cetera etc. It would have been really easy for Trump not to sue the government if they hadn’t wronged him in the first place!
I would really actually enjoy a good argument about why exactly this is even corruption. All I see online is a lot of pointing from people very selectively not mentioning the government’s extremely well-documented political campaigns against conservatives, Trump, and Trump’s allies. What else did we think would happen? People who were harassed by the government actually have a right to settle to make themselves whole, and this is what happens when those same people win control of that government. What did you think would happen after spying on his campaign? $1.776 Billion is getting off easy.
Shakes
2mo ago
“Guanxi” (i.e. “connections”) is a huge concept in China
This is always proffered as a trait of Chinese culture but I'm skeptical. Connections in this respect are a feature of business everywhere, at all times. The societies that have minimized connections are all WEIRD (Haidt).
I think that "Guanxi" satisfies some deep Chinese need for everything to be catalogued and systematized. They like reifying things. It's not just who you know, it's Guanxi. It's not just networking, it's Guanxi. Likewise their penchant for Lists (Four Great Novels, The Three Principles of the People, The One Hundred Years of Humiliation, etc.). And it's fine if you can observe that it's better to win than to lose, but it helps if you can find the relevant quotation from the Art of War from Master Sun.
Shakes
2mo ago
How is Masterpiece Cakeshop an imposition? The rule is "You can't force someone to bake a gay cake". The "imposition" here is that Cakeshop can't be forced to do something. That blue tribe is not allowed to force red tribe to do what blue tribe wants. It's not reciprocal -- red tribe isn't forcing blue tribe to do anything. You can still buy gay cake, you can still protest Cakeshop. That is, by definition, not an imposition. Perhaps it's an inconvenience. But if you redefine imposition that way, then every use of power is zero-sum. It's akin to denying neutrality itself. There really can't even be a sense of "Law" in this world, because every possible rule is just dressed-up naked force. Freedom of Religion is an imposition, because I'm forcing you to not suppress religions you don't like. Freedom of Speech is an imposition, because I'm forcing you to not suppress speech you don't like. Framed this way freedom itself can even be an aggressive act: I'm forcing you to accept that which you do not want to accept. Goodbye Westphalia!
This is just the price of living in a pluralistic society. Not everybody has the same opinions about gay marriage. What's the counter-argument, that Cakeshop constitutes unacceptable discrimination and should be barred from the marketplace? But the Cakeshop position was basically a universal belief for the entirety of human history, and gay marriage only became law about ten years ago. Everybody must be forced to accept these rights that were just discovered, even at the expense of other traditional rights. Then there's really no such thing as human rights either, it's all just staring down the barrels of a gun. (And as cynical as we all might be about arbitrary human constructs, I think the existence of human rights is good and not a concept worth dismantling.)
Similar arguments could be made about many of your other suggested impositions, although at this time I leave working through each as an exercise to the reader.
Shakes
2mo ago
Personally I think it's likely that China will continue to produce a lot of junk, even as the top-line quality of their manufactures grows. (Basically, this has already happened.) It's possible to find some of the highest quality goods in the world in Guangzhou and Shanghai. But if I were a random manufacturing company in Europe looking to source parts I would not trust a random Chinese factory. I suppose given time the free market would correct this, but I think China also provides some unique qualities that could allow them to keep making junk for a long time.
Shakes
2mo ago
I am not well acquainted with dogs, but my understanding is that it is not particularly hard to get them to hump things.
Unless you’re just having fun with it this post reads to me as if it’s way, way, way too credulous of the dog-sleights-man.
The question isn’t if a dog could mechanically rape a human being. (Although it would be a moderately disordered dog that would rape a man: what breed are we talking anyways?) The question is if Israeli jailors would sic a dog on their captive with the intent for the dog to rape him. (Actually, how does that work mechanically: did they tie him head down ass up?)
It’s a fairly unusual accusation. It requires e.g. that the Israelis have rape dogs. Which the jailors are willing to use. Without this being exposed in any provable way. Is it possible? Well, sure, technically, but why haven’t I heard of this sort of thing before? Do the Iranians have rapehunds? Did the Nazis sic specially trained dogs on their victims? I don’t recall anything like this in Leviticus. It’s not in Bernal Diaz.
The alternative, much more plausible event: “It didn’t happen. We made it up. It’s not real.” The story was fabricated because it sounded good. The victim hallucinated. Something was lost in translation. A rumor got out of hand. Those are all explanations consistent with everything I’ve ever observed in human nature.
Extradordinary claims require exorbiditrary evidence? It seems much much likelier that people will believe anything bad about Israel than than the dog didn’t even need any peanut butter.
Shakes
2mo ago
Well I guess we're arguing now about whether Hillary was a strong candidate or was merely perceived to be a strong candidate. But I would say, even if you remove the pundit class bubble the average man on the street thought it was obvious Hillary was going to win. I remember liberal coworkers brazenly exclaiming that Hillary was going to win Texas and wasn't it wonderful. I remember watching the Snowden movie with clips of Trump calling for Snowden to be executed put in the epilogue as a punchline. I was virtually the only person I knew who thought Trump was going to win. Arguments with the liberals I knew. Republican friends and family would pointedly stay quiet when I said Trump was going to win. The only other person I knew who thought Trump was going to win was an ex-auto worker who would call me up and whisper over the phone (I am not rhetorically exaggerating -- he would whisper) that the union guys were all voting for Trump and he might actually carry away with this thing. The only place I could consistently find people who thought Trump could win was on the internet. And privately, after the election, many of these people admitted to me that they hadn't thought Trump would win. That they were just trying to hold frame and save face. That they wanted it to be true but that they couldn't believe it would be.
I remember the Billy Bush tapes and by all conventional accounting everybody thought Trump was toast. "Because you'd be in jail." And I remember the Al Smith Dinner; I heard it from someone who was there that everyone in the room thought Trump was going to lose, and that the bad taste of his mean speech was taken as evidence that Trump knew it too.
Hilary's poll lead in 2016 was never as big as Obama's (either time) or Biden's in 2020.
I don't think that's true; Romney beating Obama was a mainstream possibility and he was up at times. Trump beating Hillary was an extreme outlier very few pollsters showed at all and many had her leading by quite comfortable margins. (Although I think in more realistic quarters the idea that Hillary was up +10 was not treated seriously and it was supposed that she was up by +3 or +4.)
Shakes
2mo ago
Hillary was the strong horse. She ran an extremely close primary in 2008 against Obama, which was extremely close and made her the obvious next candidate. She had name recognition and the majority of the Democratic Party on board. She was made Secretary of State as her consolation prize, which meant she was effectively one of the most powerful politicians in America. And she had the better part of a decade for the public to accept that she was the most obvious candidate to be the next President of the United States. Seemingly every TV procedural and light fiction had a blonde lady female President. A woman president! She had this mystique too. Hillary was then able to cut deals within the party to ensure the nomination was all but won. (I do believe the wikileaks reveal that Tim Kaine allowd Debbie Wasserman Schultz to replace him as head of the DNC in exchange for being made Hillary's running mate. But there were other deals made as well.) Hillary was qualified, she was experienced, she was successful, she was famous, she was even relatively popular. Secretary of State, Senator, First Lady, consumate politician. Foreign policy, Domestic policy. In the lead-up to the 2015 Democratic Primary she was the obvious obvious frontrunner, which is a big part of why nobody serious bothered to run against her.
In hindsight the weaknesses there were latent. A lot of it probably had to do with Obama fatigue. A lot of it was natural generational turnover. In hindsight the fact that she so truly represented the best of the Washington political class is exactly what made her vulnerable. But she was the best of them.
Bernie's primary challenge having legs was a surprise to everybody. It was probably even a surprise to Bernie, who can't have expected that after two generations in the political wilderness on the fringes that he was finally about to go mainstream. It was a lot closer than anyone would have expected in 2014. But it still wasn't really close.
Meanwhile the Republicans didn't have anybody of Hillary's stature. They had a lot of solid candidates by traditional Washington candidate standards and felt good that after 8 years of Obama it was finally their turn to win. But nobody was really ready for prime time. Jeb was theoretically the frontrunner and big hitter, but he had no strong public persona besides his Bush name. Ted Cruz was alienating and weird. Rubio was young and untested. Then there were all these governors and senators and winsome folk. In hindsight it's obvious that they were all weak and Trump tore through the field like wet tissue. But then it was assumed that Trump himself would lose, easily, and Hillary was the obvious favorite.
And so many things had to go right for Trump to win that it could be called divine intervention. 2016 was one of the most shocking things to ever happen in the lifetimes of everyone who lived through it. Those woke posters who called it the most shocking event since 9/11 were woke-more-correct. Nobody expected Trump to win. You had to be extremely weird to have considered it. Half the country thought Hillary was up by ten, the other half sanguinely thought it would be closer than that but she would probably win. It was genuinely shocking to the whole world, one of those events that makes people peer behind the veil and realize how arbitrary life can be and how you go along and there's a plan and the world is certainly on it and then suddenly everything changes and you can see history being made. TPP, Wikileaks, Comey, Obamacare rates, the border crisis, ISIS, Pokemon Go to the Polls.
Shakes
2mo ago
It was only in hindsight that everyone declared Hillary a weak candidate. In 2015 everyone in America knew that Hillary was probably the next president.
Anyways, Trump isn’t running again. If the theory is Trump is a bad candidate and only beat worse candidates, that bodes well for Republicans. GOP will pick Rubio or JD or DeSantis. Dems will pick…? Maybe they won’t pick a bad candidate for the 4th time running.
Trump is probably more popular than the polls show. Traditionally he overperforms the polls every time he has been on an election ballot.
Anti-Trump Republicans are unpopular because they won’t do what Trump wants them to do. Some of Trump’s unpopularity is caused by parts of the base who believe Trump isn’t doing what Trump promised to do.
I.e. (and I don’t agree with this), many think Trump has moderated and is pursuing Israel/Iran instead of mass deportations. But the base basically wants the same coherent things. It is now using its power to chase out Republicans who find reasons why the base can’t get what it wants. It’s the same story: Indiana can’t redistrict out Democratic seats because our principles; Massie can’t vote for funding ICE because his principles; Cornyn can’t get SAVE passed because his principles. In any other system this logic is very easily understood: voters hired Republicans to do a job they refuse to do, so they are being fired.
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