Shakes
1d 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
1d 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
1d 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
2d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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.
Shakes
4d ago
In 2024 the Republican party increased its performance virtually everywhere in America outside Atlanta and Utah. It's been the subject of some very famous maps
It's possible this is a high-water mark and maybe the GOP is losing and this redshift is all an affect of Trump. In that case I guess you'd be right. But it's not really in evidence. The Democratic Party remains extremely unpopular. Why couldn't a Republican Party sans Trump continue to win, say, a consistent 52-48 national victory.
Shakes
4d ago
I guess you're calling specifically for me (a "Maggot") to go to jail so there's no polite way for me to interact with this post. (Anything I say is inherently inflaming tension, no? I don't think the mod response to your comment goes far enough frankly.)
However I would still like to try to politely point out this contradiction: You call for putting MAGA in jail, and then complain that we need people to interact with reality. Imagining that you can roll up an entire political faction and put them all in jail (representing ~30%+ of the country) is obviously political fantasy.
When I find myself thinking like this, I try to go for a walk and read a book and not log on for a day or more so that I can drink some tea and reflect on higher things. Chamomile with honey and glycine helps me dream deeply.
Shakes
4d ago
Your analysis to me reads so differently from what I hear about American politics from my fellow Americans that, politely, I suspect you are not American or otherwise don't follow American politics that closely. You seem to ascribe great important to events or figures that nobody I know regards as important. (Liz Cheney?)
The result of his tenure as president, both first and second term combined has largely been to the disappointment of many
Trump has within the Republican party extremely high approval ratings. Whose disappointment? Later you cite the desire from Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama to have a reformed GOP. Liz Cheney also failed and was decisively rejected by the voters. "There is a significant desire among the moderates of the GOP to escape the influence of Magaist politics". Like the legislators just primaried in Indiana?
Perhaps your analysis that Trumpism has failed is motivated by something other than objective analysis? I mean, when I consult the oracle bones I'm not convinced MAGA will have run of the table after Trump fades, and there are a lot of ways this could all go. But MAGA is also the predominant faction now in the Republican Party, its mantle can easily be taken up by Rubio or Vance, and voters clearly still support it. MAGA is powerful. MAGA is more popular than the moderate faction you imagine supplanting it. MAGA has spent ten years purging the moderate faction. So where are you getting this idea that the moderate faction is about to totally win? From the pronouncements of the moderate faction? From the pronouncements of people who want MAGA to lose?
You see why this looks like wishcasting, yes?
The Japanese radio broadcaster assured me that the Japanese are winning in the Pacific -- it must be true. Let's discuss.
the need for a revitalized GOP, capable of once more cooperating across the aisle with their Democratic counterparts
See what I mean?
I don't see why Republican voters would want to cooperate with the Democratic party, but I can see why the Democratic party would want pliant Republicans again.
the American military has failed
Well I guess if you believe that Trump should be surrendering any day now, although he seems to have had the chance to already. But I have to add that if you are calling the war with Iran a failure and the war with Iraq a success, this is such an inversion of American sentiment that I'm not sure you really are a part of it. Are you aware of being provocative? Consider:
atrophying of the military industrial complex
Nobody in America would judge that the MIC is getting weaker.
the lack of cooperation and involvement with allied countries via NATO
Nobody in America considers NATO all that powerful, frankly.
(Actually, I think if I went around to average Americans and said something like "We could have won in Iran already if the Europeans had joined us" I would get a lot of laughs. The only people who seem to consider the Europeans important in the way you're describing are the Europeans themselves.)
Trump hamstringing the army and navy due to his obsession with “making deals”
So the theory is that Trump is sitting on a big button labeled "Win the Iran War" and hasn't pushed it because he's too nice? He negotiates too much? I think I need an explanation here. The idea is that we are going to replace Trump, who is weak because he is "obsessed with making deals," with a "revitalized GOP, capable of once more cooperating across the aisle"? MAGA is weak because Trump is a failure because he likes making deals, therefore we need a strong GOP that... makes deals with Democrats?
This contradiction seems so damning to me in your entire frame of reference that I'm tempted to delete the rest of my post and just emphasize this. You believe that America should replace Trump and his "making deals" with a "broad, consensus-based politics"? Huh?
Besides this, there is obviously no hunger for that right now in America.
his rule has largely been to the detriment of the country, especially as it pertains to America’s relationship with its allies in NATO
Are you European, by chance?
Shakes
4d ago
Trump posting Obama's face on monkeys on social media
Trump posted a recording of a social media meme, which at the end briefly autoplayed the next video (the infamous Lion King meme) before being cut off. Trump made the rare apology and deleted the post altogether.
Shakes
4d ago
As a follow-up question when do you believe sanctions against Iran started to be imposed?
Shakes
7d ago
Graham Platener
This guy’s publicist deserves a raise. I went on his Wikipedia page just now to remind myself of some particulars and found it to be extremely, extremely sympathetic without ever actually appearing biased.
The detail I was looking for was his time at George Washington University. There’s a whole class of guys who congregate at a few institutions like GW so they can groom themselves for politics. (Pete Buttigieg and Vivek Ramiswamy are similar types although not GW kids.)
I’m not sure if this actually translates to mass appeal or not. Democrats have convinced themselves it does, and they’re all excited about that, but I’m not sure that that means it’s a real phenomenon. And if they’re excited enough to vote for him he could win with that. The blue collar facade is like a spell you cast to sprinkle victory on your cereal. One reason I think it doesn’t matter is that the nazi tattoos don’t seem to matter, because nobody is really looking at this guy as a flesh-and-blood human being. He’s an idea of a person, and has successfully convinced Democrats that the idea he is projecting will win and therefore allow them to acquire more power. So isn’t the rest all just rationalizing?
Seems like Collins would win to me, because apparently she always outperforms her polls, although maybe she is uniquely vulnerable this year or maybe Plattner really is uniquely strong.
If she does lose, I think it would have more to do with an argument I’ve seen advanced by people like Mike Cernovich. What good has Susan Collins done for Maine? It’s overrun with Somalis and welfare fraud now right? Easy enough to imagine a loss in that environment, especially if the only rejoinder is “nazi tattoos”. Turns out no one cares. (?)
Shakes
8d ago
The logic here still seems to be "Agentic = good, but Trump = bad, therefore Trump is not agentic"
I guess if you really want to imagine Trump is so self-destructive to his own interests I can squint and try to see it, but it doesn't really make sense to me. Because then it's just a bunch of unrelated complaints strung together by panican feeling. What am I supposed to say? We have more deportations than any prior administration and they're increasing every month, what are mass deportations supposed to look like? Is he not investing in "structural Republican electoral advantage"? What does that mean? Congress won't pass SAVE while his DOJ is pressing red states to redistrict so Republicans can keep the House. I don't know, these are a lot of separate and unrelated arguments now but basically none of them touch on the question of whether Trump is agentic. Which is obviously trivially is, seeing as how his entire life is dominated by an appetite for action that's unusual in the extreme. First American President to ever run and win without prior political or military experience, but there's nothing worth admiring or learning from in that because the Iran war is taking longer than a week.
Shakes
9d ago
We are ten years into the Trump era now, which was inaugurated in 2015 with a primary waged on dissatisfaction with the GOP establishment. That the base has been dissatisfied with Republican leadership is one of the central facts of American politics. It's why we have Trump. It's why half a dozen Indiana state senators got primaried yesterday after they refused to redistrict. It's why Erick Erickson got pushed out of mainstream Republican politics. It's why the Republican Party was happy to dump Trump throughout the 2020 election crisis. It's also a very simple explanation for why the Republican party is unable to pass Voter ID even though a supermajority of the American public consistently polls in favor of it. I don't know what else to add here. I think you are misunderstanding one of the basic facts of American politics and are now trying to invent alternate explanations for things trivially understood in my worldview.
Yes, Erickson is generally much smarter than the grifters.
Erick Erickson is an extremely stupid man filling out the D Tier of conservative talking head punditry whose big claim to fame is saying stupid things on the radio while having a funny name. One day he calls Trump a fascist and says he'll never vote for him, the next day he's endorsing him for President, one day he's calling Supreme Court Justices "goat fuckers" and debating whether Michelle will cut off Barack's penis, the next day he's policing Trump's tone. No consistent principles. Erick Erickson is not smarter than the grifters, he is a grifter. Please, please spare me this delusional fat imbecile's self-serving fantasies about his high-minded Christian principles. (It must be nice to be principled when you can make a lot of money advertising how principled you are. I'm pretty sure Jesus says not to do this somewhere. Maybe Erick Erickson can spend some time contemplating the Christian principle of fasting and lose some weight?)
I consider this argument won because instead of confronting head-on anything I said you have pivoted to a non-sequitur about Republicans' prospects in the midterms. Although I don't see why Republicans would lose the midterms when we apparently have the power to commit election fraud without being punished. Seems simple. Republicans nationalize the Puerto Rico model and Democrats can't do anything about it because they don't know how to commit election fraud.
Maybe I'm getting too snarky. But I don't really understand why I'm being treated as the stupid one when your position seems to be that Republicans are too moral for politics.
Shakes
9d ago
Trump is constantly claiming about stolen elections and voter fraud, and yet little evidence has ever shown up.
Mostly because the only evidence leftists will ever accept is these bizarre reverse style "gotcha!" stories where they can be safe horny for election integrity. As soon as I read the words "there's a twist you might not expect" I can predict it's Republicans who will be doing the fraud, because that's the only context in which it is ever permissible to admit that election fraud ever happens. As long as we simultaneously arrive at the correct conclusion that, well, it can't have mattered anyways.
It's interesting, right? Criminal conspiracy to buy votes that, apparently, can only ever have maxed out at 5,000 votes in an election where the margin is way above that. You know it's futile, I know it's futile, but apparently the gangs organizing it didn't know it was futile? Weird that everyone involved thought this was worth doing when some back of the napkin math "proves" it can never have been worth doing. Why did they do it then? Well, they must have been irrational somehow, thankfully we don't have to examine our priors about whether election fraud is real or not.
Remember kids, though the GOP won in 2024 with Trump getting the popular vote, the grifters will tell you the losses this year are because the SAVE Act didn’t pass.
Note that this isn't even an argument against the SAVE act, this is just an argument that Erick Erickson is wise and his enemies are silly, while he sits in the corner watching. It might not even be true: this Wapo op-ed argues that the SAVE Act would turn Nevada and New Mexico into solid red states just by changing the voter pool. It doesn't even require us to believe in election fraud; The GOP simply chooses to play by rules that cause them to lose when they have a popular mandate and the power to change the rules. That's at least the decision Erick Erickson would make, as he looks down on me from his superior moral pedestal while pressing the "Keep Losing" button over and over again.
It's not like this guy is going to make a habit of murder by megaphone.
No but if the state government says "You can attack people at protests and get away with it as long as we like you and it's plausibly ambiguous," the mob can make a habit of it.
Shakes
9d ago
Many MAGA optimists don't gauge things by what is happening around them. It's exactly like you say. Their barometer is what Trump does. If he does X, then X was the best thing to do because they trust Trump. Their gas prices going up or their jobs moving away or their farms going bankrupt is just not accounted for as a counterfactual.
I'm not sure what you're intending. Most people don't reason in the sense you're describing. There is no mass reserve of people who "gauge things by what is happening around them". Most people get their opinions from life experience, and most life experience is consuming media. There's nothing novel about MAGA here except that we broadly trust Trump's judgment. So that, if gas prices go up, I assume this was judged relative to other options and found to be the best course of action. It's not even that mysterious. It's not hard for me to make a case for why Trump went to war with Iran or how this is potentially a good thing. I don't have to appeal to mysterious subrational forces.
HBD has no place in mainstream conservative politics. The functional reason for the existence of the dissident right is to be a right winger that can acknowledge HBD.
Respectfully, conservative politics has moved way far beyond whether conservatives can talk about race.
From what I can tell the Trump we have now is so far removed from the 2016 Trump it's not comparable. If one wants to say that every decision that he has made that has removed him from his original brand has been the best course of action, then I'd ask, best course towards what? Draining the swamp, building a border wall and kicking all the foreigners out and give jobs to Americans? Or the best course of action for Trump to stay in power?
Well we are building a border wall and this is the first administration in generations that has seen more foreigners leaving America than coming in. As for draining the swamp, Trump has politically defeated a lot of powerful people in his attempt to reform the American government. To me this reads like making the perfect the enemy of the good, and declaring that, since Trump hasn't accomplished everything he must have moderated. But I don't know anyone, not a single person, who has ever accomplished everything they intended.
Shakes
9d ago
You've again just defined "agentic" to mean "Trump does what I want". Maybe Trump has different priorities from you.
For instance, fuel prices. Trump decided to go to war with Iran, which is currently causing fuel prices to go up. Trump decided that the risk was worth it. Ok, you can argue with that risk assessment. Do you argue that it shows that Trump is agentic?
For instance, voter ID. Trump cannot pass voter ID unilaterally, because of Congress. So he writes executive orders on mail-in ballots and cuts backroom deals to try to get votes for the SAVE act. Maybe President RandomRanger would say screw that and send in the troops. Ok, you could argue with that risk assessment. Do you argue that this shows that Trump is not agentic?
Shakes
10d ago
There is something very admirable about the seemingly boundless faith some grassroots MAGA supporters have for Trump. It's a pure loyalty exercise for them. To a point where reality itself is just a test to be overcome.
Well I don't know I feel pretty confident that it's my view that matches reality and everyone else is just too jaded to believe in anything because they're cynical and old and mad at God. It's as if you described Christianity in very clinical terms and said, "There's something pure about belief in Christ even though these Christians have to put fact aside." Well, no, Christians believe (I believe) that Christianity is based in fact, just like I believe my support for Trump is based in fact.
But I understand that my perspective is rare so I get what you're trying to say etc. etc.
Now how does one explain that as a race blind MAGA supporter in Trump's America? Do some similarly half baked sociology based on the Moynihan Report? Do we just advocate for the implementation of a genuine white supremacy to mend the black nuclear family back together through force? Or do we just not talk about it?
Sorry, it's not clear to me contextually what specifically is being hypothetically explained here, the existence of the racial gap as such? I think the mainstream conservative position is that blacks and whites behave differently, and then you fill that difference with some ratio of "culture" and "race" depending on how racist you are. And this more or less explains everything, without having to reach into every social institution and change every facet of society. I like the take of a friend of mine who described DC's local government as having "an abusive relationship" with respect to local voters.
Not talking about things seems to be the preferred option for dealing with most things that are unpleasant to think about for the MAGA optimists. We instead trust our leaders and don't think too much about things.
This is a fierce, omnipresent debate within MAGA and I really only ever hear this line from people who don't like my explanation for why I trust Trump. It can't be that I've thought things through and reached a different conclusion from them (from you), it's that I haven't thought it through.
I guess, to add some specificity here instead of just talking on the meta level: I trust Trump because he's smarter than me, has better information than I have, and has better instincts than I have. People look at me like I have two heads when I say this, but if you were learning physics and your teacher demonstrated obvious learning you wouldn't say, "I trust my teacher and don't think too much about things." No, he clearly knows more than me, in this situation it's correct to be a little humble and learn something. I mean that with zero sycophancy.
To take an even more specific example, let's take immigration. I trust that Trump wants to stop illegal immigration. After ten years of Trumpian politics, I trust that Trump wants to stop illegal immigration. Now, in the day-to-day, there are all sorts of stories, why isn't Trump deporting more people, is this a broken campaign promise, or why hasn't Trump tried this strategy instead of that strategy, or what's he doing in Minnesota, or maybe he should defy judges, or this or that. There's a lot we could sit and debate I guess. But ultimately what reason do I have for actually supposing that Trump is wrong? He's much more agentic than I am, he's much more successful than I am, he has much better political instincts than I do, he has much more information than I do, he has much better judgment than I do. So take Minnesota. Maybe he could have done what twitter is saying and doubled down and called it an insurrection and declared martial law and forced an even bigger crisis. I'm sure that was presented to him as an option. But he didn't take it. Why would I assume that my judgment is better than his? Because I scroll twitter?
Note that this logic is not a blank check for trusting all leaders blindly. When leadership of the Republican Party passes to Marco Rubio or JD Vance I don't suppose that they will replicate Trump's skill in every domain. (Although they probably deserve more deference than random posters on twitter.) Likewise Obama and Biden don't deserve this kind of deference just by virtue of being the president. (Actually if there was one Democratic leader I would defer to it would be Nancy Pelosi: if you were a Democrat it would be entirely reasonable to take cues from her about what is politically possible, you wouldn't be very credible if you claimed to know better than her. That's because she earned it after a very long career of very highly-demonstrated competence.) Anyways, Trump has obviously performed at the highest levels for a generation now and succeeded in situations everyone else thought impossible. That actually obviously, trivially merits a pretty high level of trust. Backseat driving every decision Trump makes is about as compelling to me as a fat washed-up beer-belly in a sports jersey complaining that he can tell every time Lebron James makes a mistake.
I'm trying to lay this out very neutrally although reading back I think this conversation is not quite the right jumping-off point and I'll have to try again in the future. But I'm bored at work and I have time at my desk and so why not. I get why this sounds so irrational and strange to people. I also believe that Donald Trump dodged a bullet in an obvious miracle and is clearly chosen by God and clearly represents the deep spirit of America, U-S-A, U-S-A, and we're all too cynical so we need a reason why we should listen when Mom tells us not to touch the hot stove. But putting that aside I think loyalty can be extremely rational, which is what I'm trying to enunciate.
Just listen to cope merchants on Fox and friends tell us about how everything is under control.
As an aside, Fox has always been relatively critical of Trump and is definitely not where you go to hear happy stories about how everything is fine. Fox is where you go to hear about how woke transgender dog clinics are ruining San Francisco with vegan homeless shelters. If I was woke I would watch Fox News because it would make me feel powerful.
Shakes
10d ago
Yeah Trump makes mistakes too what does that have to do with whether he's agentic or not? In the sense of the discussion about ressentiment and whether the populist right is the political faction that casts itself as powerless and mad.
the origin of the TACO idea
When you're actually "in the arena" the amount of criticism you face is infinite and I don't consider the fact that it exists to prove much of anything. One tweak in the algorithm and the viral meme would be "Trump Always Overdoes It" or whatever.
? I didn’t even say anything.
More options
Context Copy link