Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
One day the Trumpist Mottizens will make a serious attempt to explain why I should worry more about random people on social media than actual, elected government officials holding the highest offices in the country and making policy. But it's obviously not today.
One day, as usual, the left will look at the ‘utopia’ they memed into existence and realise that it has no place for them.
Possible, but probably not. The historical pattern has been that the inclusive, liberal parts of the US are prosperous and decent places to live while the white supremacist parts are shitholes.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
Would you, uh, care to expand upon that?
The Republican Party aggressively pushes policies which are inimical to the well-being and longevity of their voters. This includes pushing crank health theories (most prominently anti-vaccine sentiments), defunding rural healthcare, and weakening environmental protections.
I do hear a lot of rhetoric about abolishing white people -- even 'kill all white men' -- but it's not coming from Republicans.
Can you please point to the Democratic policies implementing plans to abolish white people and/or kill all white men?
if he was at all vulnerable to narcissistic injury he would have gone away or broken down long ago
Trump has broken down. He has a public meltdown like three times a week. I don't know how you can look at his behavior and conclude that this is a guy who has his shit together. The man just wrote a public* angry letter to the PM of Norway because he's mad about the Nobel prize committee (which doesn't work for the Norwegian government) and Greenland (which is part of a different country).
he legitimately is interested in doing what is best for the American people
I really don't see any evidence for this. If people close to him are saying that, it's probably because it's in their interest to present Trump as well-intentioned rather than vindictive and corrupt. Trump has consistently prioritized his own interests, power, and obsessions over the interests of America. The Greenland Crisis is just the latest example of this.
The best argument one could make to sustain the idea that Trump is acting in good faith is that he's just a moron. And in fairness, there's good reason to think that (though being a moron doesn't preclude corrupt intent). He doesn't just lack an expert-level intellectual background in the things he is working - something he has in common with the vast majority of presidents - he lacks basic intellectual curiosity and common sense (see, e.g. his preposterous understanding of trade deficits) and has a zero-sum understanding of the world.
*correction: He sent a completely unhinged private letter which only an idiot would not expect to be shared immediately
Not really. While it was undoubtedly an act of grotesque malfeasance and selfishness to hide Biden's state, even if we grant the most pessimistic assessments of Biden, he wasn't nearly as far gone nor as overtly harmful to the nation. One could quite reasonably conclude that Joe Biden's cabinet plus four hours a day of Joe Biden was a reasonable choice compared to the alternatives.
By contrast, with Mad King Donald and his cabinet of villains and Marco Rubio, almost any plausible alternative would be better (though JD Vance might be one of the only steps down).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
There are two core problems:
- MAGA is a distinctively fanatical cult of personality. I suspect senior Republicans believe (probably correctly) that if they yeet Trump, his rabid base will turn on them in punishment for betraying their god-king. Even if they don't, there's a noted swathe of Trump supporters who don't show up for anyone but Trump himself. So getting rid of Trump leaves them in the awkward spot of being deserted by Trump's low-prop voters while being known to the rest of the electorate as the cowards who could have stopped the madness at any time but didn't.
- Trump's cabinet has no reason to want to get rid of him. It's no skin off their back if Trump destroys the country (some of them appear to be actively for it), and in the mean time, far better to be whispering in the ear of the Mad King than JD Vance, who appears to have his own ideas.
Basically, getting rid of Trump would be an act of selfless, patriotic self-sacrifice that the modern GOP is incapable of.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
I'm not sure what Trumpism will look like once Vance takes over.
The odds that Vance gets shoved in a locker the moment Trump exits are quite high.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
I don't understand how any White man could support the left in this country.
Because I can Notice who is President of the United States and who is pseduonymously posting in tumblr so they don't get fired from their job at the coffee shop and make a rational assessment of who poses a greater threat to my freedom, well-being, and prosperity.
The left has such open, naked hatred directed specifically at White men it just feels like self-preservation should kick in at some point and supersede the rest of your political preferences.
YMMV, especially given that Republicans seem dead-set on killing their voters.
We know the answer? What is it?
Donald Trump is an impulsive bully. He thinks grabbing territory is a big-dick move and is thug-brained enough to not grasp the diplomatic consequences. All this talk about polar competition is clumsy rationalization.
(Or, if we want to go fully tinfoil, "I'm going to invade Greenland jk unless..." is a preferable headline to "I'm a pedophile.")
Canada sounds like they’re currently trying to stoke an alliance with China
I wonder if the United States government did anything in the past year that might be construed as hostile towards Canada or otherwise make them doubt the integrity of the relationship?
And it's not as if the US isn't engaged in its own schizophrenic courtship with China.
We need strong partners. Denmark and Canada, at this point, aren’t.
What problem is being solved by antagonizing them? Canada, in particular, could be totally, absolutely useless and the US would still need their cooperation in the arctic. I know people here love the idea that it's all 4d chess to troll US allies into rearmament, but it's not. It's never 4d chess.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2d ago
That doesn't answer the objection. The US is allied with Canada and Denmark. The US has a history of working through bases in allies' territory, and already has basing rights on Greenland in particular.
Why pointlessly antagonize regional allies with territorial demands instead of just working with them? (We know the answer)
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
or maybe just the far-left?
Definitely not just the far left. Highly engaged people across the range of the left were increasingly steamed over the fact that Garland was slow-rolling prosecution trying to maintain propriety (failing to grasp that there was literally nothing he could do to convince Trumpists of his bona fides).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
The Disney live action projects have been:
Movies
- Sequel Trilogy (Bad)
- Rogue One (Good)
- Solo (Okay/Good)
Series
- The Mandalorian (Okay)
- BoBF (Baaaaaaaad)
- Kenobi (Bad)
- Andor (Great)
- Ahsoka (Bad)
- The Acolyte (Bad)
- Skeleton Crew (Good)
Of ten projects, we have five projects that are bad, two that are at least okay, two that are good, and one that is great. Not an amazing hit rate, and the ST being bad is a massively outsized issue, but probably not as bad as one might think if you compare it against the industry as a whole.
I think if you look at why the bad stuff is bad, it's hard to pull together a coherent throughline other than "get good." The ST and BoBF both flounder not because of particular tone or themes, but because they seemingly had no plan or idea for what they really wanted to do beyond cash in on Star Wars. The Acolyte has a serviceable concept for a movie, but it's drawn out over 5.5 hours (and has piss-poor execution to boot). Kenobi had a clear enough plan, but shabby execution and was something nobody wanted (or rather, getting what you wanted in the most literal sense, but in a way that makes you wish you hadn't asked for it). Similarly, Ahsoka embodies how pandering to existing fans is liable to produce a self-indulgent mess (though FWIW most SW fans I know IRL like Ahsoka, which is proof they have no taste).
Of these live action projects, the only ones that code as particularly woke are TLJ (which was bad) and Andor (which was not). The impression I've gotten from reading about the behind-the-scenes of SW production was not that Kennedy was pushing really hard for a particular vision that no one liked but that she was pretty lackadaisical and didn't impose much discipline on her productions or have a great sense for quality.
Do the Europoors understand how insulting and alienating this is given their concurrent begging for US help against Russia?
It seems perfectly coherent to ask for help against territorial aggression and also hedge against the risk of territorial aggression. This entire Greenland business is absolutely batshit insane on multiple levels. If this were any other president we'd be talking 25A or impeachment.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3d ago
No our enemies do not hate us "because we're too cool", they hate us for geopolitical reasons that are completely outside the average American's control.
You've misread me. When I say "our enemies hate us because we're too cool" I am deriding the idea that Trump's domestic opponents dislike him because he is too American.
Regarding the TR quote:
If the observation is merely that you can only have one highest priority, it's not wrong, but that doesn't in any way resolve my point. Everyone has divided loyalties, and for relatively few of them is their highest loyalty to their country. Most people will prioritize personal connections over abstract group membership if push comes to shove. Many native-born people prioritize personal social/economic interests over the national interest or the well-being of their countrymen. Religious individuals will tend to prioritize their faith over their country. Despite this, not only does no one suggest you can't be a Christian and an American, but quite a few people think you must be a Christian to be a proper American. The special concern for hyphenated Americans is both historically unwarranted (both today and in TR's time) and a form of special pleading.
The idea of being a pure American is both incoherent and is itself quite un-American.
--
You say that I am conflating American culture with the culture of the South
No, I specifically don't say that. I am saying that many oikophobes think that (and also IME many Southerners also think that, which feeds into the sense of cultural cringe).
However, you then go on to vindicate my other points, e.g. Red Tribers (and Red Tribe-fetishizing Blue Tribe conservatives) conflating American culture with Red Tribe culture* while making questionable claims about the American Left. "MLK was an adulterer", for example, is something far more likely to be brought up by a resentful reactionary trying to tarnish the civil rights movement than a liberal (for whom MLK is pretty much a secular saint). You are mistaking a willingness to challenge sacred cows for a wholesale rejection**. As I mentioned in my other response, there are a lot of things liberals like and admire about the United States. They're just not necessarily the things conservatives like.
The American Right has developed an incredible difficulty with digesting any sort of critical perspective. The kindest theory I can offer up is that while liberals tend to be idealists whose interest in the US relates to values and principles while conservatives engage in a kind of ancestor worship. This creates a huge point of contention when liberals look at the past and note that America often fell short of its stated ideals and participated atrocities. Generally speaking, this is meant as an exhortation to live up to those ideals, not a nihilistic rejection of them. However, conservatives construe this as an attack on the honored ancestors, who are pure and beyond reproach. They might grudging agree that, e.g., the Native Americans got kind of a raw deal if you press them, but it's a passive-voice acknowledgement that refuses to implicate the settlers and cowboys they valorize and bringing the subject up is seen as kind of suspect.
While we're quoting dead presidents, let me throw in a favorite quote of my own:
It may be argued that there are certain conditions that make necessities and impose them upon us, and to the extent that a necessity is imposed upon a man he must submit to it. I think that was the condition in which we found ourselves when we established this government. We had slavery among us, we could not get our constitution unless we permitted them to remain in slavery, we could not secure the good we did secure if we grasped for more, and having by necessity submitted to that much, it does not destroy the principle that is the charter of our liberties. Let that charter stand as our standard.
This encapsulates the attitude that undergirds liberal reformism in the US. Crucially, it does not reject the past, but it does not hold it as sacred either.
--
for a lot of people that is simply not acceptable coming from someone who is supposed to be "above them" in social station.
In a sense you're right, but in another, more important sense, you're quite mistaken. Bill Clinton had/has a lot of the same superficially 'low-class' behavior but is pretty widely liked by liberals. To steal a quote from the internet:
I think the disconnect between Atlantic elites is that Americans think Donald Trump is a kid getting to drive a monster truck for Make A Wish and Europeans and Canadians think Donald Trump is the president of the United States.
You can strike out European and Canadians and insert "liberal Americans". You're ascribing it to classism*** when the central issue for Trump's critics is that Donald Trump is a bad person and really, really bad at being President. He is bad at the performance of leadership (and it is a colossal mistake to confuse this for simply being 'low class'). He is bad at long term planning. He refuses to accept reality and treats bad news as a conspiracy against him. He is comically dishonest. He is openly sadistic. He is openly corrupt. I could go on naming Trump's vices for a long time, but the underlying point is this: he's exactly the kind of man liberals think shouldn't be president. Many of his inadequacies in the realm of competency and intellect would be tolerable if he was a basically decent guy, but then he wouldn't be Trump.
--
* Of the items you list, the only ones that are convincing red-coded are cowboys, pick-up trucks, and John Wayne.
**obviously, you can find people who engage in that sort of wholesale rejection, but they are on the margins of the movement. Republicans love to highlight them, both because it is politically useful to highlight weirdos in the opposition and because they make them genuinely furious, but you end up with a situation where you're comparing social media personalities to, like, the President of the United States and his senior advisors.
***it should probably be noted that Trump is not so much low-class as classless. Inasmuch as there is a socio-economic class angle to liberal antipathy for Trump, it is Brahmin vs Merchant, not rich versus poor. Trump is, himself, a very rich man
This is why I don't buy any of the mental gymnastics about the strategic value of Greenland and how the Euros are just being obstinate to stick it to Trump over a very reasonable request. Denmark has historically been very accommodating and for some reason Trump decided that we (the US) needed to threaten to mug them.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4d ago
it just seems a weird drum to bang on
It's especially weird because the US already has access to Greenland.
I'm all in. Nothing ever happens
Absent outside intervention, regimes fail when security forces defect or desert. If the US (or someone else, I guess) isn't going to intervene, the IRGC can just keep shooting protestors until the survivors get the message. The only other possibility is that the rest of the military decides to intervene on behalf of the protestors, but my (extremely uninformed) impression is that, in true police state fashion, the Iranian military is largely neutered precisely to avoid that outcome.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5d ago
Temperance can specifically refer to abstaining from alcohol, but it more generally means moderation in personal conduct.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5d ago
I've never seen the Newsroom, so I'm going to need you to clarify what you're trying to get across here.
Those ideals being... what, exactly?
Liberty, Truth, Justice, the American Way, Human Rights, Democracy, Transgender For Everyone...
Does it have any resemblance of a common culture
This what Scott Alexander coined the phrase "Blue Tribe" to refer to. American culture is not the Red Tribe. Plus, to be honest, I think there's just a general failure to model their adversaries' preferences on the part of right-wingers, where the weirdest, most idiosyncratic are assumed to stand in for the whole. Libs also like football, cars, car commercials featuring George Washington running over the British, and so on.
you're hard pressed to find a group of similar scale that doesn't have such contempt and outright hate.
Most of them? The takeover of the American conservative movement by people who hate America and Americans is fairly recent. While they're playing on pre-existing sentiments, the severity of the rot comes from the top.
The problem with "far more likely to be critical" is that they seem to never find one godforsaken occasion to be positive... It became too declassee to think that one's country and culture is something to be loved instead of apologized for.
This is another failure to model liberals' beliefs/preferences, or why they have an issue with vulgar tribalism. It is not that there is nothing to be proud of - libs are happy to celebrate* the space program, WW2, the abolition of slavery, rock and roll, the civil rights movement, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US Olympic team etc... The disconnect is that they feel conservatives want to be proud of things that are shameful or whitewash sordid elements of the past.
*this list is not meant to be exhaustive; it's just stuff that popped into my head
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
American regional accents in general aren't that strong and have gotten substantially weaker.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
6d ago
Over the years I have often heard cosmopolitan liberals express a sentiment to the effect "the United States has no culture".
Define "cosmopolitan liberals", because I have also heard this over the years. Based on that experience, I think you are probably overreacting to a couple of oikophobes* (or, if you're on the internet, Europeans), who are themselves overreacting to some chest-thumping chauvinists with a highly exclusionary conception of American culture. In that sense, this is a perfect microcosm of the modern culture war in general: people getting worked up over minor or even imagined issues, often involving a fantasy strawmen (or, at the very least, cherry-picked weakmen) of their opponents.
The major difference between liberals and conservatives with respect to America is their willingness to adopt critical attitudes. Liberals are, in general, far more likely to become disappointed/critical if they perceive the US to be failing to live up to its ideals and are far less interested in performative patriotism. The latter in particular I think right-wingers tend to mistake for antipathy. Conservatives, by contrast, are much more adaptive in their principles while demanding uncritical loyalty ("love it or leave it") and deeply love patriotic pageantry.
he gives off this vibe of being quintessentially capital-A AMERICAN in a way that I don't think any US President really has since the Cold War.
"Our enemies hate us because we're too cool."
People hate Trump largely for the reasons they say they hate him: they see him as distinctively - almost uniquely - loathsome and stupid individual. He is distinctively American only insofar as we basically elected Florida Man as president, but that certainly doesn't set him above our other post-CW presidents in being AMERICAN. He is perhaps the most declasse president of the post-Cold War era, but to say that makes him more quintessentially American is an example of the exclusionary conception of American culture I mentioned earlier.
I broadly concur with @LiberalRetvrn here: Trump is a vulgar tribalist (at best) of the kind that can be under any rock in any corner of the Earth. For all the flag-waving and shallow patriotic verbiage exhibited by Trump and his supporters, I find that they are people who have contempt for the history and values of the United States, as well as outright hate for their countrymen.
quoting Teddy Roosevelt (I'm not bothering to quote the full passage)
With all respect to TR, he was just wrong with this one. The persistence of superficial identification and cultural elements was not and is not a problem. German Americans are one of the most prominent examples of this: German American culture endured until it was more or less forcibly suppressed during WWI (Chester Nimitz grew up in a German-speaking household, for example). However the problem there was not German immigrants, who were quite well-behaved, but fearful xenophobes. We can go through a list of immigrant groups and see again and again that the fears of immigrants being disloyal or not assimilating is largely unfounded.
Conversely, the most prominent expressions of disloyalty in US history came from the unhyphenated, and one of the ironies of the "a country is not an economic zone" shibboleth is that the people saying it are by far the worst about treating their country and countrymen as things to be exploited rather than a community of common interest.
As an aside, TR is making a common and understandable but nevertheless important error: divided loyalty is inherent in the human condition. You cannot be American and nothing else. It is not entirely without merit to note that immigrants often have interests other than pure loyalty to their new country, but the singling out of immigrants is a distinct double standard. The same concern could equally apply to, e.g. religious affiliation or personal loyalty (a very real risk, as we saw in 2021).
--
*as an illustrative anecdote, when an acquaintance raised the idea in very progressive company, basically everyone scoffed and told him he was being an idiot. I think you are more likely to find liberally-minded people who don't like American culture than think it doesn't exist, though IME they are making a shared mistake with Southerners in conflating American culture with the culture of the South.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
8d ago
For some of the people confused about why Minneapolis is such a big deal still, it's not a scissor event, it's a mask off moment
TBF it's been mask-off for a while, most people just don't pay attention. DHS comms is openly fash-posting, Trump openly rejects any limit on his powers and tries to rule by decree, political opposition is labeled domestic terrorism, etc...
The only group that hasn't been mask off is CBP/ICE, but they have double down on thuggery
To be fair, most people are pretty myopic everywhere, and it's easy to focus on domestic conflict when it's low-key existential.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
8d ago
Only one of those is even pretending to be an example
You asked for a single example. I gave you a single example.
Seriously, if this is the best you have to offer then ICE is doing a spectacular job.
This is the product of about nine seconds of research to recall the details of a half-remembered case. I see no reason to put more effort into it when past experience has shown that there is no amount of unambiguous evidence that you would accept at face value, let alone as demonstrative of a pattern.
The bear case for JD Vance is that he becomes the front man for a movement that much more smartly pursues authoritarianism and consolidates power while creating the cyberpunk hellscape William Gibson warned us about (but lamer). Combine this with Vance's apparent desire to destabilize global security for... unclear reasons and I think the implications for both the United States and the world are potentially significantly worse than many possible Trump adminstrations.
The bull case for JD Vance is that he's too weak to actually marshal any political support on his own and gets immediately sidelined. The tech right embarrassed itself right out the gate, and brings very little actual popular support to the table.
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