Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
No bio...
User ID: 1226
I find your suggestion that they get the same treatment as common criminals to be rather ludicrous, and I do not believe that you are making it in a good faith.
I think you vastly overestimate how well criminals and suspected criminals are treated.
The criminal justice system did not treat the George Floyd rioters in the same manner, that is, by attempting to catch every single last one of them and keeping them in pretrial detention for months or years.
The vast majority of people present at the Jan 6 riot were not arrested or charged with anything. Justifiably, since all they did was mill around outside. (Many participated in attacks on the USCP, but not in a way where they could be credibly identified).
The 2020 protests led to ~13.6k arrests by early June (FBI). Much like Jan 6, most people weren't arresting and many were slapped with minor charges (e.g. violating curfew), but many were subject to more serious charges.
The problem here is that you are asking me to play along the rules of the game, while your side of the "criminal justice reform" argument is rigging the game to punish my side and benefit theirs. I reject that.
This is a common claim here, but allow me to offer an alternative thesis: right-wingers are really bad at protesting. They don't get that protests - the interesting, effective ones, that are more than just rallies - are as much about the police response as they are about the protests themselves. That means walking the line of riotous behavior, because fundamentally you're trying to garner sympathy by provoking a police overreaction. Too riotous and you alienate potentially sympathetic members of the public, too docile and you just get ignored. The point is to be able to gesture to the riot cop kicking the shit out of you and say "come and see the violence inherent in the system".
Where this becomes a problem for would-be right wing protestors is a) many view anything more disorderly than a Flyers' victory celebration as a riot, so the nuance of this is lost on them b) they don't do much protesting themselves. So they never develop the metis that left wing activist communities do about how to walk the line, how to self-police people who make a little too much trouble, how not to get arrested (e.g. don't film yourself doing crime and post it to social media with a public statement admitting you're doing the crime). They don't even understand that walking the line is something you're supposed to do. Nor do they have the social infrastructure set up to assist when their people do get arrested.
The result is that for the most part, right wing protests are cringe and a bit pathetic, and when it does get rowdy they blunder across the line and get in a lot of trouble. This seems unfair to them because they don't perceive the distinction between their cargo-cult protest tactics and what more experienced left wing activists do. The game isn't rigged, they're just new to it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
What strikes me about most of the people in the "surrender for their own good" camp is that they would never in a million years apply the same logic to themselves.
Donald the Dove strikes again. I'm beginning to think Trump really is a Manchurian candidate :V Simultaneously looting the country while tanking foreign relations and the economy. Xi Jinping really could not have asked for a better agent.
Just, like... what. There's helping an ally out and then there's doing a bit of light ethnic cleansing on their behalf.
Prediction: this is something Trump came up with on short notice (possibly suggested by Netanyahu) and didn't run by anybody and got defensive when people started poking him on it. It will be quietly dropped within a couple of weeks because simply admitting it was a terrible off-the-cuff idea would make Trump look weak and we can't have that. In the intervening time, Trump supporters will convince themselves that this is actually a great ideal; afterwards they will insist that he was misrepresented and the fact that you care about it is proof you have TDS.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9mo ago
Harris will deliver a mediocre performance that will look positively masterly next to Trump's old man ravings. It will have minimal impact because every aspect of Trump's incapacity is priced in. Practically speaking, Harris can't win, she can only lose.
what do you think the policy strengths/weaknesses will be?
Trump's biggest policy strength is simply that he is the challenger and can thus run on vague promises instead of his actual record. Whenever he talks about specifics, it's embarrassing (but again, priced in - no one expects Trump to know what he's talking about). His biggest vulnerability on that front is that he's surrounded himself with extremist weirdos who have fairly radical ambitions and Trump has a history of being pretty milquetoast with respect to his advisors, so he may suffer if those attacks stick to him. "JD Vance pals around with mask-off authoritarian billionaires" is probably a more fruitful line of attack than "your proposed economic policies are positively Argentinian", even though the latter is more substantive.
Harris' biggest policy strength is that she's not Trump and can thus talk about policy in a way that doesn't threaten to have your brain self-deport through your ear canal. Her biggest policy weakness is that her policy proposals are still very bad and she's not going to get graded on a curve like Trump will be.
5% chance Trump refers to Harris with a racial slur. 50% chance Trump makes some implausibly deniable misogynistic remark.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
Declare yourself trans/queer and you'll have affinity groups supporting you at high-status jobs.
Trans individuals earn significantly less than their non-trans peers and are more likely to work low-status jobs in food service or retail.
The police in NYC were pointedly less interested in stopping rioting and looting than in attacking anti-police protestors. Their handling of Floyd protests was textbook anarcho-tyranny, deliberately allowing the spread of lawlessness while concentrating their efforts on the law abiding in order to deter criticism.
The failing here is that the systems of accountability are so anemic that police can continue to routinely violate civil and human rights while obliging taxpayers to foot the bill.
In related olds, DisruptJ6 protestors, despite alleging molestation going on for a longer period of time, and interfering with bodily autonomy in much more invasive ways, have yet to be given money
As I noted the last time this was brought up, these are normal conditions. If you have a problem with how Jan 6 rioters have been treated in detention, you have a general problem with how the detention of accused criminals is handled in the US.
It's always helpful to remember that Donald Trump a) will never intentionally admit he did anything wrong b) is a fully post-truth individual. I don't think Trump has been all there in a while, but he's also a narcissist and a pathological liar.
On a different note, this interview helpfully provides an illustration of how Trump likes to pretend to be retarded but is also just an idiot. They're quite easy to tell apart. Compare:
TIME: The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that you have to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia. You haven't done so. Aren’t you disobeying the Supreme Court?
Trump: Well, that’s not what my people told me—they didn’t say it was, they said it was—the nine to nothing was something entirely different.
TIME: Let me quote from the ruling. “The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador.” Are you facilitating a release?
Trump: I leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions. They feel that the order said something very much different from what you're saying. But I leave that to my lawyers. If they want—and that would be the Attorney General of the United States and the people that represent the country. I don't make that decision.
to
TIME: Well, I mean, the question is, how can CEOs make long-term plans and investments if our tariff policy can change from day to day and still remains so uncertain?
Trump: How can they make long-term investments? I'll turn it around. How can they make long-term investments if our country is losing $2 trillion a year on trade?
TIME: Will you consider giving exemptions—
Trump: No wait, just so you understand. How can we sustain and how is it sustainable that our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade in Biden years, in this last year. That's not—when you talk about a company. I had the head of Walmart yesterday, right in that seat. I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I'll tell you what they think, they think what I'm doing is exactly right.
"Golly shucks, I'm just the president of the United States, what do I know about one of my banner policies?" vs defensive gibberish.
If your goal is to radically change the legal status quo, US governing systems are generally arranged in such a way where you have to win everything by large margins. The right is generally in favor of this whenever the left wants to do things.
including the entire judiciary at every level and every non-political hire in the bureaucracy (which means they have to be willing to, after winning, use the political capital necessary to fire everyone and replace them with their own)
Given the strong propensity of American conservatives to treat these groups as hated enemies regardless of their behavior, the long-run trend will always be that these groups end up aligned against them. Until such a time as the right can overcome both its ideological hatred of civil servants and its human capital problem, it's not going to produce any solution more sophisticated than either serial arson or bringing back the spoilers system.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
The left, via their march through institutions as well as their early control over new media, gained access to a super weapon; the ability to point the whole of society against any individual.
This isn't really true*, but it gestures towards something true: the fairly novel experience for social conservatives of not being in the normative driver's seat. For a very long time, social conservatives defined collective norms while social liberals rebelled against them. Every so often the liberals would win a fight and move consensus, but the center of gravity remained with conservatives. Even institutions that tended to be dominated by liberals in composition (e.g. Hollywood) still had to submit to a broader conservative consensus.
In the Obama era, this was upended and for the first time conservatives were in the uncomfortable and bewildering position of being censured for failing to adhere to liberal values rather than vice versa. The cultural center of gravity shifted away from conservatives. Liberals were defining standards of public behavior, and generally not in ways conservatives found agreeable. The entertainment industry shrugged off the aforementioned conservative consensus and started pushing overtly progressive themes (e.g. LGBT/minority representation) in a way that challenged conservatives' sense of rightful cultural hegemony.
This is part of why we get the peculiar phenomenon where conservatives seem to care far more about what liberals say about them than vice versa. The former were accustomed to being able to demand respect and unaccustomed to finding themselves on the outside;the latter were already acculturated to a certain amount of social opprobrium and often took pride in it.
*social media cancellation overwhelmingly affected people in liberal-dominated spaced and was an emergent behavior rather than a directed one. Rupert Murdoch was in no danger of being canceled even though left-wingers absolutely despised him; we can argue about why Musk shifted right
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
The question is if it's purposefully crude
Depends on what you mean by 'purposefully crude'. Most government-waste-cutting enthusiasts have a dubious understanding of the causes of government inefficiency, have an ideological presupposition that government spending is a waste, and have never heard the term 'market failure'. The result tends to be that they approach the problem by driving a bulldozer through Chesterton's fence. My view is that "they have no idea what they're doing" is significantly more likely than deliberate clumsiness.
There's a side problem wherein the major drivers of government spending are politically untouchable but you need to grandstand about how you're making cuts so you attack the Everything Else bucket even though it tends to be short-sighted penny-wise behavior.
The left sees itself as the upper class ruling elites and the conservatives are seen as lower class.
The left sees itself as a mix of hard-working urban middle class + discriminated minorities, while they see conservatives as a bunch of bigoted country club members.
I know of no one anywhere who believes that the Jews have space lasers
I know an unfortunate number of people who think Obama is a secret Muslim, that the government is trying put them into camps or controls the weather, that the 2020 election was stolen with millions of fake votes. Let me be blunt: both parties have more than their share of cranky stupid people, but the major difference is that the Dems have (correctly) corralled their idiots and generally have more of a problem with the galaxy-brained wing of the party. The GOP, meanwhile, has been taken over by the morons and wishes they had enough smart people to have a galaxy-brained wing. Saying it's just an act is cope.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
Except states set their own curricula and Southern states aren't exactly known for their wholehearted embrace of Anti-Racist memes.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
Stole from whom, exactly?
The president gets to nominate SC justices. Customarily (see @guesswho's remark about trust), the Senate almost always accepts them, even when the president is from an opposing party. It has rejected them on occasion (or nominees have been withdrawn when it was clear they were headed for rejection). Garland was neither rejected nor withdraw. McConnell simply refused to hold a hearing or consider the nomination.
Yes, in theory, the Senate can do whatever it wants. In reality, what McConnell did was extremely unusual, compounded by the handling of ACB's nomination making it clear that his arguments with respect to Garland were unambiguously in bad faith. If you keep mashing the defect button, don't be surprised when your opposition starts Noticing.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
17d ago
So what's the deep, unresolved tension surrounding keeping noncitizens in the country?
The competing interests and preferences of nativists, anti-nativists, employers, consumers, etc... combined with a deadlocked political system that effectively leaves immigration policy up to the caprices of executive discretion.
Is there any reason other than "it helps us win elections?"
What is that supposed to mean? Illegal immigrants can't vote, so the "importing voters" theory doesn't hold up so well, and their mere existence alienates the xenophobe vote, so it's hard to call it a winning electoral strategy. Even if you think they're wrong, you should probably take immigration advocates at their word when they offer humanitarian and economic justifications for supporting immigration.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2mo ago
It certainly does! Most complaints about how the left always gets its way and the right never does are simply selective perception or "not-winning-hard-enough"/"everything-I-want-is-the-bare-mininum" style complaints. The US political system is incredibly status quo biased. Sometimes this helps the right, sometimes it helps the left.
I'm reminded of this comment from a few years ago on the old place:
It's strange, isn't it, how no one feels like they're in charge.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
Did you also maybe believe that Milei would fail in Argentina
No, but then, Argentina is not the US.
Twitter would collapse when Elon fired 80% of staff
Twitter is a billionaire vanity project (or alternatively, an influence op). It is markedly worse as a service post Musk takeover and sacking 80% of the staff hasn't made it any less unprofitable.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
I don't think he actually wins that many points here because of how personal some of this gets, which voters tend to dislike actually, but overall the impression is still vigorous and strong.
Trump benefits substantially from double standards where everyone already expects him to be dishonest, deranged, and mean-spirited, so when Trump does these things, no one cares.
I have genuinely never understood the "Trump is strong/vigorous" perception. He babbles incoherently and frequently trails off or repeats himself like a broken record. Physically he's a fat and sluggish old man. He doesn't give off age-belying vigor to me, he gives off 'unhinged grandpa energy". Best I can tell is that middle America is so acculturated to obesity that they conflate being loud with being energetic.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
23d ago
God-willing these lawless men who roam our streets, threatening innocent people will be identified and brought to justice.
I cannot help but feel like "either the Russians have a mind control device or else the alternative media were right about everything" is a bit of a false dichotomy. The alternative alternative hypothesis, born out by his behavior during his first term, is that Trump is a simp for authoritarians in general and Putin in particular. It doesn't take a mind control device to explain how a not-very-bright 78 year old conspiracy theorist might fall for bullshit that flatters his preferences.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
If you uncritically accept Russia's position that they have the right to dominate Ukraine, then the Ukrainians did start it by not applying their tongues to Russian boots with sufficient vigor. However, I refer you to my remark about thuggish worldviews. Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.
It's hard to see how a change of government in a neighboring country justifies invading them (twice!) and engaging in naked land grabs.
with generous help from the West
What exactly does this mean? The "Euromaiden was fake/astroturf" position runs aground on the absolutely massive, cross-spectrum popular participation.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
Or they replace the fired workers with Republicans and the bureaucracy goes from 95-5 to 70-30.
What's your source for Federal employees being 95% democrat?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
8mo ago
What you live in a world where corruption is already rampant and the norm? One where you are going to have to bribe your way through no matter what. Consider yourself in that situation.
What if you don't live in that world, but want an excuse to act like a bandit, so you claim that you do?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9mo ago
Why on earth would you jeopardise these favourable battlefields to tilt at ideological windmills that the large majority of Americans and Westerners consider sacrosanct? Bad and stupid ideas, but also bad and stupid strategy.
As a poster here (actually back on reddit, but same diff) once trenchantly observed, bigots can't help themselves. The reason people from the New Right keep getting caught out doing Nazi apologia is that the New Right is shot through with Nazi sympathizers. Maybe they're not champing at the bit for an expansionist totalitarian dictatorship, but they often think Mr. Hitler had some interesting ideas about the use of state violence to enforce racial/cultural purity and fight degeneracy.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
If the postulate is that I plan to punch everyone in the face and also have 1000 fists so I can punch everyone in the face simultaneously, the fact that I am only punch one guy strongly calls into question whether or not I actually plan to punch everyone.
If conservatives are merely concerned about sexualized performances near/involving children, one might wonder why they don't have similar issues with, e.g. child beauty pageants, dance recitals, or cheerleading?
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