Sunshine
2mo ago
And why are those actions morally illegitimate? What is the source of moral illegitimacy in those two cases?
Sunshine
2mo ago
The word 'men' conveys inherent dignity, and even saying the words 'white men' has become right-coded. That's why when the Harris campaign decided to make a Zoom call for every race/gender combo, the names were Black Men for Harris but White Dudes for Harris. Calling the white dudes 'men' would be too respectful in the mind of the politics-brained consultant who came up with it. They flinch back from it, even subconsciously.
Some day I will write an essay on the psychological fuckedupedness that the Western left has towards men.
Sunshine
2mo ago
Lying in applications for federal funding comes with significant institutional and personal penalties.
It never has before, why would it start now? Any punishment that isn't felt keenly before Trump leaves office in 3 years is no punishment at all. I don't think that's enough time for the court case and ten appeals that would follow any attempt to punish liars.
Sunshine
3mo ago
You are the one who asked. This is an answer to your question.
And what's the answer to the other question: "Was Joe Biden a bad president for not listening to you on Medicare For All/Free Palestine/Abolish Prisons/Annex Cuba?"
Step 1: Ask question.
Step 2: Get answer.
Step 3: Blue screen.
Step 4: Accuse interlocutor of writing fanfiction?
Sunshine
3mo ago
But in the end she did... nothing.
I think this sums it up. There are a lot of things she could have done, and if she had picked one of them and committed to it I think she'd have had a chance. But she didn't, so she didn't.
Sunshine
3mo ago
"Joe Biden was a great president, and we've worked together to achieve great things over the past four years. We delivered a great economy, we passed legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and Build Back Better that helped millions of Americans, and (<insert third thing here, I'm having trouble remembering what Biden did during his term>). I consider myself privileged to have been given four years to learn from one of the great statesmen of our time."
"But there are so many more things to do. As your nominee for President of the United States, I'm ready to build upon everything President Biden and I achieved together over the last four years. To that end, I am proud to introduce a new piece of legislation for consideration of Congress (or whatever you say when you do that), the Medicare for All Act, co-sponsored by my good friend Bernie Sanders. I believe that America is the greatest country in the world, and I believe that we can deliver healthcare to every single citizen of this great nation."
"It won't be easy. Trump and his Republicans are going to fight us on it every step of the way. That's why I need your help, America. I need you to come out on election day and give me the Democratic majority I need to get this bill through Congress. I need you to give me four more years! If you choose me to represent you as your president, I promise I will deliver healthcare for every - single - American!"
(Hold for applause from friendly L.A. or New York studio audience.)
Sunshine
3mo ago
she must across as kind, at least to her allies
Did Margaret Thatcher come across as kind? I think the traits a woman needs to overcome the gender barrier in politics are: tough without being bitchy, intelligent without being smug, passionate without being hysterical. It's a bit of a tightrope, but I think if you can manage those three you basically don't suffer any disadvantages for being female.
Sunshine
3mo ago
Eh? Do American voters really have no attention span, they forget about inflation that happened a couple years ago?
I don't know how well-supported this is (and it's obviously impossible to conduct double blind laboratory studies on election phenomena) but one of the things Dominic Cummings advocated for with the Brexit campaign was to save their money for a massive ad blitz in the week leading up to the vote. The logic is that the effect of an ad mostly wears off after a few days. You only need people to agree with you on the day of the election, so the best time to buy ads is right before.
They won, and AFAICT the British people really did support Brexit on election day and not a moment longer, so it's hard to argue with the results.
What bold policy slogan could she have used?
In this alternate universe she would have some kind of sincere belief to advocate for. Obama clearly believes in socialized medicine or he wouldn't have fought for Obamacare. Trump clearly believes in barriers that separate the nation from the outside world or he wouldn't be so consistently interested in walls and tariffs. Kamala Harris doesn't seem to actually believe in anything, and that's the problem.
I think it's a lot harder to be a charismatic leader if you don't actually believe in anything.
That being said: Just pick one! Pick a direction and start directing people! She was running for President, people must have been beating down her door to give her policy proposals. She was VP for four years! Did she not have a single idea in four years?
She can't escape the questions of "Why haven't you done this already?"
To be honest, I don't think that would stick to a VP who was trying to spread their wings and fly in a new direction. The answer to that question is obviously "Because I was the Vice President, not the President." Everyone watching that clip would know that's what the answer is. This isn't an obscure point of political minutia, everyone knows the VP isn't allowed to go behind the President's back like that. It's an empty gotcha and I doubt it would resonate.
If- and this is the sticking point- if she actually stood for something, if Harris had hit the floor day 1 advocating for Medicare for All in a clear departure from Biden's policies, I think people would respect her for that. The problem is that she actually doesn't have any policy differences from Biden. My read on Kamala Harris is that she wanted to be President because she likes to be the top banana, not because there's something in particular she wants to do with the most powerful office in the world.
That election was winnable. First of all, 107 days is plenty of time for an election - fellow non-Americans, back me up on this. The last 7 days are more important than everything else put together. Secondly, Kamala Harris made a lot of unforced errors in that campaign. She basically hid from the public and she had no iconic or easy-to-understand policy goals. Compare some policy ideas from better politicians, like Build the Wall and Medicare for All. Iconic, bold, and yet emblematic of what the politician stands for. Inseparable from the personality of the originator. Give me a policy goal that fits in 3 words and you've got a shot at winning.
I don't think you can really say she had no chance considering how out-of-touch the campaign was. I think if Justin Trudeau (slightly slimy former PM of Canada) was zapped into Kamala Harris' body Freaky Friday style he could have won that election pretty easily. Trump is an unpopular, divisive figure and he's never won an election against an opponent who wasn't historically unpopular. He is not a strong candidate. The Democrats lost by being even weaker, not because the contest was impossible.
Sunshine
3mo ago
Pete Buttigieg could have done Joe Rogan and come out looking good. He has real charisma and he is good at communicating his values.
People fixate on the they/them part of the ad, but the important pronoun is you. You don't get people to support you by convincing them that you deserve their vote, you get people to support you by convincing them that you support them. The message of the ad is this: 'Kamala Harris isn't for you, she's for minorities and Groups and special interests and the sacred cows of her weird San Francisco Progressive ideology. If you're just a regular person she doesn't give a crap about you.'
It landed because Kamala Harris is bad at acting like she cares about regular people. That's something Pete Buttigieg excels at. Obama had the same talent.
Before Obama won, lots of people said a black man couldn't be President. Now a bunch of people are saying a black woman can only be present if her running mate isn't gay. It feels like a god of the gaps fallacy to me. The better explanation is that charisma is real and more important than identity checkboxes.
I find it hard to believe that most black voters would have an opinion about the VP nominee. Most people don't follow politics that closely. I recall trending Google searches about whether Biden was still running the day after the election.
Just don't send Pete to Chicago. Send him to do the Pride parade and shake hands with suburban moms. Send Kamala to talk to the brothas and sistas. (I don't think black voters like Kamala Harris either, but that's neither here nor there. They ended up sending Obama. With a bench that deep, who even needs the VP?)
Sunshine
3mo ago
I think it's an indictment of Harris' political instincts. Buttigieg is the best communicator in the Democratic Party. Harris and Walz are both weak speakers and weak debaters who struggle to connect with the voters. She could have picked the person who shored up her weakness, but instead she chose someone who had the same weakness. She was so fixated on identity (Walz is a white male football coach therefore white men will vote for me?) that she missed the larger issue.
Her assumption that her greatest political weakness is being a black woman shows a lack of self-awareness. She didn't need a straight white man to shore up her weakness of being a black woman, she needed a charismatic speaker to shore up her weakness of being an uncharismatic machine politician.
Sunshine
3mo ago
I find that difficult to believe. Are you saying that police officers regularly demand that people call them 'sir', and will insist upon it if addressed in any other way? That doesn't sound right to me. Why have I never seen this on video despite the fact that I have spent many hours watching videos of police officers misbehaving in various ways? This seems like the kind of thing that would go viral.
Sunshine
3mo ago
I feel like there's no need to actually say, "Yes, sir." I'm sure you would get the same effect if you say, "Sure thing, man." The main thing is to remain calm, show whatever papers or cards you need to show, and comply with whatever the local rules are until the cop leaves.
Sunshine
3mo ago
It's not a hill, it's a pit of mud that the Democrats and Republicans have been wallowing in together for the past decade.
Sunshine
3mo ago
I think the real value of a famous host on a talk show run by a major network is that they can book a higher tier of guests. I watch Bill Maher (who is on HBO now, incidentally) because he can have a panel made up of, like, a major intellectual, a Senator, and Snoop Dogg, and have them all give off-the-cuff remarks on the issues of the week. In that sense, their only real value is in that they're big enough to attract guests with star power.
the Senate is that it held almost no legal power at all
The actual heck are you talking about? The Senate had almost unlimited power through the Republic and well into the Empire (in theory if not in practice). The Senate could declare the Senatus Consultim Ultimum to suspend the constitution and grant the Consuls unlimited power, which Cicero used to execute a high-ranking Senator. The Senate could appoint a Dictator. The Senate appointed the governors of provinces. The Senate could declare someone an enemy of the Republic. The Senate could declare war.
To be clear: Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus usurped all that power, but they did it by packing the Senate. Julius Caesar added 300 of his supporters to the Senate, including non-Roman Italians and Gauls. This is like if Trump added 10 diehard loyalists to the Supreme Court and told them how to vote on each case, and someone came along 2,000 years later and said "the Supreme Court held almost no legal power at all." The Senate had lots of power, that's why Julius and Augustus spent so much time usurping it!
Sunshine
3mo ago
I was also kind of under the impression that by the time he was firmly in control it had been like a century of unrest and many of the big players already had played their hands so the Senate was already weak in practical terms not just because of legal or political maneuvers.
This is correct, but when people say "the Senate was weak" they elide a key factor: Augustus had himself elected consul 13 times. 11 of them were consecutive, meaning that Augustus was consul for 11 straight years (with various cronies as his co-consuls). The Senate was weak, but also, Augustus was monopolizing the power of the Senate.
After his 11-year term Augustus mostly stopped ruling as consul and started ruling with the powers of a tribune instead. This was in large part to free up the other consulship to give to his supporters as a reward, since the consulship was still prestigious even with all the real power stripped out of it. You can identify the exact time the consulship lost its power, because that's when Augustus no longer felt the need to hold it personally.
Sunshine
3mo ago
Here's the fun epilogue: Two generations later, Augustus Caesar pulled a reverse-Sulla. Augustus realized that the office of Tribune was so powerful that it was the only office he actually needed to hold in order to rule Rome with an iron fist. He kept all the forms of the Senate in place, but he turned every office from Quaestor to Consul into powerless ceremonial roles he could use to reward his supporters while he himself ruled as a 'mere' Tribune.
Sulla weakened the Tribunes to shut the common people out of power, whereas Augustus weakened everything except the Tribunes to shut the Senate out of power. Unlike Sulla, Augustus' 'reforms' actually stuck.
Sunshine
3mo ago
So regarding my open question of whether anyone can name an example of a US-backed terrorist who committed acts that fit the central definition of 'terrorism,' the answer is still no?
Sunshine
3mo ago
within the bounds of civil discourse
I wouldn't exactly call your examples civil. Sure, people who say those things shouldn't face any kind of punishment or retaliation, but they're also crass. You might even call them uncivil. I would not invite someone who talked like that to a dinner party.
Sunshine
3mo ago
Sorry, allow me to clarify: I'm not disputing that Hamas owns uniforms to wear in photo ops. When I say that Hamas doesn't wear uniforms, this should be taken as shorthand for saying that in battle Hamas militants disguise themselves as civilians by not wearing uniforms (as well as by other means, such as operating out of active civilian buildings like hospitals and schools and mixing themselves into civilian populations to maximize collateral damage on their own side). I am not claiming that no member of Hamas has ever worn a uniform at any time in their lives.
The US gave massive support to various jihadist groups in Syria. Also the US has backed terrorists in Libya.
Like the US bombing the middle east almost constantly since 2001? The endless drone strikes, backing jihadists and starving civilians.
So regarding my question of whether you could name an example of a US-backed terrorist who committed acts that fit the central definition of 'terrorism,' the answer is that no, you cannot name one?
Hamas fighters do wear uniforms.
No they don't.
Israel is a genocidal nation that is illegally occupying territory. Any action against it is not only karmic, it is self defence.
Self-defense sure, whether it's karmic is a question of metaphysics, but 'illegally' occupying territory? Since when is it illegal to occupy territory? Hamas invaded Israel, Israel counter-invaded Hamas. That's not illegal, that's just how it works when you invade somebody. Do you think there's some kind of international treaty that says that Hamas is allowed to kill Israelis but Israel is not allowed to fight back?
Which ethical principles?
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