Well, without doxing myself too much, its mostly aerospace related matters, specifically involving certification of new aircraft, new rules for airports and air traffic controllers, and how the US would harmonize its regulations with other national and supranational regulators (like EASA... okay mostly EASA). The list of sins is long- it was never clear who was actually making a formal decision (lots of 'here's what i think, but xyz all need input'), despite a formal decision being requested. Some paperwork remained outstanding for 4 years. Certain statutory limits on how long the government has to respond to requests and filings were routinely ignored without apology or explanation, to the point we seriously considered suing the FAA and DoT. It also became obvious that several key administrators were completely AWOL and had delegated their entire function to assistants, and when this was brought up directly to him, we got an out of office (I believe it was his paternity leave stint, which is charming, but as a cabinet secretary the buck stops with you, respectfully you dont get to take months of paternity leave), our concerns about serious government malfeasance were never addressed in even a perfunctory manner.
My experience with the previous two secretaries of transportation, as well as the current one, are nothing at all like that. Night and day difference, and I know there are many other people in similar positions who have similar feelings.
I never met with him personally, but the issues i was involved with were the kind of things that would require his approval, or st least input, and that really never happened. In contrast, i have emailed Secretary Chao before and recieved a personal response about three hours later. Secretary Duffy appears to be much the same.
TeknOShEeP
2d ago
So I shared many of your feelings about Buttigeig, and felt that he would have done well at the top of the Democrat ticket, and then I had to deal with his office and him professionally as the secretary of transportation, and now I have to disagree in the strongest possible terms. While he has charm and charisma, as a professional executive head of a functional body, dude is fucking incompetent. In my experience he was totally unable to make an independent decision without 17 layers of ass-covering consultation, totally unable to tell when brown-nosing subordinates might be completely full of shit, and worst from a political perspective, totally unaware of when optics might demand his presence or at least general visibilty, such as when a major transportation disaster has occured, and the Secretary of Transportation might plausibly be expected to have input.
If the DNC wants to lose badly in 2028, I can think of few better ways that having Buttigeig be the nominee.
TeknOShEeP
2d ago
If Trump dies, I do not think there is any obvious candidate to inherit the MAGA kingdom.
Is it not Vance? It seems to me that he is being groomed for the top slot in a way most VPs never are. Also, AFAIK he's in pretty good with the MAGA base.
TeknOShEeP
2d ago
To the extent that genetics (and epigenetic phenomena) express themselves in our behavior, yes.
This is not a condemnation of any individual person, but blank-slateism has been rather conclusively debunked. We are all, to a certain extent, products of our genetics.
TeknOShEeP
4d ago
Thanks for the review, it reminded me of why i got about 200 pages in and never bothered to finish it. Definitely drove home why having a good editor is important.
TeknOShEeP
4d ago
conservatives, i.e. the party of law and order, be a fan of measures which promote public safety?
Define public safey. Because the moment authorities in the US cracked down on anti-lockdown protestors, but then allowed BLM protestors free reign (because "racism is a bigger threat than COVID) it became transparently obvious that either lockdowns had nothing to do with safety, or that those in charge of determining what constituted safety had no idea what they were doing. Or plausibly both. For mild evidence in support of this, I refer you to Sweden which had more mild lockdowns thsk most of the US, and achieved better outcomes.
right in the US, especially in its current MAGA incarnation, is just as gleeful in its authoritarian tendencies
It's fairly obvious that you get your US news from lefty sources, but a few moments of consideration would show that mostly what the MAGA agenda is about is deregulation, sprinkled with some mercantilism. I understand there is a great temptation to slap the evil "authoritarian" label on things you don't like, but getting rid of laws is not authoritarian by any possible stretch of the word. The few genuinely authoritarian actions, like banning red dye 40, have mostly gone unnoticed.
TeknOShEeP
4d ago
No, race realism is also wrong, the actual reason is class/subculture for which you are using skin colour as a proxy, due to the US having a underclass primarily composed of black people. I live in a European country
Respectfully, I have never met a European native who properly groks US white-black race relations, nor the class structure in the US. They both differ in very significant ways from the European experience. Suffice to say, no, its not a class thing, it is a race thing.
there is a social class that behaves in identically disruptive ways on public transport, despite being as white as the rest of the population.
We have those in the US too. They are pretty much universally despised and regarded as being the source of their own problems. The fact that the judgement comes so easily against those with white skin, and yet any level of mental gymnastics will be done to excuse sinilar actions from those with non-white skin... is interesting. (BTW our current Vice President comes from that class, and wrote a very interesting book about his childhood and escaping the destructive cycle. He is quite forthcoming that most of the harms are self-inflicted.)
TeknOShEeP
5d ago
The fact that its a big, amorphous coalition that has differing values just indicates the retaliation has to be stiffer than might otherwise be required, and that appropriate targeting is required.
The problem the left has at the moment is that moderates just don't matter- they are drowned out by the extremist voices, and policy proposals become about pandering to the loudest wing nuts.
Cancel all of the far left nut jobs, and you give space for the center left to actually have a reasonable conversation.
I think its pretty big stretch to say cancel culture actually lost the left any elections. Maybe didnt have as much of an effect as they were hoping, sure. But outside of some cheap "they tried to cancel him! Next they'll cancel you!" propaganda, I dont know what concrete bemefit it actually provided to the right.
TeknOShEeP
5d ago
I think you dismiss justification #3 too easily. Some degree of "Tit-for-Tat" has long been recognized as the Game Theory correct move. If the right just moves on and says "okay, cancel culture is done" then they have let the left have a decade plus of abbhorent, anti-civilizational behavior for free. This shouldn't happen. Hard lessons are the best learned, and a few years getting their noses bent out of joint and prominent leftists fired from media jobs and cancelled off of social media may actually force some self reflection on the left (and about a trillion posts worth of whining about facism, but that will probably happen anyway).
If the right just lets sleeping dogs lie, then the norm becomes "cancel culture is a weapon that only the left gets to use, some of the time." In the long-term interests of free speech, this should not become a norm.
TeknOShEeP
5d ago
What you're proposing is basically a massive country-sized white-collar union.
Yes, we have a name for that: a politcal party. We could create a new one, or maybe just get one of the existing ones to pick up the idea in exchange for support at the ballot box.
I'm not sure where the idea that politics has to be about high-minded ideals instead of basic collective self-interest, but its crept in somehow and is disastrous in its effects.
Maybe, but he burned a lot of bridges with people who would make very good attack ads. Like 40 year career, apolitical professionals ended up hating his guts and can make a very good case for why he made Americans less safe, and would happily do so on national media outlets. Perhaps I'm underestimating the capabilities of the DNC propaganda arm, but especially with his, erm, demographic disadvantages with certain key voter segments, I dont think he would stand a chance.
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