TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
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User ID: 3097
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
The whole, so and so cant possibly believe the things they plainly believe, is the thing I've found most frustrating about political discourse over the last 10 years or so.
I feel like i am continuously watching affluent liberals tie themselves in knots to avoid grappling with basic arguments and claims.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
@TheAntipopulist is one of the specific users i had in mind writing the OP.
Their three paragraphs here and replies elsewhere in this thread can be summarized as; "even if the populists are sucessful (which they wont be) it will be for reasons outside thier control and thus not count."
So cutting to the chase, no the anti populist is not going to be updating his priors regarding populism and populists.
With that in mind do you really think they are arguing to understand rather to score points? A large portion of the users' output (along with thier user name) is little more than casual disparagement of anyone outside the managerial class.
Casual disparagement that you are not just tolerating but actively defending from push-back.
Why?
Trump was talking about hiring Elon to take a machete to the executive branch the same way he did twitter all the way back in October.
Am I supposed to be holding the fact that he followed through on that against him?
In contrast the Democrats and Legacy-media felt compelled to conceal Biden's decline from the public and tar anyone who called attention to it as a fabulist.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
Yes. In this thread even.
For the last couple years of the Biden administration it was unclear who if anyone was actually exercising presidential authority.
Any complaints about Musk's "undue influence" must be read with that in mind.
No one who was silent while a bunch of unnamed White House staff weekended at bernie's can credibly claim that they are worried about "Musk's influence", or the "dignity of the office". They are obviously just mad at Musk/DOGE for threatening thier sinecures, and at Trump for stealing a base and denying them thier first female president yet again.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
Doesn't this "Trump is a buffoon and the people who voted for him a bunch of deep-throating cock-slobberes" lens prove too much? Why is the principle of charity only being applied in one direction here?
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
So that is a "no" then, you would not update your priors.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
Isn't he/they an MTF?
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
Honestly, paying someone else to do something he couldn't be bothered to do would be very "on brand" for him the question is whether the art of the deal is an accurate representation of his worldview.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
Are you taking the position that the "little green men" wrre totally not Russian special forces and that anyone who says otherwise is an Alex Jones-tier conspiracy theorist?
Because if not, Georgia, Ukraine and Maldova would all like a word.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
If, come the 2026 midterm or 2028 presidential elections, the economy was looking decent to strong and there had been significant progress towards any of the following goals; balancing US trade deficiets, restoring US shipbuilding capacity, or peace in Ukraine. Would you update your priors? Or is being an anti-populist such a core component of your identity that you would deny reality to protect your ego?
If the latter, how is your claim that "Trump is a buffoon" any less of a fully general "everything proof" argument?
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
17d ago
If you don't understand, is it because you missed the part where the planning board approved the project?
If not, how is telling the contractor "The planning board is going to approve this project" a lie? Where is the falsehood? Where is the deciet?
Nobody said anything about a preexisting agreement. They said an agreement would be made and that statement was correct. An agreement was made.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
18d ago
Is it really "lying" though if the statement is objectively true?
By the same token, if the statement is true, where exactly did "the defection" occur?
You seem to be arguing for a concept "truth" that is independent of ground level reality.
For the last two weeks (basically since the whole tariff conversation kicked-off) I've ve been seeing comments here about how trump is "erratic", "stupid", "illiterate", and a "retard", about how he's going to tank the economy and usher in a new age of Democratic party rule, about how his supporters are all deep-throating cock-slobberes who deserve to loose everything.
I would like to propose an alternative take. What if The Art of The Deal is an accurate reflection of Trump's beliefs and and approach to the world? If that were the case, it would seem that theMotte may be seriously underestimating Donald Trump.
I recently started reading Art of The Deal and I found it interesting to contrast Scott's review of that book with his latest on "The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does" as Trump (or his ghostwriter if you prefer to continue believing that Trump is illiterate) makes a similar but inverse argument.
According to Trump (or Tony Schwartz) one of the key skills of a sucessful negotiator is the ability to remain focused on what is rather than what ought to be, or what people say. Scott alleges in his review that the purpose of a real-estate developer is to lie, and there is a naive "the purpose of a thing is what it does" interpretation where this is plainly true but I don't think Scott gives the Trump/Schwartian position enough credit.
Regardless of it's purported purpose, the "role" of planning boards and zoning laws is to prevent buildings from being built. in orderfor a building to be built the planning board must be thwarted.
Thus the Developer tells the Contractor to start pouring concrete. The planning board is going to approve this project, we're just waiting on the paperwork. The contractor starts pouring. The Developer then goes to the planning board and tells them, you might as well approve this project because we already started work and otherwise you'd have go down to the job-site and tell the Contractor to stop. The planning board approves the project.
Scott would characterize the Developer as having lied to the contractor about having the approval, but did they? The planning board did in fact approve the project after all. That the contractor beginning to pour without approval played a major part in the granting of approval is either of vital importance or completely irrelevant depending upon which side of the managerial versus working class divide you are sitting.
Another key element of the Trump/Schwartian approach is the idea that there are no "friends" and no "enemies" at the negotiating table. Only people who are willing to negotiate in good faith, and those who are not. People who refuse to negotiate at all are definitionally in the "not" catagory.
Finally, contra Scott, i would hold that rather than being vague and unsatisfying the solution of "find someone who knows more about the issue than I do and pay them to persue my prefered outcome" is sensible and actionable advice.
With these ideas in mind a lot of his allegedly "erratic" and "nonsensical" decisions regarding Tariffs, Zelenskyy, and Immigration start to look less "nonsensical" and more like deliberate tactical choices.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
19d ago
To "break the tie" by making whatever it was we were going to do anyway legal or illegal.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
19d ago
Legislature to the white courtesy phone, Legislature to the white courtesy phone please.
It's actually been working out reasonably well. So no, I am not "tired of winning" yet.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
19d ago
What the right might lack in organization or ideological discipline they make up for in ideological consistency. The reason you dont see republican boomers marching with Nazis is that republican boomers tend to be the sort of boomer that would rather bayonet a Nazi than march with them.
What you see as a weakness (a disinclination towards doublethink) I see as a strength.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
19d ago
Hug an asian, plus the whole song and dance about how wanting to restrict travel to/from China durring the lunar new-year (feb-mar 2020) is totally proof of how racist and out-of-touch Trump and his supporters are.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
19d ago
The rights of "Residents" versus those of "Citizens" is kind of the whole debate.
Niether did Ukraine until February 2022.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
21d ago
Either acquiesce to being partitioned or fight it out.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
21d ago
Because unconditional surrender is always an option.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
21d ago
For all sides
How can you claim to be "evaluating a choice by it's effects" when those effects have yet to manifest and there is significant disagreement regarding what those effects will be and what "bad" even means in this context?
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