TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
30d ago
Sure, there's always been a bit of dissent around the fringes (/pol/ has had similar debates). But these people are nowhere close to being in the driver's seat when it comes to MAGA. The tariffs debacle was really the ultimate test, as it was 1) a big policy that 2) affects something almost everyone cares about (the economy) and 3) had a pretty significant flip-flop in a very short timeframe. Basically everyone should have been pissed either when the tariffs were announced, or when the tariffs were significantly watered down.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
30d ago
Yes, they've essentially captured the Republican party in its entirety by this point. Criticizing or even disagreeing with Dear Leader too consistently is seen as a crime worthy of (political) death, no matter the topic or how wrong Trump is.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
30d ago
Your comment is excessively fatalistic. Countries undo their bad decisions all the time. Massive peacetime deficits were not a normal occurrence in this country for the first couple hundred years of its existence. Whether the US will cut its current deficits is up to the electorate. I'm not particularly hopeful about the prospect given that the current electorate is full of populist idiots that would punish politicians for making the correct long-term decisions vis-a-vis deficit reduction, but it's certainly theoretically achievable. Tariffs are not the way to get there, as the amount of money raised would be comparatively tiny relative to the damage done.
The US isn't printing "infinite money", as that would have resulted in hyperinflation (inflation of high single digits or low double digits doesn't count as hyperinflation).
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
30d ago
It's not the fact that it's the first term, it's that Russia's actions don't follow a predictable clock. Blaming Biden for Ukraine being invaded is almost as bad as blaming Trump for COVID happening under his watch. Russia is the primary determinant of how Russia acts. Maybe Biden withdrawing from Afghanistan slightly helped goad Russia to invade, and maybe Trump's threats might have had some small impact, but they were not the primary determinants by any means.
From a certain perspective all politics is can-kicking.
Not at all. If the debt explodes to 99% of bankruptcy during one leader's term, and the bankruptcy happens under his successor, would we say the first leader was great and only the second one was the issue? Obviously not. The first guy set the powder and lit the fuse, it doesn't really matter if the bomb only went off when he wasn't in charge.
While it's true to some degree that we can't know with perfect accuracy unless we had a time machine that let us rerun the presidency with the alt candidate, some actions are clearer than others, e.g. I doubt if Biden had another term that we'd have a tariff-induced market crash. Maybe Biden could have caused a crash in another way, but Trump owns his own stupid actions in this universe.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
30d ago
I already give Trump credit for destroying wokeism or at least hastening it's demise. I also gave him credit for announcing a buildup of the military, which is a good idea. Hopefully he actually goes through with it and doesn't waffle.
I don't find balancing US trade deficits to be a priority. Something like reshoring (high tech) manufacturing though, sure.
Yes, it would be great if he could restore US shipbuilding.
Peace in Ukraine is highly contingent on what the peace looks like. If it's effectively "force Ukraine to surrender and give up huge swathes of land that they wouldn't need to if Biden were still around" is not a good peace. If it was "ceasefire at current lines, and Ukraine protected from future invasions by European guarantees", that'd be reasonable.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
30d ago
No, I agree little green men were Russian. It's just a question of timing. Moldova was in the 90s, Georgia was 2008, Crimea was 2014. None of those happened under Obama's first term, nor Bush 2's first term.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
That's a stretch since Russia didn't invade any country during Obama's first term either. Even if you think Trump really did prevent a war during his first term he didn't do anything substantive to fix any underlying issues, so he just can-kicked.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
trump is "erratic", "stupid", "illiterate", and a "retard"
Erratic? Definitely. Stupid? In a sense. Illiterate? No. Retard? By the medical definition, of course not.
I prefer the term "buffoon" myself.
his supporters are all deep-throating cock-slobberes
I'm assuming that's supposed to be "cock-slobberers". I wouldn't call all his supporters that, but a decent chunk, roughly about 33-37% of the country certainly are. I'm confident enough in that assertion that I'd be willing to bet money on it, if such a market existed.
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.
There's two big problems with the "4D Chess, Art Of The Deal, Trust The Plan" style of arguments.
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It's deployed as yet another everything-proof shield for any of Trump's actions. Trump cultists desperately, desperately want any reason to love the man, so there's an extensive distributed search to come up with any reason to do so. This is just like how woke academics searched for any reason not to blame black people for their own problems, and ended up coming up with unfalsifiable ideas like "structural racism" as the cause for everything. When the motivated reasoning is this blatant, you should be suspicious of the purported results.
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Where are the actual results? Trump has already had a full term where he was full of erratic actions. Where are his successes where the erratic behavior clearly led to a good outcome? Note that there are going to be happy accidents every once in a while, so we would expect at least a few good results even if we made an RNG simulator the President. Trump certainly had a few good results during his first term, but they were mostly just him acting like a conventional politician, e.g. Operation Warp Speed (which Trump later disavowed, because of course he did) or his SCOTUS nominations (more of McConnell's victory really, but Trump gets some credit for not buffoonishly sabotaging it in some way).
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
Interesting video, thanks for sharing.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
I feel like you're not really disagreeing with me on the key argument. I'm sure there's thin slices of fat that could be cut across the USFG, but it's not going to be significant enough to meaningfully impact the deficit. So sure, cut the communist rap albums. Just don't pretend it's anything other than a performative victory.
And no, I want both parties to get serious about tackling the deficit. It'll likely require a compromise of both some tax increases and spending cuts, and by virtue of how the budget currently is, some of those cuts will almost certainly have to come from elder care. The best time to stop kicking that can was 30 years ago. The second best time to do so is right now.
If Trump attempted this, he'd probably screw it up in dozens of ways. But that's just Trump being Trump. Bears shit in the woods, and Trump is a buffoon.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
The media propaganda machine claims that the US will experience a "brain drain" - a term usually applied to third world countries - because of recent DOGE cuts: https://www.reuters.com/world/scientists-us-harried-by-trump-cuts-turn-towards-europe-2025-04-11/.
Of course, the DOGE cuts are necessary to reign in the huge deficit and just as importantly, to stop funding DEI programs and worthless research, like the "tuna" research cite din the article. Just like my taxpayer funds do not need to go to funding transgender surgeries in Honduras, they don't need to use my money to study tuna for "sustainability" reasons. Of course, the EU being EU, they want to hire some of these people for no other reason than to spite the US. There hasn't been any actual investigation into whether they need a tuna researcher; as long as they can dunk on the US and pat themselves on the back, they'll do that.
The DOGE cuts were purely performative. Anyone trying to cut the federal deficit without tackling the absurd ballooning elder care costs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid portions that go to elders) isn't serious. Science is an extremely tiny slice of the federal budget, but it happens to be one where the effects of cuts won't show up for a decent amount of time. This is in contrast to something like tariffs, where Trumpian buffoonishness is almost immediately apparent in a number of ways.
Jewish nuclear researchers that fled Nazi Germany helped produce the atomic bomb. I'm not saying the current crop of researchers are doing stuff that's that serious, but having scientists flee your broken sectarian country is generally a bad thing.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
I'd personally do my napkin math from the Cook PVI instead.
I'd break Republican Reps into the following buckets
- Won in blue districts, and very susceptible to breaking from Trump: 3 Reps
- Won in districts that are R+0 to R+2, moderate-high susceptibility to breaking from Trump: 13 Reps
- Won in districts that are R+3 to R+5, moderate-low susceptibility to breaking from Trump: 23 Reps
- Every other Republican Rep: 181 Reps
So I see what you're saying as fairly unlikely. Trump would have to do something truly cataclysmic to get a third of Republican Reps to fear losing re-election more than Trump coming after them with a primary challenge. The 2022 midterms showed Trump would gladly prioritize eliminating "traitors" over actually having Republicans win. Purifying the party is something Trump has always shown very consistent determination in doing, far above any actual policy goals.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
OK sure, my particular example was dumb for the reasons you pointed out. I wanted to think of something that had partisan valence in the other direction, but at this point Republicans are mostly only pro-business as a historical accident. Most of the base hates "Wall Street" and "Big Business", so I think their response to Bernie-style economic leftism would be relatively muted compared to, say, 20 years ago.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
I don't know about the tilma of Juan Diego, but I've looked into Eucharistic miracles a long time ago. All claims of such miracles are either 1) fringe enough that nobody cares, 2) unfalsifiable in that there's no evidence to check against, or 3) rely on witnesses.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
Looking at Trump's first term approval ratings, the 37% mark is close to where I'd put the 50-50 at. But 1) I make a habit of not betting on prediction markets unless I have a decent alpha, and 2) Trump is one or two standard deviations more buffoonish this term than he was in his first term, which needs to be factored in. I could probably barely be persuaded to make an even-money bet at 35%, and I'd feel genuinely good if I could make the bet at 33%.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
The intellectual leader of MAGA has basically already confirmed your line of thinking.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
Who cares? "Insider trading" probably doesn't crack the top 5 list of worst examples of corruption, and Trump defenders would furiously denounce it as "lawfare" no matter what it was anyways.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
I'm just so tired with everyone's vapid obsession with tariffs. To the point where it feels like a psyop.
"It feels like a psyop"? Oh good heavens.
I feel like you're only upset about the topic because it reflects poorly on your ingroup, and it's providing fodder for your outgroup. Democrats were practically wallowing in despair for several months after the election, but Trump's buffoonishness was such a blatant shoot-myself-in-the-foot moment that suddenly the Dems were getting very talkative again, and almost became triumphant. They were practically egging on a crash, and reality was largely granting it to them until Trump waffled.
I doubt your reaction would be similar if the shoe was on the other foot, e.g. if Biden suddenly tried to force 1 in 20 people to undergo a sex change in the name of diversity.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
I also didn't see your post as insinuating he was a "bad person". I don't know how he came to that conclusion or what he means by that.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
What?
If the dollar collapses, world traders will just pick a different currency, or a basket of currencies.
And nobody needs to prevent all conflict in the world, they just need to prevent piracy or a giant world war for trade to continue on.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
A veto-proof majority? Not gonna happen in any realistic scenario. I doubt Trump's approval rating will drop below the high 30s for any sustained period of time, he just has that much of a lock on the Republican base. Trump has also invested quite heavily in purifying the party from all critics. He's been much more focused on that than any durable policy goals. With all that in mind, Republican legislators (beyond a few dissidents) will not broadly from Dear Leader.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
I loathe Trump, buffoon that he is, but I'll admit he did effectively kill wokeness which was great. If he does this, it will be another good step in my eyes. Storm clouds are gathering, and the US needs to be ready one way or the other.
In dollar terms, the US already spends more on its military than the next 8 largest spenders put together do on theirs. The US is under no existential threat from any other country barring a nuclear war. But given that the US already has a very substantial nuclear deterrent, spending $100 more billion a year on the military is unlikely to substantially improve that situation.
This is very wrong. If adjusted for PPP values and differences in accounting (e.g. what's kept in black budgets) then China spends nearly as much, if not more than the USA does. Worse, China is concentrating that in one area whereas the USA is spread out all over the globe still (including, foolishly, much of the Middle East). The notion that nations can invest in some nukes and then forget about foreign policy while assuming nothing bad will happen is silly.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
Well, firstly, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
It's not conclusive evidence but it should certainly raise our suspicious given that 1) humans frequently and erroneously attribute mundane phenomena to the supernatural (it's an extremely common human logical fault), 2) with so many claims, you'd assume at least a few would have clear evidence of occurring and not having ready explanations. It's similar to UFO sightings, which were quite common a few decades ago. If they were real, the proliferation of smartphones with cameras should have led to a surge in evidence of their existence. Instead, the lack of such evidence is a good indication that it was bunk all along. That's not to say we should be completely closeminded on the issue if evidence does arise, but we should wait for that compelling evidence first.
Minor or even moderate healing is a bad metric since the human body is extremely complicated, so mundane phenomena could easily be confused for the supernatural. Moreover, health is something people are very emotional about, so they pray about it frequently. But if people were e.g. regularly doing crazy things like being able to walk on water or (as Jiro mentioned) regrowing lost limbs, then that would be a better starting point.
This all reminds me of the fact that scientists refused to accept the existence of meteorites for a very long period of time because they were one-off events.
This story should raise your opinion of science, not lower it. Rocks falling from the sky would seem like superstitions in the early enlightenment, but Jean-Baptiste Biot collected evidence it actually occurred and science was persuaded relatively quickly. Miracles should be held to the same standard.
But anyway, the claim here being made (by Voxel) is that miracles (or supernatural or if you prefer inexplicable events) aren't very uncommon or, shall you say, extraordinary.
Claims of miracles aren't uncommon, I'm sure. But that just proves that humans are fallible fools in their explanations.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
From a Bayesian perspective, I'd say that the claim that "miracles happen, but only in ways that are conveniently impossibly difficult to scientifically corroborate" is pretty good evidence that we should discount them unless we really do get some solid proof. This is especially true given humans have a known habit of attributing unexplainable phenomena on the supernatural, but which have later been conclusively proven to have mundane origins (e.g. primitive humans thinking thunder and lightning were gods fighting each other).
Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence.
I sincerely don't understand how you're coming to that conclusion based on what I wrote.
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