ccc
20hr ago
The "don't tread on me" crowd is already dead and irrelevant, as if they weren't already 10 years ago.
Laws are tools for power. You don't just get one of them and say "ah, we're done, now let's just enforce it and call it a day." Did liberals stop once they got the Civil Rights Act of of 1957 passed? Civil Rights Act of 1960? Civil Rights Act of 1964? Did they call it a day then? No. Of course not. They packed courts with sympathetic judges and universities with sympathetic admins. They even got Republicans to sign off on amendments.
If you want to win, you keep passing more and more laws that get you more power until you get as much of what you want as you can get. You tear up as many enemy laws as possible. You do all of that and you do everything else you can too. Propaganda, persuasion, institutional capture. Enforcing laws you like, ignoring ones you don't. This is politics.
What you don't do is piss and shit yourself and then have a cry when that doesn't do anything.
If you want your state to do things, you need state capacity. That is reality. You might not want that, but the average MAGA voter has a laundry list of things they want their Daddy to do to their enemies.
ccc
23hr ago
They have all three branches of government and a favorable supreme court. Trump owns the party and can make all the senators and congressmen fall in line. It would be so easy to pass legislation to massively increase state capacity for audits, deportations, expedited court hearings, etc. Well, it would be easy, if the administration had any competency to work with.
But the purpose of this presidency is impotent lashing out at perceived enemies. It's all theatre and grievance politics. There's no intention of executing proper statecraft, of actually doing things. The best you can hope for is wonton destruction. That's what you get when you elect a conman.
So in one sense, no, it isn't necessary -- if they were comptent. But given they aren't, it's the only option they have.
ccc
5d ago
This can't be overstated. Have a look at the questions she asks on Manifold. Almost all of them are about herself or about sex. Every time I hear about her it's one of those. It's so tiresome.
ccc
5d ago
If she repents and changes her ways, I will forgive her.
Of course, this is meaningless. I am nobody. In the world of online microcelebrity culture, there is no institution that can make her this promise. Before the Internet, there were things like religious leaders that could meaningfully make this promise. Even the irreligious would usually have their censure limited to a well-defined social group with de facto leaders who could grant clemency. That's all gone now.
With the tools we have, there's only really two good options. Ignore her, or make an example out of her.
ccc
5d ago
We should "cyberbully" celebrities more. They got into the business for attention. Well, you don't get to pick and choose what kind you get.
A celebrity has made themself an avatar, a role model for all their fans and haters. They are an object to be adored and criticized. Society learns and enforces norms by how celebrities are treated. You put your body and soul out to the world to be judged. So you shall be. Ever wonder why women are so much more interested in celebrity culture than men? Because women have always been the primary enforcers of morality.
Can't handle it? Pick another career. Go work a shitty office job like the rest of us.
Even this arrangement is unfair to the audience, because the celebrity gets to set the frame. See Taylor Swift annihilating her business rivals via social media to negotiate a better price on her master recordings. Her legion of haters are but a drop in the ocean for a celebrity with the wisdom to ignore it. They can't affect her.
What they can do, however, is affect the "discourse." They can inform and influence their friends and wider society about what the right and wrong things to do are. These are real stakes. While nerdy men will sit around and debate fruitlessly about the intricacies and nuances of books written by dead perverts, the people rebuking celebrities are out doing real, applied philosophy.
You're right from an individual's utility-maximizing perspective this makes no sense. It's irrational. It's wasted energy. So is voting. So are all manner of good deeds that will never be repaid in kind.
ccc
7d ago
I don't know where you live that cyclists blow through red lights on the regular, but it sounds like the laws of physics should take care of that eventually. Unless you're talking about them doing it where there's clearly no traffic, in which case what's the problem? What's the danger? Are you just mad they get to and you don't?
ccc
16d ago
Yep, Abundance holds up a mirror to Democrats and many don't like what they see. A lot of their assumptions about governance and economics has be thrown out to accept its thesis. That's why there's so much nitpicking about political strategy and messaging efficacy and never any criticism of its actual prescriptions. Moreover, the existing homeowners (the much maligned NIMBY liberal) are usually moderate Democrats, so they make a good villain for leftists to blame. Meanwhile, The Groups are mostly leftist sinecures and axe grinders, making a good villain for technocrats to blame. Cue internecine conflict.
I think if COVID lockdowns had not tanked the credibility of technocrats everywhere, there would be enough trust that this agenda could get motion. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. It's almost absurd we live in this reality where we have such boundless wealth and nothing but frivolities to spend it on, where "We need more houses? OK, let's build more houses" and "We need more energy? OK, let's build more solar/wind farms" faces such extreme and multi-pronged resistance, but so it is. Put another trillion into NVIDIA. Perhaps God can save us from ourselves.
ccc
16d ago
The discussion surrounding this is a never ending source of amusement. Ezra says "please just let the government build shit and stop getting in the way", and then leftists say "what do you mean? I'm not getting in the way? but also, did you stop to consider... [words words words]" It's beyond parody. I'm impressed they don't ever see the irony.
If there's one thing the leftists get right, it's that this is a political nonstarter. The whole reason they're in this mess in the first place is that populists are fundamentally opposed to progress. Populists want handouts and they want their enemies destroyed. Higher principles are of no particular interest. And the Dem coalition is only getting more and more populist in the wake of Biden's presidency, despite its legislative successes, failing to build anything or deliver real results for the poor and stupid and over-socialized -- a case that Ezra made quite well in his book. Leftists look at Trump and don't think there's anything particularly wrong with having a retarded president (and why would they? they tried non-retards and got no handouts and no enemies destroyed), they just wish it was their retard.
Can we really blame the average left-leaning voter for feeling this way? It wasn't given a name until recently, but this whole "housing theory of everything" idea has been floating around in wonky circles for at least 15 years now and totally ignored by Dem lawmakers. People have been griping about the cost of housing since the Occupy protests. Obama could have, in the popular imagination, been the president who builds instead of the president who bailed out wall street, if he were so inclined and better advised, but it wasn't on his radar in the slightest. In what sense do Dems deserve the mantle of technocrats when they're so behind the game? Being right in this case doesn't really matter when the median voter can barely read.
ccc
1mo ago
Isn't there a massive oversupply of TA's and PhD students? Get them to do it for pennies. Hell, they already do that. It's not like professors at large like teaching anyway, much less grading.
ccc
1mo ago
I can understand why pundits or political players would engage in this sort of sophistry, but to see it on a niche anonymous online forum is utterly bizarre.
A retvrn to the state of affairs where the USA was not global hedgemon would not benefit the average US citizen, much less the average Trump voter. It doesn't even benefit Trump himself. Who would benefit is China. That is self-destructive.
ccc
1mo ago
This is good instinct for politics but awful instinct for statesmanship. No amount of conquering enemies will overcome the fact that these tarrifs are self-destructive.
If you go this hard on conflict theory you end up surrounded by sycophants in an epistemic black hole. This isn't just "one unfortunate thing Trump is doing wrong" it's the primary issue with authoritarianism as a means of running the state. As soon as the guy on top of the hierarchy has a dumb idea (and everyone has dumb ideas) there's no way to stop it.
The more he punishes people for lightly pushing back on his one big dumb idea, the further into the black hole everyone goes.
ccc
3mo ago
I've lived near and in buildings that look almost exactly like that, and it still looks absolutely hideous to me. The building in the background mogs it by a mile.
This has been the procedure for his whole 2nd term. Flood the zone with shit. Put feelers out to see what people will tolerate. So what if he telegraphs the punch? Making the opposition flinch (and laughing at them when they do) is half the point. The other half is it gives him options. Nobody panics if things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.
There won't be any Literally Hitler moment (i.e. broad suppression of civil liberties comparable to the Reichstag Fire Decree) because the media landscape is totally different today than it was 100 years ago. Today the playbook is individual opposition buried under a litany of accusations, reports, and kangaroo courts -- too many things to litigate for any Informed Citizen to keep up with, each with a sliver of truth behind them. It will look like a hollowing out of the Democratic party to the point where they run someone like AOC for president. You'll still have your first amendment, you'll still be able to say whatever you want online, and you'll vote for a 2028 Trump ticket of your own free will, never minding that the USA is more like Mexico than ever before.
ccc
3mo ago
A self-citation to a self-citation to a bare assertion, purely intended to smear the author. Could you try making an actual counter argument?
ccc
3mo ago
The war should be easy to end. Take the current front line. These are the new borders.
If this offer were on the table, backed by security guarantees, Zelenskyy would take it in a heartbeat. Trump has not made any such offer.
ccc
3mo ago
Of all the reasons why this is grade A copium, the simplest is this: Trump is not a good actor. Go watch Wrestlemania 23. He has no range. In fact, one of the big things people say they like about him is exactly that: he's an honest liar. His motives are clear as day, even as he lies to your face, because he has no capacity to hide them.
There are very few states right now who are trying in earnest. Most still act as if the Non-Proliferation Treaty is real and that the U.S. nuclear umbrella will protect them. Ukraine thought they were still safe because they were in line with U.S. interests. They had the Budapest memorandum, and destabilizing Russia was a perennial U.S. interest. Now, suddenly, U.S. interests are... the fleeting whims of the current president, entirely divorced from geopolitical realities. So now there is a new lesson to learn: the U.S. is no longer a reliable ally, no longer a benevolent hedgemon. It's a very different lesson than one anyone learnt from Gadaffi's fate, and a dramatically different state of affairs to live in.
All these states formerly relying on U.S. protection are going to want their own nukes now: Finland, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand; perhaps Singapore and Taiwan as well, although those may be less practical (no land to test with, risky that Malaysia and China respectively would be aggravated by such programs before they get off the ground).
On top of that, states which were grumbling and maybe learnt from Gaddafi and were maybe doing things slowly in secret but were still somewhat checked by U.S. soft power are now certainly not going to hold back. That's at the very least Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Kazakhstan accelerating their programs.
And what's stopping Mexico and Brazil from starting a nuclear program at that point, other than lacking state capacity?
ccc
4mo ago
The position is MAD, which is still the only real response to nuclear threats. If Putin gets what he wants in Ukraine, every capable nation in the world starts its own nuclear weapons program. How does that fare for global nuclear war?
ccc
4mo ago
He doesn't want to be a parent. He wants to be a sire. What you've described is in line with this. It may well be unusual or alien but it isn't confusing and lines up with his stated preferences, so yeah my vote is "autistic compulsion".
ccc
4mo ago
I'm confused by the confusion. He thinks his genes are superior and wants to spread them, and he has the means to avoid having to raise them personally.
ccc
4mo ago
I feel a bit stupid
You should feel more stupid. Even now with hindsight you can barely muster a proper mea culpa. Your failures of judgement are innumerable, yet you fall back to "I didn't even vote." And you have the audacity to say the accelerationists are full of pretense? You will learn nothing from this.
ccc
4mo ago
Anyone who thought Trump 2024 would be the same as Trump 2016 was being lazy. You should feel stupid. You were willfully ignorant. Your entire plan was, "libs will save me from myself."
You knew that the only thing stopping Trump 2016 was career bureaucrats. You knew he had a plan not to let that happen again. Project 2025 was no secret. Did you think unitary executive theory was a joke? Or did you just pretend Trump would not even try, that he'd roll over and lose to the same move twice? Or did you stop thinking here and murmur idly, "libs will save me from myself."
You got what you voted for.
ccc
4mo ago
Seconding that the best thing to teach would be social skills, i.e. compassion for others. I should hope you gently admonished his comment sbout the social worker.
Encouraging any more STEM studies would only further his descent into the antisocial, half-clever asshole life.
ccc
4mo ago
Why do you need sync if you're only going to write at the disconnected setup? I would think the simplest way to heed that advice is to get a machine that can't connect to the internet and write on that using some offline word processor (e.g. Scrivener). Maybe back it up on a USB drive occasionally if you feel the need.
In most places you can get refurbished office PC's for cheap that should be up for the task. An old laptop with a broken WiFi card could also work.
You seem to be conflating the Tea Party and MAGA. They're not the same thing. Plenty of people were involved in both movements. That's just politics.
MAGA doesn't care about deficits. They're about to sign a $2.6T omnibus bill. Take a guess how much of that is going towards capacity for deportations.
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