dasfoo
10mo ago
There was no mystery as to the identity of the shooter
Officially, maybe, but speculation about Maxwell Yearick is still circulating on social media.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Instead every comment that goes against the left wing hive mind is a bot
More specifically, a "Russian bot."
dasfoo
10mo ago
but the category error made is thinking that the consensus shifts mainly through some actor above the grassroots
A good example of this is the split between Trump and his base on the Covid vaccine's Operation Warp Speed. He could brag about that non-stop and it would convince none of them. But within an hour all loyal Democrats will replace their Twitter profile pics with Ukraine flags and make jokes about couches. It's an open question whether the centralized media/messaging on the left and the decentralized media/messaging on the right is reflective or formative of the respective groups and their information heirarchies.
dasfoo
10mo ago
In some countries, they refer to this as a "coup".
No, it isn't.
First, a party can nominate whoever it wants; it doesn't have to go through a "democratic" primary process, and the Democrats only did that in the most disingenuous way possible for this election.
Second, it's absurd for people on the right to try to claim that, both, A. Biden is mentally unfit; and B. It's a "coup" to replace him. If A, then B must happen in the name of civic responsibility.
I'll grant that a lot of Democratic Party shenanigans stink to high heaven, and this whole election process makes them look like the most cynical operators. But it's rich for people, most of whom don't even think Biden was legitimately elected in the first place, to try to claim that switching out nominees in this case is somehow deeply illegitmate.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Another reason why the left currently worries me more is that their delusions are deeper than the right's delusions.
Yes: The left is smart and understands the system and has been re-engineering it for decades. I am far more wary of smart people who know how to accomplish bad things than dumb people who might accidentally break some stuff but don't know how to permanently damage the structure of it. It's a grim choice, and I can't endorse either one, but I know which one is more frightening.
dasfoo
10mo ago
I think I know the kind of normies you are referencing here. There are roughly two stripes of normies -- people who don't think deeply / interrogate concepts -- that don't think "Communism is bad:"
- The normies who buy into the general media narrative that right-wingers are mean to minorities so anything to the left of them is kind, and that the right uses "Communism" to scare people into being mean, so it must be OK.
- The normies who think free stuff has no costs, because they aren't direct costs. (I had a conversation once with a guy from Latin America who was self-declared "pro-freedom," but to him freedom meant freedom from hunger + freedom from poverty).
I wouldn't try to get into a philosophical discussion with someone who doesn't think philosophically. I think you have to take a practical approach, like:
What should happen to people who don't want to participate? What if the government tells you your job is to dig ditches all day every day, and you would rather knit or fix cars or answer phones? Or, worse, start your own business? They say no, you will dig ditches. What should happen to you? What if you accept being forced to dig ditches, but want to talk to your fellow ditch-diggers about how you don't like digging ditches? The government (your boss) tells you to stop talking about that. What should happen to you if you keep talking about it? What if you think of a better, more efficient way to get the ditch dug, that requires less effort on your part, and your boss doesn't care? Communism isn't creative; it doesn't allow for individual initiative/enterprise (except for political climbers, but watch out for the other political climbers!). Every person is a cog in a machine and if you are not a cog in the machine you are a problem. It doesn't matter if the machine is efficient or even operable, you are there to do what you're told, or you're a problem. This is why Communuist countries do not allow their citizens to leave and invariably turn into prisons/death camps.
The Marxist argument against capitalism is that there are a lot of real problems with capitalism, and it presents itself as an idealized solution to the problems of capitalism. The problem with this is that people are imperfect and any system run by people will be imperfect, including Communism. There is no Utopia. All of the same human failings that Communism wants to eliminate will be present inside Communism. There will always be problems. In a centralized system, the problems created by that system are distributed throughout the entire system. One important person makes a mistake or does something evil, and everyone downstream of that important person has to confront the consequences and has no recourse to fix the mistake -- you may not even be able to acknowledge the mistake without consequences!
Capitalism is decentralized, so it's a bunch of people making their own mistakes, and these mistakes have a smaller impact because those downstream are fewer and may be able to navigate their own mitigation strategies. Of course, these people might not make a mistake but do something good that will have good effects on anyone downstream from them. Communism essentially precludes the possibility of the good thing happening and instead locks everyone into the shared mistake path.
As a sort of libertarian, I've been accused of favoring my own Utopian ideal, but really it's the opposite: an anti-utopian ideal. People will do things badly and hurt themselves, and the best way to minimize the effects of this is to keep power limited and allow people the flexibility to fix their own mistakes or mold their circumstances to avoid the worst effects of others' mistakes. Meanwhile, we can share in the benefits from people who do the good things by choosing to trade with them and work on our own good things that give us purpose.
dasfoo
10mo ago
So, how do we figure out the fair way to make sure everyone in the intersection gets proper priority? We could have everyone get out of their car and have a little discussion about where they're going and why and then implement some group decision-making procedure in order to allocate priority fairly. Then repeat at the next intersection, and the next intersection, and the next intersection, all the way to work. Even normies can realize that this would be ridiculous.
The reality is, it wont really matter who needs to go first. The person who will get to go first is whoever is most in-favor with the boss in charge of that intersection. And best way to ensure that you get to go first is to be a toady to that boss and spread lies about how the other people at the intersection hate that boss. And even then, the boss will let the dipshit nephew of his boss go first, because he's also a toady. And soon it turns out that no one in charge of intersections is actually good at running intersections, they're just the better ass-kissers.
dasfoo
10mo ago
it was perceived as the alternative to Western capitalism and liberal democracy. If you don't like the current system and want something else... it's there.
The cruel irony is that rather than being an alternative to the potential failures of capitalism, Communism merely fortifies all of those failure modesand traps them into a single funnel that's certain to fail. You don't like being exploited by any number of employers? Now there's only one employer who will treat you even worse, and you can never quit your job!
Point to actually existing government. "Do you really want Joe Biden/Donald Trump deciding how much toilet paper you're allotted or what books are worthy of being published?"
Yes, I like to say, "Never support giving the government any power you wouldn't want your least favorite politician to possess." It's remarkably unpersuasive, because the notion that the means of government is more important than the ends is completely lost on post-1960s liberalism.
EDIT: IMO this is why it's so easy for the right to assume that the left supports electoral fraud: it would be insane to want an all-powerful government and also support literally Hitler having a shot at winning. Of course, you would fix an election to prevent that from happening.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Or, two, he's comparing the totalitarian endpoints of each ideology. Communism verus fascism.
The picture on the right, however, is not the endpoint of Communism, but a waypoint. In the endpoint, most of the people in the picture on the right are dead or in prison, because it was never going to turn out the way they thought it would and it's always worst for the non-conformists. Honestly, the endpoints of Fascism and Communism look pretty much the same: A corrupt political hierarchy eating each other for power while stealing from the people and murdering as many witnesses as possible.
dasfoo
10mo ago
Do you resent any other politician for their lies?
Anyone who pays attention knows politicians tell tactical lies nonstop.
If you hold Trump to a special standard I think that's ridiculous. Otherwise yeah, resenting the lie is probably the most rational response possible.
I don't agree that Trump is lying is most cases like this. Almost worse, it's that he doesn't care to know if it's the truth. It sounds good to him to say, and the truth of it is irrelevant.
How many things does Trump say during debates and his speeches that are merely poorly remembered memes he saw on X or Truth?
IMO, it should behoove a leader to care to make the best case for their argument, and that includes understanding and optimizing for the biases in the medium through which the argument is presented. If Trump knows he is going to be mercilessly fact-checked, it's on him to make life tougher not easier for the fact-checkers. He makes valid arguments sound like lies because he doesn't bother to make them sound as true as possible, and that's unforgiveable.
dasfoo
9mo ago
Here's a fun example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia
dasfoo
9mo ago
Not saying this proves anything one way or the other, but have you ever skimmed through the call logs of your local police department? I think they're all public record. I used to work at a community newspaper and we would get the logs once a week and look for potential stories. There is some crazy shit and I would guess at least 25% of the logs I used to read were the rantings of people who were not mentally well and should not be taken at face value.
dasfoo
9mo ago
Have you ever tried to eat a live cat while driving? It's not easy. Accidents are bound to happen.
dasfoo
9mo ago
What about this is blood libel?
If you wade into the X threads where the Cats thing got started, there are now nascent claims of voodoo and, yes, cannibalism.
dasfoo
9mo ago
It would be closely related to the "Sicilian immigrants are eating our horses" meme as featured in The Godfather.
Uh, what? I think a re-watch might be in order.
dasfoo
9mo ago
I'm a "Stop the Steal" agnostic. The 2020 election looked fishy, but most of the "proof" of election fraud has been merely suggestions with no follow-through. I'm not a Trump voter, but I have no faith in the integrity of his opponents -- especially if you take them at their word that he is an existential threat.
The Democrats do themselves no favors by trying to stop all of these election reform measures in swing states, like PA and GA. Their insistence that we should not clean the voter rolls, enforce ballot integrity or deadlines, or be able to produce records that verify vote counts or reconcile ballot and voter numbers is bewildering in the absence of fraud. Can anyone of the "Most Secure Election in History" persuasion steelman the argument against increasing election integrity? Isn't it in everyone's best interest to increase confidence in the electoral process, even if you think 2020 election deniers are kooks, as it will improve the legitimacy of whoever wins and diminish avenues of sympathy for the deniers?
dasfoo
9mo ago
He attended a private party at an exclusive restaurant while his state prohibited such get-togethers: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/opinion/gavin-newsom-french-laundry-california.html
Remove the sensationalism of the orgy, and it's violation of the same principle.
dasfoo
9mo ago
Implementing these will make voting slower, more difficult, and more likely to generate lawsuits. They encourage a heckler’s veto, where anyone with the time and money has more levers to slow down and cast doubt on the outcome. Is that likely to improve legitimacy?
I don't see "slower or more difficult" as valid objections to improving vote security. Maybe it should be slower or more difficult? Maybe not, but I would need more information to judge those trade-offs. And it already seems to have gotten slower despite the improvements in technology. Lawsuits aren't always bad. Maybe some are worthwhile? I don't know, I'm just saying that when someone says, "Your system is flawed" and your reply is, "It's the most perfect ever," without probing the suggested issues, is shitty public relations whether or not there are actual problems. And worrying about whose ox gets gored by investigating potential hazards is never going to result in effective systems regardless of who is in charge. That's a Soviet-response to Chernobyl environment in the making. Get it the fuck out of American voting systems, please.
Every election ought to be able to withstand an audit and defend its results, and not just met with a shrug when hundreds of thousands of ballots can't be accounted for or memory cards get wiped or voter rolls don't match or someone just accidentally let thousands of late ballots get counted or all of the vote totals changed in the dead of night after all of the observers were told to go home. The best reply to false or incorrect accusations of vote fraud is to present the accuser with impeccable records that support the result. If your election systems are such a mess due to laziness or complacency that you can't really support the result, it doesn't matter who is accusing you of what -- get your shit in order, or it makes it look like they might be correct when they accuse you of corruption. That is corruption, even if it's a less malicious sort of corruption.
dasfoo
9mo ago
The argument is that the actions Republicans take do not increase election integrity, and are instead aimed at adding hoops to jump through that may reduce voter turnout among groups that typically vote Democrat.
Those all sound like eminently reasonable election safeguards (possibly except for the in-county restriction, maybe because I live near the intersection of 4 counties; in-state should suffice), and would be easy to comply with for anyone of any race or background, and it seems racist to suggest otherwise. If some communities need to be better educated on election procedures, that does not seem like an insurmountable obstacle, and I'm sure there are organizations dedicated to voter awareness that would be happy to help them.
dasfoo
9mo ago
My favorite "fact check" of the night was on the Climate Change question. The moderator asked a question which included a reference to Donald Trump calling climate change a "hoax." Both candidates gave answers, neither of which supported Trump's "hoax" framing; Walz argued against it and Vance avoided it. Then the moderators "fact-checked" Trump, who was only there in the moderators' own words. It was truly bizarre execution of a pre-planned fact-check and exposed the lie of no moderator fact-checking.
(Interestingly. I'm having trouble finding a quote in which Trump calls "climate change" a "hoax." This biased article (https://democrats.org/news/donald-the-denier-donald-trump-has-repeatedly-called-climate-change-a-hoax/) claims that he has 'repeatedly' called it a "hoax," but only produces one quote in which he refers to the "global warming hoax," which is arguably different as the term was changed to fit a broader definition. And then there's this earlier article where he directly says it might not be a hoax: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-says-climate-change-not-a-hoax-but-not-sure-of-its-source.)
dasfoo
9mo ago
Tangentially, IMO both sides got the response to claims of election shenanigans totally wrong, going into tribal mode rather than civic mode.
Whether or not there was actual fraud, there was pretty compelling appearance of fraud in the seemingly sychronized one-way anomolies that took place on election night. Rather than carefully investigating claims of impropriety and producing explanations that assauged concerns, the winning side took the very Trumpian approach of declaring fraud impossible in the most secure and perfect election ever held, coupled with a slate of articles condescendingly headline with the following template "No, xxxxxxxxx didn't happen, you fucking MAGA retards!" (OK, that last part was implied rather than stated directly.) It seems to me, as someone who voted for neither Trump nor Biden in 2020, that there were ample claims of shenanigans that deserved sober investigation, and sober investigation was never produced. The losers, on the other hand, thanks to grifters who saw they could profit off an atmosphere of polarized suspicion, threw every possible crazy fraud theory into the mix and then threw the stupidest tantrum in American history on Jan. 6. Trump was a terrible figurehead for a cause that could only possibly succeed with a careful and precise and civic-minded legal approach. I don't think the winners were ever capable of entertaining the best evidence of fraud and the losers were never capable of producing it.
dasfoo
9mo ago
Even keeping it to the 2020 election, why was no one who claimed that 2020 was "the most secure election in history" asked for the data on which that statement was based? By what metrics, and how do those metrics compare to past elections? Or was that claim based on partisan wish fulfillment and yet accepted as fact because we don't like the people claiming otherwise?
dasfoo
9mo ago
Temporary Protected Status and Asylum are different legal protections, with different criteria and processes. More generally, what does the term "illegal immigrant" refer to? I am under the impression it refers to people in the United States without a legal status that permits them to remain. That very literally does not include people with TPS (like the Haitians in Springfield have). if "illegal immigrant" includes even people who have legal permission to be here, what precisely are the boundaries? Are there green card holders who are "illegal immigrants?"
Isn't the distinction Vance was making that the immigrants entered the U.S. illegally and then TPS retroactively changed that status, temporarily, to legal?
It's also kind of funny to hear Vance complain about the CBP One app since it was launched in... October 2020 by the Trump administration!
But if you read the article, it says that the app's functions have been expanded under Biden to do things like grant parole to illegal immigrants! https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/cbp-one-overview
On October 28, 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) launched a mobile device application called CBP One so that travelers could access certain agency functions on mobile devices. Over the last two years, the agency has expanded CBP One’s uses. The app has become the only way that migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum at a port of entry can preschedule appointments for processing and maintain guaranteed asylum eligibility. CBP One also became the only way that Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans seeking to secure travel authorization to obtain parole through special programs for those nationalities can submit their biometric information to CBP.
CBP One’s original uses included 1) providing travelers with access to Form I-94 information, 2) scheduling inspection appointments for perishable cargo, and 3) assisting international organizations who sought to help individuals enter the United States.
The app’s latest functions, like the use of CBP One to pre-process asylum seekers, has raised concerns both about gaining access to a legal right through a smartphone app and about the privacy implications of the app.
Trump defeats himself when he can't stop talking, which is why his 2020 debate with Biden went so poorly for him due to his constant interruptions, but in the 2024 debate Biden had several uninterrupted moments of looking old and weak. A closed mic helps Trump even though/because it goes against's Trump's nature.
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