faceh
11mo ago
but I find most of Trump's lying so transparent and bullshitty and unimportant that it's hard to even read them as lies, exactly.
Interesting point, and hits on something in the vein of "Trump's supporters take him seriously, but not literally."
Part of his image and legend is being a bragadoccio, and embellishing stories is something the 'average' person probably considers fine as long as you do it with a bit of a wink and a nod.
Vs. the normal Politician method of lying by omission, or using weasel words, or aggressive cherrypicking of data so that no particular statement is blatantly 'false' but ultimately the information is not conveying any 'truth' about the world to the listener.
Trump could claim to have a 15 inch penis, which is a very specific statement of fact, and fact checkers can retort "ACKSHULLY the largest recorded penis is 13 inches, it is extremely unlikely Trump has exceeded that length" and include photos of his (clothed) crotch which would suggest he's not that well endowed. But supporters wouldn't care because they don't expect him to whip his schlong out to prove it, they get the message as its presumably intended.
There's ample lies one can pin to Trump, I don't mind calling those out, but anybody who understands that politics is a game of dishonesty in every single aspect probably can't muster up much outrage for Trump as if NOW the political system is trying to enforce honesty in candidates.
faceh
1yr ago
A fundamental problem for SpaceX is that there just isn't all that much demand for space.
This reads to me, respectfully, as:
"A fundamental problem for the Wright Brothers is that there just isn't all that much demand for air travel."
The hope is that with Starship bringing the cost of sending mass to space down to earth (pun intended) that entrepreneurs will jump at finding new ways to monetize low earth orbit and, eventually beyond.
If it doesn't do so, I do fear we might be resigned to remaining a single-planet species
As others have indicated it's something of a floating signifier which, in the same vein as 'Black Lives Matter' is very useful for shutting down opposition without having to lay out a fully articulated position of your own.
If you raise any sort of critique or resistance you're clearly okay with trans children being harmed! Shame on you! Or we could say "protect all kids" which will probably be received about as well as "all lives matter." I kinda favor the term "protect kids" myself, but in that context the rhetoric loses most force because it's a completely unremarkable sentiment.
I do have my questions about how 'trans kids' are defined, since the whole debate these days seems to center around whether one's gender identity can be reliably ascertained at an early age. The use of the term 'kids' definitely implies that prepubescents are included in this group.
And of course what are they being protected from? Abuse? And if it's abuse, does that include from parents who are skeptical that their kids are actually gender dysphoric? Or maybe it's more a generalized 'protect their right to express their preferred identity (i.e. their right to transition).'
At which point, the statement 'protect trans kids' roughly translates to "ensure that children of all ages are permitted to have gender reassignment surgery on demand and without apology." And "over the objections of their parents, if necessary" is implied in there too.
Which I think is pretty damned controversial in mainstream discourse, so it remains more palatable to collapse it to "Protect Trans Kids" and let the onlookers guess at what you actually mean.
I ultimately think the goal is to have this particular rhetoric stretch to it's logical conclusion where children can be removed from their parents' care and undergo gender reassignment surgery without parental consent or even knowledge if some 'expert' is able to ascertain that the child is gender dysphoric, as this is the only true way to 'protect' trans children to the fullest extent possible. You have to be able to identify them all as early as possible and enable them to medically transition at the earliest opportunity and thus remove any social or legal barriers that might prevent these kids from transitioning.
The actual implications of how that might all work in practice I will leave unexamined for the moment.
It definitely annoys me that "access to the financial system writ large" has become so utterly critical to doing anything useful that it immediately has a totalizing effect on what anybody can do, anywhere in the world, even on the internet.
Maybe there's one bank/payment processor that holds out and willingly acts to handle the 'controversial' transactions, but that just removes things one layer back, as other banks and processors will eventually blacklist that bank. And thus rendering that bank mostly useless for any other purpose. If it doesn't shut down it'll struggle to remain solvent.
Lets say that some pornography company was wealthy enough it could 'become its own bank' and processes payments on behalf of users and extends credit and otherwise runs all its own transactions and only has to interface with the financial system to purchase the services it needs to operate. Once it is known as the 'porn bank' it'll probably be impossible to find any other financial services willing to interface with them unless they comply with all the sames restrictions the other banks are working under... which defeats the purpose of 'self banking' to begin with.
It comes down to the fact that the financial system is a tightly connected web, and the main value any bank or payment process can provide is access to the network, so maintaining that access is their primary concern.
From the moral standpoint, it bugs me when there's very little evidence(indeed, I've seen none) that digital artwork depicting heinous, illegal, or otherwise disgusting acts is actually causing harm to nonconsenting parties. The reasons we find CSAM objectionable and worthy of legally crushing are generally not present when it comes to digital art. One party or group wants some art, the artist produces it and gets paid, nobody else even need be aware of what it contains!
It'd be nice to think of our financial system as mostly as set of dumb tubes that transmit the data representing our money around without caring much about the start and endpoint... with a lot of protections in place to mitigate fraud, theft, and user error. But ultimately a financial company is operated by humans who are subject to legal jurisdiction of some country or other, and have to maintain access to the global finance system if they want to take that money to any other jurisdiction, so in reality the 'rules' are set based on what all participants are willing to tolerate.
Anyhow, this is ultimately the impetus for the protagonists in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon to create a private, heavily anonymized bank/data haven in a location outside of the U.S.' sphere of influence. And in order for them to pull it off it required a chain of events that seems even more fantastical now than it did then, such as finding an island nation that is independently wealthy yet also politically stable enough to act as a headquarters for such an endeavor.
So...what gives? Are modern women just that impulsive when feeling unhappy in a marriage? Or misled? Do they have illusions about singlehood?
Probably similar to the reason a gambler would keep playing even when they're way up and the odds are not in their favor going forward. They could walk away from the table, stick the money in an index fund and enjoy the benefits of it for years to come, or they could go another round and maybe double or quintuple their money!!!
More directly, people in general are bad at considering the long term costs of an action when they perceive a short term benefit that would remove what they perceive as a source of discomfort.
I also think that women, in particular, when they've grown up being showered with male attention, and the had their pick of suitors, they expect that they'll still be a hot commodity once they're out of their marriage. They have been out of the game so long that they don't realize that a 30+ woman, possibly with kids, is simply not going to command the same sort of attention, especially with newer models on the showroom floor.
I don't know how to get across to a woman whose recollection of the dating world is "I went on fun dates with hot guys who paid for everything" that if she tries that now she'll find herself rejected more often and her pickings will be much slimmer.
(This doesn't explain why college educated women are more likely to initiate divorce, I suspect that has more to do with sheer social status)
IMPORTANT EDIT: college educated women are not 'more likely' to initiate divorce than other groups, only that college educated women who get a divorce are the ones initiating it 90% of the time, and husbands 10%. College educated women are less likely to be involved in a divorce either way.
This is not to say that no women end up happy after initiating divorce. My own mother seems to have ended up being quite happy after divorcing and remarrying (my dad is doing alright too). Just that you would have to take claims that they're happy with a grain of salt because they will be VERY vested in projecting the appearance of happiness and retroactively justifying their decision even if from the financial side of it they are OBJECTIVELY worse off.
Like seriously, how many people would you expect to pull the divorce rip cord, find themselves alone and relatively poor (compared to their previous status) and just as unhappy as before, and would then openly proclaim "I made a big mistake, it was all my own doing, and I have irretrievably worsened my quality of life!"
Does the ego even permit that sort of open admission?
Excellent post, I'll just add my 2 cents (earned from my legal career) on this question:
But if you can swap in virtually any attorney into the slot without affecting the outcome, how would any individual attorney stand out from the rest?
I have been on both sides of the equation at this point. Both a public defender and handling private crim defense for, among others, DUI cases. My experience may not be particularly applicable outside of my state or even county, but I think there's a lot of basic ideas that are near-universal.
The one factor that can actually allow you to 'stand out' is earning the reputation as the guy who absolutely can and will go to trial and give the prosecutor a run for their money regardless of the true merits of the underlying case. Who is never afraid of the hard work and showmanship required in jury trials.
Because when so much of the job of criminal defense is just keeping the client calm (and out of custody) and negotiating a plea deal, the attorneys can reliably coast for years without ever being forced to pick a jury and try a case. They get in a mode in which trials are a serious inconvenience and this effects how they handle clients, indeed they may even try to persuade them to take plea deals to AVOID trial risks, even on very winnable cases!
And those who haven't flexed that muscle in a while are generally KNOWN to be less likely to push a case all the way through to trial. Maybe it's even rumored that they're scared of actual trials, where the consequences can be unpredictable.
And I genuinely think that's the factor that makes any meaningful difference. All attorneys have access to the same legal databases, they attend the same CLE classes and seminars, and generally speaking every new development in the law is easy to locate and digest. Some attorneys may be more... creative about how they apply a new development (think Saul Goodman-esque arguments, but dialed back a bit to pass the sniff test) or be able to present their arguments in a more majestic style. Some may excel at motion practice and have top notch paralegals prepping their filings.
But end of the day, the one thing that the prosecutor doesn't want to do is work. And trials mean LOTS and LOTS of work.
And it means the possibility of a hung jury (MORE WORK) or a not guilty. So this means rather than take the first plea offer that comes along, a lawyer with established trial rep can play the game of chicken with the prosecutor as the trial date looms nearer and nearer and suddenly some truly generous offers come on the table, which might not be easily obtainable if there wasn't a credible threat of forcing a trial.
Incidentally, as a Public Defender I once took three separate cases to trial over the course of three consecutive days, mostly just to show the prosecutor that I would. I called it my 'trialathalon.' Unfortunately that reputation doesn't persist much outside of the county in which the cases occurred.
Yeah, there's a particularly nasty tendency recently for these videos that kick off rage mobs to involve people who are literally just trying to live their lives and suddenly they find themselves in a forced dilemma with a camera shoved in their face with no warning or prep.
For instance, some guy on the NY subway who is just trying to get to a destination unscathed.
At least in the situations with, e.g. Kyle Rittenhouse or George Zimmerman (remember him? over ten years ago!) they were arguably inserting themselves into situations where a conflict and confrontation were likely, so there's a certain amount of risk assumption there.
But this trend of depicting ordinary people, probably dealing with various other stressors, just trying to go about their normal days and not intentionally interfering with others, forced into a standoff where they either back down and allow themselves to be trod upon, or they stand their ground and get mobbed by an uncaring internet posse for their 'racism'... it is antisocial in the extreme, if you ask me.
And there's no obvious way to restrict it other than, perhaps make it broadly illegal to publish videos taken of other people in public places, which is surely going to be impossible to enforce at the end of the day.
faceh
2yr ago
The right isn't gonna accept trans people no matter what at this point, when you start calling people pedophiles the conversation is kind of over.
When you openly and blatantly state your intent to convert people's children to an ideologically driven belief system backed by the power of the state, then no conversation is possible. Arguably it never started.
"We don't have to convince YOU of anything, we'll just teach your kids to hate your beliefs and we may convince a few of them to undergo invasive surgery to alter their very personal identity, against YOUR wishes."
Explain to me how there's any room for negotiation when such a position has been moved to the forefront of one side's platform?
I don't have well-articulated thoughts on it yet, but the entire industry of golf, even outside the professional players, is maybe one of the last vestiges of 'elite' culture which hasn't been commodified down to a complete premium mediocre experience. Okay, we have to acknowledge that places like Topgolf attempt to distill the experience down to a mere amusement in the vein of bowling, but nobody, I wager, would consider it a substitute for actual golfing.
As you indicate, the lack of profit motive is obvious because the core of the industry is supported by the wealth of it's patrons, it has no need to scramble for peasant dollars. It stands to gain far more by catering to whales than relative minnows.
It is accessible to the common man in a way that, e.g. polo or downhill skiing (or on the extreme high end, Formula One Racing) certainly are not. You can practice the skills for <$20 a day at your local driving range. But it also has a near infinite cap on how much you could spend on the hobby, from top-of-the-line clubs made of exotic alloys and carbon fiber, to customized golf carts, to weekly lessons with top-skill experts. Somehow both the image of beer-chugging frat boys tooling drunkenly around the course in carts and the image of staid professionals, including CEOs of billion dollar companies and heads of state hashing out the details of vital financial/political matters between strokes can coexist here without contradiction.
And yet, AND YET, a guy who puts in the hours of practice using thrift-store clubs (that's where mine came from, growing up) will almost always win over the player who merely spent the first guy's yearly salary on equipment.
The very existence of golf courses are effectively a huge signal of the excess wealth your country produces. "We spend exorbitant amounts of money on meticulously maintaining 150+ acres of land not for growing crops, or industrial purposes, or even mass recreational games, but rather to let people wack tiny balls around in groups of 4." When you can literally devote huge swaths of prime real estate to 'nonproductive' use, you are flexing quite the surplus of capital.
It is also one of the few sports where traveling around to play at different facilities really means something as each one is designed to have unique features that will actually challenge you to adapt, rather than rigid uniformity.
There's also a delightfully nerdy aspect to it, given how many independent variables one encounters during the course of play, and slight alterations in any one of those variables (wind speed, the deflection angle of your wrist upon impact with the ball, the slope of the green, to say nothing of which club you select) can have outsized influence on the result.
And I'm not even a golf aficionado. I prefer Disc Golf as an actual hobby. But as hobbies go, there's virtually no downside, in our current culture, to being moderately competent at golfing and at least minimally conversant in the current professional scene (i.e. be able to name a few top players other than Tiger Woods, and their recent performance), since the interest can cross so many other cultural barriers, and you genuinely never know when you might get invited on a golf outing by someone influential whom you might want to make inroads with.
faceh
2yr ago
I feel like it should be utterly self-evident why a class of aspiring lawyers should be capable of listening to the words of a party they oppose with enough respect to let them give their whole argument in peace, and then responding in kind, without resorting to shouting them down or implicitly threatening their safety.
And that's before accounting for the fact that it's a Federal Judge doing the speaking.
Literally the whole point of having a legal system is to allow civil dispute resolution where each party is heard and the winning party determined according to set rules which usually don't account for "we'll be really angry at you if you don't decide in our favor."
This is largely the reason why Judges sitting on the Bench are kept completely separate from the public, don't walk through the public hallways, and generally have their personal information kept confidential and not publicly available. Because miscreants would use implied or explicit threats to get them to change their rulings.
Of course we've got law grads who are full attorneys throwing molotovs and attending active riots (HOPEFULLY in observer capacity) so I dunno, seems like this is just going to get worse when these guys graduate.
I'll say, I honestly don't know what these students expect will happen when they get into actual legal practice and it turns out ambush tactics and mass social shaming not only won't work but it'll lead to bar complaints and possible license suspension very quickly.
And finally, I flip my lid over the "counter-protesting is free speech" and justifying the heckler's veto logic. Free speech implies reciprocal obligations. You don't shout over somebody else when they're given a platform then claim that because you're louder your speech means more.
Or more simply put, knowingly interfering with another person's speech (especially when they have a willing audience) implicitly forfeits whatever claim you had to being permitted to speak freely. If you're in a court hearing and you loudly scream every time the other attorney is presenting arguments... you don't win the case by default, surprisingly enough.
Not the first time The Federalist Society has caused a kerfuffle at Stanford:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/06/federalist-society-stanford.html
In a sense, I have to applaud those FedSoc students for continuing to position themselves outside the local Overton Window.
Has anyone else noticed a clear "vibe shift" on trans issues recently?
I think Trans issues have been the 'high water mark' for Social Justice, and the tide may not be receding but people are not going to let this particular dam actually break. It feels like we're in a 'bargaining' stage where we are trying figure out how to slot Trans people into society in a way that doesn't reject their existence but also doesn't sacrifice, e.g. women's sports, childrens' puberty, and Religious freedom in the process.
JK Rowling probably deserves some sort of credit for giving otherwise progressive women a rallying point on this matter that doesn't require directly cooperating with the right.
Is it going to go all the way? Will trans issues be seen as the weird 2010s, early 2020s political project that had ardent supporters, but eventually withered away and died like the desegregation bussing movement?
I've made this point before. There was a time when State-Enforced eugenics was a progressive policy goal. (that thread was on the same topic as this one, funny enough)
THAT got completely abandoned. Alcohol Prohibition was also a progressive goal too (crossover with evangelicals, though). I bet the 'healthy at any size' movement goes the same way now that Ozempic is making it much easier to not be obese.
When progressives fail in their goals, they don't admit defeat. They write it off, avoid mentioning it again and may even pretend it was never their idea... unless they hold onto it and try to bring it up again later on. When they win, they just write the history to make it seem inevitable.
So to me, the question becomes, if they 'lose' now, will they try again in 10 years? Or is this project be utterly abandoned.
I suppose you can defend the heavy-handedness if your overriding priority is primarily to tamp down on the handful of actual voter fraud that takes place.
Perhaps we can gain some insight into Desantis' mindset by looking at the 2018 election:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_elections
Desantis won by the veritable skin of his teeth by 33,000 votes out of 8 million cast.
Rick Scott won his Senate race by about 10k votes.
Nikki Fried, the ONLY Democrat to win an executive office, won by 6,000 votes.
These are outcomes that could be swung, potentially, by one county in the state being manipulated or screwing up a count.
And guess what happened in Broward County in 2018?
Half of Broward County’s election precincts reported more ballots cast than the number of voters. Backlogs in processing mail ballots snarled reporting of results.
Confusing ballot design may have led thousands of voters to inadvertently skip an important contest.
Money was wasted on unneeded blank ballots, which weren’t adequately tracked and were eventually destroyed.
After election day, auditors found the recount was plagued by poor planning, inadequate staffing and equipment, and poor quality control.
And the money quote:
“We conclude that the November 2018 election was not efficiently and effectively conducted,” Melton wrote in to county commissioners. “Based on the totality of these issues, we are unable to provide assurance over the accuracy of the November 2018 election results as reported.”
Oh, and lets not forget that Rick Scott very directly claimed the election was being stolen. He and Stacey Abrams were two years ahead of Trump on applying this tactic.
Broward singlehandedly delayed the final outcome of multiple races and from the look of things had gaping holes in their system that COULD have been exploited. Oh, and it's heavily and reliably a blue county.
Actually, Palm Beach County also delayed it. Also another heavily blue area.
One of Desantis' first actions upon taking office was removing and replacing the Broward and Palm Beach County Election supervisors.
And, 'strangely,' Broward and Palm Beach County had no discrepancies or delays in the 2020 election. Further, Florida went more heavily Republican than usual, including more towards Trump than expected.
Broward County has almost 2 milllion citizens, this is not a small podunk area that we're talking about. Palm Beach has 1.5 million.
And while Desantis is going to walk to an easy victory this time, I can't imagine he wants to allow ANY room for doubt in the sanctity of the election should any races come down to the wire.
So in light of all this, perhaps it makes sense why Desantis might conclude that arresting 20 people is worth it for the possible upside of dissuading electoral shenanigans throughout the state?
Is dissuading a handful of bad actors worth putting some innocent people in jail? Worth dissuading large swathes of the population from legally voting? If so, say so.
I dunno. I think he cares very little that those twenty guys got misled, but cares a lot about ensuring he doesn't have to worry as much about catching electoral fraud after the fact.
So this action is a cheap way to possibly pre-emptively solve an issue that could arise.
Going along on the premise that because voter fraud has not been detected in the past and therefore is not likely to occur in the future seems like an unwise tactic in an environment as adversarial as this one.
It's not like there's not ample historical precedent of organized efforts to fraudulently influence election outcomes. Oh, also recent precedent.
In June 2022, the defendant admitted in court to bribing the Judge of Elections for the 39th Ward, 36th Division in South Philadelphia in a fraudulent scheme over several years. Myers admitted to bribing the election official to illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections. Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons. Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as “consulting fees,” and then use portions of these funds to pay election officials to tamper with election results.
Just because it's 'rare' doesn't mean, when it happens, it won't have significant impact.
Can't imagine why you'd want to chance it in a state where races can be extremely close.
These charges were patently frivolous from the very start but setting that aside they don't even make sense from the political grandstanding perspective. Bewildering.
Think on the meta level just a bit. As in, not about whether these twenty people themselves were or were not intentionally trying to commit a crime, and catching them is proof of anything.
From a pure signalling standpoint, if you want to prevent people from knowingly casting illegal votes and demonstrate that you are capable of enforcing this rule (i.e. detecting illegal votes), then yes, you have to arrest people who do cast illegal votes, even if they possess a defense for the action.
Especially since "I was told it was legal to cast my vote" is such an easy defense to invoke and hard to disprove otherwise. You show that you will STILL investigate such situations and try to verify the defense as valid.
Do you think that this action will, on the margins, increase or decrease the chances of someone attempting actual voter fraud in the 2022 elections in Florida?
Or would the effect be entirely minimal and worth disregarding?
Its a point I've made before.
Power law distributions rule EVERYTHING around you if you're younger and haven't had decades of time to cement your status and build a pile of wealth. And yes, this has almost always been true, but now its simply a known fact of life for the Zoomers. Its the air they breathe, the water they swim in. Every activity they could possibly participate in is subject to a panopticon of algorithms that will rank their performance and often publish it for easy observation, and they are surrounded by peers who are competing as hard as possible to not be left behind.
Algorithms have ruled everything the Gen Zers have done since they were young, from Video Games to Dating to School to Jobs.
And this means they're pretty much attuned to the Molochian incentives over their entire lives, and this thus sets their expectations for how the rest of their lives will turn out (spoiler: not great unless they get rich enough to just opt out of the race).
Yes, Algorithms have always been there, but now its more legible than ever. Or, ironically, less legible since most places keep their algos as black boxes. Its not like you can just ask "Why didn't you hire me?" "Oh, I don't like your tattoos/lack of experience/general attitude." Its always a nonspecific dismissal that even they can't explain.
So they're told to suck it up and try harder, keep going until they get a yes, etc. etc., but they're missing the 'feedback' part that might help them zero in on why they're failing and getting rejected. And I think the hard truth is just that everyone is TRYING to capture the top 20% performers across the board, so anyone not in the top 20% performance bracket for any given category is going to be left out, and very confused as to what their real options are.
One hopeful use case for AI if it does not end all our problems at once (we're all dead, or its utopia) is it should be extremely good at helping match people with positions that work best for them given their preferences and the other party's needs. An effective 'job hunt' AI could check all available jobs against all available applicants and sort out which are best suited to which, AND given constructive feedback as to why certain applicants aren't suitable or what they can do to improve. Same for dating, in theory, although the thought of AI mediated dating/mating disgusts me on a visceral level. Hmm.
I think one of the points of near consensus on The Motte is a general hyper-suspicion to this kind of disingenuous koombayah style of writing.
I'd mostly agree.
It personally sets my teeth on edge to read something that clearly wants to inspire strong emotions in the reader or perhaps persuade them of something but doesn't actually speak of anything that is happening to be excited about.
Its the difference between saying "We've received and analyzed the test results which have provided us with an unparalleled depth of understanding regarding the intricate nuances of your overall health and physiological dynamics. The insights gained from this process are both illuminating and inspiring, offering an exciting roadmap for continued progress and optimization. We are deeply committed to partnering with you on this transformative journey, leveraging future interactions to refine our approach, enhance the granularity of our feedback, and will ensure you remain in top condition in the coming decades!"
(ironically, I used ChatGPT to generate the most corpo-speak version of that sentence possible)
vs. "The test came back negative. You're cancer free, congrats!"
The first just desperately wants you to feel good without delivering the information you actually would like to hear that would make you happy. The second actually gives you the reason to be happy because there's a tangible fact about the world that is 'good,' and you just needed to hear it said.
I also note that there are no concrete examples of how their products have improved productivity for any companies already. Either the examples they have are underwhelming or maybe they aren't allowed to discuss it? Otherwise why not talk about tangible achievements?
I'm increasingly annoyed when the AI 'insiders' will speak reverently about how they're instantiating a Godhead that will relieve us of all the miserable burdens of our mortal existence in the near future, but will get hugely cagey about how that's actually being done or why we can trust them do to his correctly. They talk about things in religious/spiritual terms when telling us what the future holds, but hew to corpo-speak and remain businesslike when asked about present status.
It reads like a particularly opaque sort of intentional hype cycle that might be mostly designed to inspire us to transfer tons of wealth to them before AI progress stalls out for a while.
A few disparate thoughts.
I suspect that the arrest of the Telegram guy in France was a trial balloon/shot across the bow to show that Western Countries can use a, for lack of a better term, "Chinese-Style" authority to physically detain extremely wealthy oligarchs and celebrities to try to reign in their open resistance to government edicts. Compare the "Russian-style" authority where they just chuck you out a window or crash your plane.
My model of how centralized governments think holds that NO such government will tolerate a serious power base outside of its own control, which includes any 'platform' or organization that, if activated, could attempt to seize political control of said government from the current holders (organizing to vote for particular candidates counts too!). The instant such an alternative power base seems to arise, the existing government will seek to either seize it, destroy it, or disrupt it.
They will do so with even more urgency in times of war or serious unrest, and we're sliding into such times.
It was all fun and games when tech companies were helping produce more wealth and providing said government with neat tools to e.g. surveil the public and detect crimes, or analyze economic data, or better weapons to fight their enemies. But the balance of power in the relationship is becoming untenable... from the government's point of view.
I believe the U.S. and European governments strongly feel like the tech industry represents such a power base, or at least that they provide the platforms that dissidents and political opponents can use to organize their supporters into effective movements that can then undermine existing power bases. And said governments can pay lip service to classical liberal ideals while plotting to disrupt those opponents and bring those platforms to heel all the same. End of the day this will mean threatening the people in charge of and operating those platforms with serious consequences. Which is hard to do if those people are extremely wealthy and generally popular, and your country has laws that inhibit the government from arresting citizens and taking their stuff on a whim.
The one thing I know for certain is that they will NOT simply stand by and allow power to accrue outside their hands until it actually destabilizes their authority.
Finally, I have literally never felt quite this much shivering terror at the realization that the group who believes in something like unrestricted free speech even and ESPECIALLY against the efforts of government to 'protect' us... is a tiny school of fish in a sea of indifference, patrolled by many censorious sharks.
I was aware that globally the concept or ideal of free speech was vastly a minority preference, but I didn't have much concern about what a Cameroonian or Indonesian thought was okay to say or not say. But even in the West, even in the United States itself it feels like I've got maybe 20% of the population that would honestly vote for a provision protecting free speech if one didn't already exist.
The left was never in favor of it but now they've gained enough institutional control to silence enemies on various platforms, the liberals have abandoned it in the name of stopping or getting Trump, the moderates just want to grill, and the conservatives/MAGA are generally shaky allies on this particular point.
With all the tools for censorship that are now turnkey ready to implement across the board, starts to feel like it is just a question of whom will be in charge when the governments of the world lock down speech entirely.
Amazing how consistent the pattern is these days.
Iowahawkblog said it best in 2015
-
Identify a respected institution.
-
kill it.
-
gut it.
-
wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
Some small news/analysis outlet will find some audience and gain traction for producing quality, mostly unbiased, and interesting/unique content, which forms the reputation on which its' appeal rests.
The outlet hits a critical mass of audience/attention, then some known lefty/prog investors buy out the brand, and in short order remake it into left-leaning opinion mouthpiece #418210, BUT they try to demand everyone treat it as just as reliable and quality as before, and maybe they even make a vague attempt to retain what made it unique in the first place.
In many cases, it dies not long thereafter.
Happened to Axios most recently, also happened to Vice. Also the Onion but I can't count them as a 'reliable' media brand.
FiveThirtyEight ALWAYS had a detectable liberal bias and yet the analysis they did, the actual numbers, at least seemed to reflect underlying reality and they weren't afraid to report conclusions that were disfavorable for Dems. My 'problem' with them was usually their intentional selection of issues to analyze that were pretty much only relevant to left-leaning readers, and the framing of everything as "we all know that [progressive opinion] is the best one, but the polls show that support for it is weaker than we'd like..."
Unless I'm misremembering, Rasmussen was one of the most accurate predictors of the 2020 election results (as reported by The Washington Post no less):
Almost all of the remaining polls — except the Rasmussen poll released Nov. 1 — overestimated support for Biden. Taken as a group, the average bias in the 2020 polls overall is -0.085, which is not statistically significant. However, these five polls’ pro-Democratic bias is statistically significant: Economist/YouGov, CNBC/Change Research, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, USC Dornslife, and Quinnipiac.
Even FiveThirtyEight itself finds them overall rather accurate. Indeed, seems like their tilt towards the GOP often counteracts whatever factor seems to make certain conservative opinions appear underrepresented.
So it seems absurd to select THAT ONE of all the options to question their reliability and literally threaten with expulsion if they don't explain themselves.
The only thing that could make this situation more farcical as a culture war issue is if the whole point of this move was to drive the value of the Rasmussen brand down so that it can be purchased by lefty/prog investors and they can pull the exact same game by converting Rasmussen itself into a prog mouthpiece.
I actually 100% believe that is at least part of the intent, if they thought they could acquire it and use it to their ends, they already would have.
Anyhow, Conquest's Second Law remains an excellent heuristic.
faceh
2yr ago
If you left race entirely out of it, there is zero doubt that it is MORE plausible for a gang of teens to randomly confront a female nurse to pressure her into giving up a rental bike (which I gather don't cost much to rent) than the reverse.
Because the story that some random pregnant nurse decided to intentionally confront a gang of teenagers to steal one of their bikes is utterly absurd on it's face. Not impossible, but in the world we live in, 99/100 times you bet the other way.
Bringing race into it doesn't update one's priors that much, but it definitely updates them in the same direction.
faceh
2yr ago
If anything it's the opposite. The progressives are running scared. For every year since 1972, that's for half a century now, Gallup has run a poll on institutional trust that asks people to what degree they expect the media, the government, academia, etc... to report facts "fully, accurately, and fairly". The available answers are; a Great deal, a Fair amount, Not very much, and Not at all. Well the results for 2022 have just been released and people who answered "not at all" for trust in mass media is at 38%. This has been characterized by the talking heads, and many rationalists as "a crisis of sense making" but I don't really see it that way. Sounds more like healthy skepticism if you ask me.
And this hasn't actually caused the progressive agenda to slow down one iota.
Indeed, it has accelerated in the past couple decades, even as institutional trust declined rapidly!
I think the point is that evidence that people are skeptical and resistant to institutional control is weakly associated with the conclusion "Progressives are in a materially weaker position than they were 50 years ago."
If the progressives/elites/establishment are less trusted now, they are still capable of exercising increasingly naked power to bring about the outcomes they prefer, and they are still capable of preventing red tribe from actually using the levers of power if they gain access to them.
Progressive voices, even when completely, utterly, batshit insane and called out as such, are still elevated and given positions of authority over policies that effect 'normal' people. Any nominally right-wing voice that crosses a few particular lines is nigh-instantly silenced and in some cases all their possible platforms are obliterated in one go (shoutout to Alex Jones as the canary in this coal mine).
Will this always remain the case? Not necessarily, but the idea that a progressive tide is somehow receding and leaving room for right-wingers to rise doesn't seem borne out by the evidence.
I do not see any reason why the government could not make an identical argument if an "administrative error" meant they deported a United States citizen.
Here's a small hint, U.S. Citizens are 'owed' certain 'duties' by 'their' (key word) Government. Non-citizens (once they've been determined to be such) are not.
Here's the actual Federal Law on the matter:
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title22/chapter23&edition=prelim
And the quote:
§1731. Protection to naturalized citizens abroad
All naturalized citizens of the United States while in foreign countries are entitled to and shall receive from this Government the same protection of persons and property which is accorded to native-born citizens.
Bonus points:
§1732. Release of citizens imprisoned by foreign governments
Whenever it is made known to the President that any citizen of the United States has been unjustly deprived of his liberty by or under the authority of any foreign government, it shall be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that government the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen...
Granted, what this looks like in practice is up for debate. What does "unjustly deprived" mean?
I'll reiterate the point I already made that I think the only way the Administration gets any heavy pushback on these actions is if they accidentally deport an actual U.S. citizen, who is then tangibly, physically harmed or killed while in custody, where-ever that is.
I actually agree that these measures are pretty draconian, but its hard to feel like "due process" is a major concern.
It'd be MUCH, MUCH easier to get Due Process if these folks, you know, followed the process and entered the country via the channels established to keep track of them and grant them permission to be here, so they can have a 'known' status.
"I intentionally skipped the procedural steps that would have established my right to stay in the country, but don't you DARE skip the procedural steps that would delay my inevitable removal from the country" is not a winning argument, I daresay.
faceh
4mo ago
As one of those libertarian types who has been saying for over a decade that everyone, on left and right, should value free speech because it protects you when your ideas are unpopular, this comment just makes me feel smug.
I mean, I don't believe its accurate. I haven't seen anything outright censorious from the current regime, but if lefties believe they're being censored, they're just showing me that I was right all along.
So thanks, I guess. What lessons might we take away?
faceh
1yr ago
I can say that at the state level, there is a tactic law enforcement uses with regards to confidential informants/insiders/undercover officers to avoid blowing their cover is to put them through a prosecution that inevitably results in probation, on paper, which means as long as they don't get arrested again they'll never be in a jail but at least it looks like they got punished along with the rest.
To be a proper Bayesian I'd need to hear the base rate for how many J6 Defendants got probation sentences, but this does nudge up my belief that Ray Epps was, in some sense or another, involved with the Feds.
I don't hesitate to say that the Bruen decision was a masterstroke, especially in the context of advancing an Originalist interpretation of the Constitution.
It 'sneaks' in the idea that the rules mean what they people who wrote them intended them to mean, since presumably the people who wrote the Constitution did so with the intention of making it comply with those other rules and regulations that existed around the time all of this was written, and further if they tolerated a particular rule after the Constitution was ratified, you can certainly argue they didn't intend for the Constitution to contradict those rules, regardless of any ambiguities that may exist.
I'm more of a pure textualist myself, but I do agree with the idea that the rules were written with a particular meaning in mind, and that the proper way to 'change' the rules is... to follow the procedure for changing them. So taking the approach that the rules can just be reinterpreted over and over again, especially in ways that generate greater ambiguity is, in my view, completely antithetical to the idea of having written rules in the first place.
And just about the only way to reduce ambiguity is to ground your interpretive standard on something firm enough to form a valid premise for further legal reasoning. Yes you will never be able to reach the perfect a priori premises from which all else will flow, but anything that doesn't at least directly build off of the original text is way too ad hoc to provide a predictable/reliable jurisprudence, especially as your system of interlocking precedents gets more complex. In my genuine opinion, anyway. This is why I agree with Dobbs overturning Roe irrespective of my beliefs about abortion.
So in short, Bruen's requirement that government has to demonstrate that their restrictions on firearms rights are in keeping with traditional, long-accepted regulations going back to (ideally) the original founding of the country puts the burden of proof in the right place. The State doesn't have a heavy burden, it's just a very restrictive framework to work within... which to me is the point of having those restrictions.
And if we (i.e. the people of the country) can't agree that looking at the rules in place when our Nation was formally founded is at least a guideline for figuring out what the actual words in the document meant, then we're fundamentally questioning the validity of the document itself. Which is fine with me, but for some reason people want to maintain the validity of the document whilst changing the rules it contains to suit their purposes.
If Bruen is carried through to its logical conclusion, we should probably expect that we'll be getting legal machine guns (new ones, not grandfathered) in the not-too-distant future.
If the logic behind Bruen is applied to other aspects of the Constitution, a lot of precedents that are nearly a century old are potentially on the chopping block. And oh boy Justice Thomas seems positively GIDDY to start swinging that axe.
And being clear, I think this creates an interesting double-bind if you want to keep some of those precedents in place. "You can't touch these cases, they've been around for decades!" is easily rebutted by "the standard we're now using to examine those cases goes back a whole century or so before those cases were decided, so if age is the question, this standard wins." You'd have a hard time arguing "the older a judicial precedent is the more deference the Court should grant it!" AND say "but times change and the law has to change with it."
Hence the progressive Justices tend to appeal to more nebulous concepts when reaching a decision, allowing for reconsideration later.
The win for the left here was to house the migrants for a while, refuse to raise a fuss about it, quietly find new accommodations for them and send them along, meanwhile make certain changes to ensure that no more migrants flights could land without forewarning.
The actions they're taking seem to be revealing that they REALLY take it personally when the GOP manages to slip a trick by them that doesn't get leaked in advance and so puts them on the defensive. As well it should, since this indicates that Desantis has REALLY solid OpSec, unlike Trump. This is also keeping the issue of illegal immigration on the forefront of the national discourse, which may be preferable to them to avoid talking about the economy but also makes the issues at the border more salient for voters.
This is free publicity keeping Desantis in the national spotlight. He doesn't really need it to win his election this year, that's all but a foregone conclusion.
But they're absolutely helping him build his legend for 'future endeavors' and they're insane if they think he didn't account for this particular reaction and doesn't have a countermove already prepped.
But as we have seen, the left's rule these days is that they NEVER have to take an L, even when doing so is the sensible route. Doubling and tripling down to prove they're not owned is the tactic du jour.
See also: the Supreme Court handing down a ruling that strengthens 2A protections and New York and California immediately implementing more firearms restrictions which are mostly going to be struck down (and strengthen the legal precedent) and do little but piss in the eye of the pro-gunners who might otherwise vote Blue. Not to mention Biden talking up an assault weapons ban.
How about "Firearm ownership is literally written into the founding document of this country as a fundamental right and thus we are literally entitled to ignore your pleas for gun control unless and until you can garner sufficient political support to amend said document."
Since "we're trying to overturn a civil right that the very founders of the country thought important enough to specifically enshrine AND ignore the actual procedure for making changes to the founding document in the effort" isn't exactly inspiring either, and it's certainly accurate to describe the gun-control movement's approach to the issue.
Or in short, the deal is that we follow the rules set forth when the nation was created, and those rules happen to include this particular provision for gun rights, so amend it or, literally, GTFO to a country that is more politically suitable to your own beliefs.
More options
Context Copy link