wingdingspringking
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User ID: 1348
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
Cheating in what sense of the word? Influence campaigns? Those have been run by everyone. Intelligence agencies, state actors, private companies, etc. Anyone who has something to gain by one administration winning can try and convince people. That's how the system runs.
But if by cheating you mean what Trump keeps claiming, which is that large numbers of fake ballots are being added to the count, then no, I do not believe it. I would need to see pretty strong evidence to substantiate this claim.
The reason I'm skeptical is because cheating in such a way would require a huge number of people keeping silent. Given that any one of them would stand to gain a lot by defecting, it really seems unlikely that all would keep silent. Contrast this with something like Epstein being killed. Do I think that was a conspiracy? Quite possibly. The number of people involved was small. That would have been much easier to keep under wraps.
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
I agree. I think an independent judiciary is one of the better aspects of the US government system, and I'd really hate to see it done away with. That being said, in my mind, it comes down to probabilities. I think simply allowing Trump to win after having attempted to circumvent the election results the first time would signal that doing so is now fair game. I think we would see far fewer uncontested elections. And I think ultimately it could lead to electoral violence in the fairly near future.
On the other hand, I think the probability of a Democratic sweep is relatively low. Even in the case of a Democratic trifecta, I think the likelihood that all senate Democrats would be onboard with something like this is very low. And finally, if that law did somehow pass, I suspect that it would then be held up in courts for a very long time before being implemented, if not struck down entirely. In other words, the risk of the worst case scenario occurring there is extremely low.
So by that measure, the safer path is to go with Harris (and all republicans down ballot). It's certainly not a pleasant vote. But I'd like to think the reasoning behind it is sound.
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
"Should" in what sense of the word? In an ideal world? Sure. In actuality, organizations act in their own interest. This is true for state agencies, private organizations, sovereign states, etc.
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
Sure, there are some dirty tactics used with absentee ballots. I'm actually all for election security reform. I have no problem with voter ID requirements.
My problem is that the more grandiose claims of election interference are a lot harder to believe. Claims that the election was stolen by fake ballots being added to the count. Claims that dead people were voting in sufficient numbers to swing the election. I've never seen anything that supports these claims with sufficient evidence to be convincing.
As for the "gains", well, if you had evidence of a conspiracy to overturn a US Presidential election, that evidence could be used to get you almost anything you could want. Huge amounts of money, either from the right or from foreign powers. National fame. Or maybe just assuaging your own guilt. If you had thousands of people involved in something like this, you don't think a single one of them would defect?
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
To be fair, I'm strongly against changing the Supreme Court. The difference there is that the Democrats are still working within the framework of government that exists. The constitution gives the president the right to appoint justices, and there is no cap to the number. Would it be a break with tradition to pack the court? Yes. Would i support an amendment capping the number of justices? Also yes. But the fact remains that everything being done is following a precedent that has existed for quite some time. Partisan justices are nothing new. Even threats of court packing are nothing new (FDR).
When you start acting outside of the institutional framework, you get into really dangerous territory, especially with respect to elections. The threat of escalation is high. If one side does something, the other side will do it too. I really don't want to see every election being questioned by the loosing side. If that happens, it's only a matter of time before we get real political violence.
wingdingspringking
1yr ago
I agree the effect on underclass men would be less than ideal, but it would likely not lead to increased violence. From a societal standpoint that still seems to be a more desirable outcome.
wingdingspringking
1mo ago
I'm a little confused about what you are replying to. I certainly never said that online dating isn't prevalent. Nor did I make any generalized statements about what happens offline. My point was simply that spending some time and effort searching for alternative dating pools is probably more worthwhile than spending that same time and effort on an easily accessible dating pool with poor outcomes.
Let's look at specifics. A club is a poor substitute for online dating, because you get very little time to interact with someone. So it requires people to make the same snap judgements that they do online. A better alternative is something that is going to put you in repeated contact with the same people over and over. That is traditionally how relationships have formed throughout most of human history. You also probably want to choose something where the odds are your favor.
Assuming you are a guy, there are any number of classes, part time jobs, volunteer work, or group activities in female dominated areas that would probably accomplish this. And if the first one doesn't work, you can easily keep trying others until you find one that does. It requires some effort and strategy. But if the alternative is repeated disappointment with dating apps, it certainly seems like the better option.
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
Violence in the "state's monopoly on violence" sense of the word. If the state is physically preventing you from doing something you are otherwise physically capable of doing, that is the state exercising said monopoly. Were the state to do that, we would likely see real violence afterwards.
If the state is merely making it harder to get to polling stations, well, they already do that. Here's a sensationalized news story about how the right is making it harder for minorities to vote by selectively closing polling stations. In actuality, I'm quite sure that both sides do this when they have control over where to place polling stations. That's the nature of politics. Anything that hasn't specifically been banned is in play.
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
I would vote for someone like that in a heartbeat. So would a lot of people I know. I really hoped that it would go more in that direction after the 2020 election. And I somehow still hope that it will go in that direction after this election. That may be unwarranted optimism. But I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibilities.
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
No, an autocracy requires an autocrat. The democrats are most definitely an aristocracy. They have different factions that vie for power and influence. Also, all of those things you mentioned are within the realm of legal possibility. Do I support them? No. Are they legally tenable within the US framework of government with enough votes? Yes. Gerrymandering is perhaps the best example of this. And both sides do it.
In contrast, acting to subvert faith in/circumvent the legal means of transferring power is not only breaking the rules of the system, it threatens to undermine the whole thing.
wingdingspringking
1yr ago
The difference is that is a temporary imbalance. It will correct itself within a generation. If you imposed it at the genetic level, the results would play out over a much longer period.
wingdingspringking
1yr ago
I've seen video broadcasts of organized, uniformed thugs publicly celebrating the political murder of someone very much like me, with the tacit support of a national political party, and the contented acquiescence of "moderates" everywhere
This line of reasoning suffers from two flaws in my mind. First, scale. This type of indecent is exceedingly rare. I think a very common tactic in modern political debates is to zoom in on a horrific incident, and then imply that this type of even is happening at a national scale. This works because the human mind is bad with intuition/induction at the scale of nation states. That doesn't make it a valid point though.
Secondly, I don't agree with your point about tacit support. In order to tacitly support something, you have to at least be aware of it. The vast majority of people have never heard of these incidents. Admittedly this is a bit of a semantic argument, since you could just as easily say that ignorance is tacit support. But in my mind that should be reserved for situations where someone becomes vaguely aware of a problem but chooses not to pursue it further due to lack of concern.
Well, it's a shot in the dark, but my guess is that you are a fairly average moderate light-blue Blue Triber, with some serious doubts about the excesses of the Social Justice movement and considerable nostalgia for the 90s-2000s era.
I suppose that is a reasonable assumption given the forum, but it's a bit off the mark. For the purposes of this discussion, let's say I have some strong traditionalist leanings. I think societies, governments, and cultures are inextricably linked, and they take a long time to evolve an equilibrium. I think that, once an equilibrium is lost, the resulting period of strife is typically pretty horrific. Given the massive technological and social changes that have occurred over the last several decades, I'm not sure that the previous equilibrium can be restored. But I would certainly rather try to do that than forage ahead with creating a new balance completely from scratch, given what the historical precedents for that look like.
Sinkholes form over years or decades, but the part where the ground opens up and swallows your house with your entire family inside can happen in seconds. Something building up slowly does not mean it remains slow once it starts rolling.
I would imagine this is the fundamental difference in our assessment of the situation. You see the sinkhole as already having caved in. I don't. Aside from a palpable amount of discontent and some unsustainable social norms, our society is still functioning. We don't live in a failed state. The amount that we still stand to loose is enormous.
wingdingspringking
1yr ago
At the risk of sounding a little preachy, I don't think your us vs them mentality is doing you any favors here. I'm not sure what you think my views are, but I'm pretty sure the "you" described above doesn't encapsulate them particularly well. I'm not if favor of moving in the current direction and haven't been in a long time.
I am, however in favor of moving slowly. Despite what you may think, we did not end up in this situation overnight. Institutions have moved away from their traditional roles bit by bit over the last several decades. If we want to reverse any of this with any semblance of our current society intact, the progress is going to be equally slow. Thinking that we can quickly fix anything by tearing institutions apart is just going to make the situation far worse. We'll loose what we still have.
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
Or maybe a sufficient number of the people backing him are peeled away by some other movement. Just because the competition this cycle was weak doesn't mean it always will be.
Or maybe Trump has a stroke. Or maybe age takes its toll and he starts having that same vacant look Biden does. Assuming that an individual low likelihood event wont happen may be safe. But assuming no low likelihood events will happen is not.
wingdingspringking
1yr ago
We have lost some function of some important institutions, but if you want to see what total loss looks like, take a look at Somalia for much of the last 30 years. The government functions in a small area around the capital, and everywhere else is run by warlords. There are no functioning institutions at all. Are you genuinely arguing that the US is in this same situation?
There is still a lot that can be lost.
wingdingspringking
2yr ago
I'm not talking about success or failure from an evolutionary point of view, but from a societal point of view. From that vantage point, success is somewhat equated with levels of material comfort or success. But the evolutionary forces that promote the transmission of behavior to offspring make it very difficult to alter these outcomes for people whose parents "failed" from a societal point of view.
wingdingspringking
1mo ago
My initial thought was that it was some form of sexually antagonistic selection. Self-pity in women isn't nearly as detrimental to courtship as it is in men. And it does work really well as a defense mechanism. Given that it isn't terribly important for lower tier males to reproduce from an evolutionary standpoint, having such a defense mechanism that helps women survive at the expense of some men is probably a good tradeoff.
wingdingspringking
8mo ago
What if they were to force them on a non-allied government? If completely unconstrained by world opinion/sanctions, Israel might do something like force march the entire population of Gaza into Lebanon and then just annex Gaza. It's not like there's much Lebanon/Hezbollah could do to stop it.
To be fair, I don't think the current government is capable of human rights abuses on that scale despite what its detractors might say. But after a few more iterations of the cycles of violence, who knows. Not to mention the fact that Israel's government is going to be increasingly fundamentalist as the ultra-orthodox become an ever larger segment of the population.
That's not exactly a good faith interpretation, but I'll answer it anyway. 12 years ago I didn't have sufficient experience with the world to realize that human nature makes utopias impossible. I think that's the fundamental fallacy of the left. And I think that as people get older (assuming they are willing to consider new viewpoints), they tend to accept that. Hence the old adage about people becoming more conservative as they age.
So no. I didn't care about "binders-full-of-women". I believed at the time what I had been taught that leftist policies could make the world better. I no longer believe that. That being said, I would like to hold on to some of what we currently have in terms of a society. And subverting faith in democracy is one of the fastest ways to lose that.
wingdingspringking
10mo ago
I hear a lot of people say that. It seems like a pretty big assumption. There are a lot of things that can happen over the next 4 years.
wingdingspringking
11mo ago
How low can they go? This is one of the few places in modern society where true Darwinism shines through. At some point, we've selected for the people whose reproductive drive is strong enough to overcome the hurdles presented to it by the modern world. At that point, rates go up.
wingdingspringking
1yr ago
I think there are quite a few tools that are there, but that are not being used. The problem is that for the last several decades, a lot of political attempts have been made to fix cultural problems. Culture, while maybe upstream of politics, is still downstream of economics. If there were ever any real economic efforts made to change culture, I think we'd see some interesting results. Such efforts would have to be sustained and coordinated though. So far that has proved elusive.
wingdingspringking
4mo ago
I think you're vastly underestimating what throwing the full power of the state at someone looks like. If you have full control over institutions, and the other side is going to pretend whatever you do is akin to killing babies, it basically means you have cart blanche to do what you want as long as you keep your base somewhat appeased. Trump seems to understand this. The old establishment didn't.
Media games/hearings to soften up support are a milquetoast response. Especially if your survival is on the line.
Given the difference between our current living situation in the US and that of a failed state like Somalia, I'd say we have a lot left to lose. Are the policies of the current administration chipping away at the foundations of society? Yes. Are they likely to cause its collapse in the next 4 years? Probably not.
As I said in the original post, I don't have any particular attachment to democracy. It's just the means that we chose to uphold the power of an aristocracy. What I do have an attachment to is the current system and everything that's been built on top of it. Is it long term stable? No. But nothing is long term stable. I'd like it to last as long as possible, since change to something new is likely to be violent and chaotic.
On a slightly more optimistic note, I don't agree that we have no control. The aristocracy is willing to grant the population a decent amount of say over cultural things in return for their economic hegemony. A lot of the idpol stuff on the left was selected for precisely because it doesn't interfere with the aristocracy owning things. So there's no reason to think they wouldn't be amenable to the culture moving in a different direction as long as they can still own everything.
If violence is being used to prevent voting, I really doubt anything we are saying matters. At that point we are inches away from armed civil conflict.
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