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Notes -
The vibes are a shiftin'
MAGA experienced a wave of euphoria from Trump's election until about around the time of the trade disputes. They felt like they were on top of the world, and that nothing could stop them. They notched a few wins against wokeness, but their major victory was in the realm of vibes.
It's increasingly seeming like those days are over. Scott Sumner's article details who's up and who's down over the past few weeks:
Who's Up:
-Neoliberals
-The experts
-TDSers
-The elite media
-Chinese and Canadian liberals
-Deficit hawks
-Principled conservative free speech advocates
-Integrity hawks
-Rules hawks
-Critics of bullying
Who's Down:
-Mercantilists
-The populists
-Anti-anti-trumpers
-Fox News
-Non-US nationalists
-Deficit doves
-Unprincipled conservative free speech advocates
-Issues people
-Autocracy advocates
-American exceptionalists
Edit for more opinions per moderator request: I agree with this article that the vibes have definitely shifted, as it's been clear in my (adversarial) conversations with MAGA that the mood has changed from combative (pre-election) to triumphalism (post election until a few weeks ago) and then back to combative with a hint of disillusionment (today). Any opposition movement is going to have principled believers and cynics, e.g. people who think we should have free speech as a general rule and people who only claim to like free speech but really want to censor their opponents when they come into power. Winning means these splits that could be swept under the rug get blown out into the open, and the pendulum starts swinging back the other direction. Hopefully we don't swing back to crazy wokeness, but I'd pretty much take any alternative at this point. A decade ago I would never have seen myself cheering for The Experts or The Media, but I've seen the alternative now, and it's just so much worse.
OK, we've lost some money from dumb economic policy. I've lost money, you've lost money. Stocks down. Schizo tariff policy is dumb.
But is this really worse than what the experts were cooking up in terms of DEI, mass immigration and green economics? Australia has been in an economic meltdown, GDP per capita fell bigly. Housing is massively unaffordable. No politicians have any answers except more plans to pump housing prices even higher, subsidizing first-home buyers. The ponzi marches on! The European economies have been wrecked by the EU. Britain is still being wrecked. Canada has been stagnating, universities turned to degree-mills, massive immigration, houses unaffordable, wages inadequate...
Why is it that schizo tariff policy is worse than deliberate, considered, orderly wrecking of the economy? Is it that famous quote from the Joker?
And I haven't even mentioned the social problems caused by these policies! London is what, 30% English? Isn't the capital of England supposed to be English? Isn't Birmingham supposed to have garbage picked up, it's supposed to be a rich industrial city, not a shithole? Aren't Western countries supposed to be high-trust societies? Isn't it bad when Biden brings millions of migrants into the US?
Trump is not perfect and he probably can't solve many if any of the challenges the US faces, while likely making many things worse. But the other side is fully committed to making things worse, they've worked hard on it and see it as virtuous. I consider DEI, expensive energy and mass migration as core policies of the mainstream right and left, everyone besides Trump and Trump-adjacent figures. As far as I'm concerned, these are bad policies.
Respectable, moderate, reasonable, orderly German centrists are working to raise the price of petrol and diesel and make workers poorer: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/incoming-german-government-from-hell
Yes but the notional balances of retirees accounts has gone down which is a great evil, whilst all these other evils were good for the amount of 0's on the spreadsheet and could be justified by magical thinking in other spreadsheets about fungibility of human labor.
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