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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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vice president isn't a normal job where you need experience. The "job" is basically to give TV interviews and make the main guy look good. Maybe run for president in the future, but not now. It's a very strange job. For that, he's as qualified as anyone.

Maybe run for president in the future, but not now.

The whole reason that Trump is winning right now is that 1/ Obama thought this way when picking his VP in 2008, and 2/ Biden thought this way when picking a VP in 2020. Choosing a VP is monumentally consequential for your party. You need to make sure you are choosing the right guy if you care at all about the future of your party. And how can you think you have taken the measure of a man to know where he will be in the next decade or two when he's already a completely different man from what he was a decade ago?

I kinda of agree. I don’t have anything against Vance specifically. He in fact may turn out wonderfully. I just don’t know him—at all. He hasn’t had the eye of Sauron on him so I can’t trust him.

It’s why I would’ve preferred RDS. Of course Trump feels (I think really unfairly) that RDS betrayed Trump so was never going to happen.

DeSantis has his strengths, but they were on COVID response and anti-woke. I don't expect him to deport anyone and I don't expect him to stand up to China.

He can stay right where he is, it seems to suit him. Or maybe unseat Rubio and join the Senate.

Covid to me is still a big deal. There needs to be accountability for that. RDS also runs a very competent Florida government.

Also RDS showed he would respond to a hostile media without cowering. No reason to think that would change.

He is a very competent administrator albeit not a very inspiring personality.

Yes, I agree with your points, but they don't tell me that he's going to shut down the border or be tough on China. Those were, are, and forever will be Trump's biggest selling points to me, and many others.

I would be happy with him if I thought he would accomplish those things. I don't, especially when it comes to China.

What on earth makes you think Trump is going to be tough on China? He's not even supporting the TikTok ban.

And why should he?

In many respects, the TikTok ban seems less like 'tough on China' and more like the Democratic Party trying to assert control of yet another media company, after having spent decades with a partisan-media company alliance that has been used to the detriment of their political opponents.

There's plenty to dislike about social media like Tiktok, but the part that the Democrats were reacting to wasn't actual propaganda-techniques like inflaming election season via hyperbolic claims about political opponents. That was and is just standard Democratic party electioneering. Nor is it about personal data security- that's both old news and not unique. From a more skeptical perspective, the biggest distinguishing factor about TikTok- aside from the anti-PRC electoral hay- was that it was uncontrolled.

Donald Trump has just spent the better part of the last decade under unmitigated information warfare by the controlled or aligned media channels of the Democratic Party. Why would he want to support a Democratic administration assert control/coercion over another social media platform?

It was Trump's policy before it was Biden's.

The origin of the policy came from TikTok censoring content supporting the Hong Kong protests. That made people go "Hey maybe we don't want to let the Chinese government exert information control over our social media" and Trump tried to make them divest through an executive order. That got challenged in court and didn't work so it came back as bipartisan legislation. Until March, Trump supported it too.

Whatever misgivings you might have about other social media platforms, at least they aren't controlled by a hostile foreign government.

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