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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   37560 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Once again, someone of Indian descent is on the cusp of power in the West (well Indian and black in this case). Are there any theories why, among Asians, Indians in the West so often end up in leadership positions (especially in the corporate world), and East Asians don't?

I can only imagine that whatever the sauce is, adding black genes to mix might quicken it.

Edit: Also, lol at Elon's lame attack on her on Twitter. They're afraid.

  • -30

So you’re not going to even tell us what Elon said, just boo outgroup it?

It's a video of Harris saying "I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit."

Various responses are saying that she's talking to blind people, as if that somehow makes it not weird.

It does make it not weird, everyone else at the table was saying similar things. I mean it’s still kind of performative but it’s not as if she just said that out of imbecility

That everyone else was doing it doesn't make it not weird either. Blind people don't need to know what colour suit you're wearing. When I listen to the radio or to a podcast I can't see the speakers either, and not once have I thought "gee I really wish this person would tell me their pronouns and what they're wearing".

Introduce yourself by name, fair enough. Everything else is unnecessary and if you're participating in some nutty subculture that likes to pretend that this nonsense is somehow supportive of disabled people, that itself is a reflection on you.

It's unusual but doesn't seem weird to me. Blind (the community notes say blind and poor vision) are not always blind from birth. They might have internal representation of colour and specifying blue suit can be useful for them to have her image in their minds.

At first her mentioning her pronouns seemed weird but then again – for blind people it could be helpful in certain cases.

Have you ever talked to a person on the telephone?

Do you open by telling them what you're wearing so they can imagine you in their minds?

Only when they're paying $5.99 a minute.

Ha-ha. Of course you can do that.

But with friends and family, sometimes I tell them how I am doing, what new clothes I have bought and what colour they are. It's a normal talk.

While some of Kamala's recorded speech indeed seems frivolous and unfit for the occasion, I am judging her charitably.

The same critique was directed towards Trump when it was claimed that he suggested drinking bleach etc. He didn't. He was just musing about potential treatments. That wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. But people take seriously everything that the president says, sometimes uncharitably.

Yes, sometimes I do.

Yeah, I've always been legally blind, but was not always totally blind, so I have some amount of visual memory.

Of course, I've read this whole thread and still am picturing Harris in a generic almost-black dark grey suit, in spite of the subject matter. My visual imagination can be stubborn.

I don't think the pronouns were for blind people. I think introducing themselves with pronouns is just what people do in place of saying "I am a serious progressive who supports trans people." I'm still annoyed by this trend; 20 years ago, I was supporting trans people by complaining whenever an online service would require disclosing gender in an irrelevant context. Now it's in vogue to do the opposite, and that's somehow more inclusive. But I digress.

Of course, I've read this whole thread and still am picturing Harris in a generic almost-black dark grey suit, in spite of the subject matter. My visual imagination can be stubborn.

It's not a bad thing to assume. She's in blue in that particular video but usually wears more muted colours.

No one cares how blue her clothes are. Formerly sighted blind people included.

Funnily enough, the single blind colleague I have ever worked with, asked for people to tell him their sex and a color of something they were wearing as well as their name. He said this helped him build a mental model of who was where in a meeting room and keep track of who was saying what.

This was over 20 years ago mind you, but perhaps it does help some blind people enough to have become a request/norm.

Before video conferencing was a thing dialing in via phone into a remote meeting was always a pain because keeping track of who said what was a trial. Unlike in a podcast, you're expected to interact back after all.

This may not be as unhelpful as you think in other words.

Unlike in a podcast, you're expected to interact back after all.

So like during a phone call, where you're not supposed to ask what people are wearing either (unless we're talking about a very particular type of a on me call)?

There's more then one reason for asking these sorts of favors of others, and I don't see why we should go with a mundane one by default.

So like during a phone call, where you're not supposed to ask what people are wearing either (unless we're talking about a very particular type of a on me call)?

Right, but have you ever been the only one dialing into a conference room? Everyone else can see, and all you have is sound? Back in the day I used to have to do that all the time and it was legitimately a pain to make out who was talking, where everyone is in relation to each other and the like. I think it would actually be an improvement to try and construct a visualization in that circumstance. Especially if you don't know who is talking. Indeed what we ended up having to do is preface every statement with "This is Dave, department head of consular services, I think we need to consider the cost implications of adding to ambassadorial security" But that was clunky and time consuming. Now for most people particularly nowadays with video calling that is no longer something that crops up much. But if you are blind it is every meeting, every time. Building up a mechanism to help navigate that seems like exactly the thing that you would do in that circumstance.

I would suggest that the mundane reason for blind people needing/wanting better descriptions of who is talking and how to create visualizations to keep track is exactly the one that should be considered the default. When Bob in network engineering asks me to limit the use of resources on the mainframe on Fridays, I should also consider the mundane reason the most likely one, though it is possible he is training Skynet, the mundane is almost always correct, in my experience.

Right, but have you ever been the only one dialing into a conference room? Everyone else can see, and all you have is sound.

Sure, and the primary reason that's a problem isn't that other people have visuals, and I do not, it's because other people are present in a 3 dimensional space, and I'm not. The sound that I do get is flattened and muffled, just as the sound that they get from me. We know this, because no one decided that demanding participants state their sex and attire helps to communicate in that situation.

When Bob in network engineering asks me to limit the use of resources on the mainframe on Fridays, I should also consider the mundane reason the most likely one, though it is possible he is training Skynet, the mundane is almost always correct, in my experience.

The big difference is that even though you might choose to trust Bob, his claims are verifiable. People asking that you comply with an arbitrary request, who's utility is not only unproven in the instant, but is fundamentally unprovable, tends is not typically explainable by mundane reasons.

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... why a color specifically? You'd think that type of clothing, hair style, distinguishing feature, or a half-dozen other things would be more relatable than color.

Was he one of the many (most?) legally blind people who still have some (ultra-blurry) color vision?

Or is it a sense of humor thing? "Hey, you know how there's this major qualia that I'll never get to experience? Could you bring it up in a way that will sound natural at first but will make you feel a little more confused and uncomfortable the longer you think about it?" That would actually be awesome.

... why a color specifically? You'd think that type of clothing, hair style, distinguishing feature, or a half-dozen other things would be more relatable than color.

OK so then you can go back to the 2020/2021 Microsoft meetings where people built more detailed models of themselves and got made fun of for that.

Do I find it intolerably cringe and another way for narcissists to discuss themselves with the excuse of accessibility? Yes. But if I were in a meeting with someone blind I think this is all a reasonable accommodation, is the point.

Oh, it seems entirely reasonable to me, just a very specifically weird way to be reasonable, out of a lot of alternatives. As a choice pushed by narcissists it would make sense to me. But as a request specifically made by a blind person it's an interesting mystery.

I thought it had to do with that most blind people are not fully blind like you mention so they can sort of fuzzily perceive that there is a woman wearing blue

You know, it just occurred to me... blind people have their own activist organizations. They have conventions and speakers and seminars and conference calls and stuff. I had to attend a number of those for scholarships and the best training available. In none of the numerous speeches, presentations, seminars, etc that I heard did anyone describe what they were wearing, or what they looked like, in any way. I remember one banquet speaker who brought up diversity and said that, when he looked at the crowd, he saw a rainbow. Which was obvious because of things like accents and ... OK how do I point out that people from different ethnicities smell different without getting accused of saying PoC stink? Because I feel like someone is going to take it that way.

To quote a blind Aspy with a cringie youtube channel where he used to complain about random encounters, "Blind people don't do that."

OK how do I point out that people from different ethnicities smell different without getting accused of saying PoC stink? Because I feel like someone is going to take it that way.

Just the way you did right there.

I think this is a typical case of boomer right wingers not recognizing how far behind the curve they are. They don't get to decide what is socially acceptable in the bio-leninist coalition. Those things are already long decided on before they are performed publicly.

As the owner of Twitter Elon now does get to decide that, or at least influence it, which is why his propaganda edit has 77 million views.

There are a lot of right wing boomers in the world. Be that by birth or spirituality. I don't remember the last time any of them at any time in the past 80 years could make any relevant change to the course of history. It seems like it doesn't matter how many 'SJW Owned Compilation's there are, or how many boomers watch them and cackle.

Those derided Boomers represent the change the didn't happen.

We didn't go full Australia on Covid lockdowns. We are still allowed to own guns. The state only takes 35% of our income instead of 50%. Etc...

A country with those "right wing Boomers" gone looks a lot like Canada or Australia, but with the addition of urban decay and a large criminal underclass. It's not a great look.

Yeah I have a feeling that when all those right wing boomers die off the world is gonna miss them a lot more than they think.

We didn't go full Australia on Covid lockdowns.

Neither did Canada.

We are still allowed to own guns.

So are Canadians.

The state only takes 35% of our income instead of 50%

Again, look at Canada.

All involved are neck deep in mass immigration. I'm not seeing the boomer utility here.

I reject pretending that the US and Canada are equivalent. Especially when it comes to portion of the population that are first generation immigrants. And their meager crumb of gun ownership privileges.

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We didn't go full Australia on Covid lockdowns.

Nor did most of Australia. Australia had tough restrictions at the border, but inside Australia lockdowns were localised, imposed only as necessary, and abandoned once the most vulnerable groups had been vaccinated.

The only part of Australia that was locked down for longer than California was Melbourne.

Various responses are saying that she's talking to blind people, as if that somehow makes it not weird.

That's a perfectly reasonable thing to say if you're talking to blind people, or at least the sitting at a table wearing a blue suit stuff is reasonable. If I were blind I'd appreciate it as that would give me a better mental model of the space I'm inhabiting.

The difference between this situation and a phone call is that phone calls are symmetric and nobody has info about what the other is wearing etc. while in this case the sighted people will have a more accurate representation of the situation than the blind ones. Her words were just a way to try and equalise the situation a bit more.

A better comparison would be to a Google Meets session where Alice has audio+video of Bob while Bob can only hear her. There's definitely an inherent element of weirdness in this situation caused by the imbalance (as I'm sure everyone who has been involved in such a situation knows) and the way Kamala was talking attempts to at least cut down on how severe it is.

The rest of the quote is just standard left wing greeting rituals.

There's definitely an inherent element of weirdness in this situation caused by the imbalance (as I'm sure everyone who has been involved in such a situation knows)

How does having the person with no video state their sex and apparel make it any less weird?

Fair enough.

Are the people even blind? The visible ones mostly seem to be taking pen & paper notes, one of them has glasses, and at least two seem to be gazing longlingly at Kamala?

Apparently it's a meeting of disability activists, some of whom are blind. Others may have other disabilities, or no disability at all.

I'm blind. I cringed. It sounds like the opening narration in a really bad first person novella.

But, you know, there aren't that many blind voters. They might be outnumbered by the activist types who like that conspicuous inclusivity signaling that alienates the people it's supposedly including (I'm sure there are dozens of trans people with pronouns in their bios, but it's mostly cis signalers; trans people I've come across just go for a name that communicates the gender they're presenting as and leave it at that, unless pressured).

In other words, she's aiming for the progressive whitewomenin HR vote. As said elsewhere in this thread, if they're the heart of the democratic voters, then she needs to appeal to them. Trans and blind voters combined might feel up a mid-sized city, if I remember the statistics correctly.

Exactly this. Most people want to be treated like they're normal, not like they're special. Yeah sometimes a particular thing becomes an obstacle and you have to work around that as best you can, but disabled people don't usually want everyone constantly acknowledging that they're disabled, immigrants don't like being perpetually reminded they're immigrants, etc, etc. It's actually the opposite of inclusive to constantly orient your language and behaviour around the thing that is different about someone.

What all these language and behaviour rules actually are is a modern form of elite etiquette. Whereas once upon a time you might have needed to demonstrate that you knew the right fork to use or how to curtsey the right way, now you need to show that you know the proper modes of address in different situations. It's not for the the actual blind/trans/whatever people, it's for the cultural class you're showing you are properly a member of.

It isn't weird for videotaped presentations among a certain crowd. Such as some people who work for some major tech companies that employ me.

Afraid of what?

I've been trying to find the right sports metaphor for dropping Biden for a while now and I've finally got it:

The new candidate is Big Sam Allardyce, getting brought in to save the democrats from relegation.

Big Sam often succeeded though. What moxie does Kamala have? She seems a bit like a midwit to me.

Big Sam is the model. You need a guy who can keep a bad team from getting played off the field.

What moxie does Kamala have?

She has the media, Dobbs, the most partisan American voting base in my lifetime and an 80-something opponent who may as well be Satan to her base. And the election is going to be before the honeymoon phase is over. And she can talk in complete sentences

If the goal is to shithouse a win, or just shithouse a lower impact on downballot races, it's a foundation.

And the election is going to be before the honeymoon phase is over.

With the news velocity lately - don't count on predicting honeymoon duration.

I think the honeymoon phase for politicians ends pretty quickly once real policy changes are being proposed. It's easy to present oneself as a reasonable, upstanding figure that wants what's best for everyone. It's much harder to keep that image when tough choices have to be made.

Voters can agree that the status quo sucks, but in aggregate hate any suggested changes to it. I don't think the honeymoon will continue once Harris has had to clarify her positions on immigration, inflation, the Middle East, and Ukraine. Thus far she's mostly been hiding (or perhaps forced to hide) behind Biden's positions, and there is no combination of views there that satisfies all the left's core constituencies.

Shithousery is about satisficing more than anything. A draw is a win for the inferior team. The goal is to eke out enough turnout. If people have to hold their noses or take a shower later so be it.

I firmly believe that Americans are narcissists and it's to their credit here; they'll mostly vote on domestic matters that truly impact them. I doubt Ukraine will in any way be a major stumbling block, no matter what the really Left says. Israel might, if only because of some very motivated voters in Michigan. The progressive Left has been somewhat contained on this.

Without Biden's age the media will default to hating on Trump again, reminding the base What's At Stake.

Not much she can do about inflation at this point. The border is also going to be bad, especially since she was briefly appointed to help manage it. It remains to be seen how bad (how many people even recall that?).

I imagine she'll continue Biden's desperate pandering: capping rent increases, deporting some migrants while allowing others to stay, talking about SCOTUS reform and more giveaways to their base that took college loans.

Just throw enough at the base that people project enough hope unto your candidacy that you hopefully squeak out a win. And, if you don't, stop sinking the rest of the ticket. That's really what's essential here. The Democrats may have to just take a Harris loss so long as she runs ahead of Biden and lets people who want to vote for a Democrat elsewhere do so. Newsom and co. can pick up the pieces later, so long as they haven't been ground into a fine powder by the mobility scooter of a candidate 2/3rds of their party thinks literally cannot run.

I firmly believe that Americans are narcissists and it's to their credit here; they'll mostly vote on domestic matters that truly impact them.

Does that make them narcissists? I'm not sure why anyone should be expected to vote more on the basis of issues affecting people overseas rather than domestic concerns.

It was more a shot at the pretense that large numbers of people are going to peel away for a global issue that's ostensibly of ultimate importance but is really just a way to play out people's more short-range anti-apartheid larps or fight their domestic opponents (Gaza)

As I said, voting on your economy or political system is quite rational.

don't think the honeymoon will continue once Harris has had to clarify her positions on immigration, inflation, the Middle East, and Ukraine.

I think it's fair to say that she doesn't have positions on these topics. Why can't she just dodge these issues and remain opaque? It's not like the mainstream media will ask her hard questions.

SatanDonald Trump is "only" 78.

I don't think Kamala is going to get a honeymoon phase; she's been around and is associated with the administration, and she doesn't even get the benefit of being a primary winner. She's probably strictly better than Biden (who will only get worse), but IMO the Democrats would have been better off going for the higher-risk strategy of an open convention where the winner probably WOULD get some sort of honeymoon (if they didn't split the party)

There are two quantitative facts for me that set up what Kamala has to get through independent of Trump.

  1. The beating heart of the Democrat party today is college-educated women, frequently unmarried

  2. In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost White women outright. It was even worse for white married women.

"Just turn out the base" is a red herring of a strategy because a big part of the base has already demonstrate that, absent total ideological capture, when push comes to voting booth, they might torpedo their publicly professed choice. Revealed preferences and female-on-female relative-status aggression. Yes, there is a pretty high floor of Democrat voters who are so down for the cause that they'll vote Kamala no matter what, but there's also a non-trivial amount that will scream that in public and then do something different in the ballot box.

Furthermore, as I am certain we will see from Nate Silver this week, the polls are going to be all over the place and kind of valueless until maybe September. Too many structural assumptions are out of whack.

So what's Kamala to do? Well, the obvious answer is something. But I think that's a high bar to clear for her. Most of VP-ship has been staff turnover and other .... unburdenings.

Except when posting about his companies' achievements, Elon Musk is usually lame on Twitter.

Politics is a profession where only the paranoid survive, so I am sure Team Trump are going to respond in ways which could be spun as "They're afraid" - even if all they are "afraid" of is that Trump has gone from a 80% favourite to a 75% one. Musk will respond as shitposter-in-chief and will be pretty lame for the usual reasons.

One of the less talked about outcomes of Musk buying twitter is the predictable revelation that he's sort of a dweeby edgelord. Some of the things he retweets are absolutely perfect mappings to "the weird IT guys have been passing around this meme all week. eye roll"

I think he has just enough self-awareness to catch this much of the time. One of his ticks is a retweet with a single word comment - "true", "this","wow" etc. But other times he goes full 'sperg. The one this week was him retweeting the "AI fashion show" that included (among the Pope, Nancy Pelosi, and Kim Jong Un) an AI Elon in a weird speedo quickly followed by a suit of armor.

But keen observes will see that the shtick has been going on for some time. Elon has learned to deploy a simulacra of high end verbal intelligence - dramatic pauses, quickened speech patterns with some jargon thrown in, and verbal intonations that make you think he's bestowing something deep upon you. If Musk and Aaron Sorkin ever team up on a show, I will pen my suicide note to it.

  1. Kamala is more outgoing and forward than Asian people. The most important trait to reach the political and media elite is to have the personality of a narcissistic car salesmen. Asians are a bit too timid and not outgoing enough.

  2. Indians like to fight internally but whenever they go abroad they seem to hold together much better. Even Indians and Pakistanis seem to be great friends as soon as they leave their home region. Asians don't have the same level of Asian cohesion.

Can't tell you about mixed indians or epigenetic causes, but specifically she is very much down for corruption and sex for favors.

That’s the kind of hot take which requires evidence.

You’ve been warned half a dozen times for lazy, snide culture warring. One day ban this time.

"Kamala kickstarted her career by engaging in sex-for-favours (ie. corruption) with Willie Brown" is a hot-take?

Maybe I’m misreading Fistfullofcrows, but I didn’t understand him to be connecting Kamala’s sexual past with her Indian heritage, just saying that she, specifically, ended up in a leadership position due to her past sexual activities.

Nah, that’s pretty defensible.

OP did not bother being so specific.

What is this, Culture War for ants babies? I think we should be allowed to assume a certain level of common knowledge, else posting gets pretty cumbersome.

Well, I for one didn't know (and still don't, since nobody's spoonfeeding)...but then again, I can live with not getting all the implications about US insider baseball.

The short version is what I just said -- she had an affair with him while he was mayor of SF, at the same time landing pretty good jobs under his control/with his support.

Anyways the point is not that everyone should know this, but that Crows' statement was totally true, and banning him for not typing enough background seems out of line.

Willie Brown is a titan of California state politics. Back when Kamala was young she was decent looking. Proof for those in shock she was ever passable. She was also abandoned by her father as a young child. Willie Brown was a much older patronizing man to her.

He gave her no-effort high-paying political sinecures. And advocated for her advancement to higher office in a state in which merely being the Democratic anointed candidate near-guarantees election.

She gave him something else in return.

He's just providing a tiny sample of how the media is going to run this campaign. One of my favorite mods for doing that so reliably.
Get ready to hear the word "malinformation" until you want to scream.

Brahmins had power in India, And Kamala is Brahmin. Just from what I’ve read about the corporate world online, the stereotype of Indians (as opposed to East Asians) is that they are better at the social games which lead to promotions. Whereas East Asians historically had a test that guaranteed promotions, perhaps Indian culture relied more on social quid pro quo?

India is very communalist and is divided into thousands of endogamous castes. China is one big melting pot of a population with a big focus on being a meritocratic peasant society. These lead to very different societies.

, among Asians, Indians in the West so often end up in leadership positions (especially in the corporate world), and East Asians don't?

Let me quote Kissinger on that

"They (Indians) are superb flatterers, Mr. President. They are masters at flattery. They are masters at subtle flattery. That's how they survived 600 years. They suck up...their great skill is to suck up to people in key positions."

As someone who much more prefers a yelling match or being told "this is crap" and "this will never work" and being blunt, I have a deep loathing for the Indian ethos of bending the truth or just straight out lying about things.

This is a constant. I hear it from my family who sometimes have the misfortune of dealing with Indians employed by their contractors, I see it on twitter where are few of the RWers I talk to are developers who have to deal with frequently lying Indian contractors.

I have a deep loathing for the Indian ethos of bending the truth or just straight out lying about things.

The power of just nodding in agreement, affirming that you understand, and then refusing to actually do it wins again and again.

It seems obvious to me that the yes-man strategy dominates all others as a way to get ahead. It's definitely the default model in most of the world. So why isn't it the default model in northern European culture? Why is Europe, especially northern Europe, so weird?

Why is Europe, especially northern western Europe, so weird?

There's an obvious answer but I dont think it's one a lot users here are going to like.

How so? If the idea is that Christians don't lie because of their Christian belief, wouldn't they start lying again once they become atheists? But that doesn't seem to have happened in, for example, the Nordic countries.

More convincing is that big changes happened once the Catholic Church banned cousin marriage in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215.

I hope he responds with a really off the wall interpretation like how the schisms among high IQ subsets of Europeans over theological quibbles turned into bloodshed resulting in a eugenic selection for intellectual disagreeableness.

Surely that's the kind of thing that selects for agreeableness. At least, that's what people claim about China.

Christianity led to long term cultural changes that resulted in the reaction to persistent and bloody disagreements being liberalism, and not to genocide.

Of course, that doesn't mean Christian societies can't be brutal and repressive- see the entire history of Russia- but the fragmentation in western Europe made bloody disagreements persistent enough long term to render that solution non-viable.

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Its not that "Christians don't lie" so much that the Christian worldview in general and Western attitudes regarding individual worth and the treatment of servants/subordinates in particular are unusually conducive to building trust in an otherwise low trust environment.

At the same time are we sure "wouldn't they start lying again once they become atheists?" Is not exactly what we are seeing? Do you believe that the Democratic party of Jimmy Carter would've allowed the current situation to occur? What about the party of Truman?

Because it doesn't work in Europe, which is just as well because yes man culture is a terrible basis for effective organisations. "Most of the world" got steamrolled by northern Europeans!

It's amazing how unreasonably effective this tactic is, not that I condone it or anything.

My experience dealing with non first tier Bangalore software shops. You will never get any kind of negative feedback or pushback. It is always yes sir all the way to the failure.

My experience dealing with Koreans in Korea. There needs to be training for dealing with Westerners. If an American asks you a yes/no question and the correct answer is no, say no. Don't repeatedly say yes many times and then entirely fail to deliver as promised.

There needs to be training for dealing with Westerners.

Oh, you mean diversity and inclusion training?

What are the meetings like after the initial failure? Like, say they just blow through a sprint and don't deliver anything.

"Why didn't you get anything done?"

"Yes! We will work harder?"

How does it go? I have trouble seeing how there wouldn't just be a ton of nonsequitors and straight dodging questions.

Also, lol at Elon's lame attack on her on Twitter. They're afraid.

I know they’ll figure it out eventually but watching in real time as rightoids try to figure out how to attack Kamala is pretty funny.

In the spirit of equal-opportunity sneering, it was cringy how everyone’s bye Biden tweets all used the word “consequential” like someone must have directed them to.

How much ammo does one need to summon to crush a wounded, pathetic little duckling?

I respect the possibility that she may WOW me with a pivot to a smart, competent, and incisive campaign. If only these were qualities she had ever managed to exhibit or sustain beyond a 30-second edit. This meme you're pushing that "Repubs are scrambling to figure out an attack on Kamala" is one of the most fanciful things I've read in this last week, as if she hasn't been repeatedly trotted out as a pinata to playfully hit with a stick in between more serious concerns regarding Joe Biden and the Blob. She is known to her opponents, and they make hay out of her every day.

The Trump campaign should give her a cursory acknowledgment as the Dem nominee, and then go back to hammering the Biden admin while pretending she's not even in the room.

How much ammo does one need to summon to crush a wounded, pathetic little duckling?

On the one hand, I see this sort of thing in some quarters. Like Neema Parvini declaring that Kamala is a "sacrificial lamb" intended to lose to Trump, and that this whole election proves his thesis about how our elites are "putting the woke away" and actively pursuing Trump's return as "right-wing containment" and a pivot to rebuilding America's force-projection capacity to maintain the global American empire.

On the other hand, I encounter others arguing that this guarantees Trump's defeat, because the only candidate he could even possibly defeat was Biden, and he's utterly doomed against literally anyone else. Further, many of these argue that this is Good, Actually — not because they support Dem policies (far from it), but because they "want to see Trump supporters cry" and think that the sooner "this MAGA shit dies" the better, to make way for their preferred alternative.

And then you have the Dreaded Jim predicting that "Kamala gets one hundred and twenty million votes at three in the morning after all voting centres have been locked down and Republican scrutineers expelled."

(And don't get me started on the opinions about Vance — he's a based neoreactionary, he's an "anti-MAGA" Republican establishment type, he's a race traitor, he's a CIA/Palantir plant intended to bring about digital passports and a central bank digital currency, he's secretly gay…)

I'm really not sure who — if anyone — has the right of it.

Has the present tumult weakened your confidence that Blues have already won and Reds should despair?

No, not really. The only question is whether they win by using Trump as "containment" — giving Reds another meaningless "win", to defuse tension and slow the proverbial frog-boiling, that translates to no actual rightward movement due to the permanent bureaucracy being fully insulated from election outcomes (Project 2025 is utterly doomed); by using deep-cover CIA Vance to get the GOP back on script as the Washington Generals outer party jobbers; or by announcing Kamala as the winner with over 100 million votes in the most-safester-and-securester election ever, and these absolutely-not-fake official results are unquestionable — literally unquestionable because anyone engaged in "election denial" is officially a domestic terrorist and will be arrested by the FBI forthwith; or some other horror scenario.

Every battleground but one, every mode of conflict between the tribes but one, inherently favors the left. There is only one field of battle where the right has a relative, comparative advantage, and that's the actual field of battle. Any other method, we're guaranteed to lose. And as I've said to you before, I still think that — thanks to the nature of modern military technology and to our inability to organize (because anyone who so much as mentions "organizing" is a Fed) — we almost-certainly lose that one too.

So yes, we're still doomed. Come back to me after you've won a civil war, and then I'll have likely changed my mind.

People are throwing every kind of insult at Kamala to see what sticks. Many are very sexist and very racist, which I imagine would push any non-misogynistic, non-racist moderate away from voting Republican. It's all pretty vile, but workshopping takes time. I'm sure Trump will eventually come up with something.

With Kamala as the Democratic nominee, Trump will have to pivot in his rhetoric. He was already pretty mellow in his debate with Biden, at least compared to his usual self. The assassination attempt reportedly mellowed him out even further. His RNC speech had to be scrapped and re-written with unity as the central theme.

But Trump's platform of unity lasted only a week. I believe that unity is no longer a working, winning strategy now that Biden is gone.

Many are very sexist and very racist, which I imagine would push any non-misogynistic, non-racist moderate away from voting Republican.

I think the effect will be lower than expected. People are intelligent enough to distinguish between sexism and misogyny and vitriol towards specific person even if they do performative pearl clutch.

I dunno,I follow some spicy people on twitter and the most risable things I've heard is that she's an Affirmative Action VP or that she slept her way into politics neither of which are new.

People are throwing every kind of insult at Kamala to see what sticks.

Cacklin' Kamala has a certain ring to it, don't you think? Isn't sexist or racist either which is another plus.

Isn't sexist or racist either

"Cackling" carries connotations of femininity (it generally is not used to describe a man's laughter), so it could be considered sexist. (I can't think of a masculine counterpart word.)

"Guffawing" is a more masculine-coded often-negative connotation word for laughing, though not exclusively masculine nor always negative. Also when negative it connotes boorishness, not bitchiness or supernatural evil.

Eh. It just doesn't sting for me. What, she laughs too much? The best anti-Kamala taunt was the throw in I've seen on bumper stickers and flags: Joe and the Ho Have Got to Go.

I'm sure once Trump puts his mind to it he'll come up with something. Ron DeSanctimonious was still pretty good.

Cacklin' Kamala

High Fiber breakfast cereal that makes a pleasing sound when milk is added.

Geared towards children 5 - 10 with health conscious parents. Not a premium brand, but not bottom shelf. Sold next to Kix and Honey Bunches of Oats.

Is it possible that Harris is a sort of mirror image of Trump? Both are quirky and memeable and voluble and unintentionally funny but maybe in ways that appeal to (and repel) opposite groups of people. Neither is seen as particularly principled or deep, but their unseriousness manifests in ways associated with their sex and social class: his fragile masculine ego, her giggly femininity; his chest-thumping and locker room talk, her woo-adjacent babbling; his blue-collar affectations, her PMC wine mom energy. He uses his wealth and status to access sex; she uses her sex to access status. (Sorry, I know I stepped away from the Indian thing.)

Some Brahmin sub-groups appear to have extremely high verbal IQ, possibly on par with Jews. Consider that in stand-up comedy, one of the purest tests of verbal intelligence, Indians are quite overrepresented in the US and UK.

Tamil Brahmins are uniquely successful even among Brahmins. If anything it is interesting that Harris’ verbal ability and charisma appear comparatively poor given her background.

If he actually died surely he would have also ‘resigned’ as president for Kamala?

Can a president resign via letter on Twitter? Sure, they can announce their intention to resign, but there are formal constitutional requirements to actually resign that a dead Biden would be unable to fulfill.

Per the Nixon precedent, it requires a letter to the Secretary of State, on which someone willing to run this conspiracy would happily forge Biden's signature. (It isn't deliberate, but it is useful the SoS has probably seen more wet-ink Presidential signatures than anyone else except the National Archivist because they countersign documents that require sealing). You can publish the letter on Twitter, but it isn't effective until someone couriers the wet-ink original to Blinken's office. If Blinken isn't on board with the conspiracy and refuses the letter until Biden authenticates it in person, then you probably didn't have enough support to pull it off to begin with.

What would there be for the Dems to gain for hiding Biden's death?

I'm reminded of the time when Kate Middleton went on an extended media hiatus and the odd behavior by the British royals around it led to a host of conspiracy theories, ranging from relatively benign "they're divorced" to the raving ones like "They've harvested her for organs to keep King Charles alive". Or when Putin was absent from publicity for some time in late 2022 and there was fervent speculation that he had died and there was a power struggle in Kremlin. In both cases the supposedly dead party eventually turned up and the speculators, well, at least didn't come out looking so good afterwards.

Of course it is entirely possibly that it does turn out that Biden has died or been seriously incapacitated by Covid, but again, why wouldn't they just come right out with it to get sympathy points and make Kamala's road to nomination even easier?

Possibly to prevent a new VP that might be forced upon her by the Congress, so she can run with whoever she wants?

Kamala gets to appoint her own VP if Biden resigns/gets 25th Amendmented. It's subject to congressional approval but it's still her nomination.

Well sure but that doesn't affect the ticket, just the last few months of the current administration.

What would there be for the Dems to gain for hiding Biden's death?

Who knows. Maybe they are so addicted to lying, it's so much their first and most natural impulse, that they do it even when it serves no purpose what so ever. This has been shown to be true for Hillary Clinton and all the made up stories she tells, Biden was a habitual liar his entire political career and it tanked his Presidential run in the 80's, Kamala has been caught plagiarizing stories and adopting them as her own. I was listening to Dan Carlin, one of the Supernova in the East episodes I think, and he mentions Roosevelt had a reputation as "a man who would never tell the truth when a lie would serve him just as well" or something to that effect.

It may be time to consider that most politicians are just congenital liars.

I think Kamala would rather campaign as an incumbent, even an unpopular one, rather than as a veep.

You're right that it's irrational, but it's not unthinkable coming from a severely dysfunctional organisation where there are very strong incentives to lie.

If Biden is dead then the Democrats don’t have a tie breaker vote in the Senate until a new VP is confirmed.

What would there be for the Dems to gain for hiding Biden's death?

His staff / family delegating power to their allies before the jig is up, perhaps?

Given that this seems to be the thread all about discussing Harris, can I bring up the fact that she is TINY.

She is only 5 foot 2. Versus Trumps 6 foot 3! I don’t mean to sound like some Height obsessed incel (probably too late for that now but anyway) that is just a yuuuge difference. If I were Trump I would demand any debate be on an open floor in a townhouse style so that it maximizes the height differential. Advantage: Trump

Height doesn't really matter in women as long as it is within the normal range, which 5'2" is. If she had been a man, it would've mattered at least a bit, but she isn't.

I remember Obama saying Buttigieg was unelectable. Not for being gay, but too short at 5'8".

When looking at the height pay gap (tall people get paid more than short people), it exists in both women and men, but is much larger in men.

As with many things in life, men have the burden of performance, including Doing the Bare Minimum of being tall and not being short.

Calling 5'2" Harris "Little Kamala" would just be perceived by normies as somewhere between a weird non-sequitur and just plain mean-spirited, even for what they view as Trump's standards. After all, Hillary is/was only three inches taller than Kamala and it wasn't an issue at all. In contrast, calling 5'9" Marco Rubio "Little Marco" on stage basically ended Rubio's Presidential campaign. There was tremendous compass unity in laughing at "Little Marco" getting pwned.

Despite the average Burgerland heights of women and men being 5'5" and 5'10", respectively, a 5'2" woman is just a woman. At worst called "petite," which can even be a positive. Most women like feeling smol, even if they don't like openly admitting it. A 5'9" man may very well find himself in manlet territory and mocked accordingly.

From recollection, studies on the height premium in the workplace (e.g., compensation, CEOs, or CEOs and compensation) tend to show a materially... higher... height premium for men than women. One way academics have tried to cope with this is to claim that African Americans are More Affected:

There’s also a gendered component. Research conducted by Inas R Kelly, professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, California, revealed marked differences in the effect of height on mean income by gender. “White men face a much larger premium for each additional 10cm than white women,” she says, and that gap is even more pronounced for African Americans.

Or that, secondly, if there's less of a height premium for women, it's because male insecurities and female internalized misogyny punish tall women:

This links into the idea that women can be too tall, and that tall women face discrimination in a way tall men don't. According to a study of tall female college students, their above-average height resulted in ‘unintended intimidation’. “If there’s a woman towering over others, they might view her as a threat … As a woman, if you show dominance, it’s considered aggression. It could be problematic,” says Pritchard.

Men Judged Harshly for Their Height (or Lack Thereof): Women, Minorities Hardest Hit.

and it wasn't an issue at all.

Except the whole losing thing

In my Emotional Truth, Hillary won in 2016, Federer won in 2019, and it was The Berenstein Bears the whole time *crosses arms and turns away*.

The question is, would she had been better off being a 5’10” man in the 2016 campaign? It’s a definite no for me, especially since she could had then easily gotten dabbed upon with a “Little Hillary” like Marco did. It’d be even for worse for Kamala to be a 5’7” man.

  1. The more salient facts about her are: she can't keep staff, huge turnover, she apparently refuses to read her briefings and then lashes out at them for it.

  2. she's apparently so socially insecure she ended up rehearsing for a dinner at some donor or..

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/22/biden-kamala-harris-election-chances

Indians have been plugged into the Anglosphere & Western Democracy for centuries at this point, plus there's a level of gamesmanship that comes from sheer population scrabbling for limited resources that seems to outstrip Western equivalents.

Are there any theories why, among Asians, Indians in the West so often end up in leadership positions (especially in the corporate world), and East Asians don't?

The typical answer given is that "the leadership attainment gap between East Asians and South Asians [is] consistently explained by cultural differences in assertiveness, but not by prejudice or motivation". We see this reflected in the types of stories told in each culture about how an individual may rise to prominence and leadership: Chinese examples tend to be something like "kid studies hard for the imperial exams and passes at age 17, lifting his family out of poverty" or "brilliant strategist lives a quiet life in the countryside until a worthy leader seeks him out and asks for his help reunifying the empire", neither of which lend themselves to the type of assertive self-promotion needed to succeed in American business or politics. This may be less of an issue for 3rd generation immigrants and beyond who are fully assimilated, but they are relatively small in number at the moment.

The way you phrase your non-question "Are there any theories why-?" looks an awful lot like certain previous alts who like to Just Ask Questions about Jews, Chinese, Blacks, etc. Haven't seen Indians become a particular focus for this "line of inquiry" before, but if you genuinely want to start a thread discussing the role and success of Indians in the West, you chose about the shadiest way to do it.

You are allowed to trot out your racial theories, your conspiracy theories, your grievances with Group X, here. But we strongly discourage Dark Hinting and shady speculation. If you have a cultural or HBD argument to make, make it. If you just want to say "How weird that there are so many Indians in top positions, what could it mean?" well, it is not believable that you have just happened to Notice this phenomenon and are innocently asking if anyone else has any theories.

Inter-generational responsibility

Sometimes I have these moments when I realize I've got a big hole in my mental models for other people. This came up a few weeks ago, but I didn't get around to posting about it because other stuff happened.

The hole in this case is inter-generational responsibility. To what extent are parents responsible for the actions of their kids, or kids responsible for the actions of their parents. And how much of that responsibility carries across multiple generations.

My answer has always been something like "kids are never responsible for the actions of older generations, and parents are mostly responsible for the actions of their kids while they are guardians of those kids, but most of that responsibility goes away when the child reaches adulthood". I thought this was close to most people's take, but I'm pretty certain its not. I had all the clues and information I needed to put this together sooner, I just didn't. So any comments that basically say "how are you so stupid that you only just now figured this out" my response is yeah yeah yeah, whatever, congrats on being so smart, I was busy noticing and caring about other things.

Evidence I had but didn't really put together:

  1. The bible talking about killing off entire families as punishments.
  2. Long lasting family feuds.
  3. Feudal level countries killing off entire families as punishments.
  4. Ongoing demands for reparations.

Anyways, now that I am unmoored from my previous set of assumptions, I'm not really sure where to set anchor again. I'm curious what people here believe in terms of inter-generational responsibility, and what you think the general consensus is on inter-generational responsibility.

In partial defense of my original view and thinking it was standard ... the US legal system mostly seems to take the same viewpoint. Deviations by other countries legal systems is often something that is noticed and gets commented on. Like North Korea still doing full family punishments, or Singapore having a built in legal responsibility for kids to take care of their parents in old age, or the grown adult in Italy that sued his parents for not continuing to treat him like a kid.

But the political system doesn't so clearly take the same viewpoint. Welfare and social security are mainly paid for by the currently young and healthy to the current old and infirm. Debt is taken on by the federal government, and that debt will inevitably be paid off by the children of those alive today.

Treating people as individuals is one of those secret sauce things that the modern Anglosphere takes for granted but which isn't that common globally or historically and which is part of what makes modern society work.

In terms of establishing democracy and capitalism, individualism has been great. And clearly more clannish attitudes haven't stopped birth rate declines elsewhere (looking at you Southern Europe, nobody's having kids when you live with your momma until you're 32). That said, I think a little intergenerational responsibility can be a good thing. Sam Kriss' excellent feature describes elderly retirees in Florida 'absconding from their duty as old people, which is too be a link between the past and the future'. I think old people sticking around to care for children and give them a sense of belonging is something tragic to lose, of course, that requires the young people to stick around too, which can't be taken for granted any more.

I skimmed the piece. I read the first few paragraphs, already starting to doze. Then I got to this line:

Florida developers are a fairly cagey lot, so I’d decided that telling them the truth—“Hi! I’m interested in excoriating your fiefdom!”—was probably a non-starter. So I lied. I gave them a fake name, and even made an email account to go with it.

So guy goes to the Villages, already having made up his mind, and then just riffs on his own confirmation bias for 10 dreary pages.

I guess it's well-written, if you like that sort of Atlantic Monthly/New Yorker style. But it comes off as that most self-righteous and common form of virtue signal – the worry that someone, somewhere might actually be happy.

The Villages is a pretty interesting place from the perspective of urban development, and contains a lot of the things that liberals say that they want. We need more interesting experiments like it, and less sneering from depressed would-be novelists.

I've got a young child and my parents live interstate in the Australian equivalent of a Floridian retirement community.

We're fortunate to have the resources between us to enable visits back-and-forth with minimal stress, but I do definitely feel that it makes it hard to ensure the grandkids have as deep a bond with their grandparents as I'd ideally like. Also in my case my parents moved away a few years ago before grandkids were 'on the table', and as an unfathomably young parent in my demographic of 29 years old, that has to be somewhat increasingly common these days. I'm pretty sure if grandchildren were an ongoing concern prior to the move that it would have been enough to change the plans.

I think that the responsibility of parents towards their children doesn’t go away when those children reach the age of 18 or 21 or whenever. Parents have the responsibility to act for the benefit of their descendants forever, but that responsibility gets more fuzzy and less strong(there’s nothing wrong with kicking your thirty year old out of the house on the basis of ‘you should have a job by now’- although at 16 there would be- and I think it’s in the interest of the thirty year old to be kicked out in that case).

I also think children and grandchildren have the responsibility to care for their parents, especially in their dotage, to not waste parental resources, to listen to their parents advice and not bring shame to the family, etc. It seems entirely reasonable to blame parents for shitty parenting leading to shitty behavior in their adult children.

Honestly rather than arrive at a surface-level verdict one way or the other, I find it both more useful and more accurate to speak more broadly and say that opinions and values about inter-generational responsibility are more grounded in culture rather than a rationalist conclusion based on axiomatic principles.

For example, the modern United States has for a long time been one of the most significantly individualistic societies of all time. Many of us do indeed carry an attitude of 18-21 as being a hard border of personal self-responsibility and somewhat related to primacy of a conjugal bond over all other relationships, and the somewhat non-sequitur that parents have a strong and longer-lasting responsibility for their kids than vice versa. However, many other cultures do indeed view family units as having their own collective sense of honor, of responsibility, and of continuity.

As an aside, I find that the whole collectivized Social Security setup isn't really related to any actual American principles but rather was just a convenient kick-it-down-the-road approach. Well, okay fine, that's not entirely true. You might find somewhat interesting the Social Security Administration's own short history, which notably traces the true beginnings of this kind of collectivization to Civil War pensions -- which to me reflects a tacit admission that the State more broadly was somewhat responsible for so many people dying unnaturally, undermining traditional self-sufficiency. Then later, you had the forces of urbanization, more mobile workforces, longer life expectancy, and basic "nuclear family" stuff. But the main Social Security idea was originally one more similar to regular "insurance" against sudden unpredictable bad things, and as time passed on the system only got bigger and bigger and the principle debt burden shifted earlier and earlier. In fact some early participants were explicitly given kick-backs in acknowledgment that they might not have participated long enough to get vested.

Evidence I had but didn't really put together:

The bible talking about killing off entire families as punishments. Long lasting family feuds. Feudal level countries killing off entire families as punishments. Ongoing demands for reparations.

These don't strictly require any actual moral culpability. Pragmatists and cynics could elect to enact these measures out of a sense of vengeance, pour les encourager les autres, or simply using responsibility as a pretext.

"kids are never responsible for the actions of older generations, and parents are mostly responsible for the actions of their kids while they are guardians of those kids, but most of that responsibility goes away when the child reaches adulthood"

I think this is generally true, and is what most people would believe in the US.

The bible talking about killing off entire families as punishments.

Long lasting family feuds.

Feudal level countries killing off entire families as punishments.

Ongoing demands for reparations.

Of your evidence, 1-3 are pretty similar. There's two options here. The first is that killing someone's entire family is seen as the ultimate sort of punishment. This isn't really about a 2-year-old child being responsible for the behaviors of their parents, its their parents being perceived as so terrible that there's justification in inflicting the most heinous retaliation on them. The second possibility is more pragmatic: if you think their family is likely to want revenge, then killing off all of them makes sense so you don't have to watch over your back. This is especially true in feudal states where a deposed ruler's children could come back as pretenders.

For the fourth point on reparations, this is just blatant racial spoils laundered through historical grievance and narrative. It uses slavery as its primary justification, but that's mostly for convenience since leftist media has spent so much time and effort making US slavery look like one of the biggest crimes ever committed, possibly worse than even the Holocaust. In practice, though, demanding reparations just for that is untenable since the vast majority of the US population is not descended from slaveholders (didn't live in the South, not rich enough, immigrated after the Civil War, etc.). So while people pushing reparations use slavery as their primary marketing material, they quickly shift motte-and-bailey style to things like "institutionalized racism" when people ask questions like "why should I have to pay for this?".

In short, none of your 4 points really needs to have much to do with generational guilt.

This isn't really about a 2-year-old child being responsible for the behaviors of their parents, its their parents being perceived as so terrible that there's justification in inflicting the most heinous retaliation on them. The second possibility is more pragmatic: if you think their family is likely to want revenge, then killing off all of them makes sense so you don't have to watch over your back. This is especially true in feudal states where a deposed ruler's children could come back as pretenders.

In brutally authoritarian regimes in historically Christian societies- including historically quite recent ones, eg Francoist Spain- this took the form of removing children from dissident homes and placing them with regime loyalists. I think historically pagan societies like North Korea just have fewer qualms about killing children when faced with the same situations.

The second possibility is more pragmatic: if you think their family is likely to want revenge, then killing off all of them makes sense so you don't have to watch over your back.

I've seen this argument made a few times online. One example being Twitter tankies defending the murder of the Romanov children. Another one is (predominantly Jewish) essays defending the divine command to utterly eradicate the Amalekites by pointing out that Saul's initial sparing of the Amalekite king Agag — for which failure to follow God's command Saul was stripped of his kingship — led to Agag's eventual descendant Haman attempting to wipe out the Jews in turn.

"You gotta end the bloodline and prevent any revenge killing."

I’m pretty sure your view is commonly held among Americans. At least when asked explicitly.

In practice, though, there’s a reputation ecosystem. Parents get credit when they raise respectable adults and flak when they prop up the prison population. By self-selecting into neighborhoods with “good schools,” they find other parents who will give and receive such kudos. And, like all fashion status games, no one says it out loud.

Think of the expectations. Did your grandparents try to give generous gifts? Your mother-in-law judge your home’s readiness for guests? Your coworkers brag about their kids’ weddings? They want to seem successful, even tasteful, and fear being seen as trashy. Responsibility for other generations is enforced by social pressure rather than law.

  1. The bible talking about killing off entire families as punishments.
  2. Long lasting family feuds.
  3. Feudal level countries killing off entire families as punishments.
  4. Ongoing demands for reparations.

I think the assumption that is built into your thinking is that the only legitimate justification for proactive violence (that is, violence not in defense of self or others) is as punishment for an offense by the person targeted for violence. If we assume that, then it follows that the cases above consist of punishing people for the acts of other people. But not everyone holds that assumption, and I don't hold it myself.

Note: I am not necessarily defending the actions described below, but I am trying to articulate the alleged moral justification in the minds of the killers.

In Case 1, I assume you are referring to the story of Achan in Joshua 7. Notice how often this phrase occurs in the Bible: In this way you shall put evil away from you (some examples can be found here). That means that the execution is justified, not by punishing someone who committed a bad act, but by the desire to rid the tribe of certain genetic predispositions. It isn't bad acts that are being punished, but bad genes that are being extirpated. This also applies to the genocide of other tribes that have too many bad apples (e.g., the Midianites and Amalekites). It's not that the Amalekite infants have done anything wrong; it's that they are likely to infected with something akin to zombie-ism or orc-ism. That doesn't explain the killing of Achan's wife, but it explains the killing of his children.

The killing of the wives and children also has an enhanced deterrent effect. What good does it do to punish someone for crime in the first place? From a utilitarian standpoint, the benefit of punishing crime isn't the pain and loss of the offender as a positive good in itself; it is the deterrent effect. Killing the whole family enhances the deterrent, and thus has the same kind of justification as killing the offender himself, or even flogging him. From a utilitarian standpoint, IMO, it is indefensibly arbitrary to just punish the offender, when punishing people he cares about has a larger deterrent effect -- and when no immediate, intrinsic good comes from punishing anybody in the first place. (But I'm not a utilitarian).

Case 2 is unique in this list. This is the only case where the killing is not a state action. But in warfare, whether between clans or nations, your duty to kill enemy combatants, and perhaps even noncombatants, is not justified by the fact that you are punishing them for some offense they committed. On the contrary, they may be right good fellows through and through. Killing in warfare (or clan warfare) is not punishment at all; it falls under a different heading.

In Case 3, for example in the Glencoe massacre, I presume the real justification was to cement the power of William of Orange, which might otherwise have been on shaky ground. This action was widely condemned, but not universally condemned, and William felt he could get away with it so it must have been plausibly justified in his culture. When I see something like this, I don't ask, "Wow, how could they be so crazy?". I ask, "Wow, what makes that moral convention adaptive for national survival?" What I take away from events like this is how important it was to the survival of feudal nations for the King to have strong moral authority. Without that, national defense would be a tragedy of the commons.

Case 4 is, in my opinion, the one that is truly based on a notion collective punishment. How could people be so crazy? What is adaptive about that? What is adaptive about that is that, if you manage to convince enough people that the targeted class (the bourgeoise, white people, Jews, whatever) is the root of all evil, then, like Lenin, Hitler, and Mao, you and your constituents can self-righteously steal the property of large numbers of people who have done nothing wrong. The push for reparations is nothing but a pretext for banditry -- the same as in Marxism and Nazi antisemitism.

Case 3 I’m pretty sure is most common in Chinese dynasties.

Agreed - massacring relatives who might pose a threat is very widespread, but Chinese law was unusual in legitimating clan extermination for cases of real or imagined high treason. I seem to recall this was the fate of the sequence of imperial in-laws that dominated most of the Eastern Han (which makes you wonder why families kept putting that much energy into attaining that position).

The killing of the wives and children also has an enhanced deterrent effect. What good does it do to punish someone for crime in the first place? From a utilitarian standpoint, the benefit of punishing crime isn't the pain and loss of the offender as a positive good in itself; it is the deterrent effect. Killing the whole family enhances the deterrent, and thus has the same kind of justification as killing the offender himself, or even flogging him.

This seems wrong in context. SOP in societies where the law of slavery made it a possibility (which OT Israel very much was) was to enslave the women and children of the vanquished tribe. Killing them is salting the earth of Carthage or melting down Ned Stark's Valyrian steel greatsword - it is needless destruction of newly-acquired war booty to make a point (probably mostly to your own side) about how destructive your vengeance can be.

The weirdest people in the world talks a lot about this not in the context of inter-generational responsibility but as intra-kin-group responsibility, which of course overlaps quite a bit.

The book argues it’s a new and modern take that individuals are accountable at all as opposed to the idea of you getting beaten up because your cousin did something dumb, which was much more common historically.

Thinking in terms of responsibility seems pointless to me. Ultimately, there are goals and actions that bring us closer to or farther from those goals. Saying "X is guilty, he chose to do something" doesn't get you closer to your goals. This type of thinking does make sense on a societal level, as a way to reduce independent actions that might hurt the tribe but it doesn't make sense for an individual. You punishing someone else can only help you indirectly, in a manipulative way. Like, if you "expose" a pedophile, your social status might increase slightly. But I don't like where this type of thinking leads to, so I don't do it.

So my solution is to simply think about guilt as little as possible and only under the context of "If other people think Y person is guilty, how will they behave?".
In your example, that means:
"The older generation worked under specific circumstances that made them act a certain way, it's too bad if their actions caused harm." and likewise for the younger generation.

So... where's Joe Biden?

I will state for the record that these sort of questions come up fairly regularly. Almost always, the VIP emerges soon enough, seemingly no worse for wear. Kim Jong-un was MIA for a couple weeks, and I think Putin may have disappeared too at one point.

So normalcy bias being what it is, I expect Joe to turn up soon and give some sort of speech.

But, isn't it a bit strange that Biden made his announcement via Twitter of all places and hasn't been seen in public since? We have no idea whether he wrote that statement, or even signed it. The only evidence of him "stepping aside" is a JPEG on Twitter. Personally, I think there is a real chance that he is seriously ill. The stress of the two weeks cannot have been good for his health.

On a more meta level, this seems to pattern match a behavior we've seen from the Democrats a lot. Instead of proactively using openness to refute conspiracy theorists, they seem to double down on secrecy. Why let the rumors swirl? Why not have Joe pop out to say hello?

Whatever happens, I expects some great books and movies to come out about this two week period. To be a fly on the wall in the White House!

Update: 12:20am Tuesday. There are some crazy rumors swirling on Twitter with one source claiming that Biden is in hospice care and might die soon. It's a very low status source, but they correctly called the Sunday resignation. (Humorously they are squabbling with another low status source and have a ban bet going). Back in normiestan, Biden's physician claims that he is nearly recovered from Covid and is performing all Presidential duties (odd statement, that). More facts: Biden was supposed to meet with Netanyahu today but it's been moved to Thursday. Polymarket currently has Biden with a 50% chance of finishing his term - with no movement in the last 24 hours.

When he disappeared, the claim was that it was COVID. Yet he wasn't wearing a mask, and he's Mr. Mask. So I would guess it was not COVID but rather something more serious.

(Alternatively, it is COVID but it's a serious case)

Severe reaction to Paxlovid also a possibility.

This one makes at least some sense.

I thought COVID was a convenient excuse. It's got the advantage of being a medical diagnosis that can vary in severity, and also something you can get over. If he dropped because of Dementia or Alzheimer's, he can never get away from that. And in his remaining 6-10 years, he can't really give speeches at Harvard as a former president if he's known to be cracked mentally. But he can recover from COVID, and be treated as an ex president in good standing. Sure, he'll be visibly slower, but it doesn't really matter because he has no obligations.

He just called in via phone during Kamala's first speech in Wilmington. Ironically, sounds the best he has since the SOTU.

How sure are you that the voice you heard wasn’t AI synthesized?

I assume you're joking, but I have to imagine we're not far away from Deep Fakes being used by state actors to manipulate the public. The technology is getting better and better.

Consider this synthetic shitpost: https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1815137702561689866#m

You can tell from the x.com username that this is obviously going to be a fake, and the word choices and speech pacing make it even more clear. But for someone without such an idiosyncratic speech rhythm and reputation for stumbling and mumbling? We're well past "you can fool some people some of the time" and probably even "you can fool most people some of the time". I'd say we're at "you can fool most people most of the time" now, and it will only get worse.

I wonder how far we are from forging a voice being as difficult as forging a signature. Hopefully that's paired with widespread doubt about it as a method of authentication, but you still hear (occasional) stories about forged signatures being used for fraud in the age of photocopiers.

Our whole system is built with toothpicks and rubber bands. The idea that a signature or a docusign means anything is farcical. Biden's signature didn't even look right on the Twitter JPEG. (Note: I'm not claiming its false – only that it shows just how bad a signature is as a form of ID verification).

It's funny how much of our fintech stack is built on obsolete technology. I've had trouble doing a Zelle bank transfer for $1200. On the other hand, my handwritten $400,000 check goes right through no problem with nary a notification.

Our best defense against cyberattacks is also the President's best defense against assassination: only stupid and crazy people ever try. So maybe that's some relief. Even when Deep Fakes are easy, reputable people might just not do it.

OpenAI were recommending phasing out voice auth back in March, passably mimicking voices is now extremely accessible. Current TTS can't replicate more subtle mannerisms and tics, but human mimicry and speech-to-speech gets you most of the way there.

If only AI Biden is based.

Am slightly disappointed it wasn't the "I'm smoking on Bhutanese Shadow Garden Dark Evil Pack" meme.

Normalcy bias wins yet again. Nothing ever happens, yadda yadda.

Ironically, sounds the best he has since the SOTU.

I imagine he's had a weight lifted off his shoulders, much like the man who has decided to end it all. Hopefully, he can enjoy the final years of his life in peace. The last few months have been painful for everyone.

Kamala at one point says: “joe we’re so happy to have you on the recor….on the call. It is just so good to hear your voice”

Does this not strike anybody else as a pretty odd thing to say?

Imagine this was another country. Putin disappears due to some illness, and a few days later announces that he is withdrawing himself from politics, but he does this by posting a jpeg to Facebook, then nobody hears from him for a full day, and what we finally get is him calling into his replacements press event with what could easily have been some prerecorded audio.

I mean…what the hell? Why not have Jill call in at least?

I thought the speculation on his whereabouts was over when I heard he phoned in. Then I saw this clip.

https://x.com/goddeketal/status/1815521002773766502?s=42

Someone please explain this. She blew it.

I thought she was going to be saying 'on the record' or something but no, that's not right at all. This is wild. And the whole way she's talking also makes it seem like a hoax.

What of the comments by 'Biden' just after where he says "It's mutual, I love ya kid" etc ?

It's certainly plausible that there are recordings of him saying that in some other context. Though to what end, I don't know. Certainly they couldn't maintain such a rude all the way to November, and I don't see what a week or two would buy, other than maybe fake endorsements from a candidate who then tragically died.

The Kamala campaign certainly has a press person capable of hitting the stop and play buttons at the correct time. It's not like this was an impromptu speech.

As an American abroad for some time it's odd to see the US from the outside in the current era. There's no conspiracy speculation in Japan that I have heard of in the news regarding Biden's health, but it all seems bizarrely obviously a set-up in banana republic-type proportions.

Biden says he will only step down for health reasons. It is conveniently announced that he has COVID. He vanishes, tweeting out his disinclination to stand for re-election (though does not mention health anywhere in said tweet). In fact no one really mentions his health except to say he is on meds. Word trickles down that his staffers are surprised by his tweet.

His next presence is days later in a voice (not Zoom, not video) call, of course praising Harris as the inheritor of the mantle. A happy, positive old man gracious praise of Harris, who seems tickled pink and gushes how Joe and Jill are just like family (who gives a f**k?) It's bizarre. Am I just online too much or reading too many conspiracy types? Even taken at face value this all seems odd.

This clip is the best evidence for "Biden dead" I've seen so far. Harris is even more sus than tricky Dick himself.

Or she was about to say, "on the recovery[...]", or "on the record[...]" and either changed her mind or blended two sentences together.

Regardless, I very much doubt he is dead, it makes no sense to hide that. If anything I think it's much more likely that he is being isolated because he doesn't really want to resign from the 2024 candidacy, and this is more or less a palace coup, either explicitly (he never said that he is resigning) or that they don't trust I'm to not say something ambiguous (or forget that he's resigned) during a live press conference.

it also could have been a recording because they decided to record it rather than do it live. like how singers sometimes mime a recording at their concerts rather than sing live. not because he is incapacitated or locked up but because they can do a cleaner take and there is less chance of a technical issue that could interrupt the call. but i also think its funny that it could just be a lot of small lies that are feeding the conspiracy narrative. i'm sure there is some lesson about how you should be honest.

Why not have Jill call in at least?

I can't imagine that would reassure anyone on the "dead Biden" train.

Maybe not the dead Biden thing, but the palace coup thing.

It would be bad for Biden to give the most impactful speech of his career (dropping out and endorsing Kamala) if he is visibly sick. They want to move past sickly old Joe and focus on other things. Having one last “our president is about to die” video go viral is the last thing Democrats need.

On a more meta level, this seems to pattern match a behavior we've seen from the Democrats a lot. Instead of proactively using openness to refute conspiracy theorists, they seem to double down on secrecy. Why let the rumors swirl?

I'd guess that most White House staffers might not even be aware of this speculation, or if they are, they might consider it fringe enough to ignore. I've only seen this stuff on rightwing twitter.

What would be the point of pretending Biden isn't dead?

If he died we'd get president and candidate Harris. Seems to be what everyone wants.

Yes, if he were dead (he's not) there would be no need to hide it since that's everything they want. So why is Biden in hiding? Perhaps he had a 'sode (as the kids say) and is a babbling idiot. Perhaps he's extremely grouchy after having been shivved by his own party. I don't know. Seems like he'd want to give a nice speech for party unity.

I'm betting on sickness and senility. If Biden resigns now it reveals the big lie that he was just fine this whole time, when it's clear to everyone who has been paying attention that he has been incapable of doing the big job for months if not longer.

If Biden resigns now it reveals the big lie that he was just fine this whole time, when it's clear to everyone who has been paying attention that he has been incapable of doing the big job for months if not longer.

Not totally convinced.

If he were actually incapacitated I don't see why they wouldn't just invoke the 25th for the same reasons.

In his interview with Stephanopoulos, Biden said, “Look. I mean, if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get outta the race,’ I'd get outta the race.”

I think it’s pretty clear what happened.

Is ..this a joke? I don't always know here.

It is, though the Biden quote is real.

Looks like our troubles are behind us.

Joe: "Lord, why do you sound like Nancy Pelosi?"

Lord: "I move in mysterious ways. Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way..."

Don't mock. Kamala Harris could win in November and Nancy Pelosi would still be the most effective female politician in American history.

Kamala is looking to be president soon. She doesn’t want to normalize using the 25th amendment.

I don't believe anyone believes that the 25th poses a threat to Kamala.

I don’t know personally how true this is but I heard recently in an interview that the 25th is not designed to forcefully remove a president. If the president is aware and capable enough to resist at all it wouldn’t work. I hadn’t heard that before and it changed my view of some of this stuff.

Hasn't he been isolated by his son and wife for a while? If they don't want him making public appearances(perhaps because they are not rational actors) then they might be able to stop him.

It's kind of a bad look if the sitting President of the United States blunders an interview, is widely considered un-reelectable, resists calls to step down and dies shortly afterwards.

That's the kind of thing you see in Crisis of the Third Century era Roman politics.

For that to make sense your definition of "Shortly" is doing a lot of work here. Pretending he has COVID buys them what, a week? This is the sitting President of the United States, not some reclusive celebrity. He can't just mysteriously stop making public appearances or attending meetings for the next seven months.

IDK, these people aren't great schemers. I would've thought about this BEFORE doing some shady backroom deal to get an already old Biden as nominee in 2020 with Kamala. This was an eminently foreseeable problem.

I would've gotten a decent looking signature on my jpeg too. Maybe people are in a rush and playing for time to outrun the other factions to the throne? Maybe they're just collectively stupid?

It's also difficult to realize how deep the internet autists are going to look into something. Maybe 20 years ago you would have been able to get away with it but now its too difficult to control the narrative and I think some people have not updated.

This might be the silliest 10 days I’ve ever seen.

  1. Weekend at Bernie’s debate
  2. Trump shot by 20 year old kid while SS watched and everyone just agrees SS incompetent
  3. Biden gets covid
  4. Cocksucking whore becomes nominee
  5. Biden just disappears
  6. No one at SS has any explanation for how a kid with no training wandered around with basically I’m a sniper going to shoot Trump shirt on and no one noticed

Did Covid just fry everyone’s brain? Or the kid playing the simulation got bored?

Forgot to mention at some point a crack smoking trust fund kid with a hooker problem may or may not have essentially been the acting President.

Edit: was meant to be humorous. By writing things in extreme. Humor of course does not always translate in text. My actual view on Kamala is 2010 Kamala and her true beliefs are fairly moderate.

I guess I advocated for perhaps the right is correct to pursue cancel culture as they have power. If you live by the sword you die by the sword.

Seems like I get enough upvotes. And I have previously criticized your AAQC taste.

Insanity. The simulation got weird.

I still remember when Obama roasted Trump at the 2011 Correspondent's Dinner. That was some funny stuff. Trump, what a clown, amirite?

If you told me that 13 years later I would be voting for that clown for President, I could never have guessed at the twists and turns of fate that brought us here.

Cocksucking whore becomes nominee

This whole post is an example of unfiltered culture warring where you just see how much shit you can throw at the wall. You've been told (and told and told and told) to stop posting like this. Last time you were told you were cruising for a permaban.

You have, by my count, 8 warnings and 6 tempbans, with notes saying "Escalate if he doesn't improve." You have zero AAQCs, and to my recollection, you have never posted anything interesting or of value. You collected nine reports on this post. I have no confidence you are willing or capable of improving.

I'm just going to make this a permaban, unless the other mods are feeling merciful and want to give you another chance.

It's not too far from what happened to FDR, except that guy managed the media better.

Except the alleged Pupienus was weeks before the debate.

She’d take the office as the first woman President of the US after having dropped out of the 2020 primaries due to bad polling and having been nominated by Biden due to her demographic profile (“Black” woman). She’d be seen as the face of DEI quota hiring, not a woman who succeeded due to her merits like Secretary Clinton would have been. The House will have to vote in her successor as Veep, and she’d be stuck with whoever they chose. None of the optics are good. And the polling says she has a good chance to occupy the office for all of half a year before Trump becomes 48th.

They also want her to earn the office of 47th President with votes, because they can campaign on “if you vote for her, you can show the world a woman can be President!” This boosts the down-ballot races.

The House will have to vote in her successor as Veep

It's a ceremonial office anyway.

They also want her to earn the office of 47th President with votes,

Of course, the 25th amendment doesn't cancel the election.

I don't totally discount the argumentum ab vibum, but I don't think it's strong enough to keep a conspiracy going.

I agree, I think there's a much likelier chance that Biden is very upset at what happened and is just not being very cooperative with the people who engineered his ouster

I think he's probably in a moderately-bad state (but not terminal) plus not cooperating. If he hadn't taken a downturn, I think he's not coerced to resign.

Hillary Clinton (it was HER place in history!)

More seriously, the media and Democrat insiders extremely strongly insisted Biden WILL drop out that weekend. And he did. If he also died that weekend that's maybe a bit too much of a coincidence to just gloss over.

He's recovering from an illness, he's not campaigning, and he's by all accounts been dialed out of his day job for a while now. It doesn't seem like "why is Joe Biden keeping a low profile" requires a ton of explanation.

He's President of the United States. He just made the biggest announcement of his career. Notably this announcement was a 180 from everything he had ever said until yesterday.

Many people are suggesting that he was coerced, and that sounds pretty reasonable.

No, this is not the time to hide in his beach house.

He's an 81 year old with a serious(for him) illness who has six hours of lucidity on a good day.

If he was lucid enough to write that letter he’s lucid enough to jump on TV for a couple of minutes.

He didn't write the letter (likely). He probably has barely agreed to the not running part. If he is ever healthy(as much as this word applies to him) again, there is probably going to be a time where he starts (correctly) accusing people of tricking him into agreeing to drop out.

I think the default explanation is just that he's still pretty sick and not in good condition to give a speech.

Now I'm confused, because I distinctly remember, around the time this comment was posted, being in my dad's truck, where he had MSNBC playing, and Nicole interrupted whatever Trump Vs Harris stuff they were talking about to show Biden giving a speech indorsing Harris and thanking his supporters. It stood out to me because he sounded like an old man on death's door, more so than anytime I've heard him speak prior. Of course he did start to ramble on in a stereotypical old man way before long, but it was more what the covid did to his voice.

Am I missing something, or did nobody else run this?

Weird. That speech didn’t happen. He hasn’t appeared on video in a couple days.

Oh god... are the Berenstien and Berenstein universes finally colliding?

He phoned in to a Harris speech. That's probably what cae heard.

I think this is what you're talking about?

There’s reporting with confirmation from police sources on the motorcade detail in Las Vegas that Biden suffered a medical emergency on Wednesday: https://x.com/jenvanlaar/status/1815588805300084983

The cops got a radio callout that there was an emergency with the President and scrambled to clear the way to the hospital, but Biden ended up on Air Force One instead. The event he had for later in the day was canceled. Another source says he suffered a transient ischemic attack.

One additional detail from a reporter on Air Force One is that they made the trip from Vegas to Delaware in 3 hours 40 minutes, and said that the plane was going so fast it was shaking.

The "dangerous alt right conspiracy theory misinformation to fully confirmed in the NYT" process is getting compressed down to a few hours at this point.

Here’s a video of him trying to get into an SUV and needing a lot more help than normal:

https://x.com/anthonycabassa_/status/1813780713747149084

This was last weds when he disappeared for “covid”.

I love how the video narration says he's wearing a mask in the car, but the video clearly shows him in the car seat without a mask on.

Maybe he put on a mask later, I don't know.

Kate Middleton redux. They can’t pretend he’s alive for 6 months without any public appearances and they have little reason to. If he dies, they’ll announce it. Seems more likely he’s just angry at the party and sick anyway, and therefore doesn’t care to make any public appearances anymore.

This seems a reasonable take. It also suggests he wrote (or signed off on) that Tweeted comment under a certain amount of duress and probably coercion. Which hey, maybe from people with reasonable arguments. It still seems like horrible precedent. Yes I spelled that as intended.

He gave a speech to some union today and was cracking jokes. Did Kate Middleton do that the 3rd day after she was in hiding? I don't remember.

I believe she did, yes, to the same union.

The normie explanation is that he's old, weak and tired. He had to keep up appearances for the sake of his campaign, but now that this is over, he wants to check out and have some R&R. Maybe he'll coast like that for a week or two, maybe he'll coast all the way to the finish line.

If Biden dies close to the Trump assassination attempt we are going to have some wild "shadow war" conspiracy theories.

Shadow war? Maybe. Or the same group behind both. If Biden dies so close to the Trump assassination it raises the possibility that there were more plotters than the shooter related to Trump's assassination attempt. The same way Oswald being killed by Jack Ruby and then Robert Kennedy being killed by an assassin, raised the possibility of a conspiracy.

If Biden is dead it would look like a group might have decided to get rid of Trump in an opportunist and not highly competent manner and when that failed, thinking that Biden will certainly lose, they decided to get rid of him. Now, what about forcing Biden to resign? There is still opportunism there, and certainly culpability in regards to promoting a narrative that painted Trump as existential threat, and the possibility of such plots remain. But Biden's death would demonstrate a higher possibility of people brazen enough plotting to kill Presidents.

People would be correct to come with conspiracy theories that Biden might have met an unnatural fate if Biden is now dead while his twitter account announces the successor and just after the Trump assassination attempt. Events would be mega sketchy.

Do we really need to come up with a conspiracy theory to explain the death of a frail 81 year old? They have like a 7% chance of dying within a year.

They have like a 7% chance of dying within a year.

This is so accurate I feel like you must have checked the same actuarial table I pulled up; next time add the hyperlink too so your statistics aren't mistaken for hyperbole!

We don't need to come up with it, it's a reasonable to do and unreasonable to not consider it a possibility, or worse to dismiss it. Biden dying in these circumstances would be genuinely incredibly suspicious by the nature of the events. It is possible a coincidence due to his frailty, and it is also reasonable to bring this up as a possibility but the timing matters and so it is a by default a reasonable thing to be suspicious about. Because he announced the successor on twitter without doing an appearance. Actually this kind of thing would be suspicious and speculated about when it comes to even roman emperors who in their death bed announced a guy there as successor and have been accused by people then and historians for murdering them.

Dismissing possibility of plots is certainly against the precautionary principle and allows criminal plotters to get away with them and it isn't a reasonable course. Of course history is full of plotters plotting nefariously. Not to mention that organizations like CIA have played important role in promoting propaganda dismissing conspiracies when that is what they do, plenty of criminal plots.

The way to go is to want more scrutiny, not to shut down these issues which is itself is suspicious. And there are some who dismiss such issues because they support those doing so. People who claimed the mafia didn't exist at minimum sympathized or had a relationship with the mafia, or were blackmailed like Hoover. We need people to show some courage and desire to put networks or in fact organizations like the CIA, Epstein's clique and clients and backers under the microscope and investigate and shut down such activities. Not just to dismiss the issues.

Also, Ceasar's wife should not be only honest but appear honest. I very much would rather political players to be sensitive in acting in a way that isn't raising real suspicions, which requires transparency. I am not interested in dismissing such things by default because that means giving them an opportunity to get away with criminal plots with zero scrutity. We need events to unfold in a manner where are not given reason to suspect foul play, by acting in a manner that doesn't make it plausible. We know for a fact that things dismissed as just paranoia like the goverment putting their thumps in the scale to censor in social media, or covid being the result of gain of function research, are true in first case and highly plausible in the later.

Obviously it's a possibility. Anything that's not physically impossible is a possibility.

Have you interacted with many 81 year olds?

Is it more likely that Biden got whacked, or that an extremely frail 81 year old, possibly with a neurodegenerative disease, with covid, occupying the most stressful office on the planet, during one of the most stressful (for him) times of his administration, finally kicked the bucket? Or is simply too incapacitated to make a public appearance?

I know my answer.

Or is simply too incapacitated to make a public appearance?

Of course, I am not saying that Biden has been murdered, or that he is dead and you are twisting things there. Assuming he is dead, yes it is plausible to a degree above just anything being a possibility that he has been murdered considering the circumstances and the timing. It is a plausible scenario.

Assuming by default that nothing nefarious going on, where it is suspicious that there is something and people both have motive, act in a manner where the death of the president is related to a tweet choosing successor that can't be refuted by an alive Biden is unreasonable and enables with criminal ploters to get away with such actions. Reasonable suspicion is a good thing and I find your preference of assuming coincidence to show bias towards influential networks and their honesty. Note that this is conditional on Biden being dead in response to a post claiming the implications of Biden dying close to Trump's assassination attempt and my default assumptions on this issue are different because I don't have a strong view of Biden being dead.

Well, if he's dead, he's exhibiting a remarkable state of preservation.

Well, that's a relief. This timeline was getting a bit too dank for me.

Good. Like I said in my first post on the issue, Biden really ought to appear even if he is diminished since in a succession, you need to see the guy endorsing their successor and a tweet doesn't cut it.

The selection of the new presidential canditate only through a tweet and with no appearance of Biden, certainly has the strong appearance of a coup. If Biden is conscious and can string two sentences together even with gaffes and dementia, he really ought to get behind a camera and speak what his account has twitted. He has that responsibility to his country even if he doesn't feel up to it.

There is also the possibility that he is alive but that tweet didn't represent his views at the time and there was a sort of a coup and he lacks control to counter it, especially after Kamala' endorsement by many.

Or maybe he was pressured and possibly threatened (scandals, prosecution of his son, or even him) but he did do it and he is bitter about it.

A coup is when you overthrow the leader of a country. Figuring out who runs for election to be the next leader is just not what a coup is.

  • -20

One presidential candidate got shot.

The other one went AWOL and is tweeting that he is no longer running.

Palace coup:

a situation in which a leader is removed from power by the people who have worked with him or her

Okay, again, Biden hasn’t been removed from power. There’s an upcoming election and his party decided to not nominate him.

  • -10

Biden hasn't been removed from power

With what knowledge the rest of us lack are you making this assertion

Biden is technically still in power.

Another alternative that his reported health issue from last week is considerably worse than has been implied, in a 'man he looks like shit' sense.

If he physically looks weak / unable to function- say stuck to a bed with IVs- that would be an understandable reason to avoid any sort of visual media presence.

But yes, the conspicuous lack of presence- especially when tied to the immediate wave of pro-Harris election propaganda starting to go across the internet / into youtube advertisemenets that was almost certainly on hand and ready in advance- is 'he's not the one in control' vibes.

In fact reporting supports this. I saw a few articles that even identified a specific time frame where he made his decision Saturday night, identified who on his team knew about it, etc.

Two things allegedly contributed. One, yes, apparently he was taking longer to recover from COVID than expected, so half right there. Two, he got some polling data from the swing states, and oh boy was it bad.

In fact, and I found this interesting, they hadn’t done new major polling in swing states for almost two months! At least two sources I saw chalked this up to almost willful ignorance.


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