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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29613 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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A comment on how Trump lies like a used car salesman and other politicians lie like a lawyer caught my eye.

It seems to me that some people, basically, see obvious "used car salesman" lies as insults, personal ones. "You think I'm gonna believe that??? You think that's earning my vote??? The nerve..." So they get incensed. But lawyer lies, on the other hand, they get a nod when they get noticed. "Ok, good one, you even managed to technically say the truth."

There's also some crossover with the way the lies of Soviet regimes are often described. "Everyone knows that they're lying, they know that we know they're lying, yet we can't do anything about it." Now, you don't have to pay lip service to Trump's lies. Yet!!! I imagine that plays into the frustration some people exhibit at Trump's embellishments and what drives them to "fact-check" his every single misdetail smugly.

I think a better comparison would be Trump lying like a fisherman or a hunter. Everyone knows the fish wasn't thaaaat big and that grizzly didn't literally jump on your tent, but these embellishments make for a better story.

And different people have different levels of tolerance for this sort of bullshit.

how Trump lies like a used car salesman and other politicians lie like a lawyer caught my eye.

Interesting because it's not true at all. Car salesmen rarely exaggerate. They'll play the numbers to scam you, such as hiding the sctual price and financing for 84 months. But the numbers you do get are real.

And when it comes to the car itself, he'll either read some nonsense off of the car's official marketing materials, or make up some blatant pants on fire lies. All 100% insenscere with the intention of duping you the sucker into paying out the nose for a lemon.

When Trump lies, he at least is making boasts in the same general direction he believes in. Meanwhile the democrats also make pants on fire lies, such as repeatedly claiming Trump supports a national abortion ban, a position Trump has never even remotely approached.

I think this is pretty insightful. I am personally someone who cannot deal with a used car salesman of that type and I will do a lot to avoid the need to interact with them. Whereas I feel a lot more comfortable with political types. Their speech seems more informative because if they lie and you spot it, you have learned something about how they estimate you and what they think they can get away with. If you don't spot it, you may have been tricked, but being wary of politicians' statements is good epistemically anyway so that's all right. With a used car salesman type liar you may as well ignore them entirely since there's really nothing to learned.

It seems to me that some people, basically, see obvious "used car salesman" lies as insults, personal ones. "You think I'm gonna believe that??? You think that's earning my vote??? The nerve..." So they get incensed. But lawyer lies, on the other hand, they get a nod when they get noticed. "Ok, good one, you even managed to technically say the truth."

Well, part of my argument (or, well, my suspicion, anyway) was that there was something like a class or place-in-the-hierarchy aspect to how different groups of people respond to the used-car-salesman-style lie vs the lawyer-style lie... and further, that that place-in-the-hierarchy aspect was potentially dangerous or destabilizing for the broader system, long term, and even further, elite groups have a lot of short-term incentives not to see the fact that it was potentially dangerous and destabilizing, because the social validity of their forms of lying (and only their forms) props up their place in the hierarchy.

Lawyers don't get offended if they see other lawyers absolutely shading and abusing the truth well, because they have internalized a value system that sees that as at least plausibly virtuous behavior. Like, we live in an adversarial system where everyone deserves representation, and therefore every lawyer, MORALLY, should be doing everything possible inside the bounds of the law to advocate for their clients - and this is fine, because other parties ought to have their own lawyers advocating similarly for them. And further, they see those moves as just the inevitable, legitimate moves given our set of incentives and institutions. It's like expert game fans watching a good speed runner - yes, reprogramming Mario 64 in real time on the controller via a buffer overflow glitch arguably violates the spirit of the game design of Mario 64 and makes for a lousy show, but wow is that being good at the actual, existing Mario 64! That's what being a good speed runner looks like! And so it is with being a good lawyer - this is certainly my experience with knowing a few lawyers, anyway. Don't hate the player, adjust the game (eventually).

Meanwhile, what do you call a hundred lawyers on the bottom of the ocean? A good start! Har har! The reality is, lawyer jokes don't come from nowhere.

Similarly, good politicians who actually know things about political rhetoric (and diplomacy for that matter) have a moral story about how, to knit together a giant, disparate coalition of low information voters and special interest activists who all have tons of unspoken assumptions and values that clash, you have to rely on certain kinds of misleading and ambiguous abstractions and narratives to pull people together for the greater good, even if it leaves individuals with highly incorrect impressions of what you say and mean and will do. It's not lying in some profane sense; rather, it's all strictly utilitarian, with those technically-just-inside-the-bounds-of-law statements being primarily viewed entirely by what effect they have in the broader social world. Plato named the Noble Lie more than 2000 years ago, and despite technological changes since, that core idea remains true and unavoidable.

Meanwhile, how do you know that a politician is lying? Their lips are moving! Har Har! Once again, the reality is, politician stereotypes don't come from nowhere.

Part of why I, personally, have found the replication crisis so jarring of my own worldview (after following it pretty closely) is that I had, previously, assumed that anybody doing something with "science" in its name had, as an ultimate value, pursuit of "disinterested, objective, universal truth" in exactly the way that politicians and lawyers didn't. That faith and trust in "science" was a huge motivator in pulling me out of the more conservative religious background I grew up in. So it's been extremely disruptive to me (on a personal, emotional level) to realize that many of the people in those fields are much closer to the politicians and lawyers than I had been led to believe and, frankly, had wanted to believe. And, similarly, I think such people themselves overwhelmingly have their own moral stories about why what they're doing is, ultimately, virtuous - power poses could help women gain equality, and microaggression research is on the right side of history, so finnicky details about study design and p-hacking and the garden of forking paths (or whatever the details were) are secondary to the greater moral purpose, and it's more important that we not undermine social solidarity in addressing those vital moral issues than that we get every single detail right about how things actually work....

And by the way, have you seen the absolutely cratering of trust in the academy that happened over the last decade? It didn't come from nowhere, either.

I think this is the nub of it. A used car salesman lying, in its ugliest form, is very low status, because its so nakedly venal. "I want money, and I don't mind hurting strangers to get it, because if I lie to you and you believe it, you are a sucker and that's proof you deserve to be taken advantage of." But because it's so venal, and often so crass, I think it's easy for normal people to understand. They can mostly trust their instincts and have their guards up. NOBODY will justify the lying of a used car salesman. And by the way, have you heard about Trump university and Trump steaks?

But the moral cases I just made for what lawyers and politicians and academics do (and I say this as someone who has a few lawyers and many academics in my social circles) are not just much easier to make, they're actually kind of foundational to our entire system. It's what justifies people's behavior and recognition of social power. And status differences play a huge role in it all of this. And a lot of normal people, I think, understand this power difference on a gut level, even if they are unclear on the details and know that they can't actually understand or refute (or even always recognize) the styles of truth abusing being used on them.

In a way, it reminds me a lot of Scott Alexander's essay on getting Eulered, or Paul Graham's old essay that includes the idea of the Blub Paradox. Both essays emphasize the problems of a person encountering arguments or techniques that they can't evaluate because the arguments rely on knowledge or concepts that they can't understand, and yet they are forced to make weighty choices in the face of those arguments... and they recognize the larger, contested social context those arguments or techniques are in, too, and that there are certain zero sum aspects underlying everything.

The lawyer metaphor reminds me a bit of the discussion ymeskhout brought up comparing TWA Flight 800 as compared to certain sanctionable lawsuits, and what I contrasted with the Subway Tuna lawsuit allegations.

From a lot of points of view, all of these lawsuits had what a serious literal reader would consider were made 'recklessly or in bad faith'. And I don't just say that given what's happened since in Krick: even at the time, it was clear that several core claims, including one that ymeskhout highlighted, were presented with either ignorance of their context or willful misrepresentation, and that a good many others were paraphrased commentary from randos taken as gospel truth.

Some of that difference in treatment is politics, and the electioneers are treated as a dire threat while Krick is a tragic sob story. But I think there's something deeper.

There Are Rules, some explicit and some the sort of thing that are like describing water to a fish. It matters if your phooney balooney claims are things that would be in the possession of a specific named other party you've sued in this case, or if they're something that would require 'discovery' of an unrelated third party. It matters if you've got an affidavit from one rando with credentials or a dozen without. These change the extent courts can interact with matters, and also the extent that they'll treat you seriously.

But these norms aren't about what's 'real' or not, or even if they're not-intentional-lies.

That's not even limited to things like lying or not. I've got an effortpost brewing on how some politicians are Nice and some aren't, and how little it has to do with them actually being kind, even to the people around them, and it has a lot of overlap.

It's because you know, and the Used Car Salesman knows that you know, that you're rounding everything he says down by 50% and probably just straight up ignoring some of it. It's a game you're both playing. If you called him out on his BS, he'd probably concede immediately "Well okay not quite zero to sixty in 2 seconds, maybe more like 5 seconds, but she's zippy! You're gonna love her!"

Whereas when the Lawyer lies to you, he thinks he's the only player in the game -- you're too dumb to play. He either sincerely believes you're too stupid notice the subtlety of his lie, or he knows that his lie-by-omission is well-crafted enough that refuting it would take an order of magnitude more time and energy and make you look like a fool for trying. If you call him out he will not concede, he will just persist in his bold-faced lie. Glib, simplistic political slogans are a closely related type of lie, which is why they are so effective at enraging political opponents.

I think it's the opposite, the lawyer is the one who'll have to adjust when called out because they depend on longer term trust relationships. The used car salesman will just grin through it and move onto the next customer.

This has been the exact opposite of my experience, and as @ArjinFerman observes such adjustment can be read as professional weakness in thier position.

I think it's the opposite, the lawyer is the one who'll have to adjust when called out because they depend on longer term trust relationships

That doesn't help when they're working for your opponent.

Funny, my reaction is the complete opposite. Getting upset at Trump's lies is like getting upset at Gillette after discovering that there, in fact, might be something better a man can get. It's the lying while telling the truth that I find insulting.

Now, you don't have to pay lip service to Trump's lies. Yet!!!

In stark contrast to lies of the establishment, which I am forced to pay lip service to.

Getting upset at Trump's lies is like getting upset at Gillette after discovering that there, in fact, might be something better a man can get

Love this analogy. I definitely feel the same way. I find Biden‘s lies, which have an air of supposed respectability about them, much more offensive than Trump’s lies, even when Trump’s are more blatant.

A missing mood in development news: Environmentalists pin hopes on tiny fish to stop Highway 413.

From a plain reading of the article, the logic goes:

  • Activists don't like the proposed Highway 413
  • They searched for a way to stop it.
  • They found these fish, and the strategy may be effective.

In a sane world filled with people arguing in good faith, you might see a similar situation:

  • There are endangered animals in an area
  • Environmentalists discovered development posed a risk to them
  • Therefore they oppose that development

If you trust the CBC's reporting, then the activists would be better described as anti-development rather than environmentalist. The discussion is centered on the highway, the political situation around it, the promises that Doug Ford (bad!) made, and the actions the Federal Liberals (good!) took which slowed it down.

There's a reason the wisdom for landowners who discover endangered species on their property is 'shoot. shovel. shut up.'.

Unfortunately, in this world, the way it works is

  1. Law is proposed

  2. People opposed to the law note it can be easily abused by people acting in bad faith.

  3. Their objections are overruled; no one would do that and surely there are safeguards against it

  4. People acting in bad faith abuse the law

  5. The people in 2) note this and complain

  6. Those in charge insist on taking the bad faith objections as if they are in good faith. ("Maybe that tiny fish really is vital to the ecosystem. Can you PROVE otherwise?")

  7. Repeat step 4-6 forever.

This is a tale as old as environmental law. In the 1970's, the discovery of the endangered snail darter blocked completion of the almost-finished Tellico Dam by the Tennessee Valey Authority. Congress had to pass a specific exemption to complete the project.

We later found out that the snail darter also lived in other rivers in the area, and the completion of the dam did not drive it to extinction.

For another variant of the problem, see the wildlife 'separate populations' discussion Kagan brought in Loper-Bright was about this case asking if the Washington State population of the squirrel subspecies sciurus griseus griseus was distinct enough from the Oregon and Californian populations of the same subspecies to 'count' as a species-as-legal-term for the Endangered Species Act. Or where local regulations effectively traded off unproved harms committed by politically disconnected actors against much-more-established risks by powerful ones.

I grew up in the San Diego area, and recall environmentalists opposing transmission lines from new desert solar plants into the city because it threatened some desert tortoise's habitat. Environmentalists have been this way for decades, at least right wing environmentalists like Uncle Ted and the anarchoprimitivists are honest about their intentions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Powerlink

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/energy/sunrise_powerlink/index.html

Also for anyone wondering after reading the environmentalist article, given that I grew up less than a mile away from the edge of the Cleveland National "Forest," it ain't no forest.

See this is exactly why I don’t like environmentalists as a group. I can understand the need to protect a species, and I’m generally in favor of protecting the environment where possible. But there’s a point where you have to be pragmatic about these things. We need roads, power plants and wires. Planning around a major habitat I get. But if you oppose everything people want to do even when it’s 95% of what you want, then I see no reason to take them seriously when they suggest we need to retool our infrastructure to protect the environment.

In their defense they are like the various right wing commenters here who refuse any compromise on guns, abortion, environmental law, etc. on the grounds that the left will just run rampant over them if they compromise and the only winning move is complete defiance and opposition to anything the enemy does. Even if each action is indefensible individually. I don't have a high opinion of either group.

In their defense they are like the various right wing commenters here who refuse any compromise...

Then just come out and say it.

"No gun control" and "Full ban on abortion" are both within the Overton Window, albeit as fringe positions. "No new development in Ontario" would be derided as batshit insane. If they're going to refuse any compromise, then they should at least have the balls to stand by their convictions.

State your arguments, gather support, and fight for your goals. Anything less than that has too many shades of conspiracy for my tastes.

That "the left will just run rampant over them if they compromise" is also obviously true with guns in a way it is not with the right for the environment. Containing the tiniest little compromise, the Bruen decision has resulted in it remaining illegal for me, a citizen of the State of New Jersey with no criminal record, to buy a gun anywhere in the United States or to carry one outside my home in New Jersey or anywhere in New York. Whereas the environmentalists not winning every battle on the environment has not resulted in lead back in gasoline or the Cuyahoga river catching fire again.

Obstinate Gun Owners is a thing, but I don't think they're analogous to environmentalists. Gun owners and its advocacy are working with much different incentives. Gun owners online can be annoying like environmentalists, but gun owners are mostly fine to stay out of the news. Most change is bad, most coverage is bad. Status quo is the best thing. They rarely receive friendly reporting when they organize, so they haven't learned to leverage media the same way as environmentalists. Generally, 2A advocacy groups fight in in the courts, or in some places on online forums (lol), but not in big displays of protest.

When gun owners do mass it's usually not so much a shock-and-awe lever, but a more traditional "we exist, there's lots of us, we will walk to the state capitol, clean up, and leave."

Generally, 2A advocacy groups fight in in the courts, or in some places on online forums (lol), but not in big displays of protest.

Sure, but fighting in court is what we've been talking about this whole thread, not protests. Environmentalists also do silly protests, but those aren't what we are talking about and I'm not making a 1 to 1 analogy or making this especially about the 2A.

It's good politics if you care about your goals. Centrist opinion doesn't matter in the long run. Only control of institutions does.

Centrists vote for the status quo. So all you have to do is be the status quo.

If you want something different out of politics, you have to be Lenin, not Talleyrand.

In the long run, I think Talleyrand spent more of his life getting what he wanted than Lenin did. And he saw a lot of change in his life, too. He just didn't think he could control it.

It feels like one of those intentionally bad metaphors. It's so bad I can't make heads or tails of it, but, also, to quote Bertrand Russell on Marx,

"His theoretical errors, however, would not have mattered so much but for the fact that, like Tertullian and Carlyle, his chief desire was to see his enemies punished, and he cared little what happened to his friends in the process."

I feel the same about all these people who look down on centrists and Talleyrand.

I don't look down on him. He was an incredibly competent and useful man, and without his involvement France may not even still exist.

But he is also not who you want to be if you have political goals. He went with the flow, only altering fate in small ways.

If you want to make a mark on history and change things you need to hire guys like him, but you can't be like him.

Here is an interesting development: Kamala Harris is now demanding unmuted microphones for her debate with Donald Trump.

It's been memory holed, but I seem to remember the general opinion being that allowing Trump to interrupt his opponent during debates gave him an unfair advantage since he would interrupt more often. This appears to be a complete 180. It's tempting to model this as a reflexive reaction to Trump's dominance in the June debate with Biden (which muted the candidates' microphones when it wasn't their turn to speak), but I get the sense that there are deeper strategic considerations at play. A few possibilities:

  • The Harris Campaign wants Trump to come off as unhinged by giving him the oppurtunity to make a complete ass of himself. This didn't work for Jeb, Rubio, Cruz, or Hillary, but maybe it will work for Harris? (I am pressing X to doubt)

  • Kamala wants to unleash her inner prosecutor and roll around in the mud with Trump. This could work, but it strikes me as the kind of thing that sounds better in the shower than it does in real life.

  • This is just mind games. The Harris Campaign is using meaningless nitpicks to bait Trump into doing something stupid. I think this is an underrated strategy in general. It would be very bullish for Harris if the people in charge are this smart.

Kamala wants to unleash her inner prosecutor and roll around in the mud with Trump.... sounds better in the shower than it does in real life.

Phrasing.

Kamala wants to unleash her inner prosecutor

Kamala can't unleash her inner prosecutor when she's being interviewed 1 on 1 by a friendly journo, I very much doubt she'll be able to out-shitpost Trump on stage. Maybe they think they have some real good pre-learned zingers for her, or maybe they realise just how bad the whole mic-muting-control looks optics wise, the people understand they are desparate, maybe this is a way to show that they are somehow back in control. It'll be hillarious either way.

They also want Kamala to get a 'Shut up, I'm talking' viral clip.

The public likes Trump more when he shuts up. Throughout all his political campaigns (with an exception of early 2016) and his entire presidency, his approval rating and polling would go down when he was in the news for saying boneheaded crap, and then it'd go back up when he wasn't saying anything at all. Trump doesn't ever really do stuff that's good PR, so simple "not bad" is the high point for him.

The Harris campaign likely judges that the more he speaks, the more likely he is to put his foot in his mouth. The most spectacular example of this was the first debate in 2020 when he acted like a petulant child the entire time, which cost him 4% in post-debate polling. 4% is a crazy big move in an era of hyper polarization.

There's also the chance that Trump is now just too old to really quip back effectively. Trump has never been a particularly effective debater. He could hold his own in 2016 and benefited from his opponent imploding in 2024, but he's always had a meandering semi-coherent speaking style that's only become worse with age. There could be an opportunity for Harris to jab at him in a way that he couldn't effectively counter.

Trump's campaign knows he's a liability, but Trump himself almost certainly doesn't like being "muzzled" to any extent, so it's Trump + Dems on one side and Trump's campaign on the other, trying to keep their candidate from another self-inflicted wound. I can only imagine the lies his campaign staff is trying to cook up to convince him not to turn on the mics, because they obviously can't tell the truth to someone like him.

I think it's a defensive move; Trump is good at debates (well, not at debating, but at turning the debate to his advantage) so they want to force a 'draw' by making it as chaotic and unproductive as possible.

Not a great strategy, Kamala trying to match Trump will probably come off as 'bitchy', not the 'sassy' they're hoping for.

What in the world?

Trump has never been good at debating. At best he's been OK, as in he's been good enough to not crumple to someone like Jeb Bush's attacks back in 2016, but he's never really gained much from debates, he's just treaded water.

Then in 2020 he gave one of the worst debate performances in presidential history.

And he flubbed strategically in 2024 by letting Biden debate way early, when there was still time for the Dems to change horses. Trump is in a much weaker position because of that debate than where he was before it.

Let’s see:

  1. He ended Jeb Bush’s political career in a debate.

  2. He had one of the best lines in debate history “because you’d be in jail” which just might have pushed him over the top in 2016.

  3. He ended Biden’s political career in a debate.

He did poorly in 2020.

Not sure id say he is a top debater but he surely isn’t bad.

  1. I don't recall any great debate flub by Jeb, but 2016 was a long time ago so maybe I'm forgetting something?
  2. The "because you'd be in jail" didn't help him, and if anything it temporarily cost him support with moderates. Trump went from -4.6 against Clinton to -7.1 in the weeks following that.
  3. Biden self-destructed. Trump didn't do anything to help it along other than a weak "I don't think he knows what he's talking about" and be minimally competent enough to not also get dinged. A good debater could have accelerated it (like what Christie did to Rubio in 2016).

he's never really gained much from debates, he's just treaded water.

This is a pretty bizarre standard, because generally debates don't matter much at all. Who remembers the 2008 or 2012 debates? As I recall Romney was generally considered to win a few debates against Obama, but it didn't really matter and nobody cared. Trump, by contrast, used the 2015 debates to win the primary, the 2nd debate with Hillary to revive his campaign after the Billy Bush tapes, and now his debate with Biden to force an unprecedented mid-election switch. Declaring that Trump is a bad debater is one of those stylistic preferences, where people who already don't like Trump conclude he isn't actually good at anything.

Who remembers the 2008 or 2012 debates?

I remember Obama's "slam dunk" on Romney, in which he said the following.

Gov. Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that al-Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaida. You said Russia ... the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years

It's somewhat ironic, in retrospect.

He did great in the 2016 republican debates. Consistenty entertaining and stole the spotlight, as you'd expect from someone who spent so long working in reality TV. He struggles more with the 1v1 debate format, i think. Maybe because that gives both people too much airtime and the whole thing is just boring.

His advantage in the 2016 debates stemmed from his approach being so unconventional that the audience found it exhilarating, and the other participants were so flummoxed by anyone not being appalled by it that they didn't know how to effectively respond. By 2020 his schtick had worn thin, and Biden knew what he was up against.

Honestly that says more about the extraordinary weakness of the 2016 Republican field than it does about Trump's strength.

The silver lining here is that it's going to be great entertainment.

Millions of streamers are now salivating at the prospect of commenting on a sassy black woman putting misogynist old huwhite Drumpf back in his place or glorious tangerine god emperor throwing Kamabla in a volcano of facts and logic.

There is a grandiose spiritual conflict for the ages in this. The shameless robber baron huckster versus the soulless HR lady corporate face.

Which one will better skewer social norms to their aid? Which one will inherit the soul of America?

Millions of streamers are now salivating at the prospect of commenting on a sassy black woman putting misogynist old huwhite Drumpf back in his place or glorious tangerine god emperor throwing Kamabla in a volcano of facts and logic.

Neither of these seems likely to me. Kamala doesn't seem that witty, and "facts and logic" isn't the kind of witty Trump is, even when he's on.

huwhite

Unrelated but what is this spelling about? I've seen it a lot but never got the memo.

I thought it was like cool whip. https://youtube.com/watch?v=nfVEvgWd4ek?si=Yuf-nRiy-BURug_2

I think it started with imitating famous Japanese social scientist Jared Taylor's upper class accent.

I think it's supposed to be mocking people with upper-class accents who pronounce the "w" in white.

Or it's referring to this chick.

(Despite her going viral a while ago, the only video I could easily find of her was from the Daily Wire. "Asian girl spitting while saying white people" uh... gives a lot of results in an entirely different genre...)

There are people... Who don't pronounce the "w" in "white"?

Sorry - meant "h". Apparently it's actually supposed to be lower-class dialect, though I distinctly remember a debate on a talk show many years ago where a Bostonian was arguing that "whether" is properly pronounced with an "h." Which is probably why a pretentious, aspirated "wh" sound registers more as an upper-class thing to me.

I was scratching my head trying to figure out how someone pronounced white sans w. Hey look that guys hite!

Pronouncing the h is one thing, inserting an initial h is another.

I’m not convinced that @hydroacetylene and @sarker are right about the intended connotations. The various upper class New England accents (most notably the Transatlantic accent, but other accents as well) have also traditionally distinguished between “w” and “wh.” I’d always assumed that “huwhite” was meant to mock the (outdated) stereotype of an old-fashioned, conservative, racist, elitist, country club snob, not a poor, dumb hick.

To be fair, the white racist in question could be southern too, but either way, he’s elite.

"huwhite" clearly emphasizes an initial "h" sound, not that there's an "h" following the "w".

More comments

Pronouncing the h in white is a deep rural accent from the red dirt belt where the south and lower midwest meet- not particularly upper class or high status. Think Hank Hill but ruraler.

Yes, this must surely be it. Imagine "hwhaait" in a southern drawl.

In Django Unchained, DiCaprio’s character does it pretty frequently.

The times I’ve seen it it’s used to at least imply that the person involved is hoping a white man would be put in his place.

I expect probably both bitchy and sassy are undesirable adjectives here. Confident and aggressive, maybe.

It helps them avoid talking policy which seems to be one of their main strategies other than keeping Kamala away from any unscripted events. I mean obviously during the debate itself they will finally have to justify their policy assuming Trump can call them out on how stupid things like price caps on food, taxing unrealized gains, and giving virtually everyone 25k free towards their house is, but if there is a lot of back and forth bickering and banter between those bits than the media coverage over the next week can ignore the policy weaknesses and just report on the Jerry Springer esque drama. Drown out any policy weaknesses.

I think one interesting thing Trump could do is say you were against XYZ and now allegedly coming to my position. The position you labeled deplorable. The position you labeled anti American. Maybe if voters want that position, vote for the guy who didn’t try everything else until they were forced to at the last moment.

I think it’s 3). Kamala is trying to bait trump into looking like an ass canceling.

He says many stupid-sounding things. In the recent event where the guy was grabbed by cops going over the rail I heard Trump in the background (well technically he was the main event but the video footage was of the climbing guy), expounding on how at some point in the recent past (maybe his shooting day) a couple of US flags were flying in just the right way as to resemble, in a photograph, angel's wings. Which is Sunday School for toddlers enough of an image, but then he kept on about it, like he wouldn't drop it. Now I'm not irreligious and I can even be moved by certain religious iconography but this seemed like the kind of hamfisted shitty politicking you'd hear in a Hollywood film penned by someone trying to satire a populist politician.

Anyway. I am trying very hard to see Trump in the best possible light. I find not listening to him speak useful. God help me.

The longer Kamala speaks uninterrupted, the more incoherent she appears. Thus, her teams wants the debate to be a continuous conversation: She interrupts Trump, he interrupts her, and she doesn't get bound up in 2 minute rambling answers. This is the opposite of Joe, who can no longer adapt quickly to a live conversation, so they wanted closed mics so he could recite rehearsed answers.

The twitter PR spin (that comes from Kamala's handlers, almost certainly not Kamala herself) is just spin. I think you have to be very credulous to believe that Trump is scared of debating Kamala Harris. Likewise, I don't imagine that Kamala's brain trust is a brilliant team of superplanners. They probably just figured this was an attack line that sounded good. I don't think it is.

The longer Kamala speaks uninterrupted, the more incoherent she appears.

There's an interesting point in there.

Most politicians are quite good at establishing a rapport with their constituents during in-person interaction. I won't link them here for the sake of brevity, but "I met ${congressman} and he wasn't the scum-sucking pile of human shit that I expected him to be" stories are incredibly common. This rapport building usually translates to public speaking as well. It's almost a universal trait in politicians.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of four cases where that's not true, and where direct person to person communication seems to result in lower favorability for the politician in question. They are in no particular order:

  • Kamala Harris
  • Hillary Clinton
  • Michael Bloomberg
  • Rick Santorum

Looking at that list, I can't really see any obvious commonality. We have two and a half Democrats and one and a half Republicans (I'm splitting Bloomberg). We have prosecutors and businessmen. We have men and women. We have representatives from the North, South, East, and West.

Are there other politicians like this, where their mere presence seems to be anathema to their political goals? What's behind it?

Hillary is the GOAT of "How in the hell is she worse in person?!" stories around the beltway.

The further we get from 2016, the more it looks like a Trump victory was inevitable.

None of them had really faced a truly competitive election before, except for Santorum (who racked up some genuinely impressive wins). Usually politicians have to have some baseline likeability to get to the national election stage.

Rick Santorum

Are we sure about that? The public seemed to like him less as they got to know him, but he was supposedly genuine, friendly, and caring-seeming in person, just way outside the overton window on the public stage.

Santorum's political career is an interesting case study. Everyone forgets this, but when he was in the House he represented a district that was heavily Democratic and waged his first Senate campaign as the prototypical "compassionate conservative" who would look critically at the budget but still try to accommodate social services spending. At the very least, he always shied away from the "up by your bootstraps" mentality that characterized a lot of the Reagan right in those days. As such, he was a rising young star who had bipartisan support. His first term was relatively uneventful, and he cruised to victory in a totally unmemorable campaign that was nonetheless closer than it probably should have been. He was popular enough in PA but had no national profile. He decided to rectify this during the Bush administration by going hard in the direction of the religious right. This decision absolutely boggles the mind. Maybe things looked different in 2001 or 2002, but those guys generally don't win presidential primaries, let alone general elections. He couldn't even keep his Senate seat, losing to Bob Casey, who even back then always looked like he was about to fall asleep.

As far as him being unlikable in person is concerned — I'm from the same neck of the woods as him and I never heard that. That being said, most of his interactions around here are from the '90s, when he was "your local elected official" as opposed to after 2000, when he was "national political celebrity". Part of the reason people may view him as unlikable may be that he turned into a caricature of himself at some point and couldn't turn it off. Maybe the lone attendee of his 2016 rally during the Iowa Caucuses can shed some light on this.

He decided to rectify this during the Bush administration by going hard in the direction of the religious right. This decision absolutely boggles the mind.

It's entirely possible that this is 100% driven by genuine religious convictions.

That being said, most of his interactions around here are from the '90s, when he was "your local elected official

All the reports I have are from PSU and CMU faculty and staff. That probably has enough impact that, in hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have included him in the list.

Are we sure about that?

I can't say for sure. The people I know who have met him first-hand are all of a specific (upper middle class blue tribe) type, so there may be some cognitive bias in play.

"I met ${congressman} and he wasn't the scum-sucking pile of human shit that I expected him to be" stories are incredibly common.

I'm always surprised that they're surprised. Con artists don't scam people by being so off-putting that no one would ever want to speak with them. People can know going into an interaction that they're being targeted for a confidence trick and then still get tricked by it.

It would be interesting if Trump chose not to speak at all and gave Kamala a chance to hold a two hour uninterrupted unprepared speech.

The impartial, unbiased moderator would immediately declare the debate over. The network would then proceed to the post-debate discussion in which a panel of impartial, unbiased journalists would discuss how Kamala's stunning and brave girlbossity dazzled the Bad Orange Man into a catatonic state.

This is pretty low effort. At least make doomposting interesting and have something to say.

meanwhile... https://www.themotte.org/post/1140/transnational-thursday-for-august-29-2024/245145?context=8#context

The job of the mods is hard enough and they’re doing a great job. Let’s cut them some slack.

Campy is at least trying to be humorous which I appreciate. The mods post was just sneering. They literally can't think of a single reason beyond contrarianism that people aren't supportive of Ukraine?

You don't have to call me a "they," I'm not non-binary.

The question wasn't "Why aren't you supportive of Ukraine?" It's "Why are you pro-Russia?" Those aren't the same thing.

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Unmodded post, he can say whatever as a citizen.

And in every discussion you will see the same comments about how they're against Ukraine because globalism or trans people or something. It just feels wildly incongruous every time, like trolling.

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Here is an interesting development: Kamala Harris is now demanding unmuted microphones for her debate with Donald Trump.

You think that was a demand?

The full text of the tweet is:

Donald Trump is surrendering to his advisors who won't allow him to debate with a live microphone. If his own team doesn't have confidence in him, the American people definitely can’t. We are running for President of the United States. Let’s debate in a transparent way—with the microphones on the whole time.

I don't think "Let's [do thing]" would be a demand if Trump was saying it, and I don't think this is a demand.

And I think that without those blinders, it is pretty plain to see that she is trying to taunt him.

My guesses are more like some mix of

  1. They're changing the conditions repeatedly to try to get Trump to pick a fight in a fit of pique and call off the debate altogether. Which Trump might do at any given time. This is at worst a neutral outcome for Kamala.

  2. They want a messy debate where Trump yells a lot and she scolds a lot and the moderators try to get everyone back into order and nobody even remembers what anyone said about anything substantive. They don't think Kamala can deliver a great performance, so the best choice is to make sure that Trump doesn't either. The noise about it is at worst a neutral outcome for Kamala.

I maintain my theory that Kamala's mission is primarily aiming to shithouse a draw, and if she manages a win then great. But the goal is to make sure the Dems win the house, hang onto as close a margin in the Senate as possible, and hopefully win the popular vote to undermine the Trump "mandate" in the popular consciousness. What could undermine that goal is a disaster debate, where Kamala looks lost on substantive issues.

So they're minimizing risks. The better, more substantial debate has upside, but it has downside. A shithouse yelling match will just force everyone to double down on their priors and won't change anything.

I like this take.

Trump's debate performance is a known quantity. He can land solid substantive points earlier in the debate. He had some real wins on immigration in the first half with Biden. He then gets either bored, distracted, or hung up on a single issue. This turns into rambling, but Trumpian rambling has a fixed return on investment - pretty much zero, but not negative.

Kamala's debate abilities are forecast to be between 2008 financial crisis and negative eleven billion. The DNC showed she can give a speech, perhaps. But the time pressures and direct adversarial nature of a debate are not at all her home field.

Exactly. The dems are losing two senate seats for sure, and there’s good chances of losing two or three more. They don’t really have pickup opportunities. Their standard bearer is a ditz whose softball interview with CNN had to be edited and still looked bad. The democrats strategy is to minimize risk as much as possible while trying to drive TDS. If Kamala can scrape out a win that way it’s great, but if she can’t, then at least keep the republicans from winning 54 senate seats and enough house seats to do what they want.

If having unmuted mics worked for Trump last time, why is his team not agreeing to it now?

I'm thinking trumps cognitive decline is far worse than expected and his team is worried about how he'll look.

What are you talking about? Trump speaks in public regularly and gives frequent interviews. These interviews are more critical than anything Kamala Harris or Joe Biden are subjected to. Trump was literally just shot in the head at a rally and had the presence of mind to stand up and pump his fist yelling, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" Before that, he debated Joe Biden in conditions that lead to Biden having to resign from the race. He was just at Arlington and gave several appearances in public there. What decline? Trump isn't hiding.

I think "Trump's cognitive decline" is just a talking point from the DNC, though I thought it had petered out a couple of weeks ago.

I think Trump actually has gotten worse at getting a point out. When he wanted to cite Snopes fact checking Charlottesville at the Biden debate he couldn't quite land the point in a way where you knew what the hell he was talking about if you weren't already familiar with what he was trying to say.

He’s been living politics for so long now he assumes everyone else has a similar knowledge base.

I mean, Trump has a pretty unique cadence to his speech. It's always been a bit rambly, a bit non sequitur. The usual hallmarks of senility, the inability to hold a conversation thread, are kind of difficult to apply to Trump.

That said, when I have bothered to watch long form Trump speeches or interviews, while he's not at Biden levels of word salad and starring slack jawed into space, he's definitely lost a step from 2020. And he's lost a lot of energy and force from his performances since 2016. I was watching that clip of him talking about his brother on Theo Vonn's podcast, and while he was human and sincere in a way you rarely see politicians, he also told the same part of the story what felt like a dozen times, got distracted, repeated it again, etc, for like 15 minutes.

And like I said, that's kind of always been part of Trump. But like Biden's stubbornness, it seems cranked up to 11 as he nears the cusp of "If this were Grandpa, we wouldn't be letting him drive anymore".

I'm still voting for him. I don't think applying "cognitive decline" to him the way it was applied to Biden is remotely fair or honest. But it's also impossible to ignore that he's lost a step or three since 2016.

It doesn’t really work as a political ploy the way it does with Joe. Trump still seems to have some vitality. See his golf outing with the PGA star.

I do think it is fair to ask “what about in three years”

I hate to be pedantic but Bryson DeChambeau is not a PGA star. He's a former PGA Tour star, and possibly a LIV Golf star, if you're of the opinion that LIV Golf actually has stars.

Something tells me you don’t hate to be pedantic.

The bullet wasn't really a back and forth debate. Neither was Biden, speaking facetiously.

And if there's no decline, why does his team not want open mics for him?

Trump has been subjected to intense public scrutiny. He speaks in public over and over and over again. We know what it would look like if he were senile: his handlers would hide him from the public and run a front-porch campaign, as they did with Biden, as they're essentially doing with Kamala.

The mics were muted last time and the pundit consensus is that this was in Trump’s favor.

Agreed. I think Trump came off as less unhinged to the normies by waiting his turn. He didn't need to do anything because Biden sunk himself. Kamala can't talk off the cuff in a credible way as far as I've seen so the same strategy might pay out.

She is well known for having scolded previous participants including Mike Pence, so I strongly suspect the goal is to portray her dominance by both interrupting Trump and throw him off balance and theteby goading him into a nasty retort, and also to contemptuously scold him if he interrupts her. I'm sure the idea is to exploit female sympathy to the maximum extent possible. It didn't work that great for Clinton though, so I doubt it's worth the bad PR of reneging a fair agreement.

ETA: I previously stated that I much preferred the debate with no talking over and everyone I discussed it with expressed the same. They should keep to these rules purely for the benefit of the viewing public if nothing else.

I strongly suspect the goal is to portray her dominance by both interrupting Trump and throw him off balance and theteby goading him into a nasty retort, and also to contemptuously scold him if he interrupts her. I'm sure the idea is to exploit female sympathy to the maximum extent possible. It didn't work that great for Clinton though, so I doubt it's worth the bad PR of reneging a fair agreement.

I'm not so sure - when some researchers put on a genderflipped 2016 presidential debate, female!Trump, with all Trump's mannerisms and lines ("WRONG!") turned out to be incredibly popular, and male!Hillary was reported as “'really punchable' because of all the smiling." If Hilarie had acted more like Kamala proposes to ("I'm Speaking!") it may well have gone much better for her.

You know, when she scolded Mike pence she still lost- to both him and the fly landing on his head.

I’m pretty sure that dem staffers are up their own assholes in a media bubble, but I don’t think they’re that far up their assholes.

In what way did she lose?

Yeah, I'm not sure sounding like a scold is the win some think it is

It just leans into the further political polarization between men and women. Women overwhelmingly cheer a woman living out their "and everybody clapped" public humiliation fantasy against a boorish man. Men get PTSD flashbacks to all the normalized relational violence they've suffered. It's just going to be two screens the whole way down.

Eh, a brutal slugfest of talking over each other is probably better for Kamala than her uninterrupted rambling. But coming off as a bitch doesn’t endear her to the median woman- women are really harsh on each other.

Men get PTSD flashbacks to all the normalized relational violence they've suffered.

Can you please expand on this a bit? I’m not sure what you mean.

My read is that he's using 'violence' in the same way that campus protestors do, to mean things that make the accuser feel attacked. In this case, women humiliating their menfolk in public (which is obviously bad and can shade into abuse, but isn't violence).

Thanks!

My bad, I meant Relational Aggression. But no, I didn't make it up out of whole cloth.

Thanks!

What does "two screens" mean?

Two movies, one screen.

Yeah, WC got the expression pretty much backwards, but it's an established enough part of the lingo around here that I knew what he meant right away.

My impression is that her team think they can train her up with a few canned clapbacks (eg. “I’m speaking now” that @WhiningCoil mentioned below) that will please the base, and that maybe there’s the added bonus of interrupting a Trump ramble where he goes way off topic as he is wont to do with some kind of “Donald, what are you even saying?” question that might provoke him into getting mad or doing something stupid.

Kamala's singular successful quip is "I'm speaking now". If Trump never interrupts her, she never gets to girlboss him back and have everybody clap. In fact, having the microphones muted except when it's your turn to speak is even worse. I recall, possibly falsely, that during her debate with Pence in 2020 she got so in the rhythm of going "I'm speaking now" when Pence would interject, she started accidentally doing it when she was point of fact talking over Pence during his time to speak. And then everybody clapped.

Unironically, what would be Trump’s best response to “I’m speaking now”? If you were wargaming strategies with him, what advice would you give?

Is it just unbeatable because of the broader cultural optics? Part of the problem is that I have no idea what the psychological profile of an “undecided” voter could possibly look like at this point, so it’s hard to craft a strategy that could appeal to them (because winning over Kamala supporters in any non-negligible amount is a non-starter).

Part of the problem is that I have no idea what the psychological profile of an “undecided” voter could possibly look like at this point

A few I’ve spoken to(understand my filter bubble is not representative)

  • thinks Trump’s personal behavior is too much to look past, but also that democrats refusing to condemn after birth abortions is too. Generally trust Trump on the economy but thinks he’s likely a criminal.

  • thinks republicans are too socially conservative but doesn’t trust democrats not to make inflation way worse through shear incompetence. Antiwoke and anti war but moderate to liberal on most of the issues, including things like race and the border.

  • opposed to wars and likes trump on that basis, but scared of rate cuts and thinks democrats are less likely to push/enable the central bank. Thinks Trump won the 2020 election.

  • conspiracy theorist and major antisemite who opposes wars, wokeness, and an open border, but supports woke prosecution for no reason I can understand. Doesn’t expect trump to be better on the economy but is mostly center-right on social issues, except for far right on guns.

major antisemite but supports woke prosecution

Damn they should come in for an AMA.

Wild guess: Nation of Islam or similar background.

Nope, just conspiracy theorist. White claims-to-be-Cherokee, more or less consistent with his views that low level crime should be basically tolerated- he thinks the owner of a store should have carte Blanche to beat a thief but that the police shouldn’t be called. Oh, he's also a legalize-all-drugs, yes including the ones that kill you, type but he still doesn't like gays or abortion and supports strong religious liberty protections and lax homeschooling laws.

That’s consistent. I’d probably like the guy, even if the feeling’s not mutual.

Honestly I'm torn between wanting to see him post on the motte and not wanting to see competition with SS for most antisemitic motteizean.

“If you wanna speak then actually say something, Kamala”

Or perhaps a bit longer form:

“Kamala wants to speak? After refusing to give interviews alone? Well she’s been talking a lot tonight but she’s not saying anything in terms of policies. Not a thing. Very sad, you know, the American people want to know what your policies are, Kamala. They wanna know and you’re not telling them a thing. You can’t though because you do have a record. The Biden-Harris record, and it’s been a total disaster. You wanna run for President but you’re running away from your record. Which has been a complete horror show, so if you wanna speak then talk about the Afghanistan withdrawal or inflation or immigration. All disasters.”

If it were me I'd just break the fourth wall and point out that its literally her one move. Tell her to get it out of her system since she changed the debate rules to do it. Mime saying it with her since shes so predictible. If there were and audience I'd lead them in a mocking chant of it. Turn it into that Simpsons meme about Bart saying the line.

I say this like it'd be easy to do, and it probably wouldn't. You'd need the instincts and timing of a veteran performer. Lucky for Trump, while he's no Bill Burr or Tony Hinchcliffe, I'd still say he has better odds than most at pulling that off.

Yeah. The Chris Christie approach re Rubio. Basically “you had that one canned just like you did for Pence—do you have anything to say that isn’t preprogrammed and focus grouped? Do you have something genuine to tell the American people?”