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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   34593 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Alright folks, the U.S. Presidential debate is coming up tomorrow night. I'm invested because I've got friends from both sides of the aisle coming, so we'll see what's going to happen...

What do you think will be the major issues discussed? Strengths for Trump? Strengths for Harris?

Outside of just 'debating skills' what do you think the policy strengths/weaknesses will be? My guesses:

  • Trump will continue to hammer strong on immigration issues
  • Abortion will still be a sore spot for Trump and Kamala will focus tehre
  • Economic issues will of course be Kamala's big weakness, Trump will pounce
  • War in Palestine will likely come up again - not sure how Kamala sees it (will she go anti-Israel?)
  • Taxes will be a thing
  • Maybe Trump will harp on government spending/inflation?

I doubt these will come up, but my personal dream is that nuclear and crypto become talking points, and Trump very publicly comes out for both. We'll have to wait and see.

So - what are you predictions my fellow Mottizens?

but my personal dream is that nuclear and crypto become talking points, and Trump very publicly comes out for both.

Being a crypto holder, I'm more concerned with the Dems/Harris' opposition to it than Trump's support for it. At the Nashville bitcoin conference thing, Trump tried to make it into a more partisan thing. I'm worried that Harris might respond to this with more opposition rather than trying to win votes from crypto holders...

Abortion will still be a sore spot for Trump and Kamala will focus tehre

I'm not sure why it's a sore spot, but then I may not have kept up with the "debate" on that topic. Can't Trump honestly (for Trump) say something like:

"What are you talking about? I've been saying all along abortion should be left up to the states to legislate, and oh, look, now the Supreme Court says I was right all along, it should be left up to the states. Which contrary to your side's usual fear-mongering, is all the ruling says. I already won! The federal government is out of the abortion business. Don't take my word for it, ask the Supreme Court, that's the law of the land now. There's nothing either of us can do about it, even if I wanted to, which I don't!"

That's actually less exaggerated and blustery than the average policy-related thing Trump says; as far as I know it's basically true. He's probably the least anti-abortion Republican president in living memory, yet has (indirectly) given that side its biggest win of my lifetime. It seems to me neither side can attack him convincingly on this topic. What am I missing?

You're missing that feels > reals. To the Democrats and to a sizeable chunk of unaligned it's not a complex philosophical or political issue with any nuances. There's the good guys who want abortion to be more accessible and the bad guys who want it to be less accessible (either due to ignorance or for cartoonishly evil reasons). Anyone who says it should be up to the states is for making it less accessible, because the position they were working from is it being federally protected. The idea that one could personally wish for it to be available but shouldn't be a federal matter does not register because Democrats consider government as a tool to use and not a neutral umpire enforcing rules and codes. It's baked in to both parties' core identity; in a democracy the majority votes and gets their way, but a republic is a specific structure.

Previous Republicans gestured at reducing accessibility but it didn't change. Due to Trump's supreme court nominations, abortion is less accessible. Nevermind that it's just he was in charge when something Republicans were working on for decades reached a tipping point, his presidency is the one that put the final nails in the coffin of Roe v Wade, so he's the worse of them all.

Are you saying that "feels > reals" doesn't apply to Trump's base as well? It is the human condition, not specific to one party or group.

Are you saying that "feels > reals" doesn't apply to Trump's base as well? It is the human condition, not specific to one party or group.

I am definitely not saying that. It is absolutely universal.

I just had to ask as you pointed out Democrats and undecideds but not Republicans or MAGAs.

They have their own topics on which they'll ignore the other side's nuanced opinions and just go by what's most convenient to assume the other side's saying. Accusations of "communism" from that side are often like that.

What am I missing?

Trump is the Republican nominee for president

a) Trump appointed the SC majority that overturned existing precedent on abortion. b) Democratic voters believe (correctly) that many Republicans want to ban abortion nationwide and many more Republicans are happy to go along with that.

There's zero chance that happens, of course.

Probably, but outside of election season, Trump is likely to be providing party support to those who will try whatever they can. For example, I still have no idea how Texas' laws about traveling out of state to get an abortion are not a violation of interstate commerce.

Yeah, I'd be inclined to agree. Kavanaugh, at least, would agree as well (he said so in Dobbs), so I imagine that's true of Roberts too. It'll die if it makes it to the Supreme Court.

Can't Trump honestly (for Trump) say something like PERFECTLY REASONABLE THING

Not really. Because the level of discourse is just too stupid. The average person doesn't know anything about the Constitution, how the government works, etc... They just want more (or fewer) abortions because other team bad.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure this issue is quite the slam dunk the Democrats think it is. The number of Americans who are pro-choice is not a large majority, only a narrow one. At times in the not-so-distant past, pro-life has been the majority.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/225975/share-of-americans-who-are-pro-life-or-pro-choice/

Donald Trump's position on abortion is much closer to the median voter's than Kamala Harris. Al Gore's "safe, legal, rare" was a good formulation. But the current Democratic party positively celebrates abortion. They refuse to denounce horrific late-term abortions. Things like having an abortion truck at the DNC come off as vampiric. It's not a good look. Which is why they lie about Trump's position rather than defend their own.

I'm convinced that unless one has strong philosophical priors related to either the sanctity of life (life begins at conception) or bodily autonomy (woman's right to choose), the intuitive moral answer is one that you almost aren't allowed to say in public: there are capital-G Good abortions, there are bad abortions, and there are meh abortions. There are times when it is close to murder, there are times when it is a mitzvah, and there are times I don't really care one way or the other. And there are a hundred virtually unprovable factors that go into that determination.

But by altering what kind of abortion you are talking about, you rapidly change people's opinions on abortion.

I think this is the mainstream opinion too.

Therefore, the goal of each side is to make the other side defend their most extreme beliefs. Here's where Trump can win I think.

He can flat out say "I do not support an abortion ban. But my opponent supports ultra late-term abortions". Kamala will have a hard time denouncing late-term abortions because she is a product of a machine that highly values conformity.

Trump can (and might) say that Harris supports abortions up to nine months, as he said about the Florida abortion referendum (after saying "we need more than six weeks", he said "At the same time, the Democrats are radical because the nine months is just a ridiculous situation" -- the MSM news blackout is such that I had to search specifically for Fox News to get this; other MSM just describe this as "Trump repeating lies about late-term abortions" or something similar). Of course the fact checkers will call this a lie (and it might be), but I don't think that matters at this point.

Yeah, it's a good point. More people will be exposed to heavily-filtered post debate coverage than the debate itself.

Honestly, the best bet for Trump is if Kamala shows up drunk or does something else that is too juicy too ignore. The debate won't be won or lost on policy.

Imagine the chaos if Trump says he can smell alcohol on Kamala’s breath.

Debate drinking game rules:

If Trumps says the words "wine aunt", everyone has to drink.

I mean the question is whose extremists are going to inflict a cost on the candidate for having a philosophically squishy position.

Not really. Trump is willing to defy his extremists on this issue(and almost all of them will vote for him anyways); Kamala is not(and they'll never have to face the question).

Right, I would be aghast if my sister got an abortion. But some crack whore getting an abortion? Yes, please, do everyone a favor! Or someone who will resent that child for the rest of its life due to the circumstances of its conception? By all means, save that poor kid the trouble. And of course that’s not even touching all the health-related stuff, both when it comes to the baby and to the mother.

I would be aghast if my sister got an abortion because she just didn't want a third child. Or if she had an abortion because she didn't want another boy. I would be aghast if my sister chose not to abort a down's syndrome kid, or a pregnancy that threatened her life.

Oh certainly, like I said, once you introduce serious health complications into the picture, my take is pretty much always, “Just get the abortion.”

That is the logical take, there are many on this forum that think you should be forced to raise a retard and care for them until you die because all life is sacred. So sacrifice your life and your wife's to raise an unproductive person that would probably have died without modern medicine because God says so.

I mean, no.

Because I believe in it and think it's right - that's why I'd raise an "unproductive person" (BTW how do you feel about 100% disability war veterans, just asking)

Your model for a "worthwhile life" doesn't trump anyone else's model for a "worthwhile life."

The only way to discover if you can derive meaning in life is to live it.

Never allowing that life to start is certainly a way towards finality.

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I think most would agree with this choice put in front of them, but the faith in the public health system generally is low enough that it might poll surprisingly poorly, especially if stories of (pro-choice) doctors handing out "totes serious health complications" notes for late-term abortions like prescriptions for emotional support animals. Witness the slippery slope that euthanasia in Canada has wrought.

Serious question, not trying to bait.

What if we have or develop a technology that gives you an early probability. You're 6 weeks pregnant and you get a report along the lines of "There's a 15% probability your baby will have xyz horrible disease or condition. We will know with 60% certainty at week 18, and 90% certainty at week 24"

What's the decision model look like then?

Right, so obviously I’m sure situations like this do come up, and I wouldn’t fault a woman for pretty much any decision she makes under that level of uncertainty. I would need to factor in things like: how much more difficult is the abortion going to be on her body the longer the decision is postponed?

I’m currently reading John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, and one of the early chapters in the book is about one of the characters becoming an abortionist in the late 19th century and the absolute horrors the women endured at that time; a lot of it dwells on how much more difficult and potentially fatal an abortion becomes the longer she is into the pregnancy. Now, obviously our medical technology is worlds better in the 21st century, but I would think that the likelihood of complications still increases substantially as the pregnancy progresses. I’m not a doctor and don’t want to speculate about what I would recommend for a woman in such a scenario. I hope to God I and my hypothetical future partner never have to make a decision like this.

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But we have numbers!

Everything below comes from this link from Guttmacher. Guttmacher is rabidly pro-choice.

You can piece through the crosstabs as you like, but I focus on these numbers:

  • There are about a million abortions a year.
  • "45% of abortions were obtained at six weeks’ gestation or earlier,"
  • " 49% at 7–13 weeks’ gestation"
  • Only 7% occur after 14 weeks
  • The abortion rate is 15.9 per 1,000 women aged 15 - 44. If my mathin' is good, this would be 1,590 per 100,000. St. Louis has 69.4 murders per 100,000 people, the highest in the country. Do with that apples-to-oranges comparison what you will.

Here's another Guttmacher link - " About half of all U.S. women having an abortion have had one previously."

What does all of this mean?

Your categorization of good/bad/meh abortions is good and useful. The raw numbers, however, show that even if "bad" abortions make up a very small minority of all abortions, we're talking about (probably) somewhere on the order of 100,000s of cases of what a lot of reasonable people would probably view as infanticide.

Secondly, there's a bit of a hidden conclusion to drawn from the "Only 7% occur after 14 weeks" statistic. Some posters here like to point out how raising a r*tarded child is somehow beyond the pale for many humans (I think differently). Taken a little more charitably, it makes sense to consider that a fetus that has demonstrable physical or cognitive deformities could give would-be parents pause. But, if 45% of people are getting these abortions at six weeks or earlier, people aren't making these judgements based on particularly advanced fetus condition. At 6 weeks, an embryo is 6mm long, the size of a pea. Yes, there could be markers, indications, signs, what have you. But the often presented narrative of "We learned our baby would require 24/7 care forever" is far more rare than is presented in campaign narratives.

And that leads me back to the numbers. Democrats love to campaign on the the smaller proportion of abortions that would probably fall mostly into "meh" (and definitely into "good"). Pro-lifers see the plain fact that a lot of abortions are purely elective on the part of a mother than feels somehow "unready" to be a mother. We (I) think these are absolutely "bad" abortions, mostly the product of a sexual lack of discipline or a cavalier disregarding for what are very predictable outcomes of, you know, having sex.

While I don't doubt the sincerity of those emotions, there is no way they outweigh the fundamental right of an otherwise healthy baby to be born. Hypothetical future states about being "unloved" or "having a bad life" have to be thrown out. That's literally trading the truth of the present for an emotionally based forecast of the future. That's bad decision making 101.

Finally, regarding the fact that half of all women getting abortions have had one previously, I don't see how this is anything than stupid after-the-fact birth control. "Young girl makes mistake" is certainly an understandable situation for a single abortion. I do not see how it can be that common (50%!) unless it is viewed plainly as "no big deal"

You're discounting that gestational time plays into most people's moral calculus. Most people feel differently about six weeks than six months. Which is logical: miscarriage rates start dropping precipitously after six weeks, and are minuscule after ten weeks. Many people might be placing those abortions of fetuses the size of peas in the meh category automatically, as the probabilistic child isn't probable enough or present enough at that stage.

The problem is that this becomes the Sorites Paradox -- the paradox that asks the question "how many grains of sand make a heap?" (Worse, actually, because time is continuous). It's not resolvable.

@100ProofTollBooth

I'm not saying it doesn't present a philosophical illogicality. What I am saying is that philosophical consistency ends up requiring (for most people) taking counterintuitive actions in real life.

Taking a hard black-and-white stand at conception or at birth prevents you from ever facing inconsistency. But each requires biting the bullet and accepting some tough choices. The shift from people identifying as pro-life vs pro-choice is mostly capturing shifts in the perceived environment around those people, their actual beliefs resemble neither philosophically consistent position.

The polling is like asking people "Do you think we should paint things Blue?" Some small percentage of people will genuinely never tolerate anything blue, and some small percentage of penn state fans want everything blue. Most people will change their minds depending how many things are already blue.

I see what you're saying. This makes sense. And I appreciate the comment on philosophical consistency.

I'm not pro-life because of dogmatic adhere to religious teachings (although I do that in my spare time). I'm pro-life because I think philosophical consistency would push the more rabidly pro-choice into favoring eugenics.

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To piggyback off of what @The_Nybbler said. This comes down to a bright line definition of when life starts. And an honest debate about abortion would have that at its center.

It's funny, we've all heard the joke about it being impossible to be "a little bit pregnant" - you are or you aren't. It seems, however, you can be pregnant with something that is only "a little bit human."

Infanticide was a large part of the human condition for hundreds of thousands of years. With no real access to abortion and no way to tell if a child would be deformed at birth it was a very common practice.

"Most Stone Age human societies routinely practiced infanticide, and estimates of children killed by infanticide in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras vary from 15 to 50 percent. Infanticide continued to be common in most societies after the historical era began, including ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the Phoenicians, ancient China, ancient Japan, Pre-Islamic Arabia, Aboriginal Australia, Native Americans, and Native Alaskan"

Killing actual living babies and not just a small pile of cells with no consciousness is a time honored human tradition, back when HARD TIMES™ made HARD MEN.

Abortion seems like a big step up in humanitarian behavior.

The thing is, Trump's personal opinions on abortion don't matter. Trump isn't proposing any changes to federal law, and in fact the justices he appointed ensured that he can't. His opposition to Florida's actions are all talk, and given he's on the campaign trail there's no reason to believe he'll put any public pressure on future actions if he wins the election.

Trump's effective policy on abortion is ending Roe v. Wade, which opened the floodgates on states banning abortion. But aside from a few extremely principled libertarians, that's not the policy anybody actually wants. Whichever side of the abortion debate people are on, their beliefs are strong enough that they probably want those beliefs to apply nationwide. And given he's running as a Republican, Trump is still on team "wants to stop virtually all abortion."

The thing is, Trump's personal opinions on abortion don't matter.

You're misunderestimating Trump. He has fully captured the Republican party. He forced them to remove anti-abortion language from the platform.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-backed-republican-platform-tempers-language-abortion-2024-07-08/

Kamala is a product of the machine. Trump is its master. His personal opinions on abortion matter a lot.

Whichever side of the abortion debate people are on, their beliefs are strong enough that they probably want those beliefs to apply nationwide

I actually don't think so.

Probably like 25% of the population are pro-life absolutists. And maybe 5% or 10% are pro-choice absolutists. But most people support abortions in some cases but not others (and miniature American flags for everyone). And lots of people don't care about the issue a lot either way.

He has fully captured the Republican party. He forced them to remove anti-abortion language from the platform.

My personal interpretation of Trump is I don't think he would take any real action in any direction on abortion once he's in office. I think he's more interested in being President because of the prestige of being President more than for any policy reasons. And because of that I don't think he would do much if they returned to that policy after the election.

But to tie it back to the point about Kamala vs. Trump's debates, I think she can simply ignore what you said and concentrate on him being largely responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. I expect lots of talk about Texas.

Probably like 25% of the population are pro-life absolutists.

Let's clarify some language here. I was trying to do so in my first response but let's confirm if we're on the same page here.

When it comes to marijuana legalization, you might have an opinion one way or another but if the state next to you decided to legalize or criminalize marijuana, you might say it's none of your business. If the state next to you decided to legalize murder you would probably say "What the hell?! Change it back!" It likely will not affect you but it still offends your sense of right and wrong. Most people are not pro-life absolutists in that they might make exceptions under X weeks or in the case of child rape, etc. But I do think whatever criteria they think is right, they generally think is right everywhere and should apply everywhere, rather than being decided on a state by state basis.

My personal interpretation of Trump is I don't think he would take any real action in any direction on abortion once he's in office.

Which, surprisingly, is congruent with what he says he'll do.

Harris will give bizarre word salad non answers to half the questions, but the other half she'll have a nearly flawless rehearsed answers for.

Trump will mostly ignore the questions and just go on about whatever topics he feels he's strongest in. His answers will also be too online, and assume you know what he's talking about. At some point he'll bring up the 20,000 Hattians in Ohio, but it will be in the most confusing way possible. You'll either know what he's gesturing at and nod along, or think he's an absolute crazy person.

Despite the mics being muted while the other person is talking, at some point Kamala will try to shoehorn in "I'm talking now", because the "vote blue no matter who" crowd loves it when she says that and it gets them all fired up. But in context it will make almost zero sense.

If the debate rules break down at some point like they did with Biden, and they stop muting the mics, I have no fucking clue what sort of chaos will break loose. Pretty sure Harris' entire strategy is to just bully Trump into shutting up with girlboss energy, but I'll be extremely disappointed if he lets her. But I wouldn't be shocked if the moderators put their finger on the scale and start selectively muting Trump so Harris can speak in that situation, even if it's supposed to be his time to speak, like for his 2 minute rebuttal or however they structure it.

If Trump actually accused Kamala of helping Haitians eat cats what the heck happens?

"You, and Joe Biden brought in millions of illegal immigrants, and now. Did you see this folks? They are stealing and eating cats in Ohio. True story, I couldn't believe it myself."

I think it'll be way less coherent than that. You can actually tell what's happening almost in your fictionalization. I think it'll be something where Trump just blurts out, apropos of little

"She put the Hattians on Ohio! Terrible, terrible. Many such cases." And if you know, you know. If you don't, he just sounds crazy. What about Hattians in Ohio? Was Kamala actually in any way responsible for... whatever he's talking about? He might as well be ranting about lizard people or clockwork elves.

But your paragraph doesn't have to word "cats". The cats part is something Trump could really fixate on if he gets told about it.

I know. That's the point. The last year Trump has been terrible at explaining the things he's seen on Twitter. He just blurts out some words that are kind of a sentence, and if you saw the same meme he saw, you know what he's talking about. Absent that, it's a mystery.

The only Trump I've watched lately was him getting shot and the debate. Debate Trump would talk about eating cats and say something like, "they're eating cats now, cats. People's cats. Terrible terrible people, and Kamala wanted them here "

Kamala has to do 80% of the work in the debate.

Trump is a known quantity in these things. Rambling will occur. His best messaging will be on immigration.

He'll have three some (EDIT: editing for clarity, but leaving the original typo because the first response to it was hilarious)

Trump will launch some zingers that land with varying degrees of efficacy.

Kamala has to convince those on the fence that she's not just a party apparatchik. She also stands to risk some support if she gets caught in a flip-flip struggle (some outlets are reporting that part of Trump's strategy is to try to corner Harris with her own debate performance from the 2019 primaries).

The median case is just that - something like a 2-3 point bump in the polls for whoever "wins' the debate. But this cycle has been about outliers. The last debate resulted in a sitting president getting knocked out of the race. So, what are some possible outliers?

  • Trump could actually say something to sink him with a large part of undecided women - the key demographic for the election. It won't be about abortion, but I wonder if Harris can needle him enough so he off-handedly says something along the lines of "This is why you can't have a woman as president, the're too nasty." Trump loses hard on comments like this.

  • Trump plays possum enough to let Harris sink herself. This is an almost guaranteed win strategy, but Trump finds it hard to help himself and just not say much. The interesting thing is this was actually what happened for a good part of the first half of the Biden debate. Trump saw that Joe's train was running off the tracks and just stayed out of the way .... before joining him in the ditch over the second half of the debate. If Trump had more discipline, he could engineer some pretty amazing mechanics with this in the debate - say he gets a 30 second rebuttal period after some Harris response, instead of responding at all, he could say "Actually, I'd really like to hear more from VP Harris on xyz" and just give her 30 more seconds to implode.

  • Harris short-circuit version 1: She gets tongue tied and confused early with an answer and defaults to a weird combination of canned responses and her woo-woo wine aunt aphorisms. This is probably the debate perfformance (outside of the median) that most people are expecting - and the reason why Harris has, reportedly, been conducting many, many prep debates with her staff. If this happened, I think you might be looking at almost the same level of panic as after the Biden debate. There's not enough time for Harris to recover and the worst clips would be repeated ad nauseum in PA and elsewhere. Like I said in another post, there's a chance Trump goes 2-0 with 2 KOs in Debates this year.

  • Harris short-circuit version 2: ONLY Canned responses without any zingers to Trump or "hear felt" personal anecdotes or connection to voters. Comes across as robotic and scared to go off script. Will answer follow up questions with close to literal repetitions of what she just said. Minimal wine-aunt woo-woo-isms, but not zero. This exits as a Trump win, for sure, but I don't see the same level of panic in the DNC / Harris campaign. They would wake-up Wednesday thinking it wasn't that bad and "she won on substance." They run the rest of the campaign with these odd "isn't she so relatable!" spots from time to time (remember the infamous Hillary in Cedar Rapids selfie video). The end result is a Trump win bigger than everyone expects. The sobering, "Oh, shit, how did we not see this coming after the debate?" will hit like a falling silo on election night.

All that being said, the thing that will definitely not happen - but that I want to - is one of the debate moderators asking, "Why the hell have both of you gone full retard on economic policy. Tariffs and unrealized capital gains taxes. No reform to social security and medicare. How will your administration handle the recession that will likely occur during your first year in office?"

He'll have three some zingers

“Blowjob Kamala? More like spit roast Kamala.”

(If you’ll excuse me, I need to wash my mouth out with soap.)

Thanks for the hilarious catch. I edited the original.

Continue doing the Lord's work, brother.

"This is why you can't have a woman as president, the're too nasty." Trump loses hard on comments like this.

Well, he didn't say that for Hillary.

I was specifically trying to describe outlier scenarios. I don't think he'll say it regarding Kamala, but the chance is not zero. Furthermore, while I don't buy into the "Trump is just as cognitively frail as Biden!" narrative, I think there has been some level of performance decline over the past eight years. I don't see Trump flying into a totally unhinged misogynistic diatribe on "womenz are bad!" It could see Trump, in his stream of consciousness, letting fly some line like the one I proposed in my original post. Look at the J.D Vance "cat ladies" comment; off the top of his head in an interview, and it was horribly received pretty much all the way around. If Trump hits the same note, even if the line is flippant and unserious, it matters in an election that will come down to ~250k votes.

Personally, I think I would prefer her to be a party apparatchik, because I think another President DNC is preferable to a President Kamala. I wonder how many Democrats feel the same. The impression I am getting from many Democrats is that they're voting for the party not Kamala, so coming across as a party apparatchik might actually be a the better move. She just needs to come across as the black female girlboss figurehead but not too obnoxious to turn off moderates.

This is a fair ... enough ... reason to vote, but my perspective would be that "rule by party" resulted in an orchestrated dishonesty campaign denying the senility of an elderly man endowed with the power of the office of the President.

When no single person is "in charge" and decisions can be made with a collective diffusion of responsibility, bad things happen.

Donald Trump is the main reason to vote Democrat, and Democrats are now the party of trusting the experts. I think Democrats mostly just want "their people" (the experts) in charge, and President Kamala is just a product of circumstance. If Kamala tried to exert too much autonomy, I think the party would remove her like they did Biden, or at least freeze her out and frustrate her efforts to do anything. It could happen quite suddenly, perhaps with some scandal that had previously been denied and ignored. I think Democrats would mostly be okay with this. There is very little talk about the previous dishonesty campaign, nor the fact that the US does not and has not had a functional President for a long time. That doesn't seem to be shifting anyone to vote differently, because they're voting for the party. Attempts to build a cult of personality around Kamala have been mostly astroturfed, and it has no staying power.

Trump is entirely opposite in this regard. Much of Trump's support comes despite the party. He does have a cult of personality. This is perhaps a much weaker ideological coalition, and I am concerned about what will happen when Trump's luck runs out the next time someone shoots at him.

As a partisan Democrat, my issue with Joe Biden was he could not win the election. He can still do the job of President, at the very least no worse than 2nd term Ronald Reagan, he just couldn't be President & run an effective campaign due to his age.

The reason he could not win the election was that he is a senile old man, which impacts his ability to be president quite a bit as well.

I think it might be worth examining your biases re: Ronald Reagan.

Here is a speech from Reagan towards the end of his second term. A balloon pops and he reacts on his feet, quipping "missed me", which causes the audience to erupt in laughter.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2IGDYGroToY

Here's Reagan giving a 36 minute speech in 1992, four years AFTER the end of his Presidency.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WxL3OU1dwmI

In this video we can see signs of decline, but he's still quite a bit more functional than Biden today. Will Biden be giving speeches at the 2028 convention? Will he even be alive?

There's a lot of sane-washing that's being done on Biden's behalf. People are trying to claim "both sides". It's simply not true. His current decline is far beyond what we've ever seen for a President.

While the DNC might be preferable to this particular candidate, it's not a positive development for the country.

Who are the DNC? They are people who care about partisan politics so deeply that they dedicate their lives to working for a political machine. They are not elected by the people but instead advance via intra-elite status competition. In short, they are activists and ideologues.

The median views of a White House staffer are far removed from those of the typical American. They defer to the voters only to the extent that it helps them win the next election. Then it's right back to doing the things they wanted to do anyway. Did the voters ever call for open borders? No. But that what the activists wanted, so that's what we got.

A President is more directly answerable to the people than his staffers. A strong President can restrain the extremist views of his staffers. But a weak President like Biden or G. W. Bush gets dragged into doing whatever their handlers want. As a result, we got endless wars and open borders. Kamala, with no internal compass of her own, means more of the same.

A strong President can restrain the extremist views of his staffers. But a weak President like Biden or G. W. Bush gets dragged into doing whatever their handlers want.

I like the idea of a "high draft pick" presidential candidate being (1) Self-assured to almost the level of obstinate and (2) Very vocally honest about their value system, world view, and political theory.

This would probably result in more Trump-like dispositions in candidates (regardless of political persuasion). Higher temperature in terms of campaigns, but, perhaps, a lot more predictability in the administration.

because I think another President DNC is preferable to a President Kamala.

In what ways?

Harris will deliver a mediocre performance that will look positively masterly next to Trump's old man ravings. It will have minimal impact because every aspect of Trump's incapacity is priced in. Practically speaking, Harris can't win, she can only lose.

what do you think the policy strengths/weaknesses will be?

Trump's biggest policy strength is simply that he is the challenger and can thus run on vague promises instead of his actual record. Whenever he talks about specifics, it's embarrassing (but again, priced in - no one expects Trump to know what he's talking about). His biggest vulnerability on that front is that he's surrounded himself with extremist weirdos who have fairly radical ambitions and Trump has a history of being pretty milquetoast with respect to his advisors, so he may suffer if those attacks stick to him. "JD Vance pals around with mask-off authoritarian billionaires" is probably a more fruitful line of attack than "your proposed economic policies are positively Argentinian", even though the latter is more substantive.

Harris' biggest policy strength is that she's not Trump and can thus talk about policy in a way that doesn't threaten to have your brain self-deport through your ear canal. Her biggest policy weakness is that her policy proposals are still very bad and she's not going to get graded on a curve like Trump will be.

5% chance Trump refers to Harris with a racial slur. 50% chance Trump makes some implausibly deniable misogynistic remark.

Trump is the moderate realignment candidate, this is why he's backing off abortion and being endorsed by Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, and Elon Musk. The odds of Trump using a racial slur are zero, because like his decorum or not he comes from a generation that finds such things unspeakable. (If he didn't say it about Michael Jackson or Muhammed Ali why would Trump wait 80 years and then start dropping slurs now?)

His biggest vulnerability on that front is that he's surrounded himself with extremist weirdos who have fairly radical ambitions

Like the Biden administration? Like Kamala?

Practically speaking, Harris can't win, she can only lose.

Then why take the debate?

She and her staff may not share my belief. Also, they may believe (possibly correctly) that not debating is worse than the likely outcome of an unimpactful debate.

As far as I can tell, she inherited the debate agreement from the Biden campaign, and would look weak backing out of the already-reduced debate schedule (and rules!) he had committed to. I believe the last few cycles have had three debates, all after the conventions.

I think there are rumors they tried to get the rules modified (unmuting mics), but I don't think they changed them. IMO if Harris were a strong candidate, they'd be trying to schedule another one or two, but I haven't heard any such rumors.

There's only certain lengths you can go before defensive campaigning looks like cowardice.

And you can't really afford that given the circumstances.

You don't want Trump able to say "I knocked out Biden and now Harris is hiding, I took a bullet for the American people and she's too afraid to even tell you who she is. Who do you want standing up for you?"

Doing one debate denies him at least that.

There will be pressure on Harris to get in at least one "zinger", although it doesn't need to be too effective. She just needs to show that she can form a coherent thought to be better than Biden. Harris will be well-rehearsed so I doubt there's much of a chance that she self-destructs as spectacularly as Biden did. There's a chance that Trump could do something crazy, although he's too tired now to act like he did in 2020 so I also don't think the chance is that high. He can ramble semi-coherently and it will be enough since the bar is extremely low for him.

I'd say there's a 10% chance one candidate loses badly, a 30% chance Harris overperforms slightly, a 20% she underperforms slightly (relative to expectations), and a 40% chance that both candidates hold their own and nothing really happens.

With the parties' microphone being muted while the opponent is speaking, that prevents Trump from shooting his mouth off too much, and it prevents Kamala getting her true girlboss moment where she shuts down the misogynist orange man.

If we get the relatively restrained Trump from the first Biden debate (feels forever ago, honestly!) I think he makes it out okay.

I can't think of a single Trump debate moment that actually hurt his standing, there may be a couple but he's a known quantity. Unless someone else takes a shot at him during the debate it won't be anything remarkable.

I don't see how Kamala makes it through the entire thing without at least one 'gaffe' and it is possible her normal demeanor, once its on full display for an extended period of time, just grates on everyone.

I'd argue that Kamala has the really hard job to make herself look both competent and collected, and if she doesn't land a single solid blow on Trump she loses by default.

I think there is potential that Kamala has a complete cackling brain fart moment where she spews a genuinely absurd answer to a question she didn't anticipate. This will be somewhat relevant but will depend on whether its 'memeable' or not, I'd guess.

Mainstream coverage of the debate will declare she dominated the entire time in any case.

I can't think of a single Trump debate moment that actually hurt his standing, there may be a couple but he's a known quantity. Unless someone else takes a shot at him during the debate it won't be anything remarkable.

His first debate in 2020 was very bad. Not as bad as Biden's recent debate, but worse than pretty much all others in living memory.

I think you are generally unfair to Trump but this is spot on. Dude couldn’t shut up and saved Biden numerous times.

Agree with other posters that Trump holds a large home field advantage. Kamala’s task is to define herself without angering anyone. This is hard, and she doesn’t really have time for people to get over it when she PO’s people or says retarded things. Trump, on the other hand, his foot-in-mouth disease is like water off a duck’s back for anyone who could vote for him at this point.

I saw a profile of undecided voters from the NYT. Median picture- not a trump fan but think they can live with him, pocketbook voter, feels like he doesn’t know enough about Kamala to make an informed decision. Usually, the more people see of Kamala on economics the less they like her. So advantage; Trump.

The best bet for Kamala will be to be super fake and positive for as long as she can keep it together. She has a deeply unappealing demeanor, and if she can keep that under wraps it will be to her benefit. Quips like "I am speaking now" might cheer the troops but will lose her votes. Trump will try to bait her. If she sticks to her pre-scripted answers she'll do better.

Whatever happens, the media will say that Kamala "won" the debate. If she is halfway competent, they will even say it was "one of the greatest performances of all time" up there with Single Ladies.

Speaking of exaggeration, Trump will say that when he was in charge, the U.S. economy was the strongest of all time. He will probably invoke Communism at some point.

90% chance that Kamala will lean heavily on the biggest lie of the campaign to date: that Trump will ban abortion nationwide.

The winner and the show stealer will be the fly, dispatched to vanquish Trump this time…

Upon the stage where giants took their stand,
A simple fly descended from the air.
On Pence’s crown it chose to make its land,
A moment strange, bizarre, beyond compare.
While words of policy and law were said,
That tiny creature stole the viewers' eyes.
A fleeting buzz now swarmed around his head,
And tarnished Pence with silent, mocking ties.
For though the speakers bandied weighty things,
The fly became the subject of the night.
No lofty speech nor future hope could bring
His image back from this odd, comic sight.
Thus, politics—so fragile in its grace—
Was boggled by a fly's brief, subtle trace.

Kamala's campaign has been about minimizing attack surface area. I don't see why they would go for broke here unless they think they need to. She'll have some zingers and jabs, because that's what the event is for, but my guess is the people around her don't aim to win the election off of the debate. Trump will provide enough distractions that turn an unimpressive, mediocre performance into a perfectly adequate one. I expect that's what the Kamala campaign wants: an adequate performance that provides some evidence she is not an empty husk. That Slate and WaPo can write about and gloat over. No big risks, no big offensive. She only wants small wins. Small little anecdotes that can comfort "ew/sigh, Trump" people to think okay maybe she is someone I will turn up to vote for.

If a bad (not catastrophic) performance happens there's still some time to at least partially recover. This probably applies to Kamala more so than Trump, but Trump already has a lot Trump priced into the polls right now. Play it safe, do the things, say the stuff, flip flopper, abortion, try not to implode, and hope other person implodes.

Policy differences aside, I'm not sure what kind of performance she could provide in a presidential debate that would convince me she's worth turning up for. It's a contrived arena and POTUS doesn't always get 4 weeks of prep to deal with stuff. I need to see her on her feet, nimble, thinking. I want to see her express a train of thought beyond Politico Brain Speak, or perhaps a more sophisticated version of those same platitudes would do.

There are plenty of people that are looking for reasons to trust Kamala is not only a DNC puppet suit and, while they would never say it, unqualified. Most of them do not like Trump, but she needs a couple wins for these people to point to. Trump, as ever, is a walking wild card. For all I know he'll give the greatest debate performance ever. The debate does provide a mostly unfiltered platform for Trump to reach people that typically only read about his latest antics in their feeds or reporting. If he wanted to sell a More Moderate Presidential Trump it's the best platform he'll get.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true.

First of all, like or hate Trump, he has political views and ideas and he’s been talking about them. She has said very little about what she wants to do. And I think unless she has something she wants to do, is just going to come off as weak. He wants to round up millions of illegal immigrants. What does she want to do here? If he talks about his plan and adds in the crazier stories about what immigrants are doing (for example killing ducks in Ohio parks) and it’s going to be hard to just vibe it. Likewise inflation. Talking in vague generalities isn’t going to make groceries or gas cheaper. Again, if he can point out those stories where this hurts ordinary Americans, she can’t exactly get away with not having a plan.

As far as the bad performance being recoverable, I’m not so sure just because of how close the election is. We vote November 5, two months from now. That’s a pretty small window and probably not enough time for memory to fade. People were talking about Biden’s bad debate for a month or more. I grant that his obvious Sun-downing is probably worse than anything she would ever do, but still it’s not easy to just forget an obviously bad debate. So she kinda has to go for broke here. If she can’t convince people t9 even consider her as anything other than an empty head, she’s not only not going to close the deal, but might lose some Never Trumps.

As I said I expect her performance to be sub-par for me, but most presidential debates are not memorable enough to store in my stupid faux elitist hipster brain. For Kamala's needs, and the average voter watching, I think she has a good chance of getting some small wins and not spontaneously combusting-- a la the Hindenburg or the sitting POTUS. People talked about Biden's debate because it was so terrible he had to leave the race. There's no one else behind her. Kamala is too big to fail.

If she does poor enough to get hurt in the polls she can tap a media machine that's chomping at the bit to get access to her to Learn What She Really Thinks. They will be happy to help her out. Admittedly, if she sucks so bad at the debate her entire campaign and media engagement strategy has to change that's not a good sign. I wouldn't bet on the crash and burn though. Does she need a good performance at the debate to win the election? I say no. Is she capable of getting some monster success out of the debate? I haven't seen signs she is capable of this, but she could surprise us!

That's why I predict safe, boring. She aims for the minimal adequate showing. She has a brain, a mouth, she can memorize some zingers. She's fine. Better than that other guy.

Perhaps this is more deserving of a top level, but Kamala released a policy page on her website! Interestingly, all her policy proposals are juxtaposed against her campaign's summaries of "Project 2025 Agenda". Man, they really committed hard to the 2025 angle. Some bean counter strategists must have determined that if attacking Trump isn't working anymore, then attacking something that represents him is just as good.

Policies include:

  • Guns are bad
  • Tax more
  • Tax less
  • Fentanyl is bad
  • Borders are under control thanks to me (Kamala, Not-Border-Czar Esq. II)
  • High rent is bad

I won't look at the Trump campaign's policy page but I bet I could copy paste most of this except guns and change high rent to high inflation. Since this was posted before the debate, I assume we'll hear all about her concrete policies posted to her website during the debate. People say she doesn't have much policy, but don't they know there are concrete policies on her website?

Some bean counter strategists must have determined that if attacking Trump isn't working anymore, then attacking something that represents him is just as good.

Interestingly enough, I got a Pro-Trump leaflet through the door, and about a quarter of it was dedicated to debunking the fact that Trump supported Project 2025 along with some Trump quotes calling them wrongheaded or something similar.

That tends to suggest at least some of the Trump PAC's et al think connecting him with Project 2025 is a potential weak point. Otherwise you don't spend time and money counter-pointing it. Though my wife had never heard of Project 2025 so all it succeeded in doing for her was make her look it up in a kind of Streisand effect way.

I mean we’re a bad sample simply because we’re tuned into political issues and discussion. Keep in mind that outside of the too-online left and right, most people’s interactions with politics happens in spurts — the conventions, the debates, and maybe they catch an interview or two on a talking head show. They have other interests and are too busy doing other things to really pay close attention to who’s doing what outside of the big show events. Which means that this debate is likely the first time these normies will have really paid attention to what either one of those candidates has to say. This means it’s a make or break for Harris who hasn’t publicly tried to run for office since 2020 when she failed pretty hard.

The media can help, but it’s not going to completely erase a bad performance especially 2 months from the polls. If the normies aren’t following closely, they might not see her interviews with friendly journalists.

Ok let's play some fantasy football here in the comments:

YOU are the wizard of oz behind the Kamalarama. You need to come up with a line of argument, a plan of attack, to coach her on that will win the debate for your candidate. What do you do? Litigate Project 2025? Bring up Hannibal Lecter in your own answers (seriously what's the deal with that)? Ask him when he last spoke to Mike Pence? Ask him when he stopped cheating on Melania?

What's the attack she can launch here?

I honestly don't know, because I cannot possibly craft an argument she could make at this late stage which could possibly win me over. Her proposals to raise capital gains tax, a new unrealized gains tax, her talk about how Trump has lost his "privilege" of free speech, this woman will utterly ruin this country. At best the deep state runs her like a puppet, same as they did Biden, to prosecute pointless foreign wars while a feckless DEI cabinet lets the country burn as they give speeches about how bridges are racist and sexist.

As for what she can do to win over that extra 1% of the electorate to clinch a close election, I'm not sure that's on her. That's going to be on the media to craft her legend, and social media to censor anything that puts holes in it. I mean, already, with virtually nothing that's changed about her, she's still the same abject failure of a presidential candidate she was in 2020. But the media has turned her into the second coming of Obama based on nothing.

All she really needs to do is get a few canned lines out that the media spin masters can work with, regardless of context. That'll be clipped out. If she can get out a single "I'm talking now", whether it lands or not during the debate, SNL this Saturday will have a long hagiographic cold open dedicated to it. More people will see that than the debate, and that's how they'll actually remember it. And everyone will clap.

It doesn't work that way anymore because the very concept of a 'mainstream media' was shattered into a hundred thousand screaming fragments by the bale curse of social media. 'respectable' media like NYC and ABC may capture the lib normies but that audience is growing smaller by the year and more out of touch by the moment.

No one even remotely in our reality would think Kamala is a strong candidate.

No one even remotely in our reality would think Kamala is a strong candidate.

All this could be, and I feel the same way. And yet, the fact remains, lots of voters are not "even remotely in our reality". The mainstream media might be shattered, but Kamala only needs to nudge things fractions of a percent, and those shards are fully capable of that.

Mainstream media proved it still existed and was stronger than ever during COVID and the Summer of Floyd.

No one even remotely in our reality would think Kamala is a strong candidate.

Someone reported this as "Building consensus," and it does come awfully close to saying "Nobody could possibly disagree with me." I'm gonna call this a borderline statement of opinion, but do avoid making statements like this no matter how strongly you think they are true, because there certainly are people "in our reality" (though maybe not on the Motte) who think this.

I apologize. I've got a bad habit of making hot takes.

To expand on that pithy statement, I can't see her as anything but a worse version of Hillary Clinton. She, at the very least, had experience in government and political wrangling. What does Kamala have in comparison?

Harris is a better candidate than Hillary Clinton. Clinton treated voters with apathy at best and unveiled contempt at worst. Kamala, whatever someone thinks of her substance, is actually trying to appeal to voters.

Bring up Hannibal Lecter in your own answers (seriously what's the deal with that)?

What do you mean what's with it? It's a joke in a laugh line Trump has given in a few speeches. It's not esoteric.

I think her strongest line of attack would be the people who have worked with him before who either disavow him or are endorsing Harris. The nonpolitical normies are most likely to defer to people whose names they know and that they remember as competent bureaucrats.

I think her strongest line of attack would be the people who have worked with him before who either disavow him or are endorsing Harris.

Trump's best retort to that would be "Like Dick Cheney!" Maybe pantomiming a shotgun.

Yeah hammer home they are people like Cheney and it was a regret you (ie Trump) had in first admin. Then note the turnover Harris has in her office but note it wasn’t political but personal. Recount the story about how she made the intern stand when she walked into the office whilst being California AG.

The smart attack is to outflank him from the populist side by out-promising him in a vague way. Whatever Trump says he'll do (on the economy, immigration, whatever) she'll do even more and better. "I'll do even more and give you more free stuff."

This approach doesn't appeal to me personally at all, and probably doesn't appeal to the type of person who is coaching Kamala for the debate, but it appeals to the average voter and Trump would have a hard time rebutting it.

I think the rebuttal would be to point out that she's been VP for 4 years, and neither she nor Biden nor the other Democrats have done or tried to do most of those things, and it's off-brand for them to even try. If Kamala promises to build a wall and it will be "uge! bigger and better than any wall ever built before. The best wall!" Trump will call her a liar. Now granted, Trump also didn't build a wall, but he tried, and can blame the Democrats for not letting him.

Kamala is restricted to promises that are consistent with Democrat positions, at least if she doesn't want to get called out as a blatant liar. And avoid alienating the Democrat voters.

I think the best line of attack would be portraying Trump as a buffoon who lacks the work ethic or principles to accomplish anything or even do his job. Not a neo-Hitler or American ayatollah, but a huckster whose entire vision is driven by whatever talking head he last saw on Fox said. Mention how many games of golf he played while President (ideally, claim he has a terrible handicap and draw him into a prolonged argument about how good he really is). Have a long list of his broken promises and, if possible, at least some plausible sketch of a story of how the Biden/Harris administration actually fulfilled them. I'd encourage her to heavily embellish those stories; if there's even a remote kernel of reality to them, she won't get any flak for it, and even if it's an outright fabrication it doesn't matter too much. At the same time, represent herself as a competent workhorse who's capable of handling the job of President. Have defenses at the ready for attacks around her being too liberal, and feel free to jettison or reject any policies that are inconvenient.

Seems like a pretty good strategy; I guess the obvious problem is the conflict with previous messaging, and trump appealing to his actual record in office versus kamala's record in office. still, a better suggestion than I think most of the strategists are offering.

Well, the previous messaging is baked in already. But although the best time to have good messaging is yesterday, the second best time is today.

There's a nice side benefit: Republicans will then say "she's a weather vane who's abandoned all her previous policies!" That does some damage to her, of course, but it's mitigated because voters hear "she abandoned a bunch of failed policies and is more moderate nowadays."

The problem with playing exclusively the man and not the ball is that you only discredit Trump and not any of the things he wants to do. If you beat Trump by effectively saying that tariffs, immigration control, free speech etc. are great then people will expect you to implement those things in office. So you’ve won the battle but lost the war.

Ideally, you want to discredit your enemy and his ideas at the same time:

‘Orange Man’s ideas must be stupid, listen to him ramble on!’ And simultaneously, ‘only an idiot could think that cutting off free trade will improve the economy’.

  1. Winning is winning. I think people here overstate the level of committed ideology among practicing politicians. They mostly want to win and be celebrated by culture.

  2. There's the time honored strategy of campaigning one way and then governing another. You'll have less public support to implement your maximalist goals, but you'll also have won an election (and helped more downballot Democrats win their elections). That leaves you in a better position to achieve maximalist goals than losing and being the minority party. When you wield power is when you try to shift public opinion: you have more tools at your disposal.

All true.

I think something like Trumps tax cuts and tariffs are going to blow up the economy at a precarious time when you want the adults in charge, could work.

Maybe a "too online" jab as a variation of the "weird" jab now that he's getting Elon Musk to cut down the government, which intrigues me but could come off as alienating or reckless to the average voter? Basically emphasize that she cares about what people in the real world think instead of being obsessed with the internet.

Abortion should be an obvious win especially with the recent Trump Florida flip flop.

I think laying out a succinct case for what Trump's recent criminal cases are about, and push the fake electors story hard, saying something like two terms won't be enough, and after Trump it'll be Trump Jr. or something.

The best outcome for Harris, and also the most likely outcome where the debate makes a large difference (I agree with other commentators that the debate is unlikely to change anything and that the most likely outcome is that both candidates have been effectively sedated by their teams and we get a mediocre snoozefest where nobody takes risks), is that she manages to put Trump on tilt and he spends a large part of the debate rambling incoherently. Double points if he rambles incoherently about the 2020 election because that makes him look like a bad loser.

I don't know what are the best attacks to put Trump on tilt, but I assume Harris has people on her team who do have an idea. The critical point is that the target audience is Trump, not the people watching on TV. The cliche one is to talk about how small his hands are.

I think emulating Obama's 2012 "the 1980s called. They want their foreign policy back" debate performance is probably a good call. Especially with how effective the "Republicans are weird" attacks have been recently. Be confident and even a little dismissive, while constantly jabbing at how weird/conspiratorial Trump and his allies are. Try to bait Trump into coming across as a loony old man while presenting herself as the boring, safe option that's not going to slip into senility two years in.

This could backfire and come across as bitchy if Trump manages to remain disciplined and statesmanlike, but Trump historically has about half an hour in him before discipline breaks down and he starts free associating.

prescient! as was parent's hannibal lecter mention.

I subscribe to the @wemptronics school. The Goldilocks zone falls between “more present than Biden” and “less bitchy than Trump.” Both should be easy for a normal person. Unfortunately, nobody in this election cycle has been particularly normal, so there are a few routes to mess it up.

  • Hammering on Trump too hard will cross the “bitchy” line.
  • Staying completely vague will fall below the “present” line.
  • Presenting unhinged economics could go either way depending on how specific she gets.

I predict Harris will not unveil anything resembling signature legislation. If there was any low-hanging fruit, it would have already been pushed through via Biden, because a good economy is better at winning elections than a good promise.

More likely she remains a policy non-entity. Fox and friends will press on this as a safe, reasonable angle of attack, but they don’t have a good counterplan, since no one wants to admit to running a tight economy. That leaves us with “State” vs. “State” strategy: two smiling faces telling us they’re going to fix inflation and/or original sin.

Also, why would you want Trump to come down for either nuclear or crypto? I guess he can’t make the latter more sleazy, but he could single-handedly boost the green wing for a generation.

Also, why would you want Trump to come down for either nuclear or crypto?

Why would you not want the President of the United States to be on your side?

Possibly because you believe he won't be able to accomplish anything for it anyway, but will tar the idea for the future by his association with it.

The three stools of Trump's original 2016 campaign were: illegal immigration, tariffs, and ending wars.

Tariffs were so successful that Biden continued many of them.

Ending wars was so popular that Biden also basically didn't start any new wars.

Illegal immigration: when Trump took this up in 2016 he was the only GOP politician talking about it, now it's mainstream. The wall went from being violently opposed to routine funding in Kamala's budget.

Trump is the most popular politician in America.

Ending wars was so popular that Biden also basically didn't start any new wars.

Only technically true, in that he didn't start the war in Ukraine. However it has enormously escalated under his administration, and we're basically bankrupting our nation and ignoring every other priority to keep escalating it.

I'm not sure whether I'm more amused by the conflation of correlation and causation in an inversion, or the unironic use of budgetary PR in a budget year that was nearly half continuing resolution.

Edit for elaboration, since it may come-

I find the claim that the Ukraine War escalated enormously under the Biden Administration laughable in a 'that is actually amusing' way, given the evolution of many dynamics since 2022.

In 2022, the Ukraine War was a war of national elimination by a Russia waged on three different fronts that threatened to collapse the Ukrainian state, multiple major population centers changed hands with a routine use of artillery against population centers, European countries were to supposedly facing mass freezing death in the winter and total economic deindustrialization for lack of gas, and Very Serious People and Motte Posters were warning that the specter of nuclear escalation was right around the corner if Ukraine received military supplies or tried to retake cities that the Russians had not only conquered but formally annexed. 'Plausible' peace terms included a unilateral disarmament to a scale where Ukraine would have fewer tanks to begin the next war with than it has lost since this war began, a great risk factor for a fourth continuation war. Western discussions on Ukraine included whether there would be an armed intervention, ranging from a No Fly zone to special forces advisors or 'volunteer' military formations.

In 2024, the Ukraine War has largely narrowed to one front, the scale of territory changes and civilian deaths has dropped precipitously to a degree that zoomed-in maps are required to assess relative changes that are hard to recognize from a country-wide scale, the Europeans are far from freezing and no longer operating under the previous economic sword of damoclese, and nuclear threats are so passe that the Russians themselves are downplaying the first invasion and occupation of Russian territory since WW2. 'Plausible' peace terms now adays no longer pretend to rest on Ukrainian disarmament, but hinge on how many years it will take the Russians to re-build themselves out of a Soviet-era military and whether they would really try another attempt at Ukraine and thus does Ukraine have a reasonable need for western security alliances. Western discussions on Ukraine now includes routine criticisms that the lack of Western presence on the ground to die is an immoral policy of treating the Ukrainians as canon fodder.

The stakes, the risks, and even the rate of loss of the Ukraine War have decreased considerably since 2022. It is strategic de-escalation in nearly every sense of the word.

As for bankrupting the nation in the support of the Ukraine War, that would be somewhere between factually inaccurate and glossing over many other more relevant contexts that prevent one's preferred policies from being funded.

bankrupting

Less than 60 billion in total is hardly a rounding error...

Ending wars was so popular that Biden also basically didn't start any new wars.

To be fair to the poor old man, Biden himself was notably part of the "peace wing" in the Obama administration - he opposed getting involved in Libya

Talk is cheap, and he didn’t have a son or an election on the line for the Lybian misadventure.

He did for Ukraine, hence the war.

Ending wars was so popular that Biden also basically didn't start any new wars.

I don't think that Trump surrendering the the Taliban was that popular - it is just that the Republicans managed to pin the blame on Biden (who was in office when the final US pullout from Kabul was due under the surrender agreement Trump signed in Doha in Feb 2020.

FWIW, I think that Trump was right to surrender to the Taliban (there was no pro-US government in Afghanistan worth defending) and Biden was right to implement the surrender agreement rather than ratting on it the way the Deep State wanted him to. But I notice that "Biden pulled out of Kabul and bad things happened as a result" is an attack the Trump campaign are running on, notably at the Arlington press stunt, so I assume the people making the decisions think that this is a good line of attack.

When the Biden administration came in they tore up Trump's agreement with the Taliban in their desire to avoid ever giving Trump credit. Then followed the debacle. Trump deserves the "blame" for starting this chain of events, but hes right to note that Biden could have handled events better -- for example, not leaving all our weapons for the Taliban to pick up off the ground.

Criticizing America's poor leadership is one of the great themes of Trump's tenure in politics.

Even better: he'll highlight the crazy, the unserious, and the vindictive, letting you know to avoid them.

Because the current generation of eco-warriors are focusing more and more on carbon than on nuclear. The last thing they need is an infusion of fresh anti-Trump partisans.

Predictions: the debate will be boring; Kamala will say a bunch of vague things and throw some zingers at Trump; Trump will offer some stream of consciousness responses and some Kamala jabs; neither will have a collapse a la Biden; hand-picked focus groups will say Kamala won in a blowout; nothing really happens in the polls.

I'd love to see AI come up in the debate, though.

I have to admit that I'm disappointed the microphones will be muted except during designated response times, because it denies us the (admittedly small) chance that, when Kamala tried to talk over a moderator, Trump could butt in with "Excuse Me, ECKS-CYUSE ME, SHE'S SPEAKING!! COMMIE-LA IS SPEAKING!! VERY RUDE!!"

What is going on in Springfield, Ohio? 20,000 Haitian arrivals into a town of 60,000 seems insane, but the New York Times seems to back it up. I definitely don’t trust the NYT to give an honest portrayal of what the situation is like on the ground, but I don’t really trust a lot of the rumors going around Twitter either. I am seeing reports of Haitians killing the ducks at the park and eating them. There are even secondhand reports of Haitians eating pet cats.

What I am not seeing however is geolocated footage or images. How hard can it be to send a guy to the park to see if there are any ducks left? I am legitimately confused. None of this seems to make sense.

I don't know about the cat thing or the duck thing, but if they really are eating local wildlife (and why not, everyone knows the ducks at the park are free, right?), I would suggest they be transferred to places like Fairmount Park in Philadelphia that are plagued with nuisance geese.

The numbers seem beyond belief so I wouldn't be surprised if the true number is much lower.

But I think that small towns with weak connections to centers of power will be the perfect dumping ground for the worst type of migrants. Think of what the last 50 years have done to the Rust Belt. It's clear that the powers-that-be are completely fine to throw this entire region into the trash bin for larger ends.

On the other hand, nicer areas seem to have the human capital to keep undesirables out. In Seattle, it's been said that when a tent appears in your local park, you need to go full Karen and get the first tent removed immediately. Because if you don't, a second tent will appear, then a third, and pretty soon it will be a real encampment with drugs, and rats, and murders. There are very few drug zombies in Magnolia, but the International District (ID) is crawling with them because the residents of the ID don't know how to organize and resist.

The same seems to be true with migrants. At some point, a non-profit or government agency must have started sending Haitians to Springfield. And they didn't have the human capital to resist. If the 20,000 number is accurate, I think it's fair to say the town is absolutely fucked and will be nearly 100% Haitian within 20 years.

At some point, a non-profit or government agency must have started sending Haitians to Springfield. And they didn't have the human capital to resist.

This is adjacent to the "they have homes, addresses, wives and children" meme. As in, commit violence against these people in retaliation for what they've done to you.

You mostly seem to come here and just offer hot takes. And "we should engage in violence" is too hot of a take. Antagonistic and culture warring. Ten day ban for now.

I live nearby and can say, in support of your first point: Springfield, Ohio was already totally fucked, and therefore it's a great place to put migrants. It is a quintessential Rust Belt city that was hollowed out by deindustrialization; it is a satellite of Dayton, which is even worse off.

This is happening much more widely even than what is reported on. Down the street from me, the village of Lockland was gutted by the closure of the original Stearns & Foster mattress factory in the early 2000s (along with many industrial closures for decades prior, and even the closure of the original Miami & Erie Canal in the 1910s... Lockland is a hard-luck place); it is now being resettled by Mauritanians, with the enthusiastic support of local NGOs.

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/finding-solutions/you-only-have-hope-hundreds-of-mauritanians-seeking-asylum-find-refuge-within-lockland-bike-shop

I guess for the record, Mauritanians that I have met have been nice to me personally, and I am not aware of them making particular problems for everyone; but it is also true that they have concentrated in one neighborhood and turned it into Little Mauritania. I suppose it's better than the building sitting empty as they had done previously; but I wish that my own culture had simply stayed there and built new things after the factories closed, instead of decamping to distant commuter towns like Mason. Easy for me to say, I suppose.

Who are these nameless faceless NGOs carving up the ethnic map of middle America like post-war European diplomats? What is their motivation? Who is funding them? Why does nobody care? Is right-wing media too incompetent to weave a narrative more complicated than "Democrats open-borders bad"?

Catholic Charities is the largest one. They contract with the fed gov and states to resettle people everywhere, if the local spot can handle it, great, if not, they don't give a shit. They plant people and move on, they get paid good money for it too.

They're (often Catholic) 501(c)s getting billions of dollars through the federal government in ways that no one in Congress has the power to stop.
Got to CESglobal's financial page and see what $186,000,000 in government funding buys you. And that's just one drop in the bucket.

This is just the consequences of the total state falling into the hands of the left. Asking what you can do about it is as pointless as asking what you can do about Stalin's purges. The time to stop this was decades ago. Now there's nothing to do but suffer and try to find any way to stick a knife in your tormentors so they suffer some consequences for their evil.

Same Catholics on here preaching away! This may be our first total agreement moment Steve. I'm 150% anti immigration.

Can this also be blamed on Vatican II?

Unlikely, as the theological foundations for the Catholic Church’s activism predate Vatican II by at least a decade. In 1952, Pius XII published Exsul Familia Nazarethana, which started off,

The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, living in exile in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king, are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien and refugee of whatever kind who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil.

The church’s efforts were initially focused on providing priests, churches, seminaries, schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc., for Catholic populations that had already emigrated on their own to new places—all reasonable and positive efforts. However, political activism to encourage increased immigration started almost immediately after World War II, and increased dramatically in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Pius XII wrote the following to the American bishops on Dec. 24, 1948:

You know indeed how preoccupied we have been and with what anxiety we have followed those who have been forced by revolutions in their own countries, or by unemployment or hunger to leave their homes and live in foreign lands.

The natural law itself, no less than devotion to humanity, urges that ways of migration be opened to these people. For the Creator of the universe made all good things primarily for the good of all. Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this.

Informed of our intentions, you recently strove for legislation to allow many refugees to enter your land. Through your persistence, a provident law was enacted, a law that we hope will be followed by others of broader scope. In addition, you have, with the aid of chosen men, cared for the emigrants as they left their homes and as they arrived in your land, thus admirably putting into practice the precept of priestly charity: “The priest is to injure no one; he will desire rather to aid all.” (St. Ambrose, “De Officiis ministrorum,” lib. 3, c. IX).

Even if the Catholics’ efforts hadn’t started off this way, it would only have been a matter of time before the Catholic refugee agencies started advocating for near unrestricted immigration, as the trajectory of the various Protestant churches’ refugee agencies demonstrates.

To give just one example, after WWI, the Lutheran churches in America established welfare agencies to provide aid to their coreligionists in Europe and to help resettle a small number of Lutherans in the United States. They did the same again after WWII, then began helping eastern Europeans (again, mostly Lutherans) who were fleeing persecution at the hands of the Soviets. Through the 1970s, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) shifted to hooking up anti-communist refugees from Cuba and Vietnam with local Lutheran congregations, so the latter could help them find housing, jobs, etc. After the end of the Cold War, many Lutherans kind of forgot that the organization existed, and evaporative cooling meant that die-hard immigration supporters were the only ones still invested enough to keep things running. With little financial support from congregations, they turned to the federal government for funding (made possible thanks to George Bush’s push for the government to partner with religious non-profits), and they used those funds to help bring in Africans, South and Central Americans, Afghanis, and others. In 2019, they hired a Hindu Democratic apparatchik (former Policy Director to First Lady Michelle Obama) as CEO, and earlier this year, with the skinsuiting of the organization complete, they eliminated “Lutheran” from their name and rebranded as “Global Refuge.”

All of which is to say, no matter how reasonable and uncontroversial these organizations’ actions may have been at the start, eventually they were all taken over by activists after their original mission had been accomplished. To prevent that, people need to learn to formally abolish organizations they are involved with once they have completed their original purpose, rather than step down from positions of leadership with the organization still intact.

I think if Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of congress they could withdraw from global refugee treaties and totally reform immigration law.

They won't, because they're cowards/idiots/grifters, but the problem is solvable in principle.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for awarding grant money to NGOs that resettle refugees in cities around the country.

acf.hhs.gov/orr

I looked up a random state using that link. It shows some NGO called IRC - International Rescue Committee. So I asked them to tell me who they are:

https://www.rescue.org/who-we-are

Says one “David Miliband” is their president. Who is that? What is his background? So I asked Wikipedia.

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

Early life and family

Born in London, Miliband is the elder son of immigrant parents, Belgian-born Marxist sociologist Ralph Miliband and Polish-born Marion Kozak, both from Polish Jewish families.[1][7][8] The latter was a teacher before she became a homemaker. He was given the middle name of "Wright" after the American sociologist C. Wright Mills, a friend of his father.[9] He has said "I am the child of Jewish immigrants and that is a very important part of my identity."[7] Both his Polish Jewish paternal grandparents lived in the Jewish quarter of Warsaw. His paternal grandfather, Samuel, a trained leather worker, served in the Red Army in the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921 before moving to Belgium.

Oh.

Surely the more important point about David Miliband is that he was supposed to be the Leader of the Opposition in the UK after Labour lost the 2010 general election, but lost the leadership election to his more left-wing brother Ed and left for American in a huff.

The most important thing about International Rescue is that it is a secretive organisation based on Tracey Island which built a number of Elon-Musk-esque flying machines. The original agent on terra firma was Lady Penelope, but in this day and age a politician is needed rather than an aristocrat.

They are not faceless, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society is one of the most important. You want a face? Here's a face.

HIAS @HIASrefugees map inside the Bajo Chiquito invader camp in Darien Gap, Panama is giving “migrants” instructions and maps on how to illegally enter the United States with printed instructions on how to reach each bus station, medic, and what the weather is going to be like on the way to the US.

While I was recording this video, there were thousands of invaders walking around inside the camp, waiting to be processed upon arriving from their jungle trek in the Darien Gap. I encountered invaders inside this camp from all over the world, including Afghanistan, Angola, Iran and Morocco.

There is so much irony in the fact that a JEWISH NGO (HIAS) is helping Muslims from terror tier countries and other places in Africa and the Middle East get to the United States illegally.

Here are their migrant centers throughout South America where they assist illegal immigrants in entering the United States. But wait, there aren't any dots in Haiti, so we can't attribute this mass ressetlement of Haitians to this NGO right?

HIAS hand-picked Alejandro Mayorkas, who is also Jewish, as Secretary of DHS which is responsible for the mass resettlement of these Haitians as well as of course other border policy. The HIAS endorsement of Mayorkas noted "A Biden Appointee who Carries the Jewish Story Itself." Mayorkas served on the board of HIAS through 2020.

Our Secretary of DHS, the one responsible for these Haitians being resettled into the United States, literally served on the board of a Jewish NGO that aims to carve up the ethnic map of middle America explicitly.

https://www.vicrc.org/

This is the one that provides the most support in the specific case of Lockland; the director, John Keuffer, is quoted fairly often in the local news here. And as another commenter notes downthread, Catholic Charities is heavily involved. I used to spend a lot of time with a girl who is now a fairly high-ranking leader in this region's Catholic Charities organization - we worked at the same previous job together, and she kept me posted during the application process for the job with CC.

The impression that I get is: there is a substantial amount of people for whom helping people who claim to be hungry and homeless is a Good Thing, full stop; and any downstream consequences of that are not important to them, are not actually even considered, compared to this higher priority. It's quite hard to argue against it, especially with highly empathetic people: the people who already live in Springfield or Lockland are not, currently, hungry or homeless to the same degree, so of course their needs are considered second.

What's happening in Springfield Ohio is punishment for voting wrong. "Great Replacement Theory" might not be the most watertight explanation. But NGOs run by deranged partisans who viscerally hate white rural Trump voters, as can be plainly seen by most of their social media activity, are certainly executing on perhaps a "Minor Replacement" plan.

Just like Greg Abbott's buses...

Those are intended to punish people who voted FOR more immigration.

Well yes, both sides have done this- and in theory could do it again, although illegal migration has mostly shifted west of Texas due to razor wire and law enforcement operations.

There's something of a difference between sending migrant populations to places to punish them for voting against migration, and sending migrant populations to punish them for voting for migration. The latter has a bit of that poetic-justicy thing to it.

You know the deal—specific groups, specific people. Deranged partisans are a dime a dozen. Show us which NGO moved these Haitians. Show us where they gloated about it on social media.

There’s a legitimate case to be made, but you’ve gotta make it.

Springfield's city government estimated around 12-15k immigrants "in Clark County", on the FAQ, though it hasn't been updated in a while. Clark County as a whole has closer to 110k citizens, though a large portion of those not in Springfield proper are closer to Dayton or Columbus. 20k immigrants is a lot more plausible than you'd expect, especially if you start to include people who get dropped there and then migrate to other nearby towns, and given the extent that the Biden administration doesn't really care how disruptive it is.

Ohio wildfowl are a mess, both geese and ducks, not helped by the recent very dry conditions. You'd get in trouble with the feds for taking a baseball club to 'em, but you would be really hard pressed to run out, and at least no one credible is alleging that there's an entire army trying to depopulate the wildfowl rather than a few bad actors doing it.

The cat video going around is in reference to a (presumably not-mentally-well) lady in Canton, Ohio (aka Cleveland), about two hours drive northeast of Springfield. Her public defender suggests that she's not a recent immigrant and may even be a citizen, but not seeing a ton of confirmation on that.

You'd get in trouble with the feds for taking a baseball club to 'em

You and I would, but apparently all it takes to ignore international treaties is to be form a shithole country while living in the Midwest. I pick up an eagle feather from my yard and I my conscience reminds me how there's zero-tolerance for feathers and it doesn't matter where you get them from because you're presumed to be guilty. I don't care about the geese, I care about the tyranny of the government with respect to Whites and anarachy with respect to blacks and other minorities. I care about how I was raised to follow rules and respect the law and I'm a fucking sucker for ever believing such bullshit, because Haitians just kill the geese and eat them, they're free.

I don't care about paper citizenship, so whether or not this woman was foreign doesn't rely on how long she's been living where, or which papers she had. She does look like she has significant european admixture, though, unlike goose man.

I once knew a white RN- so a respectable citizen- who would capture ducks from a public park and keep them in her backyard until they ran away, in the hopes that they would lay eggs for her to eat. The migratory bird act is mostly enforced against hunters, not anyone else, and this is due to apathy and/or law enforcement not thinking to look at random crazy people in the park. Like seriously this woman chased them on a kayak and the cops didn't do shit.

I can well believe that some migrants get away with grabbing geese out of the public park. The ducks are certainly free and you can take them home.

Also why my conscience is pinging on bald eagle feathers, not mallard, goose, or crow.

Man, that Yahoo article really trips my trigger. JD Vance lied they say! What did he say?

On X, formerly Twitter, Vance amplified bogus “reports” that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

What's their refutation?

Springfield, Ohio, has been a hub for immigrants, and particularly Haitian immigrants, in recent years — contrary to Vance’s tweet, they are here legally — but there’s no evidence at all for these viral claims.

Whether they're here legally or not doesn't refute the claim that they shouldn't be in this country. Perhaps this is a genuine point of confusion, but I rather doubt it. There are many people that are here legally that I think should never have been allowed into the country in the first place. Their current legal status isn't even an attempt to rebut the claim that they shouldn't be here.

It also doesn’t mean they are here legally. They may be judged to be here illegally in the end.

A large portion of Haitians are under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), with almost all recent immigrants under the humanitarian parole programs (either CHNV or HFRP), rather than asylum parole or parole-with-conditions programs, which makes things... complicated. There are a few ways for someone under these categories to be present illegally, either due to failing background checks or fraud on the part of their sponsors, but it's very unlikely that even a significant portion will be found here illegally.

((And even of those who were originally entered illegally, after ten years 1229(b) kicks in -- that was a big unspoken part of the recent Campos-Chaves v. Garland case.))

Assuming that there are in fact not reports of Haitian immigrants eating cats, then I think it’s pretty fair to say Vance was lying.

Whether “people who shouldn’t be in this country” was intended to imply illegal immigrants or just immigrants generally is unclear, but it’s also secondary to the eating cats thing. That’s the main thrust of what Vance said and it doesn’t seem to be true.

To be fair, a lot of people, including (especially) many reporters are pretty unfamiliar with the broader set of categories of immigration law and status, and Haiti is kinda in the nexus of a bunch of different things. But yeah, there's a lot of tendency for pro-immigration writers to conflate descriptive and normative statements.

Conflating Canton with Cleveland is a misnomer, Canton is about an hour drive away and doesn't share any local government services with Cleveland . The likelihood of any significant cross pollination between impoverished Clevelanders and Cantoners(?) is pretty minimal unless Cleveland is buying a one-way bus ticket for the mentally ill.

Fair. It's a little closer than Dayton to Cincinnati, but there are distinct cultures from Cleveland to Akron to Canton.

Springfield's city government estimated around 12-15k immigrants "in Clark County", on the FAQ, though it hasn't been updated in a while. Clark County as a whole has closer to 110k citizens,

We're still talking about a relatively enormous influx then though.

Yes, and this is a lower-bound, both because it's older information and because it's almost certainly incomplete.

None of this seems to make sense.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. It seems perfectly sensible: anti-immigration activists are repeating a rumor that supports their preferences. It might be true, it might be exaggerated, it might be a complete lie. Why bother checking? After all, even if it's not true, the fact that I could believe it really says something about society.

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After all, even if it's not true, the fact that I could believe it really says something about society.

Several people lately have decided it's clever to do a bit where they say something they imagine their opponents might say, with a straight face, with the intention of saying "Aha, gotcha!" when someone points out how ridiculous what they are saying is.

It's not clever; it's disingenuous and annoying. Make your point reasonably clear and plain.

I think my point is reasonably clear and plain: people are signal boosting rumors with a reckless disregard for the truth because they don't care about whether the particulars are true. Given the context of the rest of the not-very-long post, I'm not sure how someone would read some other meaning into that sentence.

When it turns out to be true, will you commit to publicly acknowledging it?
Because every time in the past the strategy has been "you heard that on libs of tiktok and everyone knows she lies"

When it turns out to be true, will you commit to publicly acknowledging it?

Are all of the rest of you publicly committing to acknowledging it when it turns out that Skibboleth was right and it's all fake outrage? Or are you just trying to impose a double standard?

We have a solution for this around these parts, and it's called making a bet.

Now I doubt there's a prediction market for Haitian shenanigans, but surely we can come up with a level of evidence that would satisfy both sides and a time frame for it appearing.

Let's say if a police report/bodycam or local newspaper reports on physical evidence of someone poaching local birds or pets within Springfield within the next three months?

@Skibboleth, @SteveKirk are you guys willing to get some skin in the game? No pun intended. Come on guys, if it's obvious, it's free money.

Absolutely not, because I remember this exact same scenario playing out at least three times, and in two of those cases a bet would never have been adjudicated fairly.

First and most obviously, Jussie Smollett. It was like pulling teeth, but eventually the people defending him shifted their counter-attacks to "why are you so obsessed with hoaxes when they're so rare?"
IMO the only reason that one might have settled is that the main representative for the losing side was so overwhelmingly disliked he had no social cover. Already unpopular people facing social consequences isn't great evidence for fair and impartial systems.

Second, the Virginia school bathroom rape case. To my knowledge nobody on team "there were no gender neutral bathrooms, ok but you can't prove there was actually a rape, ok but he wasn't really gender fluid, anyway it's super rare why are you so obsessed TERF" ever admitted wrongdoing. And I'm pretty sure that one catholic girl was banned for pressing them on it at least once.

Third and most recently, the Sam Brinton case where it took three arrests for stealing women's clothing for the people litigating it to go from pretending it was a right wing conspiracy to pretending they'd never heard of the guy.

Who's going to judge the bet? Some of the mods are the people from those other cases.
Even if we do get the absolutely overwhelming evidence we got in those other cases (and I admit we might not see the same Haitian guy arrested three times with a skinned cat in a sack each time), the bets will do nothing.
And you'd better believe the media will be pulling out all the stops to play the exact same "no evidence acknowledged by Reliable Sources" game they played in all those cases, until everyone's internalized that it was just another case of Republicans Pouncing.

If you are willing to bet enough I'll fly out there and check. Flights aren't that expensive. I should be able to tell if there are 20k extra people from Haiti eating birds and whatnot. No one ever puts their money where their mouth is. Many people talk a lot, few are up for the moment. Round trip is only 200 bucks!

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Absolutely not, because I remember this exact same scenario playing out at least three times, and in two of those cases a bet would never have been adjudicated fairly.

Really? Bets were made and stakes were put on the table? I don't remember this. People throw "Want to make a bet on it?" a lot, but I don't recall anyone ever trying to set up a formal wager.

And I'm pretty sure that one catholic girl was banned for pressing them on it at least once.

I wish she were still around to react to being called "that one catholic girl."

I don't know which specific ban you are talking about, but her repeated bans were never because she was saying things mods disagreed with or against someone who enjoyed the mods' favor, but because she had a problem saying things without being an antagonistic and personally insulting about it.

Who's going to judge the bet? Some of the mods are the people from those other cases.

Who? Name names and post links.

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I think my point is reasonably clear and plain: people are signal boosting rumors with a reckless disregard for the truth because they don't care about whether the particulars are true.

Your point was clear enough, yes. Which part of my point did you not understand?

Alternatively, they could “not care” whether the story is true because they believe that mainstream sources would never bother to check the story. Thus there’s no way to fact check the story at all from sources of record. So if the people telling those stories believe that the story is too political to deal with honestly, why “care” if it’s true. The media dug its grave a long time ago and is only worth reading if you want to know what the elites want you to think.

This is one of the worst kinds of post. You can't even clarify what "might be exaggerated" before you go on to imply that your enemies are lazy. Are there not 20,000k migrants? Yeah, whatever, let's talk about the real problem: some comment I read online somewhere.

After all, even if it's not true, the fact that I could believe it really says something about society.

I appreciate your sarcasm, so I'm just going to jump in to say that that's a line of argument I loathe. It's lazy, masturbatory, and ultimately boils down to "I wanted to be right, so that's just as valid as having been right!"

Of course, as is often the case, C.S. Lewis put it into far better words:

Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that”, or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.

No offense, but the willingness of any individual to believe in something always reflects on the individual. It is in fact, your responsibility to use your brain.

Not always. When the target is a group disliked by the establishment, we call it "Poe's Law" and we laugh at how those people made satire indistinguishable from reality. It's only when the establishment itself becomes the target of an absurd rumor, that believing it reflects on the believer. When the rumor turns out to be true (like it did in this very case), that doesn't matter at all. You're still a backwards ignorant hick for thinking it could be true, before it was proven to be true.

Local news seems to say that there's no reports of pets being eaten: https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/springfield-police-say-no-reports-of-pets-stolen-after-viral-social-media-post/3WSIZQNHQVE4NP4TS5BVHBB2PY/

I don't know about the ducks. There's an image on twitter of a black guy carrying a duck but I don't know what the provenance is.

Litigating the truthiness of this is great.

It's like people talking about how George Floyd was a drug addict and a criminal who resisted arrest. All true, but you don't kill a fire with oxygen.

Well, if it isn't true, I don't think it's that great that we need litigation. Polluting the epistemic commons is bad, actually (inb4 "but my outgroup also does it!").

I'd be curious to know where the claims of pet eating originated.

Polluting the epistemic commons is bad, actually (inb4 "but my outgroup also does it!").

Agree in principle with the caveat that it's a Paradox of Toleration problem. If only one side tells outrageous lies (Trump wants to ban abortion nationwide!) and media is partisan and complicit, then the side that lies wins, and the principled libertarians wail and gnash teeth in the outer darkness.

Or, put another way, once the epistemic commons are polluted, they are really hard to unpollute. Probably we need to start with the universities.

I'd be curious to know where the claims of pet eating originated.

To the best I can tell there was a crazy woman in Ohio who ate a cat. She wasn't an immigrant and she didn't live in Springfield.

If only one side tells outrageous lies (Trump wants to ban abortion nationwide!) and media is partisan and complicit, then the side that lies wins, and the principled libertarians wail and gnash teeth in the outer darkness.

The problem I'm seeing is that trumpeting nonsense claims is a shortcut to getting dismissed by normies. People I know are sending me articles from the MSM dunking on Vance for repeating the pet thing. The whole issue has been settled as much ado over nothing in their minds, and any actual problems are swept under the rug with prejudice.

Is it unfair that the MSM can make shit up with impunity but Vance can't? Yes, but Republicans best get used to it because that's the state of play right now.

Well, if it isn't true, I don't think it's that great that we need litigation. Polluting the epistemic commons is bad, actually

Not being able to ask if something is true, because it might turn out it isn't, seems badder.

(inb4 "but my outgroup also does it!").

Well, if you truly believe this is bad, I'd say we have far bigger problems then this. We have entire institutions doing it on a mass scale, it's odd you'd dismiss it with a snarky quip.

Not being able to asks if something is true, because it might turn out it isn't, seems badder.

It's not asking if it's true that pollutes the commons, it's uncritical repetition of seemingly baseless claims.

Well, if you truly believe this is bad, I'd say we have far bigger problems then this. We have entire institutions doing it on a mass scale, it's odd you'd dismiss it with a snarky quip.

I'm hardly dismissing concerns about the outgroup doing it. I'm dismissing using that as a justification for the in-group doing it.

It's not asking if it's true that pollutes the commons, it's uncritical repetition of seemingly baseless claims.

But you were responding to OP, not JD Vance?

I'll be honest with you, I didn't really understand what OP meant.

I'm not sure what he meant by killing fire with oxygen, but the rest seems pretty clear. He thinks litigating the "truthiness" if controversial claims is good. Floyd's drug habits are given as an example of an inflammatory claim that could be neither confirmed or denied at the time, but we eventually learned the truth of.

Actually, I'll take a stab at interpretation. Perhaps what he meant was that the controversy itself was essential to us finding the correct information? If you "killed the fire" we'd never know the truth, but it was kept alive with "oxygen"/controversy, and so we eventually did, because people were invested in winning old internet spats.

There's this video of an African man peacefully trying to cook what's purportedly a cat on a fire on the sidewalk in Italy while an elderly Italian woman is yelling at him...

I had a girlfriend who worked for a resettlement agency and they did have to deal with cases of goats being killed and butchered at apartment complexes. I could buy killing a few geese/ducks but I highly doubt cats. If the populations of duck/geese are similar to parks in my area there no way they depopulated a park. The picture going around of a black man with a goose appears to be from Columbus could very possibly be fresh road kill. I've seen white people dressing a road kill deer on the side of the road, 100% legal in my state.

Hell, my great grandfather's brother used to listen to police scanners for news of animal strikes so he could head over for some free fresh meat. I'm sure it's reasonably common in a lot of rural/rural-adjacent areas.

I had a family member hit a deer and before a tow truck arrived, some guy walked up to ask if he wanted the carcass. This was maybe five years ago?

RFK posts on The Motte. You heard it here first.

I thought RFK Jr.'s story was about throwing a dead bear into Central Park. You don't have to go too far outside a city to find people harvesting roadkill deer.

Yeah this wasn’t (isn’t?) uncommon in my very white hometown.

Username checks out.

Personally I'm in favor of people eating Canada geese. If we can just break the Haitians up into smaller groups and relocate them near areas with problem geese, then move them around as the goose population "somehow" drops, we can make good use of these refugees.

In Texas, he would be arrested for poaching. Lots of other states allow it though.

but I highly doubt cats

Local law enforcement says it happened.

https://www.wowt.com/2024/08/21/woman-arrested-allegedly-killing-cat-eating-it-front-neighbors/

That's probably what started the cat thing, but it's a different town and I doubt that woman is a recent Haitian immigrant. The duck thing, on the other hand, was supposedly a complaint made at a council meeting.

Why are these Haitians being admitted to the US when there's a neighbor conveniently next door to them called the Dominican Republic that they can move to? They share an island together, in fact, no need to get on a plane or boat.

The DR is surprisingly well run, they wouldn't stand for this shit. Last time I was down there they had prop fighter planes patrolling the border ready to gun down crossers.

I would definitely not say that DR is well run. Corruption is endemic, crime is high, and basic services like electricity are unreliable.

But they are serious about keeping Haitians out.

I mean, he did say 'surprisingly well run'. For Latin America, I don't think it's that bad.

The DR may not be well run, but it's a fuckton better run than Haiti. Make that a kilofuckton.

No argument there, it's a stretch to say that Haiti is run at all.

As far as the specific function of keeping out Haitians goes, they seem to be doing a much better job than the Americans.

The situations aren't comparable. The DR shares a land border with Haiti (which has a similar population), and is very poor itself. They're a heck of a lot more motivated to take positive steps to keep Haitians out than the US is.

Sharing a land border and being poor should make the job harder. But you're right - it's a question of motivation.

Because the Dominican Republic has actual immigration enforcement.

Not a joke. Obviously it's not practical to guard every inch of the border (which is quite mountainous). But they have checkpoints all throughout the country with soldiers checking cars for Haitians. They deported a quarter of a million Haitians in 2023.

Dominicans are openly racist towards Haitians, they do not want Haitians in their country, and they commit serious resources to keeping them out.

Also, they murdered the fuck out of the expats back in the 30s.

And more recently, stripped people of Haitian descent of their Dominican citizenship.

Interestingly, the Dominicans started construction of a border wall last year.

For more information, there's Deconstructing Border Walls: Tackling the Dominican Republic’s anti-Haitian racism.

I was waiting for the part of the article where they'd go from the Trulijio dictatorship massacres to explaining how things got to be this way, but sadly they never do.

Dominicans have the Boer problem: their neighbor keeps trying to seize their land and enslave them but because they're white and Christian, somehow it never seems to count as colonization.

Now I won't be so naive as to claim there isn't fault on the Dominican side, but you'd think not wanting to associate with people who are your declared ennemies would at the very least be justified.

Dominicans are white?

They're Spaniards mixed with Afro-Carribeans. Make of that what you will.

They are lighter skinned than Haitians so in the grand unified anglo theory of colonial struggle that the linked article uses, that makes them the whites here. I don't make the rules.

They're mulattoes..

/images/17259435487462516.webp

The most surprising thing to me here is the amount of white ancestry in Haiti and Jamaica

Hispanics, like Jews, are Schrodinger's whites depending on whether or not it serves The Narrative. See also: George Zimmerman.

Strange that they are Hispanic - they’re more black than Spanish

Strange that they are Hispanic - they’re more black than Spanish

They're literally from the island of Hispañola, you can't get any more Hispanic. (of course the Haitians are too).

The word Hispanic really doesn’t have anything to do with someone’s racial background

I kind of feel bad, because I shared the article merely because of the silly headline. Apologies for making you read it.

It's extremely hard to find anything (at least in English language media) that represents the position of proponents of the wall. Presumably there are some: a majority of DR citizens support it. But most articles are just about how it's racist and inhumane and escalating tensions.

Por que los Dominicanos tienen una historia de preguntar a dicer 'parejil'.

how cute, they have their own Vesper story

On average, Dominicanos are not as self-hating or oblivious as to the negative value-add of black(er) Haitian invaders compared to the self-hatred, obliviousness, and negrolatry of EEUU blancos or blanco-adjacent.

Crappy comment expressed crappily. As I seem to have to be telling several people, if you want to condemn an entire population as invasive retards, you need to put more work into it than a Twitter-tier hot-take. You have a poor record of comments like this; next time will likely be a ban.

Putting 20k foreigners into your town of 60k is a literal invasion. That community to the extent it exists has been conquered.

I am shocked it hasn’t come to violence.

How do the leaders and police officers sleep at night knowing they’ve cooperated with a complete surrender and probably gotten paid for it too

Demoralization propaganda. Resisting is literally unthinkable to anybody who lives there, even the people complaining about it. They'd never dream of arming up, organizing, planning a date, and taking back their civilization. They most they'll do is meekly complain that the federal government should provide more assistance. Even deportation is probably going too far for most of them.

Demoralization is saying the community has been destroyed and the place is conquered. That is only so if you believe it is so.

Community in America barely exist because commercial businesses and government has taken over all the functions of community. As government is failing, if you put put people under enough pressure due to lack of security and it's going to form in the absence of active disruption by state agents.

Even deportation is probably going too far for most of them.

The people in the city meetings were desperate. Removing the Haitians somewhere else isn't "too far".

Demoralization is saying the community has been destroyed and the place is conquered. That is only so if you believe it is so.

This is silly and relies on the firm beleif that nothing is real. If you live ANYWHERE and your population increase by 33% in a couple of years, from ANY sort of transplant, than any local culture, landscape, services, infrastructure has been irrevocably changed. Maybe one wants to argue that this is a good change and in many cases it is.

But if the dramatic change comes from outside and against the will of the people, wihtout their explicit consultation and approval, they've been 'invaded' so to speak. At least, when it's gentrification, the people who stick around get a better, safer city out of it, and it's generally from their fellow Americans. When it's by true foreigners, it's ridiculous to pretend anything else but invasion.

You can't just absorb a 1/3 population surplus from a completely different country.

You can't just absorb a 1/3 population surplus from a completely different country.

I'm not saying it's not happening, but you're saying it's final. It's not final at all.

They can always go back. This has been done plenty of times in history. Germans went west by the million despite centuries long habitation. Bhutan repatriated iirc hundreds of thousands of Nepalese. Fiji repatriated a lot of Indians, enough to secure a comfortable majority for their natives.

And so on.

What do you think would happen to Haitians in the event of a civil war and breakdown? Do you think they'd be nice and considerate suddenly ?

What do you think is going to happen there if there's a serious economic crisis? That that'd improve relations ?

No this isn't going to end well, and it certainly isn't going to end with Haitians happily inhabiting rustbelt by the million, being even worse for the budget than black Americans. It's going to end in tears. America is going to see some bad times and that never helps with diversity.

I have to admit that if the numbers are correct then I am surprised it's not worse. Listening to some of the comments at the town hall it certainly sounds unpleasant, but there wasn't much in the way of actual crimes and shit (no, no one actually cares about the sanctity of the migratory bird treaty act). Lots of "get your government hands off my medicaid" type stuff regarding lines at the welfare office.

Violence will only make it worse in the current political situation. Bearing through it might be the right move.

The whole thing started with a Haitian driving without a license killing an 11yo coming home from school.
A common feature of all these CHNV groups is they have absolute immunity to basic law enforcement. They drive without plates, they drive drunk, they don't have licenses and they certainly don't know how to drive.

All shit people like you and me would go to prison for. basic anarcho-tyranny.

If you hit a kid walking home from school and drove off, there's a pretty good chance you'd get away with it. These people's relative immunity from the law is downstream of their willingness to ignore it.

Not if you've registered your car. You only get away with this if you get away with paper plates and no insurance for long periods of time.

Even worthless fuckhead cops will spend 60 minutes looking at traffic cameras to try and spot a license plate after you murder a kid.

The guy who did that was sentenced to 9 years in prison.. You would expect one or two traffic fatalities a year from a population of 20,000.

You would not go to prison for driving without a license or without plates either. These are minor offenses.

He should be deported.

I would absolutely not get away with driving without a license or plates. I know this because I have friends who have spent time in the county jail for it.

I also know who around here does get away with ignoring almost all laws, from licensing to fire codes to food handling.

What is "CHNV"?

The migrant flights from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, where anyone could get a plane ticket to the US paid for by a refugee resettlement agency. It was paused in July due to massive fraud (tens of thousands of fake or dead sponsors), but recently reopened once the heat died down.

It's one of at least two programs that flew migrants directly into the country instead of having them cross the border.

So far it has flown at least half a million people from the worst countries in the world into the US, with zero screening. That Venezuelan gang arrested in Colorado came in that way, iirc. Others have murdered here and it turned out were already wanted for rape and murder in their home countries.

Thank you.

Why does the mere pressence of foreigners constitute an invasion? They don't control the place. They're not doing anything to the locals.

It’s about numbers and percentages. A handful of foreigners in your town does not represent an invasion. When they begin to comprise a plurality or even a majority of the population of the town, it must be treated as an invasion, even if they haven’t done anything sinister yet, simply because their capacity to assert their will and preferences has now become equal to (or superior to) that of the former majority.

I am legitimately confused. None of this seems to make sense.

On the contrary, it makes perfects sense. If you take people from a chaotic and poor country, and not the best people and send them to a place that's not poor and not chaotic and just let them loose, without close supervision, they're going to behave in a chaotic manner.

They, or a substantial part of them were apparently relocated there as a part of a scheme to provide cheap workforce, but I find it doubtful that most of them even work. We know the statistics, we know they don't know the language and have low ability on average. So low that profitably employing them is a challenge.

Haiti is one of the poorest countries on Earth. You surely know of the observations Scott Alexander made and then deleted off the internet out of fear?.

I was looking for that exact link just now, thank you.
It would be perfect evidence for the "a 70iq country can't possibly exist" people, not that it would do anything except make them switch the argument to "well IQ isn't real and you're weird for having evidence"

I'm still amazed he didn't realise that the Haitians were just trying to get free medicine that they could later sell.

I'd peg this as more like 80 than 70. You've got to take into account the social compounding, where information is not passed on accurately.

I was reading Scott's review of Hive Mind recently. The part that stands out to me is this:

The best guess is that the cognitive skill of elites really does matter more than the nation’s average score. When it comes to institutional quality, Potrafke and I found that the cognitive skills of the top 5 percent did the better job of predicting property-rights friendly institutions, although the nation’s average score also did a reasonably good job as a predictor…for the time being it’s reasonable to start with the belief that a nation’s top performers matter more for the economy than a nation’s average performers.

A decent manager would probably be able to find something productive to do with the functionally illiterate office worker Scott mentions in your link. The problem becomes compounded when that person's boss is also an idiot, and so on and so on.

If there really were 20,000 unemployable retards wandering the streets of Springfield, we would be seeing video clips, not second and third-hand rumors. So I am tentatively willing to believe that they are employed. Is there really that much demand for cheap low-skill labor? That is one of the things I am confused about.

Is there really that much demand for cheap low-skill labor? That is one of the things I am confused about.

Yes. In a rapidly aging community like that, yes there is.

Is voting low skill labor?

A decent manager would probably be able to find something productive to do with the functionally illiterate office worker Scott mentions in your link.

Sure. If there isn't a welfare state to tempt him away from working in the first place. And if there isn't a minimum wage law to prevent him from working at his natural wage. And if the overseer is allowed to give him a stiff beating when he catches him stealing on the job. And if...

I'm not so sure the manager can actually find something useful for the illiterate worker to do within the constrains of 21st century America.

If the hypothetical manager of company A cannot, then said hypothetical manager is replaced by hypothetical manager of company B, unless you believe there are no industries that can find use for low-skill labor in 21st century America.

Depending on the minimum wage laws it absolutely can be the case. Not to mention that the big problem isn't just being low skill - we have some black market work for those, even if it isn't ideal - it's unreliability. If you can't depend on a person to at least show up on time, stay for the agreed-upon time, do the work, and not opportunistically steal from the company, than a person can easily be worth negative money for a company. If you read up Haiti and more generally african countries, it's this unreliability that drives most of the dysfunction, not just merely being low-skill.

There are no uses for low-skill, high priced, lazy, dishonest labor in 21st century America. The supply and demand curves for sufficiently low-skill labor would meet below the current minimum wage if it wasn't in place; add in laziness and dishonesty and it probably doesn't clear at all (that is, there's no demand at any positive price, because the worker does more damage than work)

The UAW is still going strong... Clearly someone has a use for low-skill, high priced, lazy, dishonest labor. Just maybe not the people required to hire them.

In any case, I think "lack of English language comprehension" is the real nail in the coffin. We can get away with Spanish since it's basically the unofficial second language of the USA, but I don't see too many government forms translated into Creole.

Bosses of low skilled labor, and white men entering those fields on a management track, expect to need to speak (imperfect)Spanish as a job skill. On the contrary I’m not sure that learning creole is even possible except by exposure; you don’t have classes on it at the local community college.

Edit: I'm not actually sure that there is something called 'creole' which can be learned- it seems like it's multiple dialects which are never written down, not all of which are mutually intelligible. At least with Spanish Mexico city is the prestige dialect for people who actually come here(not a lot of Argentines walking to the border) and is mutually intelligible with eg Noreste Spanish, Centraco Spanish, etc pretty easily.

Isn’t there an obvious explanation?

You’re looking at second- or third-hand sources with an explicit agenda. Of course they’re going to show the spiciest takes, whether or not they can provide any more details.

Put a number to it. What percentage of those 20,000 do you think are slaughtering ducks in the park?

The emphasis on the cats and ducks has a strong potential to backfire, it can be dismissed with questions like yours. The better approach would be to focus on the human element. Maybe the woman in that clip is a secret Alt-Righter with an explicit agenda.

By the way, the only reason we are talking about this is because Elon Musk bought Twitter. The clip I just linked has 11M views. Without Musk allowing this discourse on Twitter the only indication of this all happening would be through the lens of the Corporate Press.

The emphasis on the cats and ducks has a strong potential to backfire

Not at all. It's a brilliant psy-op. Why do you think Musk is posting images like this?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1833220440254513243/photo/1

Is it because Elon Musk is actually a moron? Does he think that Haitians are raiding back yards to eat cats? Of course not. This is the Streisand Effect in action. Every time someone "debunks" this, the story only grows.

Let's say you are a normie, just trying to grill. You read this: "Actually, no the 20,000 Haitians who moved into the small town in 4 years are not hunting and eating cats".

What is your reaction? Do you think, "haha dumb Republicans". Or do you think, "Holy shit, this town just got taken over by Haitian immigrants. Is my town next? Why does the person who wrote this article think this is totally normal?"

This is a winning issue for Republicans. The Democratic position on immigration is lunacy. Anything that brings this to the forefront is good for Trump. There is nothing good or okay about what happened to Springfield, cats or no.

Haitians are raiding back yards to eat cats?

They have some cat-eating custom apparently ...

Let's say you are a normie, just trying to grill. You read this: "Actually, no the 20,000 Haitians who moved into the small town in 4 years are not hunting and eating cats". What is your reaction? Do you think, "haha dumb Republicans". Or do you think, "Holy shit, this town just got taken over by Haitian immigrants. Is my town next? Why does the person who wrote this article think this is totally normal?"

I am sure that normies would find it weird that a town's population would increase by 50% because of Haitian refugees, but I don't think they'd see it as bad. They'd complain if it meant that the people living in the town now have to leave, but they'd have no reason to suspect that that's the case. They'd just see it as a harmless population increase.

There is nothing good or okay about what happened to Springfield, cats or no.

Why would this be the case from a normie perspective?

I’m willing to believe that woman. I believed the original speaker. I just take their conclusions, their assessment of the scope, with a grain of salt.

If I were running a partisan Twitter account, I’d be cherry-picking a different set of clips and photos. Maybe show you kids in cages or quoting Rebekah Jones.

“This discourse” sucks. It reflects more about the accounts one follows than about reality. Twitter delenda est.

“This discourse” sucks. It reflects more about the accounts one follows than about reality. Twitter delenda est.

Yup, you would prefer if the Corporate Media were the gatekeeper of the narrative surrounding all of this, as it has been for demographic replacement going back decades.

Anyone who wants to convince me otherwise ought to try harder instead of whipping out their one data point.

I’ll give you credit for bothering to provide a second.

It looks like it is backfiring.

right now, the most common claims on the issue are turning out to be false

And frankly, it should backfire. When most prominent stories that conservatives are sharing are false, then why should I not be skeptical of the whole thing? You'd think the onus would be on them to come up with the most easily-verifiable, most rock-solid claim.

Are there really ~20k new Haitian immigrants in Springfield though? If so, I didn't know this before, and probably neither did you.

So it's not backfiring.

You don't need to spread fake news in order to get people to be aware of the new Haitian immigrants in that city.

That'd be nice if true, but I'm not sure if it is. Vance gave a speech mentioning the immigration itself in early July, and Moreno was not long behind him. Right-wing and especially local media have been focused on it for at least two months.

It's not even the first version of the 'big jump in immigrants compared to local population', if somewhat higher in size, nor the first time it isn't happening turned into its happening and good. It's just that normally the path is local media covers it at all, Red Tribe media talks up some of the actual issues, and then Blue Tribe media has a nice whitewash, no one actually cares except if they're stuck listening to NPR while driving.

That's not a normative thing -- if these claims are false, that is bad! -- but it points to some Bad Incentives. And I'm not sure they can be meaningfully shown to be false, even if they are.

You don't need to get on a plane to get to New York City either, but it's certainly convenient and effective.

Because there is plenty of evidence for the most important reasons you should be opposed to the mass resettlement of Haitians into your community? Like an 11 year old boy who was killed by a Haitian immigrant in that community?

"The Kitten thing was a Twitter meme, so now I'm not sure there's at all a problem with flooding a town with Haitians" is going to be the response by people like you.

JD Vance's office reports direct eyewitness testimony of residents from local wildlife being abducted by Haitian immigrants. Beleeb witnesses. Although, that's not even a significant reason to oppose this compared to the other reasons.

Do you know what's confirmed? That a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here. That local health services have been overwhelmed. That communicable diseases--like TB and HIV--have been on the rise. That local schools have struggled to keep up with newcomers who don't know English. That rents have risen so fast that many Springfield families can't afford to put a roof over their head.

This is such a stupid objection. First of all it takes a very small percentage to make a big difference when the total number is big. 20k is big. 20k is astronomical when you're starting pop is 60k.

If 2 Billion Martians landed on earth, and killed 20 million people, I'm not taking solice in the fact that that's only about a 1% murder rate.

Second, again the insane rapid influx of complete cultural and national foreigners is itself massive damage to a local human ecosystem. If I lived in a town of 60k and 20k people almost exactly like me, moved here from across the country without my town's consent in a matter of years, I would still consider it extremely destructive to my town's character.

It's better than seeing one data point and jumping to (preexisting) conclusions.

Yes, 33% is a lot by any measure. Yes, I'm willing to believe at least one immigrant did the duck thing.

I also believe a sufficiently motivated NIMBY could find something equally bad for any population. That includes your hypothetical 20k and it includes the local 60k. Follow the sex offender registry or hang around under enough bridges, and you can find someone who proves that Something Ought To Be Done.

So I asked OP how many people he thinks are doing the alarming thing. Then we can judge whether that's actually a lot. Whether it's actually worth Doing Something, and what sort of Something might be productive. I'd much prefer that to more chattering about how much NGOs hate white rural Trump voters.

If I lived in a town of 60k and 20k people almost exactly like me, moved here from across the country without my town's consent in a matter of years, I would still consider it extremely destructive to my town's character.

Arguably the town's character had already been degraded though. It's a Rust Belt town, that lost 30% of its population and had one of the worst drops in median income in the US (almost 30%) and a crime rate that was increasing, along with drug problems. It's like so many Rust belt towns hollowed out and dying, you either let it die (bad for the people there) or you inject fresh blood (arguably also bad for the people there). There is no non-destructive outcome at this point most likely. It's just picking your poison.

Notably the local government believes it was a network of local companies that coordinated to attract the influx as they wanted to take advantage of very cheap real estate but there were not enough workers in the city.

"Springfield officials were in the dark about the possibility of a large immigrant relocation to the area, Mayor Rob Rue said at the recent Springfield City Commission meeting, but a “network of businesses knew what was coming.”

Investigation by the city’s Immigrant Accountability Response Team formed in October of 2023 has revealed the possibility “there were companies that knew they were going to make an effort to bring in individuals who were crossing the border based on federal regulations that they could do that,” Rue said. "

As an aside, the federal government possessing the ability to drop tens of thousands of migrants on your town seems like a surprisingly powerful instrument of coercion. Remembering the Washington Bridge Fort Lee lane closure scandal, I do wonder if this is over something as petty as the mayor calling the wrong person a cocksucker on a phone call, or whatever.

Did the Federal government have anything to do with it? (Other than the refugee scheme itself of course). With free movement inside the US, anyone can drop migrants on you, right? See the various governors bussing/flying migrants to New York or whatever. And in this case assuming businesses organized it, all you need is money or the offer of employment.

Oh, fair, it could be state governments or even heads of non-profits acting out of spite. It certainly seems at least coordinated. Why would it be overwhelmingly one ethnic group moving there if it was simply an artifact of free movement?

As noted the mayor seems to believe, after investigation it was a group of businesses that coordinated somehow, in order to bring workers to the city. It seems unlikely (though not impossible) they would be doing it out of spite as their businesses are presumably trying to make a profit there.

Dropping a literal biblical plague of retards on your political opponents should be classified as a war crime. We need a new Hague.

Citation 1: Average Hattian IQ is 67

Citation 2: An IQ below 70 is considered retarded

I'm not joking, I'm not being snide. That is the literal, object level thing that was done to a once functional community. How is that not a crime against humanity?

Dropping a literal biblical plague of retards on your political opponents should be classified as a war crime. We need a new Hague.

I've been saying the same thing for years, but Anime Con keeps happening and nobody puts the organizers on trial for crimes against humanity.

Time out. Why do you keep calling them "Hattians"? You know the country is called "Haiti", right? And that actual Hattians lived in Anatolia? Is this some new meme?

Autocorrect strikes again.

Most Asian, Eastern European, and Latin American countries would consider it an act of war if you dropped 20,000 Haitians into one of their towns (and rightfully so), yet the US government is voluntarily and enthusiastically subjecting its own people to it.

they just need bodies buying and consuming shit to boost GDP, I'm doubtful they care about anything else while living inside their gated communities.

No, you're not joking or being snide, you're just being as inflammatory as you can so you can bitch at us about how you can't even call an entire country "retards." Posting "But technically they are retards!" links is not much better than your ChatGPT stunt.

Let's suppose your links are accurate and the average Haitian does indeed have an IQ that low. Do you think if every time people referred to Haitians they called them "retards" that would invite reasonable discussion? You could have expressed your point without calling every Haitian a "literal Biblical plague of retards" but that wouldn't have been so satisfyingly vicious, would it?

Be honest, you knew you were going to get modded for this, and I'm sure you have your whine about it already locked and loaded.

Lately you are about 50/50 AAQCs and venom-spewing shit-takes, and I recently told someone else, posting AAQCs gives you a little slack, but your long record of being incapable of controlling yourself and devoting much of your considerable cleverness to seeing how nasty a one-liner you can get off is eroding that slack. Unlike some of our shit-tier posters, you are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.

Yes, i did know id get modded for saying a true thing and citing my sources like you tell me to. It says more about you than it does me.

Edit: You know what, this is getting under my skin. You always tell me if I'm going to say something inflammatory, I need to have citations. I include citations, and you lump actually having the citations you told me to have along with my other "stunts". You told me to include citations. Don't use that against me when you mod me.

Furthermore, you act like they aren't even real. Like they don't even count, without any basis. Just "Nope, you don't get to use citations for that." We doing hate facts now here?

Then you go on to act like I've spent the last day calling Haitians retards all over. "if every time people referred to Haitians they called them 'retards'". Well it's a good thing I only did it once then, isn't it? And came with citations to show the majority of Haitians meet the clinical definition of retard.

You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.

Furthermore, you act like they aren't even real. Like they don't even count, without any basis. Just "Nope, you don't get to use citations for that." We doing hate facts now here?

You cited Bing searches; those aren't sources of information but notoriously-unreliable aggregators. I'm pretty sure I rated your earlier comment either "Bad" or "Deserves a warning" on the volunteer page, and part of it was because the only motive I could come up with for citing Bing searches (given that a Bing search is not going to convince anybody) was that you were hoping people would take the existence of the link as evidence without actually checking what the link was.

If you'd dug a bit deeper to provide actual sources, I'd have been much more positively disposed toward your post and I imagine Amadan would too.

Notably the local government believes it was a network of local companies that coordinated to attract the influx as they wanted to take advantage of very cheap real estate but there were not enough workers in the city.

I still don't really get it. Was it like

<businesses> government! we need a bunch of cheap workers to run our factories in Springfield. Maybe we can put together an incentive program or something to attract people back to the town? Fix issues with high cost of housing? New initiatives on reducing crime?

<government guy> mmmm, ... how many do you need again?

<businesses> oh, like 20,000

* government guy looks at clipboard of refugee camp populations in Texas

<government guy> they'll be there on Monday

No idea, but the government may not have been involved at all. Other than to put them on the refugee scheme in the first place. They aren't living in camps or anything as far as it appears.

We just don't have enough info to know how these busineses did whatever it is the mayor is accusing them of. Some kind of contract agency? Reaching out to pro immigrant organizations? Direct approaches to Haitian community groups? The Feds as you suggest? No idea.

People left the rust belt because there were no jobs in the first place. What were these companies desperate for cheap labor? We keep hearing about them in the abstract, but what actual companies had 20,000 positions to fill?

Again, how many of these Haitians are actually working? They get more "cash assistance" than someone working for $10/hr anyway!

There's a pro open borders story being spun in every article by being very flexible with the truth.

No idea, but it is what the mayor seems to think. Who is hardly happy about the situation, so it seems unlikely he is too pro-open borders.

Until or unless the city publishes the report of the investigation, we just have the fairly vague public statements. But they presumably have access to more information than we do.

Its possible property is cheap given the town shrank so much, so companies were able to buy up commercially useful space cheaply and just need a greater workforce. But i wouldn't have that on its own would get you 10,000 plus specifically Haitians moving in. Maybe the companies are owned by a Haitian or something. Its unclear.

Maybe the companies are owned by a Haitian or something

Voodoo R Us is hiring I heard

Just be very careful not to damage the merchandise!

Am I missing a joke here?

well yeah, Haiti is known for voodoo and zombies, so a company owned by a Haitian being voodoo related and tangentially named after a toys store sort of fits into the joke. I thought the joke was pretty obvious :(

Isn’t there an obvious explanation?

I thought that they obviously made a mistake: the immigrants were supposed to be distributed, but all of the immigrants assigned to the few dozen different Springfield's throughout the US somehow all got sent to the same one.

“We swear we aren’t racist, but all these towns look the same to us.”

I don't see architecture

Just like I don’t see local color.

Put a number to it. What percentage of those 20,000 do you think are slaughtering ducks in the park?

It seems plausible to me that they are rate limited by the number of ducks in the park available to slaughter. Assuming they have three or four ponds, each with 10 or so ducks, it might only take five or six guys to go through the entire population in a year. As we have seen with shoplifting statistics, these things tend to be dominated by the tails.

Nobody has gone to the park to check! Springfield isn’t in the middle of nowhere. There are big cities nearby. This entire tempest in a teapot is happening online with approximately no input from base-level reality.

I'm... very skeptical that anyone providing either pictures of a Springfield park (or drainage ditch) with a few ducks, or without a duck, would change anyone's minds, here. Even the photo of a guy (tbf, with unknown immigration status) with some geese on their way to be spatchcocked (tbf, in Columbus, OH, about an hour and a half drive away) just gets the twitterati suggesting who knows where it could have come from.

Rotherham has desensitized me and now all I can think about this story is "how quaint". If only this was as bad as it got.

Well, according to a local, there were numerous specifically white Pekin ducks in the park in Springfield, Ohio. These are a flightless domestic breed, which explains how Haitians were able to steal them.

They do fly but can't do it very well, so you get the idea.

I tried looking it up, and easily found some wild ducks with what appears to be a single pekin duck.

Springfield has a number of parks, almost all small and without water. Doling park and Close memorial park could hold a large amount of ducks, especially the latter. No ducks on Google Earth, but then the pictures are from august of '14 and it looks hot. No idea what ducks do in hot weather but sitting in the open on water is not optimal. There's one more park that has water in it, but it's a small stream.

Doling Park? Close Memorial Park? Your second link goes to the Springfield in Missouri, not Ohio.

Springfield in Missouri, not Ohio.

Lmao. Embarrasing.

I swear I clicked on Illinois one. It even looks similar, though the creek going through the middle seems to be going east to west, not west to east.

Trump Jr. posted a 911 call from August 26th which specifically identified Haitians driving away with Geese. Also includes a police report. I haven't seen any receipts w.r.t pet cats, but the whole geese/duck thing seems pretty well-supported at this point.


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