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I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.
It is not that I do not believe in evil. But I do find it odd when liberals perceive demonic evil in Trump, yet make excuses for vicious violent criminals (at least, as a class if not always individually) who are enabled by Democrats' soft-on-crime policies.
Would Trump do many harmful things in office? I am sure. Harris would as well. Which one would do more, who knows? I do not see a clear-cut answer to that question. He certainly would be no angel, I am sure of that. But it also seems to me that often, vehement anti-Trump sentiment has little to do with a clear-eyed assessment of the possible harms that he would cause.
What explains the particular mind-shattering power that Trump somehow inflicts on so many of his political opponents? Interestingly, it largely do not seem to be his actual political counterparts among the Democrat elite who view him as an eldritch destroyer of worlds... the Democrat elite may hate him, may despise him, may say that he is a threat to democracy, but I don't think I can remember any time that any of them acted as if he was a threat to one's very psychological foundation. Maybe their power and their close understanding of American politics generally inoculates them against such a reaction.
Lest someone think that I come only to shit on the Democrats, unfortunately no. Would that I actually supported either of the two main parties... my political life would be easier. But the Republicans, too, deserve some questioning on this topic. Republicans' reaction to Bill and Hillary Clinton, at one point, was a sort of precursor to the mental shattering caused by the concept of Trump. Interestingly, despite often being accused of being racist, from what I recall Republicans did not actually react to Obama quite as hysterically as they reacted to the Clintons. Sure, there was a lot of vitriol against Obama, such as Birtherism, but it was probably half as vehement as what was thrown at the Clintons.
Yet even though Republicans were in many ways mind-melted by the Clintons, including to the point that Republican forums back in the day teemed with theories about the Clintons literally being a murderous and pedophilic crime family, I still do not think it quite matches up to the new standards of psychological devastation that Trump has wreaked. That might sound weird, given the murderous pedophile thing, but to me supporters of those theories generally just seem like they are stupid and prone to weird fantasies and LARPs but have always been that way, whereas people who are existentially shattered by Trump seem like they might have been different at one point, but then suddenly Trump appeared in the corner of their reality and traumatically inverted it into some new configuration of dimensions.
Why does Trump have this effect? Is it just that there is a large number of people in this country who fail to agree with me that Trump's chances of becoming a dictator are extremely small, that a man who has most key institutions against him, has the top military brass against him, and lives in a country where the military rank and file are probably not about to try to overthrow civilian authority, has very little chance of ending American democracy?
I am not sure. The idea of Trump being the curtain call on American democracy is certainly one of the main things behind his psychological impact on people, but I have seen plenty of people who seem existentially horrified by him for completely different reasons. Some people seem to be driven out of their wits' ends just by the very fact that Trump is crude and vulgar rather than sounding like an intellectual.
Democrat here.
I actually mostly agree with you that Trump would spend the majority of the time doing nothing and passing whatever Republicans put in front of him. From a D perspective that's bad of course, but not unexpected. Though expected or not, his court nominations have had lasting consequences. I think a lot of it is his propensity for impulsive or poor decisions, such as trying to pull out of NATO.
I think a lot of it is his norm-shattering ability to be a complete and utter hypocrite and/or corrupt and for it to be excused. He's a "Christian" that cheats on his wife and no one cares. He calls for locking up Hillary over emails, then has a bathroom full of classified documents and no one cares. Hunter must be punished over corruptly using family connections, but Trump businesses getting a bunch of business and business deals in other countries is a nothingburger. Let's also not forget Jared Kushner.
I expect to see counters about how the entire government is corrupt, and I don't even disagree with all of it. But he is so incredibly blatant about it that he doesn't even try to create plausible deniability.
I think his false elector scheme was a massive attempt at overturning democracy. I don't know how he could do it again since a two-term limit doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. But I also don't want to give power to the kind of person who seems to love trying to see how he can lawyer his way out of anything, especially when Republicans seem to go out of their way to excuse him.
It is ironic that you compare Clinton and Trump whilst making it seem like what Trump did was on par or worse. It seems clear that what Hillary was trying to do was get around FOIA (ie oversight). Clinton was by far worse.
Because I have no interest in defending Hillary. She could be prosecuted for it and I wouldn't shed a tear. I voted Bernie until I was largely forced to hold my nose and vote Hillary. In either case, her guilt or innocence has nothing to do with Trump's. And Trump's guilt when it comes to classified documents is so cut and dried the only thing anyone can do is whatabout Hillary or cast aspersions on the motive on anyone who would hold him accountable.
Is it? You know that picture with all the classified cover sheets was essentially fabricated by the FBI -- they put those cover sheets there.
They had to categorize dozens of boxes of papers, and made a dumb mistake. We still have Trump admitting on recording that he was showing documents to a guest that he didn't declassify.
Then you are being naive. The FBI knew that photo would be on the front page of major news publications. By showing that it makes it appear like Trump was causally keeping things that say Top Secret around — he even had a FOLDER!
And now that it was found out, which guess what, Trump has lawyers whose entire career is catching things like this, they have egg on their face. If it was a scheme, it was an absolutely dumb one. They're still attempting to go ahead with the case even though there's no way it will be concluded before the election.
You are assuming the goal was legal as opposed to political
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It probably would have worked if it wasn't for Judge Cannon.
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Oh yes, they added a bunch of classified cover sheets to a photo, and put it in a court filing without mentioning that those cover sheets were added by them. Just your average everyday "oopsie" in the FBI.
I generally believe incompetence over maliciousness.
What's more likely?
An impulsive braggart with a tendency to think he can do anything grabbed some docs as personal trophies or to win arguments?
Or...
Trump normally keeps stacked up boxes of documents in bathrooms and the FBI throws in cover sheets to make Trump look guilty? And the judge is going to accept they they are classified based on this cover sheet and not check? Oh, and also they trick Trump into saying these exact words?
The later. That's what actually happened, after all, and is consistent with years of prior leaks from the FBI and associated probes pursued for political harm, whereas there is no allegation that Donald Trump used those classified documents to try and win arguments.
Stacks of boxes in odd places is pretty normal. It was a minor- and not prosecuted- reoccurance of both former VP Pence and former VP Biden that they both were found to have boxes of classified documents in their domiciles well after their departures. In Biden's case, they were found being kept in a garage.
Further, there was no practical reason to put classified cover sheets over the documents in question for the purpose of an evidentiary photo. The cover sheet has no evidentiary power in and of itself- it could be any document behind it, so you'd need to take photos sans cover sheet anyways, and if you're doing that you'd need to have a camera and photo-storage planned for the relevant classified level anyway.
The cover sheets were brought for a photo that could be shared without itself being a disclosure incident, the documents were staged for the photo, and the photo was presented publicly and presented in a way to insinuate that the cover sheets had been there from the start. (Which itself was furthered by a major media outlet coincidentally being at Mar-a-Lago for the dawn document raid to report it as it happened.)
The nature of Presidential classification authority is that there is nothing to check, hence why the classified document case got nuked by implications of the official acts immunity ruling by the Supreme Court during the parallel attempt at anti-Trump lawfare.
The Biden Administration's effort to target Trump in the classified document case rested on an argument that Presidents have to go through a formal process for declassification, insist that because Trump did follow the process the documents were still classified, and thus that once Trump left office with them he could no longer declassify them and thus it was improper holding.
However, there is no required procedure, the current White House does not assert it has created a required procedure, and neither the National Archives or FBI ever actually identified a required process that Trump failed to follow to lead to the judgement of 'improper' holding. This is why the charges were under the espionage act for having classified documents, and not for violation of a declassification process in improperly declassifying documents. The case has hinged from the start on the argument that Trump did not declassify them, as opposed to could not do so automatically as part and parcel of the job.
Which has been utterly unsurprising to anyone actually familiar with US classification regulations. The President does not need to justify the decision to declassify to other parts of the US government, does not need to communicate that decision to anyone else, and if the President determines something no longer needs to be classified then- as long as it doesn't derive from Atomic Energy Act- there is nothing and no one to say he can't. There are all inherent aspects of being the ultimate classification and declassification authority of Executive Branch documentation, an authority that the Biden administration has never taken the position that then-President Trump didn't have the authority to do.
This is why the case functionally broke when the Supreme Court made its ruling on immunity for official acts. The President's decision to declassify solely Executive branch information is an official act. It's not something regulated by Congress. It's not something beyond the scope of the Executive to establish limits on itself either in certain ways, but no such procedural requirement was ever alleged.
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Is it supposed to be a defense that the classified documents he had didn't have coversheets?
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Every single president before Trump (except maybe Nixon) was allowed unlimited time to go through his documents and decide which ones to give to the archives. Obama probably still isn't done, if anyone cared to look -- hell if you looked in Bush's basement I wouldn't be surprised if you found some shit.
It's the furthest thing from cut & dried; the people breaking norms on this one are definitely not Trump.
Assuming I believed you, then it sounds to me like the proper thing to do is decriminalize keeping confidential documents if it is apparently no big deal. Hell at that point why even have confidential designation if it apparently means nothing?
It means nothing to the President -- it's legally arguable that he's already excluded from existing regulations, even once his term is up.
You're aware that presidents normally continue to receive classified security briefings once their term is up? There's no need to handle the transfer of documents in a confrontational way, particularly so soon after leaving office -- it's just a fact that this is all completely unprecedented, and completely on the Biden admin.
Congressmen and Presidents get a massive amount of leeway, which is that them still having classified documents is considered a mistake and they're told to give them back. That in fact happened to Trump, and he claimed he was cooperating. This isn't about any information he received after leaving office, or about him simply having documents. This is about him saying he's returned documents and then they come back to Mar-a-Lago and find more that were obviously moved from the last time they searched, meaning they believe he was actively trying to obstruct them. Also he showed classified documents to civilians and admitted on recording that he knew they were classified documents.
Here is a timeline if needed
Do unprecedented things, get unprecedented treatment. Especially if you leave a bunch of slam dunk evidence.
Yeah as opposed to I don’t know doctoring emails sent to fisa courts or destroying evidence under subpoena. Who, whom.
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Not Congressmen, but with presidents it's not really leeway but rather that legally it's much closer to a l'etat c'est moi situation, and the norm is to not test this. Again, the request itself is unprecedented; see Biden. Despite his lack of Presidential privilege, nobody was knocking on his door asking for documents during Trump's term; nor should they have been.
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And honestly seemed a bit like a set up (ie files were sent to him and then he was hassled about it).
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I think the unprecedented part isn't that Trump took and kept documents but that he and his team explicitly lied to law enforcement/DoJ when politely asked to report and return classified documents.
The request itself was unprecedented; no other presidents were asked to do this.
The request occurred because the DoJ became aware of their existence. They are obligated to request their return once they become aware of their existence. At least in the past, what, 30 years, I'm not aware of a situation where they discover a former president has classified documents and don't request them to be immediately returned.
The idea that there's all this collusion against Trump feels odd. Many people working at the DoJ and FBI are Republicans and voted for Trump and will probably vote for Trump again. (Maybe some have changed their mind after starting to prosecute him.) They're not picking on him by going like "those documents you're not legally permitted to have? please report all the ones you're aware of and return them to us". They're not bullying the guy because they hate him. They're following the law and carrying out their duties. It's possible there's some political motivation in the New York case, but many of the people involved in the classified documents case likely aren't putting politics into the mix. It's a pretty straightforward case.
How did they 'become aware of their existence' though?
I'm sure there's the odd one, but considering the polling in D.C. and more direct evidence I suspect that the others are rather more... impactful.
This is not even a foregone conclusion -- again, he was the President -- he's legally permitted to do anything he wants with classified documents, and ones in his possession when he left office are quite some grey area, legally.
LOL -- glad you acknowledge the possibility.
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No you intimated that what Trump did was worse than what he said he’d lock Hillary up for. Yet what Hillary did was worse so there need not be hypocrisy.
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This is why the people that like him like him and don't like the rest of the government. Honest liar. There's value in knowing exactly how you're being conned.
That's all well and good, and a genuinely civic impulse. But it's a bit too late to deescalate the lawfare now isn't it? You can't really ask the other side to give up on Teflon Don when you also keep throwing lawsuits at anybody they field that's any good. And your side can't stop throwing out those lawsuits because he keeps dodging them all.
I think there’s ample evidence, from the consumption of cats and dogs to FEMA relief being capped at $750 per household, instead of that simply being the limit on one specific, short-term FEMA aid program, that a nonzero number of these people do not know they’re being lied to.
Well the cat thing seems to be directionally true even though it isn’t technically true.
https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-cat-eaters-of-ohio
And yet the WSJ tracked down the woman who made the complaint that triggered the embellished lie — she later found her cat in her own basement — and the at-core intellectually dishonest like Rufo then when looking for “directional” truth to prop up the lie.
And even for Rufo, it’s an African, not Haitians, plural.
Immigrant from third world barbecuing cats is true. Immigrants from third world causing all sorts of problems due to incompatible cultures is obviously true (and the cat thing is merely an extreme example).
That anyone has produced evidence that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating cats and dogs is a lie. And this gets back to the initial point. Immigration does cause tensions and problems. So a non-zero number of Trump supports are happy to swallow the lie, as opposed to the claim they view him as an honest liar.
It's not cats and dogs it's only cats. It's not Haitians it's Congolese. And it's not Springfield, it's Dayton. Note that what @zeke5123a said is consonant with all of those things.
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Is "directionally true" the new buzzword that means "actually not correct, but we wish it was"? Might as well say Johnny's answer to a math problem being "three billion" is "directionally true" when the real answer is "five". It's totally meaningless.
Its the mirrior of/response to the sort of technically true but misleading brand of "facts" and "fact checking" that has become distressingly common in the current media environment.
Example: so-and-so claims that Candidate Smith is a psycho who tortures puppies. Candidate Smith responds that this is baseless slander. It was a kitten Smith tortured, not a puppy, and it was only that one time.
Smith's supporters will spill gallons of ink going about how So-and-so is a liar and thier claims have all been "debunked", but the people inclined to think that torturing small furry animals is indicative of Candidate Smith being a psycho have had thier perception reinfored rather than rebuked, making So-and-so's claim "directionally correct".
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Remember how someone making up a fake hate crime is at least "Raising Awareness" or "Starting A Conversation?" Remember how that's weak bullshit nonsense? This is that.
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They certainly don't conduct themselves as if they know they're being lied to. The hard core of Trump supporters are far too celebratory and uncritical for me to believe that he is popular because they view him as honestly dishonest.
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To you and @Cirrus
Is there? Here's the way I see it. I know the elite are screwing me over. I don't like it, but I try to find the one who might do some good in some way that doesn't conflict with their own power. Trump comes along and says "We are absolutely screwing you over and I'm going to keep doing it!" And then he gathers a bunch of people who cheer as he screws them over. The honesty is something, but at the end of the day he's still doing it and actively gloating about it! Why would I be anything but repulsed by that?
Different forms of corruption are easier or harder to get rid of. Trump is to me the guy who snorts coke right in front of the cop and then the cop says that why should I arrest him when other people manage to get away with it? Okay, they probably shouldn't get away with it, but come on, he's right there!
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Is this a criticism of Trump? Because I see this as a great positive. Would you rather have a public servant who is good at hiding corruption from the people?
Perhaps if you think that brand of corruption is a good thing?
What good will come from public servant being blatantly corrupt? When everyone knows that corruption is against the public mores and generally not done --- some people will choose to do evil anyway, covertly, but the effort not to get caught in public is a tangible cost. Some people on the margin will be uncertain of the cost and choose the public mores. When everyone knows it is permissible and can be done out in the open, within a generation it is becomes the definition of public mores. The rare few who don't do it are those who are weird enough to have their own moral code for no visible benefit. Others will call it prudishness, or soon call them opponents to public mores.
Happens to be one of conservative arguments against licentiousness that I find persuasive.
What you live in a world where corruption is already rampant and the norm? One where you are going to have to bribe your way through no matter what. Consider yourself in that situation.
Do you prefer to deal with the man who is upfront about what he wants, or with the one who obliquely implies it, forcing you to guess what the price may be or if you are ever going to get what you ask for in the first place?
What if you don't live in that world, but want an excuse to act like a bandit, so you claim that you do?
I'd condemn it in that case. If the US wasn't run by scoundrels me saying this would be evil.
But we do live in that world and you need only look at the headlines of the past few weeks to convince yourself of it.
We have long transitioned to the "loot the treasury" phase of this civilization. If you can't bring yourself to act accordingly, you're not a bastion of virtue. You're a sucker.
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I don't think this a useful way to think about the situation. It won't come down to choosing between dealing with two different men, but one man in either of hypotheticals. Keep track of the rest of the society where these hypothetical men can operate, too. If you get a corrupt official who keeps up the pretense that s/he won't take bribes, s/he wants to avoid getting caught. This means they may still process your paperwork, only slower. The official who is openly corrupt will expect a bribe for anything favorable to happen. More open the expectations, more sure there is nothing you can do about it. It would suck when dealing with a low-level clerk. You won't deal directly with POTUS, but openly corrupt POTUS won't likely cause less corruption in the government.
The only good thing about a publicly known corrupt guy is not the public knowledge, it is that public knowledge can be acted on. There is nothing good about a known corrupt authority when everyone knows them to be corrupt and everyone also knows that everyone knows they won't be successfully prosecuted and stopped.
If your argument for voting for Trump comes down to arguing he is publicly corrupt, where does this leave you?
You are not engaging with the core argument here, which is that from this standpoint society is already far too corrupt for overtness to matter except as predictibility.
Accelerate.
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The laptop had some really nasty things on it... It was the cover up that got me.
And why not just compare how both families were treated? That seems more 1-1...
The cover-up certainly was bad, but it seems like the news media, social media, Blinken, and the former intelligence officials mostly or entirely sincerely believed it had a good chance of being Russian disinformation. When more evidence came out that it was real, most serious outlets reversed their stance, and Twitter and Facebook stopped censoring it.
You believe this is more likely than the deep state and political actors working in unison to protect their preferred candidate from the truth?
Have any of the 'intelligence officials' retracted their letter?
When it comes to Blinken, there's a decent shot he might've known it was real and was trying to help cover it up, given he was an advisor to Biden's campaign. But I think there's also a decent shot he thought it had a high chance of being Russian disinformation or real information but a Russia-led operation. Now, could Hunter have told Joe who could tell Blinken that the laptop was real? Very possibly. I'm not going to say with high confidence that Blinken was entirely acting in good faith on the matter. But I think most of the other parties probably were.
For starters, here is the meat of the original letter:
So, to be clear, they carefully hedge the letter to say that it is very possible all of the emails are real. They say "information operation" rather than "disinformation operation", they say they do not know if the emails are genuine or not, they say they have no evidence of Russian involvement, and they refer to one of Russia's tactics being "the dumping of accurate information".
The rest of the letter states past alleged examples of passing of information from Russian intelligence officials to Giuliani and that
This letter was somewhat irresponsible but not that irresponsible. Many of the intelligence officials who signed off on it probably didn't and don't even like Biden or Democrats. It turned out that Russia appeared to have no involvement in it and all the emails were real, but it wasn't ridiculous to assume they could've been involved.
From some quick research, it appears none of the intelligence officials have retracted their signature or said they regret signing it, as recently as a few months ago. Some have explicitly said they don't regret it.
Yes this is how the deep state / PMC lie.
They were careful to tell technically the truth while still creating the impression in the media that this was Russian disinformation. Providing cover for the various social networks to limit / censor the story. They certainly would have known the claimed provenance of the laptop as being abandoned by Hunter at a repair shop. I don't recall their letter rebutting this very directly. Maybe this just means Hunter is a Russian agent leaking his own emails and dick pics.
I'll admit I've very little generosity left for these people. They're the same sort to produce 'intelligence' about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or Russia blowing up their own pipeline, etc.
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EU has twice the people of US, comparable GDP and whatnot. It totally should be able to match US contribution 50% and have comparable forces.
They don't deserve protection. Saying as an EU citizen.
While it is certainly true that the EU is not sharing their fair share of the NATO defense burden, it would be premature to conclude from that alone that NATO is hence a bad deal for the US and all the pre-Trump administrations were idiots for having the US taxpayer protect Europe.
The way I see it, the relationship between the US and European NATO countries like Germany is an unequal partnership, but not necessarily an unfair one. Germany gets the protection of the US, but it also accepts the US as the hegemon. When the US decides that they want to embargo some country, Europe generally follows them. When the US decides that China should not have extreme ultra-violet photo-lithography machines, the Netherlands make ASML comply with that rather than weighting their alternatives.
With NATO, there is at least a contractual obligation for the Bundeswehr to fight Russia if it were to invade the US, even though nobody is under any illusion about the threat the Bundeswehr poses to Putin. But the umbrella of US protection extends even over countries who are not under formal obligation to aid the US, especially in the Pacific.
I would argue that the US puts up with this because being the leader of the status quo coalition comes with certain perks. If the US had adopted a policy of isolationism after WW2, they would certainly not be the economic powerhouse they are today.
There isn't. It's a common misconception, but while there would be massive political ramifications if a country did not step up during an Article 5 invocation, countries are not required to fight. All a NATO member is required to do is "take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked."
So in your 'invade the US,' the Germans could make the argument that 'Americans, with your navy you got this, the Bundeswehr isn't necessary.' It could even point to the sorry state of the Bundeswehr as evidence that mobilizing a non-functional Bundeswehr wouldn't help, would be detrimental even, and thus not only be unnecessary but fully in keeping with the spirit of the alliance to not force the Americans into a two-front war defending Germany as well.
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He never did any such thing though. He said we should pull out if it's not restructured in such a way that other members don't start pulling their own weight instead of just leaving everything to the US. And he was absolutely right to do so, around that same time we had embarrassments from our allies like Germany only being able to field ~10 mission ready fighter jets and ZERO submarines:
https://www.dw.com/en/only-4-of-germanys-128-eurofighter-jets-combat-ready-report/a-43611873
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/autos-transportation/germany-sees-continued-issues-with-readiness-of-submarines-aircraft-idUSS8N20M021/
You're right, but it's still absurd to threaten to leave NATO over it, regardless of how serious the threat is. Other kinds of pressure should be exerted to make NATO members spend more on their military. Combined with his lax at best or friendly at worst attitude towards Putin, it's not reassuring.
Or maybe whatever pressure was brought to bear, you would say "Not that kind"?
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"Norm-shattering" is a good description, but incomplete. What trump is is the first person to recognize and reify a wholly new strategy for executing politics. That being: to organize his supporters not as interest groups, not as a cult of personality, not as ideological compatriots, but as a fandom.
Recently, we've been seeing a lot of ink spilt on the subject of the social media-depression link. Particularly where it concerns children, but I hold that the problem extends universally across age groups. Ubiquitous smartphones with social media is (so far) the ultimate realization of the "bowling alone" trend-- where the world inside the screen becomes so addictive that people lose social links outside the screen. Consequently, in-person social links become scarce despite being just as valuable as ever. More valuable, perhaps, because in-person interactions retain all their old benefits while also making you a high-priority person to someone who has potentially valuable virtual contacts.
People on some level realize this, so they still optimize for some level of in-person contact. And they do that by engaging in fandoms. Large, energized masses of people with a shared understanding of a universe easily gel together when they meet in person. That fact that these universes are fictional doesn't matter. In fact, the very fictionality of these universes is what makes them so effective. They can optimize for being interesting and pleasurable over being true. (See: epistemic minor leagues). And unlike traditional social groups that performed the same function (e.g., fraternal societies, religions) they demand very little from you personally outside what you were already willing to give: the free time you already wanted to spend doing something fun, and the opportunity cost of spending time with people who aren't into the same things you are anyways.
Trump is the first modern politician to truly realize the power of fandoms. I want to say, "unwittingly" because I think he's an idiot, but given his success with TV and branded enterprises I can't rule out genuine epiphany. He's creating a shared universe than his fans can all be passionate about, with interesting characters, noble heroes, and evil villains. And in organizing his political supporters into a fandom, he's invalidated all the usual tools of traditional politics. Fact checkers; negative news coverage; research papers-- none of that stuff is effective against a fandom. In fact, it's actively counterproductive. Every youtube video about how star wars physics aren't realistic just keeps people interested in the star wars fandom.
Indeed, the only thing that can successfully oppose a fandom is an equal and opposite hatedom. Whether his enemies deliberately organized themselves into one, or were simply forced by selection pressures to fit the mold doesn't matter. What matters is that when someone says, "Drake and Josh are amazing singers," you don't bother telling them that they're overproduced corporate slop. Instead, you go out and create a powerful social group of your own, by telling them, "look at all these idiots that love something Dan Schneider, a pedophile, created!"
The hate against the clintons for being slimy, the "bush is stupid" people, and the the obama birtherism were essentially prefigurement for this. They cultivated proto-fandoms with their charisma that made traditional policy attacks less effective, and therefore were subject to proto-hatedoms. Bernie came the closest to emulating trump with his own dedicated online fandom, but he definitely didn't consciously understand what was happening, and in any case failed to take advantage of his devotees like trump did.
Until technology dramatically changes the social environment again, I predict that every future president will act like trump and be treated like trump. He is to social media as Kennedy was to television as Coolidge was to radio-- laying out the path for every candidate after.
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As a Democrat, I hold both views simultaneously. An actually more accurate way to put it for me is: I think he'll probably directly be a threat to democracy if he loses, and probably won't directly be a threat to democracy over the next four years if he wins, but might have already tipped the first domino in a progression that leads to an erosion of democracy and might be able to nudge the next domino (or have his allies do so) based on some of his actions during his next term.
What erosion of democracy do you believe Donald Trump, avatar of your outgroup, to want?
Steelmanning voting concepts, I have observed that my fellow Americans either want:
Accordingly, I refuse to countenance the strawman of “Republicans just want to suppress the legitimate vote” without the flip strawman, “Democrats just want to stuff the ballot box.”
Actually trying to peer into his mind and speculate exactly what he wants is difficult. I think he likes power and I think it's reasonably probable that if he thought he could do it pretty easily, he'd appoint himself president-for-life. If he does want to do that, I don't think he will try to do it, because he knows he couldn't get away with it. But the thought that he might want it is concerning. (But I only think it's "reasonably probable" he does. I'm definitely not certain.)
What I do know is that if Kamala wins, the following will happen, with the following likelihoods, whether or not there are any credible widespread fraud allegations:
That is not good for democracy. The fact that we all know that Trump will declare victory no matter what happens is not good for democracy.
If there's no substantive evidence to support his claims, we all know that Trump is going to say he won when he lost. This is an absurd state of affairs.
I'm just going to repeat this for emphasis. Everyone reading this knows that Trump is going to say "I won" on November 5/6/7, no matter the circumstances. We all know he's going to do this.
People in the intellectual dark web regularly talk about "sense-making", but they seem to (from what I can tell) avoid the fact that if there can no longer be any common agreement on who won an election, democracy is in jeopardy.
I don't think Republicans, or even Trump, necessarily want to suppress the legitimate vote, per se. I do know that Trump is going to say he won if he lost. Basically everyone knows it. That is an erosion of democracy.
Sounds like it would be best for America if Trump wins then, hey?
No, that’s precisely why it’s best that he doesn’t win. Trump is a defect bot for elections. He always plays defect, and everyone knows it. It's only rational that “it’s best for America if Trump wins” because the convention is to cooperate, and we know his opponent will cooperate. When defect-bots start winning elections because they only play defect, then all candidates will eventually become defect-bots and we all lose. So the most rational choice is to vote against the defector to ensure only cooperative candidates have a chance to win.
To play devils advocate here, if the system is completely broken and unable to produce a good result on anything that matters, maybe a defect bot is exactly what you need. Cooperation with a system that doesn’t work doesn’t fix that system. I think that our systems are so broken at this point that we either do the major fixes we need or consign ourselves to the scrap heap of history where future civilizations will wonder how we let it all fall apart.
I don’t like Trump at all, I’d very much rather have anyone else. But on the other hand the hour is late and if we wait for something better we might be doing so in a completely failed state instead of merely a failing one. A third of Americans can’t read. We can’t handle disaster recovery, fix potholes, build aircraft, or fix train tracks. Large portions of most cities are no go zones, often featuring open air drug markets. Is Trump or any other “defect bot” going to actually be able to fix that? It’s one in a million. On the other hand the system that you think we should encourage cooperation with has failed in most respects. Risky surgery or slow decline into death?
There's no way to even tell if Trump is a "defect bot", because the defection against him started early. The New York Times declared they'd only cover his candidacy in the entertainment section (a declaration they did not follow). Democrats rioted on election day. They proclaimed him #NotMyPresident and declared #Resistance. They rioted again on Inauguration Day. They started trying to impeach him in 2017. They did impeach him in 2019. There's no way you could distinguish between defectbot and tit-for-tat under these circumstances.
Are these yokels from Trump Country, or products of our Democratically-controlled urban school systems?
Ron DeSantis can.
I doubt either party could fix Boeing.
Most of the things you've mentioned are locally controlled, and Trump can't fix them. But on the other hand, most of those cities are Democratically controlled and the Democrats are the party of "defund the police".
Democratic politicians and Clinton didn't, and I believe almost all of the protests on 2016 election day were peaceful and didn't involve any rioting. Look at what Republican politicians and Trump did on and after election day. Not to mention general Trump voters.
Look at what Republicans did when Obama or particularly Biden won.
Compare the top-down leaders and the rabble. Hillary Clinton, although publicly claiming Russia helped increase Trump's odds (which is plausibly true, even if it seems more likely than not he still would've won without the DNC hacking and social media influence schemes from Russia), publicly and privately accepted the election results within hours. No high-level Democratic leaders advocated any tricks to try to keep Trump from being inaugurated. A few very left-leaning journalists suggested such things, and some Democratic voters did, but it was fringe. I'm not going to even bother to contrast with what happened from the other side.
Red MAGA is much less tethered to reality than Blue MAGA is, Red MAGA is a much greater proportion of Red Team than Blue MAGA is of Blue Team, and Red MAGA includes most of the current Republican leadership while Blue MAGA contains little of the Democratic leadership.
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I think this only applies if you believe the status quo will cause the society to invariably decline, I don’t believe that. And even if the US does decline in next four years under Kamala Harris, maybe the next president will be able to turn it around. In my head, it certainly beats the 1 in a million chance given to us by Trump.
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It's not an iterated game though -- the guy's not going to try hanging around for three terms and he'll be insufferable (as will all his supporters) if he doesn't get a second.
Just get it over with man.
It is an iterated game, maybe not with Trump, but with future candidates who might think to pull the same thing if the strategy works out for him.
If you vote for him and he wins, he will never know that his strategy was working -- he will just think that America loves him, and you will avoid whatever hassles you are expecting in the case that he loses very neatly.
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I understand your point, but I wish you could see your posts here from a God's-eye view right now. How is it that this is the state of America and so many of us are just speaking of it in banal terms? Do you and others in this thread recognize why so many people on the left conclude Trump is an unprecedented threat to democracy, and why it's so irritating that Trump fans call that stochastic terrorism?
You may even be objectively correct, but the whole situation is ridiculous and abominable.
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How are you getting to "always" from an n=1?
N does not equal to 1. He’s done the same thing for his primary losses in 2016, and he refused to say he’d accept the loss in 2016 if he did lose. Also, whether n=1 is not important, unless you believe he’ll accept the loss gracefully this time around?
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But that presumes the other side isn’t defect bot. Look at what they did during the Trump Presidency (effectively subverting the peaceful transfer of power through BS like the Russia story). That was much more undermining democracy compared to anything Trump has done. Then add in the other shenanigans by the IC community, NGOs that are cut outs for the deep state, etc that undermine free and fair elections coupled with Dems open embrace of censorship.
None of that is to praise Trump. No, I have not come to praise Trump but to bury him. Yet like Shakespeare’s Mark Antony I cannot help but note Trump’s adversaries are worse by pretty much any measure.
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It depends. The health of the state is so bad at this point that I think keeping the status quo might be worse long term. The government we have, the old guard political class cannot actually solve problems, fix things, or come up with new ideas. FEMA can’t handle hurricane, but Cajun navy and private charities can. The government can’t handle education or health or roads. Trump might well be the shakeup we need. But I’m not sure because the amount of state capacity that will be wasted fighting every single step back will likely make it all worse.
He was president for four years. What did he shake up besides many of the establishment norms that are actually good establishment norms? He complained about the Deep State hampering him from doing things that actually should've been hampered, got nothing done, refused to leave, then had to be dragged out kicking and screaming. I'm not a big fan of Bill Maher but he predicted it all exactly right from the start.
If it were Andrew Yang or Mark Cuban or Michael Bloomberg or maybe even Bernie Sanders (despite me very much not being a socialist), and if they hadn't already been president for four years, I might be willing to lend charity to this overall vibe or maybe even vote that way. But I can't understand the people acting like Trump either was going to be the great disruptor and the great fixer or somehow will be now.
Massive changes to the federal judiciary, leading to a bevy of court cases that advance conservative policies- most notably the overturn of roe vs wade, but also more limits on the regulatory state and a general improvement in gun rights and state's rights.
Can you name a republican you'd put in that category? Because it very much looks like partisan rancor.
I personally expect Trump to muddle through in a way somewhat better for me and mine than Kamala will, certainly not with a major improvement over the status quo but definitely an improvement over Kamala. I'm willing to concede that he's not good for the health of the republic but don't think he's clearly worse than democrats. To steelman the case for Trump making major changes when he didn't last time, he has a better ability to manage personnel and put out executive orders because the right wing institutions are already helping him make them, and has a much more change-happy inner circle with people like Musk and RFK this time.
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It's better for the hostages if we negotiate with the terrorists.
Well yeah, it definitely is -- in this case the hostages are also doing the negotiating, which changes the calculus some.
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Optimizing for defection by caving to the demands of defectors is bad.
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Which major president wouldn’t want to make himself president for life? Surely Obama.
I think at least half wouldn't want to. I don't think Obama would want to. If there were no term limits, I don't think he'd run max 2 or 3 total times, and I definitely don't think he'd try to rewrite the constitution to make it so there are no more elections for so long as he's alive.
At the least, I think Trump likely wants to more than all or almost all of the past ones.
The dude decided to hang out in DC and run a shadow presidency during Biden’s admin. I have zero doubt he’d be interested in the lifetime presidency. I do have doubts whether he’d want to run multiple elections.
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Bush Jr probably wouldn't. I'm not sure if Obama would or wouldn't, but I'm pretty sure Clinton would and Carter wouldn't.
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Washington, notoriously - which is why the US doesn’t have Presidents-for-life.
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Maybe I'm misunderstanding your meaning.
As I read it, your main concern of Trump winning is that if he loses he'll claim he won and Kamala only won via fraud.
My overall concern is that Trump is a threat to democracy. As I stated in my initial post, I think the immediate harmful effects to democracy will be greater if he loses than if he wins, due to his underlying motivations for not caring about democracy (narcissism). It's not "if he wins, he will do this", it's "as a person, he is a force of destruction when it comes to democracy".
As below with "Fascism", can you define what you mean by "democracy" in this context?
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These odds seem really badly calibrated. I'm not even directionally against these but putting a 0.1% chance on something Trump does being unsuspected strikes me as madness and I'm not sure what Musk stands to gain from supporting Trump once he's conclusively lost. I'd put up money on any of these rates if you're interested.
Fair. I really actually meant 99%, not 99.9%. And sure, I'd be happy to bet you, but I don't have a lot of money spare so we could use a Manifold market (or similar) instead of betting real money. If I had money spare I'd bet you a fair bit of real money. Unless you only want to bet $50 or something, but I don't know if that's worth all the setup. But I'm willing to bet $50 if we can find an easy way to make it work.
I'll change my probabilities to 99%, 90%, 75%, and keep the last at 98%. Skin in the game does indeed help with calibration.
I've frequently seen this sentiment from people - that Musk is supporting Trump purely for selfish and opportunistic reasons and will stop being so vocal and annoying once the election's over. I think this is very likely a complete misunderstanding of him. These are his actual beliefs. I think he's ride-or-die for MAGA, and if Trump loses I think he's very likely going to be making tons of tweets per day either casting FUD about the election or explicitly saying there was fraud and that Trump is the true winner. It's not a matter of what he stands to gain, because that's not his mindset.
I'm afraid the payout ratio for any of these would make the stakes pretty onerous on you, at 99% odds you'd be getting $1 out of a $100 staked bet. I'm willing to escrow some cash or crypto on any of these with a third party or just go off honor. I just made a manifold account, don't see anything exactly right but might be looking in the wrong spot. The 75% musk one would be the most exciting probably if not the most favorable EV to me. I'd be willing to stake up to $200 on that line without demanding an escrow.
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This also gives a blank check to any nefarious enemies of democracy who oppose Trump to pull every dirty trick they can. After all, if the media is set up to whitewash any Trumpian accusations of fraud, now’s their last chance to make ballot printers go brrrr.
The other question is, what happens if Trump wins? Will his enemies’ allegations of fraud be treated as beyond the pale as if he’d made them? Or will they be investigated, be brought with standing before a court, go through the discovery phase, and be adjudicated with possible consequences for election, in the ways the 2020 vote never was?
Is this the chutzpah defence? "We made so many demonstrably false accusations of election rigging that we have no credibility left, which means now the other side can do whatever it wants!"
The boy who cried wolf is like, parables 101.
“The boy who cried wolf” was listened to, at first: “The farmers would all come running only to find out that what the boy said was not true. Then one day there really was a wolf but when the boy shouted, they didn't believe him and no one came to his aid.”
By contrast, Trump’s 2020 claims were poo-poohed by the people who said there really is no reason to believe wolves might ever come near, and the boy is a danger for spreading these false reports with no evidence. Then they did a “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”
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I agree with everything that you wrote, but I also think that there's plently of evidence that the left is playing dirty. I give Trump about 30% of winning, because the entire game is rigged against him in a way which I consider fraud. In my view, this fraud is possible in the first place because democracy has been undermined.
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Ok, but can you explain how Trump is more of a furtherance of democratic backsliding than the democrats(who do after all increasingly support things like government censorship, court packing, etc)?
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This puts me in mind of people who complain, year after year and project by project, that Alien is ruined as a franchise. Have they been in a coma since 1992?
Democracy is not this thing that will crumble at the actions of one actor, even if that actor is ostensibly the leader of the free world. When democracy falls, it will fall by its own hands, with thunderous applause. Macau recently held an election for their chief executive. He won with 98.5% of the electoral vote, a percentage that even the most credulous among us are considering "maybe sus". Is this "a threat to democracy"?
Democracy, "rule by demos", is a piece of alien technology that serves to allow people to tolerate each other and rule over each other without coming to open warfare, having to resort to the awful work of actually having to try and convince each other. If democracy fails in America, it will not be because Orange Man Bad, it will be because most of America prefers shooting the other half to trying to convince them of anything at all.
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I think you're right that Trump has a unique effect. He has done on me. I would say in my case he has utterly shattered what used to be an (okay, probably patrician) sense that the average Joe is a basically well intentioned person who is smarter than sometimes estimated and is a canny judge of character. The popularity of Trump has really changed that and made me significantly less confident in the average person's judgement. That so many people can be enchanted by the most naked sociopathy I have possibly ever seen has changed my view of human nature.
If, prior to his first candidacy, you had showed me 100 hours of video of Trump speaking, I would have thought it was some kind of satire.
Politics being a contest of character is a fable. It's good you were disabused of it, Trump or no Trump.
Yes, that's right, people do not give a shit about the decorum of personal virtue of their political leaders. What they care about is if those leaders are their friends, and if they can take from their enemies to give to them. You can be the most distasteful of human beings and that does not matter. What matters is that you're looking out for me and my own.
America is not special. It's not more magical or anointed than other places. Much more ridiculous, venal, megalomaniacal have ruled over men than Donald J. Trump, and much more will still. You should have believed it. It can happen here. You are not immune to politics.
Now that you've left the poetic notions aside and joined us in pragmatic reality, please consider your feeling seriously and listen to Cicero when he says that contracting Tiberius Gracchus derangement syndrome is a bad idea for your Republic. The rift between the plebs and the patricians will not be mended by the death of their Tribune. Figurative or not.
In some ways it feels to me like the previous system was a weird biumvirate between the patricians of the Blue Team, and the patricians of the Red Team. The plebs cheer on their favorite color of chariot racing team, and have their own division, but everyone knows that despite their, well, uncouth plebian political aims (mass deportation, tariffs, reparations, abolishing law enforcement, depending on the tribe) that the patricians, at least, all agree are beyond the pale, but to which they will give lip service to solidify their grasp on their team voters.
To some extent, and without trying to definitively draw out the exact sequence of events, we've found ourselves at a point where Trump represents that the Red Team patricians have completely lost control of the chariot teams, and the patricians generally are realizing that they've lost control of the team. For a bit in 2020, it seemed like this might happen to both teams (maybe aping the other team thinking they had a winning strategy? Maybe just general pleb unrest in all corners?), but the blue patricians are now pretty solidly back in control and want to shout about the dangers of the other team.
From where I stand as a contrarian probably assumed to side with the patricians, I see the point, but I wonder about the entire apparatus that seems, from this angle, purpose built to dangle red meat in front of the masses offering a modicum of control, but, like, not real control. It plays to the sentiments and economic battles of the elites without really much regard for giving the plebs what they're shouting for, and that seems almost exploitive. On the other hand, someone needs to prevent a democratic spiral into voting for exclusively bread and circuses (maybe with AGI).
So I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe there is space for a cooler heads "maybe we should think pragmatically and build a better system that actually cares about the needs of non-elites, rather than paying lip service, while also keeping the budget in check", but that doesn't seem to currently be on offer.
I can't find it again, but I remember reading years ago a short passage from an interview with a never-Trumper Republican campaign strategist, which was being passed around online because he got a little too honest with the interviewer. Specifically, in the passage he said — albeit in less blunt language — that the job of Republican politicians is to, as you put it, convincingly dangle enough red meat in front of stupid flyover plebs to get them to vote for you, despite knowing you're never going to deliver for them, but only for the donor class instead; and that his job as a campaign advisor is to help those politicians lie to those low-class rubes more convincingly.
Multiple people have pointed out that our Republic, like most others, began with a very narrow franchise, the vote limited to a fairly small, elite fraction of the population; and, further, every time there was a (nigh-inevitable) movement to expand that franchise, it was accompanied by a movement to transfer some measure of power out of the hands of elected officials and into unelected ones — whether judges, or (temporary) appointed officials, or eventually permanent technocrat "experts." Further, that while most countries managed to make this transition, and keep real power out of the hands of the plebs, we have a few clear examples of states that failed, and made the mistake of letting the masses elect who they actually wanted to offices with actual power, the most notable — the type specimen, if you will — being Weimar Germany.
The patricians all agree that what the plebs want is beyond the pale, because what the plebs want is fascism. The average MAGA voter wants fascism, and Trump is comparable to Hitler because he's honestly appealing (rather than disingenuously baiting) to the same portion of the population that Hitler did to take power — the sizable fraction of the electorate that will go fascist if given any opportunity. Hence why so many on the left have long warned about the grave and looming threat of fascism in America — because there are millions and millions of would-be fascists in this country, and it was the tacit agreement of elites from both parties to maintain a cordon sanitaire keeping these people disenfranchised and powerless that served as the bulwark holding it back. And it is Trump who — even worse than George W. Bush threatened with his "compassionate conservatism" — breached this essential political barrier, and gave those previously disempowered plebs enough of a taste of what they were denied for so long, that it's going to be an immensely challenging political project to put them back into containment.
I'm curious, what exactly do you think the word "fascism" means in this context. Can you define it?
I've posted on this before here.
Set up a two-axis "political compass." Let the horizontal axis be the social/cultural axis: "socially conservative"/"right wing" vs. "socially liberal"/"left wing." Let the vertical be the economic axis, with upwards being increasing government intervention in the economy, and downwards being towards laissez faire — "fiscally liberal"/"socialist" vs. "fiscally conservative"/"capitalist" (and with the actual space of interest being confined to a much smaller window somewhere in the middle between those far extremes).
In the lower left, we have the Libertarian Quadrant: "fiscally conservative but socially liberal." Low taxes, low redistribution, low regulation, but left-wing social politics. Above that, we have the Progressive Quadrant: high taxes, high redistribution, high regulation of markets, and left-wing social politics. (The trend of the past decade has been for the Democratic party electorate to actually move closer to the Libertarian/Progressive border on economic issues as they move left on social issues.) Over on the bottom right, we have the Conservative Quadrant of the GOP establishment — the people who think the best way to promote traditional values is to lower taxes, reduce regulations, unleash the free market, and "shrink government until you can drown it in the bathtub." (I could go on about this group, and how they respond to tensions between market forces and right-wing social values — but the tl;dr summary is that "low taxes, small government" must always come before "social conservatism" because having it the other way around is fascism.)
Now, what about the fourth quadrant, above the Conservative Quadrant? People who are socially conservative, but also in favor of wealth redistribution and business regulation? Who want to use the government, particularly over the market, as the Progressives, only for right-wing social ends instead of left-wing ones?
Again, I've had people in all four quadrants label that corner the Fascist Quadrant.
To reiterate from that post I linked:
And:
More than once, I've seen Democrat voters argue that a key reason not to elect Republicans is that the GOP is so solidly anti-government, so determined to "shrink it until it can be drowned in the bathtub," that when placed in charge of the government, they're incapable of running it competently. Well, once in my college days, I responded by asking what would happen if the Republican party stopped trying to cut government, and focused instead on how to run it when in charge. Would that, therefore, be less objectionable?
The answer was not just no, but hell no. That would be the worst-case scenario. Because no matter how bad the "cut taxes, cut regulation, kill the government" GOP was, any socially-conservative right wing party that didn't embrace this, which actually wanted to run the government, and use it toward right-wing ends, would be a fascist party.
I don't remember the context, but in an argument at SSC, I remember someone replying to me that Imperial China, across the millennia from Qin to Qing, was "basically fascist," for similar reasons.
There's the GOP establishment, particularly the never-Trumpers. Dedicated first and foremost to cutting taxes, cutting regulations, cutting spending that doesn't go to big politically-connected firms, cutting anything that gets in the way of corporate profits. Whose support of social conservatism is limited to fighting attempts by the left to use the government against it. Who are in favor of Burkean incrementalism, moving things in the same direction as the left, just much more slowly.
Why was the party elite this way? Because it's the only acceptable form the "right wing" can take, particularly in a modern, Western country. Because any socially-conservative right-wing that isn't this way (particularly when its supporters are mostly white and/or Christian) is definitionally fascist.
Again, you can find people both left and right, with a variety of economic views, who agree with this definition. Again, I know people who fall into this quadrant who agree with this definition, and thus accept the "fascist" label.
Using this definition of fascist, I’m forced to ask, what’s so bad about fascism?
This reminds me of Scott’s essay, “Social Justice and Words, Words, Words,” specifically this bit:
And later,
If “fascism” is just a neutral descriptor of one quadrant of the political graph, then supporting fascism should be no more controversial or upsetting than supporting libertarianism or neoliberalism or socialism, and it certainly shouldn’t result in people losing their minds TDS-style. But I think that there’s a bait and switch going on here, that labeling the socially-conservative-yet-fiscally-progressive quadrant “fascism” is a deliberate choice to poison the public discourse by tarring your political opponents as Hitler wannabes.
It’s the same tactic Greatest Generation and Boomer conservatives used when constantly decrying their political opponents as communists for supporting even a modicum of socialism, just in reverse. It seems to me that the tactic wasn’t particularly honest then, and it isn’t particularly honest now.
But again, if I’m wrong, and you’re using “fascism” in a neutral, judgement-free, purely descriptive sense, then what’s the the big deal? Why be so upset about fascism?
There's (in my view, as a progressive anti-authoritarian liberal) a lot of truth to what the parent poster said, but certainly a lot of truth in what you and Scott said. I think the better way of thinking about it is that the "social conservatism, big government" quadrant is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fascism. When taken to its extreme it becomes fascism or akin to it, just as socialism can range from social democrat to libertarian socialist to democratic socialist to authoritarian socialist to Marxist-Leninist to Stalinist to Juchist, but calling all socialists Stalinists/Juchists is silly.
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Nothing… except that our ruling elites will do anything in their power to stamp it out.
I agree that it shouldn't be that way, but it is that way.
Don't ask me; I'm not. After all, I'm a far-right monarchist with friends who are literal neo-Nazis.
The people in that quadrant aren't my political opponents, they're my allies. And it's our ruling elites who are tarring us as "Hitler wannabes."
I'm saying anyone on the right not content with being the "outer party" branch of the uniparty is going to end up so tarred, so we might as well own it. And recognize that the elites doing said tarring, and making with the "Nazi-punching" and "by any means necessary" rhetoric, are our enemies and must be removed. And thanks to their control of the institutions and to our "democracy" being a sham, there's no lawful, non-violent means to do so.
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If your right acts apoplectic towards the idea of right + using power, but tolerates much more the left using power, or it self even engages in using power for left wing or foreign nationalist causes, then they aren't really much of a right wing conservative party and at least in part made by people who are a false opposition and identify more with the other side.
Trying to squeeze all politics outside of that into fascism is trying to fit too diverse a political space into too tiny a box.
However, it is true that this behavior is very widespread and it accurately.
But by these standards a lot of countries majority populations, including in Europe are made of fascists. As was much of history.
This is genuinely the model that much of the uniparty ideologues, supposed intellectuals, mouthpieces etc promote.
It is also true that there are people who identify as fascists because they think that it is the only allowed way to be nationalists for their people, and not to be oikophobic, support their own demise, etc. But in doing so they are to an extend falling into the opposition's trap. Although one falls also into their trap if they are too eager to favor throwing everyone to their right under the bus to save their own skin, while helping the far left in the process. I will still promote a politics that isn't fascism though while also being against antifa ideology, because it is both strategically superior but also the morally and ideologically superior option.
But generally I am more interested into what people are genuinely after than how they label themselves although I care about those too. But more so about how the use of labels affect politics.
Part of the antifa extremists trick is to label anything else.
It is absolutely true that throughout its history the antifa movement was not about opposing things like imperialism, attrocities, but also about hatred of the right, conservatives, insufficiently far leftists, non communists too since some of the more notable antifascist regimes, and nationalism and the collective group rights and interests of Europeans especially although it has also affected some other groups like Japan as seen of recent.
Obviously the antifa ideology is also promoted by foreign groups who are nationalists for their own and undermining the native group.
To have a sane politics and avoid then, we simply must reject the antifa ideology.
We need to seperate things like murderous imperialism at expense of other nations which is objectionable from being proud of your own people, supporting and identifying with your nation and opposing what would lead to your people's destruction and disminishment, which if done recirpocably has been a much better working system both in theory and in practice than the antifa hatred of moderates, right wingers, conservatives, nationalists, and of European peoples and people insuficiently.
It simply is true that much of the hysteria about fascism is not about opposing evil things but about opposing right wingers, hated ethnic outgroup, and not having far left oikophobic politics. In fact it is about opposing things that a reasonable person who is moderate would support, in favor of a hysteric far left paranoid anti-intellectual overreacting fanaticism.
Another important issue is the right using power. Well, moderate nationalists have existed aplenty, but they have been failing because they let people like Satre and the decolonize our society types get away with it and brand everyone opposing this as supremacist, fascist. They have in part accepted too much of the framing of the far left. The right being more willing to use power to keep antifa types down would have been a good thing.
So, I think part of the discourse about fascism is about pressuring people to be passive losers. This isn't to say that using power for the sake of power is good. I do think keeping down people like Satre, the weatherman underground group, which also included the guy who founded BLM and their fellow travelers and organisations like that is a moral obligation.
This idea of "all or nothing" that exists about the discourses on fascism, where you either allow the antifa types to take over and transform your country into the treatment that usually is reserved for hostile foreign occupation, or else you are the mega evil fascist, is just a false dichotomy. There is a wise sweet spot on how a country ought to be ruled, and its norms. That sweet spot doesn't exist in never ending doubling down in any direction but it does lie in a more conservative, right wing and nationalist direction, to fix the failures of the current situation that is too far to the left and fails to even have sustainable birth rates along with a plethora of other enormous problems.
Additionally, when theorizing about the better system internationally, neither fascism is good, nor is the anti european, antifa ideology good. A universal nationalist system which hasn't really been that rare ideology, which necessitates respecting the rights of other nation states and therefore other peoples national sovereignty, self determination, etc and some of such foundations even if ignored have been part of the development, while concurently the antifa type of system has been increasing. Obviously the "European collectivism and Europeans and European nationalists are inherently evil and not indigenous" is not good for Europeans and European nationalism, and therefore because it tries to screw over Europeans so thoroughly, it is against International Justice. You can't have utopia no matter what system, but a system that takes into consideration the collective group interests of Europeans and of non Europeans and doesn't try to destroy the first, and make them second class citizens, while demonizing millions of people who oppose this agenda, is really a non starter.
The hatred of the antifa uniparty types towards people who don't share their ideology is also very notable negative consequence and makes the transformation of society into a totalitarian direction inevitable unless they are stopped. Not to mention the legacy of actual murders commited by antifascist regimes like the Soviet Union. So there is a moral obligation for the right wing to use power to stop that.
You've summed up my view of the GOP, and why they're useless, pretty well.
Which is why elites of the post-Nuremberg regime fear and hate so much of their own subject populations. Why — as well-detailed by Curtis Yarvin — they reduced electoral politics to a sham, use Jacobin arguments to redefine "democracy" as meaning rule by left-wing technocrats, and denounce any actual democracy as "populism," "demagoguery," and, yes, "fascism."
And that hysteria will continue until the elites that promote it are removed. And, no, there's no voting them out. As Brandon Walsh put it on Twitter, "All of our solutions are fedposts."
I'd say less "let people like…" as were "forced to by people like…" But yes, we need to ditch the framing of the far left… particularly the "fascism bad" framing.
Anyone on the right who isn't a useless GOP establishment-style "conservative," who doesn't actually conserve anything, is eventually going to get tarred with the "fascist" brush; so you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
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Setting aside that that's a whacky-ass definition of facism, would you really describe Trump as 'socially conservative, but also in favor of wealth redistribution and business regulation'? AFAICT he's diametrically opposed on all of those things.
He doesn't really fit the actual definition of fascism per Mussolini/Hitler/Franco either, so when the left says that I assume they just mean "popular person that we don't like".
Trump is a social conservative in wanting to protect socially conservative groups to allow them to grow, which is the true long-term threat to social progressivism.
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I've had in my personal backlog to look into the etymology there: Fascism pretty clearly draws on fasces, the bundle of wooden rods (sometimes with an axe) used to symbolize the power of the law to punish in ancient Rome. This didn't have the negative associations before the 20th century, and early American leaders were huge Rome stans, so it's amusingly depicted behind the podium in the House of Representatives and on the seal of the Senate. Loosely, people throw around the term "fascism" seemingly to describe any government action to punish (implied: something the speaker thinks shouldn't be punished).
But I've wondered specifically how this relates to another similarly-derived English word for a bundle of sticks that is generally taken as a slur. The evolution of language over time is so weird to me.
Reddit etymologists explain why a fascist is a faggot with an axe: https://old.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/9wt6w2/fascistfaggot_a_common_root/
Interestingly, a “faggot” is also the name for a meat dumpling made of various meats, possibly cognate to the fajita dish: “bundle”.
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I'm hopeful this would be the eventual outcome after all the patricians are dead.
I agree it doesn't seem to be on offer, currently.
It wouldn't. Hierarchy is a constant, and if you destroy it, it will be re-established, probably sooner than later. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
The plebs can't rule, that's a given. But the patricians can, if they're virtuous men, run the system in the interest of everyone.
Competent government isn't fiction, it's possible, I have seen it. We just can't do it right now.
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Funny that you mention that. I too have had my confidence in the average person shattered; but what did it for me was the way everyone bent over for masks and vaccines during covid. We went through a similar process of disillusion, but for very different reasons.
If you were to ask me how I evaluate people, "being a canny judge of character" is a criteria that would probably not even come to mind. The experience of the last decade has made me irreparably anxious around such phrases. "Judge of character" immediately conjures to mind images of schoolmarm HR types who are quite eager to enforce a set of values that I want nothing to do with.
Much more important is a criteria like "is not an NPC". And too many people have failed the test.
Undoubtedly this distinction in fundamental moral outlook is one of the contributing factors to our "political polarization" today.
Not even a big deal compared to lockdowns.
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The fact that you are lumping together masks (a reasonable public health intervention that had, in fact, worked against OG SARS but which authorities had continued insisting on long after it was clear that they did not work against COVID-19) and vaccines (a personal health intervention which dramatically reduced your chance of death or serious illness if exposed to the virus, which authorities made a misguided attempt to mandate based on secondary public health benefits) says more about you than mask compliance says about the masses.
Blue tribers with room-temperature-and-above IQs did not “bend over” for the vaccine like NPCs - they agentically sought out vaccines for their own selfish benefit (and were right to do so, as shown by the differential mortality and morbidity in red and blue states which only shows up after the vaccines are available). See this accout of highly agentic behaviour, both by the VaccinateCA volunteers and the people using the site to chase vaccines as an example.
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To be honest my mind would have been broken even if I agreed with you that he is just a bumbling fool and not in fact a cruel and mendacious one. The fact that so many people think a bumbling fool is some kind of brilliant saviour would already (then) have been shocking enough to me to break my charity towards them.
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