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Notes -
Scott Alexander endorses basically anyone but Trump
The main points:
I went back and read Scott's 2016 anyone but Trump election endorsement.
The main points:
I would maybe suggest in the future that these posts are counter-productive. The most recent one moved my needle more in favor of Trump. I can't believe I'm considering voting for a major party candidate (I've voted libertarian the few times I've bothered to actually show up). Going back and reading the old anti-endorsement was even worse. With hindsight answering the criticisms:
I really feel like there is some gell-mann amnesia going on with Scott. He reads these horrid stories about Trump. With the details sensationalized in the worst possible way. And he accepts them as fact. Meanwhile the New York Times threatens to dox him so they can run a hit piece article on him that they sourced from a weirdo on wikipedia with a knack for rules-lawyering.
He talks about how Trumps norms violations are loud and unsubtle. While the democrats only subtly and slowly violate norms. But this is a framing that has been shoved down our throats by the media. Every minor violation of Trump's is blown out of proportion, and every major violation of the democrats is minimized and not talked about. How is it not a massive norms violation to spend 3 years investigating and accusing a sitting president of Treason based on a campaign dosier that was almost entirely made up by his opposition? And the people doing this knew it all along. I don't think democrats or liberal leaning people seem to realize how much the Russia Hoax thing has utterly fucked their credibility on everything. Especially after the Hunter Biden laptop story came out, and it turned out that the intelligence agencies helped them cover up exactly what they had been accusing Trump of doing.
This is supposed to be a government system where one side wins, implements their things, becomes a little too unpopular for going too far, and then the other side wins and get to do their thing for a little while. They switch back and forth. We all learned in 2016 that no, this is not actually how it operates. There is actually a hidden veto by the bureaucracy and the deep state. If they don't like the president they can decide not to let him do his thing. People are righteously pissed off about that, and many of them would happily see that bureaucracy and deep state dismantled if it meant they never get to use their veto again. And one way to test if they still have the veto power, and one way to give someone an incentive to fix it, is to keep electing presidents that we know they will "veto".
Trump is a vote for restoring norms. For restoring the ability of democracy and the vote to actually pick a direction for the country, rather than have that direction dictated by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. I dislike Trump on most of his policies, but it wouldn't be a vote for his policies. Its a vote for voting on policies.
Scott being against Trump is one thing. Scott willing to support Harris is another. Scott was canceled by the establishment she is the titular head of. He is a traitor to himself, in the sense of adhering to his own enemies and giving them aid and comfort. That's a horrible thing, and the next time he gets canceled, I will not be in the least bit upset.
There are many valid criticisms of Harris, but if you dislike Trump more than Harris you must support Harris and vice versa. To act otherwise in the US electoral system is to act irrationally.
But, anyway, all these comments trying to relate this to his cancellation are truly baffling to me. How can you all be so tribe-brained? The NYT and some weird anti-rats with vendettas trying to cancel him is completely orthogonal to Trump being a horrible person, a horrible leader, and an initiator of democratic backsliding in the US (with a possibility he will become even more of one, whether he wins or loses). Harris and the DNC did not pen articles about Scott being problematic, and even if they did I suspect he would still (rightly) support Harris and the Democrats in the 2024 election, because their opponent is Trump.
No, this attitude is 100% Molochian. The odds of your one vote altering the outcome of the election are infinitesimal. Treating your vote as a strategic move in a game assumes a completely unrealistic degree of personal agency and impact. The psychological impact that voting (or not voting!) has on you is almost certainly (>99%) the only impact your vote will have on anyone, anywhere. In distant second place, your protest vote for a third party might contribute to making an impression on someone in power, such that they shift their policy priorities slightly toward your expressed preferences.
Of course, from the perspective of an American political party the most important voters to persuade are precisely those voters who are least likely to cast a vote for either major party candidate: the ones not already ideologically captured by either party. Consequently it is in both the Democrat and Republican parties' best interests to perpetuate the idea that because third party candidates are not "viable," it is a waste to vote for the candidate you prefer; you must vote only for the major party candidate you hate least!
Everyone should vote (or not vote!) as seems best to them, without regard for "picking a winner." To behave in any other way is to make of oneself another simple tool of party political machines.
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