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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.
Because we weren't born yesterday. The NYT is not some fringe; they're a major institution in the progressive machine that Kamala is a part of. And they are notorious for message discipline. If the NYT takes a shot at you, it's that machine taking a shot at you.
As for Trump's "democratic backsliding", I will note there is one party which attempted to remove their major opponent from the ballot in several states, had said opponent criminally convicted with the assistance of people from the Justice Department, and continues to make a mockery of the law by prosecuting him with an unauthorized prosecutor on the Federal level, and it's not the Republicans.
Members and allies of said party also attempted to violently disrupt the 2017 inauguration and physically interfered with the confirmation hearings on at least one of his appointed Supreme Court justices. Further, Democratic-allied members of the government bureaucracy both supported false information (e.g. the Steele dossier) and falsely denigrated true information (the Hunter Biden laptop) under the color of their authority. They also "partnered" with social media to suppress the Biden laptop story among others. The party which presents the by far the greatest threat to democracy is the Democrats.
There is simply no comparison here. Here is what Hillary said on it becoming clear she would lose;
There is nothing Trump ever said with one hundredth the degree of grace and humility in her concession, and it wasn't even a particularly exceptional concession speech.
Again none of this is on the scale of Trump's contempt for the democratic process. This is not really much different from the general rough and tumble of political life - the Republicans had been dishing out similar nonsense for years. Members of Congress openly indulged birtherism! While I would no doubt question your interpretation of the Trump/Russia or laptop episodes, even if I accept Democrats were knowingly lying, politicians lying is not something new. Major politicians refusing to concede elections is.
When a Democrat says 'I just want to find [the number of votes it would take to change the outcome]', then I'll worry about them as much as Trump.
It's not the politicians lying that was the problem. It was the intelligence agencies covering for them and joining in on the lies. As well as other parts of the machinery of government that we expect to be non-partisan and stay out of elections.
It goes both ways. Comey re-opening the emails investigation could well have cost Hillary given the slim margins involved.
To your understanding, how did the emails investigation get closed, and why did he have to re-open it?
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