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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   38091 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Trump renaming stuff is good, actually.

My initial reaction to Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and reverting Denali to Mount McKinley was "this is dumb and childish".

I've changed my mind.

If you're a white man under 50, then you've experienced things being renamed as something that is done to your people, for the benefit of others.

Statues of Jefferson and Washington are taken down and statues of civil rights leaders go up. Columbus Day is referred to as "Indigenous People's Day". Robert E. Lee, once the namesake of so many things, is gradually being erased from the map. Since the 1960's, nearly every sizeable town has acquired an MLK Boulevard (usually ridden with crime). And King County, Washington recently did a "name change" in which it discarded its former namesake, former Vice President William R. King, to honor (who else) Martin Luther King.

Countries in the third world have employed this power play as well. Bombay becomes Mumbai, Madras becomes Chennai. Cape Verde becomes Cabo Verde, the Ivory Coast becomes Cote d'Ivoire, and Turkey becomes Türkiye. How long until China insists that foreigners uses its rightful name: 中国.

The indigenous names are worse. Barrow, Alaska is now Utqiagvik. Port Elizabeth, South Africa, has become Gqeberha. Apparently, the citizens of these places don't even use the new and unpronouncable names – which seem to exist only as a way to flex on white people.

Since the 1960s, name changes are one of those things that the left just took complete control over while no one was paying attention. But why should should the left get the exclusive right to rename things?

Trump is now upsetting this forgone conclusion. You rename stuff, we'll rename stuff too. And if you want control over names, you're going to have to give up something else in return. I think it's a good move.

Watching wikipedia editors hem and haw in the talk page of Mount McKinley (currently still Denali... for now) about why, exactly, it was good and correct when they immediately changed the page name when Barack Obama did the name change but now that Trump is naming it back it should stay Denali has led me to the same conclusion.

Changing names of stuff is still silly, but as with all things turnabout is fair play.

Wikipedia delenda est.

Okay, maybe not destroyed, but something needs to change. It's getting ridiculous.

Wikipedia's a weird case because as a non-profit you can't just buy it out or give government orders, blocking top-down, and it's quite willing to actively purge rightists attempting to infiltrate so bottom-up seems really hard.

The main vulnerability I can see is that because it's CC-BY-SA, Wikipedia mirrors exist and with (extreme) effort it might be possible for one of them to eclipse the original, rendering the entire bureaucracy toothless.

Yeah, I think you're right. But I don't think a fork would work either. They never do. You'd just get 1,000 witches as editors and the project would turn into Conservapedia. Network effects are powerful.

That's what made the Elon coup on Twitter so great. He flipped the polarity of Twitter, and his enemies clapped and celebrated because they thought they made him do it.

But I don't think a fork would work either. They never do. You'd just get 1,000 witches as editors and the project would turn into Conservapedia. Network effects are powerful.

I did say "extreme" effort. The cases I was thinking of were "USG or something of similar scale funds a mirror" or "WMF taken off the board or crippled".

The left-wing bias in Wikipedia content comes from the community, not the WMF. And it doesn't need a conspiracy - Wikipedia is leftish because most of the people with the time and inclination to edit a free online encyclopedia are leftish. To make a right-wing Wikipedia, you need a community of conservatives willing to make sure that they have high quality articles on things like History of Tamil Nadu and Runge-Kutta methods for solving differential equations.

Conservapedia was not an attempt to do this - it was basically a collaborative homework project for conservative homeschoolers. Vox Day's Infogalactic failed because he couldn't find right-wing editors willing to edit anything except a few pages on high-profile political topics.

The rows between the community and the WMF have been intra-left factional battles which the WMF successfully spun as them being even more SJW than the community. But they aren't - they're just more cynical about using bad-faith social justice messaging as a tool of power.

The left-wing bias in Wikipedia content comes from the community, not the WMF.

I think you may have misunderstood. If WMF dies, then the main ENWP site goes down and stays down. At that point, the policies and bureaucracy of current ENWP are meaningless; someone will build a successor, probably based on one of the mirrors, but they don't need to import those policies and that bureaucracy. This is how to beat network effects if you can't just straight-up steal the network (or brute-force through it); you destroy the functionality of the existing network so that people are available for a replacement.

And it doesn't need a conspiracy - Wikipedia is leftish because most of the people with the time and inclination to edit a free online encyclopedia are leftish.

It already leaned that way, but it got a lot worse during the first Trump Presidency and especially in 2020, as critical mass and enough (perceived) urgency was achieved to do an actual purge. This went up in 2018, and it's treated as policy despite officially not being so (IIRC I've seen it cited in a ban comment). The "lab-leak is misinformation" line from 2020, in particular, saw mass bannings of those who objected, which split mostly across tribal lines. "The rebels rightists have been routed; they're fleeing into the woods."

Until that purge, it was organically fixable if one could recruit enough non-SJWs to the cause. Now, it's not, because the admins would just ban them all once it became obvious that they were such. The bureaucracy implementing the ongoing purge has to be removed or supplanted first.

I used to actually edit Wikipedia on a semi-regular basis; this is what I noticed while there (and why I left).

I think you may have misunderstood. If WMF dies, then the main ENWP site goes down and stays down.

And Jimbo puts it back up again under a new domain name, and both the editor community and (more slowly, unless Google intervenes) the readers (and SME editors, who are mostly ascended readers) find it there. The content of the existing encyclopedia, and the MediaWiki software are open-source and widely mirrored.

At that point, the policies and bureaucracy of current ENWP are meaningless;

The policies and bureaucracy of ENWP are meaningful to the extend that they reflect the shared values of the editor community. IAR is an explicit commitment that the shared values of the community will trump the policies and bureaucracy. The shared values of the community survive a migration to a different domain.

someone will build a successor, probably based on one of the mirrors, but they don't need to import those policies and that bureaucracy.

People have done. The one I am most familiar with is Vox Day's InfoGalactic. It failed. You either need to import the existing editor community (which gets you the shared values that guarantee that return of the policies and bureaucracy) or build a new editor community.

This is how to beat network effects if you can't just straight-up steal the network; you destroy the functionality of the existing network so that people are available for a replacement.

It's the people who made Wikipedia leftish. That particular group of people are not available to a conservative Wikipedia-replacement.

The normal way you beat a network effect is by providing an alternative that is sufficiently compelling to a subset of high-value users that they jump first and bring the rest of the network with them later. Facebook beat Myspace by offering a much better product to students and recent graduates of prestigious universities first, and then attracting people who wanted to be friends with elite graduates. Twitter took a bunch of mindshare off Facebook by offering a much better product to the bluecheck class, and then attracting people who wanted to follow them and reply to them. Apple held the line against Microsoft by offering a much better product to creative professionals and the developers who develop software for them (mostly Adobe). If Bitcoin defeats Swift as a payments network, it will do it by offering a much better product to criminals like Ross Ulbricht and his customers, and then over time attracting people who want to trade with criminals.

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with (extreme) effort

I think one of the harder parts would be getting the search engines to buy in to making some other site the default. That would be a lot of the battle—if google switches, people are definitely going to start editing the new one.

(currently still Denali... for now)

They seem to have a rather amazing capacity for Denali...

I understand the sentiment, and I even sympathize with it, but I feel the need to take the opposite position.

People renaming stuff for ideological reasons is bad actually.

First, it's confusing and a waste of time, since everyone has to contextualize and relearn common concepts that did not meaningfully change, update maps, and generally give thought to something that wasn't an issue before. It's a problem that arises out of nothing.

Second, it doesn't convey any new information other than who is in charge, so it's a waste of time when that can be demonstrated through other means. Worse, like all symbolic wins it actually is a disincentive to doing practical good. All the ressources spent on words are ressources not spent on making whatever you care about great again. If the vanities of language are what you care about, fine and dandy, but that's unlikely to top the list.

Third, it erases our tether to the past, the names of things can often come from ancient sources that remind us of useful and interesting history, the more ancient the name, the more culture one is vandalizing by venerating their new gods.

Fourth, it's ultimately futile and amounts to suggestion, as do all attempts at linguistic prescriptivism. The ultimate judges of the quality of a new rule are the speakers, and they organically decide to adopt it. Changes imposed by fiat can sometimes be adopted, but all the rejected ones only end up as political shibboleth. Unless there is a groundswell of support to rename the Gulf, it'll end up as yet another tell like "inclusive" terminology and "democrat" vs "democratic" as relating to the party. A further marker of division instead of unity.

So ultimately, I don't even think it's a bad kind of suggestion, but it doesn't belong in policy, and the power to name things rests either in creators, discoverers, achievers, or coiners of beautiful language.

As much as I think of Trump's linguistic acumen, the man did change American English with his speech in a way people don't always realize, I don't see this particular attempt at gaudy jingoism as anything more than that. He's free to make me wrong by being so successful people call it as he wishes in his honor.

Instead of pointing at landmarks, why not create all those new cities he talked about, those would be worthy of the honor.

People renaming stuff for ideological reasons is bad actually.

Right. This community knows this progression. neutral rules are best, but once someone defects then trying to uphold the neutral rule is basically the same thing as unilateral disarmament.

To echo the discussion on the pardons below..

If we want less stuff getting renamed for political reasons, armed neutrality is our best bet. To reduce defection, tit for tat works better than unilateral surrender.

If you just give the other side the W, they have no incentive to stop. There's a reason that the left LOVES to name/rename stuff. It glories their ideology and pisses on the heroes of their enemy. And until now there was little pushback. In fact, most of the worst woke excesses happened when there was essentially no organized opposition.

That said, renaming things is highly correlated with tyranny. During the French revolution, the revolutionaries renamed all the months of the year. Commodus (of Gladiator fame) renamed the city of Rome to Colonia Commodiana in his own honor. Then he renamed all the months of the year in his own honor for good measure.

So if Trump starts talking about renaming Washington DC to Trumptown, I'm officially out.

These all seem like good reasons to restore McKinley.

You are correct about the first three, and wrong about the fourth (renaming obviously works, failed attempts are exceptions, not the rule). But so what? My enemies keep doing it. How do you propose to get them to stop it? Tit for tat is the only strategy I can think of that has any chance of success. Got any better ideas? Unless you do, I support renaming, and I think Trump should keep doing it.

Not only should he keep doing it, he should start dismantling their stupid monuments like that giant floating turd.

Rename Martin Luther King Boulevard to Martin Luther Boulevard :-)

Martin Luther (1483 - 1546)

How does Trump renaming things disincentivize your enemies from doing so when they get power? I don't see it. If anything, you're making the job (of plundering the budget) easier for them as now there are more things to rename back.

For a person who values the status quo historical names, political renaming looks like the two sides pulling things into the orthogonal directions, not opposite ones. Just because I wouldn't want Putin renaming Moscow to Vladgrad doesn't mean I should accept "New Kyiv" instead (or vice versa).

A better move would be to find something they care about that hasn't been renamed recently, and rename that. That's more tit for tat than reversal is, but requires that they actually care about something.

Though imagining a sign splitting the difference by saying "Denali (D)/McKinley (R) National Park" is a bit funny.

As always Northern Ireland has beaten you to the culture war punch. It's Londonderry if you are Protestant/Unionist and Derry if you are Catholic/Nationalist so the both sides version is Derry/Londonderry (read "Derry stroke Londonderry") or Stroke City to make fun of the issue.

"A visible sign of the dispute to the visitor is in the road signs;[108] those pointing to the city from the Republic refer to it as Derry (and in Irish, Doire), whilst signs in Northern Ireland use Londonderry. It is not uncommon to see vandalised road signs—the "London" part of the name spray painted over on "Londonderry" road signs by nationalists,[108] or occasionally "London" added to "Derry" signs by unionists.[108]"

Fifth (or kind of, since it's related to both 2 and 4), this is going to really rile up the other side, and for nothing. This will convince everyone that Trump's next step is to do <insert batshit thing people somehow think Trump will do> and that this is the chance he's been waiting for to tear down the world and rebuild it in his own image. I think I'm never gonna hear the end of this one from the people I know.

I think I'm never gonna hear the end of this one from the people I know.

Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?

That's the downside of polarization. There's no benefit to reaching across the aisle. Trump can't be shamed by these people because they will hate him no matter what he does. He could be the second coming of FDR and they would still reflexively hate him. They compared him to Hitler.

That's why riling them up about "Gulf of America" is smart politics. It makes his critics look a little crazy and it distracts them from things that matter.

You can't appease people who can't be appeased, but you can troll them.

The weird thing is Trump actually is pretty nice to people once they show a little niceness to him in kind.

Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?

Yeah, that's been my issue in this conversation. As far as I can tell, the loudest voices against the pardons wouldn't be caught dead voting for Trump.

EDIT: Oops - I'm in the wrong thread, but the point stands.

Are these people potential Trump voters? Will they ever be allies? If not, then who cares?

Well, I mean I'm sure you and I have different values and end goals. Suffice it to say, whether someone is a Trump supporter is not what I care about in my life. I'd say that even filtering people on that isn't even an option for me. If I did try to break ties with every person I know who is a TDS leftist... I'm pretty sure I'd have almost no one left in my life.

I've made the friends I've made and have the family I was born with and for whatever reason, they almost universally think differently from me regarding politics. I've tried, but failed to make new friends. I've found that when I try to specifically find local people who are anti leftist like me, they end up going too far in the other direction, and get annoyingly complainy with lack of adherence to truth, nuance, and values I like (e.g. they've often been strong followers of Ben Shapiro and others I deem to be grifting pundits).

At some point, I've had to make peace with this to avoid driving myself crazy, and just move on with my life, with the people I organically have found to be my community, while just praying people don't talk about politics too much. So the stuff I hate the most, from either side, is the stuff that will cause people to start interjecting their political opinions into my everyday life.

I have TDS friends too, I don’t think anyone is saying you should drop them. But failing to capitalise on victory so that your friends don’t get mad at you is tactically foolish and IMO sends your friends and mine entirely the wrong message: that the louder they get, the more everyone will acquiesce.

If they were potential political allies it might be different. But right now they lost and that means it’s their turn to learn some humility. We can still be friends but their TDS is their problem not mine, and it’s time for them to learn to reign themselves in the way I did.

You'd know who'd be a good friend for you better than I would, and no one's entitled to your friendship; your friendships, your choice.

However, if scaled up this bodes poorly for the anti-leftist side, if anti-leftists are more willing to police and cutoff other anti-leftists for "going too far" or following the wrong kinds of people, whereas leftists are more willing to take a "no enemies to the left" approach. That means anti-leftists will be more fractured, with fewer allies and support networks, with a more constrained Overton window than leftists. Who knows, maybe you've unwittingly encountered potential anti-leftist friends, but they kept you at arms length and eventually quietly quit you because they found you went too far and followed the wrong people (like known scientific racist Scott Alexander).

That's fair. But I don't personally think that's the case. Most anti-leftists I have known have no scruples or even much higher level thought other than an extreme hatred of the left, and an arguments-as-soldiers kind of approach. For whenever reason, I've become different from that over time (and I believe many people in the motte, and anti-leftists in the rationalist community as well are more like me than other anti-leftists). I am anti leftist because I care about the truth, not in spite of the truth. It's just hard to meet other anti-leftists like that. Rationalists are rare to meet (where I am), anti-leftists are rare to meet, anti-leftist rationalists are really rare to meet.

I am anti leftist because I care about the truth, not in spite of the truth.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to train myself to give zero consideration for the truth for years, and haven't achieved any success. Any pointers from anybody?

I'm guessing you're being sarcastic, but truly, I have had so many experiences where I go to meet people on some conservative or libertarian meetup, and I'm excited to meet them, but then I find they're just extremely confrontational mindless drones who will jump on board any conspiracy theory, parrot anything they heard no matter how little sense it makes or how likely it is, or champion anyone who likewise wants to own the libs. Whatever it takes to convince themselves just a little more that leftists totally suck. That's not the sort of person I want to be or care to be around anymore.

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Oh sure dude, just write things. Write whatever. I didn't think about what was true for even a second before I started writing this post, I have no idea if it will work or not, but I guarantee it's what you need to do.

If I did try to break ties with every person I know who is a TDS leftist... I'm pretty sure I'd have almost no one left in my life.

Are these people aware that you're right-adjacent?

Some of them. Some of them I haven't told, some may have forgotten, some may have assumed that I've moved back (and I have moved back to some degree, but probably not as much as they think), one accepts and understands our differences, and some maybe just don't care to bring it up with me.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I do have a set of friends with MDS (though I have some other friends who are from somewhat to far to the right of me, to balance), and as long as you don't have to constantly hide who you are around them, it's fine to just let them complain for a while. Best of luck in these four years (maybe more?)!

Thanks, you too.

It took me a few minutes to put together "MDS". It is another insidious and rapidly growing variant that may overtake and outlive the initial TDS strain.

This is exactly the reason Elon did the nazi salute, and I'm amazed no one else is picking up on that.

Putting on the 4D-chess-tinfoil-hat, riling up the other side over nonsense, being loudly foolish if we want to put it that way, can be an effective distraction. Waste enough of their energy on getting outraged about renaming things, and there's less energy for opposing things you care about. Of course, there's always the risk of wasting your own energy on it too and you don't get around to the things that matter, either.

I'm on board with returning to Mount McKinley - big fan of mountains having Mount in their name in the first place, Denali could be anything (as someone else said, it sounds more like a festival than it does a mountain). I'd be okay with Mount Denali but there was no good reason to rename it to just Denali imo.

Gulf of America is dumb. It's not returning to the previous name, like Mount McKinley - it's been the Gulf of Mexico since the birth of the nation. And more importantly, it doesn't flow as well imo. The Gulf of Mexico even describes it much better, seeing as it encompasses so much of the Mexican coastline compared to American. Seems like an unnecessary and counterintuitive change.

I agree with you, McKinley rename good, “Gulf of America” dumb, freedom fries, etc.

I'd be okay with Mount Denali but there was no good reason to rename it to just Denali imo.

Wait, I always thought that it was changed to Mt. Denali, or Denali Mountain, or something.

Nope, they went to just Denali. Which doesn't give much insight into what Denali is, considering I'd put conversational knowledge of the particular Inuit language it's called that in at... what, .001% of Americans?

the particular Inuit language it's called that in

Koyukon Athabaskan, not Inuit. It's related to Navajo.

"Gulf of America" is kind of silly, though. The US borders many bodies of water. The Gulf of Mexico is the one that has Mexico on the other side.

So, actually, Gulf of America is the less chauvenistic and more Latinx-perspective-friendly name?

Got to find a left-winger and try that one out.

What?

Gulf of Mexico is named from the implicit perspective of America. Gulf of America would be named from the implicit perspective of Mexico. Therefore, "Gulf of America" is actually highlighting a non-Amero-centric viewpoint.

Gulf of Mexico is named from the implicit perspective of America.

French Jesuits called the gulf the Gulf of Mexico (Golphe du Mexique) as early as 1672.

There you go, ruining a perfectly good theoretical construct with your vulgar facts.

Another example of a similar phenomenon:

In Vietnam, the Vietnam War is known as the American War.

It's the gulf of America the continent.

The Gulf of California doesn't border (non-Baja) California.

*Sea of Cortez

Might be silly if we trued to rename an ocean to the American Ocean. But as of now we only have one big gulf

It'd be silly to rename one ocean as the American ocean. But two? Now we're getting interesting. But we'd have to decide which is the East American Ocean and which is the West. Not for sensitivity reasons really, it'd be goofy to have the easternmost places on earth in the West American ocean.

Three, the Arctic ocean is clearly American as well.

Not for sensitivity reasons really, it'd be goofy to have the easternmost places on earth in the West American ocean.

Just change the name and location of the Prime Meridian to the American Meridian, problem solved

No need to change the location once Airstrip One becomes a minor outlying possesion.

Denali is a pretty good name. Right number of syllables, pronounceable, memorable, and been around long enough now that it's stuck. Mount McKinley is fine and all, but there are already so many mountains named after people with European last names due to.. well, history. There's nothing wrong with that, but if we've managed to have a few that are more unique, I'd rather they remain.

Fort Bragg -> Fort Liberty -> Fort Bragg : Approve. Fort Liberty sounds like a dumb action movie screenwriter's half-assed working title for their generic military base. Bragg is better, and it hasn't been Liberty long enough to warrant keeping that.

Gulf of America: Oppose because it's new, but I will grudgingly accept that it is a large enough geographic feature to deserve it. Gulf of North America, maybe? Also pretty generic.

It looks like very soon Denali will go back to just being a river in Africa...

Confederate heroes day has been a thing for a while. It has meant nothing. I think renaming Denali is more of the same.

I'm very much not "woke", but I disagree with you on a couple of points. First, in my opinion "Denali" sounds much more awesome than "Mount McKinley". "Denali" sounds imposing, almost Himalayan. And "Utqiagvik", although I don't know how to pronounce it, at least looks better on the page than "Barrow". I don't see the benefit of replacing cool, exotic-looking foreign names for such places with Anglo names.

Also, I don't really mind getting rid of using Robert E. Lee's name on anything that is run by the government. I would be annoyed if the government was naming things after a man who fought to keep my ancestors literally enslaved just 160 years ago. Of course there's a slippery slope, because then one can argue we should also stop naming things after Washington and so on... but in any case, I don't think that it's unreasonable for blacks to ask that we stop naming public things after literally Bobby Lee, the top general in the Confederacy, just like it was not unreasonable for Latvians to want to get rid of Lenin statues after the USSR fell apart.

"Denali" sounds much more awesome than "Mount McKinley".

Denali sounds like an Indian festival.

Denali sounds like an Indian festival.

You're thinking of Diwali. Denali are a kind of Roman coin.

No, you're thinking of Denarii. Denali were an ancient Irish dynasty.

I can't tell which one you're talking about, but Denali is a kind of anti-cheat software.

No, that's Denuvo, Denali were actually an early modern Afghan Empire.

"Gulf of America" is some freedom fries-tier petulant nationalism and everyone who supports it deserves to be mocked relentlessly for their lack of dignity.

If you're a white man under 50, then you've experienced things being renamed as something that is done to your people

Speak for yourself.

Renaming thing can be good or it can be bad, because who and what we choose to honor says something about ourselves. Nor are we bound for eternity by the preferences of those who came before us. We don't expect Latvians to keep up Soviet monuments or Germans to preserve the aesthetic decisions of the Third Reich.

Renaming things that bear the names of Confederates is good, because it is a repudiation of tyranny and white supremacy. The best you can say about these men were that they were good generals (usually not even that), and we're not lacking for pillars of martial excellence that weren't traitors. Renaming things named after, say, Jefferson is bad, because while Jefferson had many less-than-admirable qualities, they're not why we honor him. I'm pretty mixed on Columbus Day, because while Columbus was pretty terrible even by the standards of the time, it's meant to be a celebration of Italian American heritage, not exploitation and genocide (though, as above, I think we could probably dredge up a less notorious alternative who was also actually American).

The Right is, of course, free to rename things, but of late the people and things they seem to want to honor have a tendency to vindicate their critics.

Also, Denali is a vastly superior name name to Mt. McKinley.

I think it's a good move

Has Trump ever done anything you didn't consider a good move?

Stonewall Jackson was a good man. Robert E Lee was a conflicted man — he wouldn’t have seen himself as a traitor but as a localist. And he conducted himself exemplary post bellum.

That doesn’t mean the CSA was good.

Columbus was an exaggerated evil. Most of what went badly happened under other men’s watch. He certainly is not guilty of genocide. This sort of blood libel from the left is why Trump won (again)

Re: confederate generals - I could very well say the same thing about the Indian leaders that are today honoured. Why should we? They were bloodlustful savages that tortured children and POWs, and engaged in actual genocide against each other constantly …. And were our enemies! But leftists can’t seem to see why that should stop them from venerating them. Curious indeed

Columbus was an exaggerated evil

I don't know what you mean by 'exaggerated'. He's not personally responsible for every atrocity committed in the name of the Spanish Empire, but he dealt brutally with both his subordinates and the indigenous people under his authority to a degree that was notorious during his life. He also bears at least partial responsibility for the violent and deliberate destruction of several Caribbean indigenous cultures (i.e. genocide).

This sort of blood libel from the left is why Trump won

a) that's not what blood libel means b) insofar as puncturing myths of a romanticized past is a reason Trump won, it mostly speaks poorly of his supporters.

I could very well say the same thing about the Indian leaders that are today honoured

You certainly could. Depending on who you're talking about, I might even agree, though the whataboutism misses the point. Nobody is building statues of Native American leaders as a celebration of scalping anymore than people are building statues of George Washington as a celebration of slavery. (And if they are, they shouldn't). Native American war leaders are honored as icons of resistance against wars of conquest. The veneration of Confederate generals is at best a veneration of an ultra-sanitized version of the Confederate cause.

President Biden has "pre-emptively" pardoned

General Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Members of Congress and staff who served on the Select Committee, and the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee

Or at least, he has made a statement to that effect; compare the Hunter pardon, which was fairly detailed, complete with dates. The "pre-emptive" pardon announcement has no details. What are they pardoned for? During what time periods? This appears to be a blanket memo to the future: "these people are immune from prosecution, for whatever, because fuck you that's why." It's not quite at the gobsmackingly presumptuous level of inventing fake Constitutional Amendments, but it seems like yet another example of the Biden administration (and its propaganda arm, the mainstream press) being everything it ever accused Trump of potentially being someday.

I admit: I do not have high hopes for the Trump administration. Mostly I'm hoping that Justices Alito and Thomas have the good sense to step down from SCOTUS before the Democrats are able to take back the Senate. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised? But the outgoing administration is acting like it has been dipping into the till and never expected it might actually be held accountable for that. In particular, the possibility that the January 6th riots were fomented by justice department lackeys, whether as a conspiracy or a prospiracy, is something the Biden administration absolutely does not want anyone looking into.

Biden insists:

The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.

Historically unprecedented, although the Hunter Biden pardon definitely moved things in this direction. Malicious prosecution of political enemies has long been a standard play for Democratic politicians and bureaucrats--the failed prosecution of Trump himself, of course, but also the well known IRS prosecution of conservatives, throwing the book at local conservative officials who defy federal law while winking at local progressive officials who defy federal law, et cetera.

Of course, the famous MAGA "lock her up" chant should not be forgotten, and Trump has indeed suggested on many occasions that certain people should probably be investigated for wrongdoing. But the presumptions on display--"Trump (who has never actually carried through on these threats) is just doing this illegitimately for political gain, but Democrats doing the same thing (and actually doing it) to their political enemies are just rooting out corruption, which is totally legitimate"--seem clear. I don't doubt that corruption is fairly rampant in DC, on both sides of the aisle. Politicians in general make my skin crawl. But I feel like the Democratic Party's catchphrase has very thoroughly become: "It's Different When We Do It."

If Trump doesn't blanket pardon everyone convicted of an offense on January 6, 2021, I will be disappointed in him. And if he does, the propagandists in the news media will cry bloody murder about it. I wish I was in a position to extract shame or embarrassment from them for this, because I feel like the world would be a better place if more journalists paid a heavier price for pretending to be "neutral" when they are actually functioning as shills.

Update: Around 11:40 AM (while he was physically at the inauguration ceremony), Biden announced pardons for his three siblings and two siblings-in-law "for any nonviolent offenses against the United States which they may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon".

The concept of blanket pardons for crimes that have not yet occurred seems like a pretty major vulnerability for the American constitution. I'm imagining this enabling a President's creation of a legally-unassailable paramilitary brute squad solely loyal to him personally. I don't think the pardon power was meant for that. (Still wouldn't be as stretched as the commerce clause, though.)

The concept of blanket pardons for crimes that have not yet occurred

Well, in this case we're talking about crimes that could have possibly already occurred, but are not proven yet. But at this point, why not a future pardon? "How dare you accuse me of assassinating my political opponent?! I merely gave blanket a future pardon to someone! That they just so happened to murder someone is mere coincidence, and completely unrelated to the act of me issuing the pardon!"

The Hunter pardon, at least, covered a period that ended slightly after it was issued. Perhaps I can hope that that was simply not valid (or that I'm misremembering.)

You remember correctly, but it was a matter of a few hours and visibly an effect of poor drafting, not a deliberate attempt to give him future immunity. The span of time was negligible. (I suppose this doesn't disprove the theory that the mistake was deliberate, and intended as a benign-looking battering ram through which to set a precedent for genuine future immunity. But I'm loath to ascribe to machiavellian malice what can be explained by incompetence.)

for crimes that have not yet occurred

Based on my reading, pardons only cover past crimes. Though the Hunter one illegitimately technically extended a few hours into the future due to the date range and announcement timing.

The pardons only absolve the accused from being indicted, right? They don’t restrict Fauci and Milley from being investigated, do they?

Fauci is old enough at this point that sentencing him to a jail term is meaningless. Destroying their legacy and reputation would be much more enduring; no lobbying firm will touch Milley with a ten-foot pole if he’s the subject of a Congressional investigation, even if it doesn’t result in an indictment. Fact finding, getting to the bottom of it, etc. That’s what voters wanted when they pulled the lever for Trump, isn’t it?

I don’t know — Fauci having to spend a large chunk of his limited time left in jail would’ve seemed like justice.

Perhaps it should be house arrest.

Justice for what, though? If what he's technically being accused of would have been attributed to some faceless administrator whose name didn't come up until the middle of the investigations, few people would care about whether this person technically lied about funding an organization that may or may not have been funding gain of function research into coronaviruses. No, the ire directed at Fauci is almost entirely due to the recommendations he made during the pandemic and the people who didn't like them. These people had no love for Fauci before he was dragged in front of the committee and were looking for an excuse to nail his ass to the wall.

Fauci worked with a major geo-political rival (China) to funnel US tax-payer money into performing bio-weapon gain of function research. Research that Congress had explicitly banned.

This is true. But at the same time it's remarkable that a person who bore some amount of responsibility for the existence of the pandemic in the first place then came out as a major advocate to curtail civil liberties as a response to the pandemic he helped create.

The sheer evil is off the charts.

I agree, being evil isn't a crime. Neither is funding dangerous research. But is it any wonder they want to bury this guy?

In any case, he won't get off scot free. The process is the punishment.

I agree, being evil isn't a crime. Neither is funding dangerous research.

When Congress explicitly banned the dangerous research it kind of is?

Unfortunately the 2014 prohibition didn't include any penalties so if they did go after him it would effectively be for embezzlement/misuse of government funds and property.

That would be OK -- maybe the whole pardon issue could be sidestepped by Trump ordering the DOJ to sue him (as a civil matter) for any and all damages incurred due to COVID?

While i feel like that would be reasonably justified i don't think it will happen.

More comments

Sure, I'll cop to that. I don't really care whether Fauci did something illegal or not; I want revenge for the lockdowns.

I want Fauci to be subpoena'd and forced to testify until he does something technically illegal and goes to jail. I want the same thing done to the other covid hawks. It was knowable at the time that the lockdowns weren't justified, weren't going to be justified, and would do a lot of harm(after all, I predicted it in March 2020). Execute an admiral to encourage the others. This was an absolutely enormous public policy mistake.

I would have supported prosecution for Milley for at a minimum his apparent call to China. I would have also supported a fair investigation without necessarily a trial for Fauci, as I could believe he was the voice for a large or even very large group of people. But for both, I never actually thought they would be prosecuted. Even after everything it's still not quite how we do things in this country, and these men are old and already disgraced, they were before Trump's victory, and now especially, and so it's free, empty and yet still symbolic magnanimity to let them go off into retirement.

A pardon is a brand of shame. Granting implies guilt, accepting confirms guilt. For Milley, it's confirmation of his mutiny and sedition. For Fauci, whatever the specific crime being pardoned, probably gain of function, it will be viewed as a confirmation that everything he did was illegal and thus wrong. The right I see just knew they were criminals, they feel affirmed their beliefs. Some I see on the left are glad because either they fear tyranny and view this as protection or because of open spitefulness, others I see are blackpilling among themselves about the confirmation of guilt, about another new and terrible precedent, and about the general degradation of justice.

I wonder about "arising from or in any manner related to his service" per the actual text of the pardons @Gillitrut links below. I'm not a lawyer, so for all I know this phrasing is known by precedent as synonymous with a blanket pardon, but it reads to me like it's clausal to what they did in the course of their official duties, meaning it's not a blanket pardon. That if Milley killed a prostitute during lockdown the pardon wouldn't apply because it didn't arise from or relate to his official duties and that makes me think, mutiny isn't part of his official duties either.

Edit: Glazed right past "Any offenses against the United States"

I thought the odds of their prosecution before this it would be low, I still think it's low, but I think it's higher now than it was before. Whatever happens, for their legacies, they weren't mercifully granted pardons, they were inflicted with them.

The actual pardons (Milley, Fauci, Committee) are significantly more detailed regarding what and when.

Thanks for digging those up!

Have you got any tips for finding such things? I feel like it should be a lot easier, in the 21st century, for me to find such documents. Most news outlets don't even link to the White House announcement page, much less original documents. SCOTUS makes it pretty easy to see their official opinions; Congress is a bit more complicated, especially with bills that aren't yet laws, but usually I can manage there. The White House seems much less interested in even a hint of transparency.

Unfortunately not. I saw them linked elsewhere. I do with discoverability of things like this was more of a priority for the government.

Compare and contrast the operative text of these pardons (e.g.):

BE IT KNOWN, THAT THIS DAY, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, PURSUANT TO MY POWERS UNDER ARTICLE II, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 1, OF THE CONSTITUTION, HAVE GRANTED UNTO GENERAL MARK A. MILLEY A FULL AND UNCONDITIONAL PARDON FOR ANY OFFENSES against the United States, including but not limited to any offenses under the United States Code or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January l, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

with the Nixon pardon, (from Ford's online Presidential library):

Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974.

So this looks like the standard form of pardon for pardoning a pattern of behaviour if you don't know what specific crimes it could be charged with. These pardons are actually narrower than the Nixon pardon, because they are restricted to acts taken in relation to specific offices held. (So if the Trump admin is determined to do that, they could go after Liz Cheyney for campaign finance violations or some other three felonies a day bullshit).

The argument about the political wisdom of the Nixon pardon is a pot-boiler, but AFAIK nobody has ever challenged its constitutional regularity.

In terms of the wisdom of this one, the Fauci pardon seems an obviously good idea - I don't know why the anti-lockdown movement has chosen to make criminal charges against Fauci it's preferred strategy for relitigating COVID, but Fauci didn't commit the substantive crimes - the lockdowns etc. were ordered by other people (mostly at State level). Prosecuting advisors based on technical disagreements over the quality of advice is a bad idea. Prosecuting advisors based on how other people used their scientific advice is a very, very bad idea if you want honest advice. This applies whether Pam Bondi can find a three felonies a day process crime he is actually guilty of or just uses meritless criminal investigations for process-is-the-punishment reasons.

The whole thing about prosecuting the members and staff of the Jan 6th committee is silly, including the pardon, but I think the pardon is reasonable given the Republicans started the silliness. A moron in a hurry can see that the business of the committee is protected from criminal prosecution by the Speech and Debate clause.

The pardon of the witnesses is mildly improper, given that the only crime it could plausibly cover is perjury, which is inexcusable. But no more so than the Iran-Contra or Scooter Libby pardons.

All in all, these seem fairly low down the list of bad pardons.

Fauci did a lot of bad things and some of them were criminal (eg perjury, attempt to get around FOIA, conspiracy to do the same). We can’t stop the next one if we can’t agree on what caused the first.

Is circumventing the US FOIA a crime? I couldn't google an example of anyone being prosecuted for it, and 5 USC 552 doesn't contain any criminal penalties.

[Circumventing the UK FOIA is a crime, but it is almost never prosecuted and the maximum penalty for a person is a £5,000 fine]

Re: The Fauci pardon, Congress instituted a ban on Gain of Function in research in 2014. Fauci's work with the CCP to circumvent this ban and the efforts of his office to conceal this work (not the lockdowns) is presumably what he is being pardoned for.

My view is that the appropriate response to this is for the incoming DoJ to open an investigation on every single person pardoned with a statement that "no one is above the law". Did they do anything? I have no idea and neither does anyone else, but the sitting President just pointed a glaring GUILTY spotlight at them by preemptively insisting that they're definitely not guilty of anything. People that can't be convicted by a jury don't need pardons. Would they be able to make this blanket pardon stand up in court? I have no idea, but I think we should find out whether the President actually has the ability to preempt any efforts to bring justice to his cronies.

The answer is to conduct congressional hearings and hold them in contempt for some stupid bullshit- pardons can’t be preemptive.

They can propably still prosecute them if they lie under oath about a pardoned offence.

He also pardoned his extended family. And I thin it is once again after 2014. I mean why not since 2000. What is so specific in that year that the whole family was involved.

Joe Biden in the final minutes of his presidency on Monday issued pardons to five more members of his family—his brother James and wife Sarah, his younger sister Valerie Biden Owens and husband John T. Owens, and his brother Francis Biden—after he says they were "subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats" motivated by a desire to hurt him.

I think Vance said something to the effect that they are going to pardon the non-violent offenders from January 6th. And they don't want to do a blanket pardon because they may need to prosecute government agitators.

Maybe it's misguided hope, but it seems they want to take the time to pardon the ones who deserve it and not the ones who don't.

Maybe it's misguided hope, but it seems they want to take the time to pardon the ones who deserve it and not the ones who don't.

Indeed. I don't know if fire extinguisher guy was a plant or not, but either way he deserves jail more than the mass of people there.

Nope, he went full retard and pardoned extinguisher guy.

The pardon is pretty broad -- I think the guy who shot Babbitt is now immune from prosecution as well. (in case that makes you feel any better!)

Damn, the key is to never have hope, I guess.

What did extinguisher guy do, bash someone with a fire extinguisher?

Chucked one into a capitol police officer.

Hasn't pardoned Reality Winner (which I did expect four years ago) or that IRS leaker (which would unpleasantly surprise me, yet, growth mindset), so there's still some downhill to go. But there's another couple hours left to slide down the slippery slope.

I'll also add to the extent that media coverage of 'normal' pardons is obfuscating things:

The other people pardoned include Darryl Chambers, a gun violence prevention advocate who was convicted of a non-violent drug offense, immigration advocate Ravidath “Ravi” Ragbir, who was convicted of a non-violent offense in 2001, the White House said in a statement.

They are, unsurprisingly, also strong political advocates for the President's (aides') political positions, but they're also separately testing the limits of Scott Alexander's 'media doesn't lie' spiel.

> Following a jury trial in January 1995, Defendant Darrell Chambers was convicted of several counts: Count 1, continuing criminal enterprise, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 848; Count 2, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846; Counts 4 and 6, false statements to institution with deposits insured by the FDIC and aiding and abetting, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1014, 2; Counts 8 and 9, laundering of monetary instruments and aiding and abetting, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956, 2; Count 10, attempted possession with intent to distribute cocaine and aiding and abetting, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(a)(1) and 18 U.S.C. § 2; Count 11, false statement in connection with the acquisition of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6); Count 12, possession with intent to distribute cocaine and aiding and abetting, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and 18 U.S.C. § 2; and Count 13, felon in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). See ECF 220, PgID 161-162.

I don't have high expectations for Reuters, but I would hope they were able to count.

Are "Darryl" and "Darrell" Chambers the same person? Five minutes on Google has not cleared this up for me in any way.

No, you're right, I'm wrong, and Reuters didn't goof this one. Sorry, that's embarrassing, and what I get for trying to do this sorta check on a cell phone. Correct person had one charge for dealing crack cocaine.

these people are immune from prosecution, for whatever, because fuck you that's why.

This is not a charitable framing. The President is empowered to pardon people unilaterally and we elected Joe Biden to that office. It's not because "fuck you", it's by the power we chose to vest in him.

I wish I was in a position to extract shame or embarrassment from them for this, because I feel like the world would be a better place if more journalists paid a heavier price for pretending to be "neutral" when they are actually functioning as shills.

I think the urge to revenge or shame is understandable, but unproductive.

What's more, compared to 2016 there are now scores more independent journalists that have far more integrity. Building is harder than tearing down, but it's also more durable.

I think the urge to revenge or shame is understandable, but unproductive.

Please explain why, because that feels like a thought terminating cliche to me. A journalist who can't be shamed is a short story writer.

The consequences of anger are graver than their causes.

In particular, I think the only viable long term strategy is to create a dependable and trustworthy media ecosystem. That can't be done purely out of anger or spite for the existing media. Otherwise they'll just continue lying.

Even today, the partial emergence of a real press is forcing legacy media into admitting more of the truth.

I think anger needs to be carefully directed to be useful, but my real issue is the addition of shame there. That's the part that accrues it the label thought terminating cliche in my eyes. All cliches are thought terminating in a way - they are like stereotypes, a useful heuristic that applies most of the time, so you can reference it and go about your day instead of having to constantly interrogate your thoughts and feelings on the subject. So if you had just said the old version of this - revenge is unproductive - I would have agreed with you, revenge is just gratification and should never be a goal - maybe a nice side benefit, at best.

But shame is a very useful tool for social cohesion - it promotes following the law without involving the law, it strengthens group identity and harmony, it encourages empathy by allowing for a wider range of expressed emotions and most importantly it fosters accountability - so if you are going to say it's unproductive you need a good reason. Just adding it alongside revenge skips right past the reasoning.

Eta: I agree constructing a media ecosystem out of spite would not go well, but I also agree with dag - the old media is being replaced by the new media, and without any form of accountability they are not going to be any better than the old media (Tucker Carlson excepted of course).

But shame is a very useful tool for social cohesion - it promotes following the law without involving the law, it strengthens group identity and harmony, it encourages empathy by allowing for a wider range of expressed emotions and most importantly it fosters accountability - so if you are going to say it's unproductive you need a good reason. Just adding it alongside revenge skips right past the reasoning.

Can you explain how shame encourages empathy and a wider range of emotions?

So I think of the love is God cult, the "everyone be nice, love is everything" mindset as pretty much working like the way we used to think an antidepressant worked. We all have a range of emotions going from high to low, but the cult of niceness restricts the height and depth to a comfortable middle range. This is not noticeably different to how it always was for a lot of people, and indeed they mostly only notice that they aren't sinking to the depths they had previously, but they also can't reach the heights they used to.

I still don't understand how shame equals more emotions. Shame is generally fear of judgment of others - that tends to lead to far less emotional expression. We may be using the term differently.

I agree that blind positivity tends to deny emotions as well - by shaming anyone who isn't happy and "loving" all the time.

Oh sorry man, I was typical minding. I've had a piercing headache now for two days, it's destroying my concentration. I'm talking about shame as a verb though, the expression of displeasure when someone fails to live up to their values.

Society is better off imo when as many emotions as possible can be expressed. We need guardrails of course, so anything that escalates to violence is no good, but anything short of that is good, because it allows others to empathically model their behaviour better, which everyone does all the time without thinking. Without that we drift apart, because we can't connect as well as we might, and like Mr Plinkett used to say we might not notice that but our brain does.

To be fair it was probably the weakest of my points lol.

In particular, I think the only viable long term strategy is to create a dependable and trustworthy media ecosystem. That can't be done purely out of anger or spite for the existing media. Otherwise they'll just continue lying.

I don't think this is true. I think the old media will be outcompeted by new independent media, and there will be a rotation. This is already happening in large part.

Minnesota Legitimacy Crisis

A legitimacy crisis can occur when two different groups interpret laws in different ways. This is bad because you wind up with two sets of people in the same jurisdiction, each abiding by different laws, living in parallel legal realities, and whether they are caught violating the law or not depends on which member of the group is enforcing it at the time.

In predominately Blue Minnesota, the state legislature found itself in a tie between Republicans and the DFL (what Democrats call themselves over there.) This made Democrats pretty worried, because it meant they would need to work with Republicans this session.

Then disaster struck - one of the DFL candidates who won their House seat, Curtis Johnson, was not qualified to serve in the legislature, because he did not live in District 40B as the state constitution requires. This leaves the seat vacant until a special election can be held. This gave the Republicans an advantage over the Democrats, something the DFL could not tolerate.

So the Democrats refused to show up to the legislature when they were legally required to do so. They were sworn in in secret, and didn't show up. On the first day of the legislative session, the Democratic Lt. Governor showed up, called the House to order, and then said, "You don't have quorum, so you can't do anything, I adjourn the House."

To have quorum, you need a majority of the House's members. Democrats are saying that there are 134 House Seats, half of 134 is 68, therefore the Republicans do not have quorum and cannot do anything.

However, because Curtis Johnson’s seat has been declared vacant by the MN Supreme Court, there are not 134 House members. There are 133. A majority is therefore 67 members—which is exactly what the House GOP has.

Where it gets weird is there are two competing norms written in two different books. Mason's Manual (which governs the Minnesota Legislature’s operations) says:

The total membership of a body is to be taken as the basis for computing a quorum, but, when there is a vacancy, unless a special provision is applicable, a quorum will consist of the majority of the members remaining qualified.

Cushing’s Law Practice of Legislative Assemblies, 9th Edition (1874), which Mason's Manual cites, says:

When the number, of which an assembly may consist, at any given time, is fixed by constitution, and an aliquot proportion of such assembly is required in order to constitute a quorum, the number of which such assembly may consist and not the number of which it does in fact consist, at the time in question, is the number of the assembly, and the number necessary to constitute a quorum is to be reckoned accordingly.

Which can be interpreted as that the number of seats determines quorum, BUT Minnesota does not have the number of seats fixed by constitution. So it does not appear that this rule applies. Conveniently, when Democrats cite the rule, they leave out the first part of the quote that references the constitution.

This is a good write up if you want to read all the details: https://decivitate.substack.com/p/legitimacy-crisis-in-my-minnesota. Or if you prefer something written by an actual expert, and not an internet hobbyist, this brief provides a good (if biased for GOP) summary: https://macsnc.courts.state.mn.us/ctrack/document.do?document=be8019a34d345648b6cf0337f337a772f1da69c972cc5609aef2144e14f85fc1

Meanwhile, the GOP has elected the first Black Speaker of the Minnesota House and is trying to get things done. The DFL is trying to stop them from getting things done by avoiding work and by sending people to harass the GOP in the legislature.

Oral Arguments are going in front of the Minnesota Supreme court today, at 1 PM local. The Supreme Court is 7-0 Democrats’ appointees. I think the GOP's argument has a stronger legal basis, but that does not mean that the DFL will lose the case. What happens then?

One problem is that courts have a limit with their jurisdiction over other branches of government. We saw that with the recent SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity. Can the legislature keep saying, "No, you do not have say over legislative proceedings, we are going to keep doing what we are doing?" The Minnesota Constitution states clearly, "Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings."

So you can wind up in a situation where the GOP legislature passes a law saying that it is illegal to wear red T-shirts on a Sunday, a GOP cop arrests someone for this new crime, and whether or not you end up in prison depends on if the judge is GOP or DFL. People in Minnesota have a real risk at the moment of living in a land where two sets of laws are enforced by two sets of people.

Of all things, I think this is the greatest risk to our country. Not worried about Minnesota specifically (sorry to whomever lives there, please escape at your earliest convenience.) But something similar can happen on the Federal level, might very well happen with Trump trying to shred norms as best he is able. And if that happens... it could spell the end of the Republic (or at the least a Civil War until we can force States to sign an amendment that corrects whatever crisis arose.)

A quorum bust in a blue state. My oh my. Here in red Texas we just elected a house speaker with more democrat votes than republicans.

But I have to wonder- in practice, a 50%+1 majority usually means you need to work with the opposing party at least a little bit anyways. What do democrats think they’re avoiding?

But I have to wonder- in practice, a 50%+1 majority usually means you need to work with the opposing party at least a little bit anyways. What do democrats think they’re avoiding?

There was an elaborate power-sharing agreement put in place after the election resulted in a tie, with leadership positions held jointly by members of both parties. These leadership positions are set at the beginning of the session and remain in place for the entire session. Importantly, these positions control the agenda of the house and its committees, so the power sharing agreement effectively ensured that neither party could push out the other's agenda. That tie was disrupted by the disqualification of a DFL member, giving the GOP a temporary majority until a special election is held. The GOP is trying to take advantage of that temporary majority to appoint its members to all the leadership positions before the special election (likely) restores the tie. The DFL tried to fast-track that special election, but the courts denied it. Now they are trying to stall until the election can be held and the tie restored so the power sharing agreement would also get restored.

I expect the short-term is just that the DFL wanted to use the state (and its funds) for Trump Resistance, and expect that 'legitimizing' the state House will get in the way of that. There's a ticking time bomb here -- MN uses biannual budget bills, they start in the July of every odd-numbered year, they're usually /passed/ by mid-May, and in practice this means that the DFL have a lot of leverage near something they really want (with all the fulcrum connotations that proximity means).

That said, Minnesota's politics are unusually fucked. This is from 2022, but it gives you a better idea of exactly how polarized a lot of state is -- and if anything, understates it, since several of the 'closer' red counties are close because of the faults in a politician, rather than much love for blue tribe positions.

In practice, Walz is still governor and will be for years, but certain antics mean that Red politicians are going to play things a lot more aggressively themselves.

That's the mysterious part of it to me - there is no long term win here. Are they going to stay away from the legislature for a whole year until they get a simple majority? I don't know if they have a long-term strategy.

Texas politics is insane. Dems have realized they can have a friendly speaker by getting a small number if republicans to defect.

It’s more like 40% than a small number.

Why did 40% defect?

Because the Texas GOP is one of the most far right state Republican parties and the defectors are mostly establishment types uncomfortable with the possibility of, say, re-criminalizing sodomy, invading Mexico, or holding a secession vote. The furthest right caucus which actually literally unironically wants to do those things has enough votes to accomplish at least some of their priorities when in a coalition and Dustin Burrows is, yes a squishy establishment type, but not really a centrist.

I could think of a number of ways to navigate through this using the rules cited.

But I think ULTIMATELY the Courts will, if they're being fair-minded, say "toss this back to the people. They can hold a recall vote or they can pursue a referendum or they can otherwise exercise their rights and authority to goad their legislators to act if they so wish. If the people are okay with the status quo, they can let it stand." Otherwise, the Courts risk overriding the 'will of the people' either way they rule.

Then someone in one of the Dem house members' districts starts gathering signatures for a recall, and force the issue.

If Minnesota looks to remain gridlocked for years to come, then unhappy constituents can move somewhere else if it matters that much to them.

Isn't this why you have Supreme Courts?

Can't someone file a lawsuit and get it expressly resolved by the final authority on such procedural issues to avoid an institutional crisis?

There is a lawsuit, oral arguments are today, but like I said at the end:

One problem is that courts have a limit with their jurisdiction over other branches of government. We saw that with the recent SCOTUS ruling on presidential immunity. Can the legislature keep saying, "No, you do not have say over legislative proceedings, we are going to keep doing what we are doing?" The Minnesota Constitution states clearly, "Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings."

There is a strong possibility (>50%) that the courts just say they can't rule on this as it is a political question. So they do not decide it at all, and the Legislature has to decide whether or not the Legislature can decide anything.

You'd think that courts are setup just to resolve this sort of vague procedural issue. But I guess when it comes to parliament procedure it may be a violation of the separation of powers.

Probably a naive question, but does the MN supreme court have any precedent cases where they punted on a "political" issue? This seems pretty clear-cut to me in favor of the GOP, and the rules-lawyering by the DFL seems to me as exactly the sort of behavior you should throw the book at, under the "win stupid prizes" principle.

Most recently, during the oral arguments for taking Trump off the Minnesota ballot, the Minnesota Supreme Court spent the majority of oral argument time considering if they had jurisdiction as it was a political question. But it was all kind of made moot by the SCOTUS ruling.

I'm not familiar enough with Minnesota law to know specific cases where this happened. The brief I linked to had this argument, but I don't know how to access the cases it discusses:

As noted, our Constitution’s Article III provides for the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers, and prescribes that “[n]o person or per- sons belonging to or constituting one of these departments shall exercise any of the powers properly belonging to either of the others.” As this Court has explained, “[t]he three distinct departments thus created are of equal dignity, and, within their respective spheres of action, equally independent.” State v. Dist. Ct. in and for Ramsey Cnty., 194 N.W. 630, 632 (Minn. 1923). This is no small matter. “The division of powers is the fundamental principle upon which American constitu- tional government is based, and the success of our form of government depends, in large measure, upon the respect paid to that principle by each of the three divi- sions in its relations with the others.” Smith v. Holm, 19 N.W.2d 914, 915 (Minn. 1945).

This separation of powers, of course, protects each of the judicial and legis- lative branches from the other’s intrusion on its internal affairs. For instance, when the Legislature recently tried to instruct the courts by statute to open their Minne- sota Government Access records system to all attorneys, this Court directed that the matter was within judicial, not legislative, competence. Order re Minn. Stat. 484.94 (2023) and the Rules of Public Access to Records of the Minnesota Judicial Branch, No. ADM10-8050 (Minn. June 28, 2023). Similarly, this Court holds that “the Leg- islature’s ability to discipline judges is limited to the impeachment process.” E.g., State v. Irby, 848 N.W.2d 515, 521 (Minn. 2014). And more broadly, separation-of- powers principles surely limit legislative interference with the judiciary’s internal organization. For instance, if the Legislature disagreed with this Court about the constitutionality of the Court’s appointment of a referee in a case before it, and enacted a statute purporting to remove the referee, we have no doubt that the Court would find serious separation-of-powers problems.

By the same token, it is long settled Minnesota law that “[t]he judicial branch may not, therefore, directly or indirectly interfere with th[e] legislative power in any other way than by passing upon the constitutionality … of [the] laws.” Holm, 19 N.W.2d at 916. In other words, “[t]he courts have no judicial control over … matters which the people have by the Constitution delegated to the Legislature,” In re McConaughy, 119 N.W. 408, 415 (Minn. 1909), and must be “wary of unneces- sary judicial interference in the political process.” Ninetieth Minnesota State Senate v. Dayton, 903 N.W.2d 609, 625 (Minn. 2017)

Yeah. "If you refuse to show up everyone else just votes without you" seems like a way better principle than "if you refuse to show up you deadlock the system", conditional on the not showing up being voluntary rather than some scheme where a surprise meeting was called.

It seems that the vibe has definitely shifted in politics and general social spaces, as many folks last week commented on here. People are more open to using language that used to be termed offensive, right-wing political statements are more in vogue, etc.

I'm curious specifically what all of this means for feminism, and the gender war subset of the larger Culture War. I saw an interesting piece which blew up on X lately, that, in discussing the Neil Gaiman situation, argues:

Shapiro spends a lot of time thumbing the scale like this, and for good reason: without the repeated reminders that sexual abuse is so confusing and hard to recognize, to the point where some victims go their whole lives mistaking a violent act for a consensual one, most readers would look at Pavlovich's behavior (including the "it was wonderful" text message as well as her repeated and often aggressive sexual overtures toward Gaiman) and conclude that however she felt about the relationship later, her desire for him was genuine at the time — or at least, that Gaiman could be forgiven for thinking it was. To make Pavlovich a more sympathetic protagonist (and Gaiman a more persuasive villain), the article has to assert that her seemingly self-contradictory behavior is not just understandable but reasonable. Normal. Typical. If Pavlovich lied and said a violent act was consensual (and wonderful), that's just because women do be like that sometimes.

Obviously, this paradigm imposes a very weird, circular trap on men (#BelieveWomen, except the ones who say they want to sleep with you, in which case you should commence a Poirot-style interrogation until she breaks down and confesses that she actually finds you repulsive.) But I'm more interested in what happens to women when they're cast in this role of society's unreliable narrators: so vulnerable to coercion, and so socialized to please, that even the slightest hint of pressure causes the instantaneous and irretrievable loss of their agency.

The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world's adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can't have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn't mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.

Now many linkers and commentators on X are basically arguing - why yes, women don't have agency, and that's why most cultures have reflected that in law and social practice. I think this sort of smugly satisfied mocking of women is in quite poor taste, and not likely to be productive, but there is a deeper point in there. Unfortunately it seems that, even after decades of propaganda, rewriting of tons of laws, giving women voting power, dismantling "oppressive" cultural structures like religion, etc. etc., we still as a society are not able to treat women as adults with agency, and consequences for their actions.

Now a progressive might come in and say - ok, fine we do still struggle with this issue, but hey, it's because of bad social programming! Just give us another 100 years and we will totally hold women responsible just like men, we promise!

That has basically been the progressive line to justify going further and further to the left with social and legal programs. Problem for them is, with the vibe shift I mentioned earlier, I think that argument is running out of steam. The average person no longer seems to be convinced that this is just a cultural problem which will go away.

So, where do we go from here? Do you think feminism will actually be rolled back in a meaningful way? I'm skeptical myself, but I'm also skeptical we will magically start holding women accountable. Not sure what happens next...

Do you think feminism will actually be rolled back in a meaningful way?

The motte part -- surely not. Various absurd baileys that have emerged, for sure. They are already in retreat in some places.

A big part of my growing into maturity sexually was moving past taking a legalistic attitude towards consent ("If I obtain agreement, then all questions about her needs are off") towards a more paternalistic approach with partners ("Do I think this is good for her?"). For me, this was the result of repeatedly having women say yes to things ("Yeah, I'm not looking for anything serious either!") that clearly they didn't mean. And for me, it was about realizing that I didn't want to have sex that hurt women, and that if I didn't want to have sex that hurt my partners I had to take responsibility for it, and not just take her word for it.

Louise Perry (a British 'reactionary feminist') argues that agency is distributed on a bell curve, with some people being very agentic and some people being very passive/conformist. She also acknowledges that young women are particularly conformist, and so more vulnerable to doing things that are socially promoted (Louise was talking about Only Fans) even if they are damaging to the woman in question.

It's easy to focus on young women having sex because it's titillating, but I'm happy to accept the premise that lots of people need protection from their own choices by the state/society. Whether that means banning sports betting, making it harder to get drugs/alcohol, or for parents to stop their daughters from making poor choices about who to sleep with.

The state is a blunt instrument, of course, so it's better to have it regulate concrete things like gambling than messy things like sex.

The idea of an agency bell curve is intriguing. It seems to make a lot of intuitive sense when one acknowledges that IQ is a bell curve and that people also have broadly identifiable personality traits - neuroticism, openness etc.

I do not want to see the State, however, making decisions in relation to the agency bell curve. IMHO, the State dictates the limits to the playing field - laws are, mostly, what you can't do at the outer extremes. No killing, no theft of property, you have to conform to contracts you've entered into. Other than that, let culture and subculture take precedence.

If you want to adhere to cultural norms that place no penalty on pre-marital promiscuity, this is fine. If you feel you ought to have your father's consent before you are married, that's also fine. Cultures and subcultures that do a better job of fostering pro-social systems and reinforcement loops should, naturally, win out over time.

I think one of the meta-narratives on the Motte is that when the State thumbs the scale on one side or the other of the culture war, that's always bad.

People choose to take on too much frivolous debt and destroy their lives. Is the whole lending project dead? Should the media no longer write op-eds about payday loans with a 400% ARP? The average person no longer seems to be convinced that this is just a cultural problem which will go away.

That Pavlovich bird does not a summer make. There are global differences in median male and female traits, but I see no reason to treat them differently under the laws of a free society. Globally, men are vastly more violent, more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, get into gambling debt, fall victim to romance and finance scams. We somehow manage to treat them like adults. I've never even heard it argued that we should do otherwise which is weird.

People choose to take on too much frivolous debt and destroy their lives. Is the whole lending project dead? Should the media no longer write op-eds about payday loans with a 400% ARP? The average person no longer seems to be convinced that this is just a cultural problem which will go away.

Uhhh this is unironically also a big societal issue. Lots of people have been agitating to nationalize the credit card industry for this exact reason.

That Pavlovich bird does not a summer make. There are global differences in median male and female traits, but I see no reason to treat them differently under the laws of a free society

Ok but the issue is that we do treat men and women differently under the laws of our society...

Most of my critique revolves around extending a single instance of an unreliable narrator into viewing women as children, and questioning their right to vote. This is an insane extrapolation of the data, and wouldn't be accepted as a fundamental policy or philosophical argument.

Lots of people have been agitating to nationalize the credit card industry for this exact reason.

I know, and the govt heavily regulates lending anyhow, but less now than ever in terms of max ARP.

My point being that even the most egregious instances of usuary (ie pay day loans) do not portend the end of lending. Nationalizing the credit industry seems less fringe and hairbrained than not treating women as adults. However, neither are practiced anywhere worth living.

I'm sure there is bias in the law as practiced, and men and women suffer unfounded disparate impact, but AFAIK the laws theoretically apply equally wherever possible. Given men's propensity to fall for romance, finance, and gabling scams, its odd that I've never seen it argued that we should view all men as hapless children, and restrict their rights. A maximally insane take would be restricting unrelated rights like driving or, I dunno, voting.

I'm sure there is bias in the law as practiced, and men and women suffer unfounded disparate impact, but AFAIK the laws theoretically apply equally wherever possible.

Theoretically is doing a lot of work here. There are all sorts of issues with women's vs men's shelters, funding for female programs in schools, affirmative action type things for women in corporate, etc etc etc.

I think that we are disagreeing on the fact that I absolutely do not think that women and men are treated equally right now, even though the laws say they do. In fact I think there's a big difference. Do you agree with that or not?

EDIT: FWIW I'm not actively arguing we take away rights from women, which you seem to be implying. I'm just saying that culturally, there seems to be an issue with having women occupy both the role of equal to men and also getting much more benefit than men socially.

Yeah I agree with your assessment quite a lot. My point is that extrapolating these outlying male deficits in self-control/agency all the way to questioning if society can treat men as adults is absurd.

I don't think that society should treat alcoholics or degenerate gamblers as adults... and in fact we don't in many cases, in similar ways.

I can grant that, and the original hypothesis still doesn't follow. We're talking about an entire category of people, only some of whom demonstrate lower agency in at least one area. Men are less able to control their drinking and gambling, but we wouldn't consider all men to be children. Its the same in the Pavlovich et.al cases. Some women claim they can't meaningfully consent to sex even when they do. They're insane and a moral hazard. I'm not gonna play in that framework. Whether they like it or not, they're adults.

Again I'm not saying that women should be denied rights or anything. I edited my earlier post to clarify. No need to play in a framework that doesn't exist.

I'm really just asking the question of like - what do we do with this? How can we make it more fair, perhaps by changing the culture, or at least make things make more sense?

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But it's not weird. Men treating women as having less agency, and also women claiming less responsibility, has been normal throughout human history. Women have more agency and responsibility than children, but less than men. At the same time, exceptions have always been recognized (some women, and even some children, have more agency and responsibility than some men). However, not until the last few decades has anyone tried to reorganize society and culture around the exceptions rather than the norm. This is natural human social behavior. Fundamentally, a woman crying is psychologically (and even physiologically) more like a child crying than a man crying, and that matters more than any ideological principles or even the letter of the law.

My personal preference is for the classical liberal ideal of legal equality but cultural inequality. However, that does not seem to have been a very stable equilibrium. It seems humans as constituted are unable to cope in that kind of world. There is no returning to the past, but the future will not look like the present (if only because birthrates among these cultural groups are unsustainable).

The Rich treating The Poor as having less agency, and also The Poor claiming less responsibility, has been normal throughout human history. The Poor have more agency and responsibility than children, but less than The Rich. At the same time, exceptions have always been recognized (some Poor Men, and even some children, have more agency and responsibility than some Rich People). However, not until the last few decades has anyone tried to reorganize society and culture around the exceptions rather than the norm.

Do you think the above is a fair or an unfair summary of human history, and do you think it is equally recommended by an examination of history to have class inequality as to have gender inequality?

Of course the sexes are unequal. This is undeniable. But I have yet to hear any argument why basic rights should differ. What is being proposed here is an anathema to classical liberalism. Sure, people are free to debate the cultural inequality of agency or roles between men an women, so long as they're treated equally under the law. If it wants to fit into classically liberalism, the individual takes precedent over group based rights.

Women demonstrate more agency than men when it comes to getting romance or finance scammed, abusing drugs and alcohol, or murdering people. Of course, it doesn't follow that we should take the vote away form men, or consider them children. Men are full adults, and are responsible for their choices. So is Pavlovich.

Women demonstrate more agency than men when it comes to getting romance or finance scammed, abusing drugs and alcohol, or murdering people.

How much sympathy do men get for being romance scammed? Or being murderers?

Now, ask yourself the same question for a college aged woman who reports being sexually assaulted at a party?

I probably agree with you a lot here. But it would be laughable to argue that these outliers at the margins are a serious reason to question if men are adults.

They seem to be making the opposite argument? Basically: we don't question men being adults because, when men fail, they're expected to handle it . Even if the consequences are ruinous and/or not even their fault.

Women demonstrate more agency than men when it comes to getting romance or finance scammed, abusing drugs and alcohol, or murdering people

What do you mean by this? For example, men do most of the murder, and murder is a high-agency activity. Agency doesn't mean "good outcomes".

No, not good outcome. But in general males are more impulsive, in humans and lab animals. Thats more direct. Murder was a proxy, but its multifactorial. My point being men around the world and across time seem perennially unable to control their behavior when it comes to murder (for the subset of murders that are heat of the moment, impassioned, impulsive, etc). This is because the sexes are inherently different, yet we still prioritize the individual and their choices. We don't call into question men's right to vote.

Women are more likely to be "scammed" of sex, where men are more likely to be scammed out of money. Of course men aren't spinning yarn about how they're really not responsible for their own free choices in romance scams, or divorce rape, etc. Women arguing that Pavlovich wasn't responsible are insane (as far as I understand the details).

They don't show more agency, they don't do those "bad" things. Agency is actively making choices that don't strictly follow others. This is the same mistake as thinking someone too incapable to commit crime virtuous.

Avoiding those bad things requires agency, and women demonstrate more of it than men in those contexts. This is true around the world. In general, males show greater impulsivity in both humans and lab animals. Nobody has argued for a broad societal reconsideration of whether men are adults. People would laugh that argument out of the room.

Is there a problem with women claiming a sexual encounter was consensual, and arguing for a take-back some time later? Absolutely. Does it follow that we should seriously consider whether women are adults? No. Thats insane.

Nobody has argued for a broad societal reconsideration of whether men are adults

Everyone who has uttered the words "the brain doesn't finish development until you're 25" is making this argument.

It's not laughed out of the room.

My usual remark is along the lines of "the brain isn't finished development until you enter senescence". But most people seem to believe that nonsense.

But most people seem to believe that nonsense.

It’s just modern phrenology.

To the extent that observation constitutes an argument, its completely different. Any serious proposal to push back legal adulthood to 25 is generally laughed at as an impractical nanny state absurdity. Men demonstrate less agency in some areas, women in others. Why consider one adults, and not the other.

Why consider one adults, and not the other.

Because man bad, woman good. Young men are also more physically disorderly than young women (despite 48% of population, overwhelming majority of violent crime), so you can sell it as risk control.

Any serious proposal to push back legal adulthood to 25 is generally laughed at as an impractical nanny state absurdity

It's certainly laughed at less than any proposals to lower the age of adulthood, which suggests the average person believes it should be higher.

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The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements.

The one obvious and crucial difference is that all those examples are forms of written, signed agreements with detailed rights and responsibilities of the signing parties, effecting penalties in case of breach of contract etc. In the current year, trying to regulate human mating would be seen as an enormously icky idea and would never fly.

Hmm.

Or even... a marriage certificate?

See, as someone who is actually quite fond of women- but not delusional- this is quite sad. Getting taken advantage of happens whenever women aren’t protected, either because no one cares or because of recognizing their ‘autonomy’ or whatever.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure the greatest opponents of any potential measure to introduce contractual agreements in the realm of heterosexual mating would be women.

There is a figure you sometimes see, the ‘abortion bro’. He is strongly pro-choice because, although he doesn’t care overmuch about women’s freedom or health, he definitely does not want to wind up a dad by accident. He’ll make arguments along the lines of ‘what if your girlfriend got pregnant- see that’s why it’s important to protect women’s reproductive rights’. Some of them will talk about the need to firmly tell partners interested in keeping the baby that paying for an abortion will be the last help they ever get, and they’re going no contact afterwards regardless of her decision.

For obvious reasons, this figure is not allowed to headline pro-choice rallies. But you find them on Reddit, sometimes IRL, and occasionally in op-Ed’s in lowbrow newspapers. But they definitely exist. I suspect they’re much more common than women who actually want low commitment relationships.

Men have identical happiness whether married or cohabiting- women are far happier married. Women are nearly four times as likely to say they want to save sex for marriage as men are- and by relationship progression, men get their way. The median woman has socially-conservative-in-practice preferences for relationships and sex; in fact feminists generally do too. They’re just unable to advocate for themselves effectively in the face of men’s preferences. And that is the reason for patriarchy. We don’t tell children to stick up for themselves against adults and expect them to do it, at least not well. There are frameworks for dealing with relationships between adults and children- teachers have extensive rules governing how they relate to students, for example. Likewise you can’t reasonably expect an unprotected woman to not be at the mercy of whatever man is around.

Yes, the people most offended by this are women. I have no doubt that the feminist will answer with ‘that’s NOT true’ or some variant thereof and the abortion bro will answer with ‘not my problem they’re like that’. But a typical woman flourishes better with couverture than as femme sole.

Situations like this are precisely why progressives are skeptical of employee/employer sexual relationships and it sounds like it was worse here because Gaiman and Palmer were also providing Pavlovich housing as part of the deal. If your combination landlord/boss came onto you one day might one go along with it even if they didn't want to? Might the implicit threat of "I could make you unemployed and homeless" convince someone not to resist? I hardly think we can generalize from "a woman might pretend to enjoy sex to keep her job and housing" to "no women anywhere can be treated with as having agency."

In any case I feel very comfortable asserting that ~no one enforces their own desires and boundaries as they might like 100% of the time. Do you tell your boss how bullshit it is every time they drop work on you that you think you shouldn't be doing or have to do? Do you bitch to your spouse every time they want to do That Thing they like but you don't? Or do you sometimes suck it up and do the thing with a smile anyway? Sexual assault is an extreme case of this but the consequences of not doing so (unemployment, homelessness) probably seemed pretty extreme to Pavlovich.

In any case I feel very comfortable asserting that ~no one enforces their own desires and boundaries as they might like 100% of the time.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that I don't consent to it. I make the decision to accept that I am working late instead of hang out with my husband. I make the decision to watch the show my husband likes and I don't really care about. I consent to all these things because I weigh up their plusses and minuses, and make a decision. That's just what it is to be a human person in an imperfect world making decisions. "Sure, I decided to take on student loans, but I felt pressured from my parents to go to the more expensive school and I don't like the idea of paying them back." Still consent.

An employer or landlord trying to get sex out of an employee/tenant is bad for reasons that have nothing to do with consent. It's bad because it creates an unfair labor or housing market, which is based around who is willing and able to provide sexual favors.

The point is that maybe sex is special, and consent is necessary but insufficient to guarantee an ethical sexual encounter.

And this is why ‘consent based sexual morality’ is full of obvious rule patches tack-welded on in the most awkward possible way.

and consent is necessary but insufficient to guarantee an ethical sexual encounter.

The sufficient level of consent might be a highly expensive (in terms of social capital both now and in the future) public ceremony of consent that also indirectly involves your closest family members.

That's right; marriage.

While I personally think it's goofy, I can at least understand the idea that a breathy "yes" in the middle of buttons unbuttoning and belts unbelting during a steamy makeout session is, perhaps, rushed and ill-considered. Not so in a multi-hour (or day) ceremony with religious overtones and even clergy present all while grandma and grandpa look on with (dis?)approval.

I don't think a marriage certificate ought to be required for sex, and I don't think we should be imprisoning people for the crimes of fornication or adultery. But I'd love to see a culture where casual sex is once again considered a weirdo fringe thing much like married couple swinging still is.

If I'm a young person dating right now, there is a constant suspicion that the other person is not entirely exclusive and that, due to that fact, I may be less than number 1 on their list. So dating turns into this exercise in competitive mistrust and a prisoners dilemma of commitment-investment, rather than a steadily progressing exercise in value and life ambition matching and bonding.

Situations like this are precisely why progressives are skeptical of employee/employer sexual relationships and it sounds like it was worse here because Gaiman and Palmer were also providing Pavlovich housing as part of the deal. If your combination landlord/boss came onto you one day might one go along with it even if they didn't want to? Might the implicit threat of "I could make you unemployed and homeless" convince someone not to resist? I hardly think we can generalize from "a woman might pretend to enjoy sex to keep her job and housing" to "no women anywhere can be treated with as having agency."

So how does this square with the general feminist sex-positive ideology? Are you saying we should restrict all sex at the workplace and in any relationship where power dynamics could be employed?

So how does this square with the general feminist sex-positive ideology? Are you saying we should restrict all sex at the workplace and in any relationship where power dynamics could be employed?

Yes. This is bog-standard just about everywhere. You can consensually fuck/date anyone you want at the workplace except those that you have a supervisory or evaluative relationship. The same is true of police, they can consensually fuck/date everyone except those they are investigating or arresting.

That's the motte, I think it's probably good not to sweep away this particular motte with the bathwater here, and of course I agree with the broad stroke that some are trying to claim an entire bailey of "it's not consensual if later on one party believes it wasn't".

I think one can generally be (and feminists are) pro-sex generally while thinking particular categories ought to be prohibited or warrant additional scrutiny.

Are you saying we should restrict all sex at the workplace and in any relationship where power dynamics could be employed?

I think those relationships at least warrant extra scrutiny but I wouldn't be opposed to a general prohibition.

I think those relationships at least warrant extra scrutiny but I wouldn't be opposed to a general prohibition

So you are in favour of segregation of men and women in society writ large? Thats the only Way such a prohibition would function

It already functions in most workplaces, honestly. At least everywhere I worked at there was a clause about notifying management when you start dating another employee, with the underlying assumption that it would prevent uncomfortable situations regarding power dynamics. It's not that uncommon, you don't need to introduce new laws to do this.

Most workplaces don’t prohibit coworkers from dating, true

This seems very straightforwardly false. I've worked with a lot of women, none of whom have had relationships with management.

The question is whether it's false in general and over time. If it works for some people some of the time, but also results in reduced family formation and below replacement birthrates on the whole, then it will be replaced by something else in the long run. Segregation is part of a historical package that could make a comeback.

This is low effort and seems entirely part of your pattern of worthless sneering.

Spacing out your visits to drop shits in the pool does not automatically reset the timer. Banned for two weeks this time.

For years I have heard on this forum and other places that Trump is an idiot who can't govern, doesn't know what to do to effect change, is to vain to do the right things, or won't simply because he doesn't really care. It's futile to vote for Trump. He doesnt know what he's doing. And I have been called unserious for believing in Donald Trump's excellence. Today I would like to start taking my victory lap:

https://x.com/awprokop/status/1881900975851708751?t=8OquEiW6cV89zAtXmm9kng&s=19

Trump is abolishing Affirmative Action in federal contracting. He is going to order the government to pressure private companies to end Affirmative Action. This directly benefits my career. This ends bad policy that is massively unpopular and is the kind of thing many people predicted Trump would never do. I voted this. I am thrilled!

I am doubling down on my prediction that Trump Era will be remembered as a Golden Age, will fundamentally reshape American history for the better, and will in fact be enjoyed even by thosr who have been most skeptical!

What’s the likelihood that this just ALL flops back in 4 years?

Just one giant omnibus EO that every flipping presidential party signs which renames the gulf of America, Mount McKinley, Fort Bragg, re-establishes affirmative action, cancels the keystone XL/Stargate/Moonbase etc?

I’m kind of in shock that for the first time in my life a politician actually seems to be looking out for me, but I’m still cynical. We have about 1200 days to run as hard and as fast as we possibly can, but after that then what?

What’s the likelihood that this just ALL flops back in 4 years?

You are describing a switch being flipped left, then right, then left. This is typically the way people talk about these things, because it is an orderly model of the sort assembled by orderly people living orderly lives. Or to put it another way, this view is constructed by people who have gone beyond taking orderliness for granted, and have moved to assuming that orderliness is axiomatic.

Our political system is not a switch, but rather a post in the ground. It is not "flopping" one way and then the other. It is being wrenched, back and then forth, and each motion travels further as the earth's hold on the post loosens. This "flip" is burning norms and systems that had stood for centuries. Those norms don't come back on the next wrench, or indeed at all. They are gone for good, and the next wrench will do more damage still, as the escalation spiral continues. Soon or sooner, the post comes out of the ground completely, and then we'll see what we see.

Alternatively, the culture war peters out. Maybe the Blues will give up! Certainly the Reds don't seem inclined to do so. The most likely positive outcome is that Federal authority decreases precipitously and permanently, and we have a go at actually leaving each other alone.

It took decades to build this regime. It can be undone in a matter of days. The taste of victory is sweet and success begets success. You can just do things. We can win. So are you going to fight? Are you going to fight for the future you want? It's not something that just happens once every four years. It's a choice you make.

People are never going back. Whatever the future looks like is different now. The future belongs to people inspired by Trump

You can just do things.

That realization was the most striking aspect of Trump’s first term. It hit me when he moved the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Bush had talked about doing it for years but somehow it never happened, just like he somehow never got us Supreme Court Justices that would overturn Roe, or a hundred other things. Then Trump comes along and just does it. It could have been done all along. You can just do things.

We'll see. The birthright citizenship order and the stop-energy-efficiency order run up against statutes (and in the former case, the Constitution), so this Trump train will likely derail the way the Obamacare repeal did.

Thanks for reminding me that Dobbs happened. Everyone predicted it would be a disaster for the GOP Then they still won. Amazing

People are never going back.

The big asset price crash we’ve been putting off since 2018, some fiery class-first rhetoric from the Dems, and all this comes crashing down very quickly. Once they’re back in power, the decolonize-the-establishment types reassume their positions in all key cultural functions (even if the class warriors don’t care for them) and so on and so on.

We very desperately need the global big asset price crash, preferably applied to housing more than stocks (but American stocks also need a good hammering, less so other countries' stocks).

(but American stocks also need a good hammering, less so other countries' stocks)

Is there a reason other than “number too big”? I thought the same as well. Ten years ago I bought into this thinking and observed that half the world’s market cap was outside the US, so I went 50% into an international index fund with my equities allocation. And my net worth is a good deal lower than it would have been if I stuck with the US!

India has been on the cusp of a breakout for decades. It somehow never happens. South America looks like it will remain chronically economically retarded. China is a power strip plugged into itself, subsidizing current industries using taxes on past and future industry. And Europe?

I think @jeroboam said it best that your adoptive continent has been sitting in a cafe, idly increasing pension benefits. They dream up extractive fines on American industries while they watch their villages turn into open-air museums and their cities turn into jumbo international airports.

In America we have armies of people vocationally dedicated to making my retirement account balances increase.

American stocks are more and more overvalued relative to earnings. This can change is AI boom actually materializes into….something. But it hasn’t, except allowing more efficient coding monkeys and cheating on college essays

It can be undone in a matter of days

No, it can't. Not with legal mechanisms, anyway.

You can just do things.

No, you can't. Because you need people able and willing to carry things out. Only one side has that.

We can win.

No, we probably can't.

So are you going to fight?

No, I can't imagine people actually doing so. They'll do a lot of pointless stuff that feels like fighting — and winning — in the moment, but doesn't actually amount to anything. (See Yarvin here and here).

People are never going back.

Of course they are. They have every time before; if only because they'll be forced to.

No, it can't. Not with legal mechanisms, anyway.

Every executive agency has dismantled its DEI program overnight. Every DEI program employee is on leave pending termination. Remember the FAA hiring scandal from a while ago? Every [edit]critical[/edit] FAA employee will be subject to a mandatory performance review. At least one Biden/Harris appointee who attempted to hide herself in the "non-political appointees" pool was exposed and fired.

No, you can't. Because you need people able and willing to carry things out. Only one side has that.

ICE arrested 583 people and issued almost 400 requests for detention in one day. This represents a near-doubling of the average daily arrests from September last year which stand at 282 arrests per day, the last month we have data for. The Remain in Mexico policy has been officially reinstated, and the Department of Justice has officially prioritized immigration enforcement. Deportation flights have already begun. Mexico is preparing to receive waves of deportees. Many people with dubious immigrant status are already choosing to self-deport. I say dubious because I have seen reports that people who were here legally are also choosing to leave.

It has been four days.

Edit:

And on the fourth day, ICE made 593 arrests with 449 detainment requests made. Again, average arrests made per day under Biden were under 300.

Every FAA employee

*Every FAA employee in a critical safety position (presumably including every air traffic controller)

Whoops, good catch.

Loser mindset. You've decided it's impossible to win. We haven't! That's why we're winning

Hopefully, they do well enough that we can elect Vance or another Republican.

It'll have to end eventually, but maybe the overton window will have shifted by then.

I believe the likelihood is quite high. In my opinion, the second election of Trump is a cultural-because-of-generational backlash by "the Boomers" and "Gen X" against changes in the culture brought about by "the Millennials", who I believe have a radical split from previous generations inspired by changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect. I suspect in the next decade in the "after that", then "then what" will be that American culture will take a hard and final turn against social conservatism. I like to say the wheel of progress is dismally slow, but it is inspirationally grinding.

I form this opinion off of my own anecdotal experiences in observing the microcosm of my family. My socially conservative members grow less and less able to relate to my non-socially conservative members and, as a result, the beliefs "dry out", so to say. I've observed that although the socially conservative do have more children, the families tend to splinter and fall into poverty and miss the window to be relevant to the culture, so the ecosystem of beliefs is constrained to niche branches of the family.

In my opinion, the second election of Trump is a cultural-because-of-generational backlash by "the Boomers" and "Gen X" against changes in the culture brought about by "the Millennials", who I believe have a radical split from previous generations inspired by changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect.

Among under-30s, Harris and Trump were within a few percentage points overall, white men voted for Trump, white women split down the middle, black and Latino men voted for Trump in record numbers, and the biggest issue for young voters was the economy and jobs. While I agree that Millennials are more progressive than Boomers and Gen X, it seems abundantly clear that the zoomers are not as reliably Democratic as Millennials (though certainly more progressive than Gen X). In fact, the only age group where there wasn't a swing to Trump was older voters, i.e. the Boomers.

This was a referrendum on Biden's governance and the state of the economy, with cultural issues, even abortion, playing a much more minor role in people's voting decisions. We don't need to delve into anecdotal experiences of particular families; we have data on how various groups of people said they voted in the election and the reasons they said were most important to them.

I will, however, note that Millennials and Zoomers -- the purported beneficiaries of the changing perceptions of childhood emotional neglect -- have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses, and research suggests they cope much worse than older generations when faced with major crises like the pandemic. What younger generations perceive as "childhood emotional neglect" may well have been a more natural and healthy way to raise independent, strong children who can stand on their own to face the challenges of life, though I would argue that the last generation to raise their children in the best possible way was the Silent Generation, not Gen X.

I am a zoomer, and this accords with my own experience of friends and peers, going far beyond any sort of change in diagnostic standards or treatment-seeking that could otherwise explain the change. You've talked in the past about your experiences with mental health challenges, and I relate to this -- but I would note gently that such longstanding struggles with mental illness might suggest a genetic component (as it does for me), which perhaps makes your biological family less representative of the emotional and social stability of the average person at various points on the political spectrum.

Or, in other words: it's the economy, stupid.

Damn, how can I beat lefties over the head that Institutional racism is directed at whites when Trump's ending one of the largest areas of institutional racism! It's been a good 36 hours. Some of the EO's are kind of silly, but a few of them could be the biggest political turns of my life.

Everything is possible! There is no limit. We can do the things we want to do, all our problems can be fixed, nobody can stop us we have the will and anyone who doubts is succumbing to the only sin. But we will go on anyways! Human flourishing is limitless with optimism and will and this is what America stands for!!!

Who makes hiring decisions? HR. Who works in HR, almost exclusively (especially at major corporations)? Liberal white women.

This is like SCOTUS abolishing affirmative action in college admissions, literally meaningless so long as the same people are making admissions decisions.

This directly benefits my career.

If you work in tech, the number of black and Hispanic engineers is so low that the impact on your career will be very limited. Amusingly, the biggest beneficiaries of a full end to affirmative action in employment would be the kind of progressive white men who work in book publishing, media, advertising and humanities academia, but as I said, it’s not going to end, just happen unofficially.

If it rids companies of hour long lectures on microaggressions, at least that's a step.

To be replaced with more equally boring training on how to identify phishing emails, ‘interacting with coworkers from different cultures’, communications skills and networking workshops.

Jokes on you, we already have all that other stuff.

Of course, but it can always be increased in volume.

I'd still be okay with this, comparatively speaking.

Sure, but micro aggression bullshit is worse.

HR doesn't make hiring decisions, do they? At least at my (tech) company, they, at best, facilitate hiring. Hiring is determined by the engineers and managers.

They frequently pre-screen applicants before they ever go in front of an engineer or manager.

That's actually "recruiting", and they're usually either separate from HR (or outsourced entirely) or a separate thing within it. At least in tech recruiters are far more likely to be male than HR bureaucrats. And tempermentally they're not bureaucrats, they're salespeople.

Our recruiters (for an engineering focused org) are mostly women, and are incredibly bureaucratic about blocking resumes. Including in situations where managers have told someone "Hey, I think you'd be perfect, I'd like you to apply". Resume not only never makes it to the manager's desk (even if there are literally zero other candidates), but there is nothing the manager can do to lean on HR other than to re-post the position with changes.

I've seen it happen multiple times, including to people who should have set off all of HR's demographic desire bells. Our HR and their control is probably the biggest reason why I'm looking at other career prospects.

HR screens initial candidates who are then put in front of the relevant teams.

Replying to @falling-star too

Well, I can say that's not the way it works in my company, which may not be quite the norm. In my company, individual teams drive the hiring process, including finding candidates. Recruitment does a call, but it's mostly to prep candidates in what comes next. If they narrowed out a candidate during an intense hiring period for reasons other then serious flags, there would be hell to pay. Managers have a difficult enough time getting candidates through the hiring pipeline as is.

If individual teams already have full discretion over hiring then presumably abolishing DEI will have minimal impact anyway (it will either continue to happen if individual managers put their fingers on the scale for ideological reasons, or it won’t if they don’t).

HR is involved and will push managers and hiring decisionmakers towards diversity candidates, but they're not, at least in tech, a literal screen. Orders like Trump's will remove some of HR's ability to push; they can no longer say DEI will be better for getting government contracts, for instance.

Clueless recruiters have often blocked people I've referred to my company so that they don't even get a phone screen. In most cases it's because the recruiters are incompetent and can't understand a resume, but there may be some DEI thumb on the scale here as well.

What I’ve seen is two-fold: (1) if we are hiring a larger class, then there are effectively AA slots and (2) people understand incentives and so if there is a URM they will push them through the interview process provided they are reasonably in the same church (if not pew) as the other candidate.

Yes, that's my assessment based on my company. It's a big company, but I know that at least one other big company totally differs from mine in how hiring is done (it's more central, less team-owned). I don't know which is closer to the norm for others companies.

Despite all of my company's flaws, I've always been proud of the fact that I really don't know any diversity hires. The team owned and data driven process to assess candidate skills have been very effective at keeping DEI's influence on hiring almost non-existent.

Even if HR does initial screens, they aren't throwing the resumes of qualified applicants in the circular file just because they're (probably) white. Most of it is throwing out the massive volume of garbage applications from people who have no hope of getting the job in any universe. Usually they don't even do a great job at this, especially if this work is outsourced to a recruiting company. My brother had a manager who was completely incompetent but only ended up getting fired after it was discovered that he was sharing personal information of female employees with people who didn't need to know about it. A friend of ours (who used to work with my brother) works for a company that was looking to hire a manager and the hiring team was complaining that all their staffing company was doing was sending them this loser's application over and over again.

And if I’m the management who already dislikes HR maybe I fire them and out source a portion of their work.

Fire them for what? Affirmative Action doesn't give private companies license to ignore Title VII. Any "affirmative Action Hires" you can find are likely going to be marginal cases where the resume was similar to a qualified non-minority candidate. The upshot is that any AA on the part of your HR department isn't going to be consequential to the point where it's worth laying off the majority of your HR department so you can pay them unemployment on top of the increased rates you're going to be paying an outside contractor to do the work. Not to mention the fact that this outside contractor isn't going to be as familiar with your company and it's policies as your existing staff. My firm outsources its billing to a third party firm and my boss has hour-long weekly Zoom meetings with them just to make sure they're doing what we need them to do. And this is a relatively small firm. In any event, let's not pretend you're going to give some company in India major say in hiring decisions.

Fire them because the vast majority of their actions actually reduce value. I think most of HR is bullshit and the very limited value add could easily be outsourced. This is just a signal that lawsuits will be easier to defend and therefore reduces the CYA of HR.

And then hire who? The industry's biases are endemic. Even if you have a pragmatic and fair HR leader, it's insanely difficult to find non-racist/sexist HR professionals.

Then, government is its own animal. You need to both know and understand how it works, and be comfortable with being part of the grift machine. They're checking boxes. Affirmative action made things easier for them: You have two hires, they've all lied about their qualifications, and you don't have to think about work ethic or intelligence. You just say "Darkest Wins" and move on.

Sorry for the blackpill, but an EO changes far less than you would suggest. Maybe 10% improvement. This needs to be enshrined in law, and even then it can't be 100% effective.

With no one. I just don’t think HR is a valuable cost center.

With no one.

And then you get sued, and the EEOC going after you, until you're forced out of business. Like Jim says, HR departments are a tentacle of the state inserted into every corporation, via threat of lawfare.

Who makes hiring decisions? HR. Who works in HR, almost exclusively (especially at major corporations)? Liberal white women.

If I had told you this LBJ EO existed, you would have guessed Trump wouldn't do anything. Your skepticism is rebuked! Trump and his people are in charge now, not the HR.

OK. We’ll see if he deports more than even (a pathetic) 25% of the illegal alien population, then we can talk about winning.

All he has to do is enforce penalties on employers and they’ll self deport

I'm happy with this EO but I think calling Trump an idiot who couldn't govern was reasonable during his first term. He spent like a drunken sailor on non Covid stuff (more than double Biden!) to purchase a tax cut, a trade war, remain in Mexico, Space Force, and he warp sped a vaccine. Negotiated with the Taliban to end the war. No new wars. Pressured NATO to up the price of admission. And as an indefatigable culture warrior, he got the ball rolling on a vibe shift. Okay, all great.

But no wall. Lots of illegals regardless. No Trumpcare. Domestic manufacturing barely budged. People in his orbit regularly went to prison, were disbarred, or quit. The trade deficit remained the same. No critical infrastructure. No strategic industrial policy. Covid was a disaster despite him publicly saying it'd be gone in a few months, while saying on private tape he knew it wouldn't be. Initiated the stimulus stairway to inflation. Total of 8.4T added to the deficit (also double Biden). Nationwide riots under his watch. Historic amounts of golf. Told Brad Raffensperger 'I'm informing you that certifying the current GA votes is illegal, so certifying them will cause big problems for you' thus igniting the embers of J6. All this while The Blob remained unaffected.

I think its fair to ask for better, and notice that Trump 1.0 wasn't the most effective leader. Trump 2.0 could deliver, but a victory lap now is retro causal. Trump is energetic and with it for a 78 year old, and JD Vance is sharp and hardworking. Here is to hoping for a golden age!

I'm happy with this EO but I think calling Trump an idiot who couldn't govern was reasonable during his first term.

It seems to me that the "idiot" part of it is wildly overplayed. The explanation that seems more consistent with everything that has come after is that he was a neophyte that hadn't learned how to do politics beyond having such incredible retail political ability that he was able to defeat entrenched opponents and take command of their party. Not knowing how to run the government machine once he was in is absolutely a reasonable criticism, but it doesn't imply that he was an "idiot". To all appearances, he spent his four years out of office professionalizing his campaign team, creating a ready-made staff that's ready to actually implement policy plans, and allowing that team to draft orders to override the recalcitrant bureaucracy. It seems unlikely to me that an "idiot" would do that.

Trump term 1 was great. The negatives you're describing are almost entirely the outcomes of people opposing Trump: wall not finished, "nationwide riots," no infrastructure bill, Trumpcare failing because of McCain, etc. The lesson isn't that Trump couldn't govern, the lesson is that he faced unprecedented opposition and still kept fighting! That is why I can correctly predict that Trump 2 is even better than before, and you could not

A central part of being an effective leader is allaying opposition to actually get things done. Blaming people he failed to lead makes no sense unless everyone is a good leader, people just don't listen. Despite the massive debt, Trump didn't even start the wall he promised. He won the popular vote this time, and seems better prepared and better supported. I expect it to be better than before, which is a low bar.

Trump didn't even start the wall he promised

This is flatly not true btw I think you're probably too deep in despair to recognize what is and isnt true

I mean he did say repeatedly that he would build a concrete wall. And along the whole border. And Mexico would pay for it.

A central part of being an effective leader is allaying opposition to actually get things done.

On a certain level, yes of course, but it's rather reductive to judge someone only on the outcomes. Like, sure, a good general is supposed to win battles (or at least rack up Pyrrhic victories for the opponent), but to call one an idiot because he lost, with no regard for the resources that were on his disposal, and for what his enemy could muster, is a bit silly.

Trump is abolishing Affirmative Action in federal contracting. He is going to order the government to pressure private companies to end Affirmative Action.

No, he's merely giving an executive order to a nominally-subordinate vast bureaucracy, ready to delay, leak, disobey, to cease these things. Whether they obey? Well…

Executive actions are executive orders. EOs have the legal force of a tweet. You can’t go to jail for disobeying a tweet, even if the President tweeted it. Or an EO.

In real life, EOs work when they order an agency to do something it wants to do. In fact, they are generally written by the agency itself. They are certainly reviewed by the agency. EOs are not written high at 3am by Elon Musk with a sharpie on a Denny’s napkin, even if they probably should be. If you know DC, can you make something happen with an EO? Of course. Depends what, though.

…

Basically, DOGE is promising to save the government money through… bureaucratic trench warfare. If you think an executive order is in any way executive, like private sector executive, like actually executive—read about how the process works.

Do you know if any of the new Trump EOs will affect MBEs? There are massive federal subsidies and quotas to companies that are owned by minorities and in my experience it's grift at every level - state, city, etc.

no executive order for btc reserve (yet), which was way hyped-up and his donors expected.


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