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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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It seems like Trump is getting his twitter back. The weird thing is I think red tribe doesn’t want him to get twitter back. I don’t. Blue tribe will put up a big fight over it but actually be very happy if he got twitter back. Then they get his tweets to rally against. For now Musks says he’s thinking about it. From a free speech absolutist view he does have to approve it. But I still want him to say no.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593673844996288512?s=46&t=o4yJPOOQnQoAxYXvJuPdlQ

Man, I have such mixed feelings about this.

I really want Trump to get out of the fucking way. He had his shot at being the hero of the populist right, he failed comprehensively. Somehow his enemies were stronger than ever after his tenure, with an even tighter grip on the culture, the levers of power, and the minds of our youth than ever before. His entire presidency was the perfect examples of one step forward, two steps back. He simply was not the guy.

Is Desantis the guy? 70% chance he's not in my estimation. But I'm willing to give him a shot.

I'd heard some talk that after so many Trump backed candidates ate dirt in the midterms, and Desantis fucking cleaned house, that meant America was "over" Trump. But that doesn't necessarily mean he'd lose a Republican Primary. Especially not with a crowded field, and a 30% cut of the base that's ride or die for him. Republicans will have to pull the same shit the DNC pulled on Bernie, and keep some Trump adjacent candidate in the race to try to split his base, while every other nominee falls in line and endorses someone else chosen behind closed doors.

With my luck, Desantis will be the Trump adjacent candidate they use to split the base, and fucking Jeb Bush will be the anointed insider candidate.

Anyways, Trump getting back on twitter is step 1 to growing his reach again. Right now he's so marginalized only that ride or die portion really gets his messages anymore. He doesn't go viral. Barely anybody even knows what he's saying anymore, beyond second hand accounts of his "melt downs" on Truth Social. My only hope is that he has too much pride to come slinking back to Twitter without Elon issuing a personal apology for the terrible way Twitter treated him, and begging him on his hands and knees to please grace Twitter with his genius and insight again. I guess I have to further hope Elon doesn't then go and do just that.

As much as I'm a free speech guy, and thought his banning was patently ridiculous, now that he's gone, I wish he'd just stay gone. But it's looking like he's going to take the RNC down with him every bit as much as Clinton took the DNC down with her in 2016.

I really want Trump to get out of the fucking way. He had his shot at being the hero of the populist right, he failed comprehensively. Somehow his enemies were stronger than ever after his tenure, with an even tighter grip on the culture, the levers of power, and the minds of our youth than ever before. His entire presidency was the perfect examples of one step forward, two steps back. He simply was not the guy.

He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others. I would not call that a failure. Did other stuff too. Did he make the left worse? Possible, but correlation not causation. Of course, this was not contingent on Trump per say.

Is Desantis the guy? 70% chance he's not in my estimation. But I'm willing to give him a shot.

He seems even more of an 'establishment guy' than Trump.

My only hope is that he has too much pride to come slinking back to Twitter without Elon issuing a personal apology for the terrible way Twitter treated him, and begging him on his hands and knees to please grace Twitter with his genius and insight again. I guess I have to further hope Elon doesn't then go and do just that.

Why would he ask or expect an apology when both he and Elon know it was the old management who banned him.

He appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term

That's congress's doing, not Trump's. All he did was sit in the chair. Any old stooge could have done that, and for less!

What do you mean? The president does nominate the person.

Nobody is saying that the Senate wasn't involved. They obviously are. @pusher_robot was pointing out that it's untrue to say that Trump wasn't involved, and that it was all Congress' doing.

We're evaluating Trump as a potential "leader of the populist right", and Supreme Court nominations are entirely unrelated to one's competency in that role, as Evinceo notes.

Except to the degree that you can get yourself elected as President, in which case just say that, instead of how he "appointed an unprecedented three SCOTUS judges in a single term and others".

We're evaluating Trump as a potential "leader of the populist right", and Supreme Court nominations are entirely unrelated to one's competency in that role,

I disagree.

The alternate explanation is that Trump (and more broadly the Tea Party) accurately identified one of the most significant in terms of attack surfaces in terms of actual damage dealt and flipped it, which is why so0 many blue/grey tribers are now desperate to paint it as a nothing-burger.

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