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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   32690 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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Trump did an interview with "Time," to mark the end of the first 100 days of his second term. The first topic they discussed was Presidential power:

Q: You know better than anyone that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. At the same time, it seems like you are expanding the power of the presidency. Why do you think you need more power?

A: Well, I don't feel I'm expanding it. I think I'm using it as it was meant to be used. I feel that we've had a very successful presidency in 100 days. We've had people writing it was the best first month and best second month, and really the best third month. But that you won't know about for a little while, because it takes a little time in transition. You know, we're resetting a table. We were losing $2 trillion a year on trade, and you can't do that. I mean, at some point somebody has to come along and stop it, because it's not sustainable. We were carrying other countries on our back with, you know, with trade numbers, with horrible numbers, and we've changed it. You see the market fluctuates quite a bit. Today, it's up 1,000 or 1,200 points. It goes up and down, but that will steady out, and we're taking in tremendous amounts of money. We have, as you know, already, 25% on cars, 25% on steel and aluminum—

Q: Mr. President, I think what we’re driving at is that you've taken congressional authority on trade and appropriations. You fired the heads of independent agencies. You're challenging the courts right now, as you know. You're using the levers of government to weaken private institutions like law firms and universities. Isn't this seizing power away from institutions and concentrating them inside the presidency?

A: No, I think that what I'm doing is exactly what I've campaigned on. If you look at what I campaigned on, for instance, you can talk about removing people from the country. We have to do it because Biden allowed people to come in through his open border crazy, insanity. He allowed people to come into our country that we can't have in our country. Many criminals—they emptied their prisons, many countries, almost every country, but not a complete emptying, but some countries a complete emptying of their prison system. But you look all over the world, and I'm not just talking about South America, we're talking about all over the world. People have been led into our country that are very dangerous. If you were walking down the street, and if you happen to be near one of these people, they could, they would kill you, and they wouldn't even think about it. And we can't have that in our country.

Q: So you're not concentrating more power in the presidency?

A: I don't think so. I think I'm using it properly, and I'm also using it as per my election. You know, everything that I'm doing—this is what I talked about doing. I said that I'm going to move the criminals out. I saw what was happening early on when I heard that he had open borders, when I, because it was a hard thing to believe. I built hundreds of miles of wall, and then he didn't want to, and we had another, an extra hundred miles that I could have put up because I ordered it as extra. I completed the wall, what I was doing, but we have, I wanted to build additional because it was working so well. An extension. And he didn't want to do that. And when he said he wasn't going to do that, I said, “Well, he must want open borders.” There were sections that were being built. And he stopped to work on it, and I said, this guy actually wants to have open borders. That's going to be a tragedy for our country. That's going to mean that other countries will release into our country some very rough people.

Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"

He also claimed to have made more trade deals than there are countries... The way he answers questions is peculiar and worth reading. Near the end of the interview:

Q: You were harshly critical of what you called the weaponization of the Justice System under Biden. You recently signed memos—

A:Well, sure, but you wouldn’t be—if this were Biden, well, first of all, he wouldn't do an interview because he was grossly incompetent.

Q: We spoke to him last year, Mr. President.

A: Huh?

Q: We spoke to him a year ago.

A: How did he do?

Q: You can read the interview yourself.

A: Not too good. I did read the interview. He didn't do well. He didn't do well at all. He didn't do well at anything. And he cut that interview off to being a matter of minutes, and you weren't asking him questions like you're asking me.

Q: Well, we appreciate that you are able and willing to answer these questions. It says something about you, Mr. President.

A: I am indeed. I've been answering them for years and I’ve been getting elected by bigger and bigger numbers all the time, but you didn't ask questions like this to Biden, because if you did, he would have crawled under this beautiful desk.

Should we be considering the possibility that Trump has dementia?

  • -20

I think it is obvious now that he has a mild form of dementia.

Scott Alexander wouldn't accept that Biden was senile but it was clear to me early on. It is not professional to diagnose people online, but from the other hand it has to be done for political persons who could cause a lot of harm.

Biden could function because he was surrounded by reasonable people. It does not appear to be the case with Trump. Trump should be removed from the office for reasons of mental incapacity.

  • -15

Biden could function because he was surrounded by reasonable people.

Hardly.

You might be right, but it sounds like so much special pleading.

Biden could function

Really? It didn't look like that to me. It looked like he couldn't function, and he was surrounded by liars who propped him up and did their best to hide and deny any lapses.

Biden should have been removed for reasons of mental incapacity, and he was forced to abandon his already-won primary nomination when he couldn't hide it any more. Trump isn't as bad as that guy, so recent in our memories, so why should I care now? Applying the standard to Trump is just another way to try to take him down, and not a genuine concern about the mental capacity of the executive.

If Wilson, Reagan, and Biden can finish their terms, I don't see why Trump should be any different, and I'm not willing to entertain talk of dementia as anything other than partisan sour grapes.

Biden should have been removed. I am just saying that even though he wasn't, it didn't seem to be so bad because people who actually made the policy on his behalf were reasonable. Not great but competent.

Maybe the same expectation was with Trump. It doesn't matter how crazy he is if the administration is reasonable. No one believed that absurd tariffs will get implemented etc. In a way, the problem is not with Trump but that he is surrounded by people who are not competent.

No one believed that absurd tariffs will get implemented etc.

Have they actually gotten implemented though? I keep hearing that Trump keeps kicking the ball down the road on them. Which is a pretty classic negotiating tactic - hit people with sticker shock, and then walk it back.

I am still very very suspicious that some of the motivations behind the Tariff Whiplash Phenomenon is Secret Sauce Stuff that will come out in 1 - 40 years. Not confident, just suspicious. (There seem to be other plausible explanations.)

Either way, I don't really think Tariff Whiplash is really good evidence that Trump has dementia (I suspect he has lost a step but isn't suffering from a mental illness if that makes sense).

People have been expecting Trump comebacks all the time and somehow he always did. At least with elections, he still had his genius. But ultimately everyone succumbs to old age and loses everything. It is very hard to accept the ultimate demise but with Trump it is now. With Biden most people including Scott Alexander managed to live in denial until the end of his term. Could happen the same with Trump.

How would you differentiate “lost a step” and “suffering from dementia”? Dementia is exactly like that, initially mildly losing a step, with some better days and some worse days. Trump has always been very erratic and that's why many people don't notice. But if you are able to separate his rhetoric, you could see that now he has lost a plot.

How would you differentiate “lost a step” and “suffering from dementia”?

You peak at intelligence in the late teens or early twenties - before you are even eligible to be President. So from that perspective all Presidents have "lost a step" - none of them are as bright as they once were. I think Trump was better at debates in 2016 than in 2024.

I'm not a doctor, so I tend to defer to them for the definition of dementia. Personally I would use a sort of everyday definition - if someone is mentally lucid enough to take care of themselves in the day-to-day. With POTUS, the standard should arguably be higher - "if they can fulfill the duties of the office."

But if you are able to separate his rhetoric, you could see that now he has lost a plot.

Which plot specifically? I don't see "Trump doing wacky stuff with tariffs" as, by itself, indicative of dementia. But I don't typically watch Trump speeches, so if he was noticeably out of it, the way Biden sometimes appeared to be, I wouldn't necessarily notice. If Trump is actually suffering from dementia then he should step down quickly, before it meaningfully impacts his duties.

Less intelligent decisions are one thing but doing senseless things are completely another.

Trump's dealings with tariffs make no sense. Some people continue to refer to hidden motives but by now we are aware that this is not the case. He is not capable to fulfil the duties and is greatly harming the US. It's only going to be worse with every day. A lot of loyal people will be in denial. Just like many still believe in Havana syndrome as real or something like that. And his election was mostly luck. Democrats hid Biden's dementia and people felt cheated and decided to punish them for this. It just happened that Trump was the candidate. Could have been any other guy. Now people will be even more angry when they realize they have been cheated again.

Trump's dealings with tariffs make no sense.

I dunno. I would have a stronger opinion of this if I considered myself more economically literate. But the basic strategy that seems to be shaping up, as reported, of essentially forcing countries to choose between the US and China does make sense. We'll see if he's able to pull it off.

Some people continue to refer to hidden motives but by now we are aware that this is not the case.

I don't really think that's true. Keep in mind that the press has sat on really big stories in the past at the request of the executive branch. If (as has been rumored) China was planning to attack Taiwan - and this precipitated some frantic economic maneuvers - I could definitely see "us" being unaware of the story. I don't hold that theory strongly but it's been in the back of my mind.

Just like many still believe in Havana syndrome as real or something like that.

Why would you use this as an example? (This keeps happening, to me, I swear!)

Almost certainly, Havana Syndrome is real and is being covered up by the US government to smooth over relations with foreign powers and/or conceal the fact that we have and use the same technology. We know how it works (it's a directed energy weapon). It's possible that the symptoms are not even being induced as an anti-personnel attack, but rather an electromagnetic spectrum attack that targets data. President Bush and his family were plausibly affected by this at a summit in Germany (and he wrote about it in his memoir). The Russians have even been reported to have alluded to these types of weapons publicly. There are other incidents, too (such as then-Vice President Richard Nixon being bombarded by extremely high doses of radiation - probably not due to any attempt to harm him, but rather due to a wiretapping attempt) showing that certain foreign powers are willing to irradiate high-ranking US personnel in potentially dangerous ways as part of their espionage programs.

This stuff is all public knowledge and findable on a Google. That doesn't mean that every reported case of Havana syndrome is legit, but there's absolutely zero reason to believe that it's somehow impossible and very good reasons to think it is real.

Now people will be even more angry when they realize they have been cheated again.

And rightfully so, if your idea is true.

More comments

Have they actually gotten implemented though?

"Currently, the US's 145% tariff rate on goods from China and a 10% baseline rate on all other countries are in effect."

Many communities are freaking out right now as either goods or parts used by US manufacturers have now more than doubled in cost. For individuals there's the additional insanity of a flat minimum of $100 / $200 fee for individual packages where the tariff would fall below that amount, starting in one week from now.

There you go - sort of a silly question from me, sorry, it's just that there's been so much stuff announced and then paused that I haven't been tracking when all of these things were actually for real kicking in (as opposed to being announced. I guess I'm not used to the government working so quickly!)

Anyway, to my point, it's looking like The Latest is that they'll be brought back down, at least a bit, supposedly. Which is, again, pretty classic negotiating. Slap them on, show that You Mean Business, pull back when you get a deal, which...might be happening?

For individuals there's the additional insanity of a flat minimum of $100 / $200 fee for individual packages where the tariff would fall below that amount, starting in one week from now.

I hope this helps reshore domestic light manufacturing. Not sure that it will, but that could be good.

I hope this helps reshore domestic light manufacturing. Not sure that it will, but that could be good.

The problem is that applies to any goods or parts that are imported. Need a $2 component to fix something? That’ll he $100 in one week and $200 starting in June. Ordering a batch of prototype pcbs (something no US manufacturer has capacity / interest in providing)? That’ll be $200 extra. The biggest freakout about the tariffs is in communities dealing with or closely associated with small manufacturing businesses as their materials costs are suddenly doubling or more.

This demonstrates possibly the largest single difference between Chinese and Western manufacturers / vendors. China is chock full of manufacturers who are perfectly happy to handle small quantity orders while Western manufacturers by and large are only willing to deal with major customers.

Some still believe that general tarifs apart from specific cases could be a reasonable policy, not great but somewhat reasonable.

I see them as if the hospital director decides that some medicines are too expensive and have many side-effects and suggests replacing them with some complementary medicine (such as homeopathy or any other alternative treatment without evidence base). Trump or his handlers basing his idea about tarifs on 100 year old use cases is exactly like that.

In some third world countries the medical system still uses such treatments. In India it was common for politicians to say that they want to improve healthcare but also dedicate more funds for Ayurveda. It is a total waste of money though and can harm by denying people effective treatments. Poor countries are poor because of corruption and incompetence of leaders.

Any such hospital director in the western country however would be swiftly fired or let to retire. It would be too obvious that he is no longer competent. Otherwise the staff would revolt.

Trump is offering homeopathy to treat cancer. He has lost his plot.

Need a $2 component to fix something? That’ll he $100 in one week and $200 starting in June. Ordering a batch of prototype pcbs (something no US manufacturer has capacity / interest in providing)? That’ll be $200 extra.

Tiptrans (package consolidation) is going to make absolute bank.

Ordering a batch of prototype pcbs (something no US manufacturer has capacity / interest in providing)? That’ll be $200 extra.

My man, are you not familiar with OSHPark and DigiKey Red? The bare PCB options there are fairly cheap as long as you can use their standard stackups.

If you need something more complicated and/or populated, there are choices like Advanced Circuits, too. At least in my area, if you look, there are commercial shops that can populate SMT/TH boards. Admittedly, these might be more than $200 above the Shenzen costs today.

More comments

This demonstrates possibly the largest single difference between Chinese and Western manufacturers / vendors. China is chock full of manufacturers who are perfectly happy to handle small quantity orders while Western manufacturers by and large are only willing to deal with major customers.

Yes. I tend to think this should change. I would prefer it changed in a smoother way, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

JD Vance is competent, but these people are chosen for loyalty

I can understand that some say nothing against Trump because of loyalty. But allowing tariffs destroying economy? That is borderline to treason against the USA. Most likely they are not competent and don't even understand that.

But allowing tariffs destroying economy? That is borderline to treason against the USA.

Is the economy that central to the American nation? I understand that market freedom has been an important component of our political strength, but at the same time, this feels like preparing for the last Cold War right as we are in the midst of a new one.

I think nothing is more important than economy. People talk about different values and in that sense we need more than economy, for example, democracy and pure air (ecology). But economy is a central thing that allows the country to thrive because everything is based on it. It is just that historically the growth was non-existent (0.01% per year) therefore not many past thinkers have mentioned it in the list of good values. We need to add this to the constitution of every country that achieving growth is very important.

I dunno, I think both left and right have been directionally-correct in that the economy is not the end-all-be-all of civilization. Plenty of societies in the past didn't give as much consideration to economic growth, yes, but they seemingly didn't really need it.

The way you wrote this post, I genuinely cannot tell if you are being sincere, because, at risk of mod intervention, it sounds like an alien value. If anything, I think it's the opposite: there are other values that allow us to have economic power, they are what lead to an economy and not strictly the other way around.

We are at this point, and you are concerned, because some of the very values that enable the economy are themselves weakened and endangered.

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Is the economy that central to the American nation?

Yes.

My hypothesis is Trump did not think the stock market would react as negatively as it did, so he has since backtracked.

It is quite an indictment of the Trump administration's competence for them to not know the stock market would respond like that. We'll see if we get anywhere on retreat. April 9 changed the flavor, but not the severity, of the damage. The small shift toward sanity on car parts is good news, but we still have the Section 232s looming over a lot of things, Trump getting played by China, and the 10% tariffs that seemingly are not going to go away.

Imagine you knew in advance that covid restrictions would get introduced all around the world in 2020. Would you predict that the stock market goes down? Of course, you would.

I happen to believe that these restrictions were mostly unnecessary and due to overreaction. But at least covid was real to elderly and risk groups. Increased mortality among them was real due to covid (but also from misapplied restrictions).

Even if covid wasn't real and it was all Chinese hoax the same restrictions would have caused stock market to drop.

Tariffs are exactly like that. If you knew in advance that such tariffs would get implemented, you could bet safely that the stock market is going to react very negatively. That they are introduced to imaginary problem, doesn't change their effects.

Eventually people will have enough and will remove Trump from office and it will recover. I predict that Elon Musk will come out as a winner despite all his mistakes because he seems to be the one disagreeing with Trump (by openly stating that he wishes for zero tariffs between Europe). His loyalty to free market will be rewarded in long term even if we don't see how it could happen now.

Trump had made it abundantly clear during campaign and after winning that there would be tariffs, and even when he floated some tariffs in January 2025 and Feb against Mexico and Canada , the stock market brushed it off, only to crash a month ago. The market seemed to have no problem with tariffs until only a month ago.

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By the metrics of 'accomplishing their/Trump's' agenda, Trump's appointments are mostly highly competent, at least so far.

He doesn't have the kind of dementia where you forget your kids' names, but he obviously has severe cognitive decline relative to any old video of him talking. He's settling further into routinized thought as his mental plasticity disappears. His perception of the world is now filtered through a few basic ideas that are now hard-wired into his brain: trade deficit BAD, media LIARS, deport the illegals. He's not capable of moderating his ideas or taking account how context has changed since he first had these thoughts in the 80s. Which doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. Old people with fixed beliefs can sometimes provide a useful perspective. The issue is with letting him unilaterally make horrible policy decisions in domains where details matter, like trade. Biden's dementia wasn't a big issue, because he surrounded himself with trusted advisors who helped him make the actual policy.

Biden's dementia wasn't a big issue,

Yes, yes it was. Trump's presidency might be worse than Biden's(on the measures I care about it's definitely not, but you might care about different ones), but "Biden talking to dead people, not realizing where he was, unable to make decisions" is obviously disqualifying even if Trump isn't a great president either.

Biden was a replacement level president, who left the running of government to his appointees, to a probably illegal extent. Biden remembering things didn't matter.

Trump routes everything through himself. Leaving things to his appointees would be total chaos.

"using it as it was meant to be used?"

Fundamentally he seems either deliberately unwilling or simply unable to comprehend that the interviewer is asking about means rather than ends. Saying 'I was elected to close the borders/change our terms of trade' is just a total non-sequitur response to the question 'have you expanded the powers of the presidency'. It would be one thing to say 'I don't care about process, I care about results', but he doesn't say that, he's just talking past the question.

AFAIK this is (sadly) standard political interview technique. Open live debate with a hostile interview can go wrong in too many ways, so you don’t do it unless you’re desperate. The standard technique is to totally ignore anything the interviewer says and repeat your talking points until they give up.

Even if the interviewer gives you a jumping off point for what you want to say you still shouldn’t take it because there’s too much chance they've booby-trapped the framing.

Sad but true.

It's not sad, it is a rational response to the fact that journalists have zero interest in reporting anything honestly and are de-facto hostile in every interaction you have with them. You would be a fool to ever answer their questions in the same way you'd answer a friend's or co-worker's. You treat it as an opportunity to get your talking points and story out -- nothing more.

Source: me, a local politician

IQ Distribution Meme.

Left: Why can't he just answer the question??

Middle: The interviewer is hostile and can trivially control the frame.

Right: Trump is feigning ignorance and deliberately misunderstanding the question in order to sneak in a non sequitur in a transparent attempt to change the frame. He must think we're idiots.

Edit: I got the meme exactly backwards. Of fucking course this is one of my most-engaged-with comments in my history on this website. No you're salty.

Alternative, IMO more accurate frame:

Left: Thats a stupid question.

Mid: Why not answer the question.

Right: Obviously no one would respond to a hostile question.

Are you familiar with the meme? The point isn't to flatter the one you agree with as the highest-IQ response. The humor lies in the irony that Joe sixpack could see the world more clearly than the wordcel egghead. Maybe you and I disagree on what levels of intelligence is required for each response.

I think you're the one that's using the meme incorrectly. The first and third propositions are not the same because the third is too wordy. For the meme to work, the idiot has to come to a gut conclusion and not state an open question. The fact that you have to explain what it means and it is not immediately obvious - unlike anti_dan - supports this conclusion.

The humour is that the instinctive/heuristic response of Joe Sixpack is often in line with the ultimate response of a very high IQ guy because JS I’d drawing on correct evolved heuristics. It’s the midair who tries to be contrarian and puts together a cool ‘akshually’ response that both JS and the genius wizard can see isn’t viable.

The way I've always seen it used, the humor is in the fact that people graduate past the naive idiotic conclusion by noticing some principle and grabbing onto it... and then it turns out that if you're even better you go back to the original "idiotic" answer because of some nuance that the principle overlooks.

Yes, I am aware of the meme. You are using it wrong. The overly wordy "High IQ" answer in your depiction is exactly the sort of thing that is classically put as a midwit answer. Plus, journalists themselves are probably the most commonly depicted class of persons as exemplifying the midwit in both this specific meme and internet culture as a whole.

Damn you're right.

That’s what I mean. It’s sad in the broader sense of ‘it would be nice if things weren’t this way’ not ‘loser’.

Good to hear from someone with actual experience!

You know better than anyone that the President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world. At the same time, it seems like you are expanding the power of the presidency. Why do you think you need more power?

The US President is not very powerful, all things considered. Random judges can impose blocks on his domestic policies. He needs the approval of legislators to make permanent changes and the US legislative branch seems to be very slow and inefficient.

What has Trump got the power to achieve? He can bomb countries but struggles to achieve desired political results. Bombing Yemen hasn't stopped them. He makes motions towards annexing Greenland and Canada but can't actually get it off the ground. He can't end the war in Ukraine. He can pump and dump stocks with tariffs but can't fundamentally rearrange global trade in the US's favour, American manufacturing has actually been declining since tariffs began.

He can, over many years, create a few hundred kilometres of border wall that's easily diverted around by future administrations. He can cut taxes and run up debt. He can accelerate COVID vaccine development but can't take credit for it, can barely even convince his supporters to take it. He can beat ISIS, with the help of Russia, EU, Iran, Iraq, Syrian govt, Kurds and co.

The US presidency's main powers are the ability to flail around in highly energetic ways. Xi seems significantly more powerful, he has the ability to create and control, enforce his vision in his own country at minimum. Xi wants less real estate and more manufacturing, it happens. Xi wants a stronger PLA and PLAN, it happens. His fleet isn't shrinking. Xi wants subversive NGOs shut down, they're shut down. Xi wants autarchic economics, domestic food and energy production, it's happening. Xi wants Taiwan but hasn't achieved it.

US legislative branch seems to be very slow and inefficient.

That's because by and large they have given up on legislating as bodies, and instead are some combination of grifters, insider traders, and wanna-be pundits. Also, they're not very representative because turnout is low and very few people are engaged with their local legislative representatives and instead care almost exclusively about presidential/national politics.

What has Trump got the power to achieve? He can bomb countries but struggles to achieve desired political results. Bombing Yemen hasn't stopped them

A tax cut to help the very companies that promote wokeness and censor its users on its platforms. Big handouts to AI companies. But I don't see much else happening legislatively. The real power is in the courts--things like judicial appointments, pardons. SCOTUS is where the real lasting change is. The 2024 ruling on affirmative action, for example. Stimulus and tax cuts tend to be popular.

I agree. The US presidency is powerful inasfar as the US is powerful, but relative to the power of the country, the US president is weak. He is restricted by Congress, by the Senate gerrymander, by random partisan judges and by the Supreme Court. Comparatively, the UK Prime Minister is basically an elected king (albeit one who can be deposed by his MPs if they're not happy with how he's governing).

In practice the UK is an elected dictatorship of the MPs in the governing party (if there is an absolute majority), but the prime minister’s authority is relatively fragile because that system encourages, by its very nature, MPs to depose unpopular prime ministers quickly and brutishly. An American or French president can be far more unpopular in power than a Westminster system PM, and therefore the former have more latitude to make tough decisions.

What has Trump got the power to achieve?

I am tacitly of the opinion that some of the executive orders might actually remain in effect into the next term. Affirmative action and friends (disparate impact, maybe) have long been unpopular (see California referendum results), but have hung on for half a century largely on bureaucratic inertia. Those haven't gotten as much press as some of the more dramatic actions on immigration, and I think EOs to re-establish that might actually be a hard sell for a future administration. Maybe also the Title IX sports changes.

He makes motions towards annexing Greenland and Canada but can't actually get it off the ground.

IMHO I think Trump might actually have been successful with Canada if he had pitched it differently: "I want to work with Justin to investigate forming a great, big, beautiful customs union and harmonization of laws -- we're gonna make trade so easy -- including a roadmap to a more formal union by 2050" sounds at least sellable. "Fifty-first state" really dishonors Canada by putting it equal with, I dunno, Delaware and Rhode Island: Canada has a population around the size of California.

Neoliberals broadly like nice-sounding ideas like "unity" and EU-style bureaucracies, but specific details never sell well (where's that combined EU army?). The only way that seems plausible is to sell the big picture, start the institutional inertia in motion, and let bureaucrats sort out the details down the road: Maybe the US decides to mark speed limits in metric. Maybe it's just a treaty combining military commands and establishing EU-like residency and border rules. What do we do with the existing national governance frameworks?

I'm not sure that I'd endorse the outcome if he had done that, but I don't have any particular animosity towards Canadians and am not gut-opposed to it either.

If there's a future democratic administration, they'll surely undo all Trump's internal culture war executive orders as soon as they can or route around them somehow. It wasn't a great look for Biden to open the floodgates of illegal immigrants but he did it anyway, I don't think they care much about optics in the 'I shall not do this since it will lower my popularity' sense, rather it's the 'if people don't like this we need to improve our messaging' kind of optics. Only if that fails massively and obviously do they change course and grudgingly lock up the criminals, as has been happening in San Francisco.

In Washington State they're giving grants to black homeowners as reparations. That's probably not too popular with the voters but who cares? You can just do things.

From the same interview

Well let’s talk about the tariffs. You want companies to build and make goods here in America.

Not in all cases. There are some products I really don't want to make here.

Like t-shirts?

I can’t–I can give you a list because I actually have a list, but if you want, I could give it to you.

Why does he sound surprised that he has a list of the products he is and isn't trying to encourage domestic production of?

(To be clear I don't think this is evidence of dementia, I think it's evidence that Trump's policy positions are not chosen on the basis of being likely to achieve specific economic/diplomatic/etc goals)

To me this sounds a specious reasoning. People with dementia often continue doing the same things that there doing in their lives and have internalized them. Even with half-rotten brain some patterns are so strong that they can do those things quite well. It is just that they loose a plot how it relates to the reality.

Trump is famous for his deflecting and highly confusing talk. He has done it whole life and it has brought him success. He can still do it, it just doesn't relate to anything real anymore. He is on autopilot to throw the interviewer off. Too bad that it doesn't make any sense. But people are used to Trump not making any sense therefore they don't notice any difference.

I used to listen to Trump and previously he made all sense. It was just people found a fault with his manners and way of speaking that they criticized him unduly for things that he actually didn't meant too. The classic example is that Trump encouraged drinking bleach. He didn't, he only said something expressing wishes to find a scientific way to disinfect lungs from pathogens with UV light or some other method. Which is actually what the science to actively trying to do (it is a hard problem, no good solutions so far). Accusations of him were completely unjust, tribally driven. If you discarded this mentality and tried to be neutral, you could easily see that.

But now what he says is mostly rubbish. Or maybe you are right that his goal simply is not to achieve anything but troll us all. Which could also be a sign of dementia because he was trolling people all his life and has internalized that behaviour. But at least he had some goals before. Now only trolling remains.

It's always helpful to remember that Donald Trump a) will never intentionally admit he did anything wrong b) is a fully post-truth individual. I don't think Trump has been all there in a while, but he's also a narcissist and a pathological liar.

On a different note, this interview helpfully provides an illustration of how Trump likes to pretend to be retarded but is also just an idiot. They're quite easy to tell apart. Compare:

TIME: The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that you have to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia. You haven't done so. Aren’t you disobeying the Supreme Court?

Trump: Well, that’s not what my people told me—they didn’t say it was, they said it was—the nine to nothing was something entirely different.

TIME: Let me quote from the ruling. “The order properly requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador.” Are you facilitating a release?

Trump: I leave that to my lawyers. I give them no instructions. They feel that the order said something very much different from what you're saying. But I leave that to my lawyers. If they want—and that would be the Attorney General of the United States and the people that represent the country. I don't make that decision.

to

TIME: Well, I mean, the question is, how can CEOs make long-term plans and investments if our tariff policy can change from day to day and still remains so uncertain?

Trump: How can they make long-term investments? I'll turn it around. How can they make long-term investments if our country is losing $2 trillion a year on trade?

TIME: Will you consider giving exemptions—

Trump: No wait, just so you understand. How can we sustain and how is it sustainable that our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade in Biden years, in this last year. That's not—when you talk about a company. I had the head of Walmart yesterday, right in that seat. I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I'll tell you what they think, they think what I'm doing is exactly right.

"Golly shucks, I'm just the president of the United States, what do I know about one of my banner policies?" vs defensive gibberish.

Trump: No wait, just so you understand. How can we sustain and how is it sustainable that our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade in Biden years, in this last year. That's not—when you talk about a company. I had the head of Walmart yesterday, right in that seat. I had the head of Walmart. I had the head of Home Depot and the head of Target in my office. And I'll tell you what they think, they think what I'm doing is exactly right.

yeah, these big companies have the cashflow, pricing power, and market dominance to withstand tariffs, smaller competitors do not. this works to their advantage, especially after trump is gone and tariffs are reversed. Its not so much about tariffs being good economically, but that it hurts their competitors.

our country lost almost $2 trillion on trade

"lost". It honestly is just so extremely stupid. As if it were that we had something of value that was just lit on fire. Or was simply stolen from us without providing anything in return. As if I should say that I "lost" however much money to Walmart last year. Or that my employer "lost" money in employing me. The entire point of those trades is that each and every party to them gained more value than they "lost"; otherwise, they wouldn't have made the trade!

It is stupid. Trade deficit is basically about buying things on credit. Not good in itself, but it doesn't mean that you are buying bad things. Americans buy that stuff because they really like it. It is a good deal.

Now you could argue that going deeper into debt is problematic. You buy too much cheap staff from Walmart with the credit card? What can you do? Maybe stop buying (austerity policy, increase of taxes) or get a better paying job.

Growth supporters suggest the second but maybe sometimes the first is also needed.

Trump suggest a different way. Put a tax on cheap Walmart stuff, even so much tax, so that you would quit your well paying job and start making all these Walmart things yourself. It will make you poorer because Chinese provide this stuff by paying their workers less. You will lose your salary in your high tech job and instead will get paid much less in some factory. And nobody outside the US will buy the stuff you make because initially it will be of low quality. It takes many years to learn to manufacture quality things. The learning curve is real.

Tariffs were used 100 years ago and abandoned like we abandoned ineffective treatments in medicine. Some poor countries still use them because they are so bad at collected tax that tariffs is the only way they manage to finance government.

agree. it's like thinking that imports subtract from GDP and should be avoided at all costs

Probably not the examples you want to use for that argument.

Employers do regularly lose money and value in employing bad employees and producing bad value. We know this because employers regularly go out of business. Those bad employees will be ideally fired before that, but their are reasons from corruption to labor protection laws to conflicts of interests why value-losing employees. Trades are made on an expectation of some sort of value gain, trade is not a proof that the value has bee gained. Especially when there are reasons beyond the initial value-premise that trades keep happening (not least because [value] isn't static).

Shoppers do regularly lose- in the sense of waste- money on goods and services. There are entire industries based around the legal and psychological tricks to make people spend more than they 'rationally' should, particularly for luxury non-essentials. 'Value' is not a fully substitutable nature- hence historic prohibitions against gambling and addictive, no matter how much 'value' that fun has, or against recognition that parasitic corruption is bad no matter how much easier it makes the 'buyer's' life to engage in that bit of society-wide prisoner's delimma.

Not all trades are good, any more than all investments are good. There are plenty of bad, corrupt, wasteful, and outright harmful investments. It is not hard to find histories of similar trade dynamics fully open to critiques of being driven by bad decisions and bad value judgements. Treating either 'trade' or 'investment' as axiomatic virtues because the point of the word is the good thing is not going to be convincing to skeptics of judgement.

I think it's still perfectly fine. Absent some significant external reasoning, the continued existence of trade is at least a prima facie reason to think that there is probably value there. For precisely one of the reasons you give; if businesses keep paying lots of people who aren't providing them value, they go out of business.1 As such, they're probably going to try to fire you if you're consistently negative value. As you say, it is obviously not proof that 100% of all employment relationships are positive sum, but if the vast majority of them aren't, then almost everything is thrown out the window (...all of the businesses go bankrupt, etc.). One can acknowledge that some percentage probably aren't perfect, but then we have to get into details of whether/how we can identify them from the outside, whether/how we have any tools to change that, or if it's best to just acknowledge that the employers are in a better position to judge the value of their employment relations. They have the best incentive to make sure that the lion's share of their employment decisions are positive value, and we should observe that they are, indeed, positive value. Normal curves are normal, but the mean is positive, and probably significantly so.

None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".

make people spend more than they 'rationally' should

Again, one must impose some sort of external reasoning to overcome the prima facie case. You point out one of the very very few examples where this external reasoning is the strongest - gambling - for we can simply compute the mathematics and have almost no need to get into the much thornier problems that such external reasoning normally requires.

No refined conversation here would allow us to look at the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost".

Not all trades are good, any more than all investments are good. There are plenty of bad, corrupt, wasteful, and outright harmful investments. It is not hard to find histories of similar trade dynamics fully open to critiques of being driven by bad decisions and bad value judgements.

Fully granted. Now, overcome the prima facie case that most are good (especially given some conditions on freeness and such) by calling upon some sort of specific external reasoning for the instant case. Not just that there is some tail on the normal distribution, where someone bought some useless gadget from Temu or whatever. Justify that the entire trade (in goods) deficit is "lost".

1 - Note that the fact that businesses go out of business is "probably not the example you want to use for that argument". The vast majority of the time, businesses go out of business for a whole host of other reasons that are significantly more poignant than just making some bad deal with some employee(s).

Fully granted. Now, overcome the prima facie case that most are good (especially given some conditions on freeness and such) by calling upon some sort of specific external reasoning for the instant case. Not just that there is some tail on the normal distribution, where someone bought some useless gadget from Temu or whatever. Justify that the entire trade (in goods) deficit is "lost".

The prima facie concept itself is what is in doubt / contested. The construct that shapes the [valuation] of trades is what is being challenged.

The question isn't whether there is value in the trade. The question is whether the value-distribution resulting from the structure is desirably structured. Or in other framings, it is a direct questioning of whether the [value] the system delivers is actually valuable compared to other considerations of [value]. The judgements of preferences decades/generations ago are not inherently persuasive.

To bring an extreme historical metaphor- there were a lot of 'good' trades between Britain and India during the British empire. 'Most trades are good' could honestly be made on most trades that were made. However, the macroeconomic structure of the system meant that the [value] that was generated was not mutually beneficial. India economically devolved as these 'good trades' continued. The British Isles certainly benefited from being the seat of empire, but the benefits to the Indians were incidental, not deliberate. This [value] got worse, not better, the more trade occurred, despite the [value] being greater and greater to the British.

So when you say-

None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".

The answer is... sure. Similarly, no amount of trade volume can be looked at and say 'this represents [value] gained.'

The only way to make a moral judgement on the nature of the trade is to make a moral judgement on the structure of the trade. Big numbers good if you think the big number implies a good thing. But by a different premise, bad trade structures get worse, not better, with scale.

Now, on a less-extreme historical metaphor, but one more relevant to the United States- the value of the neoliberal model in play starting in the 90s and since.

A lot of neoliberal economists have argued over the decades that this was a Good Deal. Free market liberalization and international trade allowed cheaper imports and increases to the value-added economy. That the [value] to the United States outweighed the [costs]. GDP per capita would go up. And lo and behold, it did.

The issue is that [the United States] is not an individual actor. It is a collective of hundreds of millions of individuals. And the [value] most appreciated gained went to people and actors who did not suffer the [costs]. The system did not produce results in which everyone felt they were gaining [value]. The Rust Belt, once a significant contributor of [value] to the nation, did not become an even larger contributor of [value], except in so much that sacrificing their interests benefited others. The [value] that went into American shipyards was better able to grow in other ways.

Which is fine in and of itself. Winners and losers and all that.

Except that the neoliberals were also wrong on various [cost] estimates. Not only were they wrong about the nature of the [cost] that would be born by people other than themselves. They were also wrong about what future collective values would [value]. The neoliberals did not place much [value] on sovereign supply chains. They placed high [value] on [cheaper supply chains], with things like the just-in-time model reducing [costs] like warehousing and stockpiles and such.

They did not recognize things like, say, global pandemics or cyber-sabotage that could paralyze distribution systems and leave to supply bottlenecks at ports. They did not think profit-minded countries would make deliberate plays at developing global monopolistic power on supply chain inputs, even selling at a loss, and then using economically-irrational cutoffs as a geopolitical weapon. They did not factor in policies intended to result in regulatory capture of global markets beyond sovereign borders. They did not recognize that a military, or paramilitary, could be crippled by attacking the supply chain and replacing cellphones and radios with bombs enmass. They did not think that countries might want an industrial base capable of massive wartime production capacity on short notice.

Or if they did recognize it, they didn't value it very much. But modern governments do. And governments- not just Trump but globally- have begun to hire people who have somewhat different [value] judgements.

So when you say things like-

One can acknowledge that some percentage probably aren't perfect, but then we have to get into details of whether/how we can identify them from the outside, whether/how we have any tools to change that, or if it's best to just acknowledge that the employers are in a better position to judge the value of their employment relations. They have the best incentive to make sure that the lion's share of their employment decisions are positive value, and we should observe that they are, indeed, positive value. Normal curves are normal, but the mean is positive, and probably significantly so.

I'm inclined to agree. I'm also inclined to consider [advocates of neoliberal models] to be equivalent to the [employees] in this metaphor, and that the new waves of [employers] place increasing relevance on characteristics other than process economic efficiency when determining [value]. We'd probably both agree that [employees] who are not delivering the desired [value] to their [employers] quote-unquote 'should' be fired to improve [value].

I'm also fairly sure you'd disagree with their judgements on value. But that in and of itself is the point- the judgement of how to [value] things is a first principle judgement. The [employee's] appeal to a prima facie is not actually relevant if it is not actually the prima facie standard.

Most of this is "refined discussion", which I am generally not opposed to.

None of this refined conversation means that we can just look at the total wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost".

The answer is... sure.

But this is really where we are. And I think we can mostly jump to:

So when you say things like-

No refined conversation here would allow us to look at the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost".

My instinctive response is to find this a claim needing justification I doubt you'd be able to provide. Not because you wouldn't have arguments, but because I doubt you'd recognize or acknowledge as worthy of respect paradigms where spending at Walmert could be concluded as 'lost.'

I would simply request a description of a single paradigm in which one can simply sum up the entire amount that consumers spend at Walmart and conclude that the entire sum is "lost". A single paradigm in which one can simply sum up the entire amount of wages paid by employers in the country and say that this amount is "lost". I don't know whether I would recognize or acknowledge it as worthy of respect until I hear at least one. I don't think you've presented one. I think you're in the land of refined discussions of details and percentages and such, where things can be shaded slightly through some other valuations and other external reasoning. Nothing close to, "Yeah, that entire amount is just lost."

(Just so you don't have to guess, I am sympathetic to external reasoning about supply chains for defense/pandemics/etc. That is a far cry from simply saying that just the bulk dollar figure is "lost".)

In 2004 I watched some episodes of The Apprentice and he seemed sharper. Trump today is not quite there. Not quite dementia, but not at 100%. Trying to make a diagnosis based on a transcript or TV is always going to be unreliable. There is a reason the criteria for dementia are defined in a certain way. Specific criteria have to be met, like the failure to recall a small string of numbers, fewer than even at the low-end of an IQ test. A diagnosis of dementia entails a significantly reduced level of mental performance, not just sounding bad on TV.

I think also some of this is playing to the audience. Trump repeats himself and uses simple language to prevent being misunderstood.

Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"

I think the only think Trump has done that really counts as an expansion of Presidential power (off the top of my head, but I am quite willing to be shown other examples) is asserting authority over independent agencies. (Pushing for diversity of viewpoint from universities also seems...novel...but I have not read the supposed authorities cited and "regulators pushing an extremely novel interpretation of US civil rights law on universities" is not exactly new, so I am not sure if that's really a good example, but it is the other one that readily comes to mind.)

I believe there's a fairly mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that holds that these independent agencies shouldn't exist, because they are not contemplated in the traditional Constitutional scheme, as they are neither executive agencies, nor part of Congress, nor part of the judiciary. Under that interpretation, Trump is not expanding his power by asserting authority over independent boards - he is exercising authority that has always been his, over all executive agencies. And in fact it seems to me like an awful lot of the stuff that Trump has done that's been attacked as being a novel use of Presidential power has just been exercising latent power over the executive branch.

From my point of view, the most problematic thing Trump has done from a separation-of-powers issue might be TARIFFS. Congress is supposed to make the laws, and, you know, our overall tariff policy is pretty important and under the original Constitutional schema probably would be left to Congress to decide. But guess what? Congress - as I understand it - decided to delegate him those powers. So he's not aggregating new powers to himself, unless SCOTUS rules that those powers are inherently those of Congress and that the executive may not modify them, which as far as I know they have not done. And probably are unlikely to do.

I think it's quite fair to argue that Trump is sort of double-dealing here - he's pushing (on the one hand) for expanded executive power from what might be a more originalist or right-of-center angle (the "you can't delegate too much power to unelected bureaucrats" theory of the Constitution) while on the other hand he's making maximal use out of the power that Congress delegated him under the more modern way of doing things (you might call this the "legislating is hard, let's let the President do that" theory of the Constitution) that might itself be subject to criticism under more originalist means of governing.

But here's the fundamental deal. The executive was always supposed to have a lot of decisive authority over the executive branch. It's just that the scope of his duties was originally quite small. Over the course of 200 years a number of makeshift patches were applied in US law that arguably would not fly by original-intent standards but (charitably) were necessary to make the Constitution workable so that the President and Congress could delegate sufficient functions to experts or (uncharitably) were necessary to subvert democracy by placing an unelected class of power-maximizing bureaucrats between the American people and their elected representatives and the levers of power. (That's not the only two options, and I think the truth of the matter is more complex than either or both of them, but I think phrasing it like that is clarifying). And when wielding both of those powers, the President might be much more powerful than contemplated under either the original or hotfixed versions of the Constitution.

And now we've essentially gotten the point where the President is willing to make vigorous use of the full scope of his authority under both the Constitution and those makeshift patches that we've applied, and in a way that is not only controversial but also impacts a lot of people. (Remember that Obama straight-up drone struck a noncombatant American citizen, which was controversial and arguably a bigger Presidential power-grab than anything Trump has done, but it only, ah, impacted a few people directly.) So now, maybe, Congress will decide to take the reins and do something about it.

Or not. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it.

So he's not aggregating new powers to himself, unless SCOTUS rules that those powers are inherently those of Congress and that the executive may not modify them, which as far as I know they have not done. And probably are unlikely to do.

Given how extreme Trump's tariff policy is, they may invoke "major questions doctrine," as with Biden's student load policy.

Quite possible. I don't know that much about the legal grounding of the tariffs. My understanding is that Congress delegated a truly insane amount of authority to POTUS in "times of emergency" - I suppose SCOTUS might also rule there is no justifying emergency.

The fundamental issue, I think, is that SCOTUS and Congress want POTUS to have sweeping emergency powers. They have arguably relied overmuch on "norms" to govern the President's use of them.

Should we be considering the possibility that Trump has dementia?

No.

I'm sure Trump is declining from his peak but you're just

Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"

How about the one where most of the stuff Trump is doing is actually upheld in court or not even challenged in the first place. It's only a few cases that the fake news is trying to use to try to dunk on Trump.

Biden got bonked in court many times as well, but I never saw the never trumpers criticize him one bit for it.

I'm sure Trump is declining from his peak but you're just

Just what?

I got distracted and didn't finish my thought. Given that I'm under 35 so I still can't be president yet, it's safe to say that I don't have dementia either though.

Although an interview is insufficient to diagnose dementia, I think there is something to be said for age related mental decline . I have seen it. Just go to anywhere old people tend to congregate and eavesdrop. Their conversations tend to be very simple. Even if they have advanced degrees and were successful, by their 70s they have regressed a lot. Now compare to conversations by college students, which are faster-paced and more complex. This is why I spend so much time on writing and math, to avoid a similar fate. I am not going to be 70 and sounding like one of those people who have mentally checked out for the remaining 20-30 years of their life ("dead at 50 and buried by 80"). I don't think Trump has checked out, but this is a speech pattern of his.

While I disapprove of him generally, and don't trust his Constitutional analysis as far as I could throw it, I do have to sympathize with his bemused "this is what I talked about doing" refrain. It was, and if I was in his shoes I would probably feel equally bemused and annoyed that the media flips its lid every time I implemented another point of the program I'd been very loudly advocating for years, as if I'd gotten elected under false pretenses and revealed hidden true colors. I'd wager he's less concerned with the exact wording of the law than with a sense of… fair play? "Well I said I'd do all this, and the American people elected me anyway in full knowledge of that, so it can't be as outrageous and anti-democratic as my enemies are now claiming."

I'd wager he's less concerned with the exact wording of the law than with a sense of… fair play? "Well I said I'd do all this, and the American people elected me anyway in full knowledge of that, so it can't be as outrageous and anti-democratic as my enemies are now claiming."

Unless the administration is trying to expand Presidential power, since you can't elect someone to do something unconstitutional.

Sure you can!

Voters elected George W. Bush, in part, to defend a traditional concept of marriage that had existed for well over 2000 years and had never been questioned by the men who wrote the Constitution.

Turns out that was unconstitutional!

Your first line reminds me of a famous political speech, which seems oddly relevant to the topic at hand:

We know the battle ahead will be long. But always remember that, no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. And they will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come.

We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

(Not trying to make an argument here, I just had a memory lightbulb light up and I thought it was funny.)

Trump has always sounded like that. He's definitely slowed down as he's aged, but he has probably the most distinctive cadence in a politician today. I would argue that the only sign of senility I'd take seriously is if he suddenly started speaking normally because that's Trump reading off a canned script.

His opposition's sneers about his dementia were always whataboutism, deflecting from Biden's (obvious) incapacity. In the aftermath of the former president's downfall, it feels like so much vivicarious seethe: 'now it's our turn to throw this attack in their faces!'

But no, that's not how it works. The coverup was worse than the scandal, so to speak. Trump gets a pass on his age because of his opponent's hypocrisy. People aren't that stupid. Trump isn't going for reelection anyway, so if his brain goes out before the midterms Vance is ready for prime time in a way Kamala was not.

People have regularly been pointing out that Trump routinely devolves into gibberish since 2016 at least. This is a guy whose re-entry into the political sphere was in the form of spearheading the most trivially disprovable conspiracy theory I've ever seen. His mental fitness is not a new topic. His supporters just don't care, because they have never cared about any aspect of Trump's fitness.

If you want to hit politicians for pushing things that are obviously not true then you can throw in the entire left and their belief in intersectional social justice. People hate polished and focused grouped politicians so much that they're willing to give rambling grandpa a chance. The ultimate test of a politician's fitness is the electorate, not whatever gatekeeping standards mostly imagined by the readers of the New York Times.

If you want to hit politicians for pushing things that are obviously not true then you can throw in the entire left and their belief in intersectional social justice.

Can goals not be true? They can certainly be impossible to achieve, or theoretically possible but only at such great cost that no one would think it was worth the sacrifice involved, but I don't think the goals that motivate intersectional social justice can really be "false" in this way.

Technically, I think you could believe in HBD, reject blank statism and still have the basic goals of intersectional social justice. You'd just be using different levers to achieve your agenda than are currently used by progressives.

But this is all a bit silly anyways. There's plenty of wrong to go around for politicians of all political stripes. I think the nature of politics is that it is almost impossible for political coalitions to have a set of policies that connect to their stated goals in a coherent and evidence-based way.

If you want to hit politicians for pushing things that are obviously not true then you can throw in the entire left and their belief in intersectional social justice.

Now you're just threatening me with a good time. Can we also hit the politicians who pushed rent control, CAFE standards, absurd occupational licensing requirements, etc while we're there?

Yes, but you have to do all that FIRST, otherwise it's just who/whom.

He didn't sound like this during The Apprentice . There are plenty of videos of trump pre-2016 when he's not campaigning and he sounds more normal. It's like he knows he has to dumb it down when on camera. it's like code switching. But it's hard to argue with success.

[epistemic status: shitpost]
Based on my observations it's pretty easy to argue with success.

Should we be considering the possibility that Trump has dementia?

Do you think so?

If so, why?

You've not made a position. Vaguely gesturing towards quoted material without taking a position is not taking a position.

There's a trick in the question.

Is using the Alien Enemies Act, for example, to immediately deport a members of a particular 'foreign' gang an "Expansion" of Presidential powers?

The AEA has been used by Presidents before, and its existed for almost as long as the Presidency has existed.

But Trump may be using it in a 'novel' way to perform an act that was not originally anticipated by Congress or explicitly approved by the courts...

So question becomes:

Has the President ALWAYS had the authority to do this under the AEA, and Trump was just the first one to receive an electoral mandate to use this authority...

or

Is Trump CREATING the power to do this via utterly novel interpretation and application of the law, and possibly thumbing his nose a 'traditional' boundaries on Presidential power... and he thinks he can get away with it?

I really think its the former. Trump saw a particular law that granted a particular power, sitting there dusty and unused in the warehouse of executive authority, and reached over and pulled the lever to activate it. But it has always been sitting there, he didn't invent it or wrest it from Congress or the Courts.

So ask that question about most of his actions. Is he 'expanding' power to take the particular actions he's taken, or do most, or even ALL of the powers he's wielding have established precedent in previous administrations, he's just one of the first to wield ALL of them this aggressively, so it looks like a scary expansion of power.

My personal view, as a guy that voted for Ron Paul in 2012, is that Trump is literally just flexing the full set of powers and authority that Congress has ceded to the President and that the Courts have permitted to continue for decades and decades.

I'm STILL mad about the PATRIOT Act, and that's 24 years old now. Congress has delegated even more power to the president since then. They could try to take it back at any time, but they don't. So they're tacitly approving of the executive's current exercise of authority.

I dunno, The Imperial Presidency was published in 1973 and lamented the expansion of the President's war powers. Congress has delegated much of their rulemaking authority to the executive since then in thousands and thousands of pages of laws creating various agencies. Its the logical outcome of about a century of SCOTUS precedent.

If you're scared of what the Presidency has become only because Trump is the guy wielding all that authority, well, I'm going to feel impotently smug once again. Or maybe smugly impotent. The problem has always been that the power is too broad and lacks any effective checks, if you were counting on the goodness of the man occupying the seat of power to keep the office limited, you're basically praying that God doesn't put madman on the throne.

I really think its the former. Trump saw a particular law that granted a particular power, sitting there dusty and unused in the warehouse of executive authority, and reached over and pulled the lever to activate it. But it has always been sitting there, he didn't invent it or wrest it from Congress or the Courts.

No it isn't. There was a separate law that was passed at about the same time as the Alien Enemies Act that really did give the president the power to do what Trump did. That law is no longer in effect.

In comparison, for those who haven't looked at the text of the still-existing law, the important part that is about to be argued in all the courts says:

any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government

Having not looked at any briefs yet, just the face of the text, I think it's going to be a bit of a tough road to hoe to argue that the nation or government of Venezuela is perpetrating, attempting, or threatening an invasion or predatory incursion. They would indeed be on far stronger grounds if the Alien Friends Act were still in effect.

It's a tough road to hoe, but not entirely crazy. I expect he's properly going to lose, but fortunately there are of other laws that can be used to deport TdA members (including to El Salvador, if their home country won't take them), though they require more paperwork to be done.

road to hoe

*row to hoe (as in a line on a farm field)

@ControlsFreak

Thanks! I know I'd heard this correction before, SMH...

Mmhmm.

So which branch of government is tasked with DECIDING if the government of Venezuela is attempting an invasion or predatory incursion.

And what if, for example, the FBI issued a finding that Venezuela is intentionally releasing gang members to the U.S. to undermine public safety?

Are courts authorized to overrule that finding?

I think courts are authorized to, at the very least, assume that the assertions of the executive branch are correct as to what is being alleged (which they may or may not need to do; this part gets complicated), then decide whether or not those assertions, as stated, constitute "an invasion or predatory incursion [that] is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government" as a matter of statutory interpretation.

Possible hypo land. Suppose the literal Venezuelan government sent precisely one spy to the US. This spy does some stuff. Maybe standard espionage stuff. Maybe a targeted assassination or something. The executive branch asserts this and decides to throw all the rest of the Venezuelan nationals out of the country. Is that enough to trigger the statute? I think courts might want to say "no", even if the executive branch wants to say "yes". But I don't know! They might say yes! I could even imagine reasons for them to say yes! But I do, indeed, think that they have some room to do statutory interpretation. ...then, we proceed down a chain of increasing hypos until we start to get a sense for how to interpret the statute.

Can you think of any cases whatsoever where a court overruled a President/executive agency's finding of fact or application of law when that finding was related to the executive's power to set foreign policy?

Taking a look at the "Muslim Travel bans" from Trump 1 is possibly instructive here.

Taking a look at the "Muslim Travel bans" from Trump 1 is possibly instructive here.

Precisely. They engaged in standard statutory interpretation of the INA. If the INA had said something different, for example, (or the Trump I administration was trying to do something different,) then perhaps that statutory interpretation could have come out the other way. Their opinion was in no way, "Eh, this is remotely related to 'a President/executive agency's finding of fact or application of law when that finding was related to the executive's power to set foreign policy', so we just can't say anything at all." Instead, they had a statute that delegated certain powers under certain conditions, and they did standard statutory interpretation to decide that the executive branch was, indeed, correct in interpreting it in a way that allowed them to do the things they were doing in the situation which they were doing it.

Has the President ALWAYS had the authority to do this under the AEA, and Trump was just the first one to receive an electoral mandate to use this authority...

I find the AEA argument to be quite weak in this case. For the TDA members and their supporters. The AEA was passed when John Adams was President and Thomas Jefferson, his main political rival, was Vice-President. If we transported both to 2025 and had someone neutrally describe TDA, with no conclusion language or question begging (i.e. don't use "invading army", "criminal gang" etc to describe them), describing their place of origin, appearance, and actions both would agree on the outcome. It would go something along the lines of, "Sure I guess we can expel them with the AEA, but why not just hang them like we do with the rest of the Indian warbands that do those things?"

So the dilemma is not real a dilemma about the AEA, its a dilemma about whether expulsion or public execution within 48 hours is the more appropriate punishment. Due process is not something appropriate for foreign savages, both would tell you. In criminal courts it is for co-citizens like the British soldiers Adams defended in court, or for uniformed British soldiers eventual President Andrew Jackson would take prisoner during the war of 1812, who would be held pending the outcome of the war, or immediately expelled under the AEA, depending on what was militarily appropriate. Jefferson, in his later years might note that very few Barbary pirates were ever afforded the opportunity to surrender in that war, mostly ships were left to sink or set ablaze with losses frequently being total.

TDA, with no conclusion language or question begging (i.e. don't use "invading army", "criminal gang" etc to describe them)

But Tren de Aragua are a criminal gang. That's their purpose for existing. The BBC, no fan of Trump or his deportation agenda, say it started as a corrupt local railway union which extorted carriers and contractors on their section of line, then turned into a prison gang, and now is a "transnational criminal organization" which controls diverse economic activities including gold mining and sex trafficking, and engages in political assassination as well as more commonplace "murder and torture."

The question is whether their activities in the US are in coordination with the Venezuelan dictatorship, as asserted by the administration.

But Trend de Aragua are a criminal gang

That is the word we use to describe them now. But the question at hand is what are the words John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would have used to describe them in the early 1800s. To those people in that time "gang" would have strong implications that a matter is local of origin and scope. Thus, I think in our hypothetical using the word "gang" to describe TDA can only serve to mislead.

A "transnational criminal organization" which controls diverse economic activities including gold mining and sex trafficking, and engages in political assassination as well as more commonplace "murder and torture."

This just sounds like a rogue government. Or some rogue offshoot of a chartered international corporation like the Dutch East India corporation. Adams and Jefferson would PRESUME any org engaging in all that sort of commerce must be sponsored by some government, otherwise the other governments would crush them. Or they would ask you something like, "this Venezuela is a lawless land of pirates then?" We hang pirates, or sink them, of course. "

The question is whether their activities in the US are in coordination with the Venezuelan dictatorship, as asserted by the administration. Coordination or permission is how I understand the idea to be being presented.

Adams and Jefferson would PRESUME any org engaging in all that sort of commerce must be sponsored by some government, otherwise the other governments would crush them.

Adams defended John Hancock in court after the latter's smuggling business was caught out. The big deal in smuggling back then was just getting wine and tea without paying taxes on them, but that was enough that it helped fund and train colonists for and prompt the American Revolution.

Jefferson fought the first of the Barbary Wars, against foes who were nominally Ottoman protectorates but really independent warlords funded by human trafficking, extortion, and piracy.

Explain to them that we now have drugs so destructive that we ban their shipment at any price and yet so addictive that their market is over $10B/year, and I think they'd understand right away that those drugs' smugglers would avoid becoming a legible (and thus easily targetable) government but would still become powerful enough to stand up to weak governments anyway.

"this Venezuela is a lawless land of pirates then?" We hang pirates, or sink them, of course. "

This was Jefferson's thinking going into the First Barbary War, despite that being evenly matched enough that we have to call it the "First" and we didn't get a complete victory until a decade later. Pitting the modern US vs Venzuela would seem to be a much more obvious and less bold decision.

I'm not sure that works as a metaphor here, though. That "avoid becoming a legible government" trick in the modern case is a sneaky one. If we can't stop Tren de Aragua from operating here in the US under our noses, why be surprised or angry with Venezuela about the fact that they also can't stop it there? But if we can, then from our point of view the problem is solved here, no need to go nation-building to try to solve it elsewhere.

Adams defended John Hancock in court after the latter's smuggling business was caught out. The big deal in smuggling back then was just getting wine and tea without paying taxes on them, but that was enough that it helped fund and train colonists for and prompt the American Revolution.

So an arm of the revolutionary government and its precursors. State.

Jefferson fought the first of the Barbary Wars, against foes who were nominally Ottoman protectorates but really independent warlords funded by human trafficking, extortion, and piracy.

Yes. And we took basically zero POWs. We just sank pirates until their state sponsor agreed to some terms.

I'm not sure that works as a metaphor here, though. That "avoid becoming a legible government" trick in the modern case is a sneaky one. If we can't stop Tren de Aragua from operating here in the US under our noses, why be surprised or angry with Venezuela about the fact that they also can't stop it there? But if we can, then from our point of view the problem is solved here, no need to go nation-building to try to solve it elsewhere.

Yes its a problem of will here, not means. While its more of a question of means/will (aka intentional by Venezuela). I think there is a lot of intentional burying the head in the sand on this question. 3rd party groups is how modern war by inferior powers is conducted. People acting like Venezuela should be treated like a real nation state that is going to conduct proper military operations are delusional.

So an arm of the revolutionary government and its precursors. State.

Proto-state, sure, with the benefit of hindsight. The actual State at the time was the government they fought against for 8 years, who wasn't their sponsor.

This is dumb bait. But I think the Bill Maher discussion of his dinner with Trump soundly puts to bed any arguments here. Bill Maher, is about a raving of a TDS as almost anyone, coming away and praising his sharpness and conversability is not something that can be shrugged off with gestures toward nothing like this.

Trump's quoted point at the end is completely coherent, just ideosyncratic and favoring his point over debating the minutia. I'm not defending either the content or point of view, but it's entirely coherent, and the demential complaint is dumb as hell. Here's a summary of the not even subtext of that clip:

Interviewer starts to try a tu quoue about some Biden tactic analogy to Trump. Trump doesn't want to take the bait, so pre-empts with an reverse objection about a double-standard of critique. He uses that to launch that into an attack on Biden's competence. This single sentence has tons of intent:

  • The media's critiques of Trump are invalid double standards
  • As evidence by the media's protection of Biden
  • Biden was not just bad, but incompetent, and the media / deep state covered for him/ controlled him.

All this could be disagreed with, but rather than being incoherent, its a very tight conveying of meaning.

The interviewer then tries to dodge the question of Biden's competence by arguing whether Biden actually did an interview with them or not in some given timeframe.

Trump first starts to engage, but then decides he's not going to lead the interviewer to any Socratic point, so just throws out the idea that he didn't do an interview into being a well informed that he 'barely' did an interview and it was terrible.

Is Trump lying that he's familiar with that particular interview? Yeah probably. (or else he was lying that Biden didn't do an interview and lying or mixed up about the length). But that's not really evidence of mental acuity. The lie makes complete sense in context of the picture he's trying to paint.

The interviewer then gives a sarcastic praise. Trump takes it straight-faced, and uses it to restate his thesis: Biden was incompetent, and any appearance of power-grabbing from him is just hostile coverage from the media

Again, without any bias here (tbh I deeply dislike Trump), Trump's entire bit in that last exchange is tightly governed by a specific frame and defense against a percieved hostile frame. He just favors rhetorical point over detail consistency.

Trump doesn't even remember that Biden had dementia. Biden wasn't just incompetent, he was clearly senile. It was the only reason why Trump got elected.

Now Trump comparing himself with Biden (saying that he is better, of course) is funny because that way he acknowledges that he is in the same boat, i.e., both with dementia.

I can almost hear him boasting – I have the best dementia, it is great, you wouldn't know how great it is... But he didn't because he couldn't remember that word.

  • -29

Considering how often Trump refers to "sleepy Joe Biden" I'm pretty sure he remembers.

If you want to criticize Trump there is no shortage of true things you can say.

Sleepy doesn't mean senile.

At the end even Scott Alexander admitted that Biden was senile and had to write a post apologising why he didn't see it sooner.

Now Trump is boasting that he is better than a senile man. If I was a Trump's fan, I would find it disgraceful.

Yeah but you're not a Trump fan and the people who are Trump fans have different standards for disgrace. Else they wouldn't be Trump fans.

Good point!

Speak plainly—this routine is obnoxious. Do you think he expanded presidential power? In what way? How does his "expansion" compare to Biden's use of power, since you are in fact able to predict these objections beforehand, aren't you?

Do you think he has dementia?

Not being a lawyer, I reserve judgement. Note that I also didn't ask for other uninformed opinions - I specified "mainstream interpretation," because I know that there are as many "idiosyncratic" interpretations as there are possible policies.

The dementia question was a bit cheeky, I concede, but the quoted section reminds me of confabulation.

  • -15

If you weren't meant to understand the law as a layman, it would have been written in Latin. You shouldn't fear your own understanding of these things, and you should discount others' only on their merits.

"Just asking questions"

Rather than having anything to say.

The Virginia Giuffre suicide brought to mind an idea I've been thinking about for a while: populism works best without the people. Rob Henderson and many others have talked about how certain ideas promoted by the upper class disproportionately harm the lower class. In his book Troubled, he wrote:

Many of my peers at Yale and Stanford would work ceaselessly. But when I'd ask them about the plans they'd implemented to get into college, or start a company, or land their dream job, they'd often suggest they just got lucky rather than attribute their success to their efforts. Interestingly, it seems like many people who earn status by working hard are able to boost their status among their peers even more by saying they just got lucky. This isn't just limited to my own observations, either. A 2019 study found that people with high income and social status are the most likely to attribute success to mere luck rather than hard work.

Both luck and hard work play a role in the direction of our lives, but stressing the former at the expense of the latter doesn't help those at or near the bottom of society. If disadvantaged people come to believe that luck is the key factor that determines success, then they will be less likely to strive to improve their lives. One study tracked more than six thousand young adults in the US at the beginning of their careers over the course of two decades, and found that those who believed that life's outcomes are due to their own efforts as opposed to external factors became more successful in their careers and went on to attain higher earnings.

The problem is that people who entertain populist ideas like the above wind up shoved into the same part of the political spectrum as all these people who rave about "pedophile rings." Along with the internet personalities who won't endorse QAnon outright but pander to their QAnoner supporters with equivocating crap like "why can't they release the Epstein documents? I'm not saying there's a conspiracy, I just want TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT. Just asking qwestchins!" The populist movement winds up embracing the same mentality of helplessness Henderson is criticizing. Many of the Epstein victims admit they did it voluntarily for money, but you can't say that because it gets in the way of the narrative of helpless proles victimized by evil sex-trafficking finance guys.*

You can only really stand up for the people by keeping them at arm's length.

*The QAnoners are convinced that happens ALL THE TIME but Epstein is the only example they can point to, which is why we're still hearing about it five years after Epstein's death and will probably keep hearing about it for decades more.

Many of the Epstein victims admit they did it voluntarily for money

Examples?

I mean, they were hookers. Definitionally they did it for money.

That doesn't mean it's OK to convince 15 year old girls to enter prostitution(which is what Epstein did- there's no evidence or allegations that he made any threats or kidnapped anyone or whatever).

That doesn't mean it's OK to convince 15 year old girls to enter prostitution(which is what Epstein did

That's trafficking. They were minors.

There's also very clear evidence of favorable government treatment (i.e. his case in Florida).

That's a lot different than him throwing a party with adult prostitutes.

Why the equivocation?

Yes I just said that. Epstein was bad. But there’s no evidence of him being bad in a specific way that it’s often framed as.

I seem to remember that Epstein and/or Maxwell were also accused of taking away at least one girl's passport to trap her. Which is more than just prostitution.

Some victims said Maxwell would make threats like that on the island or at one of their ranches, but compared to the tactics used by even run of the mill pimps they were rudimentary and limited at best.

Either there is no super-powerful deep state or they're ok with Trump. If there was a super-powerful deep state that disliked Trump, Trump would have been killed years ago. I mean actually killed, not just a couple of close calls.

He would have at least been preluded from running . I think the deep state didn't want to risk an uprising if that happened.

My assumption is that a super competent deep state could kill Trump and make it look like a natural death, but maybe that has more to do with thriller novels than with reality.

I think you're ascribing a level of competence not in evidence.

I am not sure that I see the similarity between "the people on the top got lucky" and QAnon.

Mostly everybody has a story which explains why they are not on the top, and "the people at the top just got lucky" is one such story, while "the people at the top are all lizardmen, and they won't allow humans to join" is another.

The other thing to consider in "hard work" vs "getting lucky" is that being a hard worker is not 100% a choice, but also subject to genetics and nurture, e.g. governed by luck at least in part.

Hard work is necessary, but luck also is a part of it. "I work hard and my dad's a plumber" versus "I work hard and my dad is a partner in KPMG", you tell me who you think is going to get further in life.

JD Vance is a legitimate "I came from poor stock, worked hard, and made it" success story, and look at the shit he gets for his political allegiance. Kamala Harris ran in part on "I grew up in a middle-class family" (where middle-class is supposed to mean "upper working class/lower middle class", i.e. 'just like one of you schlubs') but she is the daughter of university professors. I don't know if anyone has done a comparison between "is Vance more privileged than Harris because he's a white male and she's a biracial female, versus his family were poor and he grew up between Kentucky and Ohio and her mother only divorced once and she grew up between California and Canada". It'd be an intriguing problem to do a privilege walk between them!

I think the word privilege is mostly used by wokes. For them, recognized sources of privilege are ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and being able-bodied1. Social class is not part of it.2 Fighting for the rights of some straight white cis-men would be giving aid and comfort to the enemy, after all. Also, this makes determining the privilege level of random strangers so much more convenient -- just check their skin color and their gender, and if the person is openly LGBT or in a wheelchair. No need to delve to deep into their childhood or finances. The good news is that a poor white guy can still be an Ally, just as a rich white guy. But for cultural and economic reasons most Allies end up being well-off whites (it is much easier to support BLM when you live in a gated community and are a lawyer than when you live in a flat downtown and are a small time store owner). And the label the SJ left uses for (mostly poor, mostly white) folks who are not on board with their platform is, or course, "deplorables".

Personally, I think that economic inequality is likely the most significant inequality within Western societies, and most of the difficulties certain ethnicities encounter are downstream of them being economically disadvantaged. But I also believe that there are a lot of other inequalities, and that crucially that it is not useful to simply sum them up -- that there is no single scalar score which describes privilege in a useful way. Being white is advantageous in some ways. Being male can be an advantage in some situations. Being female can also be an advantage. Being beautiful, young, or hot can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on the situation. It very much depends on individual situations, specific cultural contexts (being gay is orders of magnitude less of a deal if you are living in a student dorm in a coastal city than if you are living in a rural house with your religious parents, for example).

Regarding Vance, part of the process of swearing fealty to Trump is that you deny that he lost the 2020 election, and in my mind, this is a severe moral failing which can not be excused by having had a difficult path in life -- not unless your defense is "I would literally starve unless I took a job in the White House".3

1 Terms and conditions apply. Being on the spectrum might gain you a iota of sympathy, but will not protect you from accusations of toxic masculinity, for example.

2 Yes, the pdf you linked uses economic observables. So technically poor white people get awarded points. I am just arguing that this is not how people actually move up on the totem pole of victimhood in the real world.

3 I suppose that SJ also has plenty of shibboleths, but mostly they require people not to voice certain ideas (e.g. HBD), and don't require them to loudly proclaim that the sky is green like Trump does.

part of the process of swearing fealty to Trump is that you deny that he lost the 2020 election

Given the people who turned on a dime from "election denialism about the 2020 election should be made a crime!" to "Trump stole the 2024 election!" reusing all the tropes they said beforehand were fake, conspiracy theory, etc. (the voting machines being rigged, fake ballots and the rest of it), this shocks me less and less every time I see it trotted out.

Indeed, I'm half-inclined to start to come around to "hey, maybe the 2020 election was rigged!" 😀

My experience in woke circles is that poor people of color get bonus points on the oppression checklist, while poor white people don’t.

Unless the woke speaker is obviously cornered or trying to recruit a poor white person, in which case they briefly revert to doctrinaire Leninism for as long as it takes to keep up the charade in front of their new “ally.”

There was a blog post somewhere about how a lot of poor people, black and white, are intuitively suspicious of philosophizing and big words, essentially, so I don’t know how successful overall this is as a tactic, or if wokeism dropped it at some point.

But I have seen the tactic in operation before.

Did she really commit suicide? I'm seeing "statements from the family" but nothing official. If that sounds very cynical on my part, it's because it's been "several weeks" since her Instagram post about "I only have four days to live".

Maybe she really did kill herself, but the entire thing is so murky that I'm holding off until we get something from the authorities. I'm thinking of how Ziz faked their death, including family statements that they totally did drown, and then turned up alive and well. Giuffre, whatever her past as part of Epstein's operation, seems to me to have become addicted to publicity in latter years, needing regular doses of acclaim and admiration and support as the brave victim and survivor.

She seems to have been facing a trial about breaching a restraining order, so perhaps she did kill herself, but as I said, I'm slow to believe anything without explicit sources better than "her publicist":

Western Australia state police said they received a report late yesterday local time that a 41-year-old woman, whom they did not name, died at a residence in Neergabby, a rural area on Perth's outskirts.

Police said first aid was attempted to no avail.

... Ms Giuffre, who was believed to have separated from her husband, was treated in an Australian hospital after a serious accident, her publicist said last month.

She did not answer questions about the date, location, nature or other specifics of the accident and about the accuracy of an Instagram post that appeared from Ms Giuffre in which she said she had been in a car that was hit by a school bus, and her prognosis was dire.

She was taken to a Perth hospital following the collision on 24 March.

In an emotional post on social media, she expressed that she was ready to die.

"I've gone into kidney renal failure, they've given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology," she said.

"I'm ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time."

According to reports, a spokesperson for Ms Giuffre said the Instagram post was a mistake and she had meant to share the post to her private Facebook page.

She was charged with breaching a family violence restraining order in Ocean Reef, near Perth, on 2 February, Western Australia Courts said.

Ms Giuffre's case was first heard in Joondalup Magistrates' Court in northern Perth on 14 March, where she did not enter a plea.

The matter was adjourned to 11 June for a plea hearing, according to Western Australia Courts.

The Epstein stuff was salacious because the people involved were well-known and because the plebs love seeing the high and mighty brought low, love gossiping about the rich and famous. The reality is that while what Epstein was doing (paying teenage girls from poor families for sex; pimping put some of those girls to his friends and business associates) was obviously wicked, and while his early-2000s sentence should have been much longer than it was (and served under less generous terms), far worse happens in working class communities across the West every single day without consequence or penalty.

It’s like the ‘Bullingdon Club’, which captured the British public’s imagination in the 2010s. In truth, its members behaved no worse than countless other drinking clubs, sports teams, fraternities, other social groups of regularly drunk young men. But because they were rich, wore their fancy costumes and counted the prime minister and mayor of London among their alumni, what they did was somehow uniquely awful.

But because they were rich, wore their fancy costumes and counted the prime minister and mayor of London among their alumni, what they did was somehow uniquely awful.

It was uniquely awful, in the sense that we used to have an order in which those that wield great authority or wealth would be held to a higher standard of morality than a drunk peasant and would be obligated to use their station to set a positive example.

I'm not even an actual reactionary (far from it) but I think this one element tracks with the sense of good and has an excellent pedigree back to the ancients.

those that wield great authority or wealth would be held to a higher standard of morality

What's the deal with the people I've seen around here saying that the elite should have greater licence?

Seems like on the one hand there's the argument that they're our betters and should be exemplars of virtue, on the other hand there's the argument that they're our betters and they should be enforcers of virtue because even if they fail to embody the same virtues the rot of the masses is a worse outcome than the transgressions of the elite.

Presumably it's a reaction to the feeling that they're neither exemplars or enforcers and have allowed standards to decline at both ends of the social spectrum. That then raises the question of whether they wanted that outcome and used their power to achieve it or whether they were either powerless or too unwilling to use their power to prevent it.

"Held to a higher standard of morality" is spin. What you describe is enabling the well-connected to get their enemies selectively prosecuted for "crimes" that everyone does, and should not be crimes at all.

I would think the disparity in reaction here is because the upper class are expected to behave better than that, to rise above vice, and they often try to avoid disabusing the public about such a notion.

Consider the meme of pedophile Catholic priests: these are the people who are supposed to be your spiritual leaders, and while all humans are fallible under Christian doctine, molesting boys is a level of sin that one could otherwise not believe a holy man would stoop to.

Maybe it's some sort of hardwired primal instinct. If we gravitate towards hierarchy, we also gravitate towards expecting more out of our social betters.

Many of the Epstein victims admit they did it voluntarily for money, but you can't say that because it gets in the way of the narrative of helpless proles victimized by evil sex-trafficking finance guys.*

Por que no los dos? It's true that most of the victims were offered money to step on a plane, not forcibly kidnapped. But they were also psychologically manipulated and placed in a strange circumstance way outside anything the expected or had ever experienced. Being teenagers, maybe they thought they could handle it but then the reality was very different than they expected.

People seem to draw this really weird dichotomy where you have to choose between "Epstein was not a good guy" and "the girls were prostitutes." Where the reason Epstein was a bad guy was because the girls were prostitutes.

There's a certain type of girl who, through a weird touchy uncle, a demeaning mother, an absent or hostile father, or just lack of moral guidance anywhere, will end up selling herself for cash. Moving from childhood to the blossom of sexual maturity is in the best of situations a disorienting hormonal surge of conflicting desires. Throw in peer pressure, an amoral upbringing, or the sense that as long as it's secret, anything is permitted (hi, Japan) and you have a recipe for this. Epstein having wads of money and an effective scout in Maxwell (and then girls who would, for even more money, gull their peers into a taste of the glamorous life (TM) didn't hurt.)

A guy I once knew once described Japanese girls as "all whores." I think that's a shittily uncharitable way to view the world. But at the same time I'm often surprised at the amount of prostitution here, from the casual, French-art-film level day hooker to organized crime brothels to high-end callgirls. To say nothing of snackbars (hostess bars) or cabarets, burlesques, etc. My point is that without Epstein these girls may have become prostitutes on their own, but you can't be sure. Zig instead of zag.

I feel bad for Giuffre. She made wrong choices from day 1 (she was a street urchin before she even met Epstein), but one would hope anyone could turn it around, especially with a payout from Maxwell and basically everyone affirming her as a heroine.

Yeah, the daughters of impoverished single mothers living in Hispanic-majority neighborhoods are probably going to get taken advantage of in their teens regardless, and high rates of prostitution can just be expected.

People focus on Epstein because they love hearing about aristocrats- the good, the bad, and the ugly. If the IBEW was arranging underaged mistresses for their members it might be a scandal but it wouldn’t be a front page news story(…Rotherham). This is elites, so it is.

Just a followup: Giuffre was reporting that a bus hit her going 110 kph. The driver disputed that, as did the parents of the kids on the bus. The Western Ozzie police reported it as a minor crash with no injuries. The driver also said he didn't even see Giuffre in the car, but an elderly woman.

Now these sources are all probably less-than-perfect. But this is weird. And then she offs herself? After saying in 2019 that she was not suicidal? My tinfoil hat is right here, but I hate putting it on, it's really stupid-looking.

These are the same reasons I'm sceptical. She posted on Instagram that due to the severity of her injuries in the crash she only had four days to live. Well that wasn't true for a start.

She may indeed have committed suicide, and if so I'm sorry for her, but it could be another fake story. Or she may have intended a 'cry for help' attempt that would have seen her back in hospital, and back in the news headlines, but unluckily for her it really worked (or the person she expected to turn up and find her and call the ambulance arrived too late or something).

I can't work out an angle where she might've been "suicided" as she had already spilled many sacks of beans. Possibly she was covering for her husband's abuse? There was a record there apparently of him beating on her. At the same time he was the one who took out a restraining order on her. None of it makes sense. I suppose nonsensical murders and suicides regularly occur, but I followed the Epstein story fairly closely, read her depositions, even tried to read her poorly written (but interesting) book online (most of it.)

She and Maria Farmer both seemed mildly unreliable. Farmer (also in terrible health) is a bit too loud on the wealthy Jewish angle and prone to bizarre accusations ("Ghislaine gave me cancer!") to get much airtime (unlike her perfectly respectable sister Annie) but Giuffre was more interesting as she had been, for all I could see, a very willing sex slave (if such a thing exists) or at least was aware she was living a much more glamorous life than the one she had left. Apparently Maxwell and Epstein even wanted her to have a kid for them? That's slave, yes, but it's Number One Slave. Millions all over the world have far worse fates.

I'm not saying any of it was wholesome, but it seemed like squalid amoral people doing squalid amoral things, just instead of a trailer park they were on private jets and private islands and a lot cleaner. There's a passage in Giuffre's book where she complains about how healthily Epstein ate and how she herself just wanted a burger most of the time. It's fascinating from a class divide perspective.

And then she saw an out, and eventually realized she could parlay all her terrible self-interested choices into a narrative of victimhood and heroism, and that's the card she played, to apparently grand results--on the surface.

What's sad about this--what's even sadder than all the other sad parts--is that Giuffre apparently never stopped making bad choices. But who knows.

I was thinking more "faked her own death" or even "did a 'cry for help' effort not meant to be serious, but unluckily for her it did turn out to work" rather than "she was offed by Hillary Clinton" type affair.

If she really is dead by suicide, that is a sad end to a sad and squalid story.

but Epstein is the only example they can point to

The Dutroux Affair? The Finders Cult? The Emperor’s Club VIP Elliot Spitzer scandal? The McMartin preschool case? The DC Madam scandal and her subsequent suspicious suicide? I forget the name but there was also an incident during the Troubles where MI5 was using child abuse blackmail to force Northern Irish politicians into taking a more hardline unionist stance.

I forget the name but there was also an incident during the Troubles where MI5 was using child abuse blackmail to force Northern Irish politicians into taking a more hardline unionist stance.

Kincora Boys' Home scandal.

On the flip side of this, there was a case where the police and pretty much everyone else went overboard believing the allegations of a fabulist/con artist about alleged child sexual abuse by prominent people and politicians, and ended up with egg on their faces. This was in the wake of the Jimmy Saville case, where there had pretty much been a cover-up, so the reaction swung too much in the opposite direction - make a claim about a public figure, nobody would dare question it because that would be victim-blaming.

The first fallout from the legitimate Operation Yewtree was the likes of Cliff Richard, who got a publicised police raid on his home and eventually nothing went forward. He successfully sued both the police and the BBC over this.

The next was Operation Midland, where the fake accusations were swallowed whole and investigated, including allegations that Edward Heath, a former British Prime Minister and who had died in 2005, was part of a paedophile ring. Heath was either gay or asexual, never married, was never linked with a female partner, and so was someone who was ripe for those kind of accusations. Conveniently, being dead, he couldn't face the accuser or deny the accusations. Beech, or "Nick" as his journalist dupe nicknamed him, created a series of stories about lurid scandals accusing prominent public figures of child sex abuse and murder. He also took advantage of accusations by a former Labour politician, social worker, and head of a child welfare charity, Chris Fay, to weave those into his stories:

In the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal in 2012, police were facing mounting pressure to investigate any and all cases of child abuse, particularly of a historic nature, reported by victims either directly to officers, or through interviews with journalists. Growing national public outcry over the possibility of there being more VIP serial abusers concealing their actions, and political campaigns demanding greater action to investigate cases of historic abuse, greatly affected the need for police to step up their efforts.

In 2014, journalist Mark Conrad came across an online blog containing allegations of a potential case of historic abuse, created by Carl Beech ...Conrad posted his inquiries into the blog and its allegations in a story for the investigative journalism website Exaro, providing Beech with the pseudonym of "Nick" to conceal his identity, as is common practice for protecting victims of abuse from their abusers. Conrad's story was picked up by detectives in the Metropolitan Police, who made requests to see his source, and agreed to allow the journalist to attend their initial meeting with Beech upon Conrad arranging for him to come forward. In these meetings, Beech gave full, detailed accounts of the abuse he claimed he had been subjected to at various locations, including the Elm Guest House, the Dolphin Square apartment block in Pimlico, the Carlton Club, and various other locations in the Home Counties.

Most concerning for detectives were Beech's claims that he, alongside a number of other child victims of the group, had been witness to three murders – Beech claimed that two children were killed for sexual pleasure, while a third was eliminated to intimidate the other abuse victims – in which he supplied the names of two individuals whom he stated had been murdered by the group: Vishal Mehrotra, whose abduction and the subsequent murder in the early 1980s remained unsolved, and Martin Allen, whose disappearance was documented in the late 1970s. Metropolitan Police deemed Beech's accounts "credible and true", though what he told them turned out to be entirely false.

In November 2014, the Metropolitan Police announced a large-scale investigation, codenamed Operation Midland, into Beech's claims."

Many public figures were dragged through the mud as a result of over-eager credulity of dubious claims. So it really goes from one extreme to the other. Blanket denial, or blanket belief.

You reckon it's the qanoners ruining everything?

I had a different idea. See my thinking is that qanoners are overwhelmingly middle class and below, and a lot of them are the kind of people who couldn't go to college even if they could afford it, which they can't. Not all of them, there are some very clever people involved, but most of the qanoners I've spoken to were primarily uneducated poor people.

I think the bigger problem is that our educated and wealthy people are worthless morons. Qanoners are overwhelmingly uneducated and our Elite Human Capital are overwhelmingly cowardly, narcisstic, and just not that bright. They are so vapid and myopically self centred that they couldn't even save democracy from the proles with the most advanced propaganda machine in history. A centralised bureaucracy supported by media, education and intelligence, and how did they explain the perils of populism to the people? "uh it's right wing! Hitler was populisty! How about it's racist? Or toxic masculinity? It's very passe ok, he's eating McDonald's for fucks sake, what more do you need?!"

Populism is actually pretty simple to understand - it is the game theoretic optimal solution to a democracy for any underclass in a country where they lack (or think they lack) unifying principles or values - if you think, due to a warped media environment, that you can't rally with your neighbour over the constitution or that Jesus is lord, you can still rally around a popular figure. It's basically a coin flip between finally being heard and the stamping boot, so if you already have the stamping boot in your face it's a no brainer.

And the gamble paid off! But what the populists didn't expect was that our Elite Human Capital are so self centred they'll actually defend Epstein Island out of solidarity or something. They even mock the idea of government transparency! Like they either think government transparency is a bad thing, or are just too dim to understand that they are participating in a meme that can directly harm the concept, as that kind of negative association is part of how perverse incentives kick off in the first place.

If only there was some simple fix, like listening to the working class occasionally. Then again avoiding them as much as possible, still sneering at them at every opportunity, but pretending you do care about them has worked out great so far!

And the gamble paid off! But what the populists didn't expect was that our Elite Human Capital are so self centred they'll actually defend Epstein Island out of solidarity or something.

Who's "defend[ing] Epstein Island?" Can you give some examples of defenses?

overwhelmingly middle class and below, and a lot of them are the kind of people who couldn't go to college

All the ones I know are educated, e.g. school teachers at districts requiring MAs and midlevel financial analysts e.g. writing mining reports for a Tier II bank.

That's fascinating, @greyenlightenment said similar, but aside from one retired teacher and a group of finance guys who I can never be sure are serious most of the qanoners I know are actually closer to fringe class than working - like my cousin who'd be a drug dealer if it didn't require so much effort and discipline. Could it be geographical? What state do you live in, if you don't mind me asking? And same question for you grey?

I had a different idea. See my thinking is that qanoners are overwhelmingly middle class and below, and a lot of them are the kind of people who couldn't go to college even if they could afford it, which they can't. Not all of them, there are some very clever people involved, but most of the qanoners I've spoken to were primarily uneducated poor people.

interesting analysis, although I disagree about them being poor. I think they are representative of the 'low-status upper/middle class'. These are people who may have decent incomes and jobs, like involving contracting , HVAC installation, and small business, but they do not have much cultural capital or influence individually ,unlike journalists or academics. Their impact is felt at the voting booth other other collective action, like putting Trump in office due to high turnout in swing states or memetic warfare online, but they do not write Substakc or think pieces. Their social media accounts have few followers. Individually, they are unimpressive and not elite human capital , but collectively work as a singular driving force.

These are people who may have decent incomes and jobs, like involving contracting , HVAC installation, and small business,

HVAC installers do not get paid well(and are not particular fans of Trump, either), techs get paid well- and they don't believe Qanon(although those of them whose wives stay home as opposed to being nurses or teachers are married to people who do). Small business owners(you know that 'contractor' is literally just a construction business owner, right?) likewise do not believe in Qanon, although they are fans of Trump and often believe in other conspiracy theories(often centering around insider trading to control republicans).

They are so vapid and myopically self centred that they couldn't even save democracy from the proles with the most advanced propaganda machine in history. A centralised bureaucracy supported by media, education and intelligence, and how did they explain the perils of populism to the people? (…)

This is the difference between a conspiracy and organic ideological affiliation. The bureaucracy, the media, and the educational system are in lockstep under the mainstream-woke banner, yes; but they don't think of themselves as following centralized directives. Every individual in the chain is acting according to his own conscience. Such a system is capable of coordinating like an astonishingly huge conspiracy so long as everyone's goals are aligned, but it cannot switch gears just because some clever people somewhere in the blob have realized it would be in their long-term interest. Nobody regards themself as taking marching orders, and if someone tries to give them orders that go against their own judgment they'll be ignored.

Such a system is capable of coordinating like an astonishingly huge conspiracy so long as everyone's goals are aligned, but it cannot switch gears just because some clever people somewhere in the blob have realized it would be in their long-term interest.

Pretty much everything about the response to Covid in the West seems to directly contradict this.

I think the thing that annoys me the most about Elite Human Capital is that they are the one class of people that pretends they don’t even belong to it. If you talk to them they’ll all try to act as though they aren’t a member of the elite, they aren’t that wealthy. An aristocracy that owns it would be somewhat more tolerable instead of them all pretending to be middle class

Many of the elite human capital types are nominally middle class or even below, but are elite through degrees and reach, like low-paid journalists/interns or ppl with lots of twitter followers despite not having much money.

To be fair, the reason aristocrats/ECH don't own it is because we've just come out of a century where it was pretty dangerous to be an aristocrat and to owns that. I've said before but both of my parents were actually physically accosted at various points - one had a brick thrown at them, the other was spat on and nearly beaten. When I was growing up in the 90s, pre-woke, being white was fine but being upper-class painted a target on your back. You were expected to accept being the butt of every joke and take blame for everything wrong with the country while everything you owned was siphoned away by socialist tax policy.

One of the odd ironies of the last couple of decades for me is that while the level of identity-based abuse I'm subject to has risen, in a way it's a lot easier to deal with because there are so many more people to share it. There are a lot more white people than aristocrats! I think this is why people have started to be more open about considering themselves EHC - they have successfully diverted the inverse snobbery of the intellectual population onto ethnic and sexual identities rather than class ones.

What’s funny is that people aren’t upset about “millionaires” anymore. It’s billionaires that people continue to get angry about. I guess when everyone’s boomer parent is technically a millionaire it kinda loses its edge

Inflation comes for us all in the end.

I'm not sure what to think or say about the rest of your comment, but this part stood out to me:

See my thinking is that qanoners are overwhelmingly middle class and below, and a lot of them are the kind of people who couldn't go to college even if they could afford it, which they can't.

Anyone can afford to go to college. Anyone. It's just not that expensive. Yes, it's a lot more expensive than it used to be, and yes, the ROI is not as obvious or inevitable (though it was never inevitable) as it once was. But "working class" people buy more expensive things all the time--houses, boats, cars--and those things continue to cost money (beyond loan interest--there's also upkeep). A wisely-curated program of education will in almost any economy be a better long term investment than any of those things.

What is not really plausibly "affordable" about education is failing. Every semester, without fail, I have at least one student who never shows up for class. Then, at the end of the semester, they tell me how they are running out of money and can I please pass them or else they will have to take the class again and they can't afford it...

The people who "can't afford" college are the people who lack the intellect and/or conscientiousness to learn at a higher level. College costs way too much to go there when there is not a reasonable expectation of success.

I think the bigger problem is that our educated and wealthy people are worthless morons.

I think this is almost always false. Our educated and wealthy people are only human, and in my experience almost all of them can have their substantive thinking overwhelmed, at least on occasion and maybe more than that, by the need for social signalling. That is a different problem than being morons. Indeed, I think most normies are pretty smart, within a baseline context of human flourishing--they're just that much more susceptible to focusing on sending the right signals rather than identifying substantially veridical facts.

Our educated and wealthy people are only human, and in my experience almost all of them can have their substantive thinking overwhelmed, at least on occasion and maybe more than that, by the need for social signalling. That is a different problem than being morons.

It's been proposed that there is a comforting impulse behind conspiratorial thinking, to think that even if the mysterious Powers That Be are evil, at least they're competent! I propose a parallel here, that thinking of the EHC as morons is more comforting than thinking of their particular brand of disastrous signaling as only human. Perhaps it is that I do not want to think so poorly of humanity in the abstract, and so I want to disconnect the concept of humanity from the cause of their issues.

Anyone can afford to go to college. Anyone. It's just not that expensive. Yes, it's a lot more expensive than it used to be, and yes, the ROI is not as obvious or inevitable (though it was never inevitable) as it once was. But "working class" people buy more expensive things all the time--houses, boats, cars--and those things continue to cost money (beyond loan interest--there's also upkeep). A wisely-curated program of education will in almost any economy be a better long term investment than any of those things.

Yes, after accounting for scholarships and other programs, affordability is typically not the problem. The student loan debt is cheap compared to private debt like credit cards or car payments.

meanwhile, plenty of lower-middle-class people go into debt for frivolities as you describe.

Our educated and wealthy people are only human, and in my experience almost all of them can have their substantive thinking overwhelmed, at least on occasion and maybe more than that, by the need for social signalling.

yeah, it's status-seeking behavior, they are not morons. They are optimizing for status and an upper-middle class lifestyle.

I felt your objections were, for most part, addressed by that paragraph. Maybe to change the wording a bit to make the meaning I got from it clearer: A lot of people shouldn't go to college even if they could afford it.

When everyone has a college degree no one does. I think we've already passed the threshold for too many degree holders being paid too much money to do menial wrist and finger labour. Too many people who are actually smart need to spend too much time to distinguish themselves from the average brained but highly industrious. And to that end, too few smart people engage in lower class labour where their big brains could be used for a lot more good than in many other cases.

The education inflation is hitting every part of our lives. How western societies are setting themselves up isn't sustainable. And even if it were, it's so wasteful it shouldn't be done anyway.

I think this is almost always false. Our educated and wealthy people are only human, and in my experience almost all of them can have their substantive thinking overwhelmed, at least on occasion and maybe more than that, by the need for social signalling. That is a different problem than being morons. Indeed, I think most normies are pretty smart, within a baseline context of human flourishing--they're just that much more susceptible to focusing on sending the right signals rather than identifying substantially veridical facts.

I think this entire paragraph is just a key example of how smart people can excuse anything they do with big words and fancy concepts. If your elite class torpedoes your society because it can't resist the temptation to conform and virtue signal to ides they personally find novel then they are ultimately no better than a high time preference, low IQ person that 'fails' the marshmallow test throughout their life.

At some point the elite of the world is no longer owed any leeway or respect on the grounds that they just aren't doing enough work that justifies it.

When everyone has a college degree no one does. I think we've already passed the threshold for too many degree holders being paid too much money to do menial wrist and finger labour.

the data does not bear this out. the college wage premium remains persistently high despite more degrees. They are paid a lot because evidently employers see the value. Companies are obsessed with profit, so they would not spend more on labor, which is among the biggest expenses, unless necessary.

I think the data does bear this out. (15% unemployment and 35% underemployment (rising to 41%in recent years) means we have too many degree holders. And you know profit often isn't the only motive these days, ESG demands environmental and social engineering too.

But like Hani said to Nara, this is a distraction. If the elite ran society well we would not have populism or Donald Trump because they would have ameliorated enough of the concerns of the working class before they snapped and it was too late to do anything. It's not like they were demanding the impossible - they weren't even demanding anything substantial - bread and circuses worked for Rome and it works for America too. But our elites didn't make the bread and circuses for the people, they didn't even make it for everyone - instead they made it for themselves. They can't claim they didn't anticipate the issue, they very loudly did, but they handled it so incompetently that they may as well have not bothered.

And yes it is not deliberate and it's all stochastic or distributed or whatever - like you said in your reply to Nara, it's status games. And sure, on an individual level, if the only thing that concerns you is you, status seeking is a very smart idea. But if you want the prestige attached to running society, if you want to be respected for the way your achievements improve the country, they have to actually improve the country, not just line your own pockets. You have to actually be a better person if you want people to think you are a better person than them.

I can't remember how old you are, but I'm pretty sure you are old enough to be familiar with the way humans can very easily deceive themselves into thinking they are doing good when they are actually only helping themselves. I think that self deception is the core of the current zeitgeist. It's like the unifying principle of the west these days is 'you don't point out my fuck ups and I won't point out yours'. This is a much much larger problem for the elites than the proles, because without competence to back it up status is like running in mid-air like wile e coyote.

Companies are not infallible. Wanting to make money is not equivalent to always making rational and correct decisions that make you money. Nor does it grant companies omnipotence to shape institutions to best and most cost effectively deliver them what they want.

college wage premium remains persistently high despite more degrees

The persistent college wage premium may be skewed by selection bias in who pursues degrees. College graduates often have traits like higher cognitive ability, discipline, that correlate with better earnings, independent of their education. For non-professional or unlicensed fields, we lack solid comparisons of non-degreed groups with similar traits. Without these, it’s tough to confirm if the wage premium stems from the degree itself or from the preexisting human capital of those who go to college.

The education inflation is hitting every part of our lives. How western societies are setting themselves up isn't sustainable. And even if it were, it's so wasteful it shouldn't be done anyway.

Yes, but when you've outsourced your industrial base to other countries because it's cheaper and more convenient to let them pollute their environments and exploit their workers so you can then buy the finished product, you need something to occupy your excess labour force. And that means "more education" because governments think that everyone getting a degree means they will all get good, high-paying jobs and businesses are constantly calling for "we need better educated workers" and all of this means that the economy will (magically) grow once every worker has at least a bachelor's degree (because studies show the college-educated get better jobs and earn more over their lifetimes, so naturally a degree is the magic panacea). So now to have any hope of a reasonable life, you need a good job, and to get a good job, you need the piece of paper.

Developing [rare earth] mining and processing capabilities requires "a long-term effort," meaning the United States will "be on the back foot for the foreseeable future," concluded a recent report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.

Policymakers should have seen this coming, analysts said.

"I hate to be the person who says this," said Ms Klinger, "but I remember saying over a decade ago, if we should have a rare supply chain crisis, it would be entirely avoidable".

So how did the world get to this point?

The answer is very simple, according to Ian Lange, associate professor of mineral economics at the Colorado School of Mines: it wasn't that profitable.

"I would have said, it was a conscious decision to get rid of a low-value industry," he told RTÉ News.

It's also heavily polluting.

According to a study published by the Harvard International Review in 2021, for every tonne of rare earth produced, the mining process "yields 13kg of dust, 9,600-12,000 cubic metres of waste gas, 75 cubic metres of wastewater, and one ton of radioactive residue".

For many years, it made sense for the US, Europe and others to outsource to China, which ultimately, through state subsidies, weaker labour and environmental regulations, R&D investment as well as sheer industrial scale could - as in other manufacturing sectors - simply do it cheaper.

you need something to occupy your excess labour force.

Note also that the education-managerial complex itself exists as a type of universal basic job to occupy that excess labor force, and it also serves to keep what would normally be the labor force warehoused and suppressed.

We live in a society where even approaching young adult women is fraught with risk. 'Inappropriate' comments can ruin careers. Consensual relationships in the workplace are a recipe for disaster if the woman regrets it later on. Even degenerate fictional stories on obscure corners of the web feel some need to say that all involved are 18 or higher.

But billionaires get open license for underage pussy because they're rich? No, they should face the same crushing punishments inflicted on ordinary people who have sex with underage women, regardless of whatever ameliorating circumstances there are. 'But she consented' is not an excuse when some drunk guy hooks up with a drunk girl on a university campus.

Take their money away, ruin their lives, send them to prison, ruin their reputation. Rules should be applied fairly or not at all. If you think the rule is dumb or should be adjusted, even more reason for it to be applied to elites as well.

Furthermore, Epstein committing 'suicide' in the anti-suicide ward while the cameras were conveniently switched off is clear proof of some kind of paedophile-sex ring deeply embedded in the US government. The Q people were directionally correct.

they should face the same crushing punishments inflicted on ordinary people who have sex with underage women, regardless of whatever ameliorating circumstances there are.

??? These billionaires lost in the court of public opinion, which seems to be the biggest part of the punishment for statutory.

Rules should be applied fairly or not at all.

Look I'm not here to argue at the object level but in general this strikes me as a bad idea. Obviously different social strata should have different rules. Every society I'm aware of has recognized this up until fairly recently. In the vast majority of cases I think it's good that rich people can use the legal system to get off scott-free.

Restricting everyone to behavior suitable for the lowest is literally reducing freedom to the lowest common denominator and this attitude is a huge part of why we can't have nice things. Quod licet iovi non licet bovi.

Anyway, in practice, I have much more to fear from the state than does an inebriated homeless schizo because I have resources to purloin.

Furthermore, Epstein committing 'suicide' in the anti-suicide ward while the cameras were conveniently switched off is clear proof of some kind of paedophile-sex ring deeply embedded in the US government. The Q people were directionally correct.

Unless Epstein himself bribed the guards.

I'm with @RandomRanger's objection below - it's not quite clear to me what sort of offer he could make to the guards to incentivise all of this, and why they wouldn't have been caught. I think the better explanation would be somewhat more satisfying - Epstein did kill himself, but this was facilitated by "friends in high places" whose interest in his death aligned with his own. The friends would have coordinated a time with him some way or another, either bribed or pressured the guards to remove all eyes, and taken any necessary steps to ensure that this isn't investigated too thoroughly afterwards.

(Alternatively, for colour, you could even imagine an offer: kill yourself in a relatively comfortable way now, or get a slow agonising death from some particularly nasty poison we will slip you later.)

(Alternatively, for colour, you could even imagine an offer: kill yourself in a relatively comfortable way now, or get a slow agonising death from some particularly nasty poison we will slip you later.)

You don't even need the threat. The fate of a high-profile sex offender with no gang protection in the general population of an American prison is likely to be far more painful than anything the Deep State could engineer.

Well, the guards did get caught, just not fully.

How does he get money to the prison guards as a prisoner?

If he did bribe a guard, presumably it would've emerged. Lots of people were very interested in this case! A guard-level conspiracy should be easy to uncover compared to a 'friends in high places' level conspiracy. Instead we got the 'oh he killed himself somehow' story peddled as the official party line which favours 'friends in high places'.

Did you read the link?

Yes. It doesn't really address this.

It also explains why this plot wasn't uncovered: because there are like, three people that would have to know about it, not even including Epstein's lawyers. Epstein could have just made up a sob-story and convinced a correctional officer to look the other way himself, or promised the officer his lawyers would pay them after the fact, and then didn't, because arranging that would be more complicated and time consuming.

What kind of sob story gets you to erase video evidence and bring down a huge shitstorm on yourself with a high profile prisoner? 'Bro I'll totally pay you after you've done this insanely illegal thing'?

What kind of sob story gets you to erase video evidence and bring down a huge shitstorm on yourself with a high profile prisoner? 'Bro I'll totally pay you after you've done this insanely illegal thing'?

Do you know any prison guards? When they're offered money for bringing in cigarettes, alcohol, etc, the money is paid up front and the guard is simply not hired anymore if they don't follow through.

They also don't have particularly prestigious jobs and most of them know that they never will. Large payments to people being paid not very much to do a job which isn't socially esteemed have a way of changing their attitudes. Hell, in-kind payments can do it.

bring down a huge shitstorm on yourself with a high profile prisoner

None of those guards’ lives were ruined.

Is it "insanely illegal"? Remember that in the suicide hypothesis, sabotaging the monitoring isn't murder conspiracy with its fuckoff-huge sentence. They skated with no time, and even if they'd gotten caught red-handed my wild guess is that they'd have served under 2 years.

I actually suspect that the vast majority of ordinary adults who have sex with minors get away with it. There are probably thousands of such encounters happening every day. There are millions of guys, after all, who do not sit around pondering the risks of having sex with women who might turn out to be slightly underage. They just see someone who looks hot, fuck them, and if they worry about the consequences it's only afterward. Women also sometimes lie about their ages. You might have had sex with a minor and not even be aware of it. I am pretty sure that the majority of the time, no legal consequences ensue from such encounters.

I don't disagree with what you wrote but I think it'd be much more simple to just say that this is pretty much something only the working class and the underclass engages in anymore.

Middle and upper class have more money to spend on means such as gifts, concealment, etc. More opportunities too as the same resources grant greater agency. The only defecit is in motive as they potentially have more to lose.

I bought a house from a homeflipper who had bought it from a convicted pedophile. This was explained to me by my neighbors, who cheerfully explained that his story of 'oh I had a 17 year old girlfriend at 22' was obviously false because nobody would've cared.

Anyways they beat him up and forced him to sell after somebody found out the truth, I don't know how, that he'd molested a ten year old.

But billionaires get open license for underage pussy because they're rich? No, they should face the same crushing punishments inflicted on ordinary people who have sex with underage women, regardless of whatever ameliorating circumstances there are.

Absolutely. There's really no excuse for it. Billionaires can afford to employ a 'fixer' to get them whatever they desire (presuming what they desire isn't something explicitly underage). It's not difficult to do a background check to confirm all the girls are 18+, check them for discretion, make them sign NDA's etc.

I will agree that finding and employing a trustworthy fixer is something that would likely take time and effort though.

Furthermore, Epstein committing 'suicide' in the anti-suicide ward while the cameras were conveniently switched off is clear proof of some kind of paedophile-sex ring deeply embedded in the US government. The Q people were directionally correct.

It was blatant. As soon as cameras malfunction in a prison a tech is called out. High priority camera feeds are constantly monitored by people in a prison's control room on a monitor wall. A camera that is used for suicide watches malfunctioning is not something that can happen unnoticed. If a camera or NVR (recording server) malfunctions, a large blatantly clear alert pops up on the security management system. Most systems, especially those in prisons, have a redundant recording server so there are two copies of the video feeds.

I don't know how they got all the prison guards to shut up about it though. It would have been an expensive and high risk operation to shut so many mouths.

I also don't know if it was a paedophile ring, but Epstein clearly knew something that someone powerful didn't want getting out and that someone tied up loose ends. It must have been very important to them to make such a blatant move that clearly erodes so many peoples' trust in the justice system.

Edit: I should have said I don't know if it was THE paedophile ring and the client list directly that got him silenced or the information that he gained by leveraging that kompromat.

It would have been an expensive and high risk operation to shut so many mouths.

Prison guards don't make very much and the people in a position to want them to shut up are literal billionaires with government connections. They are also unlikely to think that squealing is a good idea when they just took a bribe to shut up about a murder.


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