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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29415 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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NYT has a primer on all the corruption that Trump has been engaging in:

  • There's a film about Melania that will pay $28 million directly to her. Did you know about this? I certainly didn't. This could have been a major scandal in past administrations, but at this point it barely registers at all.
  • The Trump meme coin has collected $320 million in fees. Noah smith has written about the coin a while ago, and since then Trump has invited coinholders to private events as a reward.
  • Justin Sun was accused of fraud by the SEC, but Trump put the investigation on hold after Sun bought $40 million in Trump coin
  • The luxury jumbo jet from Qatar that has been heavily featured in the news. In what I'm sure was a total coincidence, Trump announced a big AI deal with Qatar, KSA, and UAE that's almost certainly a big net-negative for the USA according to Zvi.
  • Trump's family are raking in cash head-over-heels by monetizing perceived access to the president, with Kushner, Trump Jr., and Eric Trump each individually dwarfing the amount that Hunter Biden ever received from doing similar activities, but basically nobody cares about that at this point.
  • Previous presidents have divested their business holdings prior to coming into office to head off allegations of corruption, and of course Trump never did, and basically nobody cares about that at this point.

Beyond this article, you could probably add a bunch more, like how White House aides are buying and selling stocks suspiciously timed around tariff announcements to make big profits.

The response to all of this from MAGA has been next to nonexistent. A handful of people have implied that maaaaaaaybe Trump shouldn't be doing this, but none of them remotely push the issue. When the left try to criticize this, most of MAGA either retorts with the broken record of Shellenberger arguments, or otherwise claims something Biden did was somehow worse, and Trump's corruption is implied to be good, actually. Isn't it wonderful living in an era when negative partisanship is the only political force that matters? Scandals and corruption used to be a thing that allowed the other party to come in and try to do better, but now they're used as a justification for the other side becoming even worse.

I do feel slightly bad about giving zero fucks about the things Trump and his clan are doing compared to what the Dems have done recently. Almost I feel like it’s a ‘ well the doors open now ‘ so motorboat away whole heartedly.

I guess I never much cared about Hunter Biden getting paid as much as I cared that people were lying about it and calling me a ring winger or even Nazi or stupid for ‘ believing ‘ that anything shady was going on.

Now that I write that out, that’s definitely the issue. I see what corruption is, and so does everyone else, for the most part. Being gaslit is what makes me start giving a care.

That’s actually a shockingly small list from the NYT so maybe Trump isn’t pulling a Ceaser.

Mr. Trump, the first convicted felon elected president, has erased ethical boundaries and dismantled the instruments of accountability that constrained his predecessors.

Quoted to make clear the journalist behind this article interprets all of Trump's actions in maximally bad faith.

Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket

A documentary made by and about Melania was acquired by Amazon for $40MM, her cut is $28MM. Higher by percent than typical EP share in cinema, but in cinema they profit from tickets.

A business entity tied to the Trumps sits on a large stash of the $TRUMP cryptocurrency and collects fees every time the coins change hands. So far, the coin has generated at least $320 million in fees, which the Trumps share with their business partners, according to Chainalysis, a crypto analytics firm.

Extrapolation from trading volume and an assumed fee. Appears correct. As for Smith:

And the crypto people are right that TRUMP and MELANIA just make the whole space look bad

Crypto has required no assistance from Trump to look bad. Smith's scenario is plausible but an extreme reach, at the value and volume it would take tens of millions to move it 10%, and it would have to keep that value until Trump's sons could sell enough to profit the intended amount of the bribe.

I do find it interesting, because I feel a quiet dissonance about Trump having a memecoin beyond the obvious issues. It's something about the aesthetic of it all, cryptocurrency has one kind of griminess to it, while politicians have a different kind of griminess, and to me, these clash. This even despite TRUMP having its namesake as a man who controls aircraft carriers, and thus it carrying more objective value than all other cryptocurrencies combined. Cue obvious issues, in no circumstances should a President profit from alternate fiat currency, and his family shouldn't either, whatever those "ties" are exactly. But if a businessman capitalizing on crypto is the only criticism of merit in this piece, it's nothing, and ultimately, those who lose on crypto get what they deserve.

The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 accused Mr. Sun of fraud, but after Mr. Trump took over the agency put its lawsuit on hold even as it dropped other crypto investigations.

The SEC under Biden opened an investigation into Sun a year ago after he invested in the Trump-tied WLF. Not difficult to see what happened here.

The luxury jumbo jet from Qatar that has been heavily featured in the news. In what I'm sure was a total coincidence, Trump announced a big AI deal with Qatar, KSA, and UAE that's almost certainly a big net-negative for the USA according to Zvi.

Hollow. They criticize because it went to Trump.

Zvi gets lost in the weeds on deeper AI questions when it's a matter of geopolitics. The oiled Arabs are beyond desperate for diversification, if they attain economic salvation it will be through AI. Terrifically easy and critical win for US diplomacy.

Congressional Republicans spent years investigating Hunter Biden, the son of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for trading on his family name to make millions of dollars, even labeling the clan the “Biden Crime Family.” But while Hunter Biden’s cash flow was a tiny fraction of that of Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, Republicans have shown no appetite for looking into the current presidential family’s finances.

Hunter Biden is a fuckup, Trump's kids aren't. Had Trump never entered politics, his eldest sons' dealings would be unsurprising . . . but this isn't a defense, because he did enter politics, and his sons run his organization and are part of his political brand. It caps your list but reading about it makes me feel like you've made an afterthought of the point deserving this entire discussion.

Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm World Liberty Financial, and son of Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, announced a $2 billion deal in the United Arab Emirates, just a couple of weeks before his father and Mr. Trump traveled there for a presidential visit.

(And the article)

Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.

That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s crypto firm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.

Corruption in politics is those three principled civil libertarians who care equally about all corruption and those seven zillion witches taking turns trying to cudgel each other with hypocrite. We know this, no more state of the discourse.

There are clear lines here, and it doesn't matter if it's entirely above board. If a hypothetical business in one of those countries invested two billion in a hypothetical non-political Trump org then he would visit as quickly as possible. For it to happen with the President gives the appearance of impropriety, and for the President, appearing improper is being improper.

Except impropriety isn't a crime, and I'm not sure what crime is supposed as having been committed. Now I did just say appearance alone is a problem, and if say the Soros org gave Trump a large amount of money, even if they loudly proclaimed their opposition and continued to operate antithetically to one another, everybody would be suspicious. Even still, impropriety is not a crime. What's the result? Like we might say it's improper, it is spiritually criminal, for politicians to engage in insider trading, but it's not a crime, and how many traders now profit from the Pelosi Index? It's also only spiritually criminal to lobby for and support politicians who campaign on making a kind of business illegal or regulated into insolvency while shorting those businesses and also investing in alternatives to those businesses. The Green Industry thanks them. Corruption is the game and the rules against are now only used as weapons. I will not hear appeals to convention, against Trump, the left struck first.

A person or organization can bribe a politician. The sheriff is bribed to ignore crime, the judge the same, the city manager bribed to softball a contract. I'm not so sure a country can bribe a politician. Foreigners can, but I just covered this. People who happened to be Ukrainian were bribing the Bidens so their own wealth increased. The governing body of a country? Somewhere on that path it must veer into geopolitics and diplomacy. If an entire country makes it personally worthwhile for the President to pursue better relations, what's the crime? Their accepting of gifts? To what end? Favoring them in policy? If it harmed US companies that would be a crime. If it harmed companies in other countries? I think they should have made a better offer. The President is America, and no length of litany of "incompetence" applies to the man who gains that office. Even if in his later years he sharply deteriorates and someone else holds the pen, he still first made himself electable. I say this because these are men with a special quality of judgment, and an emissary delivering a horde of gold unto the king might make him very interested in that country indeed.

The Bidens saw only money. Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma and the US relationship with Ukraine has brought hell to that country. The real crime of the Bidens' corruption isn't the impropriety of taking money from foreigners. There is a crime, but the rote ho-hum sort, of taxpayer dollars being pilfered out of Ukraine and then funneled into private coffers. Taxpayer dollars are already pilfered into private coffers, so this isn't unusual, just elaborate. Their real crime matches whatever degree of their involvement in the greater machinations behind all those young men dead in holes from kamikaze drones.

What of the Trumps' impropriety? And while one final time it is impropriety by our standards, I'm just not sure it's corrupt. These aren't sinecures for Junior and Eric, these aren't private businessmen buying access in interest of their own wallets. These are governments, who may well have bought access to the President, but who are acting in the interest of their peoples. So it might have also been for Ukraine, sometime, someplace. In theory. But those involved aren't state department spooks running a color revolution. It's Trump walking on stage and talking about his hopes for the region and asserting et refrain their right of self-determination. We're investing, American businesses are investing, Trump's organization is investing in these countries. If economic flourish results, if Trump Tower & Resort Jeddah becomes a beloved destination, where's the grift? If his efforts at enduring peace and prosperity in The Middle East succeed, what will history care if his motivation was personal wealth?

I'm often blinded by my optimism, but I know I see better than Peter Baker here, who is blinded by hate. Or I should hope he is, because I can respect that. If that article came out of pure cynicism, I know as fact I'm right.

A bold response, Jake, "Trump is corrupt but actually that's a good thing."

What if it is?

Hunter Biden is a fuckup, Trump's kids aren't.

Of course they’re fuckups, even Don himself doesn’t like them, which is why the actual business decisions in his family business - which he built to pass down to his own sons - are made by others. Trump spends more time with Elon and possibly even with Kushner that with his own older sons. Maybe he likes Barron. Certainly Ivanka is the child he considers not only his favorite but also the smartest.

Trump spends more time with Elon

He had a debt to pay off to Elon, I doubt that Trump will be in any hurry to work with Musk again. If nothing else, two people with such massive egos don't tend work well with each other.

Donald Jr was reportedly the biggest booster of JD Vance.

Zvi's claim:

China is competing in spite of this severe disadvantage. It is vital that we hold their feet to the fire on this. China has an acute chip shortage, because it physically cannot make more AI chips, so any chips it would ship to a place like UAE or KSA would each be one less chip available in China.

I don't think this is true, at all.

There's a gigantic amount of smuggling going on. A third of Nvidia GPU sales were in Singapore.

They're smuggling because they have a chip shortage, and the smuggling isn't meeting all their needs.

They're smuggling because they have a chip shortage, and the smuggling isn't meeting all their needs.

Then why was there low utilization of clusters before Deepseek got popular?

My possibly-naive guess: those clusters were being used for crypto-mining before that took a nosedive a few years ago, and weren't just sold off.

"highly advanced AI chips"

Ooooh so scary. It's true that Nvidia is ahead right now and nobody who can get their hands on Nvidia will even consider anything else. But the fact is that AI accelerator chips aren't that hard to make, especially for a state level actor. As long as mainland firms have access to TSMC fabs for their blackbox designs, China won't be lacking in compute.

Also to say that UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, countries that can print money for decades with oil, are going to turn around and steal these AI chips for a quick buck is borderline absurd. Especially since UAE has already shown that they're willing to blow tons of money on half assed AI research in the name of getting some prestige for their universities and whatever.

As long as mainland firms have access to TSMC fabs for their blackbox designs, China won't be lacking in compute.

Can you source this claim? It goes against a substantial amount of writing and commentary I've heard about this subject. China is significantly lacking in computer as evidenced by their attempts to get their hands on even the nerfed versions of chips and all the mainland labs use nvdia chips.

Didn't we have some china bulls in here just a few weeks ago talking about how good Huawei AI chips are? I personally don't buy it but we also have AMD and intel maybe a generation or so behind Nvidia, but nobody wants to use them because it's just more work and could run into unexpected hiccups.

Currently China is gobbling up nerfed chips because qualitatively they're not that different from the latest and greatest. They'll be more power hungry and less cost efficient, but they are still capable of training a gpt-5 level model if needed.

Didn't we have some china bulls in here just a few weeks ago talking about how good Huawei AI chips are? I personally don't buy it but we also have AMD and intel maybe a generation or so behind Nvidia, but nobody wants to use them because it's just more work and could run into unexpected hiccups.

Huawei chips are significantly worse than nvdia chips at a higher cost and lower yield. They're stuck on 7nms that actually compare to how tsmc's 3nm chips are made and some cope 5nms that use a layering technique that isn't worth the yield hit to use. America definitely has a big compute edge on china.

If you're at all serious about AI being a big deal in the next decade then maintaining this edge over our main geopolitical rival is actually really really important.

Currently China is gobbling up nerfed chips because qualitatively they're not that different from the latest and greatest. They'll be more power hungry and less cost efficient, but they are still capable of training a gpt-5 level model if needed.

Takingthe advantage to taking months VS years to train a model at this kind of cutting edge iterative process is difficult to over state.

If we get down the physics of it all the difference is that the latest gen nvidia chips can do more matrix calculations for a given amount of power.

Yet China is already at 3X the USA’s power generating capacity and grows by about a whole USA’s worth of capacity every 18 months.

And Chinese industrial policy is more nimble. If they decide to prioritize data centers they can just do that. In the USA private industry is squabbling over limited generating capacity and starting to plan for on site generation.

If we get down to the physics level China literally cannot produce enough chips for this calculation to matter and matrix multiplication benefits immensely from not having to have separate chips talk to each other. It just is not the case that china is producing enough chips even if they had infinite power.

How did they do Deepseek so quickly, if they're at such a disadvantage?

Deepseek wasn't really a compute constrained thing and they did use ndvia chips. They basically did 2 things with deepseek.

  1. Trained a model using the nerfed nvdia chips but with some hacks that got around most of the nerfing. Nvdia basically half passed nerfing them to comply with chip export controls. This doesn't mean export controls aren't good, it means we need to actually enforce them in spirit.
  2. They were the first to release chain of thought scaffolding which isn't compute constrained but also almost certainly something western labs had in house but hadn't bothered to productive yet as evidenced by the release only a few months later.

They didn't use Chinese chips so I'm not really sure how it could say anything about Chinese chips.

It's interesting that so many of the replies here seem to be "yes, but the other side is worse" or "yes, we need to take the bad with the good" or even "yes Chad".

I'm a Trump fan but I abhor corruption and wouldn't want to turn a blind eye to it. That said...only two of your examples (if true) would count as corruption?

  • Melania doing a film. Actresses do typically get paid (directly!) for being in movies.
  • Trump meme coin is cringe and low class but not corruption.
  • I would need to look more into the Sun story as I hadn't heard of it. But it seems like there would be less obvious ways of paying off Trump than buying Trump coin? And why would Trump care about 40 million?
  • The jumbo jet is a gift to the USA, not to Trump. It is a token of goodwill and a sign of respect. Trump is famously more open to deals after being shown respect, so it is possible that it helped grease the wheels but it is not corruption. It is interesting you cite Zvi. I read Zvi religiously, and he has been extremely critical of Trump's policies. Zvi was comparatively subdued in his criticism of the Middle Eastern AI deals, being merely skeptical. I updated in favor of the UAE/KSA/Qatar deal after reading his overview.
  • Is Kushner even still in the inner circle? I thought he and Trump were on the outs. Regardless, if true, this would certainly be corruption and while Trump is not directly involved, he would have to know it was happening. That said, it does seem an odd grift for children of a billionaire to play.
  • Previous presidents weren't billionaires; divestment wouldn't have had the same impact on their net worth. Retaining business holdings isn't inherently corruption, and could actually align incentives: if the American economy does well, so does Trump. Proof of Stake/Principal-Agent.

What makes a Melania Trump performance worth so much? How do you know the meme coin isn't a vehicle for corruption?

What makes a Melania Trump performance worth so much

You get to advertise your movie to the maga or less-maga-but-conservative half the country thereabouts on "we have the presidents hot trophy wife in our movie."

Trumps personal corruption is stupid and I honestly think he's just creating a void where bad actors and those confident in his insanity can profit. Timing stock purchases around tariff announcements is risky if you think Trump will back down at the last minute, as he has done before, so it just reflects a bet that Trump is actually pulling the trigger on something every suited economist is screaming will be stupid. The memecoin stuff is honestly just funny at this point and calling it access capitalism is dubious since access to Trump seems to be counterproductive - Musk is on the outs, and Susie Wiles is still by all accounts the main powerbroker.

Right now the bigger problem is that the irritating screeching makes it hard to filter genuine problems of Trump accruing personal gains through the power of the executive versus the normal machinery of government being somewhat incompetent. Everything Trump does is corruption destroying the republic, but yet it still stands, so at a certain point it is legit to ask what the hell this corruption actually is.

The mechanisms to hold Trump accountable are unfortunately degraded, and the question must be posed on whether such mechanisms ever would have worked as intended anyways. In such a degraded and polarized environment, we're going to end up in a vibeoff anyways. Wait, I just time travelled back from 2011, and its been a vibeoff since a decade ago. Elevatorgate raises its head again!

Trump's corruption is implied to be good, actually

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Isn't it wonderful living in an era when negative partisanship is the only political force that matters?

I don't think so, no, but... if it bothers you (does it bother you?), why engage in it?

Trump cannot seem to do anything at all without the corporate news media screaming that it is a sign of "scandals and corruption" and most of the time it turns out to be nothing. As a direct consequence, when it does look like something, I feel like the best response available to me is to wait and see. The news media has repeatedly turned out to be a bunch of shrill partisans who spread misinformation without hesitation and then run a retraction three months later at the bottom of page B17.

Particularly the New York Times--it's awfully hard to overlook their reluctance to write clearly about it when a (D) is involved. Book and film deals happen all the time, including with sitting members of SCOTUS. I still haven't seen any really convincing evidence, either way, that the Qatari plane deal is out of the ordinary (and apparently it may have been discussed with the previous administration). I'm more concerned about the cryptocurrency and influence peddling, but the only people crying wolf about it have been crying wolf for so long, that I don't feel any urgency at their alarm.

That, really, is why an era of "negative partisanship only" bothers me--because at this point, if we really did have a deeply corrupt politician in office, how would I know? I can't trust the corporate news media. I can't trust its openly partisan competitors. I can't trust the government itself, clearly. The moment journalists and FBI agents and every lawyer and judge to the left of Neil Gorsuch took it upon themselves--often, explicitly--to defeat Trump no matter what, every story, every press release, every speech and investigation and judicial declaration, became just another piece of culture war ammunition. Trump's first term was routinely prophesied to end with concentration camps for Muslims, war with North Korea, and the total economic collapse of the United States. Those prophesies were clearly idiotic at the time (at least to me), but at least they were happening in the absence of fixed priors on what a Trump presidency would tend to look like. People today lack that excuse.

I don't like Trump, I've never been a Trump supporter, I think he is perhaps the worst thing to happen to the Republican Party in living memory. But that doesn't justify the New York Times functioning as the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. If you want to live in an era where negative partisanship isn't the only political force that matters, you're not going to get there by writing posts in the Motte consisting entirely of negative partisanship.

if we really did have a deeply corrupt politician in office, how would I know?

That's the whole point - you're not supposed to. At least you're not supposed to decide it on your own. That's the whole point of journalism reorienting from informing to indoctrinating - they tell you who is corrupt and who is not, and you accept it. That's what they are trying to do. If you want to do something else, using the corporate media for it is not the right tool. It's like asking "how do I use a symphonic orchestra to build a sea-faring ship?" You're not supposed to use it for that. The corporate media is not there to help you become informed, they are there to establish control over you and manipulate you into arriving at certain conclusions which would be useful for them. You're feeling that they are manipulating you and you can't trust them because that's exactly what is happening.

So you'd ask "ok, what tools do I use instead?" - and that's much harder question. Right now I can't name any system or solution that completely covers this need. Journalism as the profession seems to be basically done for, except maybe on a local level reporting on potholes being fixed (or not fixed) and new burger joints being opened. There are certain people (some of them coming from journalism, though most of them now working outside corporate media) that I trust to some measure to keep me informed, but that's specific for me and I can't really recommend it to other people. It's a jungle out there.

Just because the outgroup is spamming untrue attacks doesn't abrogate responsibility for one side. I'm reading through Original Sin right now, and the fact that Republicans constantly made incorrect attacks against Biden and Democrats more broadly was a big part of why the Dems ignored Biden's mental decline -- they could treat it as just another desperate attempt to smear Biden in the long gish gallop that was always going on. To them, the "Biden is senile" line could be treated as just another "Obama was born in Kenya" or "Joe is pocketing bribes from Hunter" line. If the Dems had a responsibility to actually report Biden's decline (and they absolutely did, IMO), then Republicans have a responsibility to clean up their side too, no matter what the other side is saying or how untrustworthy they are.

I'm not claiming one scandal was worse than the other (MAGA will always claim anything Biden and co. did was infinitely worse than what Trump is doing), I'm demonstrating the principle.

If the Dems had a responsibility to actually report Biden's decline (and they absolutely did, IMO), then

There's no "if-then". The responsibility for corruption doesn't come from other guys being perfect, and a presence of other corrupt guys, true or imagined, can not excuse your own corruption. Dems lied voluminously about just every aspect of Biden's presidency, bar none, and they are responsible for this, and will be responsible forever and ever, and for all harm that it has done to the country, absolutely regardless of what Republicans ever did or will do.

P.S. And yes, Joe was totally and undoubtedly pocketing bribes from (or through, however you want to present it) Hunter. Stop living in denial, it happened. And there's really no reason to pretend otherwise anymore, Joe Biden is spent goods for the party. Relieve you conscience and accept the facts, at least in this small matter. Believing the truth is always easier than compounding lies. No lie can survive forever anyway, especially not in our age.

The responsibility for corruption doesn't come from other guys being perfect, and a presence of other corrupt guys, true or imagined, can not excuse your own corruption.

I fully agree with this.

Joe was totally and undoubtedly pocketing bribes

Strongly disagree with this. I've yet to see anyone present any compelling evidence despite the massive Republican fishing expedition on the topic. Incredulity and demands to "stop living in denial" are not arguments.

I wasn't trying to bring new evidence. If the mass of evidence already widely available on the topic did not convince you, it's the matter of choice, not the quality of evidence. It's like O.J Simpson looking for the "real killer", or Jussie Smollett still claiming MAGA thugs assaulted him. It's not about quantity or quality of evidence by this point. More evidence will inevitably appear, as it always does, but nothing prevents people who do not want to believe it from rejecting it too. Frankly, I do not see any way available for me - or anyone - to convince anybody who has decided on not being convinced. There must be a voluntary act of opening oneself to this possibility.

I see it as quite analogous to the Trump-Russia investigation, i.e. there was plenty of smoke, and several people under the President were up to no good. However, there was no fire despite extensive searching by the opposition party. The connection incriminating the President himself was always missing.

and several people under the President were up to no good

Come on. Literally his son met with his business partners in his presence. He also complained privately about having to share with Joe. Sure, there's no fire. The whole family lived off this grift for years, and it's obvious to any non-partisan observer. I mean, why the heck did Burisma paid Hunter, for his artistic talents? What could he deliver to them but the link to his father? Please, live in denial as long as you want, this is really not the case I'm willing to spend any time on, it's just ridiculous by now.

analogous to the Trump-Russia investigation, i.e. there was plenty of smoke,

Nope, in that investigation there was no "smoke" beyond the infamous Steele dossier, which as we know now was wholly manufactured and paid for by Clinton campaign and promoted by the same campaign operatives, either official or de-facto. Trump has some dirt on him (like Trump University, or $TRUMP, or some of other deals which can reasonably raise some eyebrows) but the whole Russia thing is a pile of pure shit. And, as I said, these things eventually come out - we now know who invented this shit, who paid to whom for this shit, who promoted this shit and who operated the whole shit farm. We will, eventually, also know who operated the shit farm and who paid to whom and how much for the Biden RICO family too. Until then, feel free to deny it.

Hunter wanted to make it seem like Joe was in on it so Hunter could plausibly "sell access", but no money ever made it to Joe. Hunter was obviously corrupt, but there wasn't a link to Joe. Joe even agreeing to make small talk with Hunter's associates was bad no matter how Hunter lied and said they were just his "friends", but far worse was the pardon he gave his son. That's a clear example of corruption. Basically all Presidents have abused the pardon power and it would be better if it was simply abolished outright.

For the Trump-Russia investigation, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone were all engaged in a bunch of shady stuff. What they were doing was by no means a "pile of pure shit". The issue for Dems is what those individuals did didn't really reach up to Trump.

More comments

Hunter gave "10% to the big guy". Biden was pocketing the bribes. It is not all Republican fantasies.

Hunter said he would hold 10% of the equity in a project for the big guy, but didn't do anything to act on this. This is consistent with both "Joe's share was 10%, but Hunter acted as the shell owner" and "Hunter was telling lies about Joe's involvement in order to scam corrupt foreigners by selling influence he didn't have". Given that Joe's lifestyle is consistent with his known clean income and that a Congressional committee with access to the bank records couldn't find any cashflows to "the big guy" from his alleged 10% participation, or any suggestion of what bribe-service Joe was providing to Hunter's Chinese clients in exchange for the 10%, Hunter freelancing seems more likely.

Trump cannot seem to do anything at all without the corporate news media screaming that it is a sign of "scandals and corruption" and most of the time it turns out to be nothing. As a direct consequence, when it does look like something, I feel like the best response available to me is to wait and see. The news media has repeatedly turned out to be a bunch of shrill partisans who spread misinformation without hesitation and then run a retraction three months later at the bottom of page B17.

Correct. Of the things listed, the Sun story looks the worst -- except if you know that the Biden administration (in which Sun's investigation was started) was heavily into crushing crypto by regulatory means and the Trump administration is openly the opposite, so there's no definite quid-pro-quo here.

I agree and have for some time agreed that Trump is an abomination and embarrassment to conservatives. The problem for actual conservatives is what is there to actually do here? Join the Democrats? There are some rational positions where that is the greater of the two evils. Perhaps this abundance agenda is the invitation they need to throw behind a Democrat side of the aisle that disavows a lot of the leftie fringe that the rest of the Democrats have been a little too beholden to.

the problem for actual conservatives is what is there actually to do here?

Really, the problem for "actual conservatives" is more along the lines of "how can we claw anything of any relevance back?" The "real conservative" party is dead, Trump killed it, and publically so. Being a William F. Buckley fanboy is the surest path to a dead political career, and frankly good riddance.

what is there to actually do here?

Stronger internal criticism, like what MAGA did when Musk implied we must have open borders for Indians back in December. That would at least be a good start.

The problem for actual conservatives is what is there to actually do here?

Invent a time machine, go back 80 years, and convince the “real conservatives” to not spend the next eight decades constantly losing.

"Don't lose" is not the most clear or transparent piece of advice.

What should conservatives have done starting from 1945?

Crushed the universities with force and not allow the long march through the institutions to continue, slash and burn the administrative state.

And be willing to burn any and all political capital needed to stop Ted Kennedy's immigration bill.

My point is, the Republican Party as of 2015 was dead in the water. If you look at the 2012 election internal postmortem assessment, the Republican strategy was basically “give up, concede all cultural and immigration positions, become slightly more corporatist Democrats”. The landslide defeat of ¡Jeb! to Hillary Clinton in 2016 would have been the final loogie on the grave of American conservatism. People like @aqouta bemoan Donald Trump’s hijacking of the Republican Party and the demise of REAL TRVE CONSERVATISM, when Trump is only reason any kind of conservatism, or the Republican Party itself, still exists at all.

If conservatism is when you refuse to address entitlements, blow up the budget deficit, tarrif our allies because you don't understand trade policy, behave like a petulant child in every possible situation and fall for lowest common denominator X slop posts then what even remains of conservatism? What is Trump conserving exactly?

I mean, Trump is clearly far more socially conservative than the alternative, and he’s definitely preserving space for social conservatism to continue to exist.

If conservatism is when you refuse to address entitlements, blow up the budget deficit

Every post-war conservative seems to think it is.

What is Trump conserving exactly?

The population composition of the country, the definition of "woman" and "racial discrimination", children's genitals, classical architecture...

Any kind of conservatism? I'm wondering what kinds those are?

From my perspective, it doesn't make sense to describe Trump himself as a conservative of any kind - he's a populist demagogue and I'd say closer to the revolutionary of the spectrum than the conservative end. But of course it's possible for a non-conservative to, however inadvertently, create the space for conservatism to survive.

The question is what that is. What kinds of conservatism are we talking about? The conservatism of the American experiment itself, i.e. a kind of classical liberalism? A sort of cultural or social conservatism embedded in community and religious life that goes back long before the American Revolution? Reaganite fusionism? I think this kind of dialogue often struggles because 'conservative' can mean a lot of different things in the American context, some of which outright contradict each other.

At any rate, I notice you didn't answer my question. If you had a time machine and went back to 1945, what would you advise 'conservatives' (who are they, specifically?) at the time to do? Would you give advice to Thomas Dewey or Robert Taft? Maybe William Jenner? What would it be?

Thé difference is that, although Trump may not personally be much more socially conservative than Matt Yglesias(emphasis on may- I could easily be persuaded to lean either way on this question. I don’t think either of them are wedded to their views on trans and abortion anyways), he is much more credibly committed to protecting the rights of social conservatives to be socially conservative. Even centrist inoffensive democrats would be happy to leave masterpiece cake shop to die.

Impeachment and removal. Vance too if he won't behave himself. It'll incite a massive grassroots rebellion in the GOP that will have unforeseeable consequences, but IMO the tail risks of continuing on the current path exceed the tail risks of a drastic course-correction.

Impeachment and removal. Vance too if he won't behave himself.

And then what? Install Kamala as the Real President?

Mike Johnson is third in line.

Hot take: this does not really belong in the CW thread because it is not controversial. Nobody seems to be contesting that Trump has done most of the above. His defenders mostly claim that this is normal politician behavior.

Most congress critters are sponsored by big companies in their home state and certainly do their best to help these companies afterwards, sending the gravy train their way etc. Some go beyond that and do a bit of insider trading on the side. Only a few are open about taking money from foreign interests with an implied quid pro quo.

Allow me a metaphor. Except for a few (Bernie Sanders?), every politician farts in the whirlpool. There are certainly quite some who occasionally pee in the whirlpool too. But Donald Trump has just removed his trunks and taken a jumbo-sized shit in the whirlpool.

Let's not forget about Paul Weiss, the law firm Trump sanctioned earlier this year, only to drop all sanctions against them after they promised to do $40 million of pro bono work for him.

Then: Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.

Now: This shit

Eight other law firms have since made similar deals with the White House.

the law firm Trump sanctioned earlier this year, only to drop all sanctions against them after they eliminated DEI policies and promised to do $40 million of pro bono work for him White House initiatives.

Given the way Trump thinks of himself as King and everything, there really isn't any fundamental difference between the man and his white house administration.

  • -13

Of course there is, just like there is a difference between donating $100M to Mar-A-Lago, and donating $100M to IRS.

Good catch. I'm sure there will be many more examples to add to the pile by the end of Trump's term.

"I wish that voters in America would vote only in consideration of policy."

The monkey's paw curls a finger.

Edit: An anecdote. My father-in-law swore off Newt Gingrich because of his divorces. A decade of mass immigration and an explosion of gayness later, and he's a die-hard Trumper, the exact kind of person you see being ridiculed every day at the top of reddit. He's a soldier now, not a debate rival, and certainly no longer someone who is super choosy about his political allies.

Newt Gingrich was exceptionally vile even by today's standards because he left his wife as she was dying of cancer. Trump is not the best husband (he may have beaten one of his wives) but so as far as I know his ex-wives all live comfortably.

Republicans also hardened up a lot about morals after they publicly beheaded Nixon for jaywalking, and then twenty years later the Democrats closed ranks and lawyered up to get their guy out of rape and cartel money laundering charges.

Oh yeah. I've always been a social conservative, but the rank of feminists lining up to joke about how they'd strap on the kneepads for the Presidential blowjob so long as Bill kept abortion legal, and throwing Monica under the bus, after the protests about patriarchy, sexual harassment, imbalance in power dynamics, inappropriate boss-employee relationships and the rest of it?

So after that shining example of what really mattered, why should I believe them when they screamed about Kavanaugh and rape, or any of the fifty other offences? Trump allegedly assaulted E. Jean Carroll in a department store? You lot defended a guy old enough to be her father using his position to have an affair with a young woman in the Oval Office and who then tried logic-chopping his way out of it by "it depends what 'is' is" when under oath about "did you have sex with her?"

This seems basically symmetrical. Why did Republicans care about Clinton's bad behaviour if they don't care about Trump's?

Because this is tit for tat and not caring about Trump happened after the Democrats defected on Clinton.

cartel money laundering charges

I must have completely missed that... I'm assuming it was Clinton-related?

Theres also Ted Kennedy if you thought it was a one off for a president.

Yes, the Whitewater scandal

Fail to listen to the people and you will eventually invite into power someone ambitious, cynical and charismatic enough to ride their rage into power. It turns out that in addition to their political talent, those leaders are also usually extremely greedy and corrupt. Who would have guessed?

Fortunately, any potentially affected country’s political elite can avoid this disappointing outcome with one simple trick. Just end / partially reverse mass immigration and, if you can stretch to two policies, facilitate the construction of huge amounts of cheap, quality housing.

Insider trading? Family members selling access to the President? I am shocked, shocked to find that corruption is going on in here...

Well, not that shocked. Isn't this just business as usual? The sums are pretty small compared to the size of the Federal budget, and it's not like corruption in Washington is a new phenomenon.

And revealed preferences are showing that people don't actually care about this stuff much at all, that they only pretend to care to use it as a cudgel against the other side. To someone who genuinely thinks corruption is bad and should be stamped out as much as possible, that's horrifying.

If you "genuinely think corruption is bad and should be stamped out as much as possible," then you must be equally critical of every US politician, regardless of party! After all, they're all corrupt, as we well know. I bet if I look back through your post history, I'll find an even 50/50 split between posts criticizing left-wing corruption like Nancy Pelosi's insider trading and posts criticizing right-wing corruption like Trump's meme coins.

Because you, unlike those other guys, don't just "pretend to care to use it as a cudgel against the other side," (your words, not mine).

People should be critical of every US politician to the extent that they actually engage in corruption. Tons of Republicans made accusations that Joe Biden was receiving huge kickbacks with Hunter as an intermediary, but that was mostly false in regards to Joe actually getting any money. I did criticize Joe for pardoning his son though. The problem here is that the two parties are not equal in corruption, at least for now. It's plausible that Dems will become worse in the future and use Trump's current actions as justification for their own awfulness. I'll criticize that if it occurs.

I can't help but notice that you avoided the example I actually used (Nancy Pelosi) and compared Donald Trump to Joe Biden instead.

I specifically referred to Biden since I knew much more about his scandals than Nancy Pelosi's alleged insider trading. If Pelosi is doing that then it would obviously be bad, although I haven't seen much evidence that she's actually doing it. Not that I've looked super hard, I'm aware of it on the periphery of my knowledge but I've never delved that deeply. If you have an article or two that make convincing cases I'd be more than willing to give them a read.

Nah man, you don't get to say that, not after people screamed until they were blue in the face trying to point out the corruption of the democrats in the past few administrations only to be gaslit by the fucking government and media and have their lives ruined. You don't get to punish anyone who mentions corruption and then when you have silenced them claim their silence is proof they don't care.

It's not the hill I'd die on, necessarily, but I think it's coherent to care more about overt corruption like Trump's than about covert corruption like the Clintons' and Bidens' - in other words, to prefer the government to gaslight people about the corruption that's happening, if we must have corruption at all. A President who's overtly corrupt is fouling up the institutions themselves and eroding public trust by making a spectacle of his lack of morals. Meanwhile, a President who gives in to temptation in private, but understands and cares about the fact that he shouldn't, and tries very hard not to let it get out, is just one fallible man.

Do you exclusively get your news and information from Fox or some other right of center source? If not, how are you sure you are not conflating the overtness of Trump's corruption with the reporting frequency and tenor of the news sources from what you derive your feelings about what is happening?

While I don't think corruption is the most compelling example of this, I think immigration enforcement is (most of what has been reported on as unprecedented under Trump happened sometime under Biden or Obama and just no one noticed or cared to). But it is still an example. If there are thousands of reporters trying to report a thing, vs. two in the news sources your consume, your view is going to be skewed.

I actually think most people on the motte "Know" this, but far fewer act in accordance with their knowledge.

I think the exact opposite. This seems like a conflict vs mistake theory thing to me - I think you are a better person than anyone who has or will run for president. Perhaps if you have generally good pious people in charge corruption can be better in secret. Perhaps. I think the incentives will still lead to disaster, but I can buy the argument. When you are run by halfwit narcissists though, overt corruption is intrinsically better because overt corruption must toe the line of public acceptability. Kickbacks, insider trading - all perfectly acceptable to the US public as has been amply demonstrated by everyone in power since at least 2008 (before then absolutely but 2008 is where it became obvious to everyone paying attention). Sex trafficking rings? Pedophilia? Those bloom in darkness.

Edit: added the line about my personal view

What corruption were the past few Democratic administrations engaged in that exceeded the level of magnitude and blatantness that Trump is now engaged in? Even if you can list examples, why is your response to imply that makes Republicans immune from criticism now, rather than asserting that both parties deserve criticism when they're doing bad things?

What corruption were the past few Democratic administrations engaged in that exceeded the level of magnitude and blatantness that Trump is now engaged in?

You really don't know? How can you claim Trump is worse if you can't even list a few things off the top of your head. I even gave an example in the other comment (though you did remove it when quoting it, so maybe there's some gaze-averting going on).

Even if you can list examples, why is your response to imply that makes Republicans immune from criticism now

This is why I originally said you're dismissing the argument that Trump doing better. Criticize him all you want, just don't act like MAGAs should be more outraged than they were about the previous administration. At least not without evidence.

You really don't know? How can you claim Trump is worse if you can't even list a few things off the top of your head. I even gave an example in the other comment (though you did remove it when quoting it, so maybe there's some gaze-averting going on).

Which comment are you referring to? I'm not trying to be obtuse here -- I did a ctrl+f on all your comments in this thread and nothing immediately stood out, but maybe I'm just missing something.

Biden's decline, a.k.a a chunk of his term being Weekend At Berney's-ed. The comment is here.

Edit: oh, did you edit the bit about Original Sin in? I don't recall seeing it before. In any case it doesn't matter to the argument, the decline was obvious long before the book was published.

Oh you want data? Read all of the motte - it's all in there.

I point blank do not believe you care about corruption. At all. If you cared about corruption by anyone as much as you claim, you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it and you would now have bulletproof arguments that it wasn't corruption. Since you claim that you don't even know what corruption the previous administration has been accused of, I can safely conclude you don't care about corruption, you care about Trump.

And I did not imply that republicans are immune from criticism. My implication is that nobody gives a shit about corruption on their side anymore. I have been beating this drum for years, but I have been explicit about it since Trump's election - this is democrat's own fault. There is a point past which spite becomes an acceptable justification and they pushed the right there. They had plenty of warnings this was coming, plenty of people were willing to point out that the right would only tolerate two tier anarcho-tyranny for so long, but they were ignored. So now they reap the whirlwind.

you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it

I feel like I’m having a stroke.

If I’m reading you right, though, I think you’re jumping the gun. How do you know Ben doesn’t have a “bulletproof argument” for whatever it is you’ve got in mind?

I know he doesn't have bulletproof arguments for all of the DNC's corruption because the DNC are hopelessly corrupt. And if for some reason you imagine he has been a motte regular for years but somehow missed any discussion of DNC corruption in the past, he has no idea that the party is run like the Mafia and so on, his concern wasn't that there was corruption he didn't know about - he dismissed that idea out of hand - it was that the corruption exceeded that of Trump. I think it's pretty safe to conclude his concern is Trump, not corruption.

I’m sure he’s seen the discussion. I know I have. And yet I don’t share your conclusion either. It’s not because I hate Trump, but because I really do believe his administration is more flagrantly corrupt than Biden’s, Obama’s, or the DNC.

I wish you would give a specific comparison on insider trading or nepotism or something. How many politicians are given personal 747s?

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If you cared about corruption by anyone as much as you claim, you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy

Again, I must insist you list out a few examples of the corruption you're talking about. Because I did investigate some of the more major allegations. The claim Biden "stole" the 2020 election was 99.9% pure hallucination/confabulation. The Hunter Biden stuff was true in regards to Hunter being a dirtbag but critically lacked the link connecting to Joe, which was always the point in the first place.

So what exactly are you talking about?

'Again I must insist' 'Because I did investigate' 'so what exactly are you talking about' - why are you talking like this? Are you trying to convince me this conversation has gone on a lot longer than it has? I can't see your investigations if you don't mention them and stick to exclusively handwaving away all claims of democrat corruption with Hanania links, can I?

But you tell on yourself anyway when you did investigate 'some of the more major allegations'. If all corruption concerns you as much as you claim you should be concerned by all of it, surely? You should be able to rattle off a list off the top of your head of bipartisan corruption.

Here's my list of 'some of the more major ones'. I don't really want to do this since it is beside the point that someone who cares about all corruption can not possibly be partisan in the US and yet you are.

There's yes election fraud, Hunter Biden's bullshit and the cover up 'to protect the election', covid policies, insider trading, the weaponisation of the doj, the deliberate sabotage of our borders, the politicisation of social media, basically everything the DNC has ever done and, of course, the puppet president bullshit.

So the Hunter Biden cover up is definitive, as is the weaponization of the doj and the puppet president shenanigans, as were covid control measures, insider trading and the politicisation of social media - those ones are bipartisan, yay. But you didn't know about any of them? This must be a massive blow.

I point blank do not believe you care

why are you talking like this?

But you tell on yourself anyway

concerns you as much as you claim you should

and yet you are

First off you should know I have a fairly low threshold for abruptly ending conversations when the other person is disrespectful, uses ad hominems, or makes personal attacks. Nothing you've said so far passes that threshold yet (the comments I quoted are borderline), but I've been on this site long enough to know where it could be headed. When people resort to that I've found that it's best to just not respond to them much from then on. This is unfortunate since I come here explicitly to have my ideas tested, which I'd like to continue as long as both sides are generally respectful towards each other.

It seems as if I've annoyed you. If that's the case I apologize, as that's not my intention. The reason I'm "talking like this" is because I asked for specific examples, but in your reply you didn't give any and instead claimed it was obvious and that I should "read all of the motte" (?) but giving explicit examples really would was helpful so thank you for giving them. My issue with a lot of your examples is that they're not actually corruption -- many of them are bad on their own merits (e.g. border policies) -- but they're not corruption, they're just policies that you (and I) disagree with.

The "puppet president" stuff also isn't what I'd call a central example of corruption. It was also bad, and the Democrats deserve a lot of blame for it, and in some ways it rhymes with corruption since it erodes trust and involves implicit (and occasional explicit) lying, but it's different from, say, selling off pardons.

For the ones like Hunter Biden and the "stolen" election, the main claims of those are pretty much just blatantly false as I've already said. I'd say the Hunter Biden thing certainly would have been a central example of corruption, if the main claim was true.

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The Hunter Biden stuff was true in regards to Hunter being a dirtbag but critically lacked the link connecting to Joe

An associate involved in some of their dealings testified under oath that Joe was "the big guy" referred to as getting a cut -- maybe you don't believe him or whatever, but that doesn't seem like an hallucination to me?

This is in reference to Hunter's stuff, and it was a claim Hunter (or his associate) made to make it seem like Joe was intimately involved when he actually wasn't. Hunter wanted to make it seem like selling access to his dad was a good deal for the buyer, so that's why he said this even though it wasn't true. Republicans went over Joe's financial records with a fine-toothed comb and repeatedly found nothing.

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At all. If you cared about corruption by anyone as much as you claim, you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it and you would now have bulletproof arguments that it wasn't corruption

Which specific claims are you talking about here? Hunter Biden? Stolen election? Biden's "fuck all y'all I'm pardoning everyone" end-of-term pardons? The congressional insider trading thing? Or is there some other specific, credible, and concrete accusation of corruption that you are referring to?

Trump could EO himself a billion dollars and as long as he stops immigration, deports all the migrants here and stops all funding for the foreign wars / foreign aide I'd still vote for him. The country has just gotten bad enough that normal crime doesn't really matter. The threat is existential.

Personally I suspect that this sort of corruption was always happening, we just didn't get coverage of it because the uniparty was in control and they didn't want to release things that overly damaged trust in the system. Now the knives are out and all the dirty laundry gets aired. I mean epstein was getting dirt on mega rich businessmen and influential politicians way back in the late 90s.

(there should be disclaimers on hanania links so people don't give him traffic against their will, or use archives)

Well look at all of the self dealing DOGE found. NYT was…against that and those numbers dwarf what they are reporting here.

And to your point re uniparty there is zero appetite to fix it because some republicans are in on it too.

The threat is existential.

No, it is not. If the Taliban party had just gotten a majority of the votes in New Mexico, then I might be inclined to agree that your country faces an existential threat. But this does not happen. The only religious nutjobs getting elected to Congress are self-identifying as Christian, and even they do not pose an existential threat.

Sure, given current demographic trends, at some point in the future the non-hispanic whites will be a minority. But this is not the end of the world. I mean, plenty of Asians preferred living in the US (where they were a minority) to living in Asia, because by and large, being an ethnic minority is not that bad a deal in the US.

Since you beat the Brits, you had perhaps two conflicts which might be called existential: the civil war (in retrospect, the outcome was over-determined, if not in the 1860s, then in the 1900s) and the cold war (which was more of a threat to the world as a whole than to the US specifically).

Anyone who wants to tell you that any current political thing, be it Dobbs, immigration, Trump, Social Justice or whatever poses an existential threat to the US is very likely wrong. (The AI doomers at least have a plausible pathway in mind, though.)

I mean, plenty of Asians preferred living in the US (where they were a minority) to living in Asia, because by and large, being an ethnic minority is not that bad a deal in the US.

I think there's a reasonable fear that the "being an ethnic minority is not that bad a deal in the US" is only the case because of the unusual and ahistoric forbearance of the existing ethnic majority. There's a disquieting dearth of places friendly to ethnic minorities that are not run by white people.

Singapore?

A noteworthy exception, but a Crown possession in living memory, and possibly not scalable past city-state.

Instead, new mexico is ruled by a party that

  1. Put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan
  2. Tried to ban all guns on a whim one day
  3. Deliberately invited in the largest wave of illegal aliens in US history
  4. Is stubbornly tolerant of public drug use on city sidewalks and parks
  5. Mandates lgbt exposure in school for 5 year old children.
  6. Imposes racial and sexual quotas
  7. Opposes the deportation of any and all illegal aliens
  8. Requires their legislators put lgbt flags on each of their desks (in some states, idk about new mexico)

Etc

I would rather have the Taliban start a legit civil war than let the enemy turn the US into a whole new thing.

  1. Put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan

Let me stop you right there. With the benefit of hindsight, the revival of the Taliban was already a forgone conclusion when GWB invaded Afghanistan. Within the US RoE, there was no way things could have gone differently. The US stayed for two decades -- easily a generation -- and the democratic state collapsed as soon as they left. They could have stayed for another generation and the outcome would have been the same.

(This is not to say that the retreat was well done, but that the alternative -- pouring resources into Afghanistan to keep the Taliban out of power forever -- was not worth it either from a geostrategic or an EA perspective.)

And, more significantly, Joe Biden was implementing the surrender agreement signed by Donald Trump in Doha in 2020.

The Deep State thought they could prevail upon Sleepy Joe to rat out of the deal, but I don't think they had any plans to win the war if they had done so. I don't know how much of the badly botched pull-out was Biden administration incompetence and how much was Deep State sabotage.

New Mexico has low state capacity by US standards, though. Quite a bit of the lefty insanity from the top in New Mexico doesn't make it past the top.

Even the most "moderate" democrat will toe the party line when asked, or else face bullying or expulsion. All democrats are democrats.

And? I’m not claiming they’re moderates. I’m claiming they’re inneffective.

Yeah, I think most of the state is mostly Democrat because they want to use the oil money for daycare, extra school, extra Medicaid, and whatnot. But not the "LGBTQ for 5 year olds" kind of school, just the "too bad we don't have more high achieving kids here, maybe we can teach the ones we have to read and do math if they just sit in a classroom for more hours" kind. It's not like the sheriffs want to enforce the governor's orders about disallowing guns or wearing masks alone in the desert, so they don't.

"Ship of Theseus" existential, not "Destruction of Carthage" existential. Mass immigration and erosion of the civil religion threaten to transform the United States into something unrecognizable. That already happened once with Ellis Island immigration, and it is currently threatening to happen again as a consequence of the 60s cultural revolution.

I find it amazing that on this day 1 year ago it would have been the true blue left who would have called for Hanania link disclaimers while now it's the right wingers doing the same, even though his views haven't really changed much in that time.

Particularly given that many of those same people have likely ridiculed the purity spirals on the left.

By mid-2022 I could tell Hanania had exhausted his couple of interesting ideas, and it had become clear he wasn't at that 99.9th percentile of internal coherency that makes for an insightful commentator. I almost wrote a response to a comment here, saying that people were obviously overestimating Hanania's ability to invest into his own ideas. He was an r-strategist poster. And he was going to have to start wasting everybody's time to keep up with the meatgrinder of being a professional twitter wonk.

Never really liked him as a populist since he's basically open borders. He seems to lack a basic understanding of humans. It's become especially grating now though since he's basically this term's Romney/McCain/Cheney. Being held up by all the left wing posters as a conservative with morals and principals, aka beliefs that align more with their own.

I have been calling out Hanania's stupidity since at least 2023, and I'm no true blue aussieleftist. But he's definitely flattering different biases these days.

Well yes, the strategy of farming hateclicks with deliberate offense is not especially dependent on actual opinions.

There are still a few Hanania fans here, at least. He is a contrarian drifting towards the Yglesias level of annoying, but he still makes some good points.

I suppose I count as defending Hanania - I don't particularly like him, but I think hate for him here is absurdly overblown.

I will just straight-up defend Yglesias, though. I don't find him particularly annoying and he strikes me as effectively advocating for his preferred positions in a way that admits of rational argument and counter-argument. Well done him.

He can write reasonably when he wants to, but when he just wants to Boo Outgroup Yglesias gets really bad.

I suppose I count as defending Hanania - I don't particularly like him, but I think hate for him here is absurdly overblown.

The hate he gets is just a result of people putting him on a pedestal. If it wasn't for that, he'd be indistinguishable from the blur of faceless Substackers that no one cares about. I wouldn't even care that he's calling himself "elite human capital", it's the fact that others agree with his self-image that is absurd, and warrants the reaction to him.

Personally I suspect that this sort of corruption was always happening,

Biden's drug addled failson was on the god damned board of directors of a gas company in UKRAINE. Bloody Nancy Pelosi and all the rest of the house should be banned from even thinking about owning stock. The media can talk about Trump's supposed corruption until they are blue in the face, and it wouldn't matter for me one bit.

I really don’t understand what’s so bad about congresscritters insider trading. They’re using their connections to enrich their family members in harmless ways, what’s the problem? It isn’t like taking bribes or anything that might affect how they do their jobs.

It annihilates the illusion of a fair and lawful system, if I was insider trading the way they are the SEC would be setting up exploratory forward bases up my colon. Also it should be illegal for anyone in lawmaking or executive positions to retire and go work for the exact same companies they were supposed to make laws controlling. And it isn't, and everyone turns a blind eye, and if you bring that up with normies they don't even know wtf you're talking about. The media will not bring it up because they know how their bread gets buttered.

And then just knowing this is the state of play we're "supposed" to read the headlines in the Grand parent post and take it seriously. It's extremely aggravating.

You want smart, capable people in congress, right? They should get some opportunities to enrich themselves and their families that don’t cost anything to sweeten the pot.

But I don’t think we have a smart and capable Congress and we have them fattening themselves up.

Trump could EO himself a billion dollars and as long as he stops immigration, deports all the migrants here and stops all funding for the foreign wars / foreign aide I'd still vote for him.

Well, hell, I'd at least think about voting for him if I thought he could or would carry out some of his grand promises. Every politician promises he will deliver incredible things, and if you vote for him and say "I don't care if he steals a billion dollar as long as he does all the things he promised to do" you are being taken for a rube.

Well, hell, I'd at least think about voting for him if I thought he could or would carry out some of his grand promises.

He did actually stop immigration, though...

Trump has temporarily gotten it back to the levels that Obama had. He's done almost nothing in regards to helping ensure that will continue long-term.

Trump has temporarily gotten it back to the levels that Obama had.

You're saying it like it's a bad thing?

He's done almost nothing in regards to helping ensure that will continue long-term.

In American democracy, how would you propose to achieve ensuring some policy continues forever, regardless of what future voters or executives want, and how such a situation is different from a dictatorship?

What you're saying is that it continuing long-term is entirely up to the next administration. If they want to return to open borders that will be their decision, not Trump's.

Trump could absolutely make the job of anyone seeking to explode immigration harder by changing the law, i.e. passing legislation, not just executive orders.

Under Article I, legislation must be passed by Congress. The President only has the power to veto or not.

The POTUS absolutely helps set legislative priorities. This is even more true for Trump, who's basically the God-King of the Republican Party at the moment.

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I have wondered if he could massively expand the APA notice-and-comment regime by executive fiat. He lost a number of cases to APA procedure questions in his first term (and seems somewhat likely to again), but "now all executive policy changes require 4 years of notice and comment, effective 60 days from now, conveniently the day before I leave office" seems like, if IMO a poor governance choice, the sort of live policy grenade Trump likes tossing.

Trump could absolutely make the job of anyone seeking to explode immigration harder by changing the law

No he absolutely can't, that's what the Congress is supposed to do.

See my comment here.

Yes, but if they reverse his policy, the responsibility for that is on them. If the non-MAGA politicians want to act like "adults in the room" they need to stop blaming the parents for not hiding the cookie jar out of their reach.

Sure, if they reverse the legislation that would be on them, but undoing legislation is much more difficult that just doing executive orders, which is how Biden basically got to defacto open borders via loophole.

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Why do you think he doesnt do that? "Le dumb" was kind of believable during the first admin, but now theres all sorts of people who could be doing that and presumably understand the importance of it. Why isnt e.g Vance writing an immigration bill?

I have a post rolling around in my head around that, but it basically comes down to Trump not really liking to do legislation since it's harder than doing EO's, and the party and especially the base broadly respecting that. Trump absolutely could pass sweeping immigration reform if he wanted to, but he doesn't really want to.

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The obvious answer for a skeptic is "because they're all - to a man, young or old, dumb or brilliant - basically amoral nihilists maximizing their short-term gains, not selfless statesmen invested in the long-term advancement of Republican ideals". eg Vance isn't even trying to write an actually effective immigration bill because he needs immigration to still be a live issue in 2032 so he can use it to win the Presidency then.

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Easier said than done. The administration right now is putting most of its energy into dismantling the federal bureaucracy in a way that will be difficult for a future administration to undo, but successive administrations being able to reverse the policies of previous administrations is a feature, not a bug, of American politics.

Trump could certainly push for laws that will make immigration much harder, establish enforcement norms that will require effort (and perhaps public, politically unpalatable action) to reverse, and generally make it difficult (but not impossible) for the next administration to roll it back and open the gates again. But that is not where he's actually focusing his efforts.

But that is not where he's actually focusing his efforts.

Yes, and that's a bad thing. He's spending his (legislative) efforts right now passing regressive tax cuts that will blow out the deficit even further. It would be much better if he focused on long-term immigration reform instead.

Wasn't the problem with enforcement, and not the law?

Both the enforcement and the law were broken.

From "Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell" by Scott Alexander:

Would the Czar be corrupt and greedy and tyrannical? Yes, probably. Let’s say he decided to use our tax money to build himself a mansion ten times bigger than the Palace of Versailles. The Internet suggests that building Versailles today would cost somewhere between $200M and $1B, so let’s dectuple the high range of that estimate and say the Czar built himself a $10 billion dollar palace. And he wants it plated in solid gold, so that’s another $10 billion. Fine. Corporate welfare is $200B per year. If the Czar were to tell us “I am going to take your tax money and spend it on a giant palace ten times the size of Versailles covered in solid gold”, the proper response would be “Great, but what are we going to do with the other $180 billion dollars you’re saving us?”

Why wouldn't the Czar be spending all that $180 billion on making allies among the oligarchy? It's not like he gets all that tyrannical power from thin air.

Right, and indeed Scott makes exactly that point in his rebuttal.

We've been living in a banana republic for 30 years high time we got a banana republic style president.

I don't agree with this at all. Populists have hallucinated that there's massive amounts of corruption already going on, but in reality Trump is taking it to a new level of magnitude and blatantness.

What do you think of ABSCAM? It looks like they did a sting operation, found that lots of politicians had ~0 inhibition to corruption, and the end result was... they promised not to do those operations again? So if there is actually very little corruption, why not? Just a bunch of 100$ bills on the floor?

Part of the problem is that so many of us are former libertarians, who see rent-seeking aka banal corruption everywhere already. So Trump just seems a more blustery iteration of something already underway.

Or, ideology-free corruption > bad ideology operating transparently and on-schedule

Populists have hallucinated that there's massive amounts of corruption already going on

"Corruption" is itself a motte/bailey issue, because on the one hand there is the general (and nonspecific idea) of "dishonest gain/graft/abuse of power" and on the other is the very specific criteria of "that's illegal." And when you're defending, the question is "is this legal" and when it's the other side doing it the question is "does this seem at least a little bit sketchy to the reporter with a deadline."

So everything alleged in the NYT article [AFAIK, sans insider trading] is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt, just as a major defense contractor making a practice of hiring former Pentagon procurement officials who selected for them in contract awards is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt.

Now - I actually think "there are massive amounts of corruption going on" is a defensible position. Just look at the acknowledged and prosecuted cases in the defense industry, which publicly produces major malfeasance with gigantic price tags roughly once a decade.

But whether the Fat Leonard scandal or similar incidents pegs as "massive" to you depends a lot on if you are outraged at a few tens of millions of dollars here or there or consider that the cost of doing business. And when discussing "corruption" people alleging it often go beyond cases that result in a successful prosecution. Look at the problems with falsification of data, plagiarism, and non-replication in the academic community. Is this "corruption"? I would say yes, at least with the fraudulent data cases - abusing your position to accept money and then producing a fraudulent product should count as corruption, no? Yet the issue becomes fuzzier in the less blatant cases (is accepting money to make a shoddy study corruption? Is intentional plagiarism? Inadvertent plagiarism?) What about setting up a nonprofit as your own personal piggy bank (examples can be trotted forth on both sides) - the man on the street likely answers "yes" even though the behavior is (or can be) quite legal.

In short,

  1. There are and have been massive amounts of corruption measured in absolute values, but it's easy to flip back and forth from absolute numbers to percentages based on whether or not you're trying to score points or defend your own goal.
  2. Unless people agree on what specifically "corruption" means, there's just going to be an endless roundabout of "my politicians earned the money from their businesses and nonprofits while yours were doing it in the service of corrupt Eastern European oligarchs."
  3. Neither side really wants to agree on any one definition of corruption because that would either constitute agreeing to look bad, or agreeing to stop accusing the other side of being corrupt (since most cases of alleged corruption are not prosecuted and may not even be illegal.)

Corruption in the military is particularly hard to deal with since much of it is secret, and it's not like a society can just totally disband its military if things go too wrong. Perun has a good video on this, with his bit at the end being particularly pertinent. Even though corruption will always exist to some degree, it's much better to live in a society where it's at least not blatant and generally seen as a bad thing that should be dealt with, as opposed to a country like Russia where it broadly runs rampant.

Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue. If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.

Even though corruption will always exist to some degree, it's much better to live in a society where it's at least not blatant and generally seen as a bad thing that should be dealt with, as opposed to a country like Russia where it broadly runs rampant.

It depends. In the UK, I would vastly prefer the blatant corruption of money under the table to get construction contracts done over the stealth corruption of planning permission restrictions in favour of incumbent property-owning rentseekers.

What you mean is that you prefer the implementation of a very bad policy (the build-nothing UK planning framework) to be undermined by corruption. The current policy is not "stealth corrupt" - it is working as advertised for the NIMBY voters who voted for it.

This is a special case of "competent and evil is more dangerous than incompetent and evil", with corruption being an effective competence-reducer.

Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue.

Yes. As I said, it's a motte-and-bailey issue, and it is to the advantage of both sides to accuse the other side of corruption while suggesting that their side is blameless under the more narrow definition. But after decades of this, it is not surprising that "populists" think that there is a massive corruption problem. Populists read the mainstream media too.

If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.

Yes. We don't have to ask this question hypothetically.

or otherwise claims something Biden did was somehow worse

(...)

Scandals and corruption used to be a thing that allowed the other party to come in and try to do better, but now they're used as a justification for the other side becoming even worse.

How can you dismiss the argument that he's doing better, just before complaining that people don't care enough about him doing better?

What? My position is that Trump is far worse in terms of corruption, and that nobody really cares at this point -- MAGA will never care about Trump doing bad things (they'll just rationalize it afterwards no matter what it is), and the left sort of cares but doesn't see it as a particularly potent attack vector. The result is that this could easily become the new baseline of corruption that any President engages in if they want to, and that's a bad thing.

What? My position is that Trump is far worse in terms of corruption

I think you need something to back that argument, rather than assuming everyone agrees with you, and that anyone who doesn't is obviously wrong.

MAGA will never care about Trump doing bad things

Is MAGA worse than you in that regard? I don't recall you criticizing Biden (or his family / administration) much. Even about obvious things like hiding his cognitive decline.

I think you need something to back that argument

That's... what the NYT article was about?

Is MAGA worse than you in that regard? I don't recall you criticizing Biden

I personally criticized Biden plenty, from his free pass to many levels of wokeness, to his defacto open-borders immigration policy, to his pardoning of Hunter Biden. I'm reading Original Sin right now, and plan on doing a book review at some point.

I'm reading Original Sin right now,

Just so you are aware. This indicates to anyone right of center that you are basically a bot or an idiot. That Biden was infirm and incapable of the job was evident throughout the campaign and his presidency. In fact, both of the authors of that book were active co-conspirators in the cover up.

All the indications I have of are the book is not that it is a mea culpa by Tapper et al, rather it is portrayed as some heroic work of journalism, which it is not. He simply has a new set of power brokers he is transcribing for.

People who have actually read the book will understand that it gives a fairly scathing account overall. Collecting all the anecdotes along with the storyline of how it happened very much is good journalism.

A scathing account of someone who the Democrat Party is currently scapegoating for their loss of power by transcribing for those doing the scapegoating is not "good journalism".

The book really isn't the excuse that you think it is. There's some degree of scapegoating, although it's not really of Biden himself moreso than his closest advisors (the so-called "Politburo"). I'd recommend reading the book yourself if you still disagree. Even a person who just hates the Democrats ought to read the book, as they'd find tons of ammo in it.

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How does this address the point that Biden's decline was obvious at the time that the book's author was complicit in it's cover-up?

I'm not finished with the book yet, but it explicitly rejects the more aggressive notion much of MAGA advanced that Biden was a husk from the start of his Presidency that could barely string two sentences together. It claims there were some issues early on, but it was plausibly just Biden's stutter being a bit worse, and him getting tired a little faster. It further claims the bottom really fell out around the start of 2023.

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That's... what the NYT article was about?

I've only skimmed it, but I didn't see any sort of comparative analysis to the previous administrations, so it cannot back your argument.

It specifically contrasted against Hunter Biden that Republicans spent years fishing for evidence against. It might not have done a line-by-line comparison against the rest of the claims, but nobody can really point to anything past administrations have done that have the same magnitude and blatantness as what Trump is doing.

If a news report came out that e.g. claimed that Biden was embezzling $100M dollars, would you similarly handwave it if it lacked a detailed comparison to what past Presidents had done?

It specifically contrasted against Hunter Biden that Republicans spent years fishing for evidence against.

Are you talking about this paragraph?

Congressional Republicans spent years investigating Hunter Biden, the son of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for trading on his family name to make millions of dollars, even labeling the clan the “Biden Crime Family.” But while Hunter Biden’s cash flow was a tiny fraction of that of Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, Republicans have shown no appetite for looking into the current presidential family’s finances.

That's not a comparative analysis. Even assuming their conclusion is correct, I don't know how they made their comparison, and have no way of reproducing their result. Be my guest if you think Trump is more corrupt than Biden, but nothing you posted here can be a basis for discussion. You're just venting.

You're just venting.

And it seems by the parts of my reply that you ignored that you just don't want to talk about this topic.

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