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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25651 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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Personally I think what terrifies a certain class of people about Trump is just that he seems actually interested in wielding power, and has, I dunno, 'agentic' behavior when he does it. There's clearly some objective he's swinging towards, even if he's taking actions that appear stupid.

He did it quite inartfully in the first term. The second term, there's a certain amount of focus and relentlessness that probably scares such people even more. So much happened in just the first 100 days. We're 8 months in, and every week or so another angle of attack is unleashed, and it sure looks like the legs are getting knocked out from under the activist class. Simultaneously too many targets to actually focus on, AND fewer resources to divide amongst the various causes.

I assume it feels like an existential battle for them, whether it really is or is not.

Compare it to a Romney or even Bush-like figure, who are seemingly more content to twist the dials on the administrative state a few degrees here and there and not interfere with their enemy's tactics (or disrupt their funding) so the actual 'balance of power' doesn't shift much.

For better or worse, Trump is taking steps that will actually make it harder for the dems to regroup and mount another offensive, and the one thing that is missing thus far, the one seal that hasn't been broken, is actually prosecuting and jailing the people who are best positioned to thwart his power.

And in a sense, that is the most terrifying thing of all, since that sword of Damocles will hang around for the next couple years, certain people can never feel completely comfortable that the FBI won't be showing up at their door sometime soon.

That's my take, anyway. There's the people with the symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome who aren't actually threatened by him, and then there's those whose whole raison d'etre is acquiring and wielding political power, and this current situation is threatening to remove that possibility entirely for them.

This is interesting. The American left controls the establishment and therefore any particular agent wielding power is a threat because it introduces uncertainty in the way power is wielded.

Prior Republicans seemed okay wielding a small defined amount of power that didn’t threaten the establishment

the one seal that hasn't been broken, is actually prosecuting and jailing the people who are best positioned to thwart his power.

Actually this seal has already been broken - but by the democrats when they prosecuted Trump multiple times. I'm on record (though maybe not on this site) saying that these prosecutions were a terrible idea and would be a horrifying weapon in the hands of a vengeful Trump administration. I'd say the DNC were lucky that he's so incredibly merciful, but I think the truth is that actually sending the entire democratic power structure to prison would make the left stronger once all those criminals and shysters were replaced by new blood.

Compare it to a Romney or even Bush-like figure, who are seemingly more content to twist the dials on the administrative state a few degrees here and there and not interfere with their enemy's tactics (or disrupt their funding) so the actual 'balance of power' doesn't shift much.

I would argue that this was a feature. Bush, Obama, McCain, Clinton all had some investment with the status quo. They were playing the game by its written and unwritten rules. If any of them had seen the opportunity to cross the Rubicon and make themselves dictator, they would likely not have taken it, because nobody wanted to go down as that figure in the history books. For all the differences between GWB and Bernie Sanders, neither is willing to throw the democracy experiment under the bus to beat the other.

Not so with Trump. He is acting with a self-interest that would make most kleptocrats blush. He will happily burn 100$ of commons to earn 1$ for himself. He is prizing personal loyalty far beyond qualification.

I am however wondering what will happen to the Trump party once Trump finally croaks. As any player of Crusader Kings can tell you, these systems of personal loyalty are all fine while you are alive, but tend to get very messy on succession.

  • -10

Not so with Trump. He is acting with a self-interest that would make most kleptocrats blush. He will happily burn 100$ of commons to earn 1$ for himself.

This seems silly. Trump almost certainly lost money going into politics, no? What parts of his governance look like that to you? The most obvious ways for politicians to arrange such things are foreign adventurism, warmongering, and massive trillion dollar boondoggle bills for easily embezzled projects, and Trump has been pretty opposed to all of those things.

I notice that some people forget that Trump's Organizations owns or has fingers in real estate all over the planet.

This gives him some pecuniary interest in NOT doing foreign adventurism and warmongering. And avoiding wars involving countries where he has property, at all.

I imagine the thought of big, beautiful buildings getting bombed to rubble causes the guy physical pain.

You'll note that Romney and Bush were not exempt from slanderous character assassination; the only difference between Bush and Hitler were that Hitler was elected. Romney was cruel to animals, had an awful wife, wanted to reintroduce slavery.

Of course Romney genuinely seems to be guilty of nothing more than social awkwardness and Bush had nothing to do with Hitler.

Obama, and in particular Biden, were definitely guilty of targeting their domestic political enemies as well.

Isn't Romney a private equity guy, one of the class of people specializing in what's basically elegant asset stripping?

That’s one way of describing PE but generally seems like a misunderstanding. Does PE cause some businesses to fail by excess debt? Yes. But to succeed, PE generally needs to in the aggregate sell businesses for more than it purchased them for.

Frequently, PE buys distressed businesses to get a good price, tries to turn them around, and sell at a profit.

Sometimes, PE provides liquidity to founders where the company isn’t to the size that would suggest an IPO makes sense at the time. Having this exit option is great for encouraging building companies.

Other times, PE builds companies by acquiring a bunch of small companies, integrating them, and then selling (ie pay 10x EBITDA, get some cost savings combining and sell at 15x EBITDA since the stream of income is a bit more secure).

Again, PE generally doesnt make money from companies failing (one exception is leveraged recaps). They make money by companies succeeding (in ways described above).

But to succeed, PE generally needs to in the aggregate sell businesses for more than it purchased them for.

It doesn't. It just needs to get more money, by say, buying back stock or paying dividends to themselves.

Forgive me for being a bit skeptical. The only time I came across PE was reading about the fate of US gun makers, where the PE invariably made things worse and their business model was basically exploit the good name of a company they bought by lowering quality and then saddle it with debt and finally let it go bankrupt.

E.g. Remington was bought for $360 million, immediately issued a billion $ worth of debt. 10 years later, 700 millions are written off in a bankruptcy, even though they sold off their buildings to a company owned by the PE group so they could rent them back.

https://archive.is/cotTp

This just isn’t the norm. As a general rule, PE buys an entity with debt. Banks don’t permit cash to leave the banking group.

The only time is when banks lend money to an existing PE owned business with the express intention of repatriation cash (ie a levered recap). Most liquidity events aren’t levered recaps. Moreover, banks aren’t interested in lending to businesses that will go bankrupt (ie banks don’t want to equitize their debt; they want to get paid back on the debt). So generally leveraged recaps will only occur when the risk of bankruptcy is remote.

None of this means all PE companies survive, but in generally PEs cannot successful generate returns by bankrupting companies.

I don't remember the "reintroduce slavery" argument. I remember the much-to-do about him traveling with his dog in a crate strapped to the roof (which I can't say I like but doesn't really have anything to do with Presidential qualifications).

But yes, on the left much was made of his job being to buy up a company to saddle it with another company's debt.

That said, Romney's social awkwardness specifically was of the the "What could a banana cost, like $10?" variety. To the left, he was like an out-of-touch manager who couldn't empathize with the working class at all.

I don't remember the "reintroduce slavery" argument.

It is a quote from Biden talking to a crowd of black people saying Romney wants to put them back in chains.

To the left, he was like an out-of-touch manager who couldn't empathize with the working class at all.

The democrats also, in one of the most brazen acts of political gaslighting I think I've ever seen, somehow managed to turn Romney's own efforts at sex-based affirmative action into evidence of his sexism.

Probably one of the worst short-term political play decisions in modern American politics on the part of the Democrats and their allies in the media.

Romney was, and probably will be remembered as, the last major Respectability candidates of the early 21st century Republican party. He was a compromise candidate who was about the best possible synthesis of red tribe considerations and blue tribe value, a Republican who was willing to accept the legitimacy in part of blue tribe framings, and cared about their opinions. He wasn't a perfect candidate for the Republican base, but a man that- outside of a specific election cycle- had a generally consistent reputation as virtuous, even if you disagreed. It was about as close to a synthesis of red tribe and blue tribe as you could hope for, even down to sincerely practicing affirmative action and having an adopted african-american grandson.

The character assassination of Mitt Romney- among which Democratic Senate Majority Harry Reid later defended with "We won, didn't we?"- was probably what I'd point to as the breaking moment where the Republican base revolt that became the Trump-MAGA movement began.

MAGA was in part a revolt against the Republican elite, including significant disatisfaction against Romney for not fighting back. The Republican party's commissioned autopsy that argued the party needed to move decisively to the left made that revolt worse. But almost as importantly the Obama '12 campaign discredited the argument by Republican centrists/moderates, and media commentators more generally, that what the red tribe needed to be treated with respect was to present a respectable candidate.

Romney was the candidate, and was still slandered and jeered. Virtue- and especially virtue as recognized by the media establishment that joined in the jeering- wouldn't be recognized when during an election cycle. And if virtue would not be recognized, nor would it be sufficient to win even if not recognizeed, then appeals to virtue were going to lose support compared to appeals to fight back.

Which, of course, Trump was happy to do... but Trump wouldn't have won without a disillusioned Republican base that no longer responded to appeals to respectability like Romney was willing to.

I remember that. Though I think it was less about sexism and more going back to the sounding like an out-of-touch manager. "How do I talk about women? Talk about binders of resumes!"

It was indeed about Romney's alleged sexism. For example, as the linked Wikipedia states:

The phrase was depicted by Romney's detractors and the Obama campaign as demeaning and insensitive toward women and was widely mocked. This prompted the phrase's use for political attacks on Romney's positions on "women's issues"

Romney was accused of dehumanizing women by using a synecdoche, whether intentionally or not, that related women to a binder of resumes. This was highlighted as evidence of his alleged casual misogyny.

Naturally, neglecting to emphasize the distinct Wonderfulness of each and every woman (only women as a whole) while bragging about how you discriminate against men in favor of women will be held up as evidence of your misogyny. It's not evidence of misandry, however, because giving hiring preferences toward women is the bare minimum in not being a completely awful human being. Plus, he doesn’t deserve credit for the DEI attempt, since everyone knows that hiring more women and non-Asian minorities improves businesses so even a greedy misogynistic pale stale male would prefer hiring women and minorities out of self-interest.

Romney bragging about pro-female affirmative action—and getting hoist by his own petard because of it—provided another amusing example of the epic_handshake.jpg between conservatives and progressives when it comes to women’s Wonderfulness and Lives Mattering More, where they just sometimes haggle over how much more (and in what ways) while conservatives drive the progressive speed limit.

I do still think a lot of it was Romney's social awkwardness and saying it in a very memey way. But I do acknowledge that a Democrat doing a similar thing would get less flak, in a dating in the workplace kind of way. Not necessarily none, because Howard Dean and Hillary both have gotten some mockery from the left for coming across as fake or socially awkward.

That said, it was later claimed that the statement was a lie, and that feminist groups had sent Romney the resumes on their own initiative rather than him requesting them.

Kinda, but that itself was viewed as evidence of misogyny. Contemporaneous examples: The Guardian, CNN, Time.

No, it was sexism. "Binders" was used to imply that he wants to "bind" women.

It wasn't even that. It was a weird phrase that feminists seized as a Schelling point for hating Romney; the rationalizations for why the phrase was offensive came later.

From "Why I defend scoundrels, part 2" by Scott Alexander:

My complaint about feminism - and all the other isms - isn't any kind of object-level complaint like that at all. On the object-level I think they're pretty okay. It's that they have a tendency to really love their group hate-fests, and they make sure to hold them with a halo over their heads.

The last time I mentioned this, people criticized me for making vague claims. So today I'll be more specific. Mitt Romney. Binders full of women. My facebook feed. Twelve posts about it (and I don't have all that many Facebook friends). Five of those twelve included the word "misogynist". One included the phrase "giant d-bag". Then I go on Reddit, where the phrases are more like "condescending prick", "ego so twisted he starts believing his own bullshit", and "I can't see how any self-respecting woman could ever think of voting for him." Plus a link to http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/, because someone was enjoying the hatefest so much they though it would benefit from an entire website.

And what was interesting was that one of these comments ended up spawning a thread where someone defended Romney. It went something like this: "Isn't 'binders full of X' a relatively common phrase?" "Oh, it wasn't the binders that offended me, per se. It was his statement that women only care about flexible working hours." "Well, he didn't say women only cared about, just that it was a special care of women. And surveys show this to be totally true." "But it was that he was getting into this at all, when the question was about pay equity." "But Obama arguably departed even further from the question, talking about free contraception, and no one criticized him." "Well, maybe you're right, but it was incredibly stupid of Romney to phrase his comments in a way that could be interpreted as offensive, and I'm still not convinced there aren't some offensive feelings lurking under the surface."

Notice how incredibly scary this thought pattern is. You express this burning intense hatred for a guy you don't really know based on one remark. When someone demonstrates that this is irrational, you say "Well, okay, but I was still right to hate him because of this totally different thing he did." And then when someone demonstrates there's no basis for hating him, "Well, I can still hate him, because it's still his fault for being so stupid as to say something I misinterpreted."

And from "Why I specifically defend the scoundrel Mitt Romney", idem:

As promised in the previous post, here are the reasons why I think the firestorm over Romney's "binders full of women" remark is an example of people having way too much fun calling "misogyny!" as an excuse to pursue a group hatefest rather than of actual misogyny:

(disclaimer: I got an absentee ballot and have already voted for Obama. I dislike Mitt Romney, just not for this specific reason.)

1. It was offensive for Romney to use the phrase "binders full of women".

I can't Google "binders full of women" or even "binders full of people" directly because it's all references to Romney.

But "folders full of people" gets 9 Google hits of people using it in totally reasonable contexts, like "I had a few file folders full of people who signed up to help this year". One Outlook user says "Up until now i have grouped them in folders of up to 100 people and now have 22 folders full of people."

"Lists full of people" gives 9040 results, including wait lists full of people, email lists full of people, and targeted leads lists full of people.

"Files full of people" gives 5510 results, including "files full of people who are glad they bought travel insurance", "files full of people whose save lists were corrupted", and "files full of people affected by the problem".

Even more specific forms get results, for example a police station that has "files full of suspects", and four different marketing groups that have "files full of customers" plus three that have "folders full" of them.

Ignoring the "full", "folders of customers" has 3560 results; "folders of men" has 220, "folders of people" has a whopping 13300 (and yes, I checked the first few pages, most of them are folders containing people, not folders belonging to people.)

But of course as soon as Mitt Romney says it, it's because he thinks women are inhuman objects who are worthy of being stored in binders. Or something. I want to be charitable, but the only person who explained their objection to the phrase used the phrasing in the last sentence. So I don't know.

If you're on the phone with a sales representative, and she offers you a catalog of her store's products, and you say "You ignorant piece of crap! It's not a catalog of the store's products! It's a catalog containing information about the store's products! You're such a worthless idiot!" then congratulations, you can self-consistently get upset with Romney for using the same synecdoche. If you would be utterly appalled by the thought of acting that way to the sales representative, but you posted something snarky on your Facebook about how Romney was a misogynist, you have deeper problems.

Double checking my memory, and not really seeing much of that. More that the perception created of him was that he was only cared about women in order to check a box.

“Here’s a situation where, you know, it should have been readily apparent to anyone that there were plenty of qualified women but they had to make this special effort.”

Instead, he managed to conjure an image confirming every feminist's worst fears about a Romney presidency; that he views women's rights in the workplace as so much business admin, to be punched and filed and popped on a shelf.

One got the sense of Mitt Romney coming from a place where women were generally in the other room, waiting to be invited in only when the moment—or the visibility of the job—called for it.

I don't remember the "reintroduce slavery" argument.

In 2012, then-VP Biden told a largely-Black crowd in Danville, Virginia that "They're [Republicans] going to put y'all back in chains".

The last sentence in the linked article seems a bit prescient for 2024, though:

Mr. Biden also told the crowd that if they get out the vote, "we can win North Carolina again." Danville is close to the North Carolina border, but it is in fact in Virginia.

Ah. Though from the sound of it that sounds more like Biden making a stupid remark, and alluding more to the sort of Cyberpunk-style "Megacorps make the rules" than literally sending people back to the plantations.

If any of them had seen the opportunity to cross the Rubicon and make themselves dictator, they would likely not have taken it, because nobody wanted to go down as that figure in the history books.

Taking this analogy more literally, none of them faced the sort of ultimatum that Caesar did. They weren't seen as overly popular and powerful and thus a danger to the status quo in and of themselves if they returned to the public sphere.

They enjoyed the mutually agreeable reassurance that if they gracefully retire they can live out their days in ease.

Trump's Rubicon moment was probably in the vein of "If you keep up this election denialism and run again we'll burn down your entire life." Maybe he sincerely truly believed that the election was stolen from him, or he just really hates losing, or he does legitimately think he's uniquely qualified to get the country back on track, but for whatever reason he called that bluff and then survived the onslaught. Where's that leave him now?

I am however wondering what will happen to the Trump party once Trump finally croaks. As any player of Crusader Kings can tell you, these systems of personal loyalty are all fine while you are alive, but tend to get very messy on succession.

Very curious too. How much of the coalition is genuinely tied into Trump the man. There's some who buy into "MAGA" as a broader idea, or "America First," but if Trump does die or, hell, even retires and endorses a successor, what portion of the current GOP will just stop participating for want of an inspiring leader?

Vance is positioned as a legitimate successor, but Trump could throw him under a bus too before going out. Succession fights get ugly. And a decent number of people, on both sides of the aisle, have their careers/livelihoods pinned on Trump's activities and they'll have to re-align quickly if they can't hook on to his train any longer.

Very curious too. How much of the coalition is genuinely tied into Trump the man.

I was a pretty early adopter for Trump, and my thought process went something along the lines of "There's no way the usual gang of Republican candidates are going to be anything other than (leftist-overrun) Politics As Usual, what I want is someone who'll tear up the floorboards and burn out the shit down to the foundation. Who's got the moxie to do it and the money to not be bought away from it? Trump's run before, I've kinda laughed at him running for years, but he's kinda my best bet. Plus shitposting a president into power would be an even better prank than putting dear old mootykins on top of the Time 100 poll, and it'd be a great kick of the tires to see if it's possible to get a president that isn't in The Usual Gang Of D/R Career Candidates."

So, at least for me, it's not that it's Trump the man, it's that it's /ourguy/. Which includes Vance, Elon (and I was not expecting that 12 years ago), DeSantis somewhat, and the people that are willing to play ball. Which does include some of the members of The Usual Gang, but I can work with that.

Hilariously, if you ascribe Trump's victory in 2016 in some major part to 4chan's initial interest in and support of his campaign, Moot was, in fact, the most influential person of 2009... it just wouldn't become clear why for a bit longer.

They enjoyed the mutually agreeable reassurance that if they gracefully retire they can live out their days in ease.

See also how the dems started to gargle Bush's balls for some unknown to me reason that one time.

Seven years ago, I saved this @JTarrou comment, for the purpose of remembering to monitor future developments:

The current Republican president is always the worst person in history. The last one is always surprisingly human. The one before that is always a pretty decent dude.

The current Democratic president is Star Trek Jesus with sprinkles, the last one was a corrupt liar who wasted his vast potential, and the one before that was a Republican.

I'd say that Obama is probably still well-regarded, possibly having something to do with some people thinking that he was pulling the strings during the Biden Administration. I'll be interested to watch his future trajectory as years continue to pass, but I do think it might be hard for people who lean left to say much that is negative about the first black president. I suppose I've heard some criticisms from the left that he "was a Republican" in terms of his national security policies, but I certainly don't think I've seen him go through a "corrupt liar" phase. At least not as of yet.

The Republican one seems to me to have the ring of truth to it, but this one:

The current Democratic president is Star Trek Jesus with sprinkles, the last one was a corrupt liar who wasted his vast potential, and the one before that was a Republican.

does not.

The Dems were fortunate to have two very popular, charismatic presidents in Clinton and Obama, but I don’t think anyone would use terms like “Star Trek Jesus” when talking about Biden or Carter. Likewise, I’ve never heard anyone say anything remotely bad about Carter as a person or call him a Republican in disguise. Before that you’ve got LBJ (a charming scoundrel, but no Republican), JFK (a different type of charming scoundrel, still deified by Democrats today), Truman (who’s too forgettable to engender any strong feelings one way or the other), and FDR (who is of course the OG Star Trek Jesus).

JFK (a different type of charming scoundrel, still deified by Democrats today)

Which is odd, considering that JFK's main political policies were cutting taxes on the rich, beefing up military spending based on lies, and bungling regime-change adventurism.

Contrastingly, JFK's main rival, Richard Nixon, re-instituted wage and price controls and founded the EPA.

Ah, but he was sexy and had lots of sex. Women wanted him, and men wanted to be him.

One man once died
but did you know before that he could read all our minds
he was the US Adam with Jack the wife
he was a hyper-charismatic telepathical knight
Jaaaaay-ehehey Ef Kaaaay....

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How would we prove if Republican presidents have in fact been getting worse by this metric? The comment kinda only applies if there isn't a trend.

That's a fair point, but I think the pure contempt with which I remember people speaking about Bush, compared with the number of times I've heard similar people point to him as a surprisingly human decent dude in the past 10 years makes me really skeptical. If he was truly so awful back then, he wouldn't be forgiven and nostolgized so easily, even if someone worse came along, at least not by an intellectually honest person.

I don't think Biden ever had the "Jesus with Sprinkles" phase?

Maybe Biden was never truly president in anything more than a ceremonial sense, and was essentially understood consiously or not, as simply giving executive power back to the administrative state that the Obama administration installed.

The going joke is always the "strange newfound respect" for someone that they had maligned as hitleresque before.

I am just barely old enough to remember how vicious the attacks on Bush II were (and hell, I think some was justifiable!), but hey, the guy paints now, how endearing!

Even fuckin' CHENEY gets a pass now. Probably helps that his daughter is quite Anti-Trump (which could be a bit of a tell, no?)

And I do truly believe that even Trump will be seen with some level of nostalgia once he's gone.

Seems pretty natural to think that 'man in office' is bad and 'man out of office' is decent. I mean, it was never about a judgement of innate evilness. Once you're president the judgements on you are also about the machine you stand atop of and how your personal sensibility interacts with the forces flowing through the country and world.

I actually think it's a good lesson to learn that psycho and even genocidal world leaders could be generally okay to hang out with absent their official role, and therefore not very surprising that opinions on them alter later. Just like one can be charismatic not as a result of your innate characteristics but because of your position in a society (see Randall Collins for details).

It's being in power that magnifies flaws, eccentricities or even charming character traits into problems for others.

If it is any consolation, I was perhaps 16 in 2001 and now that I am 40 I can say that my anger at W has solidified rather than evaporated. For me he will always be the president who made torture official US policy and managed to start not one but two large scale wars which the US ultimately lost. His stupid stunt on that aircraft carrier. Mission accomplished my ass. From US-internal perspective, he was mostly fine, but his foreign policy was quite the disaster, and Trump will be hard-pressed to cause a similar loss of utility even if he decides to invade Greenland.

He was and is an idiot and the people who caused these wars went on to become the only faction that matters in foreign policy circles,with the Ukraine war being their crowning achievement.

Their crowning achievement is something Russia did?

Russia didn't use false flag attacks to stage a coup in Ukraine, disenfranchise their substantial Russian minority and started a civil war.

Ukrainian nationalists weren't getting support & cover from Russians.

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From US-internal perspective, he was mostly fine, but his foreign policy was quite the disaster, and Trump will be hard-pressed to cause a similar loss of utility even if he decides to invade Greenland.

That's about the sum of it.

Domestically he did introduce a lot of programs for spying and policing that I CONTINUE to disagree with, but foreign policy was, as you say, disastrous, and while I think Obama had a horrible foreign policy record as well, its hard to quantify just how much damage the warmongering did in sheer human lives cost on top of the economics of it. I look back and I cannot think of a SINGULAR positive thing that came out of it.

Okay, we unseated Hussein, but that led to the rise of ISIS (man, haven't thought about them in a while) and a general upswell of sectarian violence in the region. And they can barely hold their official government together. I genuinely appreciate that Trump made his campaign to squash ISIS as limited in scope as he did. EVERY instinct in me assumed he's put boots on the ground and pull us into another boondoggle because that seemed to be SOP by that point.

The Taliban instantly taking back Afghanistan was quite the cherry on top.

If it wasn't for the destruction of libya and the spurning of Erdogan I wouldn't think the current "migrant crisis" would have happened in the EU quite the way it did, with that no rise of nationalistic parties either. They really fucked up the internationalist global consensus they had going on.

Not in the way it did, but easily in a recognizably similar way.

The Arab Spring revealed systemic issues that were underway well before 9-11, and which would have remained primed for violent escalation even without the American invasion of Iraq. People like to focus on how ISIS had an Iraq power base, but are less inclined to note the series of uprisings against the Assad dynasty or Saddam regime, or how the fruitseller in Tunisia who figuratively and literally lit the match was responding to bog-standard petty tyrants common across the region. Names and places would have changed, but the Middle East would still be a tinder box primed to start major- or even larger- humanitarian crisis. Iraq-Iran alone could light Syria in a different way, if an fruit-seller riot spreading to Iraq led to crackdown on the Shia majority when the Iranian paramilitary capability is already present across the region.

In turn, nothing about the Arab Spring divergences would have really changed the African inflows, or the Russian incentive to use humanitarian border rushes via Belarus, or so on. Deviations might change election cycles, but not fundamental drivers.

Personally I think what terrifies a certain class of people about Trump is just that he seems actually interested in wielding power, and has, I dunno, 'agentic' behavior when he does it.

I've talked multiple times over on Tumblr — particularly this longer post about how modern liberalism (or at least the strain typified by Michael Munger in the interview linked at that post) is about opposition to exactly that. To quote Munger:

Liberalism is the actual belief that no one should be in charge… Even I, if I have the chance to be in charge, I should say no, no one should be in charge. Because anyone who’s in charge, it’s like the Ring of Sauron; it will turn you, and it will make you evil.

And as I put it in my post:

…so much of the West has so thoroughly internalized this distrust of human authority that they can no longer even conceive the idea of a good leader, and are deathly afraid of taking charge of anyone or anything — a deep terror of responsibility, of exercising leadership.

And I'd argue it's why so many opponents of Trump, right and left, struggle to find any vocabulary to describe why people follow Trump beyond "cult of personality" — because they've so internalized Weberian rationalization and this liberal view that they can't really even recognize actual human leadership as anything but some kind of pathology.

they can't really even recognize actual human leadership as anything but some kind of pathology.

Yeah, I don't think that's it, unless "actual human leadership" is code for "personalist strongman". Trump is the argument by demonstration against charismatic leadership, but left-of-center people have their own favored leadership figures as well. Obama was and is highly admired, Sanders has his own faction of die hard, etc... Any argument that rounds off to "they're intimidated by how cool we are" is probably wrong.

Where they recoil from Trump is his staggering lack of character combined with his rejection of limits or accountability. It doesn't help that his loudest supporters tend to be quite reactionary and openly cheer for authoritarianism.

I feel like I'd appreciate this argument more if I hadn't lived through electing a "Constitutional law professor" who proceeded to approve of wholesale spying on the contents of almost everyone's Internet traffic --- see Snowden, et al, and Clapper lying to Congress about it. Or approving extrajudicial drone strikes on underage American citizens in foreign countries.

If anything, I don't like much about the Trump administration, but I feel like "the system" is doing a much better job making known and criticizing his actions.

wholesale spying on the contents of almost everyone's Internet traffic --- see Snowden, et al

That's not what Snowden showed. Like, not even close.

Clapper lying to Congress about it

Clapper gave the correct, classified answer to Congress after the unclassified, televised to the public, hearing was completed.

Clapper gave the correct, classified answer to Congress after the unclassified, televised to the public, hearing was completed.

To one Congressman, anyway, indirectly, probably. He said his staff gave Senator Wyden's staff the correct answer afterward. But, the next time I can find that he talked about it to anyone else in Congress was in an apology letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee a few months later, a couple weeks after Snowden's revelations.

This seems both still-damning (Yeah, I lied to Congress, but I did tell the truth to a staff member who said they told another staff member who should have told their boss who should have told everybody else purple monkey dishwasher!) and yet partially-exculpatory (why didn't Wyden just report the corrected answer himself, if he was confident that its classification was invalid, except that it only felt safe to get someone else to put their reputation on the line in that way?).

Senate Intelligence Committee

It's good that you're aware of who this was. Now think about it for a minute. Clapper was the Director of National Intelligence. In that role, he would have routinely given classified briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee. I don't believe that anyone has ever claimed that he ever lied to them in any of those briefings. Those classified briefings are for the purpose of informing SSCI on what's actually going on.

This briefing was different. It was an unclassified, public briefing. The purpose was not to inform SSCI, especially not to inform them about classified matters. One might honestly wonder what the point of it even was... or whether it's even almost a contradiction in terms to have an unclassified, public briefing on covert intelligence programs. So when you think about it, you realize that the point of this briefing was not to inform SSCI about what's going on; the point of it was for the government to sort of get together and try to somewhat inform the public about what's going on. Doing so on a covert intelligence program sort of requires that everyone plays well together to inform on the things that "should" be publicly revealed, while avoiding things that "should" stay classified and secret.

Of course, the rub is that folks might have different perspectives on "should". Perhaps Wyden genuinely thought that it "should" become public. But the fact of the matter is, from Clapper's seat, it was classified. I think almost no theory of how the government should operate is such that it should be really relying on him to make that determination on his own. Yes, he has Original Classification Authority, but in reality, that's still pretty limited. For matters concerning significant programs like this, frankly, he shouldn't be out on his own in up and deciding to declassify it in the middle of a random briefing. That sorta thing should mostly be a matter for the President, possibly in consultation with folks like SSCI, with plenty of secret deliberation before pulling the trigger.

As such, Wyden was basically the turd in the punchbowl, preferring to pursue his own vision of "should" over the purpose of what those sorts of hearings are about. That's fair enough; he's a Senator. But it makes it more difficult for future such hearings to do the job as intended; if there's a real concern that even a single Senator will go rogue, I imagine they're probably going to pull back and be less informative generally.

I think the follow-on of what happened afterward is mostly just noise; again, there's no doubt that SSCI received the correct answer, both before and after this one briefing. They certainly already knew exactly what these programs were doing; they certainly had already gotten classified briefings telling them such; afterward, I highly doubt anyone had any real claim to having been misled... except of course, if you're a Senator talking the press, trying to drum up votes for yourself or trying to make something that is classified unclassified. Wyden even gave up the game with responding to it with a request for DNI to officially correct the public record (that is, put classified information in the public record).

It's hard to tell if Wyden genuinely thought it should be public, but didn't want to take the hit of actually revealing it himself... or if he was just trying to figure out a way to drum up more votes by playing the anti-SIGINT character. Whereas it's much easier to figure out that Clapper was just trying to keep classified stuff classified, play along with the supposed point of such an unclassified briefing, and then ultimately end up scrambling to perform damage control from such a bizarro event.

I can't help feeling that once you get to the point where you're telling clear, absolutely 100% barefaced lies to public representatives in public on a question of massive public interest, you're reaching 'Here be Dragons' on the map of morals. "If such programs existed, they would be classified and I would be unable to discuss the subject" is about as far as I think you can go before you're in serious danger of losing your soul.

I would expect that most people who get into the military or intelligence game (or, frankly, politics) have to at some point wrestle significantly with morality/their soul. Taking a brief look at his career on Wikipedia, I wouldn't be surprised if "didn't blow a classified program when a Senator went rogue, but still obviously kept the public representatives informed" didn't rank in the top ten of situations where he might have thought there was moral difficulty in doing what he thought was in the interest of protecting you and yours.

I should at some point note that I'm saying this as someone who detests his politics. Honestly, some of the political stuff he did was significantly worse than "not blowing a classified program when a Senator went rogue, but still obviously kept the public representatives informed".

Clapper lying to Congress about it

Clapper gave the correct, classified answer to Congress after the unclassified, televised to the public, hearing was completed.

The correct answer in the unclassified hearing then was "I cannot answer that.", citing the relevant classification statutes, not lying to Congress under oath like he did.

Do you beat your wife? Is the correct answer to that, "I cannot answer that"?

lying to Congress

This is pretty loaded terminology. Is it "lying to Congress" to say one thing about a classified program in a public Congressional forum and then give to Congress the correct, classified answer thereafter? Has Congress been lied to? Like, I get it. You're wanting to say that he lied to the public, and that may be true and scandalous, but it still doesn't sound as bad, so you have to juice it up a bit.

under oath

As I wrote here, when I tried to trace back this claim, I couldn't find good evidence for it. TBH, I think it would be kind of unusual for people to be under oath in those types of hearings.

Do you beat your wife? Is the correct answer to that, "I cannot answer that"?

He was legally restricted from answering questions that reveal classified information in open hearings. I'm not aware of any laws typically preventing someone from answering the question "Do you beat your wife?".

This is pretty loaded terminology. Is it "lying to Congress" to say one thing about a classified program in a public Congressional forum and then give to Congress the correct, classified answer thereafter? Has Congress been lied to? Like, I get it. You're wanting to say that he lied to the public, and that may be true and scandalous, but it still doesn't sound as bad, so you have to juice it up a bit.

It is lying to Congress to knowingly give a false answer to a direct question by a Congressman in a Congressional hearing. It does not matter if the lie was attempting to hide classified information. It does not matter if the truth is later revealed in a classified briefing. It does not matter if the lie was intended to be theater for the plebes. It is still lying to Congress. He could have refused to answer as I described, which would have been both legal and true.

I'm not aware of any laws typically preventing someone from answering the question "Do you beat your wife?".

True, but irrelevant to the point. I'll ask again. Do you beat your wife? Is the correct answer to that, "I cannot answer that"?

Clapper was under oath, and had been given the question in advance by Ron Wyden's office, and asked very deliberately about "any type of data at all". It's a joke that Clapper is allowed to work for think tanks and CNN as a "respectable" expert.

Clapper was under oath

I tried to follow this claim back when the event happened. I couldn't find any authoritative source that actually claims it. I even went back and watched the CSPAN feed of the event, and there was no oath taken or shown. But it's sort of meaningless, anyway. He also took an oath to not divulge classified information outside of narrow circumstances.

Clapper is a clown, and I don't care about him generally, but it's a stupid stupid hill to die on to claim that anyone should be put in that situation. Frankly, that's Wyden's fault, and he should know better.

wholesale spying on the contents of almost everyone's Internet traffic --- see Snowden, et al

That's not what Snowden showed. Like, not even close.

That is certainly what Snowden showed. The usual sternlightian argument is to point out that they only collected it wholesale, they didn't actually look at it except through their keyword system. I do not find that particularly reassuring.

Nope. Still wrong. Please just educate yourself on this. I've been over this with you before. There's a nice PCLOB report and everything that detailed how it actually worked. You just need to read it. As a quick check to see if you have read enough to have any idea how any of it works, what is the meaning of "specific selection term" and what role does it play in this supposed "wholesale collection"?

Nothing, because "specific selection term" was about call data record collection, which they were doing wholesale (the "Pre-2015 Bulk Collection Program"). The PCLOB report claims that they've stopped doing that wholesale as of June 2, 2015, instead requiring only CDRs up to two hops of a "specific selection term".

Charitably, your comment is acknowledging that there is a difference between the CDR program and the program that collected the contents of internet communications. Moreover, your comment acknowledges that this conversation is about the program that collected the contents of internet communications. To all of this, I agree.

Now, you're telling me that you've read the PCLOB report on the program that collected the contents of internet communications, the program that is the subject of this conversation, and you can't find anything about specific selection terms in it?

More comments

This depends on a very narrow reading of "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures ... but upon probable cause" that, to my knowledge, hasn't seen any precedent at the Supreme Court level. In fact, the secrecy of the entire apparatus seems largely to exist to circumvent judicial and democratic review.

The Ninth and Second Circuits were both okay with it. Would it be nice to get it up to SCOTUS? Sure. I don't recall if any of those plaintiffs petitioned for cert.

One note is that your analysis actually needs to start a step earlier. They are collecting the contents of communications of foreigners on foreign soil. We have black letter Supreme Court precedent that the Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to them. So, your challenge (which has so far failed in the circuit courts) is to demonstrate that one even needs to parse that text in the first place.

More comments

Yep.

This is also what the "Deep State" represents, and why liberals can regard the concept with fondness. The thought that there's a whole passel of administrators with specific 'expertise' (lol) in certain governmental functions who are able to act independently of the actual elected Executive is comforting to them. It means the government will putter along on a particular course even if there's a raving lunatic at the helm, they know when to ignore him, when to humor him, and when to take steps to reign him in. It represents the inversion of the hierarchy as it is supposed to exist (i.e. President is the plenary ruler of the executive branch itself) while diffusing responsibility enough that nobody needs to be punished for any given mistake. You all know my thoughts on that.

No leaders needed, just the abstract forces of 'good people' making decisions en masse without being beholden to the fickle, stupid electorate.

Vague guess is that Clinton was the apotheosis of this mindset. She would (intentionally) make very few actual decisions, but would be happy as a figurehead of the ship of state, and would get credit for good things that happen and could generally avoid blame if bad things happened (Goddamn, I STILL remember the Benghazi hearings, she really pretended like her position as SoS did NOT make her accountable for people dying on her watch). They did it with Biden but... well, you need your figurehead to at least look like he's in charge for it to work.

Their honest mistake WAS turning that machinery into a tool for directly resisting Trump 1. That made it way more legible and marked it as an enemy. Whoops.

No leaders needed, just the abstract forces of 'good people' making decisions en masse without being beholden to the fickle, stupid electorate.

It's funny that you say this because this is basically a complete misunderstanding and, really, the exact opposite of the classical liberal worldview that Munger endorses. From another interview:

Michael Munger: Yeah. 'That's not real capitalism. But, what if it's true that, as industries mature, they find that crony capitalism is more profitable in an accounting sense than playing it straight? Then I do this thing that I would criticize in other people. What I will say is, 'Oh, we need better people. All we need is better politicians that don't engage, don't allow this rent seeking.' Or, 'We need better CEOs [Chief Executive Officers].' That's the one thing, Russ, that you know that I cannot say--

Russ Roberts: it's against the rules--

Michael Munger: because the premise is: You cannot say, 'Good people.'

Russ Roberts: Right. 'We need'--our premise, our team, is that incentives matter, institutions matter. And with bad incentives, the best people become corrupted. And with good incentives, not-so-great people do the right thing. So, that's the--right. So you can't say that... Before we go on, I want to read the Milton Friedman quote that came to mind a minute ago, that I think deep and important. He says,

It's nice to elect the right people, but that isn't the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.

So, the point there is that--the counterpoint to that is that, eventually, the political system is going to be structured by capitalist influence to give out those goodies, so that even good people do the wrong thing.

The classical liberals emphatically do not think that if you just put the right people in the right place then everything will be OK. This is, in fact, the contrary perspective they are arguing against and that you are implicitly defending- that if you just install /ourguy/ in the oval office or as permanent secretary of the department of administrative affairs, or, worst case, if we could just fill the deep state with /ourguy/s then finally we would retvrn to the vaunted glory days.

It's remarkable that 250 years after Adam Smith, the classical liberal worldview is so hard to understand and so easy to round off to the complete opposite. Perhaps this is due to its great success turning it into the water we swim in.

I mean, what's the actual disagreement?

The fact that there are no persons who can be held to account for any given decision benefits the entire structure, and makes it easier to pull off graft and rig things for the outcomes that they find preferable. Get the incentives aligned towards your preferred goals, even if it means that you have to tolerate a few bad actors in the mix.

I'd argue the main difference in view would be whether its appropriate for these people to receive rewards for their successful service to the regime/cause. Amorally, if a bad person does the 'right' things during their tenure and we get good outcomes, then letting them earn a few million buckaroos off their public office is not a big deal. But if it is generally known that you can earn millions via graft if you attain public office, you will attract a lot of people who might not do the 'right' things.

From whence should the 'rewards' for good service come?

Anyhow, my point is that the thought of a 'deep state' made up of your ideological bedfellows is comforting to liberals, not that it actually is made up of such folks.

It's remarkable that 250 years after Adam Smith, the classical liberal worldview is so hard to understand and so easy to round off to the complete opposite.

I'm definitely NOT talking about "Classical" libs when I say this, in point of fact.

The fact that there are no persons who can be held to account for any given decision benefits the entire structure, and makes it easier to pull off graft and rig things for the outcomes that they find preferable.

Who said anything about nobody being held accountable?

But if it is generally known that you can earn millions via graft if you attain public office, you will attract a lot of people who might not do the 'right' things.

Who said anything about allowing graft in public office?

I'm definitely NOT talking about "Classical" libs when I say this, in point of fact.

That's strange considering that the guy you responded to was talking about exactly this particular classical lib.

I have to say this conversation is very bewildering. The poster you responded to made a specific claim about a specific guy, you responded saying that people like that guy all think that we just need good people running the show for everything to be OK. I point out that this is exactly the opposite of what that guy thinks and you respond with a bunch of non sequiturs that seem to have no relation to anything I said, and then deny that you're talking about that guy at all.

Who said anything about nobody being held accountable?

Me, for one.

The poster you responded to made a specific claim about a specific guy, you responded saying that people like that guy all think that we just need good people running the show for everything to be OK.

No, I was saying that Liberals, not the 'classical liberals' but the ones that vote Dem and are very performatively anti-Trump for reasons independent of his actual policies, find it comforting to believe that the government is run by "good people" in the 'deep state' of interconnected administrative agencies, and the fact that Trump is tearing up the machinery of said deep state is part of what would terrify them about him.

The quote in particular I tried to address was:

because they've so internalized Weberian rationalization and this liberal view that they can't really even recognize actual human leadership as anything but some kind of pathology.

Leadership tends to imply accountability. But the issue now is that they don't want any one person acting as 'leader' and the person who tries to act as a leader (in opposition to the amorphous blob of administrative bureaucrats just 'following incentives') scares them.

And from the longer post linked up there:

So, when modernity and Liberalism came along, the outsourcing strategy was that outlined by Weber: “rationalization” — the replacement of human judgement, now deemed too terrible and corruptible to ever be trusted, by rules and procedure; that is, by algorithms. In Weber’s day, implementing them still required human bureaucrats in all cases, but nowadays, ever more of them can be done by our machines — “software eating the world.”

So I pointed out that Clinton winning in 2016 would have enabled a government almost completely divorced from its leader. The Bureaucracy (and later, machines) would do all the work of making the state function, and let her take credit for it, she wouldn't have to exercise agentic 'leadership' (an in return, would never be 'accountable.') and from the Liberals' point of view this is nearly ideal.

Instead, we have Trump who is taking the reins and making decisions for himself, and now going through the process of 'bullying' the bureaucracy into actually carrying them out for him. He's substituting his will for the 'processes' that used to underpin the state's behavior.

No, I was saying that Liberals, not the 'classical liberals' but the ones that vote Dem and are very performatively anti-Trump for reasons independent of his actual policies

This is why I make a point of calling them progressives. It's more true and causes less confusion when there are libertarians about.

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