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The general impression (however incorrect in this case) was that it would go in substantial part to Trump personally. Even GOP voters know that it’s precisely Trump who paints himself as an immensely rich and successful billionaire, so this is giving some very rich guy a lot more taxpayer money, which is hard for politicians to justify.
More generally, every government rewards its supporters, and there are far more under the table ways to do it than this kind of fund. Trump has already done so much of it through the crypto companies, expediting approvals for various Trump tech aligned businesses, endorsing or engaging in partnerships with startups that have his sons on the board etc. If he wants to reward his supporters, this is the way to do it.
The main strategic issue for the right isn’t making it more profitable to be on the right, it’s on making it more personally challenging to be on the left. He needs to much more aggressively steal from and prosecute and expropriate violent leftist activists, make their life hell the way the left did to the right in power. This has far better long term utility. Put people on no fly lists, have banks close their accounts, stop renewing passports and drivers’ licenses.
The Trump admin has been trying to do this, they're not even subtle. James Comey is the most blatant and unarguable example.
Ironically this exact argument is exactly what FIRE, the free speech organization that became famous when it fighting against progressive universities, warns of.
This is to them, a door that hasn't been opened yet that Trump is opening now and if you want to see what weaponization against conservatives could really look like, then just wait.
Hopefully we don't get 2028 Dem who is that vengeful and abusive, I would like for us to start shutting doors instead of continually opening new ones. But I will at least be glad to point out these "it's ok to do what you want against your enemies" arguments to people who seem to suddenly change their mind in three years.
Thankfully the Trump admin will fail here. And so will the 2028 vengeful Dem. But what a shame that everyone just wants to keep opening doors anyway, eventually we'll cross a threshold where society breaks down.
What are we talking about? This is James Comey, he did all this to Trump first. High-profile supporters of the President have already been through being put on the no-fly list, or had their clearances threatened or pulled, or had bullshit process investigations launched against them. Comey pioneered a lot of it! They spied on Trump's campaign! And the people who did it, like Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, got sue-and-settle sweetheart deals from FBI because oh the public controversy has hurt their reputations they deserve millions of dollars in reparations.
Comey even had to break laws to do it. He had to lie and cheat. They simply cannot get him because Washington refuses to allow it.
Everything you are decrying already happened! That barn left the door, the horse is wide open. If you want to complain about weaponization of the federal government for political views let's start with Michael Flynn. You can go first.
Imagine the following alternate timeline: Crossfire Hurricane is a public investigation that plays a prominent role in the news cycle for the entire summer of 2016, culminating in Comey's announcement a few weeks before the election that he is considering recommending charges. Trump loses the election. Meanwhile, the FBI has quietly been conducting an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server and it only becomes public knowledge after a leak is published in the Weekly Standard on Halloween. Trump loses the election, and some on the right speculate that the FBI investigation played a major role in the loss. Would you consider Comey a Republican stooge in that scenario?
This is not antipodal to my position, which is not "Comey is a Democratic stooge".
Moreover it's completely different from what actually happened. Crossfire Hurricane was based on an underlying charge everybody involved knew was bogus. (Hillary did process classified emails on private computer servers.) Comey stonewalled the investigation and appointed friendlies to Hillary to its top positions. His boss, Loretta Lynch, famously crossed paths on the tarmac with Hillary and Bill to warn them about the investigation. The FBI closed the investigation and was only forced to reopen it when Republican senators found new evidence and submitted it to the FBI, forcing their hands. Finally, Comey famously gave a speech recommending that Hillary not be charged. At every point in fact he acted to minimize the damage to Hillary. (Or to maximize his own leverage and political power, which is not incompatible with etc.)
The opposite world James Comey hypothetical looks something like this:
A large and public investigation is opened into Hillary Clinton murdering and eating a child. James Comey privately assures President Clinton that he knows these allegations are not true, then tells Congressmen and Fox News that raping babies is a serious crime and the dignity of the Republic requires taking this seriously. He gets fired, but not until after the investigation gets launched and consumes two years of Hillary's Presidency. It ultimately concludes in a report that, although there is no proof that Hillary murdered or ate any children, she refused to cooperate with the investigation and so we can't be so sure that she's innocent. And we know that there are Chinese school exchange programs in New York and Washington DC and Hillary met with the Chinese schoolkids and the Chinese won't tell us what they know. Hillary is eventually impeached for threatening the Prime Minister, but during the proceedings everybody just debates whether President Clinton ate those babies or not. Hillary wins and it gradually comes out that James Comey and all his subordinates knew the entire time that everything about eating babies was totally made up and came straight from the Trump campaign via the Bolivian government. Oops!
Now Hillary tries to have James Comey prosecuted, but, you can't do that, you can't weaponize the Justice Department like that! Democrats will really regret politicizing the government to prosecute their enemies, which is something Republicans have never done before. We can't even really say that James Comey is a Trump guy. After all, during the 2016 Campaign, there was a large public investigation into how Trump shot and Killed someone on Fifth Avenue, something nobody denies he did. It's well known how James Comey undermined the Trump campaign by giving a big speech saying that what Trump did was a crime sure but not a big deal. Besides, James Comey is a registered Democrat, he was appointed by Democrats who hate Hillary, so for him to be doing all this it must be out of a deep devotion to duty. (Maybe Hillary and Bill got a divorce.) He investigated both sides. He's non-partisan. There's just no other explanation except that Hillary is a vengeful witch who is politicizing the government and destroying America.
I like to imagine that Hilldawg Democrats are really incensed about "Hillary Derangement Syndrome" and that Republicans, who just elected Timothy McVeigh to Congress, are complaining about how the Democrats have all become like Hitler and it was much better when Obama was around.
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FIRE is among the many, many, many organizations who lost their way and don't support what they say on the tin. Look at their tagline for that very article:
Do they think I'm an idiot? Do they think I haven't been paying attention? Did they forget the world they themselves have lived through?
I don't need to wait, because I've seen it for well over a decade at this point. I know exactly what it looks like when Democrats want to censor political opponents, and it looks like massive coordinated deplatforming from every institution or large conglomerate in the world.
What the fuck is FIRE thinking publishing this kind of dreck? They ought to know better, but then again, see my first sentence.
Thinking about the Obama administration: malicious tax audits of non-profits, Operation Choke Point debanking conspiracy and Citizens United outright censorship. So yeah I don't have to imagine very hard.
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Wait since when? It sounds like you are just pissy that they have principles. Meaning they defend free speech even when its a conservative in the executive.
Their archive has a ton of recent cases that do not cleave to a left vs right dichotomy but instead a free speech principled stance. https://www.fire.org/cases
Greg Lukiaoff the CEO has talked about this before and calls it "hypocrisy projection"
https://x.com/glukianoff/status/1784609444124316135
You see this constantly in replies to FIRE lawyers, people who have no idea what they are will go "You didn't say anything about X or Y" when no, FIRE definitely did do that. It's constant from all political directions.
People just fling out accusations of hypocrisy at them to cover up for their own hypocrisy.
Being a principled person is a fun life cause you'll have people telling you're biased and unfair in every direction you can imagine and there's just no convincing them. They don't want to be convinced, you can lead the horse to a river, dunk their head in and make them drink it and they'll spit it out!
You're actually correct on this one; that's some good theory of mind.
On this page, you have a bunch of people repeatedly asking you for evidence your positions; you consistently obfuscate, deflect, and pretend to misunderstand what they're saying.
I understand that it's flattering to cast yourself as a principled person, and anyone disagreeing with you is just terminally stupid.
Thing is, it's not actually true.
Actually pretty easy way to to check it, let's call it the Mr Rogers test.
If Mark tells you that John is a thief, you might be more cautious of John's behavior. If Mark then follows up with "Mr Rogers is a thief", then you know Mark's head isn't screwed on right, he just claims people are thieves if he doesn't like them for whatever reason and his claims about John hold little weight. Mr Rogers after all was famously a very nice guy and no credible accusations have ever been made that he stole from others, so Mark just claiming lowers Mark's own reputation.
So let's look at things that are very principled to use as our baseline to see if people's accusations have any weight here.
FIRE is extremely principled, probably one of the most principled organizations out there. So someone who makes claims against FIRE loses any weight they have in other accusations. The comment currently making claims against FIRE is at +14, so at the very least 14 people here throw out frivolous accusations just because they don't like when principled beliefs are against them.
Well maybe these are not the same people interacting with me, but there's not that many people on the site so there's a pretty good chance that several of them are. I don't give them any weight because they've already lost it by failing the Mr Rogers test.
And it's not just FIRE either. I learned recently that Trace Woodgrains was effectively bullied out of this site roughly a year ago, someone had linked his profile in response to me talking a view of his. Woodgrains is someone I've seen to be respectable and honest and he's constantly been willing to speak up against both left wing and right wing views he disagrees with. He's quite respected in the rationalist aligned community. Taking such major issues with him that he is effectively hounded off is a failure of the Mr Rogers test.
That's to be expected, it's the default of the internet really. Even people I disagree with substantially (but respect as principled in their beliefs) have it happen constantly. Micheal Tracey is experiencing that treatment right now. I think he's wrong about Epstein and his many other denials of public officials accused of abuse, but he is very consistent in holding this stance. Elliot Hamilton (among many other X users) falsely accusing Tracey of being a partisan hypocrite have lost any weight I might have given their accusations. If I ever had Elliot Hamilton say I'm being partisan, I know I can dismiss that because he just says it if he doesn't like what you say.
Edit: Actually here Trace Woodgrains speaks out another big of the issue that's still ongoing https://www.themotte.org/post/1018/smallscale-question-sunday-for-may-26/217142?context=8#context
Is it the case that there just isn't left or centrist rationalists capable of discussion here? Highly unlikely, Woodgrains himself is a good example of that. He's also a good example of what really happens, the community here is generally hostile in pursuit of the implicit purpose. Many users simply don't want to hear the arguments they disagree with, so the people who have arguments they dislike get burnt out from the hostility.
So Mr Rogers test, I'm not gonna put much weight into hounding from a site and people that also hounded out Woodgrains.
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I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it would be great for accusers of MKC to post receipts along with their accusations. Right now it just seems like people are ganging up on him for no good reason.
If magicalkittycat doesn't have to post receipts for claiming to be principled, or casting other members of this forum as stupid illiterate horses, then it's a pretty asymmetric demand that I have to post receipts to push back on that. (Also, "for no good reason"? You can literally see a reason in the comment I'm replying to! Anyone who goes "I'm great and principled; other people on this forum are stupid" is opening the door to being told: "no".)
Very charitable, thanks.
One reason that thread is so long is because I (and others like FtttG) spent a ton of time not being vague! We specifically repeatedly explained how mkc was being dishonest. If we'd been vague, it would've been a much shorter thread!
So, we explain the dishonesty in detail => thread becomes long => you say "thread is long, you are vague". Doesn't really seem fair.
But I do get where you're coming from, so I'll explain some specific points of dishonesty in that thread. This isn't a complete accounting, it's just off the top of my head:
Another problem with your policy of "I need specific individual instances of bad faith; I won't read a long thread" is that it allows posters like mkc to fly under the radar. If you're looking for a threshold of (say) 60% bad faith in an individual comment, and someone is consistently operating at 55% bad faith, then any one individual comment isn't going to set off your alarms. But the cumulative effect of 55% bad faith is much worse than a single 60% bad faith comment!
(EDIT: here is a clear example of mkc posting in bad faith. He got ChatGPT to say "this photo's caption is untrue". I got ChatGPT to say "I can't verify whether this photo's caption is true or false". mkc's response to this contradiction: "this supports me, I am right!" This isn't good faith; this isn't anything. This is purely him throwing whatever words he can at an argument, without regard for truth or consistency.)
First of all, thank you for the detailed comment. I appreciate the effort. Consider my priors adjusted.
I agree, though it does seem like he misinterpreted the request as something more general "police arrest victim instead of perp" rather than the more specific request. Later on it might be better to concede on the point before pivoting, but it's on par with online political debates.
That's bad for sure. He got deservingly banned for it.
The way I read it was a back and forth discussion where he got challenged on the impartiality and reproducibility of ChatGPT results, and changed because of it (i.e. he started posting prompts). Some parts of it may be sus but it does not go over my bad faith threshold.
Perhaps, but I'm willing to extend more charity on members in a forum with minority viewpoints. But again, consider my priors adjusted on this one, you may not have convinced me that he exceeded my single-comment-chain bad faith threshold but the cumulative evidence of sus behavior has certainly increased.
I did not say this to you.
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Well, this did happen just yesterday and today in the thread you're talking in right now. Pick your poison of long "Fetch more comments" threads involving the person you just replied to. Or go to the profile in question and search "Bottom" for low-lights.
I meant they should be more specific as in actual quotes and articulate convincingly how MKC is supposedly intellectually dishonest and trolling rather than simply linking to a particular thread. I get that vagueness is easier to defend, but just by briefly reading over the thread, it seems like he's being dogpiled for adopting a different framing than what is consistent with the Overton window here.
On Reddit, people with right-wing (or even moderate!) opinions often get dogpiled and shouted down and get called intellectually dishonest (and therefore eligible to be banned) even if they are earnest in their beliefs, because they find the left-wing framing, evidence, or arguments unconvincing. I hope this place is still somewhere everyone can speak their mind and disagree, and not right-wing Reddit.
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”Goal posts were packed up and moved to Sudan” is one of those lines you wish you’d remember to use the next time it’d be appropriate.
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Lmao if you keep agreeing with me and I with you, someone might call me your sockpuppet. Brb gotta go touch grass with my real life obligations.
But yes, very intuitive to what behavior is happening here.
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I didn't see this one in there.
So your stance is words are worth more than actions?
What about this one, this one, this one
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That article is a reprint and kept the tagline from the original. Lukianoff himself at least remains aware, though whether he still controls FIRE or it was skinsuited out from under him I don't know.
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Can you give a single example where FIRE took the pro censorship side?
They're a free speech organization in favor of free speech and they know one way that you convince people to support free speech is to get them to consider "what if it happens to me?". Would you want to have the government claim you threatened the next president for saying 86 48?
Here is an example of them aligning with Democratic interests to facilitate homelessness.
Just like the when the Sierra Club starts talking about immigration rights instead of saying that immigrants to the US are bad for the environment, when FIRE starts talking about homelessness I recognize it as Conquest's Second Law.
They lost their way on free speech by standing up for free speech?
Cause that's what they're doing
They're the free speech org, of course they're against government ordinance that suppresses unliked or unwanted speech.
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I don't want to see any politicians rewarding their supporters, but I guess I might as well wish to hold back the tides.
I'm particularly reminded of USAID disbursements to progressive NGO's worldwide, and also welfare allocations to client groups in Minnesota.
Yes. Basically this sort of weaponisation needs to be turned on their original developers. Only then you can you reach detente through MAD. There are some hardcore conflict theorists that think this will never happen and that the end goal is the destruction of the political opposition. Things have been pretty bad, but I'm surprised at how far this is all going.
Regarding this point, I have always been under the impression that NGO's that try to help people in foreign countries receive education, medicine, and emergency aid are progressive in nature. Assuming part of the president's policy is to make the world outside the US a better place by providing foreign aid, it thus follows that most of that money would go to progressive groups. Because by and the majority of charities today lean left.
Is that wrong? Are there solid charities out there which are either apolitical or lean conservative which provide foreign aid, but were neglected by USAID in favor of some kind of nepotism?
Correct; USAID was a slush fund that provided cushy jobs to loyal progressive partisans as a reward for their agitation on behalf of progressive and/or Democratic Party causes, or in opposition to right-wing and/or Republican Party causes. If any of the money USAID spent managed to make life better for the poor and downtrodden in other countries, that made the US look better, then all the better, but that was not to primary driver of the program.
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WorldVision is an explicitly Christian aid organisation with a generally good reputation and which I haven't seen accused of being skinsuited by leftists. (Christian Aid and CAFOD in the UK have, I think, been thoroughly skinsuited)
Numerous religious denominations, some of them conservative-aligned, run overseas missions which combine proselytisation with aid work, although I am not familiar with specific examples.
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The ostensible realpolitik argument was that by dispersing charity to foreign nations, the US was gaining soft power and influence. It just so happened that there were links between the Democrat party and the people running and working in the NGOs receiving the money to distribute (and fund the required salaries and overheads for the organisations themselves). This was often obfuscated by layers of organisations and sometimes lead to the money being spent on things that were incredibly dubious (eg $2M for sex change surgeries in Guatemala; $47K for a "transgender opera" in Colombia; $75K for a drag show workshop in Ecuador.)
I need to be fair and say I haven't really gone digging for a USAID spending breakdown by left and right wing causes. I guess in some ways 'free welfare' type spending is by definition left wing.
Realpolitik is not the only argument for foreign aid though. There is also the progressive view that those who own a lot should use their possessions to help those who have less. Since the US is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, she has a duty to help poorer nations prosper. If that is the motivation for program, it seems natural that the charities used would mostly share a similar world view.
I think this kind of altruism is a way more common justification among leftist voters than realpolitik. The latter is really just a way to clown on Trump. They want to donate because they believe it is the right thing to do, and would do so even if the benefit to their home country is basically null. Unfortunately, this is easily weaponized by activists. "One dollar is nothing to you, but give it to a family in Africa, and it buys all of them enough water for the entire day". You also see this to a fairly extreme extent in immigration discourse in Europe, where many on the left are more concerned about doing the "right thing" by admitting refugees and immigrants, than they are about the effect this has on their culture and economy.
Why not both? Gaining a good reputation for doing good things is the system working as intended. There's also downstream effects. The benefit of disease control activities in Africa is lower risk of eventually spreading to Americans. Alleviating poverty helps prevent anti-American terrorists from gaining power.
Has a nation-state ever started a war or funded terrorism against another nation-state simply because the richer state was richer and refused to provide charity to the poorer state?
Perhaps client states or vassal-like relationships could work this way, but they involve political subservience in exchange for material resources.
Alleviating poverty does not prevent anti-Americanism, it just alleviates poverty and creates a culture of dependency.
Simply because? No, unless you're counting warlords who want more stuff. But gangs and terrorists find poor places fertile breeding ground. If you have nothing, what are you supposed to do about them? And it's easier for the cartel to recruit a poor kid from the street than a middle class child. Life is all about contributing factors.
It does though? Are you going to tell me you aren't nicer to someone who gives you stuff? It's no magic bullet, but it helps. That what soft power is - influence.
And again I will point out the value of preventing disease outbreaks.
My point is that anger over lack of material comforts is usually directed at the internal government, not a distant foreign government. Do the people in Brazil's favelas blame China for their poverty? No, they blame the government of Brazil. Do the untouchables in India blame the US for their situation? No, if anything they blame the caste system in India. No terrorists or gangs blame obvious outsiders unless those outsiders are clearly meddling in the internal politics of their country - like the US does with NGOs and various aid programs. Poor people, including poor radicalised extremists, do not necessarily lay blame to wealthy foreigners who are minding their own business in their own country. Normal trade relations are not meddling but "free" aid always comes with strings attached and so people are rightfully suspicious.
And I don't know how to explain it, but soft power isn't gained by just giving things away for free. Maybe someone smarter than me can explain soft power better, but I think it's a form of respect that you can't just buy with resources or money.
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There are very many (christian) religious charities operating in all developing countries, most of which obviously lean conservative (btw, USAID is still working with plenty of them to this day). For the most part, these are centered around providing the basics: Alleviating poverty, providing fundamental education, giving out medicine, etc. However, they are often accused of just wanting to abuse this status to spread their religion. Some of them even openly do so. In the past, the christian western countries would frequently overwhelmingly fund these charities, citing the same arguments as you do: They are the primary charities operating in these places. You should see how this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: If they get funded but the others don't, they'll necessarily be the primary ones. That's how it works.
We have a very similar situation now; Imo arguably worse in some ways, but YMMV. Plenty of progressive NGOs are very blatant about spreading specifically their particular worldview. Usually in addition to basic aid, sometimes even without that fig leaf, but they'll often get funding anyway. And if you try looking into what they are actually doing on-the-ground, it's not only often exceptionally difficult to even find out where all that money is even going, but in the few cases where you can find something, they'll usually even exceed their claimed mandate substantially.
At least from my vantage point, we have successfully pushed these religious charities to tone down their missionary purposes and concentrate on the aid part if they want to get our funding. I'd like for the same to happen to progressive charities.
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The obvious place to look would be religious charities, wouldn't it?
Many denominations have been captured by progressiveness.
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