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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.
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.
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.
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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