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5,000 for every American citizen? Might sound farfetched, but the president just proposed it https://apnews.com/article/trump-dividend-5k-5000-check-republicans-cc80644e3168acd31c892129fb849436
First of all this is obviously retarded, there's no ability to mince words here, it would be about 1.3 trillion dollars almost doubling the annual federal deficit, causing massive inflation, and generally fucking the economy. Second of all, it's obviously not happening just like the DOGE dividend and tariff dividends and all the other free money constantly promised. We all know it, there's no need to pretend that this isn't just constant lying.
Rather I'm more interested in what this suggests, here's some thoughts.
Trump is really worried about the midterms to the point he's trying to outright suggest bribing voters. This concern makes sense given the Dems have a 50% chance of a complete sweep. Trump arrived, disappointed Americans, and his legacy is already ending.
As I spoke earlier about the plan to pay parents to stay at home, it's another highlight of how modern "conservativism" just doesn't give a shit about money anymore. The entire concept of fiscal responsibility is just a joke now. If we take the president seriously (which I would hope we could given the prestige of the office but obviously we can not), it's one of the most destructive singular policies someone could possibly suggest.
Likewise, there's not even an attempt to hide the corruption anymore. I can not even imagine how much more blatant he could get that this is attempted bribery. People can play the whataboutism game of former admins if they want, but at least those had the shame to hide it behind closed doors a bit.
The magical tariffs continue to do everything. Trump has promised so much with tariff revenue (a number I can't even cite him on since like many of his claims, it fluctuates widely). CATO has an excellent list of everything they're claimed to fund. It's not just fiscal responsibility that is a joke, the entire idea of government funding has become one.
And this isn't occuring in isolation, it's another sign of the GOP transformation into a populism powered welfare socialist party. Fiscal responsibility is a joke, redistribution from the rich to the poor in bribes is based, trade is evil and companies should be owned by the government.
And what political coalition now exists to point out the obvious and say this isn't smart? The stereotypical conservative response before was "how will we pay for that?" in regards to big sending. The response now is crickets. Negative polarization has gone so far that the DSA, a group that literally calls themselves socialist are now the most free trade voting bloc, so will we reverse polarize ourselves into a small government balanced budget "socialist" president at some point?
But most importantly, what does this say about politics now where promising $1.35 trillion in direct payments to voters is presented as the conservative campaign message. How much further into the slop can we possibly descend, and how we can ever pull ourselves out of it? Maybe the Dems can just promise 5,001 dollars or something.
Nor should it. There is no economic, political, nor social benefit available to pursuit of fiscal conservativism in any shape or form. It achieves nothing, can achieve nothing, will achieve nothing. If America needs a party of higher taxes, spending cuts and austerity, I nominate the Democrats take up this noble burden upon their broad shoulders and wish them well of it.
You probably ought to take a break from slathering on the emotives and supply a specific argument as to why they should, which will be difficult because no coherent argument for such action exists.
If you are going to call the Trump Administration corrupt, I think you should detail who in the Administration has been convicted of corruption in a court of law. I have lost count of the times you have argued that the procedural outcomes of the criminal justice system settle a matter: well, this also is one of those procedural outcomes, yet here you seem to believe that your own judgement takes precedence in a way that you have never and will never accept from your opposites.
In any case, if Trump and his administration were corrupt, it seems to me that since you were comfortable looking the other way for his predecessors, what justification other than tribal animus could lead you to argue for doing otherwise now? We are not even at the part where the FBI coordinates cover-ups with every major media outlet and platform in the country that involve mass-violations of freedom of speech and the press. You did not care then, why should we care now, or indeed ever again? Where do you get off pretending that there are rules being broken here?
Sure. Just not merely as much of a joke as your shabby pretense that this moment, now is when it became one.
Do the words "Stimulus", or "Bailout" mean anything to you? "Entitlements?" No? How delightful it must be, to be each morning born anew, unburdened by what has been.
We have been discussing the precariat for more than a decade at this point. Economic stress is driving radicalization nation-wide. What you so callously describe as "bribes" to "leeches" is necessary economic assistance to Americans who both need and deserve the help. But by all means, continue framing the issue this way, and I can only hope that the Democrats follow your appalling example.
The truth, as I see it, is that you are angry that Republicans have figured out that we also can distribute largesse from the public purse. We can probably even do it without inculcating massive ethnic fraud machines! How unfair of us! Everyone knows the democrats are supposed to be the party that buys votes with tax dollars, and the Republicans are supposed to be the party that loses votes by implementing austerity. How dare we refuse to play the role assigned to us!?
There isn't one, and you know it. And when the consequences come due, as they must, it must be a great relief to you to know that your side will grimly tighten their belts and set to work picking up the pieces in a measured and responsible manner, foregoing extremism and finger-pointing and blame-games, and through reason and persuasion patiently persuade the public the necessity of taking responsibility and accountability for the mistakes made and the many hard years of sacrifice ahead. Honestly, I'm hopeful that you'll personally be one of them, given your evident honesty and dedication to plain-speaking truth. I hope I get to watch you make that pitch someday, perhaps on TV.
It says that Conservativism is dead. The Progressive coalition successfully strangled it to death, and its last, brightest glimmer of hope was squandered in a cross-tribe coalition effort at nation-building in the Middle East. For all your performative disgust, you know that Social Security is insolvent, that entitlement spending has been obviously unsustainable for decades, and that the Democrats have worked ceaselessly to make these problems worse for at least the last fifty years. What point is there for Republicans to continue to exercise restraint? Whatever we save, you will squander, loot, spend or redistribute. And this presumes that we even can coordinate savings, which we have historically not been able to do, and which further attempts at doing directly trade off on our other political objectives.
This ends badly, obviously. Equally obviously, that bad ending was locked in quite some time ago, and I for one decline to be scapegoated for it.
Sure, go for it! Counter-offer: we offer 5,002, and a plan to pay for it by nationalizing the endowments! The destination is fixed, does it actually matter if we get there fast or slow?
It is frustrating that you're such a good writer because over years and years of reading you I've realized that all your beliefs amount to Hottentot morality in so many words. Democrats celebrate crime and brutality? Disgusting, we should do that to them, appoint our own thugs. Democrats buy votes? There is no coherent argument against buying votes! You just defend whatever Republicans do, no matter how obviously debased. You gleefully embrace the race to the bottom.
In 2023, the Peronist government of Argentina tried to buy votes with total tax relief for "the working class" and free bus rides. I've been impressed by Argentinians when they didn't take the bait and still voted Milei, who reversed the law.
There's been a lot of concern about Brazilification of the US. I think it's way past that. The US is a South American society, maybe Middle Eastern. Just wrong skin color by accident.
"Hottentot Morality" seems underspecified.
I refuse to pretend that rules or norms constrain us all equally when in fact they obviously do not. Why should I? What works that way? What positive outcome is secured by such a method? Further, if stability or peace or the current maintenance of plenty requires obvious, systematic injustice, why would you think this maintainable long-term? Why is pretending it can be sustained useful? What is gained? A pleasant aesthetic ambiance between now and the inevitable shattering crash?
Whoa now, you can't just sneak that in there, that seems pretty uncharitable! Most of the Blues remaining here certainly wouldn't agree that Democrats do anything of the sort, even when you quote examples of they themselves doing so!
Which is to say, you are willing to make this accusation to me, who is speaking the truth plainly, and decline to make it to those who have actually acted on it but are willing to lie. And even then, they burned our cities; have we burned theirs? Are we running gangs of masked men to kick people's teeth in for saying things we don't like? Are we murdering their political champions? If you're going to draw an equivalence, you really ought to back it up.
...But allow me to skip much tedious listing and harangue.
The difference that you don't seem to recognize is that I'm willing to agree that these things are, in fact, actual problems, and they are, in fact, going to lead to a bad end, provided my opposite is willing to engage with the facts in good faith. Absent that good faith, I'm not really sure what you or others expect. My side lost, and was trampled down. Can you resurrect us? If you cannot, why curse me for failing to do so? I say that the culture war is a serious problem driven by fundamentally-incompatible values across broad, coherent populations, that this locks us into an escalation spiral that is very obviously going to break things we can't fix, and I'm told that I'm being a silly-billy, that this is all a distraction or an algorithm bubble, and then the next day I'm presented with a conversation like this one, where it's awful that my side is doing the thing the other side built their entire party around doing, and has consistently claimed my side is bad for trying to stop, all the way up to five seconds ago.
If you think vote-buying is bad, explain what ought to be done about eighty-five fucking years of ceaseless vote-buying. Explain what should be done about the trillions of dollars in vote-buying that is definitely going to happen this year alone. Explain how the ideals you're espousing have even the slightest connection to the world I have to live in, or how precisely they extend even two inches beyond this specific, entirely-bespoke Russell-conjugation.
Things can be destroyed that cannot be repaired nor replaced, and recognizing this fact does not in and of itself bring them back. Pretending harder doesn't change this. Cursing people who point out that you are pretending also does not change this.
The wheel carried them down, now it carries them up. The wheel carried us up, now it carries us down. We probably have a Milei, somewhere; it's a big country. What we lack is a population willing to accept a Milei. We are too fat and comfortable, too deluded to accept that hard decisions need to be made, and so those who argue correctly that hard decisions are needed to forestall serious disaster simply lose. And so those of us who can recognize that hard decisions are needed to forestall disaster recognize, correctly, that the hard decisions can't be coordinated, and accept that the disaster is going to happen, and attempt to prepare as best we're able.
I honestly suspect that you have no idea. And yet, you frequently speak about inevitable US victory and our impending dominance of the light-cone. I think that's unlikely. I think things go badly for us and probably for a lot of other people in the not-too-distant future, as the Belle Epoque collapses.
So it goes.
The culture war is a war, and increasingly so year by year.
"When they rustle our cattle, this is bad. When we rustle their cattle, this is good. What do you mean, what's the difference? One action hurts me, the other benefits me."
It seems to me that if one makes a statement for which a reasonable response is "War exists", it might be time to contemplate one's choices.
"Hottentot Morality" describes a lack of reciprocity. Through specific choices, humans can arrive in a state where reciprocity breaks down. If we in America are not in that state, we are pretty close to it, and getting closer over time.
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"When Russians shoot Ukrainians, that's bad; When Ukrainians shoot Russians, that's good". Such Hottentot Morality.
Unironically yes. Learning how to step away from this viewpoint was one of the big things about the Enlightenment.
That's odd, I distinctly recall lots of people being killed not just as a direct result of, but in the name of the Enlightenment.
And while I'm sure extreme pacifists existed among Enlightment thinkers, I don't think "it's morally wrong to repell an invading army" was a representative view among them.
You have failed to mirror it. As much as this is "Hottentot Morality":
This is also "Hottentot Morality"
"When Russians shoot Ukrainians, that's good; When Ukrainians shoot Russians, that's bad"
I would call it just being tribal, but the clear distinction is conflict theory-like. "My side is good so anything we do is good and justified, the other side is not-us and thus is bad, anything they do is bad and unjustified, even if its the exact same thing we do"
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