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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34984 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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Watching the press briefing Trump gave... something in me finally broke.

I don't think it matters what you call Trumpism. I think that we've spent all of this time propping up a broken system with a broken man. I recoiled from the accelerationists who said they were using Trump to break the system because that just seems so destructive and vile, no better than the people who break Starbucks windows.

I thought: maybe he's a good man. Maybe we should give him a chance. And the Democrats are so vile in their baseless slander.

But the Dermocrats didn't make him give that speech on January 6th.

Hillary Clinton should have been jailed and she should still be in jail. There is nothing to be gained however from holding on to a tool that has run out of use.

I mean is there anyone out there who didn't understand why Democrats were in shrill hysterics about fascism? The man like to scare them, and I don't know if I believe that he had so much fun terrorizing the libs (it's so easy and someone has to do it) that he fell into it, or if... well, I just can't go down that road yet.

This criminal wasn't worth all of this divisiveness in our politics. Maybe the divisiveness was already there.

I regret my support for former president Trump and I want him to withdraw from public life. Nixon had the decency to step down when his time was up.

  • -28

Hillary Clinton should have been jailed and she should still be in jail. There is nothing to be gained however from holding on to a tool that has run out of use.

Hillary did something that, if I or anyone else with access to classified information had done, would have landed us in prison under the espionage act. I can forgive a former VP or President for having boxes with classified documents in their garage, locked store room, etc. Those guys live, eat, breath, and shit classified information for 4 to 8 years, the changeover is chaotic and shit slips through.

Actively sending classified information to a personally controlled server and effectively making digital copies of massive amounts of classified, export control, CUI, etc information is the kind of stuff they put people away for decades for. Let alone destroying evidence thereof.

What they are accusing Trump of doing would have netted a fine for the overwhelming majority of people and likely not prosecuted in the first place. Hell all of the charges are beyond the statute of limitations anyway and should be tossed on that alone.

Those guys live, eat, breath, and shit classified information for 4 to 8 years, the changeover is chaotic and shit slips through.

It's not a new risk nor do we lack the resources to handle it cleanly. Why don't they have people making sure it's secure? Trump doesn't need to handle it personally, there are probably a dozen people he could get instructions from or fob them off to his staff.

I can forgive a college student for not having an immaculate room. People with money and people to make things happen correctly don't have that excuse.

It's not a new risk nor do we lack the resources to handle it cleanly. Why don't they have people making sure it's secure?

Because it's difficult, politically sensitive, and low priority. A few boxes of aging classified information in ex-official's homes is not a big problem. Having people with high-level clearances comb through politician's papers looking for things which shouldn't be there is expensive and more importantly annoys the politicians. And expecting them to do it themselves, or hire appropriately-cleared people to do it, is what we have now.

Can you explain what you mean by difficult or politically sensitive?

I understand that it may not be the most pressing concern, but it still needs to be done. Same with a politician's annoyance, that's an irrelevant factor and they should understand the need to have this done correctly if they care about their country.

Ditto with expense, the US wastes lots of money. How much is it going to cost to have some people on hand to deal with this? Even at 150k salary per person doing it, that seems like peanuts.

Can you explain what you mean by difficult or politically sensitive?

I've already explained "politically sensitive"; anything that annoys former high-level politicans is going to be politically sensitive. Whether it should be or not.

By "difficult", it's mostly about getting enough people cleared at a high enough level to comb through this stuff. You can't just call up an army of GS-7 clerks to do it. You need fairly expensive individuals cleared at a high level, who then have to be exposed to a politician's ire for doing their job.

I understand that it may not be the most pressing concern, but it still needs to be done.

For some not very stringent definition of "need". Classified information moldering away in politician's basements and garages is unlikely to be a significant source of leaks.

By "difficult", it's mostly about getting enough people cleared at a high enough level to comb through this stuff. You can't just call up an army of GS-7 clerks to do it. You need fairly expensive individuals cleared at a high level, who then have to be exposed to a politician's ire for doing their job.

And who likely have other functions/jobs to be doing as a function of their high clearance and don't want to be sifting through Politicians' papers for briefs that were of actual political sensitivity for 2 weeks 3 years ago and are yet still legally classified

Why are you limiting your criticism to Trump, when Biden was caught doing the exact same thing, and probably the only reason they haven't found anything like that on any of the previous presidents is that they haven't bothered looking?

Biden was caught doing the exact same thing

It was my understanding that Biden returned everything as soon as he realised he had it, while his predecessor refused to return documents upon notification by the National Archives, and repeatedly lied about having more things he wasn't supposed to.

Admittedly, I live in a fairly Blue-tribe circle; is my understanding incorrect?

It was my understanding that Biden returned everything as soon as he realised he had it, while his predecessor refused to return documents upon notification by the National Archives, and repeatedly lied about having more things he wasn't supposed to.

Admittedly, I live in a fairly Blue-tribe circle; is my understanding incorrect?

Its roughly correct-adjacent. But it misses a few very important points, and is a generally irrelevant claim:

  1. Biden had documents in less secure locations (Mar A Lago is a decommissioned SCIF) for longer. It is also worse that the government didn't know Biden had the documents. Also, there were documents classified at SCIF level from Joe's Senate days, which means he illegally removed them from the SCIF, or someone else did and gave them to him. Unlike Mar A Lago, where the documents were there, and never moved until the FBI decided to go gangbusters.

  2. The cooperation line is silly because Biden is, essentially, cooperating with himself, while Trump was negotiating with a hostile DOJ.

It was my understanding that Biden returned everything as soon as he realised he had it

And then they found more.

Which, if I understand correctly, he also returned.

Were there any instances in which Mr. Biden either:

A: Denied possessing classified documents which he knew he possessed,

or

B: Refused to return classified documents which he was informed belonged to the government?

Can you just ask me why I'm talking about the specifics before accusing me of being a partisan?

I'm talking about Trump because that's what the conversation is about. I said nothing about whether it is or is not okay for Biden to do the same. Gut reaction, no, it's not okay for him. But at least have the decency to phrase your accusation as a question.

The average 64 year old in the state department absolutely wouldn't go to jail for decades for doing what Clinton did.

It's kind of an irrelevant comparison. The average State Dept. worker is not the boss of the entire State Department and can not have done what Clinton did. Clinton purposely implemented a system for transporting classified information outside of proper oversight and security channels. She didn't merely mishandle X number of classified documents; she intentionally ignored protocols in order to ensure that all of her classified communications were mishandled because she wanted to hide them.

To bring it back to the Trump/Biden boxes of documents, a more apt comparison would be if it were discovered that either of the Presidents had established an underground railroad that diverted all Top Secret docs away from the correct filing system and into a secret cave, and when the cave was discovered, all of the documents mysteriously caught fire.

I don't know about the state department but in the DoD or DoE they absolutely would be looking at jail time. I have seen it happen.

https://www.burnhamgorokhov.com/penalties-of-mishandling-classified-documents-in-the-united-states/

For the average person with access to classified information they would absolutely face prison time, and additional time for every count.

And I'm more pissed about this whole thing because after it happened we had to go through a ton more training and start portion marking every freaking line and paragraph on emails sent over the classified networks. MASSIVE pain in the ass.

Sandy Berger got a fine and probation for doing worse than what Clinton did.

Has anyone ever been jailed for merely mishandling classified information without improperly disclosing it?

ETA - a quick google found this list of example cases. It looks like big shots like Berger and Petraeus get off with probation and fines, but small fry can get 3 months in prison if they are unlucky. The multi-year sentences all involved at least the appearance of unauthorized disclosure.

I think it is pretty clear Clinton would not have been jailed if she was prosecuted. Similarly, it would be an injustice if Trump gets jailed for mishandling classified information (assuming, of course, that he hasn't been disclosing it).

Sandy Berger

Clearly did wrong, but not worse than putting classified information on the open Internet.

???

Are you saying that sending classified information over unsecure e-mail is equivalent to putting it on the open Internet? I suppose it might be in terms of possible harm (although in the case of Hillary Clinton's e-mails this would be mitigated by the fact that they were probably never routed outside the US), but in terms of legal culpability it definitely isn't.

Are you saying that sending classified information over unsecure e-mail is equivalent to putting it on the open Internet?

Yes. The classified information traveled (quite possibly unencrypted) over the public internet. They may or may not have been routed outside the US; Clinton's people had no control of that.

Actually we know that they were in fact routed outside the US - her private server was compromised and a copy of every email she sent from it was forwarded to a foreign power (most likely China).

Until quite recently emails between different domains would have been transmitted in plain text. It’s not persistently available like a website, but any hop between the servers could read the contents of emails.

This is accurate. It's certainly bad but definitely not equivalent in terms of actual expected cost to publishing it on a webpage for everyone to see.

I really don't know why @The_Nybbler thinks otherwise. Is there some law that treats them as equivalent or are they simply remarking on pure cryptography theory? idk

This is accurate. It's certainly bad but definitely not equivalent in terms of actual expected cost to publishing it on a webpage for everyone to see.

I really don't know why @The_Nybbler thinks otherwise.

I don't. My words were "putting classified information on the open Internet".

I mean, it's what we get drilled into us. I don't know if it's law, though.

Nixon had the decency to step down when his time was up.

which explains a lot of why the next 50 years were such a disaster for anyone with even remotely similar politics

Nixon is the perfect example of what not to do. Cooperate-bot is a losing strategy. How many times and for how long will you lose before you figure this out?

Nixon didn't resign out of decency. His advisors had told him that the Senate would vote to convict, and he didn't have the kind of grassroots Republican support that Trump did that would allow him to seek revenge on the Republican senators that voted against him - the hard-core Republican primary voters already preferred Reagan to Nixon by this point.

Nixon didn't fight back because of decency and he rolled over instead of fighting back against a coup against his administration, too. He did it because fighting back would have entailed him revealing how corrupt, coopted and sick the US government was at that point. And the US was made strictly worse because of it.

Zero "hard-core Republican primary voters" supported Reagan over Nixon in 1974. But Nixon certainly set the standard for the GOP turning vast electoral victories into finding ways to lose.

What would "fighting back" involve? Are you suggesting that you know something Nixon's advisors didn't, and that he had a way of avoiding Senate conviction? Or are you suggesting that he stage a coup to remain in office despite the Senate voting to remove him? (SecDef Schlesinger and NSA Kissinger had already taken steps to prevent orders to stage a Latin America style coup reaching the military)

We now know that Woodward and Bernstein were stenographers and that Mark Felt (aka "Deep Throat") was a swamp insider trying to remove Nixon for swampy reasons. But that doesn't matter as a matter of law or politics - in 1974 the Republican caucus in the Senate wasn't prepared to support a President who swore like a sailor while plotting the cover up of an outrageous piece of ratfucking in an election he would have won anyway. If you are caught red-handed committing a crime, attacking the motives of the prosecutor is not convincing to anyone who wasn't supporting you anyway.

Nixon did find a way of turning a vast electoral victory into a way to lose - but that was staging the Watergate burglary in the first place. That is what I don't understand - why did he do it? With McGovern as the Democratic candidate, the 1972 election was basically in the bag without the information he was hoping to get from the bug tape. The trifecta of committing a serious crime, getting caught, and having powerful enemies is not usually recoverable, and I don't see how it would have been for Nixon.

nixon did not stage the watergate burglary and didn't even know about it in the first place

your version of events isn't supportable any longer (and wasn't supportable at the time either for anyone in the know), it's time to update your understanding of what happened

The whole reason why there was a scandal is that the Watergate burglars were paid to do it by the Nixon campaign. I agree with you that Nixon didn't know that that specific burglary was being committed until the burglars got caught. But Nixon would have known about and approved of the high-level decision to hire Liddy and Hunt to ratfuck the McGovern campaign. Given their history as part of the Plumbers, he would also have known that they would commit crimes in order to do so. That is the decision I don't understand - why did Nixon (or his loyalists on the CRP) organise a criminal conspiracy to run up the score in an election they were going to win anyway.

One possible answer is that Liddy has claimed that the Watergate burglary was ordered for personal reasons by John Dean, but this doesn't make sense because the money came from the CRP, which Dean didn't sit on, and the only evidence for it is the testimony of crooks.

What would "fighting back" involve?

Having the entire staff of FBI and CIA rounded up and shot for starters. I find it kind of telling that a inveterate leftist like Oliver Stone and pair of a life-long conservatives like my grandparents seemed to have come to a mutual agreement on who Richard Nixion was and who the real enemy was.

Having the entire staff of FBI and CIA rounded up and shot for starters.

Who by? The army wouldn't have obeyed the order, and the FBI and CIA comfortably outnumbered Nixon's personal militia. I agree that the plumbers would have made the hit on Felt if asked, but Felt wasn't freelancing - he was working on behalf of the Deep State. Given the high probability of getting caught, I can't see where in the scandal "whack Felt" is a better percentage than "try to retain the support of 34 Republican senators based on partisan loyalty". It is a minority view among Watergate scholars, but the idea that Nixon could have retained the support of 34 Republican senators if there was less "expletive deleted" on the tapes isn't fringe.

What would "fighting back" involve?

Burning all the intel agencies (Watergate was an op by one against him) to the ground.

That is what I don't understand - why did he do it?

Because everyone did it all the time. He was the first one who the FBI decided it was worth launching an operation to take out for what was, bog standard politics.

Meh. I've never been a Trump partisan, but this changes little for me. I still view Trump as the prole's middle finger, and his decline into persecuted irrelevance is part of the cyclical tragedy of class politics.

I called this right at the start. Trump is not Caesar, Trump is not Hitler. Trump is Tiberius Gracchus. He was, is, and will always be the failed aspirations of the working class projected onto an incredibly flawed cartoon of a human being.

We're not to revolution yet, but if and when we get there, the memory of how Trump revealed the depths of the deep state and baited the establishment into scrapping all their old norms will be strong.

The working class has been defeated, their champion will now be buried under every over-charging liberal prosecutor in every state and city where they have authority. The PMC cannot allow the threat that Trump poses to their hegemony to go without absolutely humiliating and destroying him (in their own minds, anyway).

So, when a competent successor appears, promises all the same things Trump did, and manages to get his hands on the military, he might well decide there's no point in comfortable retirement, because that won't be an option. If you want to lead the Populare faction, you must win or die in prison, poverty or both. The proles will not be allowed an equal voice in the operation of the country except by force.

The American Empire will have its emperor soon enough, and we will have Alvin Bragg to thank, in some small part. The senatorial thugs who killed the Gracchi rejoiced at their victory over the Populares. Sulla dug up the bones of Marius and threw them into the Tiber, and the senate rejoiced because they had reset the constitution to ensure the proles would never threaten again. And Julius Caesar watched it all, and when his turn came, he did not submit to the orders of the Senate. And yet he could not bring himself to kill them all, so they killed him.

Man has only two choices in government, autocracy or oligarchy. The people will support an emperor because the oligarchy is uncontrollable otherwise.

Man has only two choices in government, autocracy or oligarchy.

Or a representative form, for those of us fortunate enough to have one, for as long as we can keep it.

And the Citizens of Rome kept theirs for just short of five centuries—and the Emperors were about a hundred years away from matching the stability of democracy when one of them broke the empire clean in half.

That's called oligarchy, and any investigation of the history of Rome will reveal exactly how "representative" the Senate was.

It’s not all or nothing. Plebs had a small amount of power, officially recognized. Every fighting man has a small amount of de facto power (though some, like rich men, generals etc, have far more than others), and when de facto power diverges too much from de jure power, it frequently results in civil war (“I guess we’ll see about that”).

The social war was near-zero power de jures getting their de facto power recognized. The end of the republic came about because the aristocrats had too much de jure power, relative to their actual power. English civil war and french revolution follow the same pattern.

The American Empire will have its emperor soon enough, and we will have Alvin Bragg to thank, in some small part. The senatorial thugs who killed the Gracchi rejoiced at their victory over the Populares. Sulla dug up the bones of Marius and threw them into the Tiber, and the senate rejoiced because they had reset the constitution to ensure the proles would never threaten again. And Julius Caesar watched it all, and when his turn came, he did not submit to the orders of the Senate.

I'm all for analogies between America and late Republican Rome. But one difference that gives me pause is that American elites seem pretty damn united. In Republican Rome, the consulship and other elected positions were the height of prestige, and elites would stab each other in the back to win them. Many populares were not true believers. They were opportunists. For example, Crassus, who bankrolled Caesar in his early career and became a triumvir, hardly screams "champion of the people".

In our timeline, political office is not particularly prestigious. Very few of the uber-elite aspire to be president, with Trump being a rare example of one who did. So while Trump was willing to take up the banner of rust-belters and hillbillies and come at the king, who's the next clout-chaser with his resources who will? Elon?

All this Rome talk puts Mike Duncan on the brain. I basically agree with him that "a unified ruling class is a tough nut to crack."

I agree, but I don't think our ruling class is nearly as unified as you do. They maintain position through directing the hate-stream of popular scapegoating, but it's only a matter of time before some smart and ambitious person points it at them.

The reaction to Trump is instructive. The man is a clown, and they lost! They then marshalled all their forces, cut all the deals, ran four years of propaganda, enlisted the CIA, changed all the rules, metastasized a pandemic and started a program of race riots, impeached him twice and just barely squeaked out a win the second time. That is not the performance of a unified and capable ruling class. That's the performance of a fundamentally incompetent pack of morons with a loose and loosening grip on power. If the US ruling class does not want to be the last one, they had better set their house in order posthaste, because at the rate things are going, I'm going to rule a significant fraction of the US before I die.

the memory of how Trump revealed the depths of the deep state and baited the establishment into scrapping all their old norms will be strong.

It is only because those norms have held that Trump's justice will be certain.

To the extent that norms have been violated, it is Trump who has violated them. There is no law saying we must commit suicide by holding to norms.

If your argument is that we cannot hold one person accountable, let me tell you: this is how you hold the system accountable. There is no universe in which the sane response to a part of the system being held accountable, no matter the story it has told about its persecution, is to complain about how the system is never held accountable.

Campaign finance law has been broken. The full facts of this case have already been read into the congressional record. Only terminally confused. Yes.

Welcome back!

Your arguments haven't improved, but welcome all the same.

Does the working class actually prefer Trump, though? In 2020 Biden won among people who make under $100,000 / year. Of course that metric is not precisely correlated with any reasonable definition of "working class", but it is some indication that maybe the idea of Trump being the working class' chosen candidate is wrong.

Let's nuance the picture a bit. According to this article: "[I]n 2016 and 2020, CES data shows that the top two income quintiles (i.e., 80%–100% and 60%–80%) preferred the Democrat (i.e., Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden) over the Republican (i.e., Donald Trump) more than the twentieth through sixtieth percentiles did". Support for the Democratic Party by income is currently a U-shape where people in both the lowest and highest income quintiles are the strongest Democrat supporters - in fact, in 2016 and 2020 it seems that those in the highest income quintile have been a bit more pro-Democrat than those in the lowest. There's also the fact that in ZIP codes with a median household income of at least $100,000, Biden outpaced Trump in fund-raising, $486 million to only $167 million. In the rest of the country the two were knotted closely together.

The parties are switching bases, and I don't think this represents a shift in the beliefs of the upper class, rather I think this represents a shift in the parties and their policies. Over the years, the two parties have slowly converged when it comes to economic policy, and the ideological battleground has shifted to the social. Democrats have been adopting the brand of radical progressivism that has long had purchase with the upper class whereas their economic policy has slowly drifted moderate, and this serves the interests of their newly elite voter base.

As usual for themotte a beautiful comment that captures my thoughts written far better than my own. Thank you!

Trump is useless. The Red Tribe will deserve everything they get (and more) if they give him the republican nomination that he is very likely to go on to lose the general with, leading to 4 more years of wokism from above. Perhaps even a Supreme Court seat; Thomas is getting old.

They say that if you can't teach people something with words, the rod usually suffices, and trump supporters deserve the rod, delivered harshly and mercilessly, if they go on to support such an absolute low class, useless, bumbling idiot over the actually competent Ron DeSantis.

Do you think DeSantis can deliver culture war victories? Republican presidents are notoriously poor in this regard. They are good at tax cuts and getting into wars, bad at everything else.

Hopefully yes. He seems to have bungled up the Disney thing but he did manage to bring Florida universities to heel. DeSantis just seems to project an aura of "I will fuck up the wokes and I know how to do it" that is sorely lacking in Trump.

I don't know if I can go so far as to say that "Trump supporters deserve the rod" because patriots have to stick together, but I think that you have to be smart in politics.

As you (effectively) say, this is about the future, not the past.

I'm honestly wondering how you could dream that a desantis administration would stop "wokism from above"? The reason the left is pounding this on you is because you have no institutional power at the federal level. He can't even stop it in Florida. His bills are toothless, made-for-tv jokes. His PR stunts, flying illegals and his spat with Disney, did nothing and desantis caved quickly.

And that's even if he could win a general election which he could not because a GOP candidate must win the midwest and desantis wouldn't even win Ohio.

And that's even assuming desantis isn't a neocon neolib pragmatist which he is.

His bills have progressives trying to hide every book in the state currently. He's also actually gone and fired a DA that refused to enforce the law. His admin properly treats enemy media as the propaganda machine it is. And his admin isn't betraying him at every turn while he giggles about it.

He's been a more effective Trump in every way while also not being a nutjob about losing. The only real questions are would he be able to replicate at the Federal level (we already know Trump cannot) and what his foreign policy would look like.

Has desantis even stopped "woke from above" stuff in Florida? From the Floridians I know, he has not. He looks to be making something of a dent, I suppose. The media reacts with hysteria when anything is done whether it's remotely effective or not so that's not a good way to gauge how effective he's been. When I've looked into most of his stuff, his actions are lots of acts made for media and then the follow through is lacking or just outright capitulation.

would he be able to replicate at the Federal level

oh, is that it?

The easy example would probably be vaccine mandates and re-opening in general.

It's definitely a big question, I'll give you that.

Desantis has roots on the PA-Ohio border. Maybe he can’t win the primary but he will know how to talk to people in that area. His grandparents were all part of the Italian immigrant wave (of which I’m a part of) to the region. His parents grew up there. Culturally he should be able to connect to all the ethnic whites that still exists there, and moving away from the region was extremely common when the steel mills closed.

There is zero chance he wins the primary against Trump in the midwest. Not "maybe" he can't, but zero % chance he wins a primary. I have seen nothing at all to think desantis knows how to talk to midwesterners at all and his record in Congress and comments since then are big turnoffs to midwesterners. The guy is not charismatic and he's not funny. He's the sort of dude who would pay $100,000 for someone else to write jokes for him to badly try to pull-off.

edit: Here's a good example of how Ron Desantis intends to connect with midwesterners. From "his" book:

I was geographically raised in Tampa Bay," DeSantis wrote. "but culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio — from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn his keep. This made me God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving.

desantis caved quickly.

Uhm.

How?

https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2023/04/03/desantis-disney-reedy-creek-board-district-investigation/

He's actively attacked a core structure of the cathedral, and hasn't stopped advancing.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/02/ron-desantis-block-dei-program-state-colleges-florida

The colleges almost instantly showed their bellies, in response:

https://www.fldoe.org/newsroom/latest-news/florida-college-system-presidents-reject-woke-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-dei-critical-race-theory-ideologies-and-embrace-academic-freedom-.stml

How did desantis cave quickly against Disney or on the illegals flights? He quickly stopped the illegals flights. His "takeover" of the Disney leaves intact everything Disney cares about, e.g., exempt sales & property tax, tax-free bonds, expedited permitting, among others. Both are examples of heavy PR and lacking substance.

I will have to look into the newest PR blitz on college DEI program "blocks."

Maybe DeSantis can stop it, maybe not.

IMO DeSantis has a much better grasp of tactics than most other Republicans I see in that he recognizes this is both a legal and institutional fight and he supports people (Rufo) who do as well.

It's a low bar but...

A lot of Republicans are so bad at this they might as well be throwing the fight. A lot of their "strategy" might as well not exist besides whining about wokeness and Silicon Valley bias (basically trying to work the refs) and trying to meet people halfway (in their mind) with the plaintive talking point of "this isn't what MLK wanted".

DeSantis (and Rufo) understand that a lot "wokeness" takes place on a legal level and needs to be attacked by removing the support structures for DEI or taking over the institutions. Judging by the ironic complaints of his enemies, he also understands that somewhat vague or subjective laws are useful by having a chilling effect on anything that could conceivably approach the line of punishable behavior (which forces companies to innovate on woke - or anti-woke- measures just to be safe).

Certainly, I'd be willing to bet he's given it more thought than Trump. If you want to fight wokeness it seems like there's two options and one is more thoughtful than the other (which we already tried and it arguably made things worse)

Trump is useless. The Red Tribe will deserve everything they get (and more) if they give him the republican nomination that he is very likely to go on to lose the general with, leading to 4 more years of wokism from above. Perhaps even a Supreme Court seat; Thomas is getting old.

Trump is ineffective at operating within the political framework. But he isn't useless. He is a great showman and very combative and that regardless of how effective he is at getting things done is a morale boost for the people he champions, if nothing else. Trump could beat Biden, he might have a better chance than DeSantis overall. Trump knows how to work a crowd and has a lot of support in areas that are likely to be competitive. Though DeSantis would probably be more effective in position I agree.

Trump is divisive but he does inspire a good deal of loyalty and enthusiasm in his supporters. With low Biden numbers and inflation still likely to be an issue, plus the political/cultural landscape, Trump has a good shot if he gets the nomination I think.

If I were still working in politics, and the Republicans were paying me for my opinion I would say that I think Trump has an edge over DeSantis in actually winning the Presidency as it stands right now.

Obesity is actually quite critical, I think. The majority of the American elite (including Trump's own children) are not grotesquely fat. Like the underclass (and unlike DeSantis) Trump doesn't care about losing weight, he doesn't feel like he should make the effort. There was that old progressive canard, that Trump was a poor person's idea of a rich person. This is true, but can be restated more simply. Trump is like a poor person who happens to be rich. And unfortunately, he brings with him the worst traits of America's underclass.

He is only borderline obese and he hides it well with his large suit and big tie. Winston Churchill and other famous upper-class people were borderline obese too. It does not confer low class. The archetypical rich person is almost always caricatured as being overweight, even grossly obese (whereas the butler is skinny).

There is weight, and then there is carrying weight. Both men are elderly but where Biden is ostensibly "healthy" he struggles to navigate a flight of stairs whereas the ostensibly unhealthily "obese" Trump is observed traversing them with ease. The snide comments about the results of substituting soy and icecream for red meat pretty much write themselves.

Disappointing. Also infuriating and sad in degrees, but mostly just disappointing. This is why intellectualism fails at capturing hearts and minds: you write something as out-of-touch and vain as how it’s our culture’s job to preserve “beauty” when the working class voters you hate can’t even afford a shitty townhouse for <200k or send their children to public school without fear of them being physically assaulted.

The old meme about Donald Trump being a poor man’s idea of a rich man was the biggest unintentional self-own of the halcyon days of 2016. Trump was an ugly mirror for upper class intellectuals that destroyed them completely: a status-seeking, vain, educated womanizer thoroughly convinced of his own unbeatable cunning and raw power. His existence stated, “this is what you are. I’m just honest about it.”

If you don't believe in enduring cultural values like the preservation of beauty, then why judge Trump for illegally blowing up an iconic piece of beautiful art deco architecture to build his gaudy black palace on fifth avenue a little more cheaply?

It's especially hard to judge him for that, when his executive order mandating neoclassical architecture for new fedgov buildings was overturned on day one of the Biden admin.

And this kind of comment is why Trump solidifies the underdog vote.

Life is complex in the postwar era, and there are all sorts of hazards for American people who yearn to live by instinct. The voters you describe were educated in public schools, trade schools, and on scholarship at public universities, the very education infrastructure the elites put into place and then eschew.

The men and women you spit on barely have enough time in their day to make a living in a small business in a strip mall and spend an hour or two in the gym every day working off the calories from hyper-stimulus food. Then on top of that, they have to face their children being taught that their parents are carriers of the whiteness virus, the privilege virus, the capitalism virus, and the straight-and-cis virus.

And to blame people from broken families for buying into the fantasy of the billionaire’s supermodel wife is the topping on the scoffing cake.

Oh I absolutely agree it's not their fault, but it absolutely is their problem (by their I mean poor red tribers here). No different to how dogs abused by their owner often go feral.

However, just like the dog, if they are to be returned to polite society treatment (ideally persuasion through words and treats, otherwise the rod) is necessary.

However, just like the dog, if they are to be returned to polite society treatment (ideally persuasion through words and treats, otherwise the rod) is necessary.

Heads up bro, you've drifted from arrogant brahmin into telenovella villain.

The usage of the dog metaphor was an analogy, I wasn't calling poor red tribers dogs themselves. You're doing literally the exact same thing as progressives do when they say you are objectifying women when you point out the lock and key analogy.

No, what I was doing was pointing out that you don't sound like a rich person, you sound like a cartoon parody of a rich person. I assumed that wasn't your intention.

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the problem isn't that you're calling Red Tribers dogs, though that is pretty much what you're doing, and it's not exactly awesome.

The problem is that you are discussing large numbers of other human beings as though they are beneath you, utterly within your power, and bereft of all agency in their own fate. If you actually think that's how things are, you are a very foolish person.

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No candidate has greater potential to derail DeSantis than Trump. He clings onto the hardcore vote and takes them with him, sets fire to his opponents in the primaries, and renders them worse general candidates.

I hope Trump actually gets convicted, irrespective of the validity of his crimes, just to render him ineligible. Even if De Santis loses in the generals, seeing him as the opponent will force democrats to prefer a moderate candidate.

The most recent 'moderate Dem' to clinch the presidency has presided over a turbo-charged progressivism that's become even more expansive and normalized than even during the 'crazy' Trump years. A development that I was assured would not occur, because said President is old, boring, vanilla, and 'doesnt look or talk like an extremist'.

What on Earth makes you think a DeSantis nomination would force moderation of anything? I would like somebody to actually explain the mechanism that will force the temperatures to die down, because so much of the rationale on offer has proven to be naive or a lie.

just to render him ineligible

if you're concerned with the law, nothing he's been charged with or investigated for is even in the realm of something which would render Trump constitutionally ineligible

that being said, the law hasn't mattered thus far so no reason to think it would going forward

Even if De Santis loses in the generals

desantis will certainly lose in the general

desantis must win the midwest to win the general, but I will tell you midwesterners do not like desantis and he will not appeal to them because he's an uncharismatic dork with a long history of being a neolib neocon who votes for forever wars and disasters like TPP

he wouldn't even win Ohio let alone Wisconsin

seeing him as the opponent will force democrats to prefer a moderate candidate

Joe Biden was the moderate candidate. So was Hillary Clinton. Democrats, as opposed to the GOP, are far more capable of forcing through moderate candidates, and they have, irrelevant of whatever "Democrats" think generally.

I mean, if the Democrats put forth a competent moderate who can beat Trump, then I'd be happy. I don't have any particular allegiances to the Republicans. But look at the alternative democratic candidates now... they're in disarray. Obama wasn't a candidate until the very last minute. So a miracle might happen. But, it doesn't look like the demos have a popular leader they want to band around. I like Pete Buttigieg and Marty Walsh. No nonsense moderates. But they seem to putting their weight behind Biden.

This means it will likely be Biden vs Republicans, and he will not fare well in debates against anyone.

he wouldn't even win Ohio let alone Wisconsin

Democrats won 2020 because they came out in droves to beat Trump, not vote for Biden. De Santis can force a lot turnout in Democrats, and energize enough Republicans to take it.

Democrats "won" 2020 because they fundamentally and illegally changed how elections were done and poured ~$1,000,000,000 3rd party dollars and biased gov grants to "get out the vote" organizations to certain areas of the country ran by certain people not to mention a vast manipulation campaign by google and facebook.

Without those illegal changes, Democrats would not have won.

De Santis can force a lot turnout in Democrats, and energize enough Republicans to take it.

you think this based on what?

Of their candidates the only one I could potentially stand is AOC and that’s despite her being the leader of the squad. I think she’s toned it down a little bit as she became a real politician.

But honestly I trust her as authentic. I don’t think she’s been bought and paid for yet. Not like Biden taking money from anyone American enemy who was willing to send his son a wire. And more than a few just come off as rich kids on a silver spoon that are listed (Newman for example) or just too old. She’s only a second rate mind (went to BC). I actually sense she’s a nice person. Not a sugar baby like Kamela.

Really? I find her understanding on nearly anything to just be vapidly regurgitate social media slop. She has an Economics degree, she has no business saying some of the crazy shit she says about socialism. I'm not sure if it's worse if she believes what she says or she doesn't.

Please don't insult my alma mater! (That's my job!)

AOC went to Boston University.

Sorry for being that guy. I guess she’s from a third rate school. And BC was my second choiceto be that guy.

Only other school I considered.

there is a gaping chasm between defensible polling and not

you want to bet this poll vastly oversamples certain demos and the polling organization has a poor record predicting objective outcomes?

Of course they do. There are a number of ways this happens, but the main driving force is the ability to affect outcomes in voting by party insiders because most of the Democrat primary voting base is in machine city politics, i.e., "black democratic primary voters," and in union members. Both of these groups are easy to drive to particular candidates. And even if all this softer "forcing" fails, Democrats have more control over who gets the nomination because the nomination is more controlled by party insiders in the nominating process, i.e., superdelegates. These party insiders have "forced" through candidates in the past. This process was slightly tweaked recently, but they are still able to force through a candidate in a contested convention (i.e., fails on first ballot).

yes, they can "force through" moderate candidates

IIRC Progressives in 2016 bitterly complained about super-delegates and the potential voter suppression effect they could have when added to tallies of delegates (which'd make it seem like Clinton's lead was insurmountable so why bother?).

Speaking as a left-wing social democrat who voted for Bernie in the primaries twice, those people were dumb.

The percentage of primary voters who ever saw a graphic w/ the superdelegates + Clinton's delegates on a TV screen or in a newspaper article was probably less than 5%, if not even lower.

There was no conspiracy in 2016 or 2020 against Bernie Sanders - he was just bad at appealing to make a majority of Democratic primaries vote for him over either Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. This isn't to say those primary voters dislike him, which is something I think people miss.

Yes, there are a small amount of leftist online who think Obama is a neoliberal war criminal and Hillary is terrible, and a small number of 60-year old MSNBC voters who think Bernie Sanders is a sexist who would've lost 40 states, but the median Democratic voter likes Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and if they're aware of them, AOC, Gavin Newsom, and even Joe Manchin.

The only Democratic person of note who is actually disliked by the median Democratic voter is Sinema, because she openly pushed againt things even median Democrat's support, and openly decided to go all-in on being friends with rich Republican's, when she could've been a Mark Warner-style Senator in Arizona for a generation, and hell, maybe even been a VP or POTUS candidate in a decade or two.

There was no conspiracy in 2016 or 2020 against Bernie Sanders

Tim Kaine is replaced as head of the DNC with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who helped head Clinton's 2008 campaign, and then Tim Kaine is made Hillary's 2016 VP. The receipts were all leaked by WikiLeaks, which showed that the DNC did everything it could to ensure Hillary's win. (Donna Brazille even passed Hillary some debate questions in advance.) Tulsi Gabbard resigned in protest over it, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz was eventually made to resign over the controversy.

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They’d have to let him out right? If he was in federal jail he could pardon himself. If he’s in state jail, the supremacy clause preempts the legal authority for a state to hold the chief executive against the lawful authority of the federal government.

I hope Trump actually gets convicted, irrespective of the validity of his crimes, just to render him ineligible

What exactly are the eligibility criteria here? Wasn't there a guy running with a slogan "Prisoner 9653 For President"? Did they change the law since then? And if not, oh god, do you really want to hand a meme like that to Trump of all people?

‘vote for the crook’ predate him by quite a while, I think. Criminals being more honest than the opposition isn’t exactly new in political memes.

"Vote for the crook" was short for "Vote for the crook, not the fascist". It originated in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election when David Duke made the run-off, and was re-upped for the Chirac-Le Pen runoff in the 2002 French presidential election. The point is an explicit appeal to people who wouldn't normally vote for your candidate to vote for the lesser of two evils.

If 2024 is Trump-Biden (80% probability conditional on neither of them dying or having some unconcealable, disqualifying medical issue) then "The Crook" is running against a mediocre incumbent who is normie by Democratic standards. So "Vote for the crook" would have to be an appeal to pure partisanship ("Vote for the crook, not the Democrat"). That isn't an election-winning message in a high-turnout Presidential election where persuasion matters more than base mobilisation.

Incidentally, as a matter of federal law, the only way Trump can be ineligible is if his behaviour following the 2020 election amounted to an "insurrection or rebellion", in which case he is disqualified from office by section 3 of the 14th amendment. I suspect some states have state-level laws which would deny ballot access to a prisoner, though.

There really is no winning with Trump.

Both Democrats and Republicans seem to be their own worst enemies this time around. Democrats can't figure out 1 decent candidate because of the infighting and senile old man. Trump out here making it impossible for a Republican politician to move on from MAGA while at the same time being unelectable.

without MAGA, there are no GOP victories

move on from MAGA to what? the GOP without MAGA is playing to a demographic which doesn't exist anymore and the reason the establishment GOP hates Trump and MAGA is because he embarrasses them to their country club PMCs that used to form the party structure

those people are either gone or now Democrats

Trump is the only candidate which has a chance to win a general because he's the only one with cross-party appeal who motivates low-likely voters to show up. Without him, the GOP loses badly. Donald Trump is the only get out the vote operation the GOP even has despite spending a billion dollars on a proprietary database which cannot even correctly flag people who are registered GOP who haven't voted yet.

without MAGA, there are no GOP victories

Are there with MAGA? After eking out a narrow victory against a historically unpopular candidate in 2016, Trumpism has mostly been getting its ass kicked electorally despite hefty structural advantages.

Yes, 2016, 2018, and 2020 were all better off with Trump rallying or on the ticket than if he wasn't with Trump running better than the GOP each time. Trump saved the Senate in 2018.

you didn't write any specifics to your comments so there is nothing really to respond to

As others have noted, almost any Republican would've won in 2016, and most probably would've won more convincingly.

Trump and Trumpist candidates have otherwise generally underperformed generic ballots and run behind less Trumpy candidates (most prominently: Trump losing both GA senate seats in 2020 and then doing it again two years later, even as Kemp cruised to re-election). The GOP would be vastly better served electorally tacking back towards the center, which would enable them to capitalize on many of the Dems' wackier social position. This would displease the more radical elements of their base, but they have little leverage beyond threatening to crash the party with no survivors (which, to be fair, they have so far used to some effect).

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MAGA is about aesthetics, not the issues.

The issues will stay the same. The aesthetics are going from institutional kamikaze (Trump) to institutional capture (DeSantis / Rufo).

Trump is the only candidate which has a chance

We aren't talking about Jeb or Ted as the alternative. DeSantis has shown himself to be a competent public speaker that has united coastal and urban florida voters.

MAGA was born from the issues and was successful because the issues and Trump being uniquely charismatic to a broad voterbase who were either Democrats or do not vote. Election 2016 was about immigration, trade, and war only because of Donald Trump.

DeSantis has shown himself to be a competent public speaker that has united coastal and urban florida voters.

No, desantis is an uncharismatic dork who comes off badly in public speaking. This description is ridiculous.

I couldn’t agree more. The contrast is stark. Trump is all sizzle. Yet he appeals in a WWE kind of way to the proles. But politics is full contact and DeSantis would actually advance the interest of the proles.

Trump punishing people who he thinks wronged him would do more for the rightwing and American politics than anything which has happened in 50 years.

If you believe that, can you name one, single, specific punishment that trump is likely to do and would materially benefit the right wing? What does that sentence even mean?

stop mitch mcconnell's handpicked replacement (thune) when mitch retires

Trump punishing and gutting establishment GOP leadership would do wonders for the rightwing and the GOP. Trump won because he saw a winning hand on the ground on a bunch of issues which were wildly popular but which both political parties were doing nothing about, e.g., Trade, Immigration, Wars. He was able to win because the GOP had been talking about those things-ish, for years and have done nothing at all to make them more in line with their voterbase.

Ridding the party of and making an example of cowardly backstabbers like Pence or corrupt out-of-touch derps like Mitch McConnel would be a huge boon to getting the GOP to actually align with their voterbase. Half the reason the GOP is such garbage is because GOP leadership have an army of entrenched allies in polling and consulting which strangles the appeal out of any potential candidates. Everything is structured in such a way as money is controlled by heavily centralized committees which then doll it out to candidates it likes which they exercise to their own benefit, the 2022 disaster being a good example of their strategy of preserving their own power at the expense of the GOP generally and the GOP voter. Removing these people or making them fear they could be held accountable would be huge benefit to bringing vitality back to the party.

No other GOP candidate has even the slightest chance of doing any of that. What they would do is kick the can down the road doing nothing (at best) and taking up time the GOP doesn't have. The GOP base is old people and boomers. Boomers' time is ticking and each year that goes by means fewer boomer voters and smaller voterbase. Every cycle wasted on some status quo dork like desantis will just mean the GOP voter or their issues is on even worse footing to mount anything resembling a "march through institutions" or at least gimping them in a way which makes them realize they could bleed too when they exercise their power on others.

Trump punishing and gutting establishment GOP leadership would do wonders for the rightwing and the GOP. Trump won because he saw a winning hand on the ground on a bunch of issues which were wildly popular but which both political parties were doing nothing about, e.g., Trade, Immigration, Wars. He was able to win because the GOP had been talking about those things-ish, for years and have done nothing at all to make them more in line with their voterbase.

He barely won. And, as others have said in this thread, it was arguably the case that any Republican candidate had an advantage on the ballot at the time.

Trump absolutely blazed a new trail.

But, truth is, we don't know how a neolib, "we love migrants now" (this was the suggested shift in the GOP's 2012 post-mortem iirc) would have done.

People can hold their nose and vote party line. Look at the Democrats; a lot of people prefer someone like Bernie but I think Trump putting three judges on the Court has broken a lot of sore loser/third party-adventurism.

simply writing "it's arguable" isn't an argument

Oh? Trump only barely beat the Clinton-Obama political machine?

Despite Biden's 81,000,000+ totally real and definitely legitimate votes, he "barely" won in 2020, too.

But, truth is, we don't know how a neolib, "we love migrants now" (this was the suggested shift in the GOP's 2012 post-mortem iirc) would have done.

we've seen those ryan-romney-bush candidates crash and burn since then so we have a guess

and we just watched yet another GOP candidate shy away from Trump in Dan Kelly in a Wisconsin Supreme Court election and lose badly

Trump would spend the entirety of a second presidency narrowly pursuing revenge on those individuals who he believes have wronged him

At this point, that would actually be healthy for American politics.

I really, really don't think it would.

You might think it's deserved, but I don't see how it would make anything about the situation better. Dangerous precedent indeed.

Democratic politicians are, right now, using the criminal justice system to pursue their political enemies. That's already a bad situation. If the Democrats aren't going to do anything about that themselves -- and they clearly are not -- turnabout is the only thing that can get the US out of the situation.

Trump going after his personal enemies within the GOP (as discussed upthread) isn't turnabout - it's an escalation (viz-a-viz normalcy) or a distraction (viz-a-viz what Alvin Bragg is doing). Trump going after a druggie fuckup like Hunter Biden (which seems to be what most of the MAGA crowd away from this forum want) would also be a distraction. Turnabout would be Trump going after the key players on the other side of the table - particularly potential presidential candidates and key congressional leaders.

Going after the GOP wouldn't help, but attacking Joe Biden through Hunter would be useful turnabout. The biggest problem for that would be that Hunter may be too obviously legitimately dirty.

Turnabout doesn't help! It just says "welp, this is the new normal." I agree that bending over and taking it isn't going anywhere, but the best outcome for America is if the Democrats get massive voter backlash for this. That doesn't happen if it becomes common practice.

Democrats are not going to get voter backlash for it because their voters support it. Turnabout may make this a "new normal", but such an equilibrium allows for a truce to be arranged. The Republicans just bending over and taking it and counting on the conscience of Democratic voters to stop it results in no equilibrium at all, just a spiral into further abuse.

because he will accomplish nothing in power.

A libertarian's dream.

In the absence of a strong executive forcing reform from above, the administrative state will simply continue to metastasize of its own accord. What we really need is civil service reform from Congress so bureaucrats can actually be fired en mass, Andrew Jackson style. But until then, the only way to keep them in check is through extremely energetic and focused leadership at the political appointee level. Trump was utterly incapable of staffing up his administration, so even though he had a shockingly libertarian deregulatory agenda, it was almost completely unfelt on the ground.

The current status quo is inherently un-libertarian.

No, power accomplishing nothing.

It will be... it will be...!

While I think this comment is consensus-building, I would like to add additional resolution on the "acceleration" bit.

At this point, the road toward acceleration is already lit, ultimately, time. I don't want to see the world burn. I'm not with CCRU-era Land, I'm not interested in the CCP saving the day, but I don't think there's any bypassing the fact that the road toward acceleration is has been paved, and that boulder doesn't seem to be stopping.

The US has been utterly impotent at limiting the CCP's (or Russia's) interference in their culture and elections, Fox News is the only prominent right wing television news source, I suppose there's TheBlaze. Talk radio makes me want to gag, and our alien god begins to come forth. Eliezer is either brain-dead or actively with the landians, I'm honestly not sure. But gridlock around ai progress is guaranteed thanks to his screaming. And in 2-6 years, most programmers will be out of a job or facing much lower paychecks than they do now.

As such, I agree with you- I wish Trump would withdraw from public life.

At least so that we have a chance of a leader who knows what they're doing and in place to capitalize when that boulder hits the bottom and crushes the silicon valley wasteland in 2-6 years.

Everyone I know just swapped back to Trump from Desantis. The establishment has shown themselves again and their target is Trump. These people need to lose and losing in a painful defeat and that’s by electing Trump.

Also the more I think about this case is Trumps the victim here. A former sexual partner was going to basically do revenge porn to him and do a tabloid write up on having sex with him. That’s revenge porn. Not on video by textually. So he paid her off. The lefts doing victim blaming that he just didn’t take it and have his sex life publically aired while he’s on the biggest stage of his life.

Hillary shouldn’t have been jailed. The word criminal is just a motte and bailey. You’re using it to mean someone who did a very bad thing. But all it means is state power got to put someone in jail. Now I don’t think Trumps a good man but he did nothing wrong here.

No. No, no, no!

We're in this mess because of the number of people convinced that a vote for Trump is striking at The Establishment. That making the Hillaries and Pelosis of the world uncomfortable is, in some way, an end goal. Whenever he fails to deliver on actual policy, well, that's just the Deep State conspiring, right? And whenever he actively serves himself, his supporters aren't going to lose face by admitting that the shady, egocentric wheel-and-dealer might have some self-interest. That's a losing strategy, and we don't like losers around here. This stupid fucking tribal calculus completely dominates any assessment of whether Trump is actually effective!

Can't you see how this is the exact mirror of all that bullshit about "holding Trump accountable?" The only thing that matters is whether this guy wins or loses. Go team.

And whenever he actively serves himself, his supporters aren't going to lose face by admitting that the shady, egocentric wheel-and-dealer might have some self-interest.

Well, Trump is the only president to lose money in recent times. Maybe you can admit that Clinton, Obama, and Bush also "actively serve themselves"?

Whenever he fails to deliver on actual policy

People keep saying this, but Trump's policies meant my paycheck went up and illegal immigration went down. Maybe he could have done more if, cough cough, he hadn't been hamstrung by so many investigations and impeachments.

These people need to lose and losing in a painful defeat and that’s by electing Trump.

You got that in 2016. It did nothing for you because your case rests on people seeing through the supposed illusion when the anti-populists attacked him. But Trump was very bad at eliciting that, he has said and done many things the people you're trying to court could find objectionable.

If he was meant to be Rosa Parks, then the part that's being forgotten is that you have to engineer him doing what he does. There has to be a strategy beyond just getting him in trouble as well. Parks wasn't the first woman to be denied seating, that went to a single mother who was passed over because people thought her status wouldn't look good. Where's the equivalent for Trump? I suppose DeSantis, but it looks like Trump has some serious followers and looks to be getting ready to fight for being the Republican nominee in 2024.

It would be one thing if Trump successfully punched out the establishment but he drowned in controversies of his own making instead.

A former sexual partner was going to basically do revenge porn to him and do a tabloid write up on having sex with him. That’s revenge porn. Not on video by textually.

Talking about having sex with someone is your definition of revenge porn?

Perhaps not, but "threatening to talk about having sex with someone then changing your mind when they give you money" is the central definition of a couple of things normally considered even worse than revenge porn...

Surely "revenge erotic literature", at most.

Erotic literature is still porn and a textual depiction of a private sexual act without the actor's permission is just as much a violation of their rights as a graphical one. The resistance to acknowledging that is simply one more example of people refusing to take male victimization seriously.

Why would this specifically victimize males?

You have a good point here that I hadn't really considered. I jumped from "stereotypical male porn == bad, stereotypical female porn == not (nearly as) bad" to male victimization which doesn't naturally follow.

I'd resist acknowledging that for a female victim too. Text vs visual porn is a significant difference in my mind.

Well, it was the OG form of hurting someone's social standing by discussing sex, see Othello etc.

I mean, if I tilt my head sideways, I could kinda see the argument: evil ex telling a lurid and bawdy tale of a prior "conquest" as a way to damage the reputation of someone, and then amp that up with the high profile of this particular case. Still not the central form of the term at all, but...

I hate that Trump is once again a thing but lets not pretend that the system was worth saving before Trump. For myself, I voted for him in 2016 on the off chance that he delivered on some of his platform, then in 2020 because why not - let it burn. Not like there were any other choices for me besides not voting anyways. Honestly if he is the nominee, if I vote I will likely vote for him again. This system is a circus and I'll do my part to elect a clown it deserves.

I honestly don't even know where to go from here, since 2016 it's been validated time and again that the powers of the state and its zeitgeist are insurmountable and resistance is swiftly quelled through its institutions. I'll lay low, try to guide my child through the clown world, and hopefully stay out from under the eye of Sauron. In my fantasies Florida or some other red state becomes the first to secede and maybe in the new confederacy I can live a free man with a judicial system that defends personal liberty.

My only regret - which isn't in my control - was that the champion the right had was Trump, which is probably the champion we deserved.

I honestly don't even know where to go from here, since 2016 it's been validated time and again that the powers of the state and its zeitgeist are insurmountable and resistance is swiftly quelled through its institutions.

To me it seems like what has been validated is that if you elect a clown, you get a clown. The institutions aren't powerless and if you want change you need someone more competent than trump.

Let's say I love trump, and read this post. Am I persuaded otherwise? Even if I dislike Trump, do I gain anything?

Watching the press briefing Trump gave... something in me finally broke.

What press briefing? What broke? You changed your mind on trump - millions of people have. What made the difference? As it stands, not a good post.

Sorry, I was writing to process and I should have included a link.

20 posts , but he has been here for 6 months . so who knows if troll or not. probably a lot of new members are not well acquainted with the sub rules.

I remember gematria from reddit, they have never been a prolific poster, but they always read as honest to me.

That said, this post could definitely have used a link to the briefing in question.

I mean is there anyone out there who didn't understand why Democrats were in shrill hysterics about fascism?

Most people here.

All my friends and I who used to be Jon Stewart liberals and now aren't.

Political narcissism I'm sure was present in the past, but the way it's played up via our exposure to it is psychotically unhinged.

This is political theater and the state telling us we have no freewill.

You have no understanding of why Democrats are in shrill hysterics after a mob ransacked a building of our federal government? In reality it was a sad selfie party but don't let that make it impossible to understand why Democrats think the way they do.

They thought all of that, and more, and worse well before Jan 6th. That event was just the closest thing to an actual legitimate concern they could latch onto at the last hour, validating all prior fears that never came true - at least the one's they bother to remember.

I think I do understand why Democrats think the way they do; what animates their 'shrill hysterics'. It just has precious little to do with their stated reasons.

This feels like low-effort consensus building. You can't just pose hyperbolic, rhetorical questions and then ask us all to join you in your quest to slap the label of "criminal" on someone whose trial has yet to begin. That is antithetical to our justice system and to this rare sanctuary of online discourse.

I regret my support for former president Trump and I want him to withdraw from public life. Nixon had the decency to step down when his time was up.

That was Nixon's mistake. Plenty of politicians and presidents before and after did much worse than he did, and they stayed in the game. Obama sicced the IRS and DOJ on conservatives, Bush lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction to start a war, and Johnson did worse. Nixon participated in the cover-up of a break-in? Reagan's people participated in the cover-up of an operation to keep hostages in Iran until after Carter was defeated, and it worked.

Now that I'm writing this all out, I want to object that you're calling Trump a criminal because he's being charged with paperwork errors in paying a prostitute.

he's being charged with paperwork errors

Regardless of what one thinks of the legitimacy of the charges against Trump -- I personally think they set a terrible precedent and will only serve the interests of Bragg and, probably, Trump, this is not an accurate summary of the allegations. The factual allegations are that Trump and Cohen arranged to have Cohen submit a series of false invoices for attorney's fee payments pursuant to a fictional retainer agreement.

“Under New York state law, it is a felony to falsify business records with intent to defraud and intent to conceal another crime,” Bragg said in a news conference later Tuesday. “That is exactly what this case is about. Thirty-four false statements made to cover up other crimes. These are felony crimes in New York no matter who you are.”

Paperwork errors

Edit: Sorry, I don't want to sound antagonistic. I get that the point is that Trump tried to conceal his payments to Stormy Daniels. But they're not charging him with anything else. And the legal argument is that Trump hid a campaign contribution from himself to himself by paying for the NDA out of his own pocket. Bragg's legal argument would have to be totally different if Trump had expensed differently. Paperwork.

Yes, of course it involves paperwork. My objection was framing it as "paperwrok errors." The allegation is of intentional false statements. Again, whether he is actually guilty of that, or whether if so it is a felony or a misdemeanor, or any of the other questions raised by the prosecution are separate issues. But if we are going to have an objective discussion of the prosecution, it seems to me that we need to be clear on what that allegations actually are.

To be precise, the crime is intentionally falsely recording a personal expense (paying off Stormy Daniels) as a corporate expense (the Trump Organization paying a bill for legal services provided by Michael Cohen). Absent any other wrongdoing, this would be misdemeanor false accounting. Under NY State law, it gets upgraded to a felony because of the intent to conceal the campaign finance violations.

It would normally turn into felony tax evasion if the Trump Organization filed a corporate tax return based on the falsified accounts, but the indictment implies that the payments were 1040ed with the expectation that Cohen would pay personal income tax on them. This means that there was no revenue loss, so probably no tax evasion charges on the Trump Organization. (Cohen did not, in fact, pay the tax, and was jailed for personal tax evasion in 2018).

Apart from the tax angle, this would never normally be prosecuted unless an actual human being lost money as a result. But it is a real crime, not "three felonies a day" bullshit. Law-abiding businesses do not intentionally falsify their books and records. It certainly looks like the prosecutor has evidence of falsification and evidence of intent.

It seems today is @07mk's lucky day! I'm pretty sure they'd appreciate whatever elaboration you could provide. I certainly would as well.

Hillary Clinton should have been jailed and she should still be in jail. There is nothing to be gained however from holding on to a tool that has run out of use.

I respectfully disagree. This bomb should be rode the whole way down, preferably while whooping and waving a cowboy hat. If Blue Tribe wants to jail him, they should jail him, but make them commit. Establish once and for all, beyond all denial, that this is what gets you prosecuted, tried and jailed: not burning kids alive for a political photo-op, not repeated forcible rape, not lying the nation into ruinous foreign wars, not running guns to the cartels or weaponizing the bureaucracy against political rivals, not lying to judges and abusing security powers, not normalizing organized, widespread political violence. I concede that this is a very ugly position to take, and submit only that reality is a pretty ugly place no matter how this goes.

I have a great deal of respect for the conscientious objectors of the Culture War, for the people who draw a line and have the character to stick to it. I have lines of my own, and hope I will stick with them when we run up against them. Unfortunately, war does not require individual consent, and proceeds regardless.

I regret my support for former president Trump and I want him to withdraw from public life. Nixon had the decency to step down when his time was up.

This is definitely a good start but what are you doing now to prevent the diviseness from continuing? We are not too far away from a smarter American fascist creating a(n) (il)legitimate Constitutional Crisis.

  • -10

And an Abbott or Desantis who gives fewer shits could do so quite easily.

This criminal wasn't worth all of this divisiveness in our politics. Maybe the divisiveness was already there.

The divisiveness was even worse in 2022- a year after Covid and when Biden came into office, not pre 2022, which was bad, but not as bad as it is now and as bad as it will become as the 2024 election nears. Biden plus wokeness plus the whole Twitter mess or revolution (whichever you want to call it) is a bigger dividing force than Trump. Pre-2022 being pro-Trump still meant being part of a minority. Now Trump + DeSantis has created a much bigger force that is especially felt online like Twitter, with the backing of Musk (plus others like Tate, Rogan, and the whole alt-center/middle Substack crew) . Pre-2022 this did not exist. If you were pro-Trump you were stuck with crappy Chan sites or quarantined on some soon-to-be banned Reddit subs. 2022 was like the Chat GPT-4 equivalent of politics. When it seems like things were already getting extreme, it got turned up to '11' suddenly...from 0 to 60 instantly.

I didn’t watch the speech. Was there anything notable in particular?

We’re on at least five levels of “yeah this is technically bullshit, but it’s the only way he can get back at [other team] for [technical bullshit other team just did].” I felt physically ill watching the clip of Yudkowsky being cited at the White House press briefing. It hurt my soul to see something so high-minded, so nuanced become something so debased as a political gotcha question, but that’s how things have to get done in a democratic system. The most terrifying line in all of Orwell is, “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles.” This is what the people want.

The whole speech is here

Hillary Clinton should have been jailed and she should still be in jail. ... I mean is there anyone out there who didn't understand why Democrats were in shrill hysterics about fascism?

You can't say that Hillary should have been jailed and then straight away imply that the Dems were right to think that trying to jail her was fascist. Do you not see your own contradiction here?

But the Dermocrats didn't make him give that speech on January 6th.

You mean the speech where he didn't say anything objectionable, and certainly didn't instruct anyone to storm Congress?

I regret my support for former president Trump

How do you feel about his time spent in charge of the nuclear codes?

You can't say that Hillary should have been jailed and then straight away imply that the Dems were right to think that trying to jail her was fascist. Do you not see your own contradiction here?

Alternatively: Democrats are concerned about fascism with respect to Trump for reasons other than his desire to lock up Hillary Clinton.

This is the correct reading of my comment, which I admit was unclear.

You can't say that Hillary should have been jailed and then straight away imply that the Dems were right to think that trying to jail her was fascist. Do you not see your own contradiction here?

That's the mark of a concern troll who isn't able to keep the pretense up for more than a sentence.

Okay, your schtick where someone expresses views you don't like but you can't actually articulate a logical rebuttal so you call them a troll, is getting tired. Stop doing this. Point out the contradiction, but don't just jump straight to "Obviously this person doesn't actually believe what they're saying."

alternatively, people are complex and emotions are raw.

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