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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30124 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Update. Perhaps I should just include it in the thread I created below but I feel like they go dead.

I complained at the Iowa State Fair that Vivek wasn’t taking the mask off. Here he is. Calling transitioning as a child barbaric. Perhaps this is a sign of really good public speaker that he can be aggressive in one venue and come off compassionate in a different venue.

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1691880080866263319?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

Musks also retweeted this speech and I’ll include his summary so you don’t have to click thru.

https://twitter.com/vivekgramaswamy/status/1692267994490060817?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

TRUTH.

  1. God is real.
  2. There are two genders.
  3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels.
  4. Reverse racism is racism.
  5. An open border is no border.
  6. Parents determine the education of their children.
  7. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind.
  8. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty.
  9. There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four.
  10. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.

Strategy interests me. The billionaires who were backing Desantis seem to be looking at Vivek now. They like myself don’t like Trumps persona. I now think Vivek is probably the best salesman for the GOP. Especially if they want to make arguments the PMC will listen to. Desantis I believe is the best get shit done member of the GOP. If you get where I’m going Vivek will make a lot of sense as the frontman President with Desantis as VP. Trump is the best at throwing a raving party and he’s really good at taking punches from the left and keeps moving forward. Which has bought him a lot of trust in the gop.

Strategically the GOP best move is to keep Trump as the poll lead until like March/April. Let them develop their lawfare election strategy. Then slide the nomination to probably Vivek maybe Desantis. The issue with this and one of my biggest problems with Trump is he doesn’t care as much about advancing an agenda as he cares about Trump winning. But for winning an agenda my thoughts today is this would be a very good strategy for winning.

Next thought. Vivek said “God is Real”. I assumed he was Hindu so was trying to figure out what he meant. So I had to go look at his Wikipedia and find out what that meant. He’s a monotheistic Hindu. I don’t know if that’s a true belief or something adopted to be more palatable to the right. Could be something explored in the election that he at some point will likely need to explain.

The other thing I thought of when he said God is Real is Marginal Revolution ran an article on St Thomas preaching the gospel in India. So I thought with him saying God is Real it might mean he was a member of that community. I didn’t even know about old Christian communities in India until yesterday. So perhaps there is a connection between St. Thomas and Monotheistic Hinduism. I do recommend reading the marginal posts as initially they thought St. Thomas wasn’t real but then some archaeologist found some stuff that confirmed a lot of the story.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/08/no-doubt-saint-thomas-reached-india.html

edit: realized i forgot my own point. none of that list will have 1/10th the image boost to the right as him saying "if 2020 was a legitimate election, it wasn't for lack of ability and willingness to steal it."

looks like rams gets why trump exists, unlike the rest. trump's continued utility as a political figure is being the single strongest signal of antiestablishment alignment. "your boos mean nothing" and all. the antiestablishment vote is what puts him ahead. it's why desantis flamed out attacking him, he can't attack and look like he's not just another stooge. rams' best strategic move is probably a "united" divide and conquer: loudly and unconditionally backing trump/more or less categorically support trump positions, including the high shibboleth of fraud, which in his rhetoric would really be pure antiestablishment signal. he'd be instantly unacceptable to the ruling powers and so the guaranteed second-runner behind orange man; brown orange man. rams does that and he's got 2028 on lock, 2024 if all the lawfare succeeds. not to mention a real shot at destroying the GOP.

not that i intend or ever expect to vote for rams. but years of annoyance at people, even sometimes here, not getting why trump is still in play means i can't help but have some respect by the ones who do. especially when they're a politician. middle finger molotov. that's trump. always was.

Ugh. I understand why shouting ten applause lights is effective; it doesn’t make it any more comfortable.

@Eetan mentions the Great Internet Flame Wars. I think that similarity runs deeper than the obvious. Forget the religious claims—you could start an atheism-style fight by dropping any of these into a forum. Even the ones which are, in theory, uncontroversial are flagrantly tribal. The act of publishing such a slate has been unfashionable since the early recession (outside of tumblresque enclaves). I don’t think challenging the social-justice left on those terms is going to pan out.

Note that Trump didn’t have to make statements like these to get attention. He sells a complete worldview in fewer words. Ambiguity in such a worldview is a feature, not a bug.

I can’t tell if Vivek is running this more as a Sneer against progressives or more as a Statement. If the former, Trump is going to eat his lunch. If the latter…well, I still think the FPOTUS will steamroll him, to be honest.

I feel like this is a downstream effect of the eternal September. The internet went from being a specialist thing to a popular one and thus became subject to the same selection pressures that plague other forms of popular media.

The act of publishing such a slate has been unfashionable since the early recession (outside of tumblresque enclaves)

And certain front lawns. ("In this house we believe....")

Oh, that's a good point.

This is going to be one of those Fussell-style class icebergs, isn't it? Nailing your 95 theses to the bathroom wall is prole, smugly baking them into thinkpieces is elite?

I feel like there's something there. The smaller 2000s Internet featured way more earnestness. Then at some point, people decided it was cringe, and spent more effort making their points indirect and plausibly deniable. Or something. I don't know enough about this history to say.

I feel like there's something there. The smaller 2000s Internet featured way more earnestness. Then at some point, people decided it was cringe, and spent more effort making their points indirect and plausibly deniable.

This is something that doesn't get talked about enough. Earnestness, sincerity, seriousness have been destroyed in modern Western culture by the Internet. I'm not sure exactly why or how either but it's something we need to figure out because it's a serious obstacle to getting anything done.

Irony and snark are not the way.

Post modernism became the default.

Those aren't applause lights, not everybody agrees with them. His supporters do but isn't the whole point of campaigning being in agreement with your supporters? 9 is a statement of fact but it's to be interpreted as an anti-corporatist/deep state message. The US isn't supposed to have Blackrock as a 4th branch, or launder decisions through social media companies.

That's exactly what makes it an applause light.

He's saying it for the supporters, who know the meaning, and know it means he's in the ingroup. Cue applause.

He's not saying it for people like me, since as you note, that's not what campaigning is about. It doesn't matter that I don't like it, or that I don't know the correct bogeymen to fill in the blanks. I understand that.

I was going to criticize Vikek for starting his list of truths with was that was so blatantly framed to obfuscate nuance between what he means and what his target audience would mean by the same exact phrasing.

However, Vivek does appear to embrace the opportunity to dig into that more deeply and honestly, even if filled with too much political grandstanding.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lxJeGIOKW8E

My view toward VR has increased slightly. I still find him too 'clever' and polished a little too over-done that I have worries his earnesty is rather calculated performance for his identified niche.

He reminds me of someone I know whose a real estate broker so take that fwiw. He’s probably not Christian but Trump isn’t either. I do think for a lot of issues he’s expressing the right view well.

I think this is the biggest mistake republicans make. It isn’t whether someone has the right views; it is whether they can wield the power of government.

Vivek has no experience doing the latter. Why should we expect him to excel at it? He is a non-entity to me.

Well he's 100% not Christian. As I said, I actually respect that he's made it clear (papered over with a lot of politician speak about values) in a few recent interviews. It was more than I expected and much more than trumpa ever been clear about religion. But at the same time Trump's lack of smooth talking on the issue has certain authenticity in itself.

Vikek did his job here with me though, as my issue with his Hinduism is measurably lower than it was before watching that interview. Still has a long way to go to convince me of his whole package though

It appears he has relatively deep roots in Christianity, he went to St. Xavier high school in Cincinnati. He would have had significant exposure to the point he should be able to speak the language.

One thing I love about social media is that you can get a glimpse into people's descent into monomaniacal obsession:

LouiseMensch 🇺🇸🇺🇦@LouiseMensch· 1h Truth: you’re a vile Russian stooge

Just like Tulsi Gabbard, apparently.

Would be funnier if social media also wasn’t the cause of their monomaniacal obsessions. I would rather not have too many people with monomaniacal obsessions in polite society

God isn't real, of course, and I doubt Vivek thinks so either. Hinduism is remarkably tolerant of atheism.

As a sidenote, I've been impressed by him. I think his willingness to be ruthlessly realistic about limits to America's commitments to Taiwan is a breath of fresh air. Reminds me of 2016 Trump. I still think Ye Olde Orange Man is a clear favorite, but if he gets barred from running due to legal issues, I think Vivek is a top contender. I wouldn't call him very charismatic, but he at least isn't robotic like DeSantis and unlike DeSantis, his campaign feels less controlled by donors and GOPe activists.

I think Trump's secret was that he intuitively understood that GOP conventional wisdom isn't actually that popular among the grassroots and so breaking with it hardly carries punishment with the voters - quite the contrary, in fact. If Vivek grasps the same fundamental truth then he has a very good shot.

God isn't real, of course, and I doubt Vivek thinks so either.

And so it begins. Second Great Internet Atheist War, exactly 20 years after the first one.

No idea if Vivek wanted it, but if he insists in returning to God talk of halcyon times of Bush admin, this is what he will get, together with second, even more crushing defeat.

And it was completely unneccessary, nothing about current material and cultural battles is about religion.

The other nine proposals lead to concrete political demands and actions, but what about this one?

"God is real", then what? Teach creationism intelligent design in schools?

If there was something good about Trump and Trumpism, it was dropping this futile and embarrassing stuff. Now you want to bring it back?

Just start your points with "America is great" or something similar. This will energize your base and enrage your enemies much more.

"God is real", then what? Teach creationism intelligent design in schools?

It means ‘defend me, fellow monotheists, it’s not any more of a bridge that voting for a Jew’. Prejudice against East Indians and mistrust of the few remaining actual believing pagans(which is what Hindus are, far more so than the fools dancing naked and calling themselves pagans) are things he has to deal with, even if as I suspect his real goal is to secure a powerful minister without portfolio position in a second trump admin. The upper 1/3 of the GOP base- where he gets his support from- is basically all practicing Christian and have a formal doctrinal commitment to seeing Hindus as savages that would be burning widows to appease the cattle they worship if the British hadn’t stopped it and casting himself as a monotheist is a way to turn that from outgroup to weird fargroup.

He's trying to play to the Republican base which is still very Christian. He wants to paint himself as a monotheist like them, not some polytheistic animal worshiper like how most Christians view Hindus. Maybe he would be better off ignoring it, but he thinks it's important to be ahead on this issue.

Pence still has 4-5% of the vote. Which might be the best represtantitive of the nice Christian vote.

Trump voters do seem to be somewhat post-Christian. The ones who grew up Christian but quit going to church.

Some of my current threads I believe have a bit of how do I deal with racial gaps and lbtq while being a nice Christian.

Pence is not popular among the ‘Christian’ vote, any more than among any other voters.

He's going to be savaged by also-rans in the debates. "Vivec, since you decided to bring up religion, you think Jesus Christ is not our Lord and savior, don't you?"

I think his willingness to be ruthlessly realistic about limits to America's commitments to Taiwan is a breath of fresh air.

While he's honest about wanting to defend Taiwan only because of semiconductors, his claim that domestic manufacturing will supplant TSMC by 2028 seems patently absurd to me.

The only reason I’d be much more keen to keep Taiwan is the microchip issue. They’re making most of the high end chips and have had trouble moving those factories elsewhere. That makes Chinese control of Taiwan a big issue.

I do not know on Taiwan. Especially on his timeline. Overall I like protecting allies. At some point you do need to draw a line. I do think Ukraine has been the right line for us in Europe. If Ukraine is lost then the Baltics too. But Russia is very different than China. Russia is on 19th century ideology and clearly declining. China I disagree with but is still a functional power today. A lot will change by 2028 so no idea if his plan is right. But I do believe in the relatively free world.

They're not allies. They're satellites and subject states. 'Ally' implies an association with a being of the same order.

The only actual 'ally' of the US might be France. And look at their reputation - they're accusing the Feds of racial subversion of their laicité and have generally been very unsupportive of US war effort.

France, Japan, Turkey, Brazil, Saudi Arabia- all maintain very independent foreign policies while being firmly US Allies. So does, albeit more bumpily, Israel.

Strategically the GOP best move is to keep Trump as the poll lead until like March/April. Let them develop their lawfare election strategy. Then slide the nomination to probably Vivek maybe Desantis. The issue with this and one of my biggest problems with Trump is he doesn’t care as much about advancing an agenda as he cares about Trump winning. But for winning an agenda my thoughts today is this would be a very good strategy for winning.

If the GOP steals the primary from Trump they are toast. The base wants Trump. That the GOP is still scheming to dispossess the base shows that they don't get it. It doesn't matter how "skillfully" they do it. The GOP will fight Republican voters more than they will ever fight the left, and then ask Republican voters to turn around and unite for the election.

Any candidate who signs onto that plan is fundamentally unserious. How would Vivek or DeSantis pitch themselves as anti-establishment while accepting the establishment primary rig of death?

If Trump loses the primary, he is really going to want a Republican who will pardon him to be the next president, although the pardon can only be for federal crimes.

e than they will ever fight the left, and then ask Republican voters to turn around and unite for the election.

Trump has a 50-point lead and the voters already know everything about him. He's not losing the primary except through Republican Party shenanigans.

The 50 point lead is somewhat fake right now. I’m not a Trump voter but in any polling right now I’d vote Trump. It’s due to the lawfare strategy the Dems are using, we need to show a united from right now which means showing Trump support. In the primary I’ll vote for Vivek or Desantis either as a vote that loses or strategically if I think one of them can win that primary.

And if they get Trump they're toast. That's the problem. And if they can't find him off now they won't be able to in 2028 either, regardless of how old he is. The GOP has underperformed for three straight election cycles, and they're barreling into four with abandon. The only way they're going to win back the voters who have abandoned them is to convince them that this party is a different one than the one they voted against in 2020. Instead we get a full-throated embrace of election denial/ January 6th nonsense that won't go away. They need to pull off the bandaid but are incapable of doing so. It's like an episode of Bar Rescue where the owner is going down with the ship because he's worried about alienating regulars. That's usually good advice, but when the regulars can't keep you in business then something's got to give.

It’s silly to think Trump can’t win the election. I think other candidates would more easily win but Trump as the candidate will be a coin flip or close to it. He’s already won an election, lost another very closely which took government intervention (fbi/Hunter) to keep him from winning, and continues to poll competitive.

Republicans would do better if they rallied behind Trump more -- he won states in 2016 that no other Republican could win, after all. The party largely isn't going "full-thrated" on supporting Trump: look at Brian Kemp, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, etc. The Republican field is running on trying to ignore or turn back from Trump, but they're not very popular.

Trump will never be popular with you, but Republicans could be more popular with the general electorate if they actually presented a united front instead of picking fights with each other that cause them to have no will to do what the voters want.

The issue is that Trump doesn't actually know how to control the executive, so returning Trump would be much less useful for the Republicans' goals than making someone else POTUS. They'd have the veto, the pardon and the judge nominations, but not much more.

The issue is that controlling the executive is a team game nowadays, and so this could largely be resolved if the GOP was actually Trumpian.

Do you think Biden can control the executive? No. He has people for that. Trump needs people. The GOP is just really bad at playing to win, and even worse at caring about what their voters want.

If Trump had the ability to identify and the motivation to use people who could control the executive, he wouldn't have failed so badly last time. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

I think there’s a limit here. Once he’s put in prison, it’s really going to be hard to make the case that he’s viable as a candidate.

If he's put in prison for any of the stuff they're throwing at him now, he will be a shoe-in for the Republican nomination. You could not ask for a better way to get his base to turn out.

Come to think of it, might this be a viable strategy? Trump energizes the base, but is in prison, so his VP has to do most of the actual president stuff. So, they can run Trump for the devout Trumpists, knowing that they're practically running his VP candidate (presumably DeSantez).

No. If an elected President is in Federal prison, he just pardons himself. If he's in a state prison there's a constitutional crisis but unless Congress impeaches him I don't think there's any way it ends without him being released.

Except you cannot actually do your duties as president from prison. You cannot leave the prison, so he can’t conduct diplomacy, you can’t call members of Congress to get your agenda passed, you can’t really do much. As such, I don’t see any viable way for republicans to elect a guy who can’t do the job.

Well, then he'll just pardon himself.

Can he do that? I don’t think he can.

For Federal charges he sure can -- statewise my fear is that this will turn into a "well come and get me then" situation long before he ever gets elected. (or imprisoned)

Trump rallies featuring standoffs between state and federal police trying to arrest him would be spicy for sure -- but not exactly great for the state of the Union.

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You cannot leave the prison

I mean, at this point, I don't think any of us knows how any of this would work. If he actually won the election, even from prison, would they petition for a temporary suspension of his sentence, in order to carry out the duties of office? Would it go through? Who knows. There is zero case history here. Maybe some enterprising law profs are preparing review articles on this topic at this very moment... but yeah, I doubt we have any idea what would end up happening.

I can't wait for Republicans in 2025 trying to figure out how they could have possibly lost with their candidate trying to campaign from a prison cell.

Probably they'll decide it was fraud again.

Too much "boo outgroup," not enough substance. More effort than this, please.

As you wish:

It may well be the case that the Republican primary electorate will react to a Trump conviction by rallying behind him even harder. But it's hard to see how such a course of action results in anything but a Biden victory. If Trump is in jail, he can't campaign. He can't debate. He can't tweet. He will be limited in his ability to do media. And of course, those Americans who have some measure of trust in the criminal justice system (54% by this poll) will see him more negatively by virtue of the fact that he's been convicted - and he's an unpopular guy to start with.

Perhaps the day after the election people wake up and ask themselves "Hey, why did we decide it was smart to hitch our wagon to this loser again?" But at this stage I feel like too many people are in too deep to ever find their way out. Trump is a winner, so if he loses, it's because they cheated. And if he goes to jail it's because he was unfairly targeted, definitely not because he committed a stupendous number of crimes trying to illegally hold on to power. So another loss will simply become even more evidence of how rigged the system is, and another reason to support Trump even harder, onwards into the mists of time.

those Americans who have some measure of trust in the criminal justice system (54% by this poll)

That is a pretty abysmal number, TBH, especially when the plurality of the three categories you're counting was in the middle of the overall range (they essentially had a scale of 1-5, and you're counting the 38% who were the equivalent of a 3). Also, it has clearly been trending downward, which is a bad sign. People are losing trust, because they're seeing what is actually happening. They keep getting told that this case or that case isn't a perfect equivalent, so we can't really be sure that there is a double-standard in play, but such a position keeps becoming less and less plausible.

Short Circuit just linked to a case in the D.C. Circuit:

In summer 2020, thousands of protesters gather in D.C., leading to much sidewalk-chalking of the phrase "Black Lives Matter"—a violation of D.C.'s defacement ordinance. No chalking-related arrests ensue. Around the same time, however, police arrest pro-life protesters for chalking "Black Pre-Born Lives Matter." Selective enforcement in violation of the First Amendment and the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment? (Shout out to you, Bolling v. Sharpe!) District court: No dice. D.C. Circuit: Agreed that there are no dice to be had on the equal-protection claim, since there are no allegations that D.C. officials had a discriminatory motive. But the plaintiffs have plausibly alleged dice under the First Amendment, which prohibits viewpoint discrimination whatever the gov't's motives might be.

Extremely high-profile uses of real bureaucratic power in service of The Party get noticed. Suddenly changing COVID messaging to allow for political protests that serve The Party got noticed. Differential enforcement of laws got noticed. Some of those times, apologists can retreat behind claims that there could have been differences, but the Difference of the Gaps argument is running thin as examples are mounting and we're seeing even circuit courts have to admit that it sure darn seems like laws are being selectively enforced depending upon whether The Party approves of the viewpoint being expressed. I've seen a lot of your comments here, but I don't think you've ever actually engaged seriously with this challenge. Every time someone tries to allege disparate treatment, it just rolls off your back. If you still have "some" measure of faith in the criminal justice system, can you agree with the D.C. Circuit that at least this sure seems be a pretty plausible example of disparate treatment based on the political viewpoint of the "criminals" in question?

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Do you think that being able to create a situation where your political opposition must run their campaign from a prison cell counts as actual power? Is it actual power when Putin does it?

The person who created this situation is Donald Trump.

Would you say the same thing about Navalny?

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If you convince people you can't be trusted, they won't play with you any more, and they won't work to convince other people to play with you even if those people have decided to stop playing based on erroneous information.

I see we have a vote for the legitimacy of imprisoning the opposition.

Absolutely. The Trump supporters who chanted "lock her up" had the right of it, crooked politicians belong in jail.

Trump supporters who said this had a specific crime in mind. They didn't keep trying crimes until they found one that worked.

There's a difference between locking up someone mainly for a crime, and locking someone up for political reasons with crime as an excuse.

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The GOP didn't underperform in 2018 or 2020. They underperformed in 2022 when Trump wasn't on the ballot because of poor voter turn-out. Given historical trends for midterm losses in the first term, the Trump lead GOP in 2018 did the best in the last 50 years.

The only way they're going to win back the voters who have abandoned them is to convince them that this party is a different one than the one they voted against in 2020

Is this where we pretend that Trump didn't get the 2nd most votes in the history of the country, improving on his previous total by 11,000,000 votes?

failing to address the obvious election fraud is precisely the reason why they performed so poorly in the 2020 senate runoffs in GA and in many 2022 races, not because of ongoing fraud (although that definitely did happen), but because they don't motivate their voters to show up

the person who motivates their voters to show up is Donald Trump; trying to claim the GOP's strategy for the last 2 years is "election denail/jan 6 nonsense" is simply wrong given they've done nothing at all in response to either of those and, in fact, helped opposition party attack their own on those exact issues

the countryclub suburban GOP voters of the 1990s aren't coming back no matter how much you trash trump and promise you're totally not like him because those voters are dead or strongly Democrat

edit: Just like another conversation we had here, Trump didn't lose the "Republican Stronghold" which voted for Obama by 8 points in 2012 and even more for Obama in 2008. Trump is not the reason for GOP failure, especially in Pennsylvania (a state which hadn't gone to a GOP presidential candidate since 1988). Doubling down on denouncing Trump and whipping yourself isn't going to win you back the "Republican Stronghold" which voted for Obama by 8 points.

My MIL fits in the country club GOP voter of yesteryear. But it turns out she didn’t vote out of political conviction; she voted because she liked the status of being “rich.” Now when rich people vote democratic, she votes democratic.

Is this where we pretend that Trump didn't get the 2nd most votes in the history of the country, improving on his previous total by 11,000,000 votes?

Trump is remarkably good at motivating Republican voters. I would argue that the only thing he is better at is motivating Democrat voters, thus no longer being president.

I mean, the circumstances of being an incumbent widely perceived as mismanaging a generational crisis surely played some role in his ability to motivate democrats.

He motivated "Democrat" voters so much, they sometimes voted multiple times in different states! Truly historic rates of voter participation, but only in counties controlled by certain people using certain procedures. Neighboring counties not controlled by those people using those procedures didn't see that magical turn-out.

There are lots of reasons Donald Trump isn't president; you could likely put most of these under a "motivates Democrats" banner, but some specifics would be the illegal and unconstitutional ways in which elections were conducted in explicit contravention to election laws across dozens of states. The GOP, the courts, and the law were wholly useless in addressing this issue.

When I worked in politics, you could pretty much tell if the GOP or Democrats would win an election by basic turn-out numbers. DJT changed that dynamic where it's the opposite now. In the motivation game, Trump may motivate a minority of people into hysterics, but in sheer numbers Trump motivates his voters more than the opposite.

If they could cheat under Trump, they certainly can under Biden. So either way, if Trump runs, he loses, whether it's fair and square or a tipping of the scales.

The 2020 election was closer than the 2016 election. Illegal changes made to election law and procedures by executive fiat justified by "the pandemic" no longer exist in most places with courts already ruling against those changes. The pandemic is not around to justify vast mobilization of state power and cowardice on the part of courts. The State operating at peak power prohibiting in-person interaction and mobilization (unless race riots ofc) and forcing people into manipulated online spaces isn't around anymore, either.

The state cashed in a whole lot of single-use plays in order to get Trump, and even with all of that and more, the election came down to tens of thousands of votes in a few states. It came down to a judge in any of 5 states allowing a filed election contest to be heard or even a slight peek at those definitely legitimate ballot signatures.

Could Trump run and lose? Sure, and it will take another vast and more ridiculous fraud campaign. The reason Trump is being indicted isn't because the regime is sure he's going to run and lose, it's because they know he could win and he's dangerous to that regime.

Another Trump run and subsequent obvious fraud by the regime has its own benefits. And in comparison to what? Without Trump, the GOP will lose anyway. And even if that's not true, I don't see how a Trump-less GOP victory would benefit rightwing politics in any way.

The 2020 election was closer than the 2016 election.

Measured how?

It came down to a judge in any of 5 states allowing a filed election contest to be heard or even a slight peek at those definitely legitimate ballot signatures.

Ah, I see. Since literally every attempt on /r/TheMotte and here to provide a shred of solid evidence of fraud has been thoroughly debunked every single time, we've come back around to "just repeat things a bunch and they'll become true."

Could Trump run and lose? Sure, and it will take another vast and more ridiculous fraud campaign.

Or, you know, Trump not being that popular. Which, if you look at the 2016 results, was actually always the case--Clinton was just an unusually bad candidate (combined 2 party vote share of only 94% in 2016).

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Could Trump run and lose? Sure, and it will take another vast and more ridiculous fraud campaign.

So is it your view that Trump simply having less support in the crucial states by election time is simply an inconceivable outcome?

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Having been systematically excluded from powerful institutions, widespread loss of trust in those institutions is a positive, not a negative. You know that trust in America's political system is going to be lower two years from now than it is today.

He motivated "Democrat" voters so much, they sometimes voted multiple times in different states!

This is a specific claim I haven't seen yet. Could you link the evidence?

trump's filed election contest in GA or one of the Look Ahead America Reports diving into permanent change of address flags

note that I am not claiming the people actually voted in multiple states, but that their voter registration was used in a state from which they permanently moved out of, and then they proceeded to vote in the state they moved to

Appreciate the link, thank you.

Is this where we pretend that Trump didn't get the 2nd most votes in the history of the country, improving on his previous total by 11,000,000 votes?

The number one for most votes in the history of the country was his opponent Joe Biden. The population of the US keeps growing; it is larger than it was in 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, and so on. So more recent presidential elections have higher vote totals breaking previous vote total records.

population growth in legal US voters would only account for a tiny fraction of the ~25,000,000 extra "votes" in the 2020 election

also, it is simply not true that later elections have more total votes over the last 20 or so years, 2008 having more total votes than 2012 and 2016 being an example

the only explanation which can account for such a vast difference is voter turnout and "voter" turnout is not uniform across the country; in fact, voter turnout is roughly the same in most parts with only select counties with certain people in charge using certain procedures and ignoring election laws which has the unheard of "voter"-turn out

I assumed he was Hindu so was trying to figure out what he meant. So I had to go look at his Wikipedia and find out what that meant. He’s a monotheistic Hindu. I don’t know if that’s a true belief or something adopted to be more palatable to the right.

There's some equivocation among some Hindus about the number of gods, with some taking the view that the big pantheon is really just emanations of some core underlying divinity. But you will also see Hindus of all kinds say things like "god bless".

In my experience there's not really a core set of beliefs that all Hindus subscribe to (beyond perhaps the very basics). There's certainly nothing like a Catholic catechism.

@fauji had a good post about this very matter last month.

In my experience there's not really a core set of beliefs that all Hindus subscribe to (beyond perhaps the very basics). There's certainly nothing like a Catholic catechism.

Exactly - "hinduism" is label applied from outside, on everything in the subcontinent that is not Muslim or Christian. Just like Christians in Roman Empire called paganism (best translated as "redneckism" ) on everything not Christian (or Jewish) that dumb and ignorant peasants obstinately practiced and believed.

Perhaps this is a sign of really good public speaking that he can be aggressive in one venue and come off compassionate in a different venue.

Or perhaps it's the sign of a grifter who views the circus of the Republican primary as a nice platform to set up himself up for a cushy consulting and lobbying gig, and he flip-flopped because it's good marketing to the base.

“Grifter looking for cushy consulting and lobbying gigs” is pretty ridiculous accusation, considering that his career before running for president has been much superior than what you suggest he’s after. You might as well accuse Trump of only running because he wanted to make a bit of money by selling his memoir afterwards.

Agreed. He’s looking for power and to enact his agenda. I think he knows he’s not beating trump, though, and so I think he’s running for President to get his name out their- perhaps as a potential veep who’s actually the power behind the throne, perhaps as a potential minister without portfolio, something like that.

For what it's worth, he said he won't be anyones VIP. He says that he's doing this to be in charge and that he doesn't want to answer to anyone.

He’s also laying out the possibility of my scenerio. Where he’s a uniter who pardons trump because it’s good for America to be United. It is a path to the Presidency and one I think would better advance conservative agenda. Trump is never going to appeal to the PMC but I think Vivek could and that’s a big deal for these culture war fights. If he can’t win the PMC he could get it to 30-70 etc.

Your not going to get anything done if you don’t get the 4th branch of government neutral.

If he just wanted money he’s done enough in the private sector that he could just open a hedge fund. Which generally pays a lot more than grifter.

Which isn’t to be confused with someone grifting because they like power. But all politicians do a bit of that. And as they age they generally shift from true believer to complex world. Witness AOC neolib transformation. She probably ends up being the Dem speaker of the house for decades.

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