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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25794 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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What is the steelman for voting for Trump in the primaries?

He's not a true outsider anymore. He's not an unknown quantity. We know his temperament. We know his governance style. What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?

I have some ideas, but they're all terrible once you think about them for ten seconds. I am willing to believe that the median voter is unable to think clearly for ten seconds before being hijacked by monkey-brain, but I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something obvious.

1. Personal Loyalty: This is close to the Richard Hanania theory. Personal loyalty would make sense if Trump was loyal in turn to his supporters, but he isn't. How many of his lawyers have gone to jail? How many orange-blooded Trump fans lost their jobs or got arrested for believing in him too hard on January 6? He could have pardoned these people, but he didn't. Orange Man good because Orange Man good.

2. Perceived Injustice: Yes, Trump has been treated unfairly by the media and the Washington establishment. Lots of people have been. I can understand why this would be seen as a necessary condition (e.g. "nobody liked by the 'elites' could ever be a good president"), but why would this be a sufficient condition? Surely electability and general competence matter more than an extra standard-deviation worth of grievances against the media.

3. Hatred: I'm not talking about "Hate™". I'm talking about a genuine desire to see one's political enemies suffer. It's not even clear to me that Trump would be better at this than other Republican candidates, but I feel I would be missing something if I didn't put it on the list.

I hate commenting twice on the same thing but Jamie Dimon basically steel-manned at WEF today and he always came off as corporatists Dem to me.

https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1747645227194855919?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

Summary - Trump was right on everything (NATO, Immigration, tax cuts).

In my mind there has to be a compelling reason not to vote for Trump. There isn't. At all.

My bias is that none of these people will improve my life in any way that really matters. Certainly not any of the non-Trump candidates. But with Trump, still the answer is almost certainly no, but there is that wildcard chance that something cool happens.

When I consider that, in my lifetime, there will never be another man like Trump running for president, and that I will have ample opportunity to vote for conventional politicians like DeSantis et al., to me, there's no decision that needs to be made. It's clear as day.

In my mind there has to be a compelling reason not to vote for Trump.

That makes no sense. You don't have to vote for anyone, so the default option should be "don't vote for anyone".

Unfortunately, "none of the above" is not an option at the polls. Until that's the case, my default option is "someone will win this election, and the consequences of who wins is directly proportional to my likelihood of voting".

Yes it is. You don't have to fill every spot on a ballot, and indeed don't have to vote at all if you don't want to.

Let's see if rephrasing this helps.

If "none of the above" were allowed to win, I'd be okay with selecting that more often. If you're stuck picking which color boot is going to be on our necks - and that's the world we live in - then I'm going to pick the color that matches my hair.

If "none of the above" were allowed to win, what happens when a supreme court justice dies?

Allowing "none of the above" to win doesn't necessarily mean you leave the office unfilled. It could for instance force a new election with the candidates from the first barred from running.

I find the need for "steelmanning" of trump to be silly.

He's running for president. People like him for what he stands for. They can vote for whoever they want, it's a republic with tinges of democracy.

I will be voting Democrat because I don't like Russia/Putin, but that's the extent of my reasoning for my presidential picks. I understand and see why people like Trump, and to say that he's being unduly attacked because he doesn't "fit in" to the establishment is not a lie.

They're very clearly trying to pin him to the wall for things that would be relatively minor scandals with a few fees and a public apology and then it would be over with any other ex-president. It's really satisfying to see how hard the establishment strains at gnats to pin him to the wall, when we know that they've gotten used to letting people like epstein go around as an open secret.

For having an unironically decent track record as president ? (bad human, worse husband, terrible role model.....solid track record)

  • Putin did not invade Ukraine
  • Got Abraham Accords signed
  • Correctly re-sanctioned Iran
  • Restarted the on-shoring of American manufacturing
  • Economy flourished until Covid
  • Started building the wall. I made fun of it, but I was wrong. It is necessary and urgent
  • Made illegal immigration to the US seem unsafe, and led to reduced illegal immigration attempts
  • Got the Vaccine to approval at 'light speed'
  • Tried to keep lockdowns to a minimum, which in hindsight was especially important to economic recovery and schooling
  • Served as a useful deregulation counter-weight to the Senate/House's pro-regulation instincts.
  • Correctly banned Tiktok

The way I see it, Trump doesn't give a fuck. Ramaswamy, DeSantis and especially Haley care too about much about their career after politics. This means they are more or less beholden to the whims of the American elite. Also, after seeing them debate, I do not think Haley has any change of victory. DeSantis has sounded more and more bitchy as the campaign has lost momentum and Ramaswamy is a little too early to the game. US is not there yet, racially.

So as much as Trump is not the ideal candidate to face Trump Biden, he is the only one who might win and maintain his anti-establishment status. Yeah, a white Ramaswamy or a less whiny DeSantis would have had a better chance. But, that's not on offer.

edit: Note that I am talking about his presidency rather than the Republican house. A republican house + senate have shown themselves to be pretty incompetent. However, they don't have much to do with the President.

If you post the argument you made to Reddit you will get a lot of people wandering if you are being serious.

Looking back at his track record I believe he did a great job. He got things right I didn’t even think about then like immigration and China and both of those aged well. He also yelled at Powell in 2018 about hiking rates and for that environment (inflation sub 2%) Trump was absolutely correct Powell was making a mistake.

I do take issue with you calling him a bad husband. He did the most important thing a husband can do which is procreate and successfully raise functioning children.

I do take issue with you calling him a bad husband.

Anyone who gets married 3x isn't a good husband, and I'd be shocked if him and Melania have anything I'd consider a good relationship.

Would a women rather have a best friend as a husband or one who produced attractive, well-educated , healthy children?

If you noticed in my prior comment I said nothing about his relationship with her. Evolutionary biology I would think says my model is the better husband.

Anyone who gets married 3x isn't a good husband

As an absolute statement this can't be right. The range of reasonable exceptions, from "the wife soon contracted a terminal disease" to "the wife turned out to be untrustworthy" is wide enough that there must be men who have had awful luck from it twice.

As a specific case, though, things like "the wife didn't get along with the mistress" or "the hooker turned out to be untrustworthy" are not in that range.

This reminds me of the shopping cart debate in which people point out a bar, resting on the floor, to be considered a functioning member of society. And then many heavily "disabled" mothers explain why their corner case makes it OK.

Statistically, I don't see the case for any double divorcee to be a good husband, and Trump's inadequacy in the EQ department is both one of his strengths and one of the 100 nails in the coffin for his quality on that front.

Got Abraham Accords signed

Who cares, really? More American money spent on middle eastern bullshit.

Economy flourished until Covid

Low interest rates and high deficits causing an artificial boom.

Got the Vaccine to approval at 'light speed'

That was bad, actually.

Tried to keep lockdowns to a minimum

That's not true, he initially pushed lockdowns and tried to bully the governor of Georgia into not reopening.

What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?

He tried to build the wall but was blocked by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

DeSantis is an old pal of Paul Ryan and has been getting campaign advice from him. He's likely to be talked into not doing anything on the border and only paying lip service to MAGA policy items.

Haley is funded by Bilderburg billionaires like Reid Hoffman. She would never ever try to build the wall. Her major goals would be American troops in Ukraine and Syria.

Trump did deliver economic gains for blue collar workers that DC types have been insisting were impossible for generations. He avoid starting new wars. He improved trade deals. For the "borders conservatism" voter he was the most successful President in a long time. He delivered some major wins in the face of intense opposition from the establishment.

Voting in an establishment friendly politician would be silly.

He's funny

As someone who preferred the other GOP candidates I do not feel like Ive had a choice on who to vote for in the primary.

Ever since lawfare began against Trump it has forced the right to vote for him. Simply put you can not allow members of your political coalition be bullied. You have to fight together or die alone.

Reason 2: Entertainment

That's illogical. Just nominate someone who's likely to win and pardon Trump.

It’s not about the pardon. You also can’t let the other side bully your candidate selection process.

You also can’t let the other side bully your candidate selection process

That's exactly what the republicans are doing, Trump shot up in the polls versus DeSantis with every indictment. Dems basically said "don't throw me in the briar patch" and it's working out like in that tale so far.

Even if there was someone else with as good or better chance to win the general (and further not likely to play a Democrat with an R after her name if she did win), I wouldn't trust them to pardon Trump.

So many objections to voting for Trump rest on there existing some alternative candidate who is outside of the establishment wing of the party AND is somehow possessing the wherewithal to take the same kind of coordinated attacks Trump has suffered... AND is somehow a less uncouth, more measured type of person.

But failing to identify such a person, only that they could hypothetically exist.

In this case, it could be Desantis, but there's a lot of bad blood there now yes, it'd be doubtful he'd pardon Trump or otherwise come to his aid beyond calling off the Federal hounds.

Who would that be?

I think the argument I made in 2016 holds up fairly well. Eight years of subsequent events mainly just add exclamation marks, I think.

Easy. I want a Trump presidency 2.0 because, unlike Haley and Desantis and Ramaswamy, he doesn't have the option to defect. Trump has burned the bridge behind him. I would trust Desantis not to defect, I guess, but less so than Trump, because Trump doesn't have the option. I'd vote third party over Haley.

Look, I know establishment republicans will make a few nods towards social conservatism and then get back to spreading it for the chamber of commerce. Trump won't.

Trump spent his entire presidency catering to chamber of commerce Republicans with the sole exception of a brief and insignificant trade spat with China that was ultimately a bipartisan policy (continued by Biden) anyway.

even if this were an accurate portrayal of the Donald Trump administration (it's not), this is still better than the last GOP administrations or viable alternative winners (which don't exist)

the non-Trump GOP only has shouldas and couldas and other unfalsifiable counterfactuals because their actual track record when they have positions of power is always finding ways to lose and fail to deliver what they promised and what their voters want

whenever Trump isn't in the picture, the GOP defaults to garbage, loser politics which harm their voters, "the right" generally, and has no chance of changing the direction of the country; they are essentially the soft pillow powers-that-be use to strangle the right quietly in their beds

The next-up neocon/neolib derp Nimarata Haley advocated for raising the social security age. Can you imagine? A GOP politician who is in office almost exclusively due to people over the age of 65 advocating for a policy that directly attacks one of their main supporter bases. Welcome to non-Trump GOP Politics.

He defected during the campaign already, when he said New York handled Covid better than Florida.

he doesn't have the option to defect.

I don't believe this. He is going to have to pardon himself of felony charges anyways. Why not plunder whatever he can for personal gain? What's a few more pardons or a third (or fourth) impeachment to his eternal legacy? He might single-mindedly appoint judges based only on how likely they are to back him up in his legal battles, above all other considerations. Isn't that defecting?

He might single-mindedly appoint judges based only on how likely they are to back him up in his legal battles, above all other considerations. Isn't that defecting?

In practice, no, because those would be hardliner conservative judges.

That's not what defecting means in this context. It's also not really in character.

Defecting would be declaring that Somali migrants are the real true Americans and dumping millions of them into the suburbs. Or eliminating tariffs on China in exchange for a Netflix deal. Or a million other things that benefit the DC and Donor classes.

I'll accept your terms on defect but self-serving actions seems exactly in character for Trump. He lashes out any one who disagrees with him, why wouldn't he try to stack the deck with loyalists?

Trump is an unprincipled egotist who is unable to work with the Establishment: he'll do whatever he wants, and he has no incentive to work with the Powers That Be because they despise him and would never cooperate with him (and the feeling is absolutely mutual). No other candidate comes close to offering that.

It's not particularly likely to lead to anything good, I think, but if you're broadly anti-establishment, he's the closest thing to a sure bet to do things differently than how the Establishment wants things to be done.

I'll probably vote for him this fall.

Why? Because I don't think Haley or DeSantis will stop my side from losing. At best, they will work within the bounds set by the the deep state machine, at worst they will throw their base under the bus to ingratiate themselves with the elite like so many Republicans do.

Trump is all the bad things his haters (and some of his supporters!) say he is. And if he gets elected, it's likely that not much will change since he's unpredictable and the swamp has a lot of inertia and defense mechanisms. However, IMO there are two main differences from 2016.

First, the GOP has become way more Trumpist. There is a movement in the GOP personally loyal to Trump, something he didn't have when he was just a meme president. They follow Trump because they believe American political system is corrupt and that they are not represented by anyone else in either political party. So they are probably willing to go further smashing norms and seizing power than any other candidate's loyalists.

Second, and maybe most importantly, I think Trump is probably big mad after the last 8 years. This time it's personal. I think Trump probably cares somewhat about America, the working class, freedom, apple pies etc. but vastly more than any of those things what Trump really cares about is validating his MASSIVE EGO. And the elites and deep state have spent the last EIGHT YEARS poking it with a thousand sharp little sticks. He's also now being threatened with prison. If he gets elected, I think there's a real chance he will do everything to punish the people he perceives as his personal enemies, the vast majority of whom are people that I detest for completely different reasons, and may also try to harm their political power and maybe even do something crazy and cause a constitutional crisis, all out of SPITE because of his severely affronted ego. Those are all things that I think are great, because TBH at this point I hate what America has become, I hate the GAE, I hate the progressive religion, I hate the apathy towards the decay of societal institutions, I hate the prioritization of aliens over citizens, and if it all gets burned down there's at least a chance something better will arise and my children won't have to raise their children in an enclave in the hinterlands to prevent their corruption and alienation.

Electing Trump in 2016 was throwing a rock through the window of Deep State. Electing Trump in 2024 is throwing a Molotov cocktail through the window of Deep State. Yeah, it might get put out quickly, or might even fail to ignite, but it also might land on a pile of newspapers and books. Voting for Haley or DeSantis is knocking on the door and threatening to write a sternly-worded letter to the HOA.

EDIT: @gorge sums it up pretty well

if it all gets burned down there's at least a chance something better will arise and my children won't have to raise their children in an enclave in the hinterlands to prevent their corruption and alienation.

So, a bit off-topic, but DAE feel like it's time to get building enclaves in the hinterlands? I wonder if anyone's studied how this has gone in South Africa and what we might learn.

I think it's hard to do before shit starts hitting the fan unless you want to live among a lot of oddballs and not a few simply deranged people.

My compromise is to live in a place where I fit in well (e.g. am not a cultural/religious/ethnic minority) and forge ties with my neighbors. When coronavirus had just broken out, before we knew how lethal it was, I lived with my family in an apartment complex where everyone was pretty much anonymous. I remember an eerie feeling that if things really went sidewise, I'd be living around a bunch of people who I didn't know from Adam. How would they behave when the cops stopped showing up? When there wasn't enough food to go around? Ever since I've been determined to live only in neighborhoods where I felt I'd be able to rely on neighbors at least somewhat in times of crisis.

Orania is probably the best test case in South Africa, if you're curious

The steelmanned case is "Trump 2024 The Return - Make Liberals Cry Again" (bumper sticker). Obviously Trump is a greedy unprincipled narcissistic hypocrite who hasn't delivered on anything really, but he sure does drive the sanctimonious liberal elites insane in a way that no other Republican can. Plus he's pretty entertaining, at times.

Much more exciting than a generic Republican. I don't know if there are more redeeming qualities than this.

The responses by various commenters here reveal severe contradictions at the heart of “the case for Trump”. I think that this profoundly confused tweet by Martyr Made is illustrative.

People underestimate (or are not in a position to understand) how powerful it is for people to see Trump being attacked by the same people who have been maligning them in media and politics for years. Critics can say that that Trump is not a true enemy of the Establishment since he did x, y, or z, but it’s obvious to Trump supporters that the same powerful people who hate them also hate Trump, and that they hate Trump for taking their side.

I remember one middle-aged woman somewhere in Ohio being asked why she supported Trump. Was it his immigration policy, trade policy, what was it? She said: “Because he sticks up for us.”

It’s like the cool kids - the varsity QB, the homecoming queen, etc - sitting in the front of the class, forever bullying and mocking the “losers” in the back of class, who don’t play sports or cheerlead because their families are poor and they have to work after school. One day, one of the offensive linemen from the football team picks up and moves to the back of the class and starts giving it back to the cool kids. All the cool kids attack him, but he doesn’t care, he’s from their world and knows they’re nothing special, and anyway, they can’t threaten him because he’s too big, so he just keeps giving it back to him on the losers’ behalf. That guy would be a folk hero to the kids in the back, no matter how much of an obnoxious, vulgar buffoon he might be.

The kids in the front of the class - i.e. a pretty blonde woman who glides through life with door after door inexplicably opening before her - will never get it. They will always assume evil or irrational motives behind the linemen’s move, and they’ll imagine that the kids in back only support him out of jealousy and resentment toward the cool kids.

In this framing, Trump is the champion of the weird, socially-unpopular kids - the ones shut out of bourgeois normal society. The jocks and the pretty girls snub and bully them, but by banding together in a coalition with disaffected members of the social elite who have become awoken to their plight, they can launch a liberatory strike against the privileged upper crust who have historically marginalized them.

This is textbook leftism! This is literally the ur-narrative of the cultural and political left. It’s also the opposite of reality. Blonde jocks and rich cheerleaders are one of the core voting constituencies for Donald Trump! The weird alienated kids who got bullied in school, meanwhile, are a core Democrat constituency! One bloc of Trump voters are now apparently attempting to re-brand themselves, or re-contextualize themselves, as oppressed victims - the marginalized Other.

However, this is blatantly at odds with the original core appeal of Trump, which is that he was a champion of normal, well-adjusted, classic and confident America, here to take the country back from the freaks and faggots and pencil-necks who have essentially usurped control through subterfuge and used that power to resentfully force their unpopular obsessions on the mass of normal popular people.

And of course, it is manifestly risible for Trump voters to claim to hate bullying. Whatever else you want to say about the Trump phenomenon in 2016, it clearly involved a substantial amount of bullying, derision, and even rough-housing/violence at some of the rallies. (I’m not absolving the Clinton campaign, which of course also involved a different type of bullying and derision.) Trump supporters have also ruthlessly mocked and derided “DeSantoids”, using classic nerd-bashing behavior; see Scott Greer’s (admittedly amusing) unflattering impression of DeSantis’ nasal voice and spergy affect.

Trump voters have no leg to stand on if they wish to wear the mask of the oppressed and marginalized. That sort of maudlin victimhood-signaling has never been what conservativism or right-wing values are about. If anything, Trump voters should be proud to be the jocks and cheerleaders rightly excluding the maladjusted weirdos; playing this “no, you’re not the underdog, I’m the underdog” game is just totally conceding the left’s frame.

If anything, Trump voters most closely resemble the oppositional culture cultivated by blacks. When they are a minority or are relatively disempowered, they cry victim and throw out accusations of cheating and unfair privilege. When they are a local majority or gain any sort of power, though, they ruthlessly bully whites and Asians; they also bully those within their own ranks who “act white” by refusing to wallow in victimhood and who aspire to earn a spot in the majority culture via self-betterment and the adoption of bourgeois values. Blacks as a cultural-political constituency would rather destroy the mainstream American establishment - supposedly for excluding and “othering” them - than try to prove worthy of being embraced by that establishment. And when they don’t get what they feel they’re owed, they riot.

I say this all as someone who voted for Trump in 2020 and who will vote for him again this November, assuming he’s the GOP nominee. I just hate liars and cope. The people in power in Washington DC and in the media and academia are certainly not Chads and Stacys. They were not jocks and cheerleaders. They see themselves as champions of the marginalized and disempowered, the same way that [the Trump who exists only the minds of his ardent supporters] does. Oppositional populism is a great way to drum up votes and guilt your way into power, but it’s also the sign of a catastrophically unwell society. Give me a candidate who is proud to represent normal, productive, intelligent people, and maybe then I’ll start getting excited. That’s what Ron DeSantis was supposed to be, and Trump supporters called him a fraud and a sellout for not going to bat hard enough for J6 rioters or agreeing that the 2020 election was stolen.

Our country is fucked.

if anything, Trump voters should be proud to be the jocks and cheerleaders rightly excluding the maladjusted weirdos; playing this “no, you’re not the underdog, I’m the underdog” game is just totally conceding the left’s frame.

The Trump-supporters-as-jocks framing does not match with my own reality or what I have observed. The guy who refreshes Drudge compulsively about the latest minutia in the Hunter Biden story, has an obsession UFOs or conspiracies, or reads Ayn Rand strikes me as more Asperger's or neuro-atypical, whereas normie liberals are more conformist or trusting. Rebellious left-wing youth not uncommonly grow up to be normie, conformist liberals. Conservatives go the opposite direction of becoming more distrustful of the system. Even someone like Rush Limbaugh was much more of a nerd than a jock, by being so obsessed with politics and broadcasting, despite his cigars and other props intended to convey a care-free masculinity.

My experience in youth politics is basically that more extreme people get in either direction, more likely they're to be a nerd or otherwise maladjusted. Normies tend to be centrists, though there are nerds of all stripes. Not a particularly mindblowing observation, I know.

Our country is fucked.

It really isn't. It will be ok if Biden wins and it will be ok if Trump wins and it will be ok if Haley or DeSantis wins. For the vast majority of people life will not change much in any of those cases. Taxes might rise or fall immigration might rise or fall, but the political fallout overall will be more theatre than anything else. For 95% of people in the country, the differences will be actually tiny.

Our country is fucked.

agree it's not. people say this every four years and then lo and behold things go on. It is changing, no doubt, but this is not the same as its destruction. Metrics such as GDP and others remain strong.

This would be more believable if we hadn't gone through the entire Covid debacle, where one side was utterly hellbent on following a set of barely-supported policy guidelines with large amounts of ideologically motivated reasoning and would have imposed these guidelines on the Federal level had they had the levers of power at the time.

And so, we have a clear, stark example of a situation where the leadership of the country can have direct impact on the lives of most of the population, where literal TRILLIONS of dollars can get flung around depending on who controls the pursestrings.

So yeah, its fair to think that the country could be made better or worse off depending on who won.

Now, CARING too much when you, individually, cannot impact the outcome is a different matter.

Except most of the lockdowns by governors happened while Trump was President. And was the one who signed the CARES act (2.2 trillion dollars and the largest stimulus package in US history), the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and another 900 billion in the December Appropriations act. When Biden passed his 1.9 trillion stimulus package in Feb 2021, Trump wanted bigger direct payments not smaller!

If you want to say that governors made a big difference, I would agree with you. But the actions taken by Trump and Biden were pretty similar overall. And the discussion we are having is the difference the president makes to the standard person.

Vaccine Mandates and penalties were one of the major flashpoints.

Biden tried imposing them nationally.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-lloyd-austin-e4047962b92087be278c6886e2e2d0c5

Biden had opposed the Republican-backed provision, agreeing with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that lifting the mandate was not in the best interests of the military, according to White House officials. But he ultimately accepted GOP demands in order to win passage of the legislation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Independent_Business_v._Occupational_Safety_and_Health_Administration

In September 2021, President of the United States Joe Biden announced his administration would be promulgating a vaccination or test mandate for all private companies with 100 or more employees. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced its Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) on November 5, 2021.

Biden also tried to pull the student loan forgiveness card a couple times.

https://www.ncsl.org/state-legislatures-news/details/supreme-court-strikes-down-student-loan-forgiveness-program

He used the Pandemic as the justification in that one:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, which was declared to be a national emergency, the Department of Education suspended student loan repayments. In August 2022, a few weeks before President Joe Biden declared the pandemic over, the education secretary received a memorandum from the Office of the General Counsel determining that the HEROES Act “grants the Secretary authority that could be used to effectuate a program of targeted loan cancellation directed at addressing the financial harms of the COVID–19 pandemic.”

Even if I grant that Biden and Trump's approaches were similar in many ways, the ways in which they were different are pretty damn salient.

Sure, but I'll note that you used the word tried multiple times there. My argument is not that Trump and Biden are the same, it's that the office of President is much more limited than people think. Biden trying and failing to do something, that Trump didn't even try to do has exactly the same outcome. The thing does not get done. So the difference in actuality was vaccine mandates for the military. Which the link says affected 8,400 servicemen/women.

If the Presidency gave you unlimited power then the differences between a Trump and Biden presidency would be huge, I agree. But it is highly constrained, so when it comes down to it, their differences of what they actually did was I maintain pretty small.

Biden trying and failing to do something, that Trump didn't even try to do has exactly the same outcome. The thing does not get done.

If you're the victim of an 'attempted' murder I think you still will have certain rational opinions about the perpetrator who tried to kill you but failed.

I just think it's odd to make the argument that it 'doesn't matter' when we've got a recent example of how much it can matter.

Which still subsumed by the point that one shouldn't worry too much about it because the factors we can control have little influence on that particular outcome.

If you're the victim of an 'attempted' murder I think you still will have certain rational opinions about the perpetrator who tried to kill you but failed.

Again, that is fine, I am not saying that having preferences between them is a problem. And it's absolutely fine to prefer the person who didn't even try to do X in the first place. That makes perfect sense!

My very narrow point is the system has built in rails, and those rails in general mean, that in practice, the difference presidents make to their citizens as opposed to the difference the legislatures, governors et al make is actually pretty small. And much, much smaller than most people think. A combination of the deep state, federalism, separation of powers and so on contributes to this.

Many effects of the president are downstream. If the president pushes a trade deal, or energy policy, or whatever, you're not going to see new prices and changes in the economy the next day; it's going to take a while. Even something like picking Supreme Court justices isn't going to have an effect the next day.

This is just demonstrably untrue. Have you considered that some of us believe that current levels of mass immigration are an existential threat to the future of this country? That whether or not DEI and affirmative action programs expand or retract will have a measurable and significant effect on the efficacy of our institutions and infrastructure? That one presidential candidate is more likely than another to create the conditions that will plunge the country into a large-scale war?

How exactly is immigration an existential threat to America?

This is just demonstrably untrue.

It can't be demonstrably untrue, because whether the country is fucked or not is not an objective question. It's a subjective one. You think it is, I do not.

I think it is better than it was 50 years ago. I think tomorrow will be better than today no matter who is president, because most of the changes have nothing to do with who is president. Who is president is downstream of cultural change, not upstream.

In other words if people turn against DEI or AA in then it will go no matter who is elected president. The president is a figure head, a lightning rod, a symptom, not a cause.

It can't be demonstrably untrue, because whether the country is fucked or not is not an objective question. It's a subjective one. You think it is, I do not.

I’m not saying it’s demonstrably true that the country is fucked. You’re of course correct that this is subjective.

I’m saying that it’s demonstrably untrue that 95% of Americans’ lives will not change at all depending on who is elected president. The president does obviously have the power to affect the day-to-day lives of citizens. The government’s response to COVID, for example, had very significant and tangible effects on the day-to-day lives of nearly every American. If you want to argue that any imaginable president would have handled the situation in exactly the same way, you have to explain why other countries’ COVID responses varied so significantly.

In other words if people turn against DEI or AA in then it will go no matter who is elected president.

Americans have opposed AA in large numbers for decades now. Multiple states - including California - passed ballot measures and laws to ban it. This did not have a significant effect on its spread or its implementation, because the ban was trivially easy for institutions to skirt around by appealing to the logical extrapolation of the Civil Rights Act, and to the decisions of unelected judges, including ones nominated by past presidents. Very very few Americans support DEI, and yet it is ubiquitous in both the public and private spheres.

The president is a figure head, a lightning rod, a symptom, not a cause.

Woodrow Wilson was elected on a promise to keep Americans out of the First World War; less than six months later, American soldiers were dying in Europe. Ronald Reagan’s voter base largely opposed mass immigration, yet Reagan himself signed the largest amnesty of illegal immigrants in American history. Presidents can simply lie about their intentions, or change their mind after being elected. It’s simply not true that they are merely catspaws of public opinion.

The government’s response to COVID, for example, had very significant and tangible effects on the day-to-day lives of nearly every American.

Did the response vary much between Trump and Biden? I would argue not much. Trump championed the vaccine etc. etc. The fact that different countries react differently does not mean changing the president within the same country changes much! The difference is confounded by different government, different history, different "deep states" etc.

I think you are making my point for me. Regardless of who was elected in before WW1 Wilson or someone else, America would have almost certainly ended up at war. Who was president was largely not important. Do you think Wilson was lying about being isolationist? Or was it simply that the president is simply not that important? Even a man who promised to keep the US out, could not do so. And you want to argue the president really makes a difference?

Only once people are REALLY against something (not just wishy-washy against it, but still go on as normal) will the establishment change. Who the people vote for as president is a symptom of that feeling, but it doesn't mean it is enough in and of itself, it's just one signal. Reagan enacted the amnesty but tied it to making it illegal to hire illegal immigrants. He said he wanted to eliminate the incentive for illegal immigration. But that is similar to stances he took in 1980 before he was elected. Ergo, it seems his immigration stance did not dissuade voters from picking him. They may even have agreed with his stance that, spending money trying to get rid of current immigrants was a waste and only be disincentivizing future immigration could change happen.

Consider Macron moving to the right on immigration et al, because there have been more than just votes. Your president can stay the same and public feeling can be strong enough then so to will the president.

Only once people are REALLY against something (not just wishy-washy against it, but still go on as normal) will the establishment change. Who the people vote for as president is a symptom of that feeling, but it doesn't mean it is enough in and of itself, it's just one signal.

It's not just a symbol, it is one of the mechanisms holding people in check, a ritual people perform that has 'given them a say in how the country is run', enforcing acceptance of the legitimacy of the election process and also making them complicit. The shit will really hit the fan when the people give up on voting as worthless imo.

Sure, but as pointed out people still supported Reagan even if they were against illegal immigration, because in reality people care about more than one thing. It's only when one thing begins to be the reason why people vote or don't vote for someone does it actually realistically matter. If you heard Reagan speak about immigration in 1980 and voted for him anyway, then clearly illegal immigration is not really a big enough issue for you to switch your support. You have to make trade offs on which values are important to you. So, his supporters had other things they prioritized (primarily the economy).

If illegal immigration had really been a huge deal for people Reagan likely would not have been the nominee in 81 indeed both Reagan and Bush in 1980 advocated for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. If it had been the top issue, someone else with more hawkish immigration positions would have been the pick no?

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If you want to argue that any imaginable president would have handled the situation in exactly the same way, you have to explain why other countries’ COVID responses varied so significantly.

I'm sure you are aware that there are many other people in the government and adjacent to it besides the president. People that don't change much between term changes in USA, but are completely different in other countries. You're also aware that other countries operate under different arrangements of those people and different laws that take various lengths of time to change, when they can be changed at all.

You know all this, so why not skip to the point and explain why you believe the president has more influence on the covid response than all the rest of that?

I say this all as someone who voted for Trump in 2020 and who will vote for him again this November, assuming he’s the GOP nominee. I just hate liars and cope. The people in power in Washington DC and in the media and academia are certainly not Chads and Stacys. They were not jocks and cheerleaders. They see themselves as champions of the marginalized and disempowered, the same way that [the Trump who exists only the minds of his ardent supporters] does. Oppositional populism is a great way to drum up votes and guilt your way into power, but it’s also the sign of a catastrophically unwell society. Give me a candidate who is proud to represent normal, productive, intelligent people, and maybe then I’ll start getting excited. That’s what Ron DeSantis was supposed to be, and Trump supporters called him a fraud and a sellout for not going to bat hard enough for J6 rioters or agreeing that the 2020 election was stolen.

Excellent post and I really enjoy your point, but something I think you are missing in your overall argument: everyone who is heavily involved in politics, especially the extremely online and out of the Overton kind like MartyrMade, are categorically losers. Normies just don't get involved in that kind of thing. I've been to GOP fundraising lunches and ProgressiveCoalition fundraising dinners in the last year, and both were full of freaks and geeks.

To move out of high school movies and to Tolstoy instead. Fat bastard Pierre Bezukhov is political, nerdy, reading, questioning everything around him. Legitimately born young nobles and military officers Prince Andrei and Nikolai engage in none of those activities, they merely do what they are told to do, their politics are their parents' politics or their teachers' politics or their classes' politics. Your political types are going to identify with Pierre, the weirdo, the nerd. Whether they are right wing or left wing, that's the archetype of the vast majority of political writers/commenters/tweeters/bloggers.

MartyrMade's Darryl is, affectionately, a weirdo. There's something delightful about listening to him talk to Jocko when they podcast together, the contrast between Darryl who has every weird conspiracy bullshit theory on tap and Jocko who's like "really bro no fucking way I didn't know that!" His perception of society is still anchored in that high school identity as a nerd/loser.

But so was any leftist hack podcaster! They were both the dorks in the back of the classroom! The class of people who write about politics all perceive themselves as primarily dorks.

Sorry to hijack a little.

One of the miracles of my life was becoming aware that I was a weird nerd at the end of High School, realizing it was a life sentence of neurosis, and very deliberately Chad-ing it up in college (Frat, did a sport). Fuck "be true to yourself" nonsense. I had leaned into maladaptive behavior for all of my adolescence and it didn't make me feel good. So, I changed it.

What's jarring to me in professional life now is seeing people who did something similar (albeit with maybe less conscious direction) flip their persona like a light switch based on the immediate social context. Product Managers in Big Tech, generally speaking, are much, much more likely to be MBA Chad/Stacey types. Yet, the second they don't get their way or face some sort of adverse group dynamic, they start sperging out with statements like "I know I don't "get it" like all of you do, I'm just trying to do my best here with what's a really awkward situation for me!" Contrast this with one of the better PMs I've ever worked with - a literal ex college football quarterback - who would often wrap up meetings with "Cool, cool! Computer dudes get after it!" And they would. Happily. Because he was being honest.

Please give the following article a read. I don't think you've got an accurate picture or understanding of Trump and the forces animating his campaign. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-21/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-resentment/

Specifically, please pay attention to the part where he outlines the salary/wage class and the distinctions between them. It neatly answers and resolves the quandaries you've posted.

For those interested, the "managerial revolution" expands this a lot further. A dash of "elite theory" spices it up.

In the class framework of that article (which is a valuable one), Trump's best demographics are small business owners and retirees - the groups which together make up the vast majority of the investor class. He clearly does better with the wage class than the salary class, but the idea that the wage class is his core vote is incorrect, unless you skew the numbers by insisting that non-white members of the wage class don't count. Considered in the round, the wage class are still swing voters.

The thing that both the MAGA right and movement conservatism have in common (to the point that it is no longer easy to tell them apart) is that they are the "country party" in the classic court-vs-country dynamic - their core constituency is local elites in unfashionable places who think the national elite is dissing them. The woman who waits tables at an Arby's in Peoria thinks she is getting the short end of the stick. Whether she ends up blaming her asshole boss or the smug librulelites on TV more is the meat and drink of court vs country politics.

The nature of the American culture war is that there is a large-enough-to-matter minority of white men who are not local elites but who see themselves as local elites because they are white and male - they are mostly "wage class" and make up the noisiest subset of Trump supporters. (They are also the reason why "country party" right-wing politics works better in the US than in other countries even pre-Trump). But the core Trump voter is rich enough to own a boat.

I was skeptical of this but it really was well worth the click.

The Trump phenomenon does not have a single rationale, but many, some of which are contradictory.

They want law and order but also to tear down the establishment. Some support Trump because he's not Hillary/Biden etc. Some see Trump as bringing fresh air to politics and an alternative to politics as usual. Some support him because he exudes coolness or owns the libs. There is no particular clique that maps to trump.

The Trump phenomenon does not have a single rationale, but many, some of which are contradictory.

They want law and order but also to tear down the establishment.

These are not contradictory goals at all.

To echo Fruck, I think you've unfortunately got twisted round the axle on the specifics of the analogy and it makes it hard to engage with the rest of your post as a consequence.

It's an analogy man. Do you understand why the dorks and losers would cheer for the linebacker? Then you understand why people cheer for Trump. You are reading far too much into it. And you are demonstrating a problem I have mentioned before - high school is forever now. You have so firmly and readily mapped your old high school cliques onto the political demographics that an analogy using an opposite framing agitates you. Also you are a Trump voter by your own admission. Trump voters are people like you.

But it’s a poor analogy precisely because it doesn’t actually resemble observable reality. Analogizing Democrats to jocks and cheerleaders, and Republicans to freaks and geeks, only works if the actual ground-level reality isn’t the opposite of that. Literal (white) jocks and cheerleaders, in real life, are in fact Trump voters. The kids who are the most likely to be bullied in school are future Democrat voters who despise Trump - in many cases precisely because they see him as the guy who will help jocks and cheerleaders persecute the losers!

The linked tweet could have chosen to analogize Trump voters to any number of different things or groups, but instead he chose the one group which is least like Trump voters.

Who are the cool kids after say, 30 years old? Writers at the NYT, Hollywood folks, tech titans. Almost universally liberals, almost universally wouldn't desire to be surrounded by deplorables.

The analogy is about group dynamics, not specifically mapping political group A to high school clique Y.

I think it depends on how you’re thinking about the bullies vs bullied. I’ll concede that the jocks/nerds version of the story isn’t a good fit. On the other hand, the social acceptance and power dynamics do absolutely fit. Liberals are not classical jocks. They don’t do competitive sports or things along those lines. What they are, though, are the cool kids and the empowered kids. They’re the ones “normies” want to impress. They’re the ones who can define what good and bad taste are. They’re the ones that marketing campaigns want to appeal to. And MAGA tend to attract those who don’t fit in. Being a smug, highly educated (or certified as such) agnostic who works in socially conscious companies “making a difference” is cool. Being a religious person who works in a conventional job with no overt social mission is not.

If you were to map this onto Breakfast Club, think of the DC elites as the princess girl. Always dressed in expensive and fashionable clothes, eating the hip new thing (which in the 1980s was sushi apparently), always trying to make sure she fit in. That’s the DC elite — including the snobbish attitude. The MAGAs would be perhaps Bender or the Jock. The dork is too busy on hobbies and interests to care. And I suppose the artists are just hanging out making art and being weird.

If you were to map this onto Breakfast Club

Why the heck would I want to do that? The whole point of the Breakfast Club is that all the kids in detention are outcasts, some of them more obviously than others. It is a movie about how generation X was (as Strauss and Howe put it) the most aborted, most abandoned, most latchkey generation in history, or how (as Tyler Durden put it) our Great Depression is our lives. Claire (the "princess girl") is going off the rails because she is collateral damage in her parent's acrimonious big-money divorce. Andrew (the "popular jock") is beclowning himself with performative toxic masculinity because he thinks he won't be respected by his father if he doesn't.

Politics isn't like that. None of the Breakfast Club characters (probably not even Vice Principal Vernon) would be a serious political candidate in adulthood. There is a reason why Generation X is underrepresented in Congress and America keeps electing borderline-senile Boomer Presidents rather than letting an Xer into the White House.

All 5 students plus the janitor in the Breakfast Club are more likely than not to be Trump voters in adulthood simply because they are white and live in the Chicago suburbs. Vernon would as well if he weren't a union teacher. Claire is unhappily married to a man who owns a car dealership (or divorced from him, in which case she votes Dem like Julia) and Andrew is a corn ethanol salesman at ADM.

Let's accept at face value that White jocks / cheerleaders support Trump. Then I still think there's a category confusion hiding in the insistence that analogies should "resemble observable reality."

I'll give an example. Say my friend were deciding between studying Russian and studying Hindi. Now say I tell him he should study Hindi because, per Wayne Gretzky, great hockey players "skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."

Would it really undermine my argument to learn that more great hockey players study Russian than Hindi?

No, because you are not making any claims about any intrinsic qualities of hockey players in particular. You’re using “skate to where the puck has been” in a metaphorical sense to refer to the geopolitical future of India vis-a-vis Russia.

In the analogy made by Martyr Made, though, he is claiming that there are specific intrinsic qualities of Trump supporters: marginalized, unpopular, needing to be “rescued” by a defecting member of the well-adjusted mainstream. He is also claiming that there are intrinsic qualities of Trump’s enemies: popular, privileged, good-looking and well-adjusted.

However, the observable reality is that the relative distribution of these qualities is actually reversed. Trump supporters are, in fact, more likely to be popular and socially-well-adjusted members of their local communities. Meanwhile, a massive part of the Democrats’ coalition is people who are outside of the core American mainstream: racial/sexual minorities, neurotic middle-aged women, childless adults. These people may be feted by the media, and affirmative action has allowed them to carve out patronage networks within certain PMC industries, but they are in fact still the people who got bullied, and still the people who feel alienated by the American culture that existed at any time before the election of Barack Obama.

No dude, literal white jocks and cheerleaders are both. They are democrats and republicans. The denizens of Madison Ave aren't geeks right? Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansen aren't dorks are they? But they are all democrats! I realise now my last two sentences in my previous post might have appeared to be a slam on you, but I meant it the opposite way - you were a nerdy theatre guy right? And you are a Trump voter! Are you the only freak?

There's something weird to me when people draw a line from "high school jock" to "Hollywood actor". The future hollywood actor during high school is a drama class geek. The jock, if he is highly successful, does not become Chris Evans - he becomes Tom Brady.

The line I draw is from the envied in high school to the envied in popular culture.

Are pro athletes not envied in popular culture?

They are, yes. As are celebrities. Both are considered lucky and not deserving their success by the envious. I think whether they play football or superheroes is just a distraction.

literal white jocks and cheerleaders are both. They are democrats and republicans.

My sense is that the partisan split among white adults who are former football players or cheerleaders leans heavily Republican, although you’re correct that there would still be millions of Democrat voters who fit this demographic profile. As a total percentage of Trump’s versus Biden’s constituency, though, I would say that white “former popular kids” are a much larger part of the former than of the latter.

Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansen aren't dorks are they?

As Hollywood actors, they’re highly atypical of their general demographic profile. (Johansson is also Jewish, so it should actually be very unsurprising that she’s not a Trump fan.) The incentives pushing Hollywood actors toward expressing liberal views are so strong that it’s nearly impossible to get a sense of what these people truly believe in their heart of hearts.

you were a nerdy theatre guy right? And you are a Trump voter! Are you the only freak?

I am extremely atypical. The percentage of American adults with theatre arts degrees who voted for Trump has to be less than 10%.

Scarlett Johansen and Chris Evans are highly atypical of the stereotype of jocks and cheerleaders as conceived by millenials, absolutely. But they literally are the Hollywood actors today. Nerd culture has been In so long it's passe, coolness no longer has any tie to intelligence - or if it does, it's a positive association.

I'm not saying stereotypes aren't real, or that jocks are Democrats and nerds are Republican now, and I bet that a lot of republicans and democrats would agree with your assessments of the demographics, but that is the map, not the territory. The democrats hate outcasts and love the elite just as much as republicans, the only difference is how they spin it.

(Johansson is also Jewish, so it should actually be very unsurprising that she’s not a Trump fan.)

Yeah, it makes perfect sense for Jews to be prejudiced against the guy with a Jewish son-in-law who moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jeruselam.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense for Jews to be prejudiced against the guy [...] who moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jeruselam.

I believe the line "this, but unironically"? I think it's safe to say many people are unhappy when people take active steps to fulfill a prophecy when a popular version of that prophecy includes, among other undesirable effects, the destruction of their faith:

Many also believe that as this occurs, there will be an ongoing and mass conversion of Jews to Christ.

A lot of the Christians beliefs of what the "second coming" will look like are not great for the Jews. Or, really, any non-Christians, but the Jews in particular get used as pawns and then screwed over.

Aren't we talking about the really insanely pro-Semitic Christians here? The ones who go and provide free labour in Israel? The annotated Scofield bible preaches Zionism and Israeli sycophancy: https://www.wrmea.org/2015-october/the-scofield-bible-the-book-that-made-zionists-of-americas-evangelical-christians.html

Evangelicals love Jews, Jews hate Evangelicals: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/03/15/americans-feel-more-positive-than-negative-about-jews-mainline-protestants-catholics/pf_2023-03-15_religion-favorability_00-08/

You know why several of us think you're putting on an act? Posts like this.

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Once you've decided that support for Israel is anti-semitic, you might want to reconsider the rabbit hole you've dived into.

I’m not arguing whether or not Jews’ antipathy toward Trump makes sense or not. It’s just a fact that Jews voted overwhelmingly (I believe it was 80-20) in favor of both Clinton and Biden.

Give me a candidate who is proud to represent normal, productive, intelligent people, and maybe then I’ll start getting excited.

The thing is, what is your notion of "normal, productive people"? Is it the guy in a white collar job writing code for some big company? Is it a farmer? (and there's a huge difference between the notion of the 'Ma and Pa Kent' style farmstead and modern agribusiness). Is it the guy who would have worked on the old style union assembly line job, which is now pretty much outsourced where it's not union-busted (for good or ill depending on your view of the unions)? Is it the Rust Belt and flyover state small towns dying on their feet because all the young people move away?

Everybody is appealing to the 'squeezed middle', the middle-class vote. The people on the margins, who speaks up for them? The Democrats, or a section of them, have gone for the minorities, but who is taking the side (even in appearance only) of the blue collar lower class guys (and gals)? That's Trump. Not DeSantis, though that's who he was supposed to be. Maybe he'll pull it out yet. I sort of like Nikki Haley, but she does need to get a position on something and stick to it because right now she's looking like Hillary Part II with "just tell me what opinion you want me to have" and getting in a stupid slap-fight with Ramaswamy, who is not impressing me and is certainly not 'blue collar rubes' material (honestly, if he reminds me of anyone, it's Andrew Yang).

Trump, for all his crassness and vulgarity, indeed because of it, does seem to be the guy who's "hey, you in the back there, who would have been one of the normal, productive, people had the economy not moved on, yeah wanna make America great again?" more than any of the rest of them.

Everybody is appealing to the 'squeezed middle', the middle-class vote. The people on the margins, who speaks up for them? The Democrats, or a section of them, have gone for the minorities,

This a funny and true observation. Politicians are always suck in a certain time (e.g. 1930s or 2008) or track in which the majority of Americans are struggling, but most Americans have a rather good standard of living, for all SES-levels.

I think many Trump supporters really do see themselves as the underdogs being picked on by Chads and Stacies, and that is a common perception even here: many, many posts are devoted to how the "Elites" (whether that means liberals, Democrats, Jews, the media, all of the above, whoever) are the popular kids picking on the losers.

However, this is blatantly at odds with the original core appeal of Trump, which is that he was a champion of normal, well-adjusted, classic and confident America, here to take the country back from the freaks and faggots and pencil-necks who have essentially usurped control through subterfuge and used that power to resentfully force their unpopular obsessions on the mass of normal popular people.

Thank you for an example of an acceptable use of slurs, since recently a number of people have been claiming not to understand when they can and cannot use words like "faggot." If you were directly calling Democrats, or the "Elite," or whoever, "faggots," I would mod that as being inflammatory and boo outgroup. It would be little more than namecalling: "My enemies are faggots." Not because we don't allow people to use "faggot" or other slurs, but because we don't allow namecalling and unnecessary antagonism. However, using it to represent what other (hypothetical) people think isn't going to get a warning for using "no-no words."

This would be an interesting use of Chat GPT to see if it can tell the difference between a slur used for rhetorical effect or pejoratively

Dollars to donut holes says that ChatGPT understands the use-mention distinction but has been explicitly programmed not to apply it to racial slurs.

Not because we don't allow people to use "faggot" or other slurs, but because we don't allow namecalling and unnecessary antagonism. However, using it to represent what other (hypothetical) people think isn't going to get a warning for using "no-no words."

"I imagine my outgroup would use slurs" really should be prohibited. It at least violates "Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be", "Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument", and "Don't be egregiously obnoxious". But since it's put in the mouth of Trump supporters, it's okay.

Because "faggot" is considered to be an extremely bad slur to use, accusing someone of using it without a direct quote is likewise extremely bad. If using it directly is so bad that you can ban people for it, using it indirectly by putting it in the mouths of your outgroup should lead to a ban too. The fact that such things are permissible is a double standard. (Which is enabled by the fact that many slurs that leftists use such as "racist" are considered acceptable, so the right can't accuse the left in the way that the left can accuse the right.)

"Racist" is not a slur. It may be an insult or an unwarranted accusation. Saying "You're a racist" would probably get a warning. Saying "That's racist" would generally be an allowable expression of opinion.

The comparison isn't calling someone a racist, it's saying "those leftists call people racists". Which is the right-wing version of "Trump supporters call people faggots". Except that it's acceptable for progressives to call people racists, so the accusation is useless.

There obviously are leftists who call people racists, and Trump supporters who call people faggots. Whether or not the two statements are equivalent (I don't personally believe they are), in themselves, I would not find reason to mod either one.

Because "faggot" is considered to be an extremely bad slur to use

No it’s not. It’s offensive to some people but most think it’s rather crass.

Because "faggot" is considered to be an extremely bad slur to use, accusing someone of using it without a direct quote is likewise extremely bad.

I feel like there's a large range in how bad this word is depending on where you are in the US, in contrast to the other double-g word which is more dependent on in which race you belong in the US. Where I grew up, this word was barely a hair beneath "nigger" in terms of how unacceptable they were, but as an adult, I learned that there are entire communities of people elsewhere in the US who use the term as freely as any other slur. Which is bad IMHO, but doesn't make it an extremely bad slur to use. So I think depicting someone as using the slur could reflect just a different culture around the term rather than some judgment about the people throwing about the term.

I’m not criticizing my outgroup; I am involved in multiple group chats where people, including myself, use that word without feeling bad about it. I wouldn’t call somebody that on the Motte, because I respect the norms of this community. But I want to be very clear that I don’t think it reflects particularly poorly on Trump voters (or anybody else) if they use that word.

This honestly doesn't seem like a good use. If they weren't signalling that they were on the same side, it would read exactly like putting some very antagonistic words in the outgroup's mouth.

If you care about the things that Trump's base cares about (immigration, America first, bringing industry back, stopping the 'woke' agenda, curbing the establishment/Cathedral-state, etc. ) , then for all of Trump's faults, the other options may be even less unappealing:

Haley -- do I need to even explain why she is bad? She is an awful combination of 1) having the worst of neocon foreign policy 2) being an authoritarian on free speech issues 3) being weak against the woke agenda 4) being cynical 5) being dumb as bricks. Desantis -- naive boy scout who is going to be eaten alive. He simply doesn't have the charisma or the guts to take on the establishment. Ramaswamy -- I think he has a lot of trouble overcoming the "who is this guy" problem. Both in the sense of having low name recognition and no history of being a public figure, but also in the sense of how did this Harvard/Yale/Goldman Sachs guy come to be giving Trumpist talking points -- is he sincere or does he think there is a market to be tapped?

The bet with Trump is that maybe he learned from his mistakes and won't staff his administration with GOP establishment types who wanted to cave in on issues and stab Trump in the back.

Is it likely that Trump can learn from his mistakes at age 77 and be a better president this time around? Is it likely that he can overcome is own personal history of not having the back of the people who supported him or worked form him? Very doubtful.

The basic reality is that right now all the presidential options are terrible.

Eight years later, the “crackhead taxi driver” analogy still holds.

Imagine you have a destination in mind. You hail an Uber, 4.9 stars, great vehicle, clean. You tell them where you want to go and they look at you like you have three heads. And after realizing you’re serious, they flat out refuse to take you there. No matter how much you beg or attempt to reason with them or bribe them.

So you call up a Lyft. 4.6 stars, nice vehicle. Same outcome, first they think you’re joking, then you’re crazy, and finally an idiot.

On and on it goes. Seven vehicles later, you hail an unlicensed taxi cab. The driver opens the door, it smells like piss inside. There are empty beer cans and takeout containers strewn around the vehicle. You tell him where you want to go, the driver looks at you for a minute with his cigarette still in his mouth and says “Fuck it, let’s go. Hop in.”

If you’re a Trump supporter, hearing that you just jump in. So far it’s you’re only shot to get where you’re going, it’s getting late and you’re getting desperate.

Honestly? Don’t blame anyone who chose that way. With the benefit of hindsight, I think they were absolutely right.

Agreed except that I want to point out that the "serious person" Trump alternative Nikki Haley is every bit of the crackhead that Trump is, in her own way. Saying something "Hamas attacked because it was Putin's birthday" is unhinged and betrays an attitude that would be really dangerous to have in the nation's chief diplomat. Of course, Trump chose as diplomat once, so a pox on him too :-P

first they think you’re joking, then you’re crazy, and finally an idiot.

If multiple taxi drivers refuse to take you to your desired location, and the only one that agrees is a crackhead, isn't it exceedingly likely that not going there is a sensible decision and if you continue to insist then you’re joking, crazy or an idiot?

Probably! But history is made at the margins.

For example, I bet if you ask four random cabbies in Manhattan in the 1940s to take you to Harlem, it’s not crazy to think that most of all of them would reject you. Some percentage of the refusal is rational, concern about crime etc, but certainly not all of it. Maybe not even most of it.

And more importantly, there were non crazy reasons to want to go to Harlem in the 1940s, lots of them. There are plenty of good reasons to go to Cuidad Juarez today, but a lot of people on the US side of the border would refuse.

I think it’s an excellent, but not perfect, analogy.

History is strewn with lots of groups who did and believed things that the majority thought were crazy. Most really were crazy. A smaller percentage weren’t crazy at all with the benefit of hindsight. And sometimes the majority of society were clearly the crazy ones all along.

That’s the risk of living in history, backing the “wrong side” in hindsight, but we don’t have hindsight in the present.

This is the reason why you shouldn't base your moral opinions on what you think "the right side of history" will be. You'll probably be wrong.

It's kind of like trying to fully max out utility, only not only do you have to account for all the pleasure and pain that exists everywhere in the present, but you have to develop actual clairvoyance too.

"The right side of history" is an insane justification for any moral stance, because of its uncertainty. When religious powers made eschatological predictions, they at least did so with the justification that omnipotent, omnescient powers made an infallible prediction that certain moral stances would lead to ruin. When secular people talk about "the right side of history," their argument rests on the authority of social opprobrium (which, for every reason in the book, you'd think lefties would be less likely to think of as reliable) and on utterly unreliable predictions of the future, as every such prediction will be.

Fools base their opinions on what people around them think they should believe. And it stands to reason that even greater fools base their opinions on what they think maybe people will believe at some unspecified point in the future.

I’m just saying, I a hundred percent agree with you. Which is why “Wrong side” is in scare quotes, I absolutely don’t frame this that way.

To play along with the metaphor, it probably means either as you suggested ("perhaps that's a bad destination") or that civilized taxis aren't interested in serving "people like you". I wouldn't be surprised if the people in question see it more like the latter.

If we lived in a normal world, yes, but we seem to be living in some absurdist "everyone pretends to not see the elephant in the room" comedy. The desired destination is "stop immigration, bring jobs back to America, cool it with the global empire that doesn't benefit people at home" and a bunch of cultural issues from "stop transing kids" to "stop teaching racism". Now, if the taxi driver came out and said that's an actually insane destination, we could have an actual conversation, but what we get instead is the conversation Truman Burbank would have had if he asked the taxi driver to take him somewhere outside of Pleasantville.

EDIT: changed the analogy to one that's more fitting.

Excellent analogy; elite political parties are only interested in driving you around a highly astroturfed overton window, and if you claim to want something else they'll try to gaslight you that you really wanted something they want. "I want to stop mass immigration" "Gotcha, we'll get you some tax cuts!" "No, I want to stop mass immigration" "Ohhh, sorry I misheard you. We'll increase the defense budget, just like you asked, don't worry".

I love this analogy, the Truman show is a perfect encapsulation of our incredibly stupid media ecosystem that has penned in an increasingly small amount of people into epistemic closure.

In the taxi analogy, trump haters act like they are requesting we go to the city of dis on the 7th circle of hell, when we really want to go to like… upstate New York. Can you imagine if every cabby you asked to go to upstate New York cried or pissed and shit themselves or immediately tried to change the subject or flat out refused to talk to you afterwards? I imagine That’s a common feeling being a Trump supporter, like “What the fuck is wrong with these people? I just want to go to Connecticut from Manhattan.”

The value is in the judicial appointments , which can long outlast him and have far reaching implications. Maybe a single piece of legislation that slows illegal immigration would be optimistic.

The Steelman is that it's the only vote that 'matters' if you're someone outside of the elite power structure.

Putting Trump at the controls as the result of an election win (as opposed to something like an insurrection) is the strongest possible message that "We do not like how the political class has managed the government, we want them out of power, and to remind them who is 'actually' in charge of the government."

He is the approximate equivalent of a "none of the above" option when it comes to selecting from the various candidates that the Mainstream parties are trying to shove down our throats. Well, not equivalent because he is not a void, he's an actual candidate with a platform, but there's just nobody else who is outside the standard power structure who can provide that option.

This partially explains why he maintains or grows in popularity the harder they bring the hammer down on him. The more the elites/political class express their spite for the man, the stronger the signal that electing him will send. Of course, sending a signal doesn't mean anything actually changes.

Pulling the lever for Haley is a tacit 'approval' of the status quo. You're not registering your voice in the system so much as clicking "Accept" on the Terms and Conditions of the current edifice and its activities. It doesn't 'count' in any real way, as she's fully ingrained in the current power structure and will not modify it's trajectory one bit.

Trump has remained the major Schelling point for everyone who is very much against the status quo and wants to voice that displeasure rather than merely withdraw.

Edit: I would also mention that Bernie Sanders represents a similar sentiment from the left, but in my opinion he folds to the main party too quickly for this purpose.

The elite not liking Trump isn't a bare fact with no implications. The fact that the elite doesn't like Trump means that if Trump gave up all distinctively Trump positions and tried to act like an establishment Republican, it wouldn't work. So there's no chance of Trump trying to appease the Democrats by becoming a "moderate"--he'd just lose his base and he wouldn't get anything.

You can't prove whether Desantis is going to backslide, but you can know that he's able to backslide.

the elite dislike trump so much he is still free despite tons of jan 6th ppl actually being sentenced, some for a long time. I don't think the elite ever hated trump that much. Until 2015 trump was heavily embedded with the entertainment industry. This is narrative to explain why he gets negative media coverage. To the elite, Trump is a tool.

He could have pardoned these people, but he didn't.

It would be some feat to pardon people accused of committing a crime after he wasn't president anymore, are we talking time travel or just precognition here?

Personally I'm just sitting back and watching the circus for entertainment value (which I can do as a non-American, sorry USAians), though I think there must be some miracle in operation this time round because Snopes of all places fact-checked a Trump story (that he had said something which had been misrepresented) and deemed it false! What wonder is this? A favourable decision for Orange Man Bad by Snopes? Keep an eye out for three headed calves and talking dogs!

From scotusblog:

The president can issue a pardon at any point after a crime is committed and before, during or after criminal proceedings have taken place. The president cannot, however, pardon someone for future crimes. A pardon covers both the offender’s conviction for the crime and the sentence for that crime.

On January 7th Trump could have pardoned them all.

I think the confusion is that only some by the 20th had undergone any criminal proceedings. most were unidentified.

Confusion is there because some folks cannot accept that Trump obviously threw his supporters under the bus and have to come up with cope theories why that wasn't what happened.

Presidents have previously granted mass pardons of categories of people without knowing or specifying each named individual. Based on my very layman understanding, I think Trump could have blanket pardoned them.

It would be some feat to pardon people accused of committing a crime after he wasn't president anymore, are we talking time travel or just precognition here?

He was President up until January 20.

It's a nice technical point, isn't it? He was technically president, but he had been beaten in the election. More informed people can tell me if he was still able to issue pardons while the clock on his term was running out. Biden was president-elect and inaugurated on January 21st, so you're saying Trump could have exercised full presidential powers right up until the very last minute?

It's a proud American tradition. The powers of the supreme court are based in a case about midnight appointments. Clinton was issuing pardons and selling off anything that wasn't nailed down until the last possible second.

Yes and yes. It's very common for presidents to issue last-minute pardons, and Trump was no exception.

In his last full day in office, Trump granted 143 pardons and commutations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executive_clemency_by_Donald_Trump#Chronology

Furthermore,

A federal pardon can be issued prior to the start of a legal case or inquiry, prior to any indictments being issued, for unspecified offenses, and prior to or after a conviction for a federal crime

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_United_States#Modern_process

I vaguely remember that he wasn't allowed to talk after Jan 6th. He lost Twitter, I don't remember any press conferences, there was the impeachment, but I don't think he was permitted to talk to the public or sign anything.

Legally he should have been able to issue pardons up until his last day, that is a power the president has. But I don't know if he was allowed near a pen.

He was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Donald_Trump_presidency_(2020_Q4–January_2021)

The start of that article is a shitshow, but the timeline table is relatively solid. He’s very quiet for a couple days, then

  • 8th: signs executive order (XO) 13973 regarding the EPA
  • 10th: issues half-staff order for officer Brian Sicknick
  • 11th: gives Rep. Jim Jordan a medal
  • 13th: signs XO 13974 about Chinese military funding
  • 14th: signs XOs for a Post Office policy and establishing a wildfire committee
  • 15th: some sort of medal ceremony with a Moroccan royal
  • 18th: issued five executive orders. One of these supposedly lifted a travel ban, at least until Biden put it back, but I couldn’t confirm.
  • 19th: signed three final XOs. Also made an official declaration (?) of Uyghur genocide
  • 20th: 73 pardons issued. 70 sentences commuted.

I elided a bunch of actions by his cabinet and by Congress. He was also making speeches and TV appearances in this window.

Thank you for the correction, like I said it was a vague memory.

Trump represents a pent up peasant and heartland burgher rage in a way that no other GOP politician can.

Yes, they want to “own the libs”, but that’s misses out the most important part. They want Donald Trump to own the libs. Owning the libs is important but not essential. Donald Trump is essential. Better Trump is in power and fails than DeSantis is in power and actually succeeds. This is, in effect, the decision that is being made.

But in a wider sense, American conservatives aren’t serious people. They consider forcing impoverished black single mothers to give birth to more children higher priority than ending mass immigration. That considered ending the tiny amount of GDP sent to Ukraine (tying up a longstanding geopolitical foe for years at the cost of zero American lives) more important than ending affirmative action - which only happened because of a 30-year effort by some autistic Jewish guy who couldn’t let it go. These are people who genuinely abhor the pittance spent on America’s empire when it has been the mission of every great Western civilization to conquer, to expand and to rule other lands and peoples.

They live in an imaginary mid century fantasy that is itself a product of Hollywood. They do not aspire to greatness, personally or collectively. Kevin Williamson was right about Trump, and about his supporters. The libs - if he wins again - will be “owned” well and truly for 4 years, and then simply pick up where they left off. Trump doesn’t understand institutions, but his supporters don’t care. The ‘deep state’ will let him spend 4 years in the AG’s office fighting spurious legal cases against his onetime political foes, and all the while the rest of Washington will tick along as usual.

abhor the pittance spent on America’s empire

You think this is about money?

The American empire is the Blue Empire. For the longest time heartland red tribers - which are the only demographic that still serves in the tip of the spear of the army -- have been duped into dying in droves in the name of "empire". Which somehow means making Ukraine safe for pride parades, or teaching Afghan girls how to put condoms on bananas, or creating refugee crises in the Middle East so that we can import mass numbers of Muslim immigrants to live on welfare and vote Democrat. The benefits of empire go to the Blue Tribe (or mostly to a small number of well-connected grifters), the costs accrue overwhelmingly to the Red Tribe.

If real empire was on the table - an empire ruled according to the interests of those who actually helped conquer it - the Red Tribe would sign up in a heartbeat. But that's not exactly what's on offer.

How do the costs only accrue to the Red Tribe? Seems to me the costs are born by everyone except a very select few, plus the foreigners who are actually receiving aid

Only the Red Tribe actually fights in the army.

American conservatives aren’t serious people.

Baby boomer self-described "conservatives" drawing social security and sometimes maybe going to an evangelical church .... are not serious people.

The next generation of conservatives is bringing the motherfucking ruckus especially when compared to their liberal / progressive peers. Mike Gallagher has more foreign policy bonafides than anyone on the Republican campaign trail right now. He is just one of a literal generation of multi-tour combat veterans. He isn't 40 yet (or maybe he's just 40). The fastest growing subset of American Catholics - and traditional Catholics at that - are millenials. Even though I'm not a fan, Look at the subscriber growth of Catholic Joe Rogan. Even the weirdo dissident right online community flows pretty easily to Rogan-Tate-Huber-Jocko LiftBro territory.

The point is, after 2024-2028, I think you'll see the emergence of an American Conservatism that codes strongly and obviously towards traditional male patterns of socialization. The "machismo" of Trump will become laughable compared to basic and common actual badass credentials of, say, Congressman eye patch pirate SEAL. The "family values" double speak of evangelicals working on their second divorce will be trampled by NunCore chicks. Even if the numbers are quite less compared to median pop-culture Americans, I'm not super worried as that later cohort is largely and quickly dropping out of society. The "RETVRN" people are weird and sort of goofy - but I think they might be durable.

Long term, I'm jacked to the TITS! about American conservatism because millenial liberalism / progressive is already a circular firing squad of bewildering self-contradiction.

I just hope the Boomers don't immolate the entire nation before we get there.

There are phonies or pretenders everywhere. Not just evangelicals with divorces , but plenty 'trad' guys with undisclosed 'pharmacological enhancement' . Everything is acting to some degree. The image sold to the public is not reality.

Better Trump is in power and fails than DeSantis is in power and actually succeeds. This is, in effect, the decision that is being made.

few Trump voters would pick Trump if you asked them, "You get Trump but he does nothing and 'fails' or you can get Desantis and he actually does all the things he's promising and 'succeeds'"

even slight exposure to Trump voters, or especially die-hard supporters, makes clear they think Desantis is a fraud who will sell them down the river like so many other Republicans, not that he's just not Trump

American conservatives aren’t serious people

Trump is a reaction to "American conservative" elites being unserious people and, worse, complete losers.

They consider forcing impoverished black single mothers to give birth to more children higher priority than ending mass immigration.

funny enough, the exact opposite of what Trump wanted to do and what caused his support to begin with

trump didn't run on ending abortion in 2016, he made immigration and trade the election topics pretty much single-handedly, and it wasn't the driving message in 2020 either

"trump is a dumb failure and the peasants support him to fail even if they could succeed" may scratch whatever itch you have, but it's nonsense

That considered ending the tiny amount of GDP sent to Ukraine (tying up a longstanding geopolitical foe for years at the cost of zero American lives) more important than ending affirmative action - which only happened because of a 30-year effort by some autistic Jewish guy who couldn’t let it go. These are people who genuinely abhor the pittance spent on America’s empire when it has been the mission of every great Western civilization to conquer, to expand and to rule other lands and peoples.

one, a claim the US or the median American only spends "a pittance" on America's empire is nonsense and attempting to make the entire discussion about "America's empire" as only talking about a couple hundred billion dollars going to Ukraine is dishonest

two, "American conservatives" and Trump supporters are not the same group of people. Many Trump supporters are fine and proud of American empire, they're upset that it's being used to impoverish them while they get no benefit. They were proud when they went over or sent their sons to fight for it. An easy way to see this is when Trump makes comments about the middle eastern wars that we conquered and didn't even get the spoils. Others want a different "American empire"; they don't like seeing their cities and towns gutted and turned into drug-zombieland as their jobs and wealth are shipped overseas and the wealth to the coasts. Very few want the US to not matter on the world stage.

it's not that "Trump supporters" or "American conservatives" don't want "empire," it's that they don't want an "empire" which means getting their sons killed and them impoverished to make Kabul, Baghdad, and Tehran safe for Pride parades all the while making people who hate them fabulously wealthy

three, even if this was an accurate description of the "American conservatives" who support Trump and of the "pittance," trying to portray ending Affirmative action, an institution which may as well be the bedrock of American institutions, and ending sending "a pittance" to a war on the other side of the planet as in the same category of things to prioritize is just silly because one is relatively easily obtainable right now and the other is revolutionary

additionally, the SCOTUS which exists in its current form due heavily in part to Donald Trump, did deliver a blow to Affirmative Action, Inc., in SFFA v Harvard

They do not aspire to greatness, personally or collectively.

a tv show host clown beat the vast political machines of the GOP and Democrat Parties to become President of the United States on the slogan "Make America Great Again" because his supporters wanted to go back to a time they thought America was "great"

a claim these people do not "aspire to greatness, personally or collectively," is simply ridiculous; for some of them, collective greatness is all they have left

your model of Trump supporters and American politics generally is way off

Trump is a reaction to "American conservative" elites being unserious people and, worse, complete losers.

Bingo!

I already linked the editorial in reply to another to another comment in this thread, but I believe Glenn Reynolds hit the nail on the head back in 2016 when he argued that guys like David Brooks and Mitt Romney effectively "Created Trump" through their own fecklessness. When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly. If you make a big show of not representing your constituent's interests, don't be surprised when they drop you for someone else who promises to do so. The Republican Establishment spent the better part of a decade in the late 00s and early teens shitting on their base and then had the chutzpah to be "shocked and appalled" when said base decided that they wanted nothing to do with them anymore.

It was clear from the first debate on that Trump understood gamesmanship and the stakes at play far-far better than anyone else in the room. That's why he was able to run the table on both the Media and Republican Establishment so readily, and it's the reason that a good chunk of his supporters in 2016 voted for him.

To paraphrase Lincoln in reply to demands that Grant be dismissed for drunkenness and insubordination. "He may be a drunk but he's the only general we have who can actually fight."

it's not that "Trump supporters" or "American conservatives" don't want "empire," it's that they don't want an "empire" which means getting their sons killed and them impoverished to make Kabul, Baghdad, and Tehran safe for Pride parades all the while making people who hate them fabulously wealthy

I would not be so sure about this. War has generally been a a popular platform for the right . first-order patriotism/nationalism takes precedent over second-order questions like who profits or whose interests are served. An empire by definition means being global and enforcing its interests abroad.

two, "American conservatives" and Trump supporters are not the same group of people.

If trump were replaced by someone else, his replacement would get probably the same # of votes, so for all intents and purposes they are the same people . Even if you vote for Trump grudgingly, that still is a show of support.

An empire by definition means being global and enforcing its interests abroad.

what the empire looks like or should look like and what are its interest are subjective; part of "the right" soured on the middle east adventures and when asked they tell you why and it's some mix of what I listed: they don't believe the empire benefits them, they don't like what the empire is and who it benefits, and they don't like a lot of what it pushes, consuming their blood and wealth to keep running

If trump were replaced by someone else, his replacement would get probably the same # of votes

no, this couldn't be more wrong; Trump wins because he motivates non and low likely voters to show up when they otherwise wouldn't

the reason why the GOP loses despite great metrics is because they do not motivate voters while Democrats have bottom-up get-out-the-vote machines going in every small city and larger across the United States who deliver ballots to friendly counting centers

in a state like Ohio where Trump won by over 8 points, the last election had a Biden +2 electorate; where did all of the Trump voters go? they didn't show up in his absence

Trump voters are not GOP voters and to the extent they vote GOP it's because Trump gets them to show-up

no, this couldn't be more wrong; Trump wins because he motivates non and low likely voters to show up when they otherwise wouldn't

This presupposes that Trump wins. He lost the popular vote to Dolores Umbridge in 2016 and lost the popular and electoral votes to an empty suit in 2020.

Trump appeals differently to swing voters compared to the Goldman-Aramco Republicans, but it isn't obvious that he appeals more to them. What is clear is that the Republican base prefer Trump to the Goldman-Aramco Republicans that run against him in primaries.

thankfully, the national popular vote isn't how presidents are elected in the United States and the other candidates on deck in 2016 or 2020 would have lost much worse

sorry mottezens, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz weren't going to win in the midwest, some of those states for the first time in over a generation, in 2016 against Hillary Clinton

You just don’t know this. Romney would have won in 2016 against Hilary, he just couldn’t win against Obama (and neither would Trump have been able to).

I don't know that a counterfactual which didn't happen "would have" won in 2016 against Hillary? No, he wouldn't have. A claim that Mitt Romney would have won PA, WI, MI, or even OHIO in 2016, all necessary states to win to win the presidency, when he lost in OHIO by over 3 points to unpopular incumbent with policies so unpopular they caused the largest seat swing for the GOP in 80 years in 2010 is just ridiculous.

No, Mitt isn't winning Ohio in 2016 either after ads hit the TV screens with cry stories of people who lost their pensions because Mitt Romney and Co. bought their companies and gutted them to sell them off to foreigners so they didn't have assets to finance the pool.

your model and info is just way off reality

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You just don’t know this. Romney would have won in 2016 against Hilary,

Speaking of things no one actually knows ...

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Trump also brings out non-regular voters on the other side.

The non-regular voters and non-voters don't split their votes evenly between red and blue; Trump has commanding leads in the non and low-voter turnout demo largely because non-regular voters who lean blue are already well mobilized by Democrat "nonpartisan" get-out-the-vote operations across the US which deliver ballots to friendly counting centers. This is even more true in the midwest, GA, NV, AZ, etc.

The GOP low turn-out Finkelstein strategy of the 1990s doesn't work and hasn't worked in the general for 15+ years. We've seen this strategy fail repeatedly and recently. Despite the best generic ballot in decades, the GOP was able to deliver only a neutered majority in 2022. It's really only still effective at shaping the primaries towards Party derps who then go on to lose.

It's really only still effective at shaping the primaries towards Party derps who then go on to lose

Sounds a bit like the main man himself.

A lot of the electoral issues the GOP has faced over the past 6 years is crazy MAGA candidates winning primaries on Trump's endorsement and then going on to lose the general.

this is simply wrong; low voter turnout doesn't benefit MAGA candidates in primaries, it's the opposite

without MAGA, there are no big GOP victories, especially at the national level

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Truly, a festival of democracy. How can we ever repay Donald?

Better Trump is in power and fails than DeSantis is in power and actually succeeds.

DeSantis isn't making too impressive a showing right now, unless events have moved on, which is rather disappointing after his performance as governor of Florida. Is he now finally deciding to stop trying to be the anti-Trump and come out as his own guy?

They consider forcing impoverished black single mothers to give birth to more children higher priority than ending mass immigration.

Yes, how very terrible it is that those poor, poor black women can't control their own fertility. They just get pregnant, who knows how, maybe the North Wind fertilises them, and unless we have abortion then they will all have twenty kids each with no ability at all not to get knocked up. Hooray for the white saviours making sure they don't have to have the babies even if they have no idea how baby-having happens!

Or maybe black women have intelligence and agency? Nah, can't be, why else would they be having babies via conservatives standing over them with whips forcing them to go out and have sex and not use protection and infallibly get pregnant from each encounter?

It is indeed true that the major reason, by a country mile, for abortion is economic, but tell me this: how is it that the liberal solution to "impoverished black women having babies" is "kill the babies" and not "end the impoverishment"?

DeSantis isn't making too impressive a showing right now, unless events have moved on, which is rather disappointing after his performance as governor of Florida. Is he now finally deciding to stop trying to be the anti-Trump and come out as his own guy?

if not for Trump, DeSantis has the goods to win. It's just that Trump is so dominant.

no, Desantis would lose a general election because he will not motivate needed voters to show up in the must-win mid-west

Desantis is an uncharismatic dork who would have to rely on a grass-roots get-out-the-vote operation, but despite the GOP, Inc. grift hoovering up hundreds of millions, the GOP doesn't have that and won't have that

without Trump, Desantis wouldn't be governor of Florida at all

Trump is his own get-out-the-vote operation who can fill stadiums in small towns in the middle of nowhere

it really is Trump or bust, there is no one else with a chance of winning a general election

But in a wider sense, American conservatives aren’t serious people. They consider forcing impoverished black single mothers to give birth to more children higher priority than ending mass immigration.

How many times does it need to be expressed that a huge chunk of American conservatives are also religious and consider ending what they conceptualize as mass scale baby murder to be extremely serious? Please stop using this like it's some kind of a dunk, all it does is indicate that the person using it like a dunk doesn't have a good mental model of the minds of the people they are trying to dunk on.

If that was their motivation they wouldn't vote for Trump a second time, they already got their judges and Trump has expressed much milder and more reserved pro-life sentiments than many of his contemporaries on the primary ballot.

  • -10

Religious conservatives have reasons for supporting the GOP and being very invested in GOP judicial appointments that go beyond abortion. Notable among them are conscience rights/religious objection, support for parental rights, especially in education, and preventing discrimination against religiously-based organizations by public agencies. And the GOP does in fact deliver on these promises to its conservative Christian base; it's generally easier to live the trad conservative christian lifestyle in red states than blue states, and generally easier in blue states than in western Europe.

The GOP, yes; I'm talking about supporting a different Republican.

Why? Trump delivers on his promises to that section of his base, it’s only fair to give him loyalty in return.

He appointed a conservative Justice when a seat opened up, which is what literally anyone with an R next to their name would have done at the time.

He's been a lot softer on the pro-life message than some of his competitors, it's pretty reasonable to predict he's not the option that would deliver the most on that front.

Of course if your decision metric is 'giving loyalty for past favors' instead of 'doing the thing that will accomplish your goals in the future' then yeah that makes sense.

  1. The real-or-feigned inability to build a mental model of the majority of conservatives that aren't "internet-brained rightoid" is a problem that extends beyond this immediate topic.
  2. To respond to your specific point, I wouldn't expect anyone who got a win that big to immediately change horses. Their choices are between the guy that indirectly got them their biggest wins in 50 years, or more of the same losing strategy. Why wouldn't they vote for him again?

I mean, if they're paying attention: The win was from Mitch McConnell stealing a seat from Obama. Literally any warm body with an R next to their name would have produced the same or better results for the pro-lifers during Trump's term, that's just when the last seat needed happened to open up.

Literally any warm body with an R next to their name

we have decades of history with people with R next to their name who nominated justices who refused to do just that

arguing counterfactuals are nice for the proponents because in practice they're unfalsifiable; no other GOP candidate was going to flip PA, MI, WI, likely even Ohio, and other states to win the presidency in 2016

the corporate neocon grift of GOP, Inc., which had lost elections for over a generation in those states, was somehow going to accomplish what Donald Trump accomplished with a radically different message who near single-handedly made the 2016 election about immigration and trade while explicitly denouncing the idiotic neocon projects to boos from GOP, Inc., stooges

Mitch McConnell blocking Obama from replacing Scalia was likely a conditional to the win, but the rest of your statement is based on counterfactuals supported by an unfalsifiable myth of the great alternative GOP winner which does not exist

yup. There were always better pro-life alternatives. It was clearly obvious in 2015/2016 that Trump was not a pro-lifer

...And yet Trump still managed to be one of, if not the, most Pro-life presidents we've had since the days of Reagan and Carter. I dont recall either of the Bushes participating in the March for Life. Do You?

Trump opposed DeSantis on abortion ban https://apnews.com/article/trump-desantis-abortion-ban-republican-primary-5bdbba55f9c2f328d49b5fbe9727677e

Speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump repeatedly declined to say whether he would support a federal ban on abortion. He said he could “live with” the procedure being banned by individual states or nationwide through federal action, though he said “from a legal standpoint, I think it’s probably better” to be handled at the state level.

Trump has a long history of prevaricating on this issue.

George W. Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act , although it was drafted by Rick Santorum.

And the elder Bush https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/22/us/as-expected-bush-vetoes-bill-that-would-pay-for-some-abortions.html

The evidence would suggest the Bushes are more stridently pro-life compared to Trump.

These are people who genuinely abhor the pittance spent on America’s empire when it has been the mission of every great Western civilization to conquer, to expand and to rule other lands and peoples.

If America actually conquered people instead of experiments in nation-building in the ME or normalizing trade with what would become an even bigger rival, I'm sure the Trumpists would give more credit.

The mission is unclear, greatness doesn't seem to be a likely product but the cost is still perceived by MAGA-types.

The ‘deep state’ will let him spend 4 years in the AG’s office fighting spurious legal cases against his onetime political foes, and all the while the rest of Washington will tick along as usual.

Not if project 2025 succeeds or fails in a way that really blows up. Let's say Trump attempts to "drain the swamp" at the Department of Education. He actually manages to replace some of the management, but the bulk of the staff keeps on following the old processes. "Abolish Title IX", they hear, and come back with a 300 page report "On amending Title IX" that ultimately recommends not doing anything.

In response, Trump posts on X that DoE must be protected from the agents of the deep state that think they run the department. A totally spontaneous peaceful protest of magahats blocks the doors of 400 Maryland Ave and lets in only those federal workers who swear loyalty to the head of the executive, including some IT workers that disable remote access to DoE services. The new rump department quickly passes new regulations that blocks Pell grants, student loans and Title I grants unless the receiving institution can prove they have zero DEI policies in action.

In response, Trump posts on X that DoE must be protected from the agents of the deep state that think they run the department. A totally spontaneous peaceful protest of magahats blocks the doors of 400 Maryland Ave and lets in only those federal workers who swear loyalty to the head of the executive, including some IT workers that disable remote access to DoE services. The new rump department quickly passes new regulations that blocks Pell grants, student loans and Title I grants unless the receiving institution can prove they have zero DEI policies in action.

This can't happen. The "peaceful protest" will be broken up by one of the various security agencies whether Trump likes it or not. You can't "quickly" pass new regulations, the Administrative Procedures Act precludes that, and lawfare will prevent any attempts to promulgate regulations. The same courts which allow the deep state to get away with shenanigans normally will suddenly decided that every such procedure must be followed. Further, the DEI proponents will come up with novel legal theories as to why those regulations aren't allowed, and the courts will accept them.

The "peaceful protest" will be broken up by one of the various security agencies whether Trump likes it or not.

Not if their leadership is replaced first.

You can't "quickly" pass new regulations, the Administrative Procedures Act precludes that, and lawfare will prevent any attempts to promulgate regulations. The same courts which allow the deep state to get away with shenanigans normally will suddenly decided that every such procedure must be followed.

How many divisions do the courts have? Will they send US Marshals into the DoE to wire the funds if Trump says, "I am the head of the executive branch, if anyone has a problem with you doing what I tell you, it's not your problem: you do what I tell you and I deal with the fallout, if I tell you to stop, don't cover your ass with bullshit acts, just stop".

Not if their leadership is replaced first.

The leadership which matters has civil service protections and can't be replaced first.

Will they send US Marshals into the DoE to wire the funds if Trump says, "I am the head of the executive branch, if anyone has a problem with you doing what I tell you, it's not your problem: you do what I tell you and I deal with the fallout, if I tell you to stop, don't cover your ass with bullshit acts, just stop".

Most of the executive branch will support the courts over Trump on their own accord. They'll even oppose Trump on their own initiative. We saw that when Trump talked about suppressing the BLM riots with force.

Trump (or his administration) did rescind Obama's Title IX interpretation, so it's certainly possible. Of course Biden put it back.

That was because Obama didn't actually pass a regulation in the first place. And you will note that colleges responded to Obama's letter by stripping (mostly male) students of due process, but did not respond to the rescission by restoring it. This is the general way of things -- when the left does something it has instant and lasting effect and cannot be challenged (since the guidance wasn't a regulation change, there's nothing to challenge, by one theory). When the right does something it is buried in challenges and even if the right ultimately wins, there are no effects (see various posts by /u/gattsuru on the ways the appeals courts have nullified every provision of Bruen including those directly at issue, and note the only challenge the Supreme Court has taken up was by the one court which upheld gun rights)

but did not respond to the rescission by restoring it.

IIRC many of those policies were softened because the schools started losing (or at least, being forced to settle) lawsuits over those policies themselves violating Title IX, largely during the Trump administration -- although whether the president influences court settlements is unclear. The Columbia University Mattress case is the first example that comes to mind, but not the only one. There are other examples more recently, as well.

I'm not sure exactly what standards of due process are on campus for accused students these days, but I'd be surprised if they're as unbalanced as those of the tail end of the Obama administration. EDIT: Also, the Biden administration has at least proposed reviving those rules, but it's unclear if that is actually going anywhere.

Honestly, Trump may have Rufo-esque entryists volunteering, all but begging, to help do it right this time around.

The man could care less about policy but other Republicans do, and he's not inclined to fight them over it if they're sufficiently flattering.

Not really the standard you'd want for the President but hey, it's what conservatives have.

He had extraordinary talent volunteering the first time round too (eg Bannon) and with the exception of Miller he screwed almost all of it over.

I think this is misrepresenting the position of most of the working class Red Tribe Trump supporters I know. Sure, there is an element of "owning the blank" that happens on both sides. But they absolutely do aspire to greatness. They have a very heartfelt belief in the greatness of America. That's why the Trump's slogan was so successful. They are very serious people, with serious problems. That even I as a neo-liberal myself acknowledge are true and correct. Their small towns and cities have been hollowed out my decades of neglect and policy. Their kids are turning to drugs at tremendous rates. Getting good healthcare coverage is difficult.

and Trump for all his faults speaks to them in a way no-one else really does. And many of them acknowledge that he is a serial liar, cheater and has an ego the size of a small moon. But at least he talks about going to bat for them. DeSantis and Haley may be conservative and know the system better than he does, but they also pattern match to exactly the same kind of Republican politician who has sided with big business over the little people for the last 50 years.

See Fetterman's success (even after a stroke!) for another kind of "working class joe" kind of vibe (even as it isn't really true for either Trump or Fetterman). My old neighbor, told me he would vote for Fetterman way before he would vote for DeSantis, and he is diehard for Trump, all day every day.

The truth is, they have been taken for granted, and that has created a level of anger and despair. And for all Trump's opponents may well be better at navigating bureaucracy they are not well situated to tap into that emotion and channel it positively. I think DeSantis is an excellent political operator. But he has the charisma of a wet paper bag where the bottom fell out and spilled your shopping all over the floor.

Trump, I predict will (barring any weirdness) easily win the primary, and it will be a 50-50 shot against Biden, depending on how the economy is feeling in a few months. His big weakness of course is that he is divisive, his supporter's love him, but his opponents hate him, so he drives turnout both ways. I think he probably narrowly loses because of this, but I am by no means certain of that and he could easily win.

But to be clear, Trump supporters are very serious people, they just have very different priorities that you do or I do. To many of them, it is absolutely not a contradiction that abortion is a bigger deal than immigration. Sure a conservative utilitarian might point out that immigration is more of a "threat" to conservatism, but they are not utilitarians. While they certainly do care about mass immigration it isn't a big leap to understand why they might think (what they see as) murder of children is a teensy bit more important than illegal border crossings. Especially when it is possible deport people after they enter the country, but you can't reverse an abortion. Having said that, they support Trump who wants to build the wall, so it isn't as if they are against doing more than one thing at the same time!

Who ought we to be conquering if we were appropriately aspirational toward greatness?

I'm all for a peacefully-aggressive expansionist American foreign policy. We should be offering any small, culturally compatible, developed nation an opportunity to join the USA voluntarily with a path to full statehood. Potential targets:

  1. Singapore. English speaking, small, rich, educated, strategically located, with a basically compatible common-law system of government. Singapore has limited natural sovereignty, and so would face relatively little difficulty in adapting to statehood. Would add massively to America's human capital and geographic reach. Would be the natural ambassadors of America to the rest of Asia, while the backing of the USA would permanently secure Singapore's future from covetous neighbors or population decline. A beautiful, genuinely diverse, and intelligent people, a credit to the Nation. Could ultimately foster further expansion into ASEAN countries, Malaysia is already most of the way there with the flag and over 60% of Malaysians are fluent in English.

  2. Cuba. Small, relatively developed, produces disproportionate numbers of doctors and engineers relative to its size. Don't just raise the embargo, eliminate the border, correct the mistakes we made after the Spanish American war and make Cuba a state. Alongside Puerto Rico, and splitting the smaller island territories between them, Cuba would foster further filibustering into Latin America. Cubans are historically a brilliant people, with outsize contributions to arts, music, heroic politics, and science. Cuba developed its own damn Covid vaccine, think what they could do with Capitalism and Capital from the rest of the USA.

  3. Greenland. One of Trump's better ideas. Allows us to surround Canada, a prelude to the inevitable CanadAnschluss. Honestly I have no opinion on Greenlanders, but there aren't that many of them anyway.

  4. Ireland. The ethnic, cultural and linguistic ties are obvious, the most powerful Irishmen in history have all been American Presidents. Ireland's economy is already based on Americna corporations, why not formalize things? Becomes the entrepot to the EU for the USA (how statehood and EU membership and Northern Ireland border issues would be handled are obviously issues, but wouldn't be any more complicated than the British saga in the EU). A lovely people (on the inside) who have plenty to offer the USA in culture and humor.

That would be a good start.

One reasonable method of assessing the overall size of the USA's states may be to take the natural logarithm of (population × land area ÷ km2). Under that metric, the currently-incorporated states contain e27 ± 1.7 people⋅km2, ranging from eμ − 2.99σ (Rhode Island) to eμ + 2.2σ (Texas).

Proposed state(ln(population × land area ÷ km2) − μ) ÷ σ
Malaysia+1.9
Cuba+0.59
Ireland (island)+0.17
Ireland (Republic)−0.12
Greenland−0.77
Singapore−2.8

Hah, I've never heard this take before, but it's hilariously fascinating. We are a nation of states after all... why not just drop the pretence and build an empire for real?

We are a nation of states after all... why not just drop the pretence and build an empire for real?

The answer is in the question- the "nation of states" isn't used to putting up a united front about anything but the basics (outside of maybe what that year's progressives are busy being angry about, whose power waxes and wanes with time), so that empire tends to be relatively minimalistic.

The only reason to impose empire, at the ground level, is to make a statement to the world that a.) your social policies are obviously bullshit (if they were true the other country would already have adopted them), and b.) you're more interested in enforcing them than you are with what your vassal can do for you resource/economy-wise. All the imported goods get a lot more expensive once a country sends its goons to force those populations to abandon all their old gods and bow down before LGBTesus; you get way more revolts that way (Afghanistan being the most recent) and it's a great way to unify and otherwise motivate your enemies.

Better to just leave them to their own devices and try to impose bits and pieces when you can through things like the Imperial Monetary Fund; this is especially important should you have a nation who sees things the same way (and the Chinese are offering much better terms than the Soviets ever could, International Communism has a higher interest rate than Belt and Road).

Ooh, or Flanders - my brother tells me they ~all speak fluent English

Tuvalu. The domain name is great money, and what are they going to do, throw coconuts at you?

When you’re right you’re right. Though the total population doesn’t seem suitably glorious. Maybe we could vassalize Georgia and Armenia and diplo-annex them in 10 years?

Surely one Georgia is enough for the American Empire? At a certain point it becomes confusing, which is why I wager Britain hasn't been reverse-colonized.

You have two Carolinas, two Dakotas, two Virginias. American Georgia can be South Georgia, Caucasian Georgia can be North Georgia. As long as the US doesn't try to annex the island of South Georgia there shouldn't be any issues.

We can call it Sakartvelo as a sop to local sensitivities

I'd offer that if you spoke to Trumpers, most or all of them would hold opinions about Trump and his positions that seem paradoxical, totally incorrect, contradictory, impossible, or just flat out idiotic. Trump, despite having served as president for four years and remained politically loud (if not exactly active) for four more since, remains a cypher. Ask eight people what exactly Trump believes you will get eight different answers. There's a temptation, on all sides of the political compass, to treat Trump like an empty vessel and hope that he will favor your cause. He's really a Red-Brown Strasser-ist fighter for the white working class, or he's really a Christian crusader (or for the more biblically sophisticated a Cyrus figure), or he's going to cut government spending and fix the deficit, or he's going to gut the MIC and usher in peace.

There's a standard format that goes: "He just says X to get votes, he really doesn't believe X, he believes Y." He just makes saber rattling noises about Iran to placate the GOP, he's really anti-war. He says anti trade things to appeal to the rubes, he's really pro business. He has a secret plan to fix immigration policy or he has a secret plan to empower a Immigrations and Customs NKVD, he is actually in favor of police reform or he's going to crack down on criminals, he's going to restrain Israel or he's going to let Israel off the leash, he's going to cut regulations and he's going to prevent chemical train derailments.

And the bitch of it is, somebody has to be right. Trump has said so many contradictory things about so many topics that you can easily put together a series of quotes that paint him as anything. He's just so out there and he talks so much, I could put together a photo series and quotes that paint him as Ibram X. Kendi's best friend or as a budding Caudillo. And there are people who hope he is each of those. He's a real person, he has to believe something. But I'll be damned if I could tell you what it is with any confidence.

Just in the last few days I can recall this. I've seen leftists joking about how Trump is going to dominate the debates by calling Biden "Genocide Joe" for supporting Israel. I've heard friends tell me Trump will bring back prayer in schools. I've seen people on here claim that he will drain the swamp.

So the steelman of Trump is that they believe he is a different Trump than you believe he is.

ETA: I literally closed my laptop and my father immediately told me that Trump planned to declare OPEC a terrorist organization and confiscate their funds from the banking system.

Maybe the appeal is this: the default politician behavior is to converge with the establishment hive mind on all issues, either actively or passively. A politician who has no firm principles, but who has a proven ability to thumb his nose at the establishment hive mind and to go with his common sense or his gut, would be a huge improvement from the point-of-view of a anti-establishment voter.

I'm pretty sure a lot of it is "Hatred", but I'm not sure which direction the Hate Flows.

Most of my family comes from Mountain Stock. Up until about 2020, they've always been staunch conservatives who voted straight ticket Democrat 100% of the time. Since Biden took office, many of them have been direct targets of new regulatory stances that have completely fucked their livelihoods. I'll list a few below.

  • One relative runs a dairy farm down on the Piedmont. There is a drainage ditch on the land. In 2021, the EPA sent a letter indicating that they had "determined" that the "drainage" ditch was a waterway, and threatened fines and jail time if they did not halt all use of the adjoining fields. After asking around, he learned that the Biden admin had directed its people to "reinterpret" the definition of several common words in such a way that they could enforce laws in novel and broad directions. This novel interpretation just happened to mostly impact small farms while leaving massive Cargill-style operations alone. This nationally came to a head in Sackett v EPA, but my relative's case is still winding through court.
  • A second relative works as a gunsmith and has his FFL. In 2022, the ATF ran an inspection of his records. While going through all of his records page by page (and photographing them in violation of the law), The agents found that on one of the records, my relative had transcribed the name "Keith" as "Kieth". At that point, the agents declared that he was in willful violation of federal law. They said he could no longer due business and that they were seizing his inventory as he could no longer legally possess it. He's currently still working through the system with lawyers, but it's due to a widespread attack by the Biden administration wherein they redefined "willful" as "any". Their justification for this is that they posted a new page on the whitehouse site (under a sign saying beware the leopard) saying "don't do that".
  • Out in the sticks, there is also more bad blood over COVID policies and the vaccine mandates than I think anyone in the NYC/SF/LA/Boston bubble can possibly imagine. I have a cousin up in PA who's business got shut down for months by the Democrat Governor, despite another business in the same field, that just happened to be owned by the governor, getting exempted. No amount of "We need a Pandemic Amnesty" think pieces are going to salve those kinds of wounds.

Since Biden got in office, there have been repeated attacks on the livelihoods of an entire class of blue collar people. I've watched entire branches of my extended family go from straight-ticket blue voters to people who are so furious about what Biden is doing that they will gladly vote for Trump just to see Biden lose in the most humiliating, soul-destroying, morale-breaking manner possible. They don't care that it might not be great for them either. They're rednecks; they're used to getting the shit-end of every trade. They're accustomed to being the target of America's hate for the last 30 years. All they know is that they think they can weather the disaster better than the Biden people can, and they'll gladly suffer that pain if it means they can watch their enemies hurt worse.

Up until about 2020, they've always been staunch conservatives who voted straight ticket Democrat 100% of the time.

Can you give some context on that? What causes that type of voting profile?

At least in my circles, it all comes down to Unions.

Appalachia skews old - old enough that many blue collar workers were able to get Union jobs before both the Companies and the Unions closed off those means of employment. For people still working those jobs, most of their political information gets filtered by (and for) the Union. Since Unions skew Democrat, so do low information voters who are members.

After that, the next most common person is the person who is not union, but is steeped in Union culture from birth. They'll tend to vote like their parents and neighbors do, which is straight ticket democrat, if they vote at all.

There used to be an entire category of socially conservative Democrats who had this voting bloc locked down tighter than a duck's asshole. Today, though, Joe Manchin is really the only one left.

For years I've read about the many abuses of "navigable waterways". Clearly meant to protect actual rivers or bodies of water so large that boats could cross them. But commonly applied to any dry ditch that sometimes becomes a little stream in heavy rain. This and other examples of bureaucracies stretching limited narrow text into extremely broad powers is why I don't like the Chevron deference.

A plausible ranking of what a US president does by importance is (1) Controlling Nuclear Weapons, (2) Foreign Policy, (3) Appointing Federal Judges, (4) Regulatory Policy, (5) Budgetary Stuff, (6) Other Law Making, (7) Communications. Almost everyone ignores (1) which is horrible, but that seems to be the nature of democracy. Perhaps it was mostly luck but US foreign policy went extremely well under Trump as he seemed to have deterred adversaries from making new trouble. If you are a conservative Trump did about as well with (3) and (4) as you could hope from any president especially with respect to the Covid vaccines. Washington is broken with respect to (5) and Trump didn't fix it but most likely neither would anyone else. We didn't get many bad new laws under Trump which is the best you can realistically hope for if you are a conservative. If you like Trump's style then he maxes out with (7).

Serious question: Why would voting for their preferred candidate be something anyone needs to "steelman"? Especially so in a primary election, where wider strategic concerns are minimal to nonexistent?

If you have a preferred candidate, by all means make an argument for why I should vote for them. What do Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy provide that Trump doesn't?

DeSantis proved to be a very effective governor. I suspect that if you really wanted to roll back the admin state, he’s your man.

Yes, that is an argument that could be made, but it is also an argument that is notably missing from the OP.

I can tell you the honest perception of my in-laws, is simply that Trump did a very good job as president the first time, and would have 'gotten the job done' if he had a second term.

They believe that he did build the wall, and did deliver on every other promise. Even arguments that he tried to deliver on X but the deep state stopped him, have been met with an insistance that he did deliver and that he will be smarter against the deep state this time around. There's no hatred here, there is percieved in justice, but that's not the driving force for them, and you could call it personal loyalty, to a degree but in their minds it's loyalty to a job well done. My in-laws beleive that Trump delivered a great first term and that the following are true: Trump:

  • built the wall, and was well on his way to fixing immigration until Biden
  • fought valiantly against lockdowns and Covid authoritarianism
  • appointed good judges
  • gave us the best economy
  • kept us out of foreign wars
  • had great foreign policy
  • started to drain the swamp (I'm not 100% sure how hard they would go on this point)

Some of those things are more true than others. But to answer your question, I think some of voting for Trump is simply believing he was a known, great president, and while I think that's wrong, it doesn't need a completely different explanation.

Which one of your categories does the idea that it's all about status and posturing correspond to? One tribe has pulled out all stops and staked a lot of prestige and institutional power perception on the idea that Trump must be prevented, and when that tribe's power is based on the perception that it can and will get its way in the end anyway, it is necessarily diminished if that is shown to not be the case. If the Democrats had spilled as much ink arguing that no orange piñata must be allowed within the boundaries of the National Mall as they did on the orange man in the White House, forcing through such a light act of cultural appropriation might likewise turn out to be a rational goal to use billions of red-tribe campaign money for.

(cf. also prison stories where they say that displaying crazy violent overreactions a few times is the key to being left in peace)

Dems haven’t gotten tired of screaming over nothing yet, ergo, there is still some screaming left for them to do.

This says nothing but "hahah my enemies are crazy." Don't post low effort sneers like this.

Ok sure, I’ll respect that, but for your consideration this was an invitation to gush out a motivation. I meant it less as an authentic idea and more as an explanation of the emotional motivation that I feel is at work here.

You can propose an emotional motivation, even an uncharitable one, if you put enough work into fleshing out and justifying it. Not just with a low-effort one-liner.

Fair enough

I think 80% of it could be covered by 3. Trump’s base are Midwestern and Southern American Whites. Many are working class or small business owners. Those are the groups that the DC elite talk down to and sneer at, their culture is denigrated and something to educate the kids out of, their declining standard of living doesn’t matter to anyone in DC. They are the ones told to sit down and shut up, that they are “privileged” and need to be shunted aside to make more room at the good jobs for minorities and women. And when Trump came along, the hatred of the DC elites made him the ultimate middle finger to those elites who they perceive as hating them.

Other possible ones would be just "being on the winning side" (a nonsensical but still powerful motivation for many) and "for all his faults just liking him more than the options" (insofar as I've understood at this point considered typical Republican lizards who are found likable by no-one expect their spouse, if even them).

The temptation to give the middle finger to the Respectable Establishment is strong.

The only other somewhat viable middle finger choice in the primaries would have been Vivek, but he’s out.

I think this is probably the main thing. Voters know that they can't control what happens once the candidate gets into office. Maybe Desantis wusses out on all his promises. Maybe Trump flounders and runs through a staffing treadmill and accomplishes nothing. But what the voters can control is who gets into office, and the left is busy sending the signal as loudly as possible that the mere fact of Trump getting elected again would be a major blow to the establishment, and conservative voters believe them.

IMO while Trump is most likely going to lose, I'm not convinced that either Haley or Desantis have a chance of winning either. While I personally like Desantis he might be the least personable candidate since Richard Nixon if not Barry Goldwater. Haley, meanwhile, appeals to a coalition that's won the popular vote in a Presidential election once in the last 30 years (Dubya would get stomped in 2024 in the Electoral College as well as the popular vote if he performed as he did in 2000 given contemporary demographics.).

Put bluntly, save for a time in the 1990s when fiscal conservatism got trendy and people were really sick of crime and a shorter time in the 2010s when people were mad about Obamacare (which the GOP did a good job of milking for House purposes with REDMAP) the Republican platform has been dreadfully unpopular since the 1930s. For a Republican to win the Presidency they either need a God-tier candidate (Eisenhower and Reagan come to mind here.) or for the Democrats to self-destruct/be in office when something really bad happens. Richard Nixon didn't magically become more telegenic from 1960 to 1968, for example.

So, counterintuitively, Trump supporters aren't exactly wrong to value style over substance. A non-stylish Republican isn't going to win. Unfortunately for them Trump seems to inspire his opponents as much if not more than his supporters and was largely incompetent at governing, but it isn't as if the GOP had been putting forth an all-star cast before he showed up.

Haley polls well, somehow.

Any candidate without Trump's negatives running against Biden would poll well.

I don't know why Biden is doing badly enough with swing voters that his losing to a coup-plotting serial bankrupt rapist is a serious possibility, but he clearly is. Haley is clearly sane, hasn't wrecked the economy (whether the Biden economy is actually wrecked is controversial, but the median voter definitely thinks it is), and doesn't have a junkie failson in the pay of the Red Chinese. Given what the voters think about Biden, that makes her a good alternative.

I don't know why Biden is doing badly enough with swing voters that his losing to a coup-plotting serial bankrupt rapist is a serious possibility, but he clearly is.

If nothing else, the various mask-off moments of the last few months have some moderate voters questioning what fraction of Biden's coalition supports antisemitic violence (the Ivy League drama isn't helping) and some number of far-left voters threatening to sit-out because he hasn't cut off arms deliveries to Israel. The administrations mostly noncommittal responses haven't been seen positively on either side.

If you look at what his supporters are saying, they trust him more than any other candidate to do the things they think they want him to do. That this requires a huge suspension of disbelief is just part of the process.
MBD of National Review told a story recently of asking his driver why he supports Trump. The driver said he thinks military experience is important and Trump went to a military style school for a while. MBD asked him if he knew that DeSantis actually served in the Navy for six years (as a lawyer) and the driver admitted that he knew this. He just counted Trump's boarding school experience as more relevant than active duty service.
He starts from the premise that Trump is his guy and any evidence is weighted to support that conclusion. Somehow, Trump has convinced a huge segment of the population that he's "their guy." It baffles me, too, but it seems that that's all there is to it.

MBD of National Review told a story recently of asking his driver why he supports Trump. The driver said he thinks military experience is important and Trump went to a military style school for a while. MBD asked him if he knew that DeSantis actually served in the Navy for six years (as a lawyer) and the driver admitted that he knew this. He just counted Trump's boarding school experience as more relevant than active duty service.

I'm going to with grug-brain more correct than the midwit on this one -- being a JAG lawyer is not relevant military service in the sense that any historical citizen would care about, when thinking about wanting a leader who had proven themselves in the military. In fact, it is probably a net negative, it is anti-military service, in that a JAG lawyer is going to be trained in a way of thinking and operating that is inimical to historically how successful wars were fought and won.

Ideally, you would have a bona fide military veteran and successful general to choose from. But if you have to choose between frauds, the bombastic, even winking, fraud of the Trump is more appealing to some than the sophisticated and self-serious fraud of pretending that being a lawyer gumming up the military operations is something that counts as being a successful warrior for your country.

I can't remember who said this, I think it may have been one of the podcast bro's back in 2016, but part of Trump's attractiveness - as a born-into-wealth billionaire - to working class people is that he looks, sounds, and acts like they think they would if they were billionaires.

  • He has a big plane with his name on it
  • He bought married an exotic european supermodel
  • His business books are all about "hard nosed deal making" instead of .... EBITDA and capital structure leverage
  • He had a big TV show about ... business-ing!
  • Red ties and gold stuff everywhere
  • He owns the golf course. He can probably, like, get beers brought to him!
  • His sense of humor isn't a dry and acerbic wit (William F. Buckley, looking at you), it's name calling and the kind of cool kid in-group bullying you'd see from High School preps and jocks (which he is.)

This feeds into a comfortable narrative for working class southerners and midwesterners. Sure, he's a plutocrat, but, unlike Mitt Romney, I can envision him tearing into a Big Mac because I have seen him tear into a big mac a bunch of times.

One thing to point out: Trump gladly and gleefully wears MAGA ballcaps a lot. In $5000 suits. And it somehow looks ... normal? Most other politicians would never make the fashion faux pas of mixing a ballcap with a suit and, even if they did for some sort of folksy photo-op, it would seem about as natural as Hillary's southern drawl. Trump thinks his MAGA ballcap looks fucking awesome and so wears it with confidence, arrogance, and pinache. Double for the dick-length red ties.

Trump is, in fact, a real estate huckster. And if you're a working class dude or chick, you know a lot of real estate hucksters, or used car salesmen, or plumbers who do bad work and overcharge, or house painters who use lead paint still, or an electrician who's been electrocuted on more jobs than he hasn't...you're probably related to one or more of these people. So, Trump Is. Your. Guy.

(Side note: This is why Ramaswamay failed. He may be just as much of a huckster as DJT, but ... a biotech huckster? Not going to work)

Some of these reasons sound like just-so stories. When Ron Paul would routinely wear an oversized suit I could say something like, "That's relatable, it's like your cousin Joe who has that one imperfect suit he wears for special occasions!"

But RP went nowhere with most.

part of Trump's attractiveness - as a born-into-wealth billionaire - to working class people is that he looks, sounds, and acts like they think they would if they were billionaires.

I remember all the snobbishness about Trump first time round (ugh, he eats his steak with ketchup!) and that, coming from the Party of the Little Guy, Minorities, and Totally Not College Grad White Professionals, really sounded even worse than it needed to be. If you're sneering so hard that your eyes are permanently crossed looking down your nose at 'what a low-class bum' his mannerisms are, then how the hell are you going to appeal to those same lower class voters who might eat burgers with ketchup and steak with ketchup and what's wrong with ketchup anyways?

Hillary did herself no favours with the "basket of deplorables" and it's really hard to believe the other side that "no, we really care about you and want to make your lives better" when you know they think of you as a deplorable. Why are the working class blue-collar whites voting against their economic interests instead of voting Democrat? Well, why are the Democrats doing all they can to sound like their fondest dream is to be able to piss on working class blue-collar whites?

And if you're a working class dude or chick, you know a lot of real estate hucksters

I do think that's it. He's relatable in a way any of the others, Republican or Democrat, aren't (maybe Joe Manchin, but he gets more stick from his own party than the opposition precisely because he represents rural/industrial Virginia, knows it, knows what his constituents want, and gets it for them to the best of his ability). Think of that book about Hillary, which I can't really blame Hillary for since she had nothing to do with it, but oh man. Cringe-inducing (remember the illustration implying that Jackie Robinson and others had it so much easier in life than a middle-class white girl in the 60s?). Imagine a version about Trump instead, it would be awesome because it would be so over the top!

EDIT: Those illos are even creepier than I remembered, what is with giving Little Girl Hillary those staring, painfully wide-open, serial-killer eyes?

This is why Ramaswamay failed.

Has Ramaswamay failed? He's a rich guy, sure, but he's also 38 years old, had zero political experience, and just got 7% in Iowa. If I were rating that effort on a scale 1-10 scale, I'd probably call it about a 9. He's plausibly in position to be in Trump's good graces and get a cabinet position if he wants it, setting him up for further federal political opportunities in the future, if that's a goal. That he beat the breaks off multiple Republican governors, including a tech billionaire governor, would make this a success from any perspective other than a pure pass/fail grade that requires beating Trump.

Has Ramaswamay failed?

There is no sugarcoating that 4th place, tied for last, is a failure. It felt like his campaign was DOA . Dropping out in last is what I expected from him. He had not built the necessary connections or exposure to have any hope. You cannot just ride in from the private sector and proclaim "I am really smart and competent vote for me". It does not work like that.

There are many things where finishing 4th place isn't failure. I don't understand why you would say otherwise. If some random amateur shows up to the Boston Marathon and finishes 4th, he didn't fail. Beating a bunch of governors with pre-existing institutional support is an impressive achievement.

4th out of 30,000 runners And losing by such a large margin to Haley , too.

also the typical runner does not have a multi-millions dollar media campaign. Given all the media coverage he got, for whatever reason it failed to resonate. His performance would be like a runner on PEDs getting last place against other runners on PEDs but he beat the runners who were not on PEDs.

I'd agree. He is in a decent position for some kind of future position, if he wants it. He almost certainly knows his chances of winning the nomination were close to zero. So that probably was not his motivation.

I agree with you that Ramaswamay was running to profile himself and make him an obvious candidate for some kind of position in a Trump administration, but I don't think it has worked for him.

Given how Trump thinks, Ramaswamay needed to pull out before Iowa to get a consolation prize out of Trump. My read of Trump's social media rantings is that he thinks Ramaswamay continuing to contest the nomination for as long as he did to be disloyal behaviour.

Nah. He dropped out and endorsed Trump, It's all good now.

I can't speak for Trump personally, but "people like that" hold onto grudges, particularly where there is a sense of betrayal.

There are a lot of people who Trump could appoint to administration positions who didn't run against him in a primary.

He's since had a rally with Trump.

What is the steelman for voting for Trump in the primaries?

What is the steelman for voting for anyone in the primaries? Why should I spend hours in the freezing cold at some stupid caucus just so that my preferred candidate increases his voting share by 0.000001%?

You don't matter, but if enough people think like that it really matters.

In addition to the response by @BahRamYou if everyone started believing that way then I’d vote since it would matter.

I wish I had the superpower to make everyone else think the same way as me, but sadly I'm just not that charismatic. Even if I was, I don't think me marking a ballot would do it.

Kulak had this theory that Trump was only good for acceleration, that he incited autoimmune disease amongst the progs, forcing them to burn their legitimacy and weaken their broader position: https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/short-take-trump-and-autoimmune-disease

I'd still favour giving DeSantis a try personally. Vivek is untested.

Left lost a lot of credibility in the Trump saga, but so did the Right: birtherism, Q, "Trust the plan", J6, forming a personality cult around him, Laura Loomer being one of his top spokespeople etc.

forming a personality cult around him

Thank goodness none of the Nice People ever had that!

"Nice People" also had Jim Jones and the People's temple, so what? Does that justify republicans making their version of that too?

Personal loyalty would make sense if Trump was loyal in turn to his supporters, but he isn't.

I don't think you understand loyalty or why voters feel loyal toward Trump. It's one thing to blithely declare that Trump didn't show loyalty because of this or that squabble. But have you talked to the voters? Trump's voters don't feel betrayed at all. (As an exercise to the reader: how much loyalty do Republican voters have for other republican politicians?)

(As an exercise to the reader: how much loyalty do Republican voters have for other republican politicians?)

Exactly as much as those politicians have for them, which in most cases is zero.

Yeah, it's just weird because he's accomplished almost nothing. His biggest win was SCOTUS, in my opinion, which any Republican could have done (just consult the federalist-society approved list, and pick at random/whoever strikes your fancy/makes political sense).

I think Hanania's roughly right, though. Trump's good enough at managing vibes to warp most of the Republican party, especially the rank-and-file around himself.

People think Trump failed in the 2022 midterms, because Republicans failed due to his endorsements. What he actually did was prove that you needed his endorsement to make it through the primaries, and get people to double down in their personal devotion to him, even though he lost in 2020.

his biggest win was SCOTUS, in my opinion, which any Republican could have done

But they didn't, is the thing. Promises and promises: "jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today".

I was astounded by the Roe vs Wade decision, because holy hannah the Trump judges really had done it! This was one of the campaign promises that Trump could have dropped in a heartbeat because nobody really expected anything to come of it, if past Republican administrations were any indication, and he did it. Wow.

"But they didn't, is the thing"

I really don't get your model of the government. The reason Trump got a bunch of justices is because three justices died. He got lucky. The reason other Republicans did not appoint three justices is because they did not have enough justices die. I don't get what you think any other Republican should have done, or how you think pre-Trump Republicans failed us.

Trump deserves no credit for Ginsburg, Scalia, and Kennedy dying. That was never about him, that was about them being old.

Trump's also fairly pro-choice for a Republican, so Dobbs is a weird thing to list as an achievement of his for that reason.

He got lucky.

Tell that to Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Sure, any guy with an R beside their name could just have their pick waved through, no bother! Trump was just lucky!

Previous Republican appointees defected on abortion a lot. It’s probably not trumps fault directly that he didn’t appoint a Sandra day O’Connor, but you can make a case that Roberts’s sudden turn to the right was trumps doing and that bush wouldn’t have appointed ACB.

Previous Republican appointees defected on abortion a lot. It’s probably not trumps fault directly that he didn’t appoint a Sandra day O’Connor, but you can make a case that Roberts’s sudden turn to the right was trumps doing and that bush wouldn’t have appointed ACB.

Reagan got three picks and two of them were O'Connor and Kennedy. Kennedy wasn't entirely his fault - if there had been a Republican Senate majority he would have got Bork - but I think a pro-lifer could reasonably say that there were plenty of candidates without Bork's Watergate baggage who would have been both confirmable and a more reliable pro-life vote than Kennedy.

Bush Sr put Souter on the Court. 'Nuff said. Admittedly he had to get his nominee through a Democrat-controlled Senate, but given he could get Thomas confirmed with he could presumably have managed better than Souter. (FWIW, I think the Senate still had a right-wing majority at the time given the existence of conservative Southern Democrats like Richard Shelby and Sam Nunn)

Bush Jr only got two picks, which is unlucky for a two-term President, and one of them was Roberts, who movement conservatives hate for good reasons and who was never going to be the fifth vote to overturn Roe, even if he was willing to be the sixth. Alito was a good conservative pick, but Bush had to be dragged kicking and screaming into nominating him - his first choice was Harriet Miers.

Trump was lucky to get three picks, but he managed to make all three count (at least on abortion). The Republican Senate majority helped a lot, but Bush Jr had that. If the filibuster was still in place for SCOTUS nominees his nominees would have been filibustered, but the reason why the filibuster lasted as long as it did was as part of an unwritten set of rules where candidates like Thomas and Alito didn't get filibustered - in other words the removal of the filibuster reversed the effect of increased partisanship in the Senate, rather than making life easier for Trump to get nominees through.

If you are the kind of movement conservative whose main issue is judges, Trump was a great President, and deserves re-election. If the next President is a Republican, Alito and Thomas will retire during his term. Given the record of establishment Republicans, Nicky Haley would appoint replacements who would move the Court to the left, and DeSantis can't be trusted not to do the sane.

Which any Republican could have done.

Could have done, but did not, being the critical difference. Trump Fights, and that's reason enough to vote for him.

Flashback to 2016: How David Brooks created Donald Trump.

In San Francisco, too, tea party protesters met pro-Obama activists and picked up their trash. "John," author of The City Square blog wrote: “As Obama supporters moved along in the line to get into the fundraiser, they left behind an impressive amount of trash ... Tea Partiers shouted ‘pick up your garbage’ and ‘this is San Francisco, what about recycling?’ There was no response. They chanted ‘Obama leaves a mess.’ Still no response. Eventually, a tea partier (wearing the black cowboy hat) crosses over and starts to pick up the trash on his own. Other tea partiers join him. Another manages to find a trash bag. Soon the trash is being collected.”

Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment and by pundits like Brooks, who declared "I'm not a fan of this movement." After handing the GOP big legislative victories in 2010 and 2014, it was largely betrayed by the Republicans in Congress, who broke their promises to shrink government and block Obama’s initiatives.

So now we have Trump instead, who tells people to punch counter-protesters instead of picking up their trash.

When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly. Brooks closes his Trump column with Psalm 73, but a more appropriate verse is Hosea 8:7 "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part. God help us all.

What failure mode do you think non-Trump Republicans would have done?

Nominating judges like Roberts, Kennedy, Souter, and Miers? Yes, some of the credit goes to Mitch burning political capital to sit on a confirmation, but Trump's nominees have been standup votes on the cases Conservatives cared about.

Okay, fair enough. I assume that H.W.'s were when the conservative legal movement was still relatively weak? But Bush's are a lot less excusable.

I guess just my point was, it's really not hard.

Yup.

And now I share the first ever SSC article I ever read

I realize that many people are in fact loyal to Trump. My point is that this is stupid and counterproductive. If you have a good reason that this is actually smart and productive, I would love to hear it.

Insofar as I understand Trump voters' motivations, "productive" is orthogonal, if not actively counter, to what they're looking for. Trump is essentially a big middle finger directed at (for want of a better term) the blue tribe, and many of them actively want to burn the government to the ground. This is not some rationalization I'm making up, it's a somewhat-close, if condensed, paraphrase of some of the defenses of voting for Trump that I've seen in this very space, or rather its predecessors.

I realize that many people are in fact loyal to Trump the progressive left. My point is that this is stupid and counterproductive. If you have a good reason that this is actually smart and productive, I would love to hear it.

IMHO, this is one millimeter away from "boo outgroup."

What's a "good reason" for being loyal? I don't think thats the point. The point is in figuring out why that loyalty exists, good or bad. Many other replies have tried to explain why. You seem to just continue to say, "yeah but that's dumb."

It's not wrong to ask for reasons for loyalty. Loyalty usually has some form of reciprocation as an intended part of the relationship.

Is he wrong to say that it's counterproductive? And in what ways? That would more substantively address the assertion.

He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?

Trump's first presidency was hamstrung by multiple factors, some of them explicit (Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller investigation it turned into) and others less visible (entrenched resistance from the deep state and republican party). The last eight years have seen substantial shifts in the GOP, with many more pro-Trump individuals getting involved in the actual political machinery of the republican party, and he's going to have a lot more leverage in a second term.

  1. Personal Loyalty: This is close to the Richard Hanania theory. Personal loyalty would make sense if Trump was loyal in turn to his supporters, but he isn't. How many of his lawyers have gone to jail? How many orange-blooded Trump fans lost their jobs or got arrested for believing in him too hard on January 6? He could have pardoned these people, but he didn't. Orange Man good because Orange Man good.

The moment Trump pardoned the J6 protestors he would have been impeached by the Republican party - the threat was even made explicitly in the media IIRC.

  1. Perceived Injustice: Yes, Trump has been treated unfairly by the media and the Washington establishment. Lots of people have been. I can understand why this would be seen as a necessary condition (e.g. "nobody liked by the 'elites' could ever be a good president"), but why would this be a sufficient condition? Surely electability and general competence matter more than an extra standard-deviation worth of grievances against the media.

Every single person who has been trusted and liked by the media/Washington establishment has immediately abandoned the particular policies that Trump-voters want and support once they get into office, and it isn't like this is an accident - the only way to be liked by the media/Washington establishment is to preserve and extend the same policies which they like and the Trump base hates. This is also why Desantis and Nikki Haley were immediately rejected by the base - they're just more representatives of Conservative Inc who want to return things to business as usual, and business as usual has gotten utterly intolerable for a lot of the people supporting Trump.

  1. Hatred: I'm not talking about "Hate™". I'm talking about a genuine desire to see one's political enemies suffer. It's not even clear to me that Trump would be better at this than other Republican candidates, but I feel I would be missing something if I didn't put it on the list.

Have you been paying attention to how much weeping, moaning and gnashing of teeth even the prospect of Trump getting back into power has caused? Nobody's writing lengthy thinkpieces about how the election of Nikki Haley would mean the end of democracy/sunlight/good things in the world.

This is also why Desantis and Nikki Haley were immediately rejected by the base - they're just more representatives of Conservative Inc who want to return things to business as usual, and business as usual has gotten utterly intolerable for a lot of the people supporting Trump.

DeSantis attacked Trump from the right, Trump attacked DeSantis from the left. Trump endorsed the supposed Con. Inc. - Ronna McDaniel, speaker McCarthy, etc.

DeSantis attacked Trump from the right, Trump attacked DeSantis from the left.

I don't believe this is meaningful at all when looking at Trump and what he represents. The policies that got him elected and which he tried to implement, are in direct opposition to the bipartisan consensus of more forever wars, more outsourcing, more illegal immigration and more corruption. I don't think that the Left/Right divide is really that useful when you look at Trump's politics and his base. Opposition to or support of the existing elite and their chosen policies is the far more meaningful divide. Desantis and Haley have donors which the Trump base find intolerable, and the Trump base is a big enough constituency in the GOP base to give them effective veto power over future candidates.

Agreed,

...and at the risk sounding like a broken record, there really does seem to be a "leviathan shaped hole" in the discourse. Liberal Domination of Academia and the Media has gotten us to a point today where most liberals simply lack the necessary framework to understand the mindset of someone like Greg Abbott or the median Trump Voter.

Bro, I think you have something here, but do you mind effortposting instead of just going ‘have you considered Hobbes was right?’? Getting a bit tiresome.

I have, multiple times, at length. Though it has been a while so maybe I ought to do some sort of recap/refresher. In any case a bunch of recent posts and comments on multiple topics (be it Trump, the Border, Id Pol, Claudine Gay) are all tickling the same corner of my hind-brain that talking to my humanities professor as a 30 year-old "freshman" did.

I read posts like the OP's I really do think that there is just a fundamental lack of understanding not just on the surface level but on I'm not sure that we share a sufficiently common language for me to even begin explaining it level. Darmok and Jalad on the internet.

I know you’ve made posts about the philosophical underpinnings of the left/right divide in the past.

But when you comment ‘have you considered hobbes?’ without elaborating, well….

And I agree with you; Hobbesian ideas are probably a key to what’s going on with the border. But there tends to be a missing link when you make the comment- humans are inherently bad and all that, but the argument for how that informs recent events/provides a different perspective is one that has to be made.

I’m a classical conservative/reactionary, and not just as a euphemism for ‘racist but I call it something else’. I agree with you- humans are mostly pretty bad and need to be civilized by external influences. But the argument for how this applies in specific situations is an argument that needs to be made instead of ‘refer to post #9999999 and apply’.

How many times are you going to shoehorn this phrase into every single comment you make?

I don't think I'm "shoehorning" anything near as I can tell there genuinely is a glaring lack of, or unwillingness to understand here.

I think the problem is the word leviathan. Even though I know you mean the book (and agree with you 100%, it is by far your best insight (not to shit on your other insights, but this one is on fuckin point)) I still instinctively bristle a little when you say it, because when you say Leviathan my mind immediately goes to giant, massive, humongous - not unfathomable monster fucking everything up and definitely not the 17th century philosophical book. And I instinctively think 'oh if you're so fuckin smart why aren't you a billionaire' you know?

Of course then you are up against memetics - a Hobbsian hole in the discourse makes me yawn just thinking about it. I think you were right in your link post earlier today - you need to write another effort post explaining what you mean.

I still instinctively bristle a little when you say it, because when you say Leviathan my mind immediately goes to giant, massive, humongous - not unfathomable monster fucking everything up

And totally damn awesome in the description, now thanks to you I'll have this image in my mind when Hlynka next mentions Leviathan instead of the book (which is where my mind immediately went) and Hlynka's Coolness Quotient in my estimation will go up by points, whole points I tell you!

Bonus points for being the Roger Zelazny story title inspiration, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth:

41 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

2 Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?

3 Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee?

4 Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?

5 Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?

6 Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants?

7 Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears?

8 Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.

9 Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?

10 None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?

11 Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.

12 I will not conceal his parts, nor his power, nor his comely proportion.

13 Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can come to him with his double bridle?

14 Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.

15 His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal.

16 One is so near to another, that no air can come between them.

17 They are joined one to another, they stick together, that they cannot be sundered.

18 By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

19 Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out.

20 Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.

21 His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.

22 In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.

23 The flakes of his flesh are joined together: they are firm in themselves; they cannot be moved.

24 His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

25 When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.

26 The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon.

27 He esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

28 The arrow cannot make him flee: slingstones are turned with him into stubble.

29 Darts are counted as stubble: he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.

30 Sharp stones are under him: he spreadeth sharp pointed things upon the mire.

31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.

32 He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary.

33 Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.

34 He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.

That phrase is really turning into a Leviathan shaped hole around here.

"The Hock is a Leviathan shaped hole"

I'm sorry I couldn't resist.

Is everyone else going to have to take up hockposting now that the progenitor is buried in an avalanche banned?

I was skiing by myself in the woods in -30 the other day, it was nice -- didn't impress any chicks AFAICT though.

Desantis and Haley have donors which the Trump base find intolerable

Last time around top Trump's donor was Adelson, who really wanted a war with Iran. Trump and Kushner do a ton of buisness with Saudis. You don't apply the same standards to Trump, otherwise you wouldn't support him.

Are you predicting that, if elected in 2016, Trump will go to war with Iran?

No, I just think that this talk about DeSantis' donors is a cope from Trump supporters and they never applied that standard to Trump.

This is a glib argument. Donor influence is legendary in American politics, and Trump famously does not need their money. Are you suggesting that Trump's policies come from his donors? This is the charge levied at Haley et al.

While the perception may be that Trump doesn't need anyone's money, that's not reflected in his fundraising efforts.

Trump needs everyone's money just to pay his legal bills.

Haley seems bought and paid for, but I don't think DeSantis necessarily is.

You don't apply the same standards to Trump, otherwise you wouldn't support him.

I'm not an American, but you're right that I don't apply the same standards. Trump isn't dependent upon his donors, Desantis and Haley are - this distinction matters quite a lot.

Of course Trump is dependent upon his donors. His own legal issues aside, a major presidential campaign costs billions and Trump doesn’t have close to the amount required in cash or easily liquidated assets, or indeed at all, and that’s if he was prepared to burn through his entire fortune, which he certainly isn’t.

The same reasoning as voting for anyone in the primaries: preferring him to the competition, or believing he could drum up more enthusiasm in the general election than the competition, or not really paying attention and recognizing his name more than others.

At least he has already been president, and mostly just produced a lot of media drama and didn't get as much done as some had hoped. There are worse things.

If the injustice that has been done to him is not punished harshly, it will become the norm and the Republic will surely be destroyed. Trump must win or be defeated in a way all regard as fair.

I tend to think it'll be destroyed regardless because the ruling elite will not be able to muster the discipline not to fuck with him even more if he wins, but at least there is a chance a Trump administration can convince the American people that they successfully drained the swamp, if none at all that they would successfully do it.

We'll see how it shakes out, but the Rubicon has already been crossed, Trump is on a collision course with the establishment. People are not going to pick the GOP candidate on such petty motives as policy or track records. Not this time. Not after presidential mugshots and attempts to remove him from the ballot.

or be defeated in a way all regard as fair.

I think people are judging such things in such a biased way that this has become impossible. This goes for all points on the political spectrum, not just the R base.

(Which, I suppose, might reasonably be parsed as "the nightmare scenario you're trying to avoid is already here".)

Haley is the same old establishment. Ramaswamy bugs me on some level. De Santis would be preferable if he were not a lawyer.

Wait, why is lawyerdom bad? I'd think it would make him more competent.

Lawyers have a professional incentive to overcomplicate law and government access. While not all attorneys succomb to this incentive, many votors prefer non-attorneys in government.

Do they really have an incentive like that on a personal level?

I could certainly see them being less bothered by complex law, and so not realize that it's a problem/not worth it, but it would be weird for them to actually want it to be hard to approach.

I believe they don’t consciously do that, but it likely is how bureaucracy grows. As Randall Munroe of XKCD puts it, “Even when they’re trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person’s familiarity with their field.”

Imagine “User Interface” testing for government programs, where the goal is to make every form legible to and usable by a ten-year-old child. Imagine being able to take your pink slip to the unemployment office and have “social safety net” programs guarantee you’ll have rent payments and medical insurance that same day.

I’ve played open-world RPGs which simulate civilization-level legal systems by detecting if you take or break anything which isn’t yours, or if you try to hurt anyone else, and it’s a decent enough level of realism most of the time. One thing only the most devoted game modders do is to try to make the economy and tax laws semi-realistic. But if it were their job, they’d build systems so complex, only they could interact successfully with them.

It would be weird for lawyers to want to create more demand for lawyers?

Yes.

Why are you saying they'd want to create demand for lawyers. Are you suggesting that they personally plan to go into the field? Are you suggesting that they are consciously thinking that more complex laws will raise demand for them?

That might be plausible for some administrative agency workers, but I find that hard to believe in the case of the president, and unlikely in congress. The focus would rather be on their actual incentives: good law (to the extent that they're ethical), and what's politically advantageous (to the extent that they're not).

It turns out, though, that it's politically advantageous to have complex law, because you get lobbied by the big companies that can afford the legal burden for the sake of getting rid of their weaker competition who can't.

Note that that doesn't really depend on whether you're a lawyer. The lobbyists and interest groups will do most of the work of writing the complex law for you.

I think that in light of the existence of the judiciary branch, which is pretty much exclusively staffed by such, lawyers holding elected office in the other two branches runs contrary to the notion of checks and balances.

Well, you'd think the people drafting the law, at least, should have some facility with it, so it makes sense to have lawyers in Congress, at least. And if the executive is supposed to be executing the law, that would seem useful. (Or, in actual fact, doing whatever he can manage, lawyering would still be useful)

Yes, but it is outweighed by the conflict of interest. I don’t think it’s an inherent indicator of competence either - iirc Biden, Harris, Pence, and Hillary needed multiple attempts to pass the bar exam.

What is the steelman for voting for Trump in the primaries?

He's not a true outsider anymore. He's not an unknown quantity. We know his temperament. We know his governance style. What does he provide over Desantis/Haley/Ramaswamy? He didn't build the wall the first time, why would he do it now?

Because he's better than the alternatives, and has the greatest odds of beating Biden? It does not have to be deeper than that.

He doesn't have the greatest odds of beating Biden (that would be Nikki Haley according to the polls), and he's worse than DeSantis on just about anything where they differ.

I doubt Haley with full exposure would win. She would get some points with independents but lose more with the base. Her unfavorables amongst republicans are getting higher and higher.

I imagine they'd hold their nose and vote for her, generally, unless Trump actively campaigned to see her lose?

Similarly to when Mittens ran, I'd vote third party or write in a spoiled ballot name if Haley is the nominee.

There is the choice of simply not voting.

What are republicans going to do about even if they're unfavourable, let Biden win?

There are some people openly suggesting that they will never vote for Haley and would stay home instead of voting for Biden. It seems insane to me to screw the down-ballot candidates just because you can't stand the top of the ticket, but these are otherwise sensible-sounding voices, so who knows?

I’d vote down ballot but I wouldn’t vote for Haley. She is a bad joke

Those people wouldn't say they would vote for Haley to a polster either, so that's already included in the equation.

My point is not yet — the more people know about Haley the more Never Nikki republicans will become.

Isn't Haley just a weathervane?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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