site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27246 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

13
Top Bottom New Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This Guardian article is a work of art as a culture war artifact.

The story: a Danish data scientist, Pallesen, who claimed that former Harvard president Gay had made "very basic" data errors in her PhD, a claim which was quoted by right wing activist Rufo.

But now the fearless investigators of the Guardian have uncovered that Pallensen also co-authored a paper called "Polygenic Scores Mediate the Jewish Phenotypic Advantage in Educational Attainment and Cognitive Ability Compared With Catholics and Lutherans" regarding the Ashkenazi, which was published by some people on the right fringe outside Respectable Academia. Some are into eugenics and "race science". Also they cited an 'antisemitic ' psychologist.

Of course, Pallesen promptly disavowed that paper when questioned by the Guardian.

Where to even start.

"Cite" in the title makes an especially bad verb in an academic context because you can generally not control who cites you. "Scientist who criticized Gay's thesis" would be more on point.

Then there is this whole five degrees of separation thing.

  • Kevin MacDonald is a retired academic who did 'antisemitic publications'. (Let's take the Guardians word for that.)
  • His papers get cited by Kirkegaard et al.
  • One of Kirkegaard's co-authors is Pallesen. (Too bad that he promptly distanced himself from the paper.)
  • Pallesen helped Rufo oust Gay.
  • Rufo is "a major ally of Ron DeSantis".
  • Therefore DeSantis is an evil racist, or something?

While both icky, there is an actual difference between eugenics and "race science" (or HBD or whatever). Eugenics is prescriptive and describes the belief that society should coordinate to affect their gene frequencies. This can go from "let's use CRISPR to fix hereditary diseases" to "kill all the kids with a disfavored eye color". This is completely separate from the claim that there are group differences between human subpopulations caused by genetic differences, which is trivially true for physical characteristics and icky for mental stuff.

My personal view is that most social science is unsound even when it is completely apolitical. If you add politics, be they woke or far-right, I fully expect the conclusions to be whatever the politics say they should be. In respected academia, genetic differences in intelligence are already a third rail. If you publish on racial genetic differences in intelligence, that will end your career faster than putting "I will increase grades for sexual favors" in your e-mail footer. The "fringe" researchers are of course also motivated by politics. So the Ashkenazi genetic intelligence hypothesis is probably undecideable in our society. (From what I remember of Scott's (who is Jewish and thus smarter than me) opinion, I would bet 75% on there being a significant (say, at least five IQ points average) genetic advantage for Ashkenazi.)

Also, I do not find the link between Ashkenazi intelligence and antisemitism all that plausible. The traditional antisemitic trope of Jews is them being shrewd manipulators, which is not exactly the same as being smart. Ask an antisemite why Jews are over-represented in the Ivy League, and they will probably say that it is because the Jews in academia collude to favor Jewish students over gentiles, helping them cheat and so on. If you convince them that the over-representation is due to raw honest brain power, that will conflict with the antisemitic trope.

Finally and foremost, the character of Mr. Pallesen is utterly irrelevant to his claims. He is not the only data scientist, so we don't have to -- and should not -- rely on his testimony exclusively. In the worlds where there is a problem with data science in Gay's PhD, I would not expect that someone who specializes in Intersectionality points it out, thereby -- in the Guardians words -- 'helping oust school’s first Black president'. In worlds where there is no such problem, I would expect that dozens of woke data scientists would jump at the chance to call bullshit on the claims.

Quillette founder Claire Lehmann Tweets about the Guardian article's author "Somewhat surprised to see that @guardianscience has known antifa associates writing for them now. (The author of this piece is pictured below behind camera, next to guy in brass knuckles). But I suppose scientific credentials are not required when the target is @realchrisrufo"

Also, I do not find the link between Ashkenazi intelligence and antisemitism all that plausible. The traditional antisemitic trope of Jews is them being shrewd manipulators, which is not exactly the same as being smart. Ask an antisemite why Jews are over-represented in the Ivy League, and they will probably say that it is because the Jews in academia collude to favor Jewish students over gentiles, helping them cheat and so on. If you convince them that the over-representation is due to raw honest brain power, that will conflict with the antisemitic trope.

Let's say you're not an academic so you're not well-placed to judge merit. You're also not on DR sites and aren't into the IQ-determinist camp (those tests are culturally biased anyway right?). And you keep seeing Jews do well, everywhere?

It's easy to see how you can both sincerely and self-servingly believe that Jews aren't really doing better than you and yours, they're cheating (I think I recall this outright being stated by disgruntled parents about Asians when DiBlasio was first taking on "equity" in the NY magnet schools - that they had a culture of cheating which explained they dominate). Nobody wants to just fold and say someone else's kid deserves that spot more than theirs. They'll come up with some theory.

So I don't see how there isn't a link - the former can easily motivate or aggravate the latter. A lot of people believe things in their interests and won't uncouple things when it doesn't suit them.

I know this because...this doesn't just apply to Jews who, let's face it, people already hated. Non-Chosen wypipo are even more subject to it, because you can accuse any white person of "privilege" or benefiting from the old boy's club or implicit bias or whatever without being hit with the "antisemite" label. So we hear even more about "mediocre white men" waltzing into things. If white people had the grace to score worse I doubt those theories would have the same vise grip.

Bill Ackman is going to manage to turn and burn academia to the ground. We're seeing a confluence of factors:

-- Plagiarism has become such a complex and overinclusive concept that it's impossible to actually do academic work at volume without either committing plagiarism or specifically acting to avoid plagiarism while still technically doing the same thing (ie, carefully rephrasing the same thought to avoid copy-paste). The best comparison I can think of is NFL football: the definition of what constitutes a "catch" a "fumble" or being "in bounds" is obvious at human speeds, slow everything down to frame-by-frame from four angles and it suddenly gets really complicated, to the point where I have no earthly idea what pass interference is, and the review officials have to impute intent into micro-gestures during intense physical violence. Plagiarism rules simply weren't designed for a world where powerful computers instantaneously compare every combination of words used in a 500 page work to every other combination of words ever combined in human history. God forbid we get to the point where HallMonitorGPT can interpret meanings and compare and cite them. Everyone is committing plagiarism all the time, if anyone has the energy to look into it.

-- Culture War has created a real team effort at destroying random people on each "side."

-- Bill Ackman's wife had Academia as her rich lady hobby. Which, on the grand scale of rich lady hobbies, is actually pretty admirable. But she got got. And Bill Ackman is showing his whole ass on Twitter and live interviewed on CNBC about it. He's hopping mad and going on the warpath to defend his wife and expose those attacking her.

-- Claudine Gay got got on plagiarism to avoid firing her for racism. That incentivizes the other team to get some of their opps.

Expect a ton of attacks on academics at every level for the next few months.

Plagiarism rules simply weren't designed for a world where powerful computers instantaneously compare every combination of words used in a 500 page work to every other combination of words ever combined in human history. God forbid we get to the point where HallMonitorGPT can interpret meanings and compare and cite them. Everyone is committing plagiarism all the time, if anyone has the energy to look into it.

We're not talking very sophisticated, "this sequence of five words resembles a use of five words scattered throughout an entire paper" stuff here, at least if I believe what I'm hearing about my nephew, who is doing teaching work as part of his PhD and thus grading papers: one example was a student who didn't even change the name on the plagiarized paper.

I think if you can't even manage to change (not real names) "Ramchandra Paresh" to "Billy Murphy", we are not talking the highest levels of academic achievement being stifled by over-zealous sniffing out of plagiarism.

You kinda missed the point I'm getting at. I'm saying that plagiarism claims are probably universal if you dig hard enough among academics. And given that we aren't really equipped to parse the severity of those claims, we're just going to keep score by "Dr. ABC had X number of claims of plagiarism against them" that's the whole tweet. Once you get a complex enough set of rules, everyone is in violation of something all the time. Like land use ordinances or holding in the NFL, the refs call it when they want a particular result.

I'm wondering if cheating students become cheating professors. If the attitude is shifting towards "pfft, who writes their own paper, that's dumb when you can buy one that will get you the grade" then why expect "pfft, why write my whole own paper/book when I can just copy what someone else got published?" to be beyond the pale when they're the academics?

As far as I'm aware, the cases being complained of are not a few words here and there that resemble words someone else wrote, but chunks of word-for-word copying. If that's not the thing you mean, then yes, extreme demands for rigour and so on.

There are very high profile academics whose work actually gets cited and picked over just for the intellectual benefit from doing so. If their work had plagiarism it would be found out already. That, there also exists this class of hangers on who just create make work articles and think of academia as a grift they can make easy money out of, is one of the biggest faults of academia.

Ackman's turn has been pretty remarkable. He's posting memes from EndWokeness on Twitter now.

Until recently, we saw most billionaires give lip service to diversity and other progressive shibboleths. They'd give some sort of weak pushback like "As a lifelong Democrat, I'm concerned by..." but they'd never actually fight the powers that be.

Now, people like Ackman have joined the other team. They are saying, explicitly, that wokeness is bad, academics are racist, and we need to vote for actual Republicans to change things.

Nope. Ackman has decided to back a full-on DEI supporter for President. His "wokeness is bad" stuff was all tactical, perhaps to get the help of Rufo. Now that he's got the head he wanted, he's back to full DEI (provided his people are on the correct side of the progressive stack).

While I am not sympathetic to people seeing the sinister hand of Da Joos everywhere, there are some patterns that are real, and one I have seen lately, of which Bill Ackman is a notable example, is of prominent Jews who were full-throated supporters of DEI and wokeness suddenly being shocked, shocked, to discover that Palestinians > Israelis/Jews. This shocking discovery causing them to suddenly reevaluate their allyship and leading to hand-wringing articles by Jews about how they are walking away from The Left/the Democratic Party, etc.

I don't have a lot of respect for people who suddenly do a heel-face turn because their ox got got.

I don't have a lot of respect for people who suddenly do a heel-face turn because their ox got got.

I'd still be happy they were shooting in the proper direction... if they kept shooting in the proper direction rather than returning to the fold as soon as their ox get a reprieve.

Is their ox gonna get a reprieve? Seems like the respectable center left which goes "ok, discriminate against whites but make an exception for Jews no seriously make an exception for Jews" has lost control of the narrative.

Ackman was optimistic about Trump in 2016 and supported him https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/bill-ackman-president-trump

Business people tend to flip-flop though or hold contradicting opinions. Mark Cuban is seen as woke but he used to be more libertarian or even conservative https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/08/12/mark-cuban-would-love-to-be-a-republican-if-it-werent-for-the-republican-party/

Billionaires have never been fans of wokeness ,as they know if wokeness is carried out to its eventual end, they will be among the first to be shaken down. I think Ackman has voiced sentiment that many others share but afraid to voice. Zuckerberg is not a big fan of the woke either.

Zuckerberg is not a big fan of the woke either.

The first I've heard. Didn't he donate massive amounts of money towards helping Democrats win in 2020 by hook or crook? That's despite the fact that they hate him and that previous progressive donations have blown up in his face.

I'd love to be pointed in the direction of anything anti-woke coming from the Zuck.

Protection money is a thing. The left hate him because he has not done enough to stop alleged misinformation on the platform, and also his denial of Facebook's role in affecting the 2016 election..

As an insider, wokes in the company had been railing against Thiel being on the board for years and years. Zuck always stood up for him.

Zuck would go along with diversity initiatives but was never the one pounding the drum. The most I can remember him being fired up about woke politics is when somebody crossed out “Black Lives Matter” on a chalkboard.

COVID censorship, even inside the company, was absurd though. Mass deletions of comments for not citing “reputable” sources, for which the definition of reputable was secret and somehow didn’t include university professors.

I got the impression that Zuck is a pretty standard Silicon Valley paternalistic tech idealist.

If someone told me “Hedge fund manager goes scorched earth over antisemitism and plagiarism controversy,” I’d immediately guess “Who is Bill Ackman?”.

Ackman’s long been one of my favorite PG-rated lolcows. Rated PG as in you can discuss his hijinks with your coworkers and family in a way you can’t about Chris Chan or Twitch thots.

Two of my other favorite hits from him was the massive beef and money between Ackman and Carl Icahn over Herbalife (I was rooting for Ackman, btdubs) which Ackman lost, as well as taking another L in an infamous “bike trip” story (DESPITE being just a small part of most our meat-space lives, bikes comprise a disproportionately large role in funny phenomena):

“I had done no biking all summer,” Ackman now admits. Still, he went out at a very fast clip, his hypercompetitive instincts kicking in. As he and Loeb approached Montauk, Loeb texted his friends, who rode out to meet them from the opposite direction. The etiquette would have been for Ackman and Loeb to slow down and greet the other riders, but Ackman just blew by at top speed. The others fell in behind, at first struggling to keep up with the alpha leader. But soon enough Ackman faltered—at Mile 32, Ackman recalls—and fell way behind the others. He was clearly “bonking,” as they say in the cycling world, which is what happens when a rider is dehydrated and his energy stores are depleted.

While everyone else rode back to Loeb’s East Hampton mansion, one of Loeb’s friends, David “Tiger” Williams, a respected cyclist and trader, painstakingly guided Ackman, who by then could barely pedal and was letting out primal screams of pain from the cramps in his legs, back to Bridgehampton. “I was in unbelievable pain,” Ackman recalls. As the other riders noted, it was really rather ridiculous for him to have gone out so fast, trying to lead the pack, considering his lack of training. Why not acknowledge your limits and set a pace you could maintain? As one rider notes, “I’ve never had an experience where someone has gone from being so aggressive on a bike to being so hopelessly unable to even turn the pedals…. His mind wrote a check that his body couldn’t cash.”

Nor was Ackman particularly gracious about the incident afterward, not bothering to answer e-mails of concern and support from others in the group until months later.

As to the Ackman antisemitism/plagiarism brouhaha, I’m also rooting for him to prevail against journalists and university administrators in this particular case. However, it’s also the case that I believe (like some others in this thread), that Ackman is only upset because it was his particular identity politics ox that got gored.

He doesn’t mind the presence of leopards, just whose faces they are eating.

Plagiarism has become such a complex and overinclusive concept that it's impossible to actually do academic work at volume without either committing plagiarism or specifically acting to avoid plagiarism while still technically doing the same thing (ie, carefully rephrasing the same thought to avoid copy-paste). The best comparison I can think of is NFL football: the definition of what constitutes a "catch" a "fumble" or being "in bounds" is obvious at human speeds, slow everything down to frame-by-frame from four angles and it suddenly gets really complicated, to the point where I have no earthly idea what pass interference is, and the review officials have to impute intent into micro-gestures during intense physical violence.

I disagree.

I see "plagiarism" as something more like traveling in basketball, where mostly everyone would agree taking five dribbleless steps while running in action is less forgivable than taking three while walking the ball up the court in the beginning of a possession. Especially when examining casual players, most basketball-familiar people can identify traveling when they see it (like pornography) and judge its severity even if complications like jump steps, floating dribbles, and step-throughs can appear.

Lifting entire passages without attribution would be like the five dribbleless steps mid-action; insufficiently rewording some well-known-in-the-field information in a sentence or two would be like the three steps while walking up the court.

Ackman

lol yeah forgot about Herbalife. He kept adding to the short position and dumped it all at a huge loss 5 years later. And now Carl Icahn has problems of his own, as his fund's dividend rate is less stable than originally assumed to be. I think the recurring theme is that these bigshot money managers are entertainment value only as egos clash. Stick to index funds otherwise.

I see "plagiarism" as something more like traveling in basketball, where mostly everyone would agree taking five dribbleless steps while running in action is less forgivable than taking three while walking the ball up the court in the beginning of a possession. Especially when examining casual players, most basketball-familiar people can identify traveling when they see it (like pornography) and judge its severity even if complications like jump steps, floating dribbles, and step-throughs can appear.

Lifting entire passages without attribution would be like the five dribbleless steps mid-action; insufficiently rewording some well-known-in-the-field information in a sentence or two would be like the three steps while walking up the court.

To continue the metaphor, I think the current cycle of feud and violence is going to look like this: imagine if the NBA sat down at the end of the season and identified travels in video of every game, and docked the team "convicted" of the travel points that the league determined resulted from the travel, and if the docked points were enough they started revoking wins. Imagine they started with the Lakers, and docked the Lakers several wins. Well then Lakers fans would naturally go through every other team's games, and point out uncalled travels, and pretty soon the results of any close game are in question.

Combine this with the tendency of twitter to report "Eleven instances of plagiarism have been found in the work of Dr. X" and you get a pretty toxic stew.

I agree with you that context is everything, I'm not arguing that plagiarism is everywhere in the sense that no one has original ideas. I'm arguing that a motivated reader can locate a possible accusation of plagiarism in almost any work, which will then be fed to the slaughterhouse of social media.

Well then Lakers fans would naturally go through every other team's games

Joke's on them, there is effectively no other team in academia.

-- Plagiarism has become such a complex and overinclusive concept that it's impossible to actually do academic work at volume without either committing plagiarism or specifically acting to avoid plagiarism while still technically doing the same thing

I think that this is completely wrong and that you haven't actually done anything to demonstrate this at all. I can see multiple groups and people putting out original scholarship, and it isn't hard to avoid plagiarism if you're actually doing an experiment and trying to replicate something. People put out original research and academic work all the time without plagiarising - for example, look at the work that's being done on reading the Pompeii papyri.

On the other hand, I think that plagiarism is a huge problem in the field of academic functionaries who aren't capable of doing actual academic work, and those are just a lot more prominent at the moment because there are so many useless midwits in academia staffing various diversity sinecures. In that world, you get your job on the basis of your identity and your friends, with the academic work being little more than a paper requirement. These people aren't trying to study or advance human knowledge, they're trying to claw down a fat paycheck for doing nothing/pursuing the political goals they wanted to pursue anyway. Plagiarism is going to be a big problem in this cohort because as far as they're concerned the actual work of academia is not something they're there for, so why not plagiarise?

Different types of plagiarism. Copy pasting has plausible deniability as an error. Rearranging text and word substitution is worse, as it shows intent.

(who is Jewish and thus smarter than me)

If Ashkenazi in the US have an Iq that is a half standard deviation higher than white people, there would still be far more intelligent white people than jews. There are 31 white Americans for every jew and not all those jews are Ashkenazi. Less than half of all jews are at average Ashkenazi Iq or greater, this is less than 1% of Americans. Roughly 30% of white people have an Iq a half standard deviation above 100 or higher. For every average or higher jew there are 19 white Americans with an Iq equal or greater than the Iq of the average Ashkenazi. Additionally there would be several non white goyim in this Iq range for every jew.

For the 98.8% percentile/2.5 standard deviation Ashkenazi, or about 60 000 people in the US, they are equal to the 3 standard deviation white American. 0.17% of Americans are white Americans in the 3rd standard deviation of Iq. There are about 560 000 white Americans in this age range. Add in some Asians and jews would make up less than 10% of Americas Iq elite.

So the Ashkenazi genetic intelligence hypothesis is probably undecideable in our society.

Wait, I thought it was pretty well confirmed but not widely publicized that average group intelligences were

  1. Ashkenazi

  2. East Asian

  3. Northern European

  4. Southern European

And then others at much lower average IQ’s(yes, obviously with smaller groups like Tamil Brahmins and Maronites in there). I’ll buy that the magnitudes of the gaps aren’t fully solved but the Ashkenazi IQ advantage being controversial scientifically rather than just not spoken about in polite company is need to me.

If that's the case, why is Israel's GDP per capita way lower than USA's?

Most of said capita are either not Ashkenazi or economically unproductive Haredi.

Ashkenazim are a minority in Israel and aren’t as GDP-maxing as in the USA.

USA is hardly a pure ethnostate of the most productive demographics. Cut 2 or 3 geographic regions or 2 or 3 ethnicities and it'd be similarly buoyed.

Israel's average IQ is 92, a score that would be roughly on par with the nicer parts of Latin America or most of the Balkans. The US average is 97. Not an enormous difference, but the large white majority(US whites score higher than whites elsewhere in the world IIRC, closer to the east Asian average) brings it up considering Israel has very large lower-IQ demographics in comparison.

Add a rough neighborhood, minimal natural resources, a national language virtually unused outside its borders... I was only addressing the overstatement of its human capital.

In 2003 the US had 202% of the GDP/capita of Israel. In 2022 it was only 140%. And this in a country where less than 1/3 are secular or modern orthodox Ashkenazim, the rest being Mizrachim/Sephardim, Arabs, or work-shy Chareidim. That’s not too unimpressive, and the figure is still substantially higher than most gentile white Northern European countries, without anything like the resource bounty of the US.

Why ask it that way?

Most people in Israel are from Eastern Europe/Russia/The Middle East. How does Israel's GDP per capita compare with those areas? Answer: It's massively higher.

How does the GDP per capita of American Jews compare with non-Jewish Americans? Answer: It's massively higher.

Is there a Jewish Ashkenazi group anywhere in the world that doesn't massively outperform their countrymen economically? No, there isn't.

Here's another way to look at it. Put 10 million random Americans into a tiny strip of arid land with no resources and check how they are doing in 70 years. The results wouldn't be pretty. Israel has outperformed to an almost unbelievable degree.

Is there a Jewish group anywhere in the world that doesn't massively outperform their countrymen economically? No, there isn't.

Yes, absolutely. Sephardic and Mizrahi jews don't noticeably outperform their countrymen, and they especially don't do it in Israel. IIRC (but I may be wrong, so don't trust this without verification) it was actually the Christians in the middle-east who outperformed economically and on IQ tests.

Here's another way to look at it. Put 10 million random Americans into a tiny strip of arid land with no resources and check how they are doing in 70 years.

This is a silly hypothetical because you have selection effects for Israel which aren't actually completely random. Exactly who counts as American is different as well - are you drawing this 10 million-strong cohort from the America of today or America as it was when Israel was founded? But even if you correct for that, throw in all the resources that Israel receives from America and the jewish Diaspora and the random Americans would most likely be doing better, if only because they don't have to support a population of non-working, non-military serving orthodox.

Sephardic and Mizrahi jews don't noticeably outperform their countrymen, and they especially don't do it in Israel.

Sephardic Jews and Jewish converts to Christianity (Marranos) certainly were overrepresented in positions of influence, power and wealth in the Latin world, and later two of the most prominent Anglosphere Jewish politicians of the 19th century (Disraeli and Judah Benjamin) were Sephardic. Sephardim were extremely overrepresented among the affluent middle classes in Thessaloniki, Istanbul and elsewhere before WW1. And Mizrachi Jews were also very overrepresented in powerful positions, both as court advisers and as bankers, retailers, department store magnates, theater owners and so on across Egypt and the rest of Islamic North Africa, and in Persia and the Levant at times. And even before the colonial period were overrepresented among courtiers, bankers, jewelers, merchants and so on.

But again, the baseline gentile host populations have / had lower performance, so this ‘works’ even if Mizrachim average, say, 95, provided those around them are 80 or 85. The Lebanese do extremely well in Central America, but badly in Australia - the difference is a host population at 80 vs a host population at 100.

That's really interesting - I hadn't seen any sources which made the claim that they were overrepresented in those areas but I freely admit to not looking at the situation throughout history. Do you have any good links for more information on that topic? Most of the sources I can find compare Sephardim/Misrahim to Ashkenazim, which really doesn't do them any favours.

Yes, absolutely. Sephardic and Mizrahi jews don't noticeably outperform their countrymen,

Sorry, I thought it was assumed we are talking about Ashkenazi. My bad.

For the record, I don't believe that practicing Judaism magically make you more intelligent. There was obvious some sort of genetic funnel in the Middle Ages in Europe.

selection effects for Israel

Many Jews remained in the US and Europe, but hundreds of thousands were forced out of Arab countries and now there are practically no Jews in Arab countries. The selection effects were importing a lot of mizrahis which you consider unremarkable.

The selection effects were importing a lot of mizrahis which you consider unremarkable.

And from a HBD perspective, they largely are unremarkable compared to others. But the point remains that the forces bringing them and the Ashkenazim to Israel were not random at all, which is one of the reasons why it would be silly to compare them to a random selection of Americans.

I don't see how you can argue for selection effects for mizrahim when they were entirely expelled from the Arab world which was their home and are now almost all in Israel. Such a uniform phenomenon is like the opposite of a selection effect, unless you are thinking they were selected for being Jews.

Because they weren't entirely expelled - there remain populations of mizrahim in various countries, and according to wikipedia at least several of them end up moving to the USA instead. I do agree that they were under less severe pressures than the ashkenazim, but that doesn't mean there wasn't any such pressure at all.

More comments

It started from a lower starting point. The rate of growth are otherwise tied if you plot them against each other.

Also, I do not find the link between Ashkenazi intelligence and antisemitism all that plausible. The traditional antisemitic trope of Jews is them being shrewd manipulators, which is not exactly the same as being smart.

There's a long running tradition of certain anti-semitic right-wing types trying to discredit Ashkenazi IQ scores. (Vox Day, more recently some youtuber. No idea what neonazis do, but probably the same.

Most recently, the otherwise pretty good Neema Parvini jumped onto that bandwagon and claims the studies that show it are all invalid because low sample size, yada yada. I'm guessing it must be strategic on his part, Parvini is a very widely read scholar.

There's a long running tradition of certain anti-semitic right-wing types trying to discredit Ashkenazi IQ scores.

It's fairly recent and I find your post to exude the kind of 'boo outgroup' pathologism you imply is afflicting others.

The OG Nazis didn't like IQ tests yet found jews to be intelligent but bad people. Early neo-nazism copied most of that.

As far as groups who actively believe in HBD and IQ stuff go, during the 'Alt-Right' era, if you can call it that, it was very rare to see any refutation of jewish IQ being high. Most parroting the 115 IQ myth. The primary argument, much like the nazis of old, being that these smart jews were taking up positions of power in white societies and using it to the detriment of whites and the benefit of jews.

The only big contradicting instance to that narrative was old newspaper clippings being posted relating to a jewish SAT cheating thing, but to what end that was brought up wasn't exactly clear. The big narrative described above came first. Why bother to undermine that?

The article by Vox is one of the only ones I can find that takes direct issue with the whole jewish IQ thing. And even then Vox was always a kind of outsider with his own thing going on.

There has, however, been a lot of recent discussion on this topic, now that the 'Alt-Right' era is over and some of its bulkier narratives can be discarded. And, maybe, just maybe, because the topic is relevant, interesting, and a big thorn in the side of many a current right wing star like Jordan Peterson. Who are trying to juggle justifications of jewish power and group interest whilst simultaneously preaching individualism to whites of European ancestry.

Very few antisemitic alt rightists ever affirmed higher Ashkenazi intelligence. If they didn’t explicitly deny it they ignored it or took the view that nepotism / in-group loyalty still explained the vast majority or all overrepresentation. And I would reject that criticism of the theory is recent - the most infamous deboonking of overrepresentation being meritocratic (Unz’ Myth of American Meritocracy) was published in 2012.

Very few antisemitic alt rightists ever affirmed higher Ashkenazi intelligence.

Every single one of them did that I know of. And I was neck deep in this stuff. I am still to encounter anyone in that sphere who thinks ashkenazi jews anything other than high IQ.

If they didn’t explicitly deny it they ignored it or took the view that nepotism / in-group loyalty still explained the vast majority or all overrepresentation.

Like I went over in my comment:

it was very rare to see any refutation of jewish IQ being high. Most parroting the 115 IQ myth. The primary argument, much like the nazis of old, being that these smart jews were taking up positions of power in white societies and using it to the detriment of whites and the benefit of jews.

Jews being smart and jews being overrepresented due to nepotism is not a mutually exclusive thing. In fact it makes a lot of sense for nepotism to work better than it otherwise would when you are the group you prefer has a high IQ. Since then the nepotism is more functional and less obvious.

And I would reject that criticism of the theory is recent - the most infamous deboonking of overrepresentation being meritocratic (Unz’ Myth of American Meritocracy) was published in 2012.

Unz did not dispute jewish IQ to any relevant extent. Making the assumption that it's 109. He just posited that jews are overrepresented even when accounting for IQ.

Most parroting the 115 IQ myth.

Oh, you're in the camp that the 70 odd Jewish kids in the absolutely random Wisconsin study of 6000 school kids were carefully selected so their polygenic risk scores would 'bolster' the 'myth' of Jews being somewhat smarter on average ?

Good luck. At some point, we're going to get bigger studies, and what then ?

That's such a poor strawman I feel it manages to light itself on fire.

At some point, we're going to get bigger studies, and what then ?

Then we have the results of those bigger studies? What then? Seriously what even is this comment?

Then we have the results of those bigger studies? What then? Seriously what even is this comment?

Then they're of course going to say 1k Jew genomes isn't enough or selection effects or whatever. Because it's an article of faith for them.

And not for us, thank heavens.

Whites managed to get screwed both coming and going, when some other group is underrepresented it's "systemic racism", when overrepresented it's all meritocratic, "get good, scrub".

So quit whining and get good.

We all go before the judge sooner or later.

  • -10

It doesn't matter how good you get if the game is sufficiently rigged. At some point you have to consider the dishonest judge your opponent as well.

What happened to "identity politics is bullshit"? Why exactly should smile and nod when it's being deployed against me, to the detriment of my career?

Hobbes again. Obey the sovereign uncomplainingly in all things.

It is bullshit that's the point.

Whining about being screwed over because of your skin color is like whining about the refs in football or the clock in Boxing. It's a losers move.

If that's the case I don't see how saying "identity politics is bullshit" isn't a loser's move by definition.

This was so predictable. The opening salvo against Gay would lead to relation by the left that would either make the whole thing a wash for either side or backfire against the right. Dissertations are public, after all. The only thing stopping a motivated adversary is manpower to read them all. And to think this originally started with Gaza. I hope regardless of the outcome this leads to better research . The underlying problem is that the majority of research in the social sciences are not that good.

Ask an antisemite why Jews are over-represented in the Ivy League, and they will probably say that it is because the Jews in academia collude to favor Jewish students over gentiles, helping them cheat and so on. If you convince them that the over-representation is due to raw honest brain power, that will conflict with the antisemitic trope.

I think that there's an element of both of these in play to be honest. The Ashkenazim verbal IQ advantage is real(and I believe it is also tied to the same alleles that are responsible for so many of the genetic disorders they encounter) but not sufficient to explain their overrepresentation in certain fields (you can just go and do the maths on that if you want) - but ethnic nepotism in combination with the IQ advantage explains it perfectly. I don't think you need to be an antisemite to point out that jewish identity is fairly strong, and it isn't like that ethnic nepotism is hidden or obscured in any way. You can just go look at various institutions and bodies set up by the jewish community to support their own, it isn't a secret at all.

I think IQ + some favoritism (not not as much as sometimes assumed) + good environment. Jewish households may do a better job fostering talent compared to gentile ones.

Jewish households may do a better job fostering talent compared to gentile ones.

A factor that itself is heritable. Genetic heritability of traits can be more than 100% due to things like that.

As I understand it, heritability can only be greater than 100% if you have negative gene-environment correlation, i.e. if the people with higher polygenic scores tend to raise their children in environments less conducive to increasing intelligence.

Hypothetically you could have infinite heritability if environment perfectly cancelled out genes, resulting in everyone having equal intelligence despite variation in genetic potential.

This Guardian article is ridiculous but seems to be the discretion leftists are taking basically calling out the motives of the people who brought attention to her fraud. The bottom line is that stuff is irrelevant and it doesn't matter if they are white supremacists or flat earthers. She's president of Harvard and a serial plagiarizer and completely unqualified for that job. The other funny thing about this is that it has nothing to do with white supremacy or white people. She was brought down by rich Zionists who were mad she didn't do enough to stop criticism of Israel and antisemitism on campus. Apparently her fraud was pretty well known and she wasn't brought down until everything that is happening with Israel since October. The best thing for white supremacists would be for her to stay in office because it shows how much of a diversity hire she was, discredits the Ivies, and it would mean they weren't cracking down on speech against Jews and Israel.

Instead of reporting on what is the actual truth is, this article makes it look like the people who want to bring her down are anti-Jewish. Somehow, these whites like Rufo have been scapegoated and Jews are the victims when it was criticism of Israel and Jews that brought her down in the first place. This is truly incredible stuff here.

What a timely discussion on this MLK day.

The traditional antisemitic trope of Jews is them being shrewd manipulators, which is not exactly the same as being smart. Ask an antisemite why Jews are over-represented in the Ivy League, and they will probably say that it is because the Jews in academia collude to favor Jewish students over gentiles, helping them cheat and so on.

One could hypothesize that aside from Jews being good at getting into competitive schools through sheer intellectual aptitude, another factor could be that competitive American schools have largely been shaped by Jews. Perhaps Jews made Ivy League schools into schools that would admit a lot of Jews.

elite institutions sought to limit the number of Jewish students a century ago—and how the advent of that quota system has shaped U.S. higher education ever since.

back then, restricting the people who got in was an attempt to thwart a certain kind of ethnic diversity. And today, there are probably unspoken quotas in existence that are meant to enhance a certain kind of diversity.

Here we see some kind of 100-years cycle of antisemitism :

That’s true, although what’s interesting is that the idea of dismissing Jews, of loathing Jews because of some supposed connection to a foreign government, strikes me as awfully reminiscent of the old trope of Jews as clannish and untrustworthy that you saw in the 1920s and ’30s. In the 1930s, the idea was that they’re not trustworthy, they’re trying to lure us into war on behalf of a foreign power. And how is a lot of anti-Zionism fashioned now, except that the Jews aren’t trustworthy, they’re trying to lure us into wars on behalf of foreign powers?

Jews luring us into foreign wars?! Where are all these progressives getting that idea from? Perhaps they just happen to be in charge when billions of dollars of US taxpayer money get disbursed in foreign wars.

“One of my responsibilities as Secretary is determining, on behalf of the United States, whether atrocities have been committed,” Blinken, who is Jewish, said Monday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

He is also dealing with appeals from Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky — who similarly cites the Holocaust as shaping his outlook — to do more to stop Russia’s attacks.

What's that story with the golem again? Perhaps they should teach it in Ivy League schools.

I think one deciding factor in the ranking of elites is not necessarily who is smarter, or who is more hard-working, as they are plenty of brilliant, hard-working people that never get into the spotlight, but most importantly who is most capable at conveying that they are the smartest and most hard-working. Something like 'showmanship'?

Historically it seems to me that American Jews were most effective at that one aspect of status-seeking. From the father of propaganda Edward Bernays to the 'Warner' bros (Wonsal/Wonskolaser before Anglicization), Hollywood Mogul Weinstein, the Talented Jeffrey Epstein... It appears to me that Americans who are exceptionally good at media manipulation tend to be disproportionately Jewish. Was Sam Bankman Fried the smartest, most hard-working crypto bro? Probably not, but somehow he had a way with the media.

A similar idea is expressed in the WW2 era concept of 'Big Lie'. Some people at the time seemed to think that Jews had an unusual ability to convince others of things that were not necessarily true (ie they ought to be over-represented in elite American schools). Interestingly, that same concept has apparently been applied to other things since, including the Ukraine war and Trump's elections issues, in a 'reclaiming the n-word' sort of way, perhaps?

Ironically, one who appears in so many ways to infuriate American elites and American Jews seems to have employed some of the same tricks for his rise to power.

“He was rich. He was vulgar. He was a city guy … and the women—business, sex and a guy who loves the attention. You couldn’t beat it.’’ So the tabloid writers used him and their papers thrived. But it turns out that he was using them too. To keep his name in print, to build his brand, to learn the kinds of lessons that have helped him put together a run for the White House the likes of which has never been seen. Talk to some of those tabloid writers now and they can see—with some discomfort—that the seeds of Trump’s celebrity were nurtured in their notebooks.

I would expect that dozens of woke data scientists would jump at the chance to call bullshit on the claims.

Why would you expect this? It's the "woke data scientists" who are making these claims in the first place. So Harvard has been found to be a hotbed of anti-semitism. Was anyone really surprised?

In any case, I see this whole kerfuffle as just further evidence that the so-called "social sciences" were never anything of the sort and that the entire field ought to be put to the torch.

Also, I do not find the link between Ashkenazi intelligence and antisemitism all that plausible.

As a parallel, note that woke anti-whiteness is premised on a rejection of the hypothesis that the black–white achievement gap is due to genetic factors rather than oppression.

This is like the Venn diagram meme: At the intersection of the set of those who attribute belief in a genetic basis for the black–white achievement gap to anti-black animus and the set of those who attribute belief in a genetic basis for the gentile–Jewish achievement gap to antisemitism, we find people who do not have a strong need for intellectual consistency.

It doesn’t have to be intellectually inconsistent- they could just be wrong, eg by claiming that black and white aren’t meaningful enough categories to take average IQ.

Last week, @SlowBoy posted about Ray Epps being sentenced to probation and asserted this was a "uniquely generous outcome" for Epps. I was puzzled by this assertion and so I asked some clarifying questions and most of my responses were heavily downvoted. As a barometer of community sentiment, I tried to understand why my questions would be met so negatively and so this post is my attempt to formulate some theories. I am open to feedback on how I can post better!

Theory 1: I focused on the wrong parameters for evaluating Ray Epps' situation

I would like to think I have some practical experience in evaluating whether a given defendant is treated with unusual leniency/harshness. I once had a client who was arrested along one other guy at the same place, both for illegally possessing a firearm. Both were felons with comparable criminal history but in addition to a gun, the other guy also was caught with what the cops referred to as a "pharmacy" of drugs in his backpack (very likely worth at least $20k on the street) and also very openly admitted to police that the gun was his. So it was really weird that my guy got charged with a gun felony while the street pharmacist was charged with only a gun misdemeanor and offered a diversion program on top of that (charges get dismissed if he stays out of trouble). I investigated more of the pharmacist's background and found out he's been arrested at least three times within the last year for exactly the same conduct (gun + drug backpack) and each time no charges were filed. I had no way of proving this conclusively but the only explanation that made sense is that he was an informant of some kind. Letting the prosecutors know I was aware of pharmacist's disparate treatment was likely instrumental in getting my guy a misdemeanor plea offer.

Obviously that was a serendipitous comparison scenario, but when I was presented with Ray Epp's situation the reasonable starting point was to examine the severity of charges and sentences that other J6 defendants received. The DOJ and other sources make this information very easy to find. At least from a bird's eye view, nothing about Ray Epps pleading guilty to misdemeanors (505 out of all 1,265 J6 defendants also did), avoiding jail time (282 out of 749 convicted J6 defendants also did), or avoiding pretrial detention (70% of J6 defendants also did) seemed unusual.

If there are factors besides the severity of the charges, sentencing, or pretrial detention that I should have evaluated instead, I would love to know about them. Maybe I can even use this information at my real job.

Theory #2: I posted false or misleading information

Maybe I focused on the correct parameters, but DOJ information is either false or misleading? That's certainly a possibility, and it wouldn't be the first time a government agency made shit up. But if so, either some evidence of this duplicity or some alternative source should be offered and I'm aware of neither.

Theory #3: I posted truthful information that people thought was false or misleading

This is an online forum and we often shoot from the hip when posting. Sometimes mistakes happen. @HlynkaCG for example responded to my questions by offering two points of comparison as a contrast to how Ray Epps was treated: "we had so-cal soccer-moms and that guy who took a selfie sitting at Nancy Pelosi's spend over a year in prison only to be released after pleading to misdemeanors." I don't know who the soccer-moms are but the Nancy Pelosi reference is presumably referring to Richard Barnett who was convicted of 4 felonies and sentenced to 54 months in prison, definitely not "released after pleading to misdemeanors". As I showcased more than a year ago, this wouldn't be the first time someone here makes a confident assertion on the topic of J6 or on related election fraud theories that are not necessarily reflected in reality.

Speaking personally, I would react with genuine gratitude if anyone pointed out I had made a false or misleading assertion, because it's not something I ever wish to repeat intentionally. Part of that effort requires introspection to investigate what went wrong in the process. I again maintain there is absolutely nothing shameful about making mistakes, and part of what I value about this community is how much we celebrate remedial acknowledgement and introspection for faulty thinking and I hope HlynkaCG can shed light on the matter.

Theory #4: I posted truthful information that could lead to false or misleading implications

This reaction is commonly encountered, and likely stems from a poor decoupling ability. For example, it's likely true that Africans had a higher life expectancy enslaved in the US than they did free in Africa at the time of the slave trade. Whether or not this is true is purely a factual determination, but many people can't help it and get ahead of themselves to pre-emptively address what they believe are necessary implications of this fact. The only way that the "slavery can raise life expectancy for the enslaved" fact could in any way threaten the position of "slavery is bad" is if the former is a significant pillar of the latter, or if someone had succumbed to 'arguments as soldiers' mentality. The classic example of this scenario is AOC's famously-lampooned "Factually inaccurate but morally right".

And so I've often wondered if this is driving part of the negative reaction to fact-checking J6-related claims. Maybe challenging one specific premise (Ray Epps was treated with unusual leniency) necessarily challenges an overall conclusion (J6 defendants are treated unfairly) because someone assumes the two are coupled at the hips together:

To use a deliberately outlandish example, someone arguing "J6 defendants are treated unfairly" links to video footage of Hillary Clinton using a hot iron to torture a MAGA prisoner. I swoop in with my google-fu and point out that the video is actually a scene from a porn with surprisingly high production values. A satisfying ending to this story is possible: the person who linked the video can just say "Damn I was wrong!" and we both can just move on, skipping into the horizon.

There are several things that I think definitely should NOT happen. One, I cannot cite my deboonking to claim I've conclusively proven that J6 defendants are actually treated fairly. That wouldn't follow, especially if I'm deliberately ignoring other, much stronger arguments. Two, the person who posted the hot iron porn shouldn't refuse to admit they were wrong on that premise. This evasiveness serves absolutely no purpose in this space, and it's startlingly immature. And three, now also would not really be the time for them to pivot towards dredging up ancillary reasons for why their conclusion still remains correct.

I don't know what the solution is to this lack of decoupling. It's really hard to teach nuance.

Theory #6: I'm ruining the fun

People have deeply cherished beliefs they want to hold on to, and challenging those beliefs ruins the prospect of a good time. This is the least charitable theory obviously. The operating principle of the Motte is to be "a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas" but unfortunately this has and will forever risk being prescriptive more than descriptive. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias clearly exist but it stretches my empathy to its limits for me to try and understand what could motivate someone to sacrifice truth-seeking in order to pursue belief affirmation points. I don't understand it and, given the nature of its manifestation, I don't anticipate a transparent confession. I offered a template of what an introspective admission could potentially look like when I admitted to having previously believed in abolishing police/prisons despite my awareness that I lacked the ability to defend those beliefs, but maybe that confession was only possible because enough time had passed to give me distance from the sting.

True to the spirit of this post, I'm open to being proven wrong.

I didn't reply to you at the time because I thought the conversation up to before you posted had covered everything important. I didn't downvote you.

I think you posted true-but-misleading information. Sure, Ray Epps was not the only J6 protester to only receive probation. In that respect, his situation is not unique. However consider the other elements that make his case totally unique:

  • He is on video having encouraged protesters to go into the Capitol Building, and on record before J6 wanting to invade the Capitol. He did not go into the building even as he encouraged others to do so.

  • He was on the FBI's most-wanted J6 protesters list up until the moment news organizations (Revolver News) started covering him. He was only charged after Merrick Garland was asked about him in a hearing. (I do not have the video in front of me, as I recall it Garland was asked about Eps not by name but in terms that could not have referred to anybody else.)

  • Eps was undercharged relative to other manor J6 figures, especially in the context of other figures being overcharged. (What's the "baseline charge" protesters deserve? That's a subjective unanswerable question. However I think it's hard to contest that the whole J6 prosecution is unprecedented in American history, and even if you think DOJ is justified, it's hard to argue why Eps wasn't charged more seriously.)

  • Leftwing news outlets and even the judge at trial all bewailed how poor Eps was made to suffer as the victim of conspiracy theories. This is uniquely generous! Maybe there are some other outliers (I know there's some grandma who went viral by apologizing for her participation and calling MAGA a cult). But, by and large, the same people calling J6 an attack on democracy are saying Ray Eps is a victim. Why? -- he wanted to attack democracy! I am not aware of the judges treating anyone else so leniently.

  • Epps' suit against Fox News will be allowed to continue, suggesting the possibility that he could win millions of dollars. It's shameless. I don't suppose some secret tribunal met and decided that Ray Epps gets his payout. But nobody in DOJ is working to stop him from making millions. If the DOJ didn't like this, they could try to find something else to charge him with. (Double Jeopardy is no guarantee -- the DOJ made big headlines about potentially investigating Darren Wilson over shooting Mike Brown. If Merrick Garland wanted to, he would get on TV and say Epps deserves to be looked at again.)

Conclusion: Ray Epps was handled uniquely leniently, in a way most people would understand those terms. Epps' treatment only looks normal within the context of an excel sheet of convictions, which doesn't tell nearly the full story.

Leftwing news outlets and even the judge at trial all bewailed how poor Eps was made to suffer as the victim of conspiracy theories. This is uniquely generous! Maybe there are some other outliers (I know there's some grandma who went viral by apologizing for her participation and calling MAGA a cult). But, by and large, the same people calling J6 an attack on democracy are saying Ray Eps is a victim. Why? -- he wanted to attack democracy! I am not aware of the judges treating anyone else so leniently.

Two things can be true here. (1) that Eps committed crimes on J6 for which he deserves to be convicted and (2) he is unfairly the target of right wing conspiracy theories of being a federal agent. Eps can be a bad person in one sense and a victim in another. There is no contradiction here. In terms of how judges have treated other defendants, what other defendants have been the target of conspiracy theories like Eps?

Epps' suit against Fox News will be allowed to continue, suggesting the possibility that he could win millions of dollars. It's shameless. I don't suppose some secret tribunal met and decided that Ray Epps gets his payout. But nobody in DOJ is working to stop him from making millions. If the DOJ didn't like this, they could try to find something else to charge him with. (Double Jeopardy is no guarantee -- the DOJ made big headlines about potentially investigating Darren Wilson over shooting Mike Brown. If Merrick Garland wanted to, he would get on TV and say Epps deserves to be looked at again.)

Maybe I am the one who is confused but I'm pretty confident the DoJ does not have a mechanism to force someone to drop a civil suit. If Fox News did defame Eps by calling him a federal agent when he wasn't, why should the DoJ step in (to whatever extent it can) to stop him? Maybe Eps' actions are shameless if you assume he is a federal agent but from another angle he's another entity (like Dominion) defamed by Fox News and trying to protect his reputation.

Two things can be true here. (1) that Eps committed crimes on J6 for which he deserves to be convicted and (2) he is unfairly the target of right wing conspiracy theories of being a federal agent.

The contradiction is not between committing crimes and being unfairly accused of being a Federal agent, the connection is between the left being uniquely willing to forgive his crimes and being a Federal agent. Arguments as soldiers is done by the left too. If the left thought he was a bad guy, the left would demand that he be overcharged and would completely ignore any false accusations made about him, because that's how they behave for everyone else.

from another angle he's another entity (like Dominion) defamed by Fox News and trying to protect his reputation.

That would require that the left and the DOJ care in general about people being defamed. They don't.

Who on the left is willing to forgive Eps' crimes? Certainly not me. Citation on how the left acts for "everyone else?"

In terms of how judges have treated other defendants, what other defendants have been the target of conspiracy theories like Eps?

Is there any legal basis for this at all? Would I be able to escape a criminal conviction by having a bunch of people on twitter talk about how I was a federal agent? If this is actually a criteria that's being used to adjust sentencing and shift legal outcomes, I've just come up with an incredibly profitable new business idea that will help get people out of sticky prosecutions even when there's direct video evidence of them committing the crime! Of course I don't actually believe that's the case - he's not being let off due to an actual legal principle. There are hundreds of conspiracy theories circulating about Donald Trump, and I highly doubt that he's going to be able to dodge the charges by using a similar precedent.

Is there any legal basis for this at all?

Not explicitly so and not unique to conspiracy theories, but judges and prosecutors do indeed factor into their decisions whether someone has "suffered enough already". The prime example I can think of are deciding whether to charge negligent parents whose child is killed as a result of being forgotten inside a hot car. I also had a client who avoided jail time on her third DUI, most likely because the collision she caused severely mangled her foot and left her in a wheelchair.

I can see the tenuous basis/linkage here, and I appreciate you providing an answer to my question. But, unfortunately, it isn't enough to change my mind on this matter - I can't understand how Ray Epps gets away with what he did on the basis of people saying mean things about him online when this same principle is not applied to anywhere near the same degree when it comes to others. Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were the target of far more online conspiracy theories than Ray Epps was, but that hasn't impacted their sentencing or prosecution in the slightest.

Well there's two questions here and it's important not to confuse them:

  1. How much did Ray Epps get away with what he did?
  2. How much did Ray Epps get away with what he did because he was a victim of a conspiracy theory?

I've laid out my reasons for why Ray Epps does not appear to have been treated unusually when comparing his charges/sentences to other comparable J6 defendants. In terms of how much him being the victim of a conspiracy theory affected the outcome, it's hard to say because his ultimate sentence was well within the ballpark compared to other defendants. I do think it's plausible just based on the fact that this is indeed a factor in other cases, but his sentence was expected to be low anyways. You can read Epps' sentencing memo filed by his attorney for further details on how his life had been affected.

This is why a comparison to Epstein/Maxwell wouldn't make sense. The "suffered enough already" factor might sway judges/prosecutors at the margins, particularly for petty or questionable offenses, but I can't imagine a scenario where it would justify leniency for someone accused of running an underage sex trafficking ring.

I've laid out my reasons for why Ray Epps does not appear to have been treated unusually when comparing his charges/sentences to other comparable J6 defendants.

Could you please show me where you actually did this? I gave the post I was responding to the and the links a few looks, but I couldn't find any where you went through the claims made in the Revolver piece in great detail.

Also, I'd just like to add as an aside that I don't think "being the victim of a conspiracy theory" is actually what is responsible for his lenient sentencing - rather, it was due to him being a federal informant or otherwise working for the government. I think that the conspiracy theory claim is being used as a figleaf for those other reasons. And finally...

The "suffered enough already" factor might sway judges/prosecutors at the margins, particularly for petty or questionable offenses, but I can't imagine a scenario where it would justify leniency for someone accused of running an underage sex trafficking ring.

Petty or questionable offences? Epstein was just running an underage sex trafficking ring, and the government didn't even think that was a big enough deal for him to go to prison the first time he did it. They haven't even gone after many of the confirmed customers of the sex ring - Ehud Barak is still a free man, as is Prince Andrew. In contrast, I've been repeatedly informed by "reliable sources" that what took place on January 6 was a violent insurrection that attempted to end our democracy, and is actually legally comparable to raising an army and literally waging war on the US government. The idea that people being mean on twitter could make up for that beggars belief.

Could you please show me where you actually did this? I gave the post I was responding to the and the links a few looks, but I couldn't find any where you went through the claims made in the Revolver piece in great detail.

I was addressing whether or not Epps was treated unusually as a defendant, and I examined that by comparing him to all other J6 defendants: "Ray Epps pleading guilty to misdemeanors (505 out of all 1,265 J6 defendants also did), avoiding jail time (282 out of 749 convicted J6 defendants also did), or avoiding pretrial detention (70% of J6 defendants also did) seemed unusual." What claim within the Revolver piece addresses whether or not Epps was treated unusually that I did not address?

I'd just like to add as an aside that I don't think "being the victim of a conspiracy theory" is actually what is responsible for his lenient sentencing - rather, it was due to him being a federal informant or otherwise working for the government.

Do you believe that the 37% of other convicted J6 defendants who also avoided jail time were also federal informants or otherwise working for the government?

In contrast, I've been repeatedly informed by "reliable sources" that what took place on January 6 was a violent insurrection that attempted to end our democracy, and is actually legally comparable to raising an army and literally waging war on the US government. The idea that people being mean on twitter could make up for that beggars belief.

Sure, that would beggar belief if it happened. I've seen no indication that's the case because plenty of other convicted J6 defendants avoided jail time despite not being the subject of a conspiracy theory. This is evidently not a material factor for sentencing purposes.

More comments

But Eps didn't escape a federal criminal conviction. He pleaded guilty to federal charges. My understanding is judges have a pretty wide latitude to consider a defendant's circumstances at sentencing, so nothing explicitly prevents a judge considering these factors.

My apologies for being unclear - please replace "criminal conviction" with "prison sentence".

Eps can be a bad person in one sense and a victim in another.

Sure, but this is not how people emotionally reason. Epps committed what is, according to what the government claims in other cases, an attack on American democracy. How much sympathy do you have when bad things happen to bad people? Somehow, though, charity runs Epps' way.

I hope if I am accused of a crime, all the judges decide I was punished enough by the bad press, and in fact deserve the chance to sue for millions.

I mean, I personally do not have much sympathy for Epps but I understand why other people do.

I hope if I am accused of a crime, all the judges decide I was punished enough by the bad press, and in fact deserve the chance to sue for millions.

I do not understand this sentence. A judge in a criminal case cannot, as a general matter, decide a defendant cannot file a civil case against some third party. It is up to whatever judge is hearing the civil case to decide whether a case can go forward or not and a criminal conviction in some other case is not, for I think obvious reasons, generally disqualifying.

and in fact deserve the chance to sue for millions.

Can you please explain how you think the civil court system works? In your mind, do you believe that a judge presiding over a criminal matter can "allow" civil suits to proceed? I'm especially very intensely curious about what role you think the DOJ plays in "allowing" suits to proceed.

Edit: Merrick Garland timeline, and MAGA grandma below

I really appreciate the specifics in your response! I'll go point by point first, from the standpoint of how unusually Ray Epps was treated:

Factor 1: Epps encouraged others to enter the Capitol

It's true that Epps 1) repeatedly encouraged others to go into the Capitol "peacefully" (whatever that means) and 2) did not enter the Capitol himself. Moreover, he's captured on video trying to calm protestors down. I agree #1 is a negative factor for sentencing, but would you agree that #2 is a positive factor for sentencing? I don't know if the two factors exactly cancel each other out but it's fairly routine for the legal system to have drastically lowered penalties for criminals who change their mind at the last minute.

Besides that, both Alex Jones (though he did say "We are peaceful" and "we need to not have the confrontation with the police") and Nick Fuentes ("Keep moving towards the Capitol! It appears we are taking the Capitol!") encouraged others to march towards the Capitol but did not enter themselves, and unlike Epps neither of them were charged with any crimes.

Because far more prominent individuals who encouraged others to go to the Capitol and were not even charged, while Epps was charged with misdemeanors, this particular factor does not indicate that Epps was treated unusually. What do you think I'm missing?

Factor 2: FBI's most wanted

It's true that Epps was put on an FBI "Seeking Information" list as Photograph #16. He still shows up on Twitter, but no longer on the official list, but lots of other photos have also been taken down from that list (they're numbered sequentially so if you start at the beginning you'll see it goes 1, 2, 5, 9, 13, etc). I don't understand how this is indicative of unusual treatment if the FBI is removing dozens (hundreds?) of other photos.

Regarding the timing of charges, it's true that Epps wasn't charged until a mere 3 days after Merrick Garland was asked about him. [Edit: I hadn't looked closely when I posted this, but Merrick Garland was asked about Ray Epps by Thomas Massie on 9/20/23 and charges against Ray Epps were actually filed two days prior on 9/18/23. Epps appeared virtually in court on the 20th to plead guilty, which heavily indicates the plea was negotiated a couple of months prior]. The timing could be more than just a coincidence, but in what direction? You could argue that Epps was treated unusually harshly if you compare his conduct to Jones and Fuentes (who have not been charged) but you're arguing the opposite and I don't understand how.

Factor 3: Undercharged relative to others

It's true it's difficult to draw a direct comparison about conduct regarding what the "baseline charge" should be, but you're begging the question by saying Epps was undercharged "relative to other major J6 figures". Regarding his specific conduct (and not the attention he's garnered) why should Epps be considered a major figure to begin with? To conduct any comparison it would be helpful if you can identify an illustrative example of a J6 defendant who acted similarly to Ray Epps but was charged/sentenced much more harshly.

Factor 4: Victim of Conspiracies

This is a recursive argument. The judge at his sentencing said "While many defendants have been vilified in a way unique to Jan. 6, you seem to be the first to have suffered for what you didn't do". I don't deny that's a unique situation, but to establish that Epps was treated uniquely generously you need a baseline to compare against. I don't know the grandma you're referring to [Edit: Found what I think is the grandma, who entered the capitol and got 2 months in jail], so all I have to compare against is the fact that Epps avoided jail just like 37% of other convicted J6 defendants.

Maybe if we had a hypothetical Ray Epps Two who was the subject of similarly intense conspiracy theories but whose sentencing judge did not acknowledge his suffering then you could argue that Ray Epps One was treated unusually generously, but if it's not reflected in sentencing why would that matter?

Factor 5: Epps' suit against Fox News

I don't understand any of this. Why is the suit shameless? How could the DOJ possibly stop Epps from suing Fox News? Even if somehow they charged him with triple-digit felonies, he would still be able to sue (almost a quarter of federal lawsuits are filed by prisoners!). This is a baffling point.

TL;DR

  1. Other people also encouraged others to go to the Capitol and never even got charged
  2. Other people were also put on the FBI "Seeking Information" list and later removed
  3. To argue he was undercharged, you need to provide a comparable example
  4. I fail to see the relevance of a judge acknowledging Epp's unique status as a victim of conspiracy theories
  5. DOJ cannot "allow" Epps to sue Fox News

Is there video of Alex Jones telling people to enter the capitol? I thought there was opposite video evidence, of him saying "don't enter it's a trap".

Search engines are fucking useless these days. I can find hundreds of second hand descriptions from "reputable" news sources, but it's nearly impossible to find the first hand video evidence.

I remember Alex Jones in a video interview. Saying what I described in the first paragraph and then I remember looking it up and confirming it at the time with video evidence. But it's seemingly impossible to retrace steps.

I have no seen any evidence or video of Alex Jones explicitly telling people to enter the capitol. He was just the first person that came to mind who seemed more-or-less comparable to Epps along the "whip up crowd to head to the Capitol" axis.

This is the only video I could find, and only by adding "Joe Rogan" to my search terms which is apparently an alternate tag for "original video". In the video Alex Jones is telling people to avoid a confrontation with Police, and to march to the other side. He is a hundred or more feet away from the capitol building.

Mostly you can know that Alex Jones had zero involvement, because there is no footage of him having any involvement. If there was anything remotely implicating him it would have been blasted on every news channel. Your vague intuition of "Alex Jones would do something like this" is the exact same intuition as the people that put that intuition there in the first place. If they could have fed it, they would have.

Its also part of my continuing frustration with the state of the world. Common perception has diverged massively. You have the intuition that Alex Jones would do something. I have the intuition that Alex Jones would be set up and blamed for doing that thing while being totally innocent. The evidence for your intuition is easily findable in a bunch of second hand news sources that all vaguely hint in that direction, without ever saying enough to get hit with a slander lawsuit. The evidence for my intuition is buried and nearly impossible to find despite it being something I heard on the most listened to podcast series in the world.

I have no idea what you're referring to about my "intuition" that "Alex Jones would do something like this". Do what? Where are you getting this from?

From your post in which you're using Alex Jones as an example of someone who behaved analogously to Epps.

He was just the first person that came to mind who seemed more-or-less comparable to Epps along the "whip up crowd to head to the Capitol" axis.

Why did he come to mind, I'd call that intuition.

@ArjinFerman also

I don't want any ambiguity here, I never said or implied that Alex Jones "would do something like this" (I still don't know what is the 'something' you're referring to here), I never spoke of potential or possibilities about his conduct. The reason he came to mind is because I was trying to think of individuals comparable to Epps, and I first did so by deconstructing Epps's conduct into "He was on Capitol Grounds but did not enter, but encouraged others to enter". I figured finding someone who was caught on tape precisely asking people to enter was going to be a challenge, so I abstracted the latter factor into a more generalized "whipped up crowd to head towards the Capitol" to broaden the search. Alex Jones came to mind because he was there and I remembered him leading a "1776!" chant with a crowd. It's not going to be a perfect comparison, but I'm trying to do the work SlowBoy hasn't by proactively looking for individuals to compare Epps against, and I'm more than open to other suggestions.

More comments

I also saw a video of him driving around in his hummer shouting on a bullhorn for people not to enter, at the time -- search seems remarkably fucked indeed. (and/or youtube has been scrubbing this sort of thing -- probably the fastest way to find the video would be to go ask on /pol/, which is quite the state of affairs)

Before I respond to any specifics I want to lay out a few general suppositions: I think it's totally reasonable, almost necessary, to believe that the FBI had informants in MAGA groups and at J6; J6 prosecutions (even if you think they're legitimate) have a strong political dimension.

I can't read Epps' mind; I don't know how thoroughly the FBI was embedded in J6 attendees; I don't know whether the FBI orchestrated any part of J6 or it's only been weaponized in the aftermath; I don't have and might never have any records that will prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. I do know that some specific people have been caught lying about J6 (the J6 Committee, government reports of officers killed, Nancy Pelosi's bodyguard, etc.).

Let's concede that it's entirely possible Epps could really be innocent. We're all just filling in blanks here. But for the reasons already discussed, I do not find Epps' total innocence very likely.

Onto some of your specific points:

Besides that, both Alex Jones (though he did say "We are peaceful" and "we need to not have the confrontation with the police") and Nick Fuentes ("Keep moving towards the Capitol! It appears we are taking the Capitol!") encouraged others to march towards the Capitol but did not enter themselves

Jones is not known to have been near the Capitol at all: he was speaking from Lafayette Square. This is in a different category from Epps, who was present at the Capitol and encouraging people to go in (while pointedly not going in himself). I don't think this is an apples-to-apples comparison.

The lack of charges for Fuentes are taken as suspicious by many people. It's openly discussed whether he was a Fed. I have not bothered looking into the accusations, there are a lot of arguments floating around. My supposition is that he's been a party to so many shenanigans by this point that the Feds would be stupid if they haven't at least tried to recruit him. He could also be genuinely that dumb.

Regarding his specific conduct (and not the attention he's garnered) why should Epps be considered a major figure to begin with?

In part because he was near the top of the FBI's J6 List until he wasn't. In part because he's a highly-visible face saying everything lefties have accused J6 of representing. He was an Oath Keepers chapter president. He he was on restricted Capitol Grounds. He fits the exact profile of people who have been otherwise severely charged.

Granted that Epps is not an Alex Jones, or Enrique Tarrio, or someone who otherwise might have been presumed to be a leader within MAGA before the J6 events. But that's not the only qualification. Epps is perhaps the most visible face of protesters agitating to enter the Capitol, the very proof that J6 was part of serious sedition, and all he gets is a slap on the wrist.

Before I respond to any specifics I want to lay out a few general suppositions: I think it's totally reasonable, almost necessary, to believe that the FBI had informants in MAGA groups and at J6; J6 prosecutions (even if you think they're legitimate) have a strong political dimension.

Yes? I don't disagree, but don't know how that's relevant to whether Epps was treated with unusual leniency.

Let's concede that it's entirely possible Epps could really be innocent. We're all just filling in blanks here. But for the reasons already discussed, I do not find Epps' total innocence very likely.

Innocent of what? He already plead guilty.

Jones is not known to have been near the Capitol at all: he was speaking from Lafayette Square. This is in a different category from Epps, who was present at the Capitol and encouraging people to go in (while pointedly not going in himself). I don't think this is an apples-to-apples comparison.

That's totally fair that you don't think Alex Jones is a good comparison, so who would you propose comparing against? You can't say that someone was treated "unusually" unless you already have a comparison in mind, so who are you comparing Epps against?

In part because he was near the top of the FBI's J6 List until he wasn't. In part because he's a highly-visible face saying everything lefties have accused J6 of representing. He was an Oath Keepers chapter president. He he was on restricted Capitol Grounds. He fits the exact profile of people who have been otherwise severely charged.

I don't know what you mean by "near the top" except that he was one of the first to be put on the 'seeking information' list. Chronology does not determine severity, so why is this significant? What does it mean to have a highly-visible face? People know who he is because he received significant right-wing media attention, so is that your metric? What are lefties claiming J6 represents and how does Epps represent it? It's true that he used to be an Oath Keeper chapter president in 2011, why is that significant? It's true that he was on restricted Capitol Grounds, but so were up to 10,000 other people, so why is that significant? What exactly is the "exact profile" of people who were charged? Did you determine this profile by examining all 1,265 J6 defendants? Are you claiming that prosecutions are decided by looking for this profile? This is an extremely confusing paragraph.

You concede that Epps would not be presumed to be a leader of any kind and I just want to understand how you contrasted his situation to determine that he was treated unusually. I again repeat that a really good starting point would be for you to pick one comparable J6 defendant that you think was treated much more harshly than Epps.

Because far more prominent individuals who encouraged others to go [in]to the Capitol and were not even charged

First off, I think you mean "into" here. But anyway, complete side track, but it's sort of hilarious watching this regularly-scheduled program on a completely different screen than watching the Section 3 disqualification program. Like, here, the fact that someone just encouraged others to go into the Capitol is good reason to not charge them. But ya know, with Trump, he didn't even do that, yet it is clearly and obviously "engaging in insurrection".

No I meant "to" because I didn't see anything about Alex Jones encouraging others to go inside. I don't know what you're referring to about regularly-scheduled program, it's hard to compare behaviors from different people because people don't act like mimes and do exactly the same thing at the same time at the same place. Best you can do is outline what the relevant factors and dimensions are and then analyze the actions according to that template. Inevitably you're bound to encounter reasonable disagreement throughout that process.

I mean, I agree with basically your entire comment about what we can do. The bit about "regularly-scheduled program" is that if you just look at the screen about this topic, it might on the surface look like everyone is doing this sort of 'best thing', outlining relevant factors, etc. It looks like the normal, ho-hum, program of people doing the best thing. Alternatively, if you just look at the screen about Section 3 disqualification, it might also look on the surface like everyone is doing this sort of 'best thing', outlining relevant factors, etc. But then it just strikes you when you see both of them smashed together. Like, really?! Trump "engaged in insurrection" on one screen, but we appear to have just an entirely different outline of relevant factors on the other screen. Just wild in contrast.

That's how the law works in general. There's enough precedents and opinions laying around that in any given case, you can credibly apply them to make the case go either way; in fact, almost every case has at least one lawyer on each side doing just that. So how do you actually decide the case? By criteria outside the law, which you then justify using the appropriate set of precedents. If you really can't find any which support the thing you want... make something up that sounds all legal-like, building on the closest thing (e.g. the "bad actor" test making Trump's speech not eligible for First Amendment protection).

encouraged others to march towards the Capitol but did not enter themselves, and unlike Epps neither of them were charged with any crimes.

Fuentes is widely believed to be either operated by feds due to threat of prosecution, or behaving as if he were by playing the persona of the degenerate racist piece of shit. Exactly what the media wants. He does nonsensical things like that time he endorse a schizo black man for .. president ?

Alex Jones is a non-stop noise generator who can discredit anything by merely speaking about it. Those aren't really the best examples.

That's fair pushback, what examples would you suggest as superior comparisons? From another post of mine:

I looked some more and wish I found out about Ali Alexander earlier. He posted a video on January 7th saying "I did call for people to enter the US Capitol" and later during a livestream "I started a riot for the sitting president of the United States" (though he also admitted he's prone to exaggeration and hyperbole). He was never charged with a crime. A judge even examined his conduct and dismissed him from a civil lawsuit brought by Capitol Police officers because the judge ruled his speech did not rise to the level of incitement. Do you believe this guy is comparable enough to Ray Epps? Compared to Alexander, Epps was treated harshly.

There's more people who called for occupying the Capitol ahead of J6, like Matt Bracken who said "we will only be saved by millions of Americans moving to Washington, occupying the entire area—if necessary, storming right into the Capitol. You know, we know the rules of engagement: If you have enough people, you can push down any kind of a fence or a wall." I don't know if Bracken was ever on site so it's not directly comparable to Epps, but Bracken never being charged with a crime is one more data point on the comparison board.

I made a bird's eye view comparison by contrasting Epps to all other J6 defendants and nothing stood out. I then tried to make a more direct comparison to individual cases and nothing stands out there either. So overall I see no reason to believe that Ray Epps was treated with unusual anything. Do you think that's an unreasonable conclusion?

So overall I see no reason to believe that Ray Epps was treated with unusual anything.

Are there any people like him who were on the scene, that loud who got no actual time?

I already mentioned Fuentes and Alexander who were on the scene and loud and were never even charged.

(sigh)

Yes, we all live in Surkov's world, despite not even being Russian.

I don't understand what this means

More comments

If "Alexander" refers to Jones, then you are again being misleading.

I'm not sure how you could've missed that I was talking about Ali Alexander, that was only one level above.

More comments

Epps' suit against Fox News will be allowed to continue, suggesting the possibility that he could win millions of dollars.

On a purely academic level, I wonder if there's an argument that, in isolation, "he's a fed!" is not actually defamatory. The claim is (I assume) that he was defamed as "working for the feds by encouraging protesters to enter the Capitol," but the second half of that claim is pretty evidently true from the video evidence. Is the first half alone, even if it is false, a negative claim about a person? I'm sure it is to some people, but it seems fraught to allow a court (in which most of the professional parties probably see "working for the government" as a positive, or at worst neutral claim) to generally rule as defamation something that only a small minority actually find disparaging. The overall claim is probably disparaging to the government itself, but I'm not aware of any law against alleging government conspiracies.

Sure, I believe he's received a bunch of hate mail for these accusations, but I'm pretty sure that's par for the course of anyone who achieves that level of infamy.

I think the 'fed' modifier turns it from "honest person encouraging protestors to enter the Capitol (true)" to "dishonest person sets other people up to get arrested." It's not the working for the government that is defamation, it's the claim that he orchestrated a false flag.

https://revolver.news/2023/07/against-all-odds-rap-legend-tupac-shakur-shot-down-ray-epps-defamation-claim-against-tucker-and-revolver-news/

Revolver news agrees with you.

Turns out that there's actually legal precedent that calling someone a government agent doesn't count as defamation.

The counsel for Tupac’s estate contended that the allegedly defamatory statements at issue were not capable of defamatory meaning. In other words, they contended that accusing someone of working for the federal government may harm that person’s reputation with some, but it nonetheless cannot be considered defamation from the standpoint of law.

Turns out that there's actually legal precedent that calling someone a government agent doesn't count as defamation.

I think you'll find there's some reason this precedent doesn't apply in the instant case.

I think that's a fairly likely outcome. Hell, given Fox's actions as of late I wouldn't be surprised if they throw the case and just give in anyway because the legal settlement would be worth paying in exchange for the political outcome.

Can’t find the court docs at the moment, but

In court papers, Epps described chilling harassment after pro-Trump media commentators suggested he could have been planted in the crowd by FBI agents to incite violence and embarrass the Trump movement: a busload of Trump supporters driving past his wedding venue during nuptial ceremonies and shouting threats, shell casings appearing on his property, and strangers telling him in person to “sleep with one eye open.” Epps said the harassment forced him and his wife to sell their business and move to another state.

If he is able to prove financial damage to his business, that’d probably satisfy the legal requirement.

If the statement is not defamatory as a matter of law, damages don't matter.

Sorry, I was unclear.

I think the alleged harms to Epps’ business satisfy the fourth element of defamation. I’m not commenting on the other three.

At least from a bird's eye view, nothing about Ray Epps pleading guilty to misdemeanors (505 out of all 1,265 J6 defendants also did), avoiding jail time (282 out of 749 convicted J6 defendants also did), or avoiding pretrial detention (70% of J6 defendants also did) seemed unusual.

... I'm on team don't break the law, fuckos when it comes to January 6th, but this seems to have a lot of overlap with past discussions you and I have had regarding the Molotov Lawyers and similar enforcement messiness, and come with many of the same problems. There is a genuine weakness when people point to two arbitrarily-selected examples and make a broader comparison without looking deeper, but it's very easy for demands for more scrupulous data to swing into isolated demands for rigor, or to require information that doesn't exist anywhere.

You put a lot of emphasis on the median conviction and sentencing for J6 defendants, and that's nice in the sense that it's readily available information. Yet the median (and mode) conviction and sentence is dominated by either 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G) (included in at least 412 sentences, "willfully and knowingly parade, demonstrate, or picket in any of the Capitol Buildings") or 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1) (included in at least 115 sentences, "knowingly enters or remains in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so"). Some of those were included with other convictions, including more serious and/or violent ones. There's a lot of interesting space to be discussed in the broader context of what extent this is a typical enforcement action for this class of violation of the law, but it's not clear much of the necessary data exists anywhere (how many people weren't arrested at a previous capitol protest?), and very clear that it doesn't actually matter since quite a lot of people want strict enforcement because of the specific Trump- election-related context.

There's still a bit of quibbling still about Epps within that context but it's necessarily going to be quibbling.

((Epps plead to 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(2). There's some trickiness about comparing to other 1752(a)(2) convictions, of which the FBI describes just over 100, because the vast majority of those included other convictions -- just over a dozen were sentenced solely under 1752(a)(2), like Epps, only three of whom seem to have received probation, and one home detention. Even where the plea agreements are comparable, allegations are not, in either direction.))

As AshLael points out at length, Epps is neither accused nor alleged to have gone into restricted capitol grounds. People are claiming that Epps planned and encouraged a riot, and likely communicated with a number of others planning a riot. You correctly point out that not all those who've done that class of behaviors have been charged or even arrested, (though in turn I'd caution that Fuentes at least has been long-suspected of being a fed or CHS or informant or whatever, even before 2020). Those who have been charged and convicted with an emphasis on their encouragement of others to enter the capitol often also committed other acts, or had past criminal history, or both.

But, to borrow a phrase, "[n]either you or I know enough about this case". It's certainly possible that the videos Revolver has publicized were the sole and only circumstances where Epps did any communication to other people encouraging bad acts, that the context of those acts makes incitement charges implausible, and after a long history of totally-normally-for-Trumpist arguments woke up on January 7th with a hell of a hangover and immediately went full anti-Trump. It's also certainly possible that he's just a generic garbage person with a long history of generic garbage stuff that the FBI just finds below its standards, who blanched when actually in a riot rather than talking about it on IRC, and who squealed as soon as the spotlight focused on him. It's also possible that he's a garbage person who turned human source, who spent a lot of the months before January 6th planning and encouraging violent activities, and we'd never be able to see it. Or a wide variety of more- or less-charitable ways that less garbagy CHS get recruited.

((To be absolutely clear, my bet's on garbage person, because there are absolutely a ton of rightie garbage people. But I wouldn't be a lot of money, because no small number of garbage people end up with feds leaning on them to get bigger scores.))

Comparing him to Palm doesn't illuminate much, here; comparing him to the more general morass of rioters is even less useful -- even just for the specific question of whether Epps has been treated unusually or even uniquely, since whatever Yavoich did was nothing like what Epps is alleged to have done. Nor does it tell us anything about the extent matters look suspicious.

((Similarly, both the 60 Minutes and Congressional interviews don't impress; the questions are softballs and Epps still can't give very credible explanations.))

Now, maybe there's a fair criticism that people are holding this belief non-disprovably, based on little evidence, despite extreme unlikeliness. And while there are things that would make the Epps-as-fed claim much less likely, such as if a video dropped from the sky clearly showing him yelling not to enter the capitol, they're probably going to be exactly as persuasive as they are unlikely to be found. Indeed, there's ways that this can go full non-disprovable: in the previous thread, /u/jkf mentions "MaroonPB" as one of the people Epps was talking with before the riot broke into the capitol, and it looks like that guy was later ID'd and arrested as Ronald Loehrke. But he's still awaiting trial, after being released on recognizance, despite entering and leading some of the charge into the Capitol itself: is this evidence that January 6th rioters are being given the kid glove treatment and the FBI just wants to be absolutely sure about what appears to be a slam-dunk case? Or is it a sign Loehrke too is a 'fed' of some kind? Will we only know after his trial/plea and sentencing?

((Or is there some superposition here that would only collapse after conviction and sentencing, and maybe not even after that? After all, one of the fed informants for the Bundeys ended up with a pretty lengthy sentence himself.))

((Loehrke's codefendant, James Haffner, I can't figure out the current situation for, including if he's still being detained, and the man (allegedly) sprayed a chemical at capitol police.))

And were feds and human sources rare among the nutty right, I'd even agree with you. But they're not. You yourself have previously commented on a case involving J6 'ringleaders', where some of the defendant's own witnesses turned out to be (undisclosed-until-figurative-eve-of-trial) CHS. There's a fair discussion to be had about how this sort of evaluation needs to be handled, or how to discuss events where none of the data sources are especially trust-worthy, or what Bonferri knockoff we needs use to handle this sort of discussion with over a thousand examples to cherry-pick from.

But emphasizing the FBI's summary sheet isn't doing it.

As expected, you bring the scalpel that I look forward to these discussions. I want to first clear up distinct questions that seem to get conflated:

  1. Was Ray Epps an informant or otherwise working for the government?
  2. Was Ray Epps treated with unusual leniency compared to other J6 defendants?
  3. Are J6 defendants treated with unusual harshness compared to other defendants?

My post focused exclusively on #2, I didn't touch any of the rest. I did not find the informant allegation interesting enough to investigate further because even if it's true, so what? My suspicion is the reason Ray Epps received so much attention was as a bid to find a scapegoat for the violence and chaos that day. That theory is too incoherent to evaluate properly because it requires simultaneously assuming 1) J6 protestors had no plans to engage in violence and 2) J6 protestors could be prodded to commit violence (See previously Overkill Conspiracy Hypothesis).

Accordingly there is motivation to seek out any indication that Ray Epps was indeed a fed, and absent a damning confession, the only evidence likely available is circumstantial. That's why so much focus was on the fact that Epps was never charged with a crime, but then when he was charged the focus shifted on the lack of severity. The underlying assumption is that government informants do not get punished (or at least just enough to keep up appearances) which isn't unreasonable, but as you point out that's not necessarily true. There's nothing wrong with relying on circumstantial evidence (I did the same when I investigated the street pharmacist after all) but the problem here is when two premises start a circular reasoning chain reaction: Epps was treated leniently because he was a fed, and we know he's a fed because he was treated leniently.

You put in way more work than I did in dutifully comparing the relevant charges Epps and other J6 defendants faced. You're absolutely right that finding a proper contrast is fraught with confounding variables and near-impossible to do satisfactorily, and I don't claim to have a definitive answer. I started with the big picture and zoomed in by just examining whether I would have been able to pick Epps' case out of a pile, and nothing about him stood out. If someone wants to make the affirmative assertion that Epps was treated with unusual leniency, hopefully they have some evidence to demonstrate that rather than just wishing it was true.

You're absolutely right that finding a proper contrast is fraught with confounding variables and near-impossible to do satisfactorily, and I don't claim to have a definitive answer. I started with the big picture and zoomed in by just examining whether I would have been able to pick Epps' case out of a pile, and nothing about him stood out.

I don't know that's true -- as I pointed out, the sole 1752(a)(2) conviction makes up only a tiny sliver of 1/6 convictions, the majority of people sentenced under it (and even those sentenced only under it) excluding Epps received prison sentences, often long incarceration. I haven't gone through too large of a group of broader cases, but both the procedural posture and the prosecutor behavior do not show up in a psuedo-random selection of cases on similar grounds. The majority of simple cases, even with pleas, received two or more years of probation. Those which received short probation either entered the Capital grounds later out-of-view of more violent protests, could make not-laughable claims of confusion about what areas were restricted, some medical or age-related concerns, or some combination of the above. Not all sentences above that 12-month line involve knowing statements that an action would be illegal, or disclaimer of responsibility (like Epps' deflection toward antifa), or a person bringing material preparations for physical violence (like Epps' tourniquets), but all are much more common above than below, and often used to justify home detention or short incarceration.

((And that's outside of the likely-spurious stuff. Epps doesn't show up on the DC FBI case list by name or case number as of today, which is just an organizational issue that'll... probably get fixed soon, and even if it doesn't is probably more the FBI being lazy than anything malicious.))

There's ways to square that circle: perhaps Epps was just better at playing his cards, or drew a prosecutor who was less willing to push harder (and to be fair, the sentencing request aimed for six months incarceration, just doing so very badly and without highlighting publicly-available information against him), or just got lucky on judge assignments ([Boasberg does seem to use a light hand even for morons), completely coincidentally. There's still a circle to square, here, even before adding in the media and congressional coverage.

But I think my deeper point is worse than even that.

I could pick Epps out of a stack, but I could also pick another thirty-odd people out, without much effort. Some of them have had comparable conspiracy theories, and some haven't even had significant media coverage: Loehrke seems in the first category, Haffner in the second. Doyle (sorry, her courtlistener is all Pacer-locked) received bizarrely short probation for someone who went in through a window and was turned in by coworkers. There's even a trio including a lawyer who managed to get comparable or even lesser sentences after going to trial, albeit some data weirdness on the courtlistener and DC DoJ page about them. With a sufficiently large dataset, there are always going to be outliers, and indeed many of the same things that made Epps a plausible fed also would have made him a normal outlier.

There's a fair complaint that this reflects too many degrees of freedom in the questions we're asking -- just as Wansink could always find something in a dataset, so could we find something here -- and to an extent that's even true. They're all weird, and weird in different ways, so you could trade off whether Doyle's sentence or Epps' advocacy or a handful of active-duty-military CAC-holder's military connections or a dozen other things are all The One Thing that matters most, and that you can makes the signal less relevant for Epps. But it still remains a signal.

That theory is too incoherent to evaluate properly because it requires simultaneously assuming 1) J6 protestors had no plans to engage in violence and 2) J6 protestors could be prodded to commit violence

I don't think that's a good model of the complaint, as it mixes to many different types of behavior together. All bad acts invite conspiracy theories at some level, especially when highly promoted in public awareness, as a way to shy away from the ramifications, but January 6th was not just bad or violent, but also involved people doing the single most identifiable things available, while also committing violations of a very distinctly different and not-especially-well-known set of laws.

The results would have been drastically different had J6 protestors planned for and had a fatal fistfight with counterprotestors on the Mall, or got shot trying to take the Washington Monument in some misguided belief it controlled space lasers emitting the magical smoke informing us of the next President's gender, or tried to storm Area 51 to force the US military to air strike DC, or done something stupid with the Secret Service trying to 'protect' Trump. Hell, even as someone who wrongly believed conservative protestors wouldn't riot, I'd caveated at the time that I'd expected something on that level (if, uh, more on the fatal fistfight side).

It would have still been bad! But we'd not have a thousand-plus cases simultaneously going through the legal system able to prove every part of the crime solely through video evidence and cell phone data present for the entire area they could have committed the crime, if only because it'd be really hard for a thousand people go Brutus on the Washington Monument staff, and a lot of them would flinch if you tried.

I don't particularly buy the conspiracy theory, because I know enough about crowd management and the sorta garbage people these protests invite. Zip tie dude neither planned at length how to kidnap a Senator and settled on zip ties, nor was a fed who brought them from home just to make a particularly photogenic picture, but grabbed them from a police officer and did as a moron does.

But while it's hard to prove the difference between people being lemmings and being lemmings-following-a-fed, it's easy to come up with possible evidence that would demonstrate a larger portion who had been planned these particular violations of the law beforehand. A lot of the evidence that could disprove this theory would be very interesting on its own merits! Do we see that?

I again admire and commend your thoroughness. At the big picture level, I'm unclear what we exactly disagree about. I don't deny that various factors played a role regarding Ray Epps's specific outcome. You mention two incriminating factors for Epps that appeared to have been ignored. He did indeed initially blame Antifa, but then also fully cooperated with law enforcement by calling the FBI on January 8th, and then sitting down for an interview on March (with a lawyer) where he admitted what he did was wrong. I don't see how having tourniquets can possibly be viewed as incriminating, it's normal for anyone attending a protest/rally to bring first aid supplies, especially with how violent 2020 was. I would concede your point slightly if he brought some offensive capabilities like a weapon, but even that is justifiable as self-defense precaution given how violent 2020 was.

I don't deny that the other cases you referenced had some odd outcomes, but it's still not demonstrating the original assertion: Ray Epps was treated with unusual leniency. Finding people with outcomes that are more lenient than Epps's doesn't tell us anything about that assertion. What would illuminate that question is someone with comparable conduct who nevertheless received a harsher sentence, and then ensuring that this hypothetical person wasn't just an outlier. I haven't seen this attempted, and people keep rejecting the comparisons I bring up on the other side by claiming those people (Fuentes, Jones) are probably feds too. This should be very easy if it was so obvious.

I agree that outcomes would have been very different had protestors tried to storm the Washington Monument or something, but as the classic saying goes if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike. I wouldn't expect any other location to have spawned 1000+ prosecutions, unless they also had the critical "very important government proceeding taking place" element. Regarding evidence of pre-planning, the most illustrative would be everything outlined in the Proud Boys sentencing memo. They created hierarchies, chain of command, recruitment standard, guidelines for communication, etc etc

At the big picture level, I'm unclear what we exactly disagree about.

If I'm understanding your arguments correctly, your position is that we have no evidence that Epps is a fed because he was not treated uniquely or unusually. My argument is that he has been treated unusually and possibly uniquely, but that this is not strong evidence he is a fed because there's enough of a spread of possible selection bias to pick such outliers.

You mention two incriminating factors for Epps that appeared to have been ignored. He did indeed initially blame Antifa, but then also fully cooperated with law enforcement by calling the FBI on January 8th, and then sitting down for an interview on March (with a lawyer) where he admitted what he did was wrong.

Epps continued to state the possibility of antifa infilitrators over a year later during congressional hearings. Maybe that's not enough to overcome the question of remorse, and after all that's what sentencing is supposed to rest on. I can't even say, since the final reasons for sentencing from the judge are (afaict) almost always sealed in these cases. But there's a few people who did that sort of ambivalence -- albeit usually on social media rather than before Congress -- and it was read as evidence of insincerity.

I don't see how having tourniquets can possibly be viewed as incriminating, it's normal for anyone attending a protest/rally to bring first aid supplies, especially with how violent 2020 was.

I agree with you, but the DoJ does not. There are several informations or sentencing requests that highlight first aid, non-weapon personal protection such as body armor, or other non-weapon preparation (painter's mask!, sometimes explicitly to describe culpability or planning. Now, I can't prove how many other cases don't mention such a thing despite it being present -- we only know for Epps because he discusses it before Congress, after all! And yet back to the start we go again.

What would illuminate that question is someone with comparable conduct who nevertheless received a harsher sentence, and then ensuring that this hypothetical person wasn't just an outlier... This should be very easy if it was so obvious.

Yet in practice, it's impossible to show anyone charged with the same conduct. Only a handful of people were sentenced after pleaing or being found guilty of the same offense and only the same offense: I provided a list: 10 of the 14 include jail time, including no small number of plea bargains -- but almost all of them entered the Capitol proper, so that's not a fair comparison.

Same for 18 USC 1752(a)(1): I can easily show cases that showed similar or greater levels of remorse and admission of culpability but received home detention and longer probation, but the overwhelming majority entered the Capitol building, if only for minutes. The only cases I can show didn't enter the Capitol proper was a nutjob with a long criminal history, who brought her kid with her and tried/helped moved barriers, or maybe that one moron who ran for Michigan governor. They all got significantly harsher sentences, but there are easy ways to pull them as unique in their own various ways, and they're certainly either less remorseful or more plainly two-faced in their fake 'remorse'. Kepley is probably the closest, but you could readily argue (and I might agree!) that her sentence reflected assumptions her 'remorse' was especially fake or she had closer responsibility to attacks on police than shown in the indictment or sentencing memo, or just that she drew a hanging judge.

((You can even flip this analysis: there are a lot more sole-1752(a)(1) sentences, so out of all of them, you can pull three that received 12-month probation, though their fact patterns in turn (sorry, the courtlistener for this one is nearly empty) are drastically different. And that'd even be fair, although in turn I can readily point to the same nitpicks or exclusions.))

You can (and as far as I can tell, do) hold that this must mean Epps was charged unusually harshly. After all, I can only find three people with comparable sentences who didn't enter the grounds! (though, uh, that's not a deep search). But you're demanding a remarkable amount of rigor, here: trying to break apart whether they're the only three at all is rough enough. Figuring out and proving whether that means they were the only people to commit that particular offense but no further, if those others who did either weren’t caught yet or have yet to be sentenced, or if the DOJ decided to do some sub-criminal investigation punishment, would range from incredibly difficult and expensive to impossible at a philosophical level.

((This, on top of their long-proposed fedishness, is part of why Ali Alexander and Fuentes seem like distractions. They fit into AshLael's defense of not-committing-technical-crimes closer than Epps, who plead and had long admitted to crossing into restricted grounds.))

Regarding evidence of pre-planning, the most illustrative would be everything outlined in the Proud Boys sentencing memo. They created hierarchies, chain of command, recruitment standard, guidelines for communication, etc etc

That's fair. I've got some quibbles about it, but got more weight as evidence than the vaguer assessments of non-uniqueness. As I’ve said, I don’t buy the Epps theory. But it’s easy to dismiss as not-even-wrong when you aren’t really engaging with it.

I think I understand the disagreement here. First, I would state my position on whether or not Epps is a fed is almost entirely divorced from whether or not he was treated leniently. That can sometimes be a factor, but it's barely relevant here. On whether or not he was treated leniently, I agree with your point that there's enough of a spread for outlier cases that it's difficult to do a 1:1 comparison. Defendants are not cloned mimes after all.

For what I understand you focus significantly on how rare his charges are, and I should have said this more explicitly but the specific statute he's charged with barely matters because he entered a plea. The fact that he plead guilty 2 days after his indictment was filed indicates his plea deal was negotiated ahead of time. Two days is not enough to send out a summons notice, and federal court definitely does not move fast enough to have allowed a plea deal negotiation to take place. If a defendant already agrees to plead, the prosecutor doesn't really care which specific statute they plead guilty to, because fictional pleas are very very common (and legally sanctioned!). In my work, prosecutors regularly ask me to suggest a charge my client would plead to.

It's less the specific charge -- you note fictional pleas, but even beyond that the relevant statutes are just vague and open-ended enough that a good half-dozen can fit pretty easily -- and more the behavior I'm trying to isolate down, and with things like charges and sentences are the closest proxies that the USAO DC page you linked actually exposes. I bring 40 USC 5104(e)(2)(G) and 18 USC 1752(a)(1) because they're the only other convictions that have similar or lesser sentencing that what Epps faced in the entire spreadsheet.

In an ideal world, we'd filter by what the alleged (or actual) behaviors were, but I tried throwing a couple scripts at the full USAO DC setup, and between missing pdfs (Andrew Morgan's courtlistener page makes him look like he got slapped more for his political views... but only because his sentencing request is still pacer-locked; taking it from other sources makes clear he behaved unusually poorly), heavily obfuscated descriptions, or bizarre descriptions... well, I got those three I mentioned last post out who didn't enter the capital building proper, but I also got another ten that did go into the building, and I'm 90%+ sure there's some false negatives.

((And I'm still finding typos and misfiles and stupid case citation errors, but that's more typical.))

Texas Border Update

The situation I laid out in last week's culture war thread is developing(https://www.themotte.org/post/824/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/178887?context=8#context). Apologize for two top level posts in three days on the same topic, but it's a developing situation and there'll probably be a transnational thursday thread post on it as well(is it the right topic for that? Dunno but I think this is going to need regular updating).

First, rep Henry Cuellar has accused the Texas National Guard in their takeover of Shelby park of causing the deaths of three migrants. It's perhaps worth noting that Henry Cuellar is a firm blue dogger who is conventionally considered the most conservative house democrat; he doesn't support open borders.

Greg Abbott has already responded. Here is the statement from the Texas military department.

Now I have about the same attitude towards "we shouldn't have a border because then people might die trying to cross it" as our resident white nationalists do- and will also point out that there were migrant drowning deaths before the Texas military started putting up razor wire, and that hypothermia is just what happens when you try to swim across the Rio Grande in January during a cold front. But, this was clearly 100% illegal under the injunction against CBP cutting border wire, which specifically allowed CBP to dismantle state border barriers in the event of a medical emergency(which was definitely happening). The refusal to remand migrants into federal custody is also new and I think like 110% illegal.

The federal government has sent this letter. Especially relevant is this paragraph

Texas’s actions are clearly unconstitutional and are actively disrupting the federal government’s operations. We demand that Texas cease and desist its efforts to block Border Patrol’s access in and around the Shelby Park area and remove all barriers to access in the Shelby Park area. If you have not confirmed by the end of day on January 17, 2024, that Texas will cease and desist its efforts to block Border Patrol’s access in and around the Shelby Park area and remove all barriers to access to the U.S.-Mexico border, we will refer the matter to the Department of Justice for appropriate action and consider all other options available to restore Border Patrol’s access to the border.

So Texas is directly nullifying federal law and the federal government has given until EOD Wednesday to stop. My sympathies reside with the state here, but "where does it all end" is what more or less dominates my emotions- Greg Abbott is, as I said in the comments on my previous post, not someone who does things without thinking them through and he is well qualified in constitutional law. He knew this was going to happen and he has plans for what to do about it. Something tells me that plan is not "let federal officials serve a warrant", and I doubt the CBP is willing to use arms to do so- if their union's endorsement of Greg Abbott's initial actions tells me anything it's that they'll refuse orders to potentially shoot at operation lonestar or state personnel- so is the plan to put the federal government between a rock and a hard place to erode their power? If there is a state which benefits from eroding the power of the federal government it'd be Texas, but Abbott numquam iacuit aleam et habuit fidem before.

Can you please translate your Latin?

The Latin phrase "numquam iacuit aleam et habuit fidelem" translates to English as "never has thrown the dice and had a loyal [companion/follower]."

(I used an LLM for this mods please don't ban me)

"Abbott has never thrown the dice and had faith"- it's a reference to both the rubicon and (appropriately for Texas)a country song.

fidelem (faithful person) → fidem (faith)

Edited, thanks

Shoulda just gone with the English, boyo.

So Texas is directly nullifying federal law

Genuine question: Do states like California not do this regularly when it comes to sanctuary cities and enforcement of some drug laws? I was under the impression they got away with that without issue. Why should this be any different?

Marijuana legalization and sanctuary city laws are technically just a prohibition on state personnel enforcing federal laws or assisting in that enforcement- red states have the same thing with second amendment sanctuaries, it just doesn’t work as well because of different enforcement structures.

California hasn’t attempted to physically prevent the DEA or ICE from enforcing federal law within California, it’s merely declined to assist.

California hasn’t attempted to physically prevent the DEA or ICE from enforcing federal law within California, it’s merely declined to assist.

California, maybe, but Massachusetts got pretty close.

Nice! Note that it’s iecit rather than iacuit, and I feel like Latin wouldn’t do two coordinate clauses joined with a conjunction. Maybe a participle phrase, eg Abbotus numquam fideliter credens aleam iecit.

My life was much happier before I learned that Veni, Vidi, Vici could (as speculated for ancient Latin) or does (for Church Latin) sounds more like Wini, Widi, Wicky.

Just diminishes the gravitas of the whole thing doesn't it?

I'm sure many a Romaboo/Grecophile is in denial that their tasteful grey or white sculptures just had the garish paint peel off.

In Ecclesiastical Latin, it sounds the same as it does in English (edit:or rather, I suppose I should say that the common pronunciation of that phrase among English speakers is the modern ecclesiastical Latin one). I agree that the original pronunciation is a severe let-down.

sounds more like Wini, Widi, Wicky

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet …

Vici is related to victory. And the hard c=k is manly.

c===3 is manlier.

I read "habuit fidem" more as keeping faith (as in, acting trustworthily (or so, that's not quite right)) than as believing.

Not sure what the best way to put that in Latin is, but I don't think fideliter credens works, if I'm right in interpreting it that way.

It’s rare in Latin, but I was going for the calque; I think ‘custodente Fidem numquam aleam iecit’ would be the proper classical phrasing stylistically.

Abbott numquam iacuit aleam et habuit fidem before.

I mean, the Texas Republicans are the obvious spark for an actual Boogaloo (as opposed to a Jan-6-level joke), and I've predicted before that they're reasonably-likely to go open rebellion if the election's fucked with.

Wouldn't have expected something this early, but it's possible Abbott wants to demonstrate to the voters that he'll secede if the election's stolen.

Texas secession is not taken seriously enough for that to be the signal, and the Texas GOP establishment(which Abbott sits roughly at the center of) does not want to be associated with it despite being unwilling to disavow the idea.

if their union's endorsement of Greg Abbott's initial actions tells me anything it's that they'll refuse orders to potentially shoot at operation lonestar or state personnel

Except, I can easily see this redounding to DC's benefit. If large portions of rank-and-file CBP refuse orders — because they agree with Abbott's position and actually want to do their (theoretical, on paper) jobs of protecting the border — then that gives grounds to the permanent bureaucrats higher up in the structure to fire all those who do so.

Which, first, means a much smaller Border Patrol, and thus less ability to control the border — which is what DC wants; the inability provides a better excuse for their inaction. And secondly, if and when they do bother hiring replacements, they can screen and select them primarily for obedience and ideological alignment. (As one "Zorost" said of the US military at Dreaded Jim's: "People who say the military of today is worse than the military of 2000 don’t know the metrics that GAE values: which military is more likely to obey orders to carpet bomb Omaha, NE?")

Why not replace a CBP that's friendly to attempts to stem the migrant flow with one that's hostile to stemming the flow?

So Abbott takes total control of the border with no one to complain about it? That’s what would happen.

So Abbott takes total control of the border

For how long, though?

with no one to complain about it?

No, I'd expect there'd be a lot of complaining. And probably arrests.

While it would be a bizarre move for a seasoned politician, perhaps Abbott is just actually trying to do the right thing. Sometimes that means being willing to tolerate some degree of political and legal risk, and it may be that on consideration, he thought the legal proceedings were worth it and that you have to at least try to do the right thing.

From a pragmatic perspective, perhaps he thinks it's feasible to drag out the legal battle until the executive branch is more in his favor sometime in early 2025.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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

There is the choice of simply not voting.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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".)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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’.

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yup.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

(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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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)

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We can call it Sakartvelo as a sop to local sensitivities

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.

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.

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

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).

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

  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

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.

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

Not simply black poverty, all poverty. I don't think that "I'm too poor to have a baby" is solved by "Congratulations, now we let you kill the baby up to the new limit of time so you don't have the problem of a baby! Of course, you're still poor" anymore than it is by "Congratulations, you can have your baby, but of course you're still poor".

If people are going to jeer about conservatives insisting on letting the babies of the poor live, I'm going to query right back about "why is it okay to be still living in poverty after now-baby-be-gone?"

Surely both parties are in favor of reducing poverty, although they are in great disagreement over the appropriate government actions in that area. That is, the Democrats are generally more in favor of transfer payments of some sort while the Republicans are generally more in favor of economic levers to make it easier for them to be employed (and perhaps also a longer-term view of a faster rising GDP lifts all boats), including reducing immigration to reduce competition for jobs. Both may think the other's approach heartless and/or ineffective, but it seems misleading to claim either party doesn't have "reduce poverty" as a goal.

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

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

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

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

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

More comments

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).

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

Speaking of things no one actually knows ...

More comments

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

More comments

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."

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.”

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".

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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%.

(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.

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.

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.

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

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

More comments

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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?

More comments

How exactly is immigration an existential threat to America?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I think of this often.

If you're taking issue with "it all gets burned down" then allow me to clarify that I don't actually mean that every government/elite institution will be ground to dust leaving us in a state of anarchy, and maybe I also need to clarify that no I don't wish for a literal continent-spanning inferno that will physically burn the entirety of the United States to ash. I mean that the political system that perpetuates our current ruling class will be so severely damaged that something else will grow up in its place. I think there are a lot of steps between "constitutional crisis" to "children getting killed in front of their parents." You seem to think otherwise though, so could you fill in the gaps for me?

You seem to think otherwise though, so could you fill in the gaps for me?

I'm not sure if this is how it will pan out, but the logic of it is pretty simple: the elites might rather set the country ablaze, than give up their power.

I have trouble with the details on this. How would they set the country ablaze? The most likely scenario I could think of would be a repeat of the Summer of Floyd, where a pretext is used to stir up mob violence and the police are ordered to stand down. But that only works in the left-leaning cities, so that wouldn't hurt the right very much. I think if the fed gov went crazy the states would probably pick up the slack. Southern states have a lot of armed and trained men who would probably be happy to volunteer in the Alabama State Militia, especially for the purpose of keeping the libs out.

Also, getting back to the original topic, I'm planning to live in a rural part of the U.S. with high social cohesion where I share the same cultural and religious background as the vast majority of the local population. This makes it even less likely for my family to be affected by any federal meltdown. The community is strong enough that it will continue operating largely unscathed and perhaps even better with fewer hostile regulations.

Once the government system cracks and fails

That doesn't sound equivalent to "the political system that perpetuates our current ruling class will be so severely damaged..." to me.

The Communist Block had a collapse of the system that perpetuated it's ruling elites. I think I heard some Western experts were predicting a descent into civil war, but and even though some countries ended up a lot worse than others, there was a remarkable lack of all-consuming fires that torch society.

More comments

Still pretty vague. So you think that we'll have Vietnam or Yugoslavia in the U.S.? I think it will take a lot more than just political turmoil to do that. We would need to lose a defensive war, or have a Great Depression level economic catastrophe, or get hit with a massive EMP burst, some black swan event that makes people truly desperate, before Americans resort to killing fellow Americans, regardless of how ruthless their leader is.

Maybe you could give some recent historical examples of mass slaughter in a wealthy first world country caused by political unrest. I can't think of any.

Sure, I guess. "Bloodshed" is doing a lot of work here. You don't seem interested in explaining your belief that a political crisis in the U.S. is likely to lead to the mass slaughter of American children, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

EDIT: Looks like it was wise to stop engaging.

Not the person to whom you are responding, but, as a parent sympathetic to what he said, that's already priced in. The question is not if the fire is coming, but when and how. Better sooner, I'd say, for many reasons -- not least that right now I'm around to protect them, which will not be so true in a few decades. Cynically kicking the can down the road is not a loving action, as it only generates a future which is even harder to survive. Though I suppose it might be done out of a sense of (imo, misplaced) hope that things might get better on their own.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Who would that be?

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.

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.

He's funny

the world anyone would tap for that as he would never reward anyone that helped him.

he pardoned Bannon, Stone, and others

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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).


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!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats