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I, like the rest of the country, feel like nothing good will come of the election. However, I feel this way for a slightly different reason than your average person, and probably closer to the average Mottezian.
I actually don't really care too much who is president. Either one of them would IMO do a good enough job. I mostly care whether the president impacts my everyday life or causes nuclear war. However, though it isn't his fault directly, having Trump in charge would impact my everyday life negatively, mostly because it would fuel another 4 years of incessant leftist whining all around me, from all my friends and family, along with people starting to (erroneously, IMO) see and declare that racism and sexism is everywhere again. It'll start causing fights between me and my wife again. My workplace and all local institutions will start making statements about how they're standing up to Trump and racism. Under Biden, I have truly enjoyed some nice peace and respite from politics.
However, I find this state of affairs to be very irritating. It feels like the left, or at least the leftists in my life, are taking an infantile tactic: we better win or we'll whine and complain for 4 years. I don't respect sore losers, and moreover, I don't like the fact that there is no path forward for the right.
Scott said this back in 2016:
Scott was absolutely correct here in how it played out. But what option does this leave the non leftists with? If the Democrat wins, then the currents move left. We get leftism enshrined into law over the next 4 years, because to the victor go the spoils. If the Republican wins, then the undercurrents move left, and more and more people get radicalized towards the left.
Is there a way for the currents to move right without the undercurrents moving left? Or is Trump just uniquely bad at making that happen? I'm tempted to say that this is just the fact that Trump is a polarizing figure, but at the same time, all the leftists I know scream bloody murder whenever a Republican is in command. They were infantile under George W Bush. And though I wasn't around then, I know many people who are still salty over Reagan and act like he was the worst.
From my position as a moderately liberal griller this sounds like exactly what the right did after Trump lost: whining about stolen elections, utterly and embarrassingly paralyzing Congress, leading half the country into a fact-free conspiracy fantasy land, and so on.
?? Biden has been extremely moderate and a bunch of far left cultural elements seem to be coming to heel. What’s going on in the movie you’re watching?
It doesn’t feel that way to me, but thinking back that’s probably accurate in terms of policy. Attempting to cancel student debt strikes me as his most radical position. He also seems to be on board the caboose of the rainbow train which feels transgressive somehow.
I’d place moderating radicals at the feet of the murder rate more so than Biden.
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You'd describe the border as moderate? Ketanji Jackson-Brown? Numerous attempts to imprison Republicans over slap on the wrist level infractions?
What Republicans are we talking about here and how much is the Biden administration responsible for the decision to prosecute?
The DOJ is part of the Biden administration. So all of them? All the J6 people including a Blaze journalist. https://www.glennbeck.com/radio/jan-6-journalist-fbi-arrest
Trump himself, of course, also Jeff Fortenberry who's conviction was recently overturned by a federal judge.
DoJ is traditionally quite independent of the presidential administration. Biden doesn’t make prosecutorial decisions.
Any federal prosecution of J6 peaceful protesters and Trump was going to happen under any Dem, because federal prosecutors have independence, and so it’s not evidence against Biden being moderate relative to his peers.
Also Biden is also a moderate relative to his peers on the border.
That is the story, yes. Meanwhile, in reality there are multiple reports of Joe telling Garland what to do. What we've consistently seen since 2016 is that almost all of the executive branch only works in a fair and reasonable fashion when people are obeying a whole cadre of unwritten rules that vast swathes of them no longer want to obey WRT Trump and populists generally.
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Biden has not been “extremely moderate” even if he hasn’t given the progressives everything they ever wanted.
He’s significantly to the left of Obama by any consistent measure.
But your overall point stands IMHO.
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Wow, sounds rough. It sure puts things into perspective. I now feel silly for complaining about riots resulting from a drug addict dying in police custody, which caused a massive spike in crime across America, an international rape hysteria that resulted in any form of benefit of doubt being thrown out in the court of public opinion, possibly the biggest medical scandal in recent history seeing thousands of children undergo irreversible hormonal and surgical interventions, the philosophical view that caused it becoming so enmeshed that teachers in many western countries help to facilitate the process while keeping it secret from the kid's parents, and law enforcement hardly think twice about sending rapists to female prisons, and having to talk about all that on a self-hosted forum, because that's the way you co discuss these topics without the fear of getting banned, and having to do so anonymously for fear of losing my job.
I should worry more about real things like my political outgroup "whining", paralyzing congress, believing in conspiracy theories, and other things that haven't been claimed by every group about it's political opposition in every democratic country, ever.
Indeed. Can you give me an example of an extremist democratic president, you'd understand people complaining about? And a few example of far-left cultural elements coming to heel?
Essentially zero of this is a product of Biden being elected. You picked Floyd, which was during Trump's term, and a bunch of things that are generally not action by the federal government.
Like, there's plenty to complain about Biden for (e.g. student loans!), but stick to what he's actually done? Or explicitly say that the problem is the missed opportunities for the right to crack down on these things, in which case the problem is not so much that the democrats are (mostly) in power, but that the republicans aren't?
Yes, I know. He was talking about how red tribers reacted to Biden getting elected, so I compared it to blue tribe's reaction to Trump getting elected.
In hindsight, I'll admit the trans stuff is a stretch, and probably would have happened regardless
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Trump was president in 2020.
So it’s strange you bring up the Floyd situation in response to that comment talking about complaints after Trump left office.
Tomato was talking how red tribe reacted to Trump leaving office, so I compared it to how blue tribe reacted to Trump entering office. What's strange about that?
Riots in 2020 were not reacting to Trump entering office.
So your sense of chronology seems a bit off.
I completely agree that things would have (almost certainly) gotten less out of hand if Hillary (or any Dem) had been president.
Not sure how that should influence your vote.
Now you're just being pedantic.
Vote for who your brain / heart tells you to, I was just addressing the claim which tribe's reaction was worse.
It’s remarkable you think it’s “pedantic” to point out you aren’t responding with apples to apples in your comparison based on chronology alone, even without the whole issue that the 2020 riots did not have anything explicit to do with Trump, since it’s not the federal government that controls the police.
You can still believe the Blue tribe is bad. I’m not trying to convince you it’s not. I don’t like them either and I certainly think the 2020 riots were atrocious and excused by many progressives, along with the “defund the police” insanity.
But do try to criticize your outgroup accurately when you do it. The Motte is best when we can at least be consistent and precise even when we’re not charitable.
Why? Yes, I shouldn't have used the word entering, because that allowed you to restrict the analysis to the period when his term only started. That's what pedantic means.
That's only relevant if you take the BLM movement at face value, and believe they were actually concerned with the police's conduct, or "black lives" for that matter.
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I suspect there's literally no way I can phrase this that the mods will approve of, but I think it's actually an important point to make so I will say it plainly:
This comment is a pitch-perfect example of the type rightist whining we've been putting up with for years. I can assure you it is indeed very annoying.
You’re correct: dismissing your opponents’ fears as whining is petty and counterproductive. If there’s any value left in the Motte, if there’s one reason to hang around here, it’s to actually engage with stuff you think is obviously wrong. Take that away, and you might as well flounce off.
I’m not modding you for responding in kind to a thread of people making the exact same dismissal. I do like it a lot better when you resist the urge.
Right, but this whole post is about how annoying it will be for OP to have to leftists whining for four years if Trump wins.
Which sides whine about what and how annoying it is, is the object-level purpose of this conversation thread.
In other situations I wouldn't have brought this up, and indeed have never to my knowledge done so despite engaging with these types of sentiments dozens or hundreds of times.
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You didn't answer his question.
And you didn't respond to the substance of my comment.
Sometimes we have a point to make that's not a direct reply. That's totally fine, and it's weird to me that you seem to criticize it at the exact same time you're also doing it?
Oh never mind, I'm getting confused and thought you were the parent commenter. Apologies.
Ah, if it was a misunderstanding then my critique is off-base, and apologies back.
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It wasn’t actually directed at him.
Which, yeah, raises the question of why respond at all. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing his answer or Tomato’s.
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I really don't think this is comparable. Mostly just the status quo at least since Nixon. An embarrassingly paralyzed Congress has been a feature of American government since I became remotely cognizant of it in the 90's, regardless of who the president is. That's the whole reason the first 100 days of a presidency has been fetishized for as long as I've been alive.
What was truly novel about the era of libs throwing a tantrum was suddenly, DEI, explicitly anti-Republican training sessions became mandatory. Schools integrated explicitly anti-Republican lessons geared towards children. Fundamental web based utilities began instituting explicitly anti-Republican TOS to boot them off platforms vital to engaging in the modern economy. Where I used to live, the town center got boarded up and businesses closed from time to time over "mostly peaceful" tantrums that threatened life and property. One morning at a farmer's market, in front of our families and newborn babies, I said I didn't like the new Star Trek and another liberal father there started yelling at me at the top of his lungs in public about the importance of punching fascist.
I moved to a red area shortly after Trump lost. You meet a person who can't help but grumble about a stolen election or bamboo ballots or whatever. But no business ever had to close for fear of their wrath. Nobody has been subjected to specialized anti-Democrat workplace seminars. The schools haven't changed the curriculums to focus on the long history of fishy elections, wink wink nudge nudge. I've never been subject to being publicly screamed at, or witnessed it the new local farmers market when someone wears a BLM slogan.
Another person who thinks DISCO Trek was an abomination! That makes at least two and possibly even several of us on here! I've been told it got better but sorry, even Christopher Pike can't entice me back to that nonsense, and I understand Michael "I'm So Special, I've Got A Man Name (Even Though This Is The 24th Century And Nobody Cares About That)" Burnham is not locked up forever in a maximum security Federation jail as being a galactic pest, but instead gets to be captain of her very own starship. You want me to cheer for whoever the bad guys are, being all mean to Mikey Mike? Because this is how you get me to cheer for the bad guys.
Discovery is an abomination. The first season of Strange New Worlds was decent, at least. Not perfect but I enjoyed it. Haven't watched the second season yet though.
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I’m sorry, but complaining about modern trek is perhaps the least controversial thing you’ve ever said on this board.
I disliked modern Trek before it was popular or profitable; I was mildly disappointed by Voyager because the writers didn't know what they wanted to do or stick to it; I was very disappointed by Enterprise, and then when I thought I had hit the floor in "being let down by Trek revivals", along came Disco.
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Well-put. This lines up very well with my set of experiences, too. TBH, I really do think that Scott's recent theories in The Psychopolitics Of Trauma are pretty spot on, for better and for worse.
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I remember the day I said The Last Jedi wasn't very good and some 40something mom said I was just against strong role models for girls. I told her to go back to the internet and take her opinions with her. It was a big moment for me, because politics intruded on one of my favorite hobbies; bitching about film and TV.
I agree, I think a lot of people are serious denial about the degree to which these opinions have broken social media containment and bled out into the real world. I'd guess mostly because of TikTok, but that's just speculation.
This was when the Last Jedi had just come out, and in a Costco. This shit's been going on since way before TikTok.
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I wouldn't go that far, but yes: somebody explain to me how it went from "look, Drag Queen Story Hour is only hosted at libraries, it's voluntary, if you don't want your kid there then don't bring them in the day it's on" to "we must have it in schools, yes the same schools your kids have to attend for mandatory education, no you can't sign them out of those classes otherwise we'll suspect you might be abusing your children at home as a transphobe homophobe bigot terrorising your queer trans kid".
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I don't have much comment about how the right is handling this, probably because I live in a very progressive area. If the right whines about things, I don't hear about it, and I don't get bothered by it. Quite frankly, I hold the left to higher standards than the right, and I think that the left should be above such behavior.
I didn't say anything about Biden, I was talking about how Trump's presidency played out.
Why? If you think the right shouldn't be expected to behave when they lose, why do you think they should be trusted with power?
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Biden would have been a moderate if he left in the Trump EO against racial scapegoating. He didn't. His administration have embraced "race conscious" policy, and the only thing preventing it is Republican judges. "We must discriminate against white Americans in every aspect of society" is not a moderate policy.
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Extremely moderate?
He’s 10x illegal immigrations.
He’s executive ordered a welfare state for excessive college debt.
Caused the greatest inflation from excessive spending since Jimmy Carter.
Invited naked Trans people to the White House lawn.
I mean rhetorically I can say things like what did Trump do wrong he’s been extremely moderate. He’s mostly just done GOP type things like cut taxes and appoint Pro-Life judges.
I’ve got no clue on what you mean by fact-free conspiracies. Most of those have ended up being true. They went a little too far anti-vax.
And clothed non-binary suitcase thieves to the Department of Energy. Well, one.
In fairness, based on how poorly his outfits matched, he probably was naked before he stole all those suitcases and wore whatever he found in random women's luggage to a reception at the French embassy.
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To be fair to Joe, I think that was more whatever munchkins there are in the administration are responsible for that, and he just showed up for the photoshoot with visitors as Mr. President. I can't see him having a list of "trans strippers I'd like to invite to cavort on the White House lawn" (Hunter maybe, but not Joe).
We're not hearing too much these days about trans non-binary queer folx in the Department of Whatever. Maybe they're still there, but they're a heck of a lot quieter since the unfortunate luggage misplacement incidents.
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...wouldn't a large part of that be Trump-era Covid spending, though?
This case?
No, inflation expectations across every horizon remained low in 2020 and only really started to go up after Biden's spending spree got off the starting line in 2021. Remember Larry Summers being pilloried for pointing out that the ARPA spent more stimulative dollars than the size of the output gap by a large amount at that time?
The early Biden administration's spending explosion stimulated the economy enough that the Fed's late 2021 plans to start tightening became very out of date for the actual state of the economy. If they had tightened earlier (so, March-April 2021), there might have been no serious inflation but there also might not have been any serious inflation if Republicans had kept the Senate or the White House and not passed the huge spending bills of that year.
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Yes. The one truly awful set of policies that Trump had were the ones where he decided to trust the experts that are pretty much all left-aligned.
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The incredible growth in M1 happened under Trump.
Don’t really want to redebate these issues. Mostly just wanted a little rebuttal to “Biden was moderate” which both sides claim of their guy.
Fwiw though I don’t M’s do a very good job predicting inflation. Part of this is IOER and other plumbing by the Fed that sterilizes a lot of the production of the M’s created by the Fed.
I don't reasonably see any way to handwave and say that quadrupling the money supply would have no effect on inflation. That seems like one of those things you can only believe after a lot of education.
If that weren't enough, the biggest budget deficit in a hundred years was under Trump, not Biden. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD
If you don't want to redebate the issues you shouldn't make claims that are at odds with easily observable reality.
The Democrats consistently pushed for higher spending and tighter pandemic restrictions and were opposed by the Republicans. Biden mostly benefited from taking office after the worst was over. Biden also wanted to do students loan forgiveness but was stopped by a conservative court. Trump is certainly not a budget hawk but I don't think it tells the whole story to just look at results without taking into account the circumstances of when they happened.
It's crazy to blame inflation on Biden when the deficit and money printing happened under Trump, and justify it with a Biden policy that never happened.
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My claims are inline with the economics profession. Bob Elliot had this exact debate on twitter a few months ago and no one though the M’s were predictive.
Also if you look at them we should be having a large amount of deflation right now. Which is obviously false.
And obviously we should have had hyperinflation at some point in the past.
Like I said, a lot of education.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that printing money and deficit spending happened most under Trump. If you don't think either of those cause inflation i don't know what to say.
Does a thought requiring a lot of education or expertise mean that the thought is therefore false?
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For those not familiar, I just want to link this out, because it is genuinely one of the most unhinged graphs you will ever see.
I'd like to see one that shows the pre-May-2020-definition and post-May-2020-definition versions of M1 as two separate lines. With this graph it's hard to tell how much growth is money printing, how much is savings pattern changes, and how much is just semantics. There's just a big gasp when you first see the big May 2020 jump, followed by a big meh when you read the "that part was all just semantics" fine print afterwards.
The FAQ page includes the chart you asked for (up to December 2020), which shows there was a pretty big jump in early 2020, but nowhere near as large as it looks on the official chart (i.e. around 2x instead of around 10x).
That's exactly what I was looking for; thank you!
2x is still more than I'd have guessed based on subsequent inflation (or M2 data, which seems to be applies-to-apples) alone. I wonder to what extent that means the Fed was partly fighting a natural permanent fall in the velocity of money, vs to what extent it means we still have more future inflation "baked in", vs to what extent it means I don't understand macroeconomics. Probably around 3%/2%/95%...
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