domain:ashallowalcove.substack.com
WandererintheWilderness
30m ago
To me the case for hope around Trump is that, in his corrupt flailing, he destroys that which ought to be destroyed, or inadvertently opens up a kind of space for new growth
I think the case for hope, and the reason I've never been much of a doomer about Trump, is that he's taking up oxygen that could be going to an actual fascist, or some other effective representative of the forces of evil. My bitterest political opponents have decided to spend all their energies pumping up a petulant old windbag who's all bark and hardly any bite. Not to mention his cult of personality becoming synonymous with their values means that his death - which is, in the grand scheme of things, imminent - will deal a tremendous blow to the entire way the Red Tribe is organized. Trump is not Hitler, and to the extent that one is worried about the prospect of an American Hitler in principle, one should therefore be very thankful that Trump is hogging the spotlight. He's like a kind of tyranny lightning-rod, collecting the loyalty of everyone who'd support an actual dictator while having very low odds of actually declaring a dictatorship. Long may he continue to do so.
Okay long summer outdoors stuff is winding down. Back to Tron bike lighting!
Seems like I fried my ESP32-C3 by over-tightening the adjustment screw on the 12v step-down converter. Apparently if you break the screw it just kind of wobbles and the "5v" you're reading right now might change in an instant.
Then I broke a second buck converter doing this same oven-tightening before realizing the ESP32 was already fried anyway.
Electricity is kind of unforgiving :/
I did one of these successfully for the proof of concept but I guess forgot or got sloppy in the intervening months. On the bright side, everything involved is only $2-4 each!
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
46m ago
Thanks for this. I grew up in the Deep South but with California parents, mostly irreligious and a mild political divide (red dad, blue mom). My dad the provider, my mom raised us to be broadly liberal, in maybe the best way. I grew up thinking of old stodgy conservatives and young fresh liberals, but not quite in those terms. Around 14 or 15 I had a heavy influence from a big leftist peer, though I didn't recognize this at the time, but also developed my libertarian instincts from a high school history teacher slash debate coach.
I went to college and 9/11 hit, and it was big rightward shift. Atheism, Sam Harris, Muslims, Terrorists. Sam Harris of course at this time is nowhere near the right and remains so IMHO. But I had never considered ROTC or CIA or FBI and all of a sudden these are interesting to me. At this time, I am starting to get psyched about shock-and-awe, learning about M-16s and M-4s and AR-15s, but also drinking Sierra Nevadas and going to Phish shows.
For lack of any wrap-up I'll end here.
JTarrou
59m ago
Did Trump not accept it and leave office peacefully? I think it is you who is playing word games.
Mantergeistmann
1hr ago
Honestly, that's a good question. I have no idea how the president generally picks the top flag officers, or if he usually just lets a military board/his aides recommend someone and then says "yep, sure, I'll trust your judgement and nominate them".
Mantergeistmann
1hr ago
To me the more productive comparisons to Trump are more like a Latin American strongman, or perhaps like Jonah Goldberg's metaphor of Trump as a Mafia boss.
I've also generally considered that the best comparison. I've also thought that, at least in his first term, all the Hitler hysteria locked the Dems out from the opportunity of a lifetime: they could have had most of their wishlist if they'd just been willing to swallow their pride, flatter his ego, and let him take the credit. "Hey, President Trump, how does 'Trump Rail' sound? How about the 'Trump National Wildlife Refuge' or the 'Donald Trump Saves America' pro-union bill?" Other than the things he was opposed to on a personal level, like offshore wind, but even then I feel like they could have made an offer and gotten a deal done. But even if any of them were willing to work with him in the first place, once he's Hitler, there's no crossing the aisle.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1hr ago
When I fetched up in SSC's comments section, my previous-favorite blog had been Shakesville, and the political issue I had been most concerned with was a tossup between the burgeoning threat of Rape Culture and the idea that another fucking Bush was being nominated for the presidency.
Damn, Shakesville, that brings back memories. You must have been even leftier than me at that point, because even though I was more liberal then than I am now, I always thought the Shakesville crew was insane.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1hr ago
But hey, public was dumb enough to vote him in again, so I guess it’s time for us to collectively reap the whirlwind.
I'm sorry but as someone else on the left the fault here is entirely that of the Democrats. Kamala Harris was one of the worst candidates I have ever seen, and it looks like Biden did his best to sabotage her as well. Trump didn't even need to bust out the worst of the attack ads because Kamala was so disrespectful and contemptuous of her own base - to say nothing of the genocide she ran on supporting (which multiple post-election studies have claimed was enough to swing the election itself). She hurt her numbers by refusing to go on Joe Rogan, but she was such a charisma void that refusing to go on was actually the right answer - she would have melted down and been unable to respond to basic questions about her past actions or present beliefs.
The problem with that election was not that the public was dumb. The problem was that the DNC ran a candidate that was WORSE than Trump - they ran a terrible campaign for a terrible candidate and got a terrible result. If you actually look at the results of that election in greater detail there's actually a lot to be hopeful for as a left-winger. When they weren't tied to the Democrats, a lot of leftist policy proposals actually went through. Left wing values are generally extremely popular with most people - but the DNC is a terrible expression of those values and so nakedly corrupt that anybody with a soul would find it extremely hard to vote for them in good faith. Remember how Schumer attacked Trump? By calling him a coward who chickened out of starting another war and murdering more people in the middle east. The public was actually doing the right thing in this case by voting for the less bloodthirsty candidate!
I agree that Trump term 2 has been very poor (probably for different reasons) but let's not try and blame the public for this happening. The blame for this result rests squarely on the Democratic party and if the public deserve any blame it is for not recognising that the ghouls in charge of the Democrats needed to be removed from power years ago.
TK-421
2hr ago
Thanks, I appreciate the explanation.
Combined, this was broadly seen as a two-part betrayal by the Bernie-left. It was a broader DNC betrayal of the Obama wing picking favorites to maintain its primacy in the party rather than letting voters pick via the nominal primary purpose, but it was also a betrayal by the more party-institutionalist Warren-left, who sabotaged a bigger left momentum in favor of selling out for postings and influence.
I think I can understand a feeling of betrayal from the process on an emotional level but I'm not sure I really get it. For instance, I didn't just donate to Amy Klobuchar, I made her tater tot hotdish recipe. It was pretty good. But I didn't feel like her dropping out of the race well before my state's primary represented the DNC betraying me or nefariously preventing me from picking my preferred candidate. Weaker candidates dropping out and consolidating behind a more popular candidate with similar views is just an actual part of the primary process as it exists. It would be interesting to see the effects of switching to some kind of one day primary-palooza where every state votes simultaneously but that is not, and never has been, how the primaries work.
Warren staying in the race through Super Tuesday probably did hurt Bernie. Presumably Sanders was the second choice of some fraction of her voters. But as you note, she represents a more institutional strain of the left and (although we'll never know) it's unlikely that enough of her voters would have gone with him to change the outcome. It's just as likely that the majority of her voters would have gone to Biden.
If primary voters wanted Sanders they could have had him. They did not. The fact that voters picked the more centrist candidate - and that there were other more centrist politicians in the race with non-negligible support in the first place - shows where the actual center of gravity was in the party. Bernie would not have won regardless of what the DNC did.
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
I'm not sure how much I qualify as 'scared' of Trump, but I at least dislike and oppose him, which I suppose makes me a minority here? The thing is, though I think he's a terrible president and generally a disaster for America, I spend most of my time talking about him trying to calm down people to my left, who I think have fixated too much on the wrong comparisons (re: fascism, Nazism, etc.). To me the more productive comparisons to Trump are more like a Latin American strongman, or perhaps like Jonah Goldberg's metaphor of Trump as a Mafia boss. He's corrupt, self-centered, unprincipled, and deeply transactionalist - he is motivated by Trump as a brand, not by any concept of American national welfare, or even American ideals.
I feel more 'resigned', I think, rather than afraid or indifferent. To me the case for hope around Trump is that, in his corrupt flailing, he destroys that which ought to be destroyed, or inadvertently opens up a kind of space for new growth. The case for fear or despair is that he destroys that which much must be preserved, or opens up a space for more organisedly malignant actors in the future. Personally I am not strongly invested in either reading.
That might give me a more mundane view of Trump, I suppose? What I see is a petty individual who has great talents for communication and self-presentation, but very little talent for organised governance, who's in power but doesn't have a strong vision for what to do with power beyond use it to establish "I am the greatest!" over and over. In a sense, I think many on the left and on the right make the same mistake in attributing him too much power, making him either devil or saint.
Of course, none of that means that he's not dangerous. There are a lot of things a venal egoist might do that are bad, even if he has no vision. But what I expect to see, I suppose, is more American decline, mostly in the direction that America was already going, while Trump and his allies try to stand on top of the scrapheap. I see a bigger risk in neglect than in sabotage.
Payback23
2hr ago
If you believe in what people say they do then how are you a "leftoid" in your own words
Once again "leftoids" have already done this in government. So I'm not sure why you care Trump is doing it?
Throwaway05
2hr ago
We called urgent care and could not obtain even an upper bound on how much a dx + rx would cost. Hundreds? Thousands? Who knows lol.
Note that an upper bound is an extremely difficult question.
If you worked with a realtor and said you wanted to buy a house but didn't know yet where you'd be buying and what your requirements were...the only reasonable answer to the upper bound is whatever the most expensive house ever sold is. An urgent care has some maximum limitation on available services (in comparison with an ED) but the situation is fundamentally somewhat similar. That number would be functionally useless.
"What will you most likely charge me as the cash price for a basic office visit" is something a PCP can easily do and generally do when they are allowed to do so.
However as this is America many places will prohibit providing this type of information as a matter of policy because of the risks associated with doing so (like being sued if the bill is higher than the estimated number). This is a general side effect of corporatized medicine as decisions are made by large inflexible organizations with massive legal and compliance departments and clinical and office staff with no independence and authority.
As you saw independent practitioners may still use common sense,* but they are being forced out of the market by things like increased regulatory burden.
This is what had me so incensed the first time this came up - individual requests like "provide prices" "you need an EMR" "have an HR department" have become so burdensome and accumulated in such numbers that private practice increasingly no longer makes sense and therefor flexibility is gone.
*And some types of interactions like this are strictly speaking illegal/fraud.
KingOfTheBailey
3hr ago
The online battlefield has shifted though. Would Trump 2016 have happened without Reddit and 4chan? Those don't exist in as usable a form these days. Twitter was a huge coup, but that's still "two steps back, one-and-a-half steps forward".
they can't really even recognize actual human leadership as anything but some kind of pathology.
Yeah, I don't think that's it, unless "actual human leadership" is code for "personalist strongman". Trump is the argument by demonstration against charismatic leadership, but left-of-center people have their own favored leadership figures as well. Obama was and is highly admired, Sanders has his own faction of die hard, etc... Any argument that rounds off to "they're intimidated by how cool we are" is probably wrong.
Where they recoil from Trump is his staggering lack of character combined with his rejection of limits or accountability. It doesn't help that his loudest supporters tend to be quite reactionary and openly cheer for authoritarianism.
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
3hr ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4hr ago
Eh? You don’t believe he’s a fascist, but also he might as well do the crime?
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
4hr ago
· Edited 3hr ago
That's a fair response to @hydroacetylene's argument, but the "this goes against what our elders say about gender roles" argument against transgenderism is itself a rather weak one.
I think a stronger one is the following: transgenderism, in its common form as I understand it, is totalitarian and intrusive, because it demands that I rewrite my mental categories in a particular way. It is fairly clear that, from the point of view of the transgender activists, someone who perfectly abides by all etiquette demands (pronouns, social grouping/shunning, social expectations in line with the person's chosen identity) but internally continues to believe that the person is, for all purposes other than adherence to the preceding rules of etiquette, a member of their biological sex, is morally evil, and this pattern of thought is one that ought to be rectified even if there is no evidence that it will lead to any etiquette violations. This is intrusive and totalitarian, in a way that otherwise only religions are allowed to get away with (you can't just go to church on Sundays and say the prayers, you have to really believe, and there will be busybodies trying to figure out if you secretly don't and do their utmost to fix you); and as a price for being allowed to keep that power, liberal societies have severely circumscribed the power of religions in other ways (they are not allowed to threaten you into conversion, use your belief or lack thereof as a criterion in hiring, etc.).
None of these restrictions are being applied to transgenderism, and in fact acting outside of those restrictions is central to its existence as a movement! "Test if your professor secretly thinks that transwomen are men, and get him fired if it turns out to be the case" is praxis. This is not some tangential feature of religions, either - if one were to create a quick summary of what was bad about religion before our present framework of regulating them, "they perform intrusive tests to distinguish true believers from fakers and exclude the latter from society" will probably feature prominently in some form.
It sometimes seems to me that progressives have performed a horse-cart inversion regarding the relationship between biological sex and "gender roles", and typical-mind themselves to assume that everyone else must have constructed their categories likewise. The traditional gender role believer will think, "you are a man; therefore you must wear pants, wield violence and hide your emotions", but the progressive instead sees something like "you must wear pants, wield violence and hide your emotions; therefore you are a man". The former is a statement of fact, followed by a statement of "socially constructed" expectations contingent on that fact; the latter looks like a statement of arbitrary socially constructed expectations, followed by a socially constructed label for that set of expectations. I don't care if you think that way, but realise that it is not standard!
As it happens, I am not particularly attached to gender roles myself; if a man wants to wear dresses and makeup and act like a caricature of a Victorian damsel, I am happy to let him. There are plenty of people who do things that are more aesthetically displeasing or outright harmful to those around them. However, I will continue to think of him as a man, and I will consider a demand not to, for whatever reason, to be as presumptuous and intrusive as a demand that I make myself believe that Brahma created the universe. Hindus are free to believe this; they are free to be sad that I don't believe it; and they are even within reason to demand that I will not walk up to them and yell in their face that Lord Brahma does not exist/is an aspect of Satan/is a minor god that my god would make mincemeat of. However, if they presumed to demand that I publicly affirm Brahma as the Lord Creator of the Universe, made employment contingent on the belief, or subjected me to tests to see if my polite silence during their rituals wasn't because I secretly thought it is all bollocks, I would feel in my right to gently remind them that last time someone did that to my people, in the end we sent them to build railways in Siberia or gave them a one-way limousine ride to a nondescript downtown basement.
(...and to be clear, the asymmetry that I view "transwomen are men" as a statement of fact while you view "transwomen are women" and "transwomen are men" both as statements of belief/social construction does not matter, insofar as the demands of transgenderism would be hardly less presumptuous if we both accepted your premise that gender is socially constructed. Long before Europe went secular, it successfully figured out rules that prevented believers from forcing beliefs on each other!)
Nwallins
Finally updated my bookmark
4hr ago
Very broadly speaking, and using these terms in the American context, liberals and conservatives are fine-grained and coarse-grained thinkers respectively. Liberals tend to believe that the machine of society can be tinkered with and engineered at every level to produce desirable outcomes (it's not a surprise that more educated people, tend towards this political orientation). An extreme example of this for instance is the energy that a non-trivial number of people in academia and the media devote to the intricate rules of what counts as racism sexism. Conservatives, OTOH are more inclined to view society as a collection of fudges that more or less function to keep the anarchy of nature at bay. They're consequently typically concerned with much more coarse-grained issues: things like crime or illegal immigration.
Brilliant! This delineates the concept of "microagression" beautifully -- basically a foreign concept to a conservative, who can be very focused on macro-aggressions like crime, terrorism, breakdown of rule of law and order, riots, etc.
Dean
Flairless
4hr ago
Probably one of the worst short-term political play decisions in modern American politics on the part of the Democrats and their allies in the media.
Romney was, and probably will be remembered as, the last major Respectability candidates of the early 21st century Republican party. He was a compromise candidate who was about the best possible synthesis of red tribe considerations and blue tribe value, a Republican who was willing to accept the legitimacy in part of blue tribe framings, and cared about their opinions. He wasn't a perfect candidate for the Republican base, but a man that- outside of a specific election cycle- had a generally consistent reputation as virtuous, even if you disagreed. It was about as close to a synthesis of red tribe and blue tribe as you could hope for, even down to sincerely practicing affirmative action and having an adopted african-american grandson.
The character assassination of Mitt Romney- among which Democratic Senate Majority Harry Reid later defended with "We won, didn't we?"- was probably what I'd point to as the breaking moment where the Republican base revolt that became the Trump-MAGA movement began.
MAGA was in part a revolt against the Republican elite, including significant disatisfaction against Romney for not fighting back. The Republican party's commissioned autopsy that argued the party needed to move decisively to the left made that revolt worse. But almost as importantly the Obama '12 campaign discredited the argument by Republican centrists/moderates, and media commentators more generally, that what the red tribe needed to be treated with respect was to present a respectable candidate.
Romney was the candidate, and was still slandered and jeered. Virtue- and especially virtue as recognized by the media establishment that joined in the jeering- wouldn't be recognized when during an election cycle. And if virtue would not be recognized, nor would it be sufficient to win even if not recognizeed, then appeals to virtue were going to lose support compared to appeals to fight back.
Which, of course, Trump was happy to do... but Trump wouldn't have won without a disillusioned Republican base that no longer responded to appeals to respectability like Romney was willing to.
Celestial-body-NOS
Supra tumulum tuum, astra nobis.
4hr ago
People are concerned about Trump doing the fake version of fascism ... because they think it's the real version of fascism ....
Or they're concerned that the former is a Camel's Nose for the latter.
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
In this house, Pinochet was a hero.
To be clear, there is a lot that Trump is doing which it is reasonable for lefty institutionalists to be concerned about. I'm not disputing that. But thinly veiled political lectures being canceled is not it. And Letitia James needed to be prosecuted under something after her own political targeting scandal.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4hr ago
if you're not familiar with the Professor Brothers, I do recommend them. They're a goldmine of old-school internet humor.
Totalitarianit
4hr ago
It's certainly possible that some, or even most of those people were prosecuted fairly in the court of Law. However, they weren't found guilty in the court of Mainstream Media and Democrats. Summer of 2020 rioters were heralded as social justice warriors fighting against a racist dictator, and almost any act of force against them was liable to be treated as an act of tyranny.
Cops and DAs could have arrested and prosecuted way more, but I don't think there were many large departments or DA offices chomping at the bit to be sued into oblivion. Most large city DAs are blue anyway and are all about whatever "perception" wins them their seat come next election cycle. The perception at the time was that any person who fell between Hitler himself all the way to some average Joe saying "I'm not sure people should be burning that." was racist, and the mainstream media and Democrats leaned into it.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
There were plenty of actually-literally peaceful protests, too. It's not hard to find examples to muddy the waters any way you want.
+1. We really are a magically small place.
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