domain:betonit.substack.com
Perhaps the next rich, famous man will update his priors accordingly:
“What’s the reaction from women for dating a fresh, childless young woman in her late teens or twenties?”
“Seethe, rage, accusations of you being a groomer pedophile who’s exploiting power dynamics and taking advantage of someone whose brain hasn’t even developed yet because you can’t handle a woman your own age.”
“What’s the reaction from women for marrying a middle-aged divorced woman who’s already been around the block and had her fun?”
“Seethe, rage, accusations of you being a trashy, shallow, classless bimbo-fetishist who’s too insecure to handle an intellectual woman.”
“Well then…”
A driver of the hate is that she presents as younger than she is, possibly passing as a thotmaxxing woman in her mid-to-late 40s and maybe even pre-menopausal (at least from afar). Thus, she isn’t decrepit-looking enough and is younger-looking than Bezos “deserves.” If she looks like she still might have eggs, she’s too young for the seggs.
I suppose, in general, progressive hate is likely to result whenever, wherever there’s a successful white man enjoying himself—from other tech bosses like Zuckerberg and Musk (including pre-Trump associations) to athletes like Kelce and Bauer. Modern progressivism: The haunting fear that some white man, somewhere, might be happy without benefiting women, racial and sexual minorities.
The far-right (which includes most people on this website)
I'm gonna go one step further than Amadan on this and actually give you a (mild) warning here: bring evidence in proportion with your partisanship, but be particularly careful about how you characterize "this site," as doing so tends to fall into the problem of consensus building.
It has been a while since we had a thorough demographic poll, and "far-right" is probably a moving target, but the mainstream meaning is something like "identitarian right" or "authoritarian right"--white nationalists, especially, though probably not exclusively. I do think there are some white nationalists who post here, but they are a small minority. All the demographic information available to me suggests that the site 's userbase has a "grey tribe" plurality, which is tough to classify but most often shows up in approximately "centrist libertarian" land over on /r/politicalcompassmemes.
It's possible that you have fallen into the same trap that many blue tribe institutions have fallen into, basically using "far-right" as a sloppy shorthand (or outright smear) for literally anything to their right, or even just anything that they don't like. I don't know whether you have used the term purposefully, or incorrectly, or sloppily, which is why you should consider this a mild warning, but in general you're better off just not characterizing the userbase here at all: address individual arguments, then individuals, then specific groups if necessary, then general groups only with extreme care and much evidence. "This site" 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.
RenOS
something is wrong
13d ago
I'm pretty confident that if Bezos would have married a literal nubile twenty something, we would have feminist journalists write about how this proves that men are shallow. If he had married a lower class mexican wife, it would be decried as vaguely coercive and that this proves men enjoy power differentials. If he had married white trash, he would be ridiculed as going back to his roots. Hell, if he married a conventionally attractive, age-appropriate, low-agency woman with a conventional job, that would probably also be insinuated as some sort of tradwife, wanting the woman to go back to the kitchen situation.
As several people have pointed out, Sanchez is in many ways precisely the sort of high-agency go-getter that should be popular with feminists, but who in practice always seems to be hated instead. In practice, feminist journalists always want highly successful men to marry women like themselves.
Shirayuki
28d ago
Why Should I Care?
I recently greatly enjoyed Naraburns' post on the life of Dylan, so I thought I would give back by putting together my thoughts as someone that empathizes greatly with Dylan, and would probably be picking pineapples right next to him if I didn't happen to be born with some aptitude for shape rotation. To provide some context, I've been in a bit of a malaise for the last few days, having had a rough week at work, and I get into a spiral of fantasizing about quitting my job when the thought hits me - why, exactly, do I even care about the job? Why do I actually care about contributing to society?
As any good economist knows, people at scale generally do what they're incentivized to do. Yet from the point of view of a young man it's increasingly harder to get a bite out of carrots historically used to incentivize men to act pro-socially, while simultaneously most of the sticks and fences previously used to corral people's worst impulses have disintegrated. Viewed from a sufficiently cynical lens, it becomes more and more rational from a self-interest perspective to drop out of the system and become a disaffected bum, and indeed this does seem to be reflected in the male labor force participation rate.
The elephant in the room is, of course, dating discourse. It is absolutely true and subject to much discussion amongst these types of circles that relationship formation and TFR is dropping off a cliff in almost all countries on the planet. Everyone has their own hot take as to what's going wrong and who's at fault; personally, I just think it comes down to incentives.
Men no longer need women for sexual gratification [when HD video porn exists] or domestic labor [when household appliances exist], women no longer need men for physical or economic security [when careers and the state will provide] and there's significantly less status or social pressure for either gender to get into and stay in relationships early, unless you run in religious or traditional circles. It's a similar story for having children; most people, if asked, will at least nominally say that they want children, yet revealed preference is for global TFR collapse. In agrarian societies having children isn't a great burden relatively and they become useful quite quickly, whereas in modern societies having child(ren) will result in significant changes to your lifestyle, and impose notable financial burden [less than what most PMC's might think, but certainty an extant one] for at least twenty years for a very uncertain return; it's a hard sell to the modal person to make sacrifices to their quality of life and economic stability for the sake of very expensive pets [from an economic perspective].
As a result, polarization between the sexes is at an all-time high as a result as neither sex really needs the other, and left to their own devices the observed tendency is that they mostly end up self-segregating. For men that do still want a relationship and marriage, this means it's the hardest it's ever been; in-person ways for singles to meet have all but disappeared, dating apps are perhaps the most demonic application of technology ever invented, and the very high amount of options that most women now hold [including that to eschew dating altogether] heavily disincentivizing making any sort of commitment [to be clear, almost all men would and do act in similar ways given the same breadth of options as well].
I don't agree with the blackpillers, in the sense that I think the majority of people could eventually find a partner if they put in enough effort [which might be an incredible amount depending on the starting point!]. However, it is true that we went from a society where the standard life script ended up with everyone except for a few oddballs partnered up, to one where the standard life script results in most men ending up alone unless they spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on dating or are exceptionally [hot/rich/charismatic/lucky] in some way. Most people really just go with the flow, and hence increasingly more people end up alone.
Even for those who do manage to summit the mountain, the returns on entering into a relationship and marriage seem to be diminished for most men. It's likely to be expensive financially [I'm not convinced by Caplan-style arguments that relationships save you money, the most expensive budget items like housing, childcare and healthcare are largely rivalrous or wouldn't otherwise exist, and it's reasonably well studied that relationships where the woman makes more money suffer] and of course there's little to really secure commitment or incentivize sticking it out if something goes wrong; getting divorced is one of the easiest ways to have your life ruined, after all.
At the end of the day, modern relationship formation is less about the practical benefits as was the case for almost all of human history, and almost entirely about self-esteem and self-actualization; hence the rise of incels [who are bereft of the validation of being desired, not the literal act of sex] and romantasy fiction. How much does it validate me that I have a high status / hot / rich partner willing to have sex and be seen in public with me? Have I now truly found my soulmate, the ideal parent for my children? This is, of course, an impossible standard to meet for the vast majority of people and relationships and hence most people who think this way end up dissatisfied and unhappy - and yet without the illusion of self-actualization what else is there really to gain bonding yourself to someone else with a bond that is not a bond?
With all is said and done, as the mountain grows ever-harder to summit and the rewards for reaching the peak become ever-increasingly a mirage, I think it's an increasingly rational choice for many people to decide not to climb and to try and find contentment at the bottom. That's certainly how I've been feeling lately, at the very least.
This brings me to my next point, where if a first world man decides that they no longer want to conquer the mountain, there's not really much else that buying into modern capitalism can offer them in many cases. It is of course a stereotype that men are happy living in squalor, and that women be shopping, but I've found it to be remarkably accurate; women make up something like 70% to 80% of consumer spending, and in general it's motivation to be a provider that drives many men to work as hard as they can, most of whom otherwise are pretty happy living with a mattress and WiFi.
If one's lost the motivation or opportunity to provide, suddenly most of what remains expensive in modern abundant society doesn't really matter; you don't have to spend money on up-keeping a lifestyle and status symbols to attract a mate, and you no longer need to spend most of your life paying off a house in the best school district you can afford to keep the wife happy and the child as advantaged as possible.
Similarly, the stick of impoverishment is no real threat in any rich welfare state; He who does not work, neither shall he eat is now comically false, food [and non-housing living expenses in general] are pretty trivial to cover if you're smart/frugal about it and if you're not the gibs will probably cover them for you anyways. Housing is a real problem that's been exacerbated near-universally across the world, but if you no longer need to provide for a family or make a lot of money there's still plenty of ways to keep a roof over your head without working too hard; living out of a van, moving to somewhere where the jobs aren't great but living is cheap, or the good old solution of failing to launch.
Anecdotally, my college friend group includes a guy who dropped out to live with his parents and do gig work and a high-powered lawyer who inherited a few million, and despite their significantly different socioeconomic classes still live materially similar lives and are still good friends. Sure, the lawyer can afford to live in a massive house, fly business and collect a bunch of expensive trinkets, but when it comes down to it neither of them worry about their basic needs, and spend most of their leisure time doing the same things; working out, playing the same video games, watching the same tv/movies/anime, scrolling too much on social media and going traveling to similar places from time from time.
Of course being wealthier and more powerful gives you more optionality in the face of adversity, and that's great if you're born into wealth or are exceptional/lucky human capital, but honestly the vast majority of people are never going to have enough power or money to matter if anything really goes wrong with their life, even if they spend their entire lives grinding and buying into the system. "Making it" to middle manager at a big firm or owning a small business doesn't save you from targeted lawfare, developing late-stage cancer where the experimental treatment is going to cost a few million out of pocket, or your home burning down and getting denied by insurance. And of course, no amount of money can save you from the true black swans e.g unaligned superintelligence, gain of function^2 electric boogaloo or nuclear war - how many young people in the first world really believe that they'll be taking money out of their retirement fund and living life as normal in 2080?.
So if the dating market is FUBAR and money has questionable marginal utility, what else is left to encourage men to work hard? Well, people will think you're a loser and low status if you don't work or you work a shitty job, maybe that will work? That's true, and historically granting young man status when they do pro-social things has been a pretty effective motivator.
Yet now we live in a highly globalized society for better or worse. No matter how far you are up your chosen totem poles, status has gone global; it's easy to look up, see who's still above you and feel bad about yourself. Chad is probably just a twitter DM away, in fact! Being unemployed or a gig worker might be low status, but even "good" jobs don't feel much higher status either; it's hard to feel the average software engineer or electrician job is particularly high status when constantly inundated with people who are orders of magnitude more successful. To me, it feels like the endgame is SoKo or China; competition for "high status" becomes more and more ludicrous and absurd, and everyone else sits on the sidelines resigned to feeling like a loser even if their lives are materially still great.
Faced with such competitiveness, you can either throw yourself into the maw and try and win an winnable game, or decide to tap out of the game altogether. Sure, there will always be those with immense will to power that will maximize for status, to strive for the stars and win at at all costs, but realistically most people don't have such strength of will. If the only options are play and lose and not play at all, it increasingly feels like the best play is to just drop out of striving for status altogether; it helps if you're no longer invested in dating or careerism, the arenas where status is most instrumental...
This piece ended up being significantly longer than I intended, and really I don't expect any sympathy nor do I have any solutions [much less politically viable and moral ones] to what I see as a deeply society-wide malaise. I have a deep respect for the incredibly autistic open-source emulator developer, the Japanese master sushi chef, and the Amish craftsman, those who still Care about their crafts in the truest sense of the word. Yet one cannot choose to win the lottery of fascinations, one cannot choose to be born into a high-trust society, and one cannot choose to have faith when it does not exist.
At the end of the day, it's hard to argue it's not a triumph of society that the modal first worlder spends most of their time wallowing in comfort and engaging in zero-sum status struggles in a world where so many still suffer. Yet what is great can easily be lost, and modernity as it exists today cannot survive without the buy-in of young men. Maybe it doesn't matter, that in the end us dysgenic neurotics will end up being weeded out of the gene pool, and that future populations will be able to break out of this local minima and take over the world. Perhaps the prayers for the machine god to deliver us salvation will come true and the priests shall finally immanentize the eschaton so that none of this matters.
In some ways it feels like to me that the barbarians are banging on the gates while nobody else notices or cares, as everyone else seems to be whiling away the hours eating bread and going to the circus. But well, if nobody else is manning the walls either, why should I be the one who cares?
Semi-related probably Friday Fun Thread Material But It Fits So I'm Posting It Here Anyway: A couple years ago I crashed a billionaire-adjacent wedding. To avoid burying the lede, it was this wedding, which, being a flamboyantly gay wedding was a lot kitschier than anything Bezos could ever dream of. The lucky groom was 84 Lumber magnate Joe Hardy's grandson, and was held at Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, which resort was owned by Mr. Hardy and is now managed by said groom's mother, and which I'm surprised hasn't changed much since Mr. Hardy's death since it was a vanity project that lost money and that his daughter was supposedly planning on changing to make profitable after the old man kicked.
ANYWAY, I serve on the board of a nonprofit that was having our annual kickoff party at a nearby bar and was attended by a friend of ours who happens to work at the resort. My friends and I had no idea about this wedding, but our friend was talking about how he worked long hours getting ready for this elaborate event, the point of which was to avoid actually having to work the event, and mentioned a few details like that it was taking place at a certain golf hole. It was at this point that someone, possibly me, suggested that we should crash the event. Although the resort wants you to think otherwise, most of the roads on what appear to be the resort grounds are public, as there are several in-parcels with private houses on them beyond the front gates. It would be trivially easy to park alongside the golf course and sneak into the wedding, especially after dark.
No dice, our friend said, while the ceremony itself was at the hole, that had already taken place in the morning, and the actual reception was being held in a tent at a different part of the golf course, and it wouldn't be possible to just slip inside unnoticed. It was at this point that the plan began to crystalize. Outside would have actually been worse, since it was early June and didn't get dark until after 9 pm. Our attempts to pump him for information were only marginally successful, as he was under strict orders of confidentiality and only revealed the location of the ceremony because it had already happened that morning. We reminded him that he was leaving his position in a month as he had just passed his home inspector's test, but he wouldn't budge. Luckily, I had already established that the festivities were expected to go rather late into the night, but weren't starting any later than normal, so we figured 8 pm would be the ideal time to go.
My plan took advantage of one simple idea: Act like you're supposed to be there. The problematic thing about a wedding like this, though, is that it's a sit-down dinner with a strict guest list that's been planned and executed in secrecy precisely to keep people like us away from the thing. But, do to our unique circumstances, this presented an opportunity. While acting like you're supposed to be there is essential, it isn't always enough. We also needed a plausible reason to be there; simply saying my name and demanding entry probably wouldn't work. So that gets us to the third thing we could take advantage of, that these billionaire events always have lots of people involved, both as guests and as staff. Our being admitted wouldn't be dependent on getting past the host or hostess, but getting past somebody who ostensibly knows who is supposed to be there but realistically can't pick any of the guests out of a police lineup.
The one snag was that our event didn't end until five, and as board members we couldn't just leave. I happened to live an hour away, optimistically, from both the event venue and the wedding venue, more like 60–90 minutes, and the cover story I had in mind wouldn't work if we got there too late, and I didn't happen to bring a suit with me when I left the house that morning. One of the participating couples that lived close said I could just shower at their house, but that didn't solve the suit problem, and going home and coming back would be a tight squeeze that might hold up everyone else. At first, I saw no way around this problem, until I realized that I didn't have a date. So I frantically began calling women I knew to see if they were interested in crashing a billionaire wedding on short notice, if you happen to be free tonight, and also wouldn't mind stopping by my house and rooting around for suitable clothing. Luckily, this is where having a good bartender comes in handy, and since I knew she was off that night she was thrilled to engage in a bit of semi-illegal fun.
Shortly thereafter, having made a serious omission, called my friend back and instructed her to stop at the liquor store and pick up a bottle of Jim Beam, two handles of Vladimir vodka, and a bottle of the most ridiculous liquor she could find that wasn't super expensive. She was then to go to Dollar Tree and get cards, two gift bags, tissue paper, and delicate wrapping paper. By the time she arrived two of us had showered and the third was in there and would be putting on her face soon, giving my date plenty of time to shower and get ready herself. In the meantime, the we put the Vladdy in a large box and wrapped it, and put the Beam and the other bottle in the gift bags. To my friend's credit she picked up Slivovitz, which was such an obvious choice that I was embarrassed that I hadn't thought of that myself. For those not aware, it's a plum brandy that's behind the bar at every hunky bar in Pittsburgh that nobody ever drinks except on a dare. We then filled out the cards in the most ridiculous way possible. Mine was full of Yiddishisms and sentences like "Your cousin Nathan is going to be a pharmacist. Good money in that." My gift of choice would have been a set of towels that said "His" and "His", but we were unfortunately under a time crunch. The third couple arrived and we all piled into my friend's 2004 Lexus SUV that he ironically brags to everyone about owning, figuring that a. We can all fit, and b. If we have trouble getting in, he can say "Did I mention I own a Lexus?"
We got there a little after 8. It being light out was a better break than we'd originally thought; since we didn't know where the tent was, it was much easier to drive around looking for it fully exposed without headlights making us more noticeable from a distance. We located the tent and found a place to park. The first hurdle came when it became readily apparent that most of the guests were staying at the hotel and that they were shuttling them back and forth in golf carts. Minor detail; the cover story takes care of that. Just keep going. Act like you're supposed to be here.
We arrive at the entrance to the tent, which is of course heavily guarded by black-clad hospitality employees with walkie talkies. "Hi, Rov_scam and guest". I give my real name, which the guy is frantically looking through the clipboard and not finding. My friends give their names, which of course also aren't on the list. This was the first point that I considered that giving three uninvited names in a row might raise some alarm bells, but no worries, act like you're supposed to be there. "You know what, we're coming from the Schwa Foundation fundraiser and we left notes with the RSVPs that we wouldn't be eating dinner. That might be why there's a mixup." I had actually thought of this well beforehand, but it seemed to allay the guy's concerns. "I'm sorry, but none of you are on the list."
At this point, the weaker-willed among us might have given up. The odds were stacked against us. We had just given three names that weren't on the list and a cockamamie story about why we were late. This guy was in no position to let us in. But one thing I do not stand for is being denied access. Asked to leave? All the time. Escorted from the premises? Almost weekly. You can keep the jeans if you promise not to come back to this store? More than once. But I will at least afford myself the opportunity to be thrown out. "Well, I don't know what to tell you," I said, standing there, my date holding a gift bag and two other couples with us similarly situated. Act like your supposed to be here. Someone who was actually invited wouldn't just leave because they weren't on some list. He gets on his walkie talkie and a woman who looks like a supervisor comes over. He explains that we aren't on the list, and looks relieved that this conundrum is out of his hands. I explain everything to the woman, this time adding that I'm on the board of the Schwa Foundation, my friend is on the board of another nonprofit that she may have heard of (which he is), and my other friend is associated with the local tourist bureau, which she is for the next two weeks before she gets canned in a shakeup.
If you know anything about Joe Hardy, it's that he wants to die broke and that he will do practically anything for Fayette County, the poorest county in Pennsylvania. It would be perfectly understandable if he took his money and bought an estate in some old-money suburb like Fox Chapel (where he could hobnob with John Kerry and Theresa Heinz) or Sewickley Heights (where he could hobnob with Mario Lemieux), but instead he lives in a house on his resort, that may be an unprofitable vanity project but one driven by his desire for Fayette County to have a five star resort. He served a term as commissioner, which is like Donald Trump serving on Palm Beach city council or some other local government position that's all work and no prestige. The idea that we might have some legitimate connection to Mr. Hardy's philanthropic activities wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. Actually, his daughter had given us a reasonably generous donation, though it was officially on behalf of the resort, and we never actually met with her.
At this point, it's clear that the supervisor is in a serious bind. There are three options, none of them particularly great. The most obvious option would be to engage the hostess to verify that these were legitimate guests who had been omitted from the list by mistake. Unfortunately, this would mean interrupting Ms. Hardy-Knox in the middle of her son's wedding reception through a tacit admission that her own staff is unable to control something as simple as a guestlist. Even worse, this party was planned under the strictest confidence. The fact that six random bozos were even able to get this close and that she briefly considered letting them in and went so far as interrupting her evening to be sure. It meant that someone had loose lips and various heads would surely be rolling down the fairway the following morning.
The second option would be to simply state unequivocally that we weren't on the list and that if we didn't leave immediately security would be involved. This also isn't a very attractive option. Remember, this event is super secret and the fact that we even know about it means it's highly likely that we were actually invited. We both look and act like we're supposed to be there. We're involved in organization that would plausibly get a token invitation. We have a plausible cover story for being late. For all this woman knows, we are six duly invited guests, three of whom are prominent members of the local community, who went to great lengths to attend, and by categorically denying us entry they would be causing Ms. Hardy-Knox a significant degree of personal humiliation and she would end up having to spend the following week apologizing on behalf of her staff, Nemacolin Woodlands Resort, and practically the entire 84 Lumber Corporation, ensuring us that various heads were as we speak rolling down the fairway, not to mention the fact that someone on the event planning staff must have fucked up royally to omit our names from the guestlist just because we weren't eating.
Or, they could, of course, just let us in. Remember, this event is super secret and the fact that we even know about it means we're probably invited. Besides, we're Acting Like We're Supposed to Be There. We come bearing gifts. We're standing there patiently, sympathetic to the conundrum we're putting this woman in. What's the worst that could happen if she lets us in? We're all above the age of 35 and don't look like the kind of demographic that would get drunk and cause a scene. It's dark inside, and loud inside, and Ms. Hardy-Knox may have been imbibing, and there are literally hundreds of people there, and it's highly unlikely that our hostess recognizes all of them personally.
So she let us in, because, when it comes down to it, what choice did she really have? What's the worst case scenario for us? She asks us who we are, and we give her our real names and positions. And at that point she doesn't know that we weren't on the list and either assumes we were legitimate guests or were invited by mistake. In the event she asks us to leave, we at first act incredulous that we're being asked to leave a party we were invited to for no reason, but we eventually comply. Luckily, this never came up. She did approach us as we were leaving and made small talk and it was pretty clear she wasn't entirely sure who we were but she was very nice nonetheless and thanked us for coming.
The party itself? It was dope, as the kids say. It seems like over the past 30 years there's been an arms race in middle class weddings, where what was once a buffet dinner at a fire hall is now a plated dinner at a special wedding venue with assigned seats and appetizers a waiter brings around. But as much as the doctors, and lawyers, and engineers of the world may break the bank for their special day, they will never even come close to what you can do when money is absolutely no object. For instance, the article only shows a couple pictures from the actual reception, and it looks like those were taken at some point before I weaseled my way in. It mentions some DJ as entertainment, but also has a picture of a stage with instruments on it. The other super top-secret thing about this wedding that no one was supposed to know about and that even the photographer for Vogue had to keep under wraps was that the entertainment for the evening was actually Lady Gaga. Performing for a few hundred people, in a tent. I don't even like Lady Gaga, but I'll admit it was pretty special, especially once I was convinced that armed guards with earpieces weren't about to escort me off the premises. I don't want to suggest that all billionaire weddings are this fun, because the over-the-top gayness had something to do with it, as did the fact that most of the guests weren't the rich and famous but friends and family and other semi-prominent people from Fayette County. So yeah, I did that, and it was awesome.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I grew up in an actually socially conservative bubble, in the hardcore twenty percent or so of Americans(so this would be the hardcore 10-15 percent or so of working age native whites, even in the Bush era). Going to church every Sunday was the right thing to do; Mohammedans and atheists were inherently untrustworthy. The blacks are racist too, and responsible for the problems in their community(I was of course warned not to repeat this in public). Fornication is bad, actually, but it happens and needs to be dealt with- and if an eligible man was known to be sexually active with a woman he had to marry her, even if she wasn't his preference or he had other plans. Homosexuals are (mental and sexually transmitted)disease ridden perverts. Gender roles and real and not optional. Women shouldn't be in the military. Marijuana is an evil drug, much worse than alcohol. The 'liberal elite' pushes bad values on purpose; I remember much bellyaching about how they had recently succeeded in making bikinis the overwhelming default, and when I was a bit older about themes in Harry Potter and Twilight. Better be spanked as a child than hanged as an adult(and few, if any, of the people around me had sympathy for criminals). A woman's father had the right- and in many cases, the responsibility- to veto a marriage, and maybe even a dating relationship. Ideally the woman should stay home with her kids, unless she was a teacher, but in either case the man was responsible for the bills. Society was going to collapse because the government uses our tax dollars to push bad morals which make people unproductive; that's why people are dumber, less virtuous, and grow up slower than in the fifties. You can't get a divorce just for falling out of love- the man has to be violent or not holding down a job, or the woman has to be an awful mental case, or somebody has to be addicted to drugs, or something.
I don't say these things so the motte can litigate them. I say them to point to the sine qua non which made the worldview work- different people have different roles in society, mostly due to their membership in various classes(age, gender, social class, maybe sometimes race). As a male youth it was my duty to protect my sister if we went to a social event together, and it was more important that my schooling focus on getting me into a good job which would one day pay the bills for a family. My sister had more household chores(well, in the conventional sense- I had to mow the lawn etc but lots of people don't count yardwork as housework) because it was important that she learn how to do ironing and baking and stuff that I wouldn't need. I was told in no uncertain terms that if I got a girl pregnant or lived with her I would have to marry her, even if I was in love with someone else or had other plans(and my male cousins have pretty much all followed this rule when they took concubines)- although the ideal was obviously a white wedding. And of course being that we were basically middle class I would have to provide a basically middle class standard of living- homeownership and stable employment and going places in cars and the like. My parents threatened to kick me out when I expressed my desire not to go to university, and only relented when I found an HVAC apprenticeship- because it was my job as a middle-class man to have a career, not just a job. These are of course an illustration.
I don't see this mentality from, shall we say, 'converts' to social conservatism. I see a lot of bemoaning about how someone else used to do better from e-trads. And I think this is a lynchpin that's missing which makes a bunch of it 'larping' or 'cargoculting' or whatever; the motte likes to talk about it from time to time. But y'know, social conservatism works off of 'who you are makes x,y,z your job and not doing it even when you don't want to makes you a bad person'. Lots of people like to talk about this- positively or negatively- about women's domestic or familial expectations. I don't think focusing on 'a man's role' or whatever is the missing piece I think you just... can't talk about it without talking about it intersectionally. 'How does everyone fit into society' is a question that needs to be answered and if you've already decided personal characteristics are the way to go about it, well...
I feel like this discussion is the missing ingredient to lots of the topics du jour. Let's take the leftward drift of young women- well social conservatism today seems to have, uh, not discussed what other people owe to them, only what they owe to other people. Is it any wonder that the victimhood narrative from runaway woke is more appealing? Or the disagreements over immigration; we no longer have a class of people whose obligation is to do manual agricultural labor(and most of the historical people who did this did it as an obligation, not a job; serfdom and the corvee is the historical norm). The modern American right seems to simply lack the actual difference between itself and progressivism; it differs only in accidentals(I'm pretty open about voting republican because they protect my right to be socially conservative, and not because they'll push social conservatism). I don't think this mentality can come back from the government, but only from intermediating institutions that democrats would like to punish for doing their job and pushing this. But this is the key difference; most adults have probably worked it out for themselves but nobody ever says it out loud.
CrispyFriedBarnacles
10d ago
I think this fits into a more general pattern that I'm becoming more aware of.
There's this idea, from some irritated younger dissident right types (and others), that America's conservative party has long existed as something like a controlled opposition. And I get where that kind of frame is coming from.
But I think there's an alternative viewpoint that goes more like this, that I'm coming to think has a lot of explanatory power. From the 1930s on, a certain version of liberalism became so overwhelmingly dominant in America that its native conservative tradition was essentially sidelined into a permanent minority status, really, and given no public oxygen at all. And the New Deal state absolutely had a massive role in that (I've brought up Hoover under FDR inventing and promulgating the slur "isolationist" and pushing it hard to delegitimize the foreign policy of most American elites up to the point, for example, and the significant censorship campaigns that government employed against conservatives, as happened under JFK as well). But liberals of a certain sort really were so dominant, under the New Deal coalition, that in a two party system, it was inevitable that a lot of the differences within liberalism would inevitably, for game theory reasons, spill over into the other party and be given an airing there. You could call that bipartisan consensus, but I don't think really captures the dynamics at play. When Eisenhower ran for president in the 50s, both parties wanted him to run for them, and what came to be called paleo conservatism (I think the public fight with Taft captured that) became marginalized and sidelined. Groups like the John Birch society came to look fringe in part because a certain broad strand of liberalism was so dominant that everything normal looked like it, and all broadcast media reinforced it.
And this, I think, is the broader social context where all sorts of 20th century laws and polices and Supreme Court rulings were developed. There were assumptions about the values and worldviews of anyone who would be wielding these laws or rulings or state power, because that broad strand of liberalism had been so dominant that it was easy to assume that surely anyone who had access to the highest levels of state power would be a liberal in that sense.
And this is the background for the rise of the Reagan coalition, which included (as thought leaders and political operatives) many more hawkish or more pro market liberals who left the Democratic party with the rise of the New Left, and with the turn towards more nakedly radical left politics, and the rise of antagonism to internationalist American foreign policy. You could call those people flooding in and bolstering the Republican party of the 70s, and 80s, 90s, and 2000s entryist or controlled opposition, but I think it's just as easy to see them as a natural consequence of a very dominant strand of liberalism reallocating itself between the two parties in a two party system, which, again, you should expect for game theory reasons. And those people (many of them really, truly elites) understood American state power, because it literally had been created by people like them, for people like them.
And thus, when Reagan came to power, he may have had some sympathies that point in some more populist conservative directions that sounds like the old, marginalized paleo conservatives, and there were important public voices like Pat Buchanan that pointed in that direction, but the coalition Reagan brought into power was still absolutely packed with those sorts of statist, more conservative liberals that existed in huge numbers in the original New Deal coalition, the ones that all state power and court rulings and so on had been written for in the first place, and the ones that were comfortable expanding the state power of Civil Rights regime and letting the CIA do whatever it is that it does. George H. W. Bush fits cleanly in this pattern.
I think part of what makes the current moment so messy and complicated is that between 2001 and 2008, those more hawkish, more internationalist, more market oriented liberals absolutely dominated the Republican party and got their way. They sidelined more traditional paleo conservative voices even more (again, bringing up Pat Buchanan is instructive here). And then Iraq happened, and the 2008 financial crisis happened, and they basically obliterated their version of conservative liberalism in the public eye (which was always much less popular with rank-and-file conservatives, who much more often were more religious and somewhat isolationist in a Jacksonian sense and more distrustful of the remote Federal state). That was the specific sequence of events that opened up the chain including the Tea Party, and the online rise of Ron Paul, (both of which were really important for making intellectual space, especially online, for younger disaffected types to start entertaining new ideas that weren't just more rehashes of conservative liberalism), and then eventually the rise of Trump. And the rise of Trump meant the rise of RINOs, who for the most part really were those older conservative liberals who suddenly found that they were losing their iron grip on those tools of state power.
The entire system of federal government power has been built with the assumption that some variety of liberal, from a certain very specific intellectual tradition, would always be given the reigns of state power. There were certain filters in place (especially through unelected credentialing bodies and universities and professional organizations) that would ensure that, regardless of party, the sorts of people who make their way to centralized power would hold certain world views and values.
And... now we're in an era where it looks like that's possibly no longer true. And that is clearly disruptive.
(And for this narrative, too, it's worth recognizing that the current 6-3 conservative Supreme Court is the first time America has had a Supreme Court that conservative since the 1920s. That, on its own, is a radical, radical shift, considering how much liberals of all stripes used their dominance of the court in the middle of the 20th century to remake America in their vision, and how central it has been to their moral story of progress)
Anyway, given that story, I think it's very likely we'll see many more examples of this, of liberals becoming shocked and horrified to discover what happens when the central state they built with the assumption of permanent broad liberal control falls into heretical hands. I'm not saying this with pleasure, exactly, because I personally would have preferred many of those tools dismantled long ago. But...
This is a fun story, and I apologise for the coming less-fun response. From where I'm standing, this is the story of how you and your friends lied and abused the trust of others in order to get things you knew you weren't entitled to. Like, this is the glitzy high-class counterpart to stories of underclass black guys vaulting the ticket barriers in BART stations.
I'm not saying this just to be a miserable scold (though I probably am that) but because when people talk about rebuilding virtue in society and upholding social trust, this is what they mean. I know that you're an upstanding citizen in many ways and that you work for various nonprofits etc. as well but why are people of a lesser standing going to do the hard, thankless work of keeping up their end when they know that this kind of thing is going on behind their back? Hearing stories like this just makes people feel like suckers for holding to the rules and trying not to trouble others.
I am reminded of a quote from SSC:
On The Road seems to be a picture of a high-trust society. Drivers assume hitchhikers are trustworthy and will take them anywhere. Women assume men are trustworthy and will accept any promise. Employers assume workers are trustworthy and don’t bother with background checks. It’s pretty neat.
But On The Road is, most importantly, a picture of a high-trust society collapsing. And it’s collapsing precisely because the book’s protagonists are going around defecting against everyone they meet at a hundred ten miles an hour.
You're not that, most of the time, but it seems to me that this is a little bit of that. Especially when you’re intentionally putting staff in a difficult spot, where they may well be in for professional consequences, so that you can get what you want:
The fact that six random bozos were even able to get this close and that she briefly considered letting them in [...] meant that someone had loose lips and various heads would surely be rolling down the fairway the following morning.
WhiningCoil
19d ago
Small changes in daily lived experiences can have an outsized impact. The crime rate can hardly budge on paper, but things that might poll as "crime" can increase exponentially in your daily life. Where I used to live was fine on paper. I lived there for about 15 years. Then things started getting really weird. Some things would show up on paper as "crime". Gas station on the corner kept getting robbed repeatedly. There was a shooting and a shooter on the loose in my townhouse parking lot after we had our first child. Women were getting dragged off the trails and raped in attacks so lurid and on the nose you'd think they were made up had there not been so much physical evidence and they caught the guy. Turns out sometimes, just sometimes, rapist do wait in the bushes to ambush women jogging on a trail in broad daylight. Same trail we'd walk our infant daughter on in her stroller.
There were plenty of non-"crime" stuff that just added to the overall ambiance of chaos. People suddenly started stopping me in my car on the street and screaming at me for money. There were more loitering gangs of kids smoking and shouting obscenities at my wife as we walked by. Often on the playgrounds we'd go to take our daughter to... and then think better of it. More stores started locking things up. But if you complained about it, some shithead was always there to remind you "Town USA's crime rate is actually below average per capita! And year and year crime has barely budged!" I don't know how to reconcile those insistences with the stark change in my daily life.
So I left. And in the last 5 years I haven't caught a wif of a crime or "crime" anywhere in my proximity. No stores I shop at have gotten robbed, I haven't driven by a house with a squad of police cars trying to disarm a hostage situation (I forgot to mention that one in my old locale). There are no strong "civilization is at the edge of chaos" vibes like I used to get on a daily basis, per capita be damned.
Sunshine
4d ago
It "spoke plainly" and provided evidence.
I did not find your original post to be plainly spoken. Actually, I'd like to get into it.
You talk about your evidence, and you did provide some, but it was all in support of the things that didn't need supporting. I would be willing to take your word for it that blacks are more likely to die of opioids than whites, or that most men have jobs. These aren't exactly extreme claims in need of reams of supporting evidence. I would be willing to accept them for the sake of parsing the rest of your argument even if they weren't true.
Here's an example of a part of your post I would have liked to see some supporting evidence for:
The new narrative on the Online Right is that there's a huge mass of white men without jobs who have no choice but to inject fentanyl because of "the border" and free trade sending the factories to China.
The new narrative according to whom? Since when? This is a rather extreme claim, made right at the start, and the structure of the post is essentially arguing that this narrative is hypocritical. And yet you advanced this argument yourself. You aren't arguing against someone else making a coherent argument, you're assuming someone believes this thing and arguing against what you think they must think. So, the part of your post I would most need to see evidence for is that this "narrative" is actually a widespread belief, and you provide none.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
4d ago
No Alex, as I have told you over and over and over and over and over and over again, what people want is to argue against your perspective. Not defend against your strawman of their perspective. Certainly not defend against your strawman of what Richard Hanania told you is the perspective of people they are aligned with on one issue. When you aren't writing sentence long sneers you constantly structure your posts like a smack down - but for Twitter arguments, not anything said on the motte. But nobody gives a shit what you saw someone say on twitter. Go argue that shit on twitter already.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
22d ago
Trump has bombed Iran's nuclear sites, using B2 bombers dropping 30,000-pound massive ordinance penetrators. All aircraft have successfully cleared Iranian airspace, and Trump is claiming that all three nuclear sites were wiped out. No word that I've seen of a counter-attack from Iran, as yet.
AOC has concluded that a president ordering an airstrike without congressional approval is grounds for impeachment. Fetterman thinks it was the right move. Both are, I suppose, on brand.
My feelings are mixed. I absolutely do not want us signing up for another two decades of invading and inviting the middle east, and of all the places I'd pick with a gun to my head, Iran would be dead last. I do not think our military is prepared for a serious conflict at the moment, because I think there's a pretty good likelihood that a lot of our equipment became suddenly obsolete two or three years ago, and also because I'm beginning to strongly suspect that World War 3 has already started and we've all just just been a bit slow catching on. That said, I am really not a fan of Iran, and while I could be persuaded to gamble on Iran actually acquiring nukes, it's still a hell of a gamble, and the Israelis wiping Iran's air defense grid made this about the cheapest alternative imaginable. I have zero confidence that diplomacy was ever going to work; it's pretty clear to me that Iran wanted nukes, and that in the best case this would result in considerable proliferation and upheaval. Now, assuming the strikes worked, that issue appears to be off the table for the short and medium terms. That... seems like a good thing? Maybe?
I'm hoping what appears to me to be fairly intense pressure to avoid an actual invasion keeps American boots of Iranian soil. As with zorching an Iranian general in Iraq during Trump's first term, this seems like a fairly reasonable gamble, but if we get another forever war out of this, that would be unmitigated disaster.
Epstein's Unanswered Questions
In a recent speech at the Turning Point USA conference, Tucker Carlson criticized the administration's recent closing of the book on the Jeffrey Epstein case. Carlson alleged that there was 'no answer' to his central question, namely how a "high school math teacher at Dalton" became a "billionaire" who owned the largest private residence in Manhattan "by providing accounting advice". Apparently, this is a question for which no answer has ever been provided. According to him, the truth is that Israel provided Epstein with his money.
In this comment, I will suggest
(1) By far the most plausible explanation for the source of Epstein's wealth
(2) Implausibilities in the Mossad agent theory
How Did Jeffrey Epstein Get Rich?
Jeffrey Epstein was born in the early 1950s to a working class family in Coney Island. He was an extremely smart student with a talent for maths and physics, and graduated high school two years early.
"He was just an average boy, very smart in math, slightly overweight, freckles, always smiling"
He pursued a major in math at Cooper Union and then at NYU (for just under three years), which he dropped out from, then took a job as a math teacher at Dalton aged 21. Dalton, which as I noted recently is the most progressive of Manhattan's old prep schools, was undergoing a time of transition. It had become co-ed a decade earlier, and - in the long aftermath of the sexual revolution of the 1960s - liberalized in other ways too. Unlike the city's public schools, subject to the strict demands of NY's extraordinarily powerful teachers' union, private schools can hire who they want.
In the 1970s, with the city in slow-motion financial crisis, tuition at elite private schools was also much lower than today, in inflation-adjusted terms about a quarter of the price. As youth became prioritized above all else and the peak of the baby boom in education led to increased demand for teachers (the boom itself had peaked in the late 1950s, meaning the mid-70s were peak demand for high schools) hiring a 21 year old NYU math dropout as a math and physics teacher was less unusual than it might seem to us. At Dalton, Epstein quickly made an impression and a name for himself as an intelligent, charming and handsome man.
Epstein was at Dalton for around two years. At parent-teacher conferences, a parent who knew Ace Greenberg of Bear Stearns (whose own children also studied at the school, but weren't taught by Epstein) was repeatedly impressed by him, thinking he was a smart and capable young man. When Epstein was fired by the school as enrollment numbers dropped, the city-wide spillover from the financial crisis continued to dent confidence in NYC and drive the UES wealthy out to the suburbs, he begged that parent for an introduction.
“This parent was so wowed by the conversation he told my father, ‘You’ve got to hire this guy,’ ” recalled Lynne Koeppel, daughter of the late Alan “Ace” Greenberg...Greenberg, son of an Oklahoma City women’s clothing store owner, rose from Bear Stearns clerk to CEO and had an affinity for employees he called “PSDs” — poor, smart and desperate to be rich.
As Bloomberg found, Greenberg offered Epstein a job - not as a trader, as has repeatedly been falsely alleged - but as a trading floor assistant, essentially a clerk to a trader. This was a clerical job that required no particular education, certainly not a degree (which wasn't necessary even for traders until the mid-1990s).
Epstein arrived on Wall Street in 1976 at an auspicious time, even though the decade was poor for equities. Options on securities had existed for centuries, but had always suffered from a fundamental problem with liquidity because they were largely specific bets made between individual buyers and sellers, with no standardized pricing, each arrangement a custom contract, traded over the counter if at all, with price discovery difficult. From 1973, the CBOE allowed the easy trading of options as a hedging tool which, coupled with the slow emergence of computerized valuation and ledger tools, allowed investment banks and brokerages to offer a much larger and ever more complex array of tools to their corporate clients. This tied into growing financialization that made intermediaries like Bear more important than ever after the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, the oil crisis and growing globalization of American firms who wanted to hedge huge swings in fuel prices, FX rates and so on.
Epstein made partner at Bear in four years. This was not unheard of at the time for an exceptionally talented young man. Even today, while progression is much slower in most of finance, it can still be that fast in booming sub-fields for very smart people. I know of someone at a leading quant firm who made partner at 28, in his first job, after four years, in the early 2020s. In 1981, Epstein was asked to leave Bear for a violation of securities law, possibly for failing to register products with the CFTC. Avoiding an expensive revenge-driven regulatory case would have been the firm's overriding interest, meaning that even for Epstein's brief partnership and overall tenure he would likely have received a decent payout.
In the early 1980s, Epstein floundered as an 'independent' financial consultant. A huge amount of drivel has been written about his activity between 1981 and 1986/1987. He used his looks to embark on brief relationships with a couple of heiresses he ripped off, most notably Ana Obregon. Her father had been caught up in the collapse of a short-lived firm playing games in the reverse repo business; Epstein merely facilitated her family's addition to an already-extant lawsuit with Chase, who were caught up in the affair, and who eventually repaid most of those involved. Epstein took a modest cut for pretty much no work. At around this time, Epstein socialized with some moderately influential people in New York. This was hardly surprising; he had met many advising corporate executives at Bear Stearns. They were also usually new money or outsiders to NYC; not UES generational New Yorkers.
Epstein told some of these people that he was a secret agent for the CIA, and perhaps Mossad. He told others he was deeply involved with Adnan Khashoggi, the world's richest man at that time, who had made his fortune taking a cut of arms deals between the UK, US and Saudi Arabia. Epstein had a fake gimmick Austrian passport, likely of a low quality and kind you could order in gray-area magazines at that time, and carried around a fake handgun sometimes, to impress party guests. He claimed he was an arms dealer, and lated claimed he was involved in facilitating Iran-Contra. There is no evidence of any of these claims, which are regularly repeated by the credulous. Khashoggi was famous at the time and Epstein was a compulsive liar; Khashoggi was one of the most photographed men in the world, his parties and debauchery attracted the world's press, he loved the media and was happy to appear on TV shows about the rich and famous. Epstein does not appear to have been part of his circle, just a liar who pretended he knew him.
My guess is that the occasional cut of a deal with the poorly informed, his payout from Bear and his winnings from Obregon tided Epstein over through to the mid 1980s. According to Vanity Fair, he lived in a small one-bedroom apartment; other sources suggest that he had no office at this time other than a temporary space he occasionally rented. Not exactly the lifestyle of an ultra-rich international arms dealer man of mystery.
The true source of Epstein's fortune dates to 1986, and his meeting with Les Wexner. Wexner had taken over his parents' clothing store in Ohio and built it into a chain of discount stores, which he then leveraged to buy and found a number of other store chains, including Victoria's Secret and Bath and Body Works. Wexner didn't need to move to New York (he could easily have run the conglomerate from Columbus, as he now does), but he chose to, and chose to buy a series of ever more extravagant homes in Manhattan as his fortune grew. In 1986, Wexner was an almost-50-year-old billionaire who had never been associated with any woman, was unmarried, and was widely considered a 'confirmed bachelor'. He was on magazine covers as 'the bachelor billionaire', with all the implicit subtext. There was rumor in both Columbus and Manhattan.
That year, Epstein met an insurance executive named Robert Meister on a flight from New York to Palm Beach. The insurance executive was taken in by Epstein's charm and bluster (no doubt full of stories about Khashoggi, international deals, arms, scandal) and invited him to an event also attended by Wexner after Epstein repeatedly showed up to his racquetball games and begged to meet Wexner. Epstein charmed Wexner, and within a year they were 'business partners', with Epstein increasingly directing Wexner's investments. It is impossible to do more than speculate here, but Wexner's business partner's thoughts, followed by some other anecdotes from the Vanity Fair piece:
Robert Morosky, who had been the vice chairman of The Limited [Wexner's holding company], was surprised Mr. Wexner took to Mr. Epstein so readily. “Everyone was mystified as to what his appeal was,” Mr. Morosky said.
Jeffrey said, ‘See all this stuff? I don’t need any of it. I could live in a tent. But Les gave this to me for a dollar. Les would do anything for me.’ ”
“Les would defer to him in any meeting…. Les would put his hand on Epstein’s shoulder.”
Wexner's own friends, according to several sources, believed that Wexner and Epstein were in a romantic relationship, and referred to him as "the boyfriend". Epstein denied he and Wexner had a sexual relationship in a filmed deposition.
Wexner and Epstein soon became virtually inseparable. They were an odd pair. Wexner was in his late 40s, with a round face and big ears. Epstein was in his early 30s and dashing—from the right angle he looked like Richard Gere. Wexner’s public image continued to grow after hiring Epstein. A 1989 Boston Globe profile that detailed Wexner’s rise reported that his September 1 diary entry that year read: “I finally like myself". Wexner’s physical appearance changed. A former Victoria’s Secret executive recalled Wexner dyed his hair. He hired a live-in personal trainer and adopted a new wardrobe. “Les would wear the tightest jeans you saw. I don’t know how he didn’t cut off blood supply to his private parts,” the former executive said.
In the early 1990s, well into his fifties, and at the urging of his elderly mother (who abused him in company meetings and was his unspoken co-CEO) Wexner married a London-based corporate lawyer in her early 30s. Epstein wrote the prenuptial agreement. The couple moved back to Ohio and had four children. Wexner stayed close with Epstein, and gave him control over his finances and investments. Even very rich people regularly make terrible financial decisions, especially when love is involved. Anyone who has been in the presence of that rare, 99.9th percentile charisma knows that very few people are immune to it, no matter their usual sobriety.
Merritt recalled once asking Wexner why Epstein was so well compensated. “Les just said, ‘Because I got more money than I can ever spend,’ ” said Merritt. “Les gave him free rein over his checkbook.” In 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported Epstein earned $200 million from Wexner. Merritt puts the number at $400 million.
The bond between an older and younger man, protege and elder, can be particularly strong in cases. Unlike some thieves, Epstein didn't even take all the money, because as will become clear, he didn't need to.
Behind the BS, Wexner was Epstein's only ever client. Which brings us, at long last, to the money. Epstein 'stole' $46m from Wexner according to Wexner, and made at least tens of millions more in asset management fees in which he was paid (as is common practice) a percentage of the money he made his client. Wexner’s business was already turning over $3bn a year by the early 80s, with exceptionally high margins for the already lucrative clothing retail business. Of course, Epstein didn't invest the money himself. Instead, he just handed it (as was made clear in the recent Jes Staley case) to JP Morgan and a handful of other banks and firms, who did the work for him. Fortunately for him, Epstein was again lucky. The bull market of the age mean that even an index fund for the S&P 500 would have returned almost 500%, meaning that Epstein's loot, plus his share of Wexner's own gains, could easily have amounted to over a billion dollars by the early 2000s in a 2-and-20 arrangement, without Epstein doing anything more than acting as a middleman between private wealth teams at a few big Wall Street banks and his dear friend Les.
Was Jeffrey Epstein an Agent for Israeli Intelligence?
It is important to be clear about the specific nature of this allegation. By the late 1990s, many of the social connections Epstein had fantasized and lied about the in the 1980s were real. He really did know Bill and Hillary Clinton, Oprah, and various other important and famous people. He was not the most well-connected man in the country, and there were social scenes in which he was less widely known, but the combination of his relationship with Maxwell, who had been raised into the British elite and had connections he didn't, in addition to Wexner's money, had been good for him. Now well-connected in Washington and internationally, in part because Wexner had introduced Epstein to his social club of Zionist activist billionaires (the Lauder family etc) who Epstein had tried and failed to pitch his 'financial advisory' services to, Epstein made friends with Ehud Barak, the Labor Prime Minister of Israel. Barak's influence in the Israeli state was already declining; he would be the final left-wing Israeli leader.
It is to me entirely plausible that Epstein trafficked gossip to Mossad, and likely also American intelligence agencies. It is possible, although unlikely, he was paid for it, and I suspect anyone who did pay would have found out, as so many of Epstein's associates did over the course of his life, that he was full of shit, but it may have happened. This is different, however, from the Israeli state being the source of his wealth and power. I will summarise some reasons here:
-
The substantial majority of those alleged to have been victims of Epstein's supposed blackmail scheme were Zionist Jews. Consider this logically. You do not need to blackmail rich Jewish-American billionaires to support Israel. They will do it for free. The idea of Israeli intelligence spending a huge percentage of their budget on destroying the goodwill of their number one supporters who already spend billions lobbying for Israel is absurd. Step One: Gather prominent people who already support Israel, often fervently. Step Two: Film them having sex with underage prostitutes. Step Three: Tell them to keep supporting Israel Or Else... Anyone who approves that operation likes burning money.
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Even the gentiles allegedly involved in the scheme had no natural hostility toward Israel. Most were old-school WASPs uninvested in either the socialist or Islamic angles of Palestinian liberation. Almost no Muslims were involved. If you were Mossad and wanted to blackmail people ambivalent or hostile toward Israel into supporting it, you'd target rich Chinese, Indians, gentile Russians, and above all rich Sunni Muslims, particularly in the Gulf. You would not target Alan Dershowitz. The blackmail argument betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the basic purpose of blackmail. It also betrays an understanding of diaspora Jewish politics and Mossad's influence over it. Most critically, those rich Americans who were more skeptical of Israel do not appear to have associated much with Epstein (likely because that isn't really their crowd). Epstein bragged about working for intelligence agencies; that is the one thing you don't want your agent of blackmail to be doing.
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Epstein had no ingrained loyalty to Israel beyond that he was ethnically Jewish (like 7 million other Americans), and so there is no good reason for Mossad to trust him with one of the most expensive intelligence operations in history. There were and are plenty of charismatic Israeli-American businessmen, who have served in the army and who in some cases have connections to intelligence, that Mossad could would have prioritized for an overseas influence operation. Many were - unlike Epstein - actually successful on Wall Street or in other industries. A random conman and compulsive liar who had been fired from every real job he ever had isn't a good target for this kind of operation. It is telling that while "Mossad wanted to blackmail Americans into doing Israel's bidding" sounds like a clever plan, nobody can even present a compelling case for why Jeffrey Epstein's inviting of various influential pre-existing zionists into his social circle would actually serve the goals of that plan. Was there some great mass of principled Anti-Israel (largely Jewish, presumably) Americans just waiting to go full BDS if Mossad didn't have the sex tapes? A poor argument at best.
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Much of the argument for Epstein's supposed connections to Israel involves either Ehud Barak (whose influence in the country was again on the decline, who was PM for a very brief period, and who was 'collected' by Epstein as just another famous political or media figure to show off at events like the Clintons, Prince Andrew etc) or an alleged connection to Robert Maxwell. There is no evidence that Epstein ever met Robert Maxwell beyond hearsay by anonymous callers into a popular Epstein grifter podcast that they 'supposedly' met in London in the late 1980s. Again, no photographs exist, no record of them being at the same social event or party exists (interesting given that there are tens of thousands of pictures of Epstein at big social events over the last thirty years; he didn't shy away from a camera, and neither did Maxwell). Maxwell was considered a hero by Israeli intelligence because he facilitated weapon and plane part shipments, illicitly, from the Soviet Union, France and elsewhere in the early years of Israel's existence. He was badly connected in America, such that his takeover of the New York Post was a desperate attempt to try to lobby for a bailout for his failing media empire, which collapsed upon his death.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
4d ago
I have moderated forums before this one. You have pretty accurately described the personality types.
I don't want this place to be dominated by snowflakes like so many of my hobby forums, and reddit, and most mainstream forums now, really. I also don't want this place to be kiwifarms or rdrama.
I hear what you are saying about, for example, merely annoying people vs. people motivated by hatred of certain groups, especially a group of which you are a member.
Unsurprisingly, my answer to you will be the same one I usually give to people who think we haven't set the dials and thermostats correctly, which is that I think you are wrong about some things, and that there just isn't a great solution to other things.
We have had annoying (by which I mean outspoken and argumentative) liberals (who got reported and downvoted heavily) who still didn't get banned (or even warned in many cases). They still leave because even if the mods are fair to them, the rest of the forum largely is not, and it's not much fun being extremely leftist and trying to engage in good faith with people who, at best, seethe with barely restrained contempt in their every reply to you. I can think of several normie liberals, a couple of trans-women, at least one black guy, and one or two outspoken unabashed leftie feminists over the years who gave it a shot, made some decent contributions, but haven't been seen in a long time because, I assume, they just got tired of people politely telling them they are despised.
The Joo-posters have been warned when they cross the line -- and I don't want to name names here to avoid this being a "call-out" post or making it about individual personalities, but the most prominent ones you are thinking of have somewhat ratcheted it back after being modded repeatedly, and several others have been banned. (Not for their Joo-posting alone but because they were general pains in the ass.) This, of course, was not taken with good grace and acknowledgment that we were trying to maintain a forum where Jews and Jew-haters could somehow engage in mutually respectful dialog. It was met with indignation, anger, claims that we are trying to suppress certain viewpoints, and accusations of the forum being secretly controlled by Jews.
Are we a locker room culture where we put up with Kenneth and his occasional unfunny rape jokes? I suppose that's not a terrible analogy. And should we become a coed locker where everyone now has to avoid offending the more sensitive members now sharing space with us? A lot of guys might not like Kenneth and his rape jokes, but they're willing to put up with it if they can speak unfiltered and the alternative is being policed by the kind of people who would punish all of them for not exiling Kenneth.
I guess the problem with this analogy (or maybe the point) is by implication women aren't just expected to put up with Kenneth and his rape jokes, but to not even be present, whereas we do allow Jews and blacks and women and trans people and liberals to be here... and listen to what some other people really think of them.
The Motte really was not meant to be a "right-wing" forum, but it has more or less become that by virtue of being one of the only places where right wingers can say right-wing things and not get banned. However, I maintain that we do put up with "libtards." We moderate on tone, not content. That's always been by design and one of our explicit principles that sets us apart from most forums. That means yes, the polite Holocaust denier gets to post about how in a purely hypothetical way, the world would be a better place without Jews, while the annoying shit-stirring leftist gets banned for being a dick. I understand how that may seem like we are favoring Holocaust denial and picking on liberals, but we're not. At least not intentionally.
I dunno. A lot of people (including the mods) think the Motte is ultimately a doomed project and it's just a matter of how long we can keep it going. So far we've lasted longer than most expected. I don't know what to tell you. Speaking for myself, I really do try to apply the same moderation principles to the shit-stirring libtards and the Joo-posters, and unsurprisingly, they both think I am clearly out to get them and run cover for the other guys.
faceh
9d ago
I know you're tongue in cheek with this, but man I don't like that the lesson being taught internationally right now is: "If even a single member of a particular ethnic group survives, and your ancestors did something oppressive to their ancestors hundreds of years ago, they will use this to extract reparations from you in perpetuity and will never let you forget what happened."
Similar logic for why, if you depose a monarch, you have to kill off their entire extended family, lest some loyalists later track down their teenage second cousin thrice removed and try to restore them to the throne.
We have a few social techs for allowing non-genocidal acclimation of oppressed populations but when they can all be trivially overridden by the logic that "any observed inequality in outcomes is proof positive of ongoing oppression which must be rectified" then guess what comes back on the menu.
Perhaps we can counter that logic by pointing out that whatever mechanism allows guilt to flow forward in time should also allow credit and pride to flow forward. So sure, maybe my great great great grandpappy beat some villagers that one time, but my family saved an awful lot of drowning children over the years too, so maybe it balances out.
MonkeyWithAMachinegun
Dancing to Tom Paine's Bones
10d ago
As always when it comes to militant vegan discourse on bees, something I have unfortunately been able to witness more than once, the article completely forgets the single most important factor when it comes to honeybee life-satisfaction.
The bees can leave.
If the bees feel that they are enjoying a level of comfort, or more aptly biological success, below that which they instinctively feel is proper, they can and will fuck off. They will up and leave and take the entire colony somewhere else. Even experienced beekeepers will occasionally have entire hives up sticks and vamoose, heading off for (literally) greener pastures.
So while the rest of the article is in my opinion utter drivel which shows the author has somehow convinced himself that a literal insect with a brain "about 0.0002 per cent of the [size of the] human brain" can somehow experience suffering equal to 7-15% of that of a human, which as @TIRM points out is clearly off by several orders of magnitude, even if that were completely 100% true, the argument of course falls flat, because the bees can leave. They can literally just leave.
PyotrVerkhovensky
7d ago
When a statistic isn't just a statistic
Like many, I was saddened by the news of the Texas flooding and the girls who were in the path of the engorged river. Natural disasters happen, but they don't always victimize school aged girls at a summer retreat. Yet I mentally filed the disaster in the way I do most disasters: the optimal quantity of flooding deaths is not zero, the odds of something bad happening to somebody somewhere is quite high, children need to do things in the outdoors even if there is some risk. And this framing, while dispassionate, isn't incorrect.
Yesterday, one of the bodies was discovered and identified. She wasn't some no-name in a far-flung state. Her family lives three streets over from mine. Her brother and my oldest daughter were in the same class last year. These are neighbors, and in our close-knit community, something akin to extended family. Suddenly, this feels personal.
A number of years ago, I was teaching my oldest to ride a bike. She was a natural, balancing and peddling within minutes of first riding. Within an hour she was shifting gears, accelerating and decelerating, making turns with adroitness. After several hours of practice in a parking lot I decided she was ready for the hilly streets near our house. Unfortunately, there was one thing I had forgotten to teach her in the flat safety of the parking lot: how to brake. She went down the hill outside our house, increasing in speed and with no ability to stop herself. Finally, she hit the curb and somersaulted into the grass of a yard. Despite the relatively soft landing she was scraped and bleeding over most of her body.
So many things could have gone wrong. She could have hit a car. She could have landed in the street and been flayed by the asphalt.
Life is fragile and can be snuffed out at any moment. The day she crashed her bike I hugged her as tightly as her scrapes would allow. Not all parents are so lucky.
5434a
27d ago
My experience isn’t typical
No one's is. I think the intercontinental, intergenerational (intersectional? a dirty word around here) scale of the internet makes comparisons nearly useless while also allowing almost any reasonably credible explanation to find enough support to pass as "true".
"You could meet someone at work" say 1000 people who work at bars in LA.
"I can't meet anyone at work" say 1000 guys who work in provincial warehouses.
"You can meet people at parties" say 1000 people who like to go clubbing in NY.
"I don't go to parties" say 1000 guys who like programming.
"You can meet people through friends and family, or at church" say 1000 Mormons in SLC.
"I was raised by 4chan and social workers after my dad abandoned my alcoholic mum and the only people who go to church are old or weird" say 1000 guys from the underclass.
"You can meet young, fun, attractive women online" say 1000 20somethings who live across the street from a middle tier university.
"Apps are full of divorcees and single mums" say 1000 40somethings who live in low turnover commuter towns.
Then a statistician comes along, shoves them all into one box and finds that 50% of people find someone at work/at parties/at church/online/etc.
It's like the blind men and the elephant. They're all true but without the full context people are talking past each other. This thread itself is a microcosm of this phenomenon.
On the other hand the internet is the only place where we can discuss this at length because workmates, party goers, friends, family, parishioners and statisticians alike are neither keen nor useful for sitting around IRL bemoaning one's dating woes at length, and maybe even less for proclaiming one's dating success. "Hello boss/barkeep/buddy/cousin/sir/professor, care to share some fully generalisable insight into why some people are struggling with dating? Not me though, I'm swimming in pussy. High five!"
You can ask out basically any single member of the opposite sex
Choose ten separate and unaccompanied strangers and then actively confirm which ones aren't single. As a trans woman you might have an intuition how different your approach and the results would be asking as a man or as a woman.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
18d ago
I feel like "emotional labor" is among the most toxic memes to come out of feminism, in the actual near-Lovecraftian sense that it insinuates itself into your world model and begs you to cleave reality at that particular joint to your permanent detriment as a human being. I'm not even in the target group, but every time I get even a little frustrated dealing with someone else's mental state (like, say, listening to a friend complain about how they were avoiding their advisor even though they and I had gone through the "I'm having [unfounded anxiety] and rationally I just need to psyche myself up to send that email already" conversation path many times already) the idea floats up and wants me to start keeping score.
aqouta
4d ago
I don't think there's exactly a word for it but I see this phenomenon everywhere on open internet forum forums and social media sites. It really seems like all it takes is a couple posters with views that someone finds intolerable being tolerated that gives the impression to some subset of people as totally captured. The Social justice lot on reddit genuinely convinced themselves that reddit was a right wing echo chamber held up intentionally by the admins because a handful of harshly moderated communities were, for a time, allowed to remain.
I don't think it's cynical, I think people with this perspective are reporting their experience truthfully. But I always come away from posts like this scratching my head. I have read/listened to greater than 80% of every comment that has been posted to a CW thread since the site spin off and before. It's just not the case that neonazis right wing extremists run rampant, it's just not that case that they outnumber liberals. It's not even clear to me that if we held a motte wide vote that Trump would win. The last couple times I've broached the topic here it felt like, although there was plenty of representation of the opposite side, my generally pro-israel position was at least as well received. The jew posters we do have receive strong pushback on their posts even if I, like many, aren't that interesting in relitigating the subjects as endlessly as they are.
If for your own good you can't maintain good mental health in a place that allows nazis to post if they do so under certain conditions then I hope you do what is right for you. But if this is related to a recent crash out drama then I think you're just misreading the room.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
Link one: Don't avoid romance says more people are single nowadays and unhappier nowadays because more people have avoidant attachment styles in the past, with some (mostly circumstantial) evidence that the amount of avoidant attachment is increasing. Ends with an exhortation to not be avoidant but doesn't examine the question I would have thought would be of interest, which is why more and more people don't have healthy attachment styles. (Aftereffects of higher divorce rate? Internet usage? Weaker community institutions? Microplastics? I'm just spitballing ideas but wouldn't a marked societal-leve change in people's psychology be something you'd want to investigate the causes of?)
Your achive link isn't the full article. This one seems better?
Once again, it's remarkable all the hoops the article, or the researchers, jump through to avoid the obvious answer. People have avoidant attachment styles because our culture almost universally portrays marriage and family as an existential horror. Women fear being "trapped" in a marriage. Women's media my entire life has bent over backwards feeding women's neuroticism that every marriage is a "bad" marriage.
And on men's side, every single man has witnessed half their friends and family cut in half by divorce. Lost the house, turned into an every other weekend "dad", and a court ordered pay pig. Probably seen friends, family and coworkers spend a weekend in jail on some trumped up charges. I had a coworker arrested because his ex said he broke into her place. On a night he was on security cameras working late in the office.
Marriage has been turned into something horrific unless you literally trust the other person with your life. A gun pointed at your head 24/7, trusting the other person not to pull the trigger, and everyone has seen it. They know someone who's been shot. Probably a lot of people. And one wonders why kids who've watched this happen to their parents (or lost a parent to it) have developed an "avoidant attachment style".
naraburns
nihil supernum
10d ago
Happy Independence Day to those who celebrate!
First they came for the Nazis, and CNN did not speak out--because CNN reporters are not Nazis.
From CNN Politics today: Law used to kick out Nazis could be used to strip citizenship from many more Americans
This is not a meaty article--it seems like "the news" these days is mostly breathless speculation over the worst possible outcomes of things the Trump administration might be thinking about doing. As a rule, the "unprecedented" things Trump does are in fact wholly precedented--just, you know, not like that! But the substance is approximately this:
For decades, the US Department of Justice has used a tool to sniff out former Nazis who lied their way into becoming American citizens: a law that allowed the department to denaturalize, or strip, citizenship from criminals who falsified their records or hid their illicit pasts.
...
According to a memo issued by the Justice Department last month, attorneys should aim their denaturalization work to target a much broader swath of individuals – anyone who may “pose a potential danger to national security.”
The directive appears to be a push towards a larger denaturalization effort that fits with the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies. These could leave some of the millions of naturalized American citizens at risk of losing their status and being deported.
The article is light on numbers--well, it's a speculative article--so I went poking around and was surprised (not surprised) to discover that this is nothing new. An AXIOS article from President Trump's first term (but updated just two days ago, apparently) suggests:
From 1990-2017, the DOJ filed 305 denaturalization cases, about 11 per year.
The number has surged since President Trump's first term.
...
Since January 2017, the USCIS has selected some 2,500 cases for possible denaturalization and referred at least 110 denaturalization cases to the Justice Department for prosecution by the end of August 2018.
This sounds about in line with the CNN article's suggestion that
Trump filed 102 denaturalization cases during his first administration, contrasted with the 24 cases filed under Biden, DOJ Spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said on social media Wednesday. So far, the second Trump administration has filed 5 cases in its first five months.
The CNN article does at least include information about the history of denaturalization, which is more bipartisan than you might initially imagine...
The statute in question is part of a McCarthy-era law first established to root out Communists during the red scare.
But its most common use over the years has been against war criminals.
In 1979, the Justice Department established a unit that used the statute to deport hundreds of people who assisted the Nazis. Eli Rosenbaum, the man who led it for years, helped the department strip citizenship from or deport 100 people, and earned a reputation as the DOJ’s most prolific Nazi hunter.
Rosenbaum briefly returned in 2022 to lead an effort to identify and prosecute anyone who committed war crimes in Ukraine.
But the department has broadened those efforts beyond Nazis several times, including an Obama-era initiative called Operation Janus targeting those who stole identities to earn citizenship.
That's more direct quotes than I intended to use, but the point is that I was really struck by the article's framing. Yes, the law has been used to "kick out Nazis," though it was originally intended to kick out Communists. But it has also been used to kick out e.g. scammers and child pornographers. Basically, the weight of history and legal precedent is that naturalized citizens absolutely can be denaturalized and expelled from the country for a variety of reasons, substantially at the discretion of the executive.
Several thoughts: first, even if aggressively prosecuted, I have a hard time imagining more than perhaps several thousand naturalized Americans being returned to their countries of origin in this way. This is not an approach intended to change actual demographics; rather, it is a way for the government to influence public attitudes and perceptions by identifying "enemies" and distinguishing them from "friends." Deporting Nazis, even after naturalization, sends a strong signal that we don't take kindly to Nazis around here. And who would object to that? Object too strongly, and you might start looking like a Nazi yourself...
I don't think this is a deep or surprising point, but as a consequence I was a little surprised to run into such a self-aware wolf moment on CNN this morning. "We made a law to expel Nazis, but now it might be used to expel Hamas supporters! Everyone: clutch your pearls now!" What I think of as the obvious question--"should we maybe have been criticizing the ideological slant of this law when it was being used to expel Nazis?"--never even gets asked. From the perspective of the CNN reporter, it's not the law that is bad, it's just that Trump is the one using that law, and against people CNN would prefer it not be used against.
"I can tolerate anything except the outgroup," indeed!
Anyway, add this one to the "Trump opposition continues to be mad at him for enforcing their favorite laws against them" file. I feel like, in a sane world, this would be inducement for Democrats to reconsider their historic commitment to infinite expansion of federal power. Imagine how things would look right now if Joe Biden (or his handlers, whatever) had made it his mission to dismantle as much of the federal government as possible. The easiest way to prevent a "Trump Tyranny" would have been to make law in a way that precludes tyranny, rather than to insist on empowering the executive and conspiring to ensure only the "right" tyrants ever ascend.
Why is it so hard for people to take the libertarian lesson from such events?
As I said--neither deep nor surprising. But I thought it was at least a thematically appropriate question on July 4th (even if Constitution Day might have been a better fit). The document of "enumerated powers" that is the putative core of our government practice is... "dead letter" might be an exaggeration, but maybe not. I do not usually perceive the federal government as in any meaningful way limited. Those bothered by Trump I would invite to consider the possibility that Trump is only a symptom; the disease is the statism toward which the United States has been creeping since, oh, probably July 5, 1776, but certainly since the Civil War, and more recently without even token opposition from any of its major political parties (since, I suppose, the Tea Party of 2007). DOGE makes many of the right noises, but the Big Beautiful Bill looks at best like one step forward, and one step back. (Republicans do not appear to have learned the lesson, either!)
Whether a reduction in liberty is worth the occasional schadenfreude of seeing one's ideological opponents kicked out of the country, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
I note that Bezos had a noted aversion to helicopter flight (perhaps a part a fear of flight, a part knowing the horrible safety record of personal helicopters) that he seems to have gotten over, just for this woman. To the point where he would go on longer helicopter rides just to hang out with her.
Placing your life in the hands of a woman is rare enough: placing it under IFR flight rules is singularly rare.
I don't know if you've ever been in a helicopter, but it's like putting your head next to a concert amp playing the sound of a chainsaw. No amount of plastic titties can overcome that. There are easier ways to get with a chick then that. I am inclined to believe that he is genuinely infatuated with her.
Lizzardspawn
9d ago
Never half ass a genocide. One of the most important lessons of history.
Looking Forward (In Time) To The Democratic (Midterm) Civil War (And Likely Trump Law Enforcement Accelerant)
/
How about that Democratic National Committee drama last
weekmonth, am I right?This post started being sketched out last month, in expectation of a predictable event just last week. Then the last couple of weeks happened, and what could have been an interesting culture war episode got overshadowed by, well, war-war. Crazy times… but the premise is still relevant in the future, if not now. So, ahem.
Last week’s resolution to some ongoing party drama has implications for the next year or so of American politics. Implications include intended infighting, pessimistic predictions for Senate prospects, and a predictable next
escalationenforcement of federal laws that will feed the partisan polemics of dictatorship and whatnot. This is because as the progressives and establishment Democrats begin to position against eachother while trying to use Trump as a foil for their internal party power struggle, the Trump Administration looks to be preparing enforcement action against the professional protest apparatus involved in recent not-entirely-peaceful riots in LA and elsewhere, which both will strike at parts of the Democratic power base but also provide leverage for the Democrat factions to try and use against eachother even as they loudly decry it.This post is looking to organize thoughts and identify trends that can help predict / make sense of some of the upcoming predictable public drama that will shape American media coverage through 2026. When equally predictable media campaigns follow, you’ll (hopefully) be taken less by surprise, and have an ear open for what may not be said at the time.
/
Part 1: The 2026 Democrat Senate Prospects
Not to put too fine a line on it, but in some respects the 2026 midterms are a lost cause for the Democrats, and some of the ongoing politic are going to be a reflection of that context.
Part of the background of today’s subject really begins five years ago, in the 2020 US election. The same election that brought Biden to the Presidency also got the Democratic Party 50 seats in the US Senate, giving them control of the Senate with the Vice President’s tie-breaking vote.
At the time, this was a great and glorious thing for the Biden Administration, as it was a key part of giving the Democrats the might trifecta, which is to say control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency. As narrow as the Senate margin was, it supported things like appointing judges, budgets via reconciliation, and so on. This was a highwater mark of Democrat institutional power, before last year’s 2024 brought in the current Republican trifecta.
Most people are familiar with this, and are also likely familiar with how the ruling party nearly always looses House of Representative seats in the midterms after an election. Presidential approval drops, the base gets complacent, the opposition gets hungrier / more motivated, all that jazz. The US House changes quickly, as every elected representative is up for re-election every two years.
What people may not realize is that only a third of the Senate is up for re-election every cycle, as the 6-year terms are staggered so that only one third are up for grabs at any given cycle. This means that far less of the currently Republican-dominated Senate is up for re-election. It also means that the seats that are, are the seats that were last voted in 2020.
It also means that senate maps can be deeply uncompetitive. Like how most Republican Senate seats this cycle are in solidly red states, so that there are about two competitive Republican seats, but four competitive Democratic seats.. While there are no guarantees in politics, it is not only plausible/likely for the Republicans to maintain control of the Senate this cycle, but to increase their margin of Senate control. After all, the last cycle these seats were up was 2020 pandemic election, and Biden’s results then were considered an especially good showing.
This is why US political watchers have been warning since the earliest parts of the Trump Administration- before any of the current drama- that the Democrats face a rough wall next year. While the House is often more competitive and up for being flipped, the Senate is much less malleable. And without control of both the House and the Senate, the ability of the opposition party to limit / oppose / impeach the President is relatively limited. (Or rather- they can impeach all they want, but lose in the Senate.)
The lack of formal ability is important. It would mean that even if the Democrats take the House, then they could impeach Trump however many times they want, but not remove him due to a lack of the Senate. It means the House could refuse to pass a funding bill, but they couldn’t use Control of Congress to dictate terms of short-term spending bills to prevent Trump’s options to further gut parts of the federal government during a shutdown. Having one chamber of Congress is better than none, but it makes those leaders relatively impotent.
This is relevant scene setting, because this is a clear and obvious wall that the Democratic Party is heading towards. If they fail, they can take solace in ‘just’ retaking the House, but the worse they do, the more bitter the recriminations. At the same time, while the senate map is daunting, there is also a clear way forward.
If the Democrats want to defeat Trump over all else, they need to (re)build the anti-Trump coalition. Use opposition and public discontent to Trump to turn out their base. If there isn’t enough organically, then manufacture and generate more, using all the levers of influence and political mobilization they can across the institutions they still control. To do as well as they can, they need to work together.
Insert laconic ‘If.’
Alternatively, a dismal year where Senate gains are unrealistic is the best election cycle for internecine conflict over the soul, leadership, and composition of the Democratic Party going into 2028.
/
Part 2: DNC Drama
Insert the multi-month Democratic National Committee drama that resolved last Friday, when Washington State Democratic Party Chair Shasti Conrad won the election for the open vice chair position of the DNC. Shasti Conrad herself is irrelevant to this story, besides that she is an establishment democratic, and onboard with the DNC’s job of helping get Democrats elected across the country.
Why was there an open vice chair of the DNC? Because the Democratic establishment defenestrated the previously elected chair, David Hogg, over his still current intention to primary ‘asleep at the wheel’ sitting elected Democrats with younger (and more progressive) challengers.
Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. No one literally threw David Hogg out a window. He “resigned” before he could be formally removed. And his removal technically wasn’t because he promised to use his DNC position to give $20 million USD to his personal super PAC ‘Leaders We Deserve,’ breaking DNC neutrality to primary his internal-party political opponents. Rather, a DNC subcommittee recommended a redo of the otherwise uncontested DNC election on grounds of procedural issues.
And by procedural issues, the standard media coverage is obviously referring to
If that parsed to what you think it parsed to- yes. David Hogg, a young white man whose ascent into progressive politics was based primarily on being a school shooting survivor](https://www.centredaily.com/news/local/education/penn-state/article286954330.html), got out-progressive stacked by a female minority over… a race and gender quota.
Ms. Free filed her objection at the end of February, well before Mr. Hogg was called a Jackass by notable / still influential Democratic strategist James Carville in late April](https://www.drewberquist.com/2025/05/james-carville-calls-out-jackass-david-hogg-directly-to-his-face-watch/). Clearly her action was unmotivated by any desire for personal advancement, and her complaint was not a convenient pretext for senior Democratic party officials like DNC Chair Ken Martin to remove a vocal progressive who sought to style himself as the next AOC.
If it were, though, then it seems the DNC establishment won an important victory. Given the first-past-the-post nature of (most) US elections, primarying your own party is a great way to expose almost-certain-win seats for a Republican upset if the primary dispute bleeds over to the general election. (American politicians are infamous for their magnanimous forgiveness in such things.) Additionally, even though Hogg ‘only’ wanted to primary dems in ‘safe’ seats, that in itself would have represented an attempt to make the permanent / core Democratic party more progressive, and leave the non-Progressives in the unstable / competitive seats. Over time, attrition would ensure that the powerful committees (which tend to go to those with seniority, i.e. safer seats over time) would go to progressives, while the non-progressive Democrats stood to be turned into the next round of Blue Dog Democrats- tolerated to a point, but sacrificed in the name of some policy priority popular with the core but unpalatable to the broader electorate in competitive areas.
Or perhaps the geriatric problem got worse. David Hogg was, after all, supposed to be part of the solution by getting the younger gen-Z into Democratic offices. His earlier PAC efforts of $8 million for young progressives was lauded at the time for getting candidates on the ballot and elected at lower levels in various red states, such as the youngest Texas-Senate senator. This was supposed to be all the more important after Trump made major gains amongst young voters in the 2024 election. David Hogg was (supposed) to be part of the solution for that, hence his relatively meteoric ascent. Even his message on primarying out the old, infirm, and insufficiently progressive resonated- something like 60% of the Democratic party want the leadership who just replaced Hogg to be replaced.
Or perhaps not. James Carville may be one of the louder cranks to publicly claim the Progressive wing is detrimental to the Democratic Party, but he is not the only one by any means. And while Carville has suggested that the party should have an amicable split over pronoun politics with progressives going off their own way, he’s also accused progressive wing leaders like AOC and Bernie Sanders of being more interested in running against Democrats than the Republicans. While Carville makes the motions of a good party man who would come behind the party regardless who wins, there is an awareness that not everyone is interested in the party winning as much as winning the party.
The point of this segment is not (just) to give some context to an American political drama you’d rarely hear about (and probably didn’t given the events of last week). The point is that an institutional power struggle is already underway between the progressive (and often younger) wing of the Democratic Party, and the (older) establishment.
David Hogg was just an iteration of more direct party-on-party fighting. He lost the institutional battle, and his supporters were not influential enough to protect him. At the same time, David Hogg would like you to know he’s not going anywhere. He still intends to primary, or at least threaten to primary, sitting Democrats. Since Trump bombed the Iranian nuclear program over the weekend, Hogg has argued any Democrat who supports Trump on the conflict should be primaried. Now that he is free of the expectation of DNC neutrality, he is free to pick fights with fellow, though rarely progressive, democrats.
For now, though, inter-Democratic competition for influence and future electoral prospects is taking a more amicable, or at least acceptable, turn of targets- who can turn out support for anti-Trump efforts.
Or, to put it another way- the acceptable form of inter-Democrat competition is, for the moment, orienting to who can oppose Trump the best.
/
Part 3: Trump Protest Power
Not to blow anyone’s mind, but Trump is kind of unpopular with Democrats, and they’d really like their elites to fight back.
After a dispirited and divided start to the new administration, where Trump’s 100 Days agenda was dominated by DOGE tearing through the bureaucracy and Senate Minority Leader Schumer avoided a government shutdown to partisan discontent, despite his belief that doing so would have empowered Trump more, early Democratic party polling suggested a desire to on the base for more and more active resistance.
How to fight was up for debate, and rather than a comprehensive strategy something of a spaghetti strategy of ‘throw everything at the wall and see what works’ was pursued. Many of these have been covered in the Motte over the past weeks, from the record-breaking national injunctions, to the media campaigns over the ICE deportations trying to equivocate migrant deportations with citizen exile, to the efforts to stall DOGE and administrative personnel actions. The recent Ivy League struggles by the likes of Yale and Harvard against Trump are also emblematic, as (university) administration have risen and fallen depending on if they are seen as weak against Trump. That’s not to say all these actions have been successful- for every ‘Trump suffers major blow in effort to [X]’ there is often a partially or mostly reversed decision later- but it is popular, and clearly so.
In the last weeks, this has organized to the point where various Democratic media organs are explicitly re-raising the #Resistance moniker, trying to re-build the sort of mass-mobilization efforts that fortified democracy to save the 2020 election. This recently culminated with the mid-June No Kings protest, where various DNC-aligned organizations including MoveOn, the American Civil Liberties Union, American Federation of Teachers and the Communications Workers of America organized nation-wide protests. These protests were meant to eclipse the military parade in D.C. for the 250th anniversary of the US Army (or Trump’s birthday, if you prefer), and called to mind the various early anti-Trump protests of the first administration. These protests demonstrate organizational capacity, coordination efforts, influence with the sort of people to show up, and of course the supporting media coverage to get their message out.
There was just one slight problem for the stage-managed revival of the #Resistance- rioters waving the Mexican Flag over burning cars in Los Angeles, California, beat them to the punch.
While the actual photo was almost certainly one of those naturally occurring protest images, the California protests weren’t (quite). On 6 June, about a week and a half before the No Kings protests for the 14th, hundreds of protestors rallied in downtown Los Angeles to protest various ICE raids that had occurred across the city earlier that day. By the 7th, local riot police and teargas were being used On the 8th, Trump federalized California National Guard over California Governor Newsom’s objection to protect federal property and personnel.
This was an unusual, arguably provocative, decision. In US law, national guard operate under the state governor’s control and are not legally under Presidential or federal control unless done under certain legal authorities. Failure to do so is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, a post-civil-war-reconstruction act making it a crime to use federal forces in law enforcement roles except where authorized by Congress. Trump invoking these authorities- which provide the Congressional authorization criteria- has been the subject of litigation by Governor Newsom, who opposed activation at the time, allegedly on grounds it would inflame the protests- which it arguably did.
Why did Trump do it, besides malicious disregard for the governor? Trump’s decision to do so anyways was likely influenced by the acting ICE director alleging that the LAPD took 2 hours to respond to requests for law enforcement assistance on 6 June despite multiple calls when ICE agents were swarmed by objectors during the 6 June enforcement raids that kickstarted the protests-turned-riots. The LA Police Chief has disputed this, claiming police responded in 38 minutes, citing traffic. (There is a joke to be made about LA traffic and how this is plausible.) The Police Chief also claimed they weren’t informed ahead of time, which is… also quite plausible.
Naturally / inevitably, however, the California protests became at least a short term win for Governor Newsom, whose post-protest Presidential prospects for 2026 seem stronger for having stood up to / opposed Trump. Resistance in this contexts has been more about verbal sparring and legal objections than something more concrete. Less assembling a platoon of people and buying the biggest fireworks possible to attack police, and more name calling, daring the administration to arrest him, and general ‘Trump is acting like a dictator’ themes. You know, the usual things political opponents in dictatorships do. At the same time, Newsom is playing the role of the moderate, and while it’s not like he can take full credit for the work of District Attorneys and such, California is publicizing charging some of the worst protestors in ways that weren’t really publicized during the Trump 1 era left-coded protests.
Except… Newsom isn’t the only winner here. Or necessarily the biggest Democratic power player. That may yet go to another, David Huerta.
If you don’t know who David Heurta is, you are not alone. He is not an elected politician, a party strategist, or elder statesman. He is a union leader. To quote his Biden-era White House bio when he was an honored guest-
Or to put it another way- David Huerta is part of the labor union wing of the Democratic party, except his labor union is of the totally-not-illegal-immigrant sort of organized labor. And his role in the party is totally not as part of the labor union mobilization to party member pipeline that organized labor has served in the past.
Mr. Huerta was arrested Friday the 6th of June, which is to say when the protests started, for interfering with ICE operations. His protest seems to have been both non-violent and directly intended to obstruct ICE activities.
Mr. Huerta may well have been correct. Instead of everyone being arrested, Mr. Huerta was arrested. And within 12 hours hundreds of protestors were in downtown LA. Within 36 hours, hundreds grew to thousands and cars had been burned in the streets. Within 48 hours Trump sent in the national guard, clearly taking it seriously.
One on hand, this can be (as the sympathetic media seek to characterize it), a case of a peaceful labor leader being unjustly suppressed, leading to a cycle of provocation due to reckless escalation.
On another hand, this can also look like an excellent example of a union leader’s ability to organize and lead not only anti-Trump/anti-ICE disruption efforts, but force Trump to respond/take him seriously, even as Mr. Huerta’s organizational turnout capacity supported larger protests and greater effect. Sure, some of the protestors got out of hand, but there’s no evidence they were linked to Mr. Huerta… right?
To my knowledge, no. And that’s why I would suggest that Mr. Huerta, not Governor Newsome, may end up being the bigger winner from these protests. A $50,000 bail fee is one of those things that is not exactly going to cripple not only a labor union leader with friends in high places, but someone who has- probably- gotten far, far more popular with the would-be resistance. Willing to fight ICE, protest Trump, and a labor leader?
Mr. Huerta may not be challenging Governor Newsom for the governorship or Presidency any time ever, but Mr. Huerta probably has a good future ahead of himself in the Democratic party… if the glowing editorial linked in that first mention of him wasn’t clue enough that he’s already a significant local power player.
But remember- it’s not just Mr. Huerta.
Mr. Huerta’s glory comes, somewhat, at the expense of Governor Newsom. Media coverage, and public attention, is a 0-sum game. Some elements can reinforce each other, and in this case arguably did, but other elements work against each other.
After all, their glory/prestige/anti-Trump cred comes from the protests that came at the expense of the No King’s protests. Their exposure / attention grabbing was zero-sum between ‘polite, professional’ #Resistance, and a far more immediate, visceral ‘snap’ protests.
And the California protests- where both Huerta and Newsom had their political interest incentives be firmly in the ‘maximally oppose Trump’ side of things- have given Trump and the Republicans the sort of made-for-campaign-add images that only a Mexican flag over burned cars in American cities can.
And this doesn’t count the other people involved, initially or later, and who tried to get in on the action / influence. One man has been charged with trying buy the biggest fireworks he could to arm his ‘platoon’ and shoot at police in the later LA protests. When political fireworks- figurative or literal- are prestigious, bigger demonstrations of ability garner more prestige for more influence for bigger groups.
The LA Protests and the No Kings Protests weren’t formally or even directly at odds. But they were competing in various ways. For public attention, yes, but also for Democrat consideration. The #Resistance revival has, for the moment, failed to take off. Maybe it already would have, but the LA riots stole wind from the sail, to speak. And in turn, the LA riots- despite being vehemently anti-Trump and anti-ICE, two very popular things with the Democratic base- are likely to undercut the Democrat position going into the next election cycle. Now any future No Kings-style mass protests has to either take better care to distance from the more combative, or be tarred with the politically unpalatable for the non-democrats in the electorate.
Which lowers the value (and ability) of a combined effort… but does encourage partisans to do what they can for their own interest, regardless of how it affects the rest of the party. The nature of such publicity-driven contests creates natural incentives for speed (to pre-empt others), high-visibility (to dominate attention), and excess (the rawest form of proof-of-sincerity).
This creates something of a prisoners dilemma where everyone has an incentive to ‘defect’ first by going for their own public display, rather than coordinating. Even if the party, collectively, would perform better if everyone sang from the same sheet of music, any ambitious leader is incentivized to not be part of the choir.
The point here isn’t that these contemporary protests are adversaries. It is that these contemporary incentives are occurring at the same time as the inter-party conflict, where the David Hogg and progressives of the party want more combative responses at the expense of other party members. And if they can do so- and win party acclaim- by pushing protest actions as aggressively as possible against Trump, the acceptable target, rather than against other Democrats…
That’s a risky mix, even before you consider that another key actor has his own agency in this brewing inner-party struggle.
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Part 4: Trump Can Strike Back (Lawfully)
I’m torn between introducing this section as ‘Trump’s White House is more competent than you may want to believe’ and ‘it’s not legal just because it’s anti-Trump,’ and ‘don’t count on departed friends to protect you.’ All are applicable.
The first is a reminder / warning against those who want to dismiss the Trump administration’s ability for deliberate, even clever, action. Whatever your opinion on Trump himself, he is not an incompetent at everything he does. Nor, more importantly, are the people he’s brought into this administration. There are implications of some exceptionally competent people who understand how the government works at a mechanical level, as demonstrated from the takedown of USAID through dual-hatting, the ongoing efforts to move Executive branch agencies outside of the National Capital Region, and the budget/shutdown politics. I’ve even gone so far as to argue that various policy rollouts like DOGE have been done with the intent of shaping later / future policy efforts. The Project 2025 wishlist may not have been a formal Trump policy plan of everything he’d agreed to, but there are a lot of discrete, actionable items there that have been pursued as able by those willing to work with/for Trump.
The point here isn’t to praise, but to make a point about institutional competence. There are people in the administration who know what they are doing, know what they want, and know how to go about turning that desire into policy. And when they know to expect resistance, they loosely know who and what they need to act against- not least because various parts of the #Resistance wrote extensive tell-all articles last time to take credit for how they worked together to link elected politicians, media, labor organizers, and business interests worked together to manage anti-Trump protests.
When political opponents write a brag sheet of dubiously legal measures they took to defeat you, it doesn’t take the most capable political actor to plan to mitigate it on round two.
It’s not even something that necessarily only started this year. Reaching way back to 2017, you may (not) remember the Dakota Pipeline Protests, which were one of the anti-Trump-coded protests in the early first trump administration. In short, American tribal / environmentalist protests over a pipeline escalated after Trump voiced support, including occupations of work sites, blockades against ground routes to resupply them, and so on. It was framed as ‘Trump against native Americans and environmentalists,’ and the protestors received significant public media support at the time.
Well, after over half a decade in court, Greenpeace has been $660 million in damages for defamation, trespass, nuisance, civil conspiracy and other acts. This may threaten to bankrupt the organization, though it will be years more before it works through the system. The crux of the verdict derives from the tens of thousands of dollars raised to train and send thousands of protestors, along with logistical support, with awareness and sanction at the highest levels of the organization.
Parallels to other mass protest organizers should hopefully be obvious.
This Time Would Be Different even if Trump were not Actually a Dictator this term, but because various factors that the Democratic party and partisans have taken for granted in the past two decades are changing. Various dynamics that let the election fortification of 2020 succeed were based variously on low awareness by the Trump administration of what was going on, having the right friends in the right places to make it work, and reluctance by the government(s) to go after coordinating elements.
As elements of this change, the system gears grind against rather than with each other. And in the sort of decentralized, every-Dem-is-pursuing-their-own-interest protest environment that the No Kings vs. Newsom vs. Huerte anti-Trump protests have been showing, there are probably going to be far more loose threads, and far more willingness to pursue them, going forward.
Take the Justice Department. A good deal of prosecution by any government is discretionary. You only have so many investigators, only so many prosecutors, and more potential crimes than you can handle. You prioritize what to pursue, and drop what you don’t want to. This is how something like 90% to 95% of the 2020 Floyd protest charges were dropped or never pursued in various jurisdictions.
But at the same time, non-prosecution is a choice, not a natural state of a just world. And it is a choice that can be made otherwise if someone wants to. Or if the people who wouldn’t want to depart and are replaced.
For example, the DOJ Civil Rights Division had a reputation for seeking certain types of civil rights cases, and not being as interested in others, such as university admissions discrimination. I say ‘had’ because something like 70% of the DOJ Civil Rights Division has departed since Trump took office. Whatever reputation / expectation you have of the Civil Rights Division, it’s probably not quite what the new DOJ CRD priorities are.
But this is the new institutional direction of the CRD. It still has the legal authorities Congress gave to the ‘old’ CRD. But as the saying goes, “people are policy,” and the people in the CRD have changed. Other people’s expectations just haven’t caught up to, say, the DOJ opening a civil rights case against any state or local officials involved sanctuary city politics that also just-so-happen to overlaps with, say, anti-federal riots.
I raised the fireworks platoon guy earlier, but that is far from the only case that can be pursued. About a week into the protests, a crowd broke into an ICE detention facility, overpowered national guard soldiers, and tried to release the detainees before about 100 law enforcement officers responded. That’s various charges on its own. The FBI is reportedly considering a criminal conspiracy line of effort for any groups involved in organizing the violent protests. The IRS is reportedly reviewing into non-profit and other organizational funding as part of the money flow investigation. Parallel to those parallels, House Republicans are investigating a US billionaire with possible ties to the protests, and the Chinese Communist Party… and Code Pink,an anti-war/social-justice organization.
And this doesn’t include other possible things that could be pursued. Doxing can be a crime… but what if its a municipal mayor who decides to dox ICE agents? When mostly peaceful protests are held outside of hotels suspected of hosting ICE agents, what if / when a not-entirely-peaceful protest occurs outside of a hotel that isn’t? When left-coded social media encourages eachother to follow and record ICE agents at work, what happens if someone ignores the ACLU’s carefully worded advice on dealing with law enforcement, particularly what the agents areallowed to do?
Would arrests and prosecutions be politically motivated? Sure, if you want. When any prosecution is discretionary, all high-profile investigations and prosecutions are arguably motivated. Similarly, a refusal to do so can also be motivated.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything that could be found. It won’t even require ‘three felonies a day’ over-criminalization of anything.
The point I am trying to make here is that there is a greater risk of legal risk to anti-Trump partisans this administration than in the last two, and this is matched by a greater interest in the Trump administration to do so.
This is going to challenge people’s expectations / understanding of what ‘should’ be tolerated / not challenged as illegal, but will be viewed as suspect now. I want to emphasize this even further, since this isn’t ‘merely’ corruption of justice, but an element of generational norms being overturned.
12 of the last 16 years have seen the American federal government under the control of the Democratic party. The Obama and Biden administrations would generally sympathize with, and not be interested in aggressively pursuing, Democrat-coded protestors. Four of the other last 16 years were the resistance phase, where significant parts of the government bureaucracy deliberately stonewalled Trump efforts- and in some cases, in active collusion with protest organizers. Four years before that, the last four years of the Bush administration, were also a period of large-scale and sustained political protest environments as part of the Democratic party apparatus, when the Bush Administration was sensitive to how it could respond due to falling political legitimacy and political norms of the era.
20+ years of established expectations on ‘what you can get away with at a protest’ is a generation. Younger partisans like David Hogg have spent their entire adult / politically-aware lives in that environment. It is a norm to them, the way things have ‘always’ been.
But such norms are not laws, particularly when the norms derive from the discretion of often sympathetic enforcers who are no longer in the position to make the call.
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Part 5: When a Resistance Devours Itself
This is the final section, and an effort to bring the points above together into a hopefully coherent but non-obvious synthesis.
My forecast prediction is that over the next year, inter-Democrat competition is going to revolve around who can ‘stand up to’ / fight Trump by pressing the limit of the law, but attempts to toe the line are going to overstep changes in enforcement practices. This will fuel anti-Trump sentiment amongst Democrats and accusations of tyranny, but also influence the unfolding of the Democratic internal struggle not only going into 2026, but even into the 2028 election. This will be because the Trump administration will likely go after the ‘connective tissue’ of the Democratic protest-mobilization apparatus where it detects legal risk. This, in turn, can become a tool in the Democratic internal conflict that sub-factions can utilize against each other, because those same mobilization organizations are factional players in the Democratic internal conflict.
In part one, we made a case for why the Senate will be a rough bet for the Democrats at all. While coherent parties can spin a partial failure into a partial success, this will likely hinder the institutional ability of the Democrats to do major limits on the Republican party. This is liable to frustrate partisans, and lead to highly symbolic protests in the institutions, and other actions outside of institutions.
In part two, we raised the ongoing internal conflict within the Democratic party. Significant parts of the Progressive wing have and are making efforts to actively displace non-progressive rivals for control and even composition of the Democratic Party establishment. The non-progressive institutionalists won, but they are facing the challenge of the upcoming mid-terms, even as the progressives are trying to take the mantle of ‘actually fighting Trump.’ Democratic institutions are already being used against each other.
In part three, we raised how ‘actually fighting’ is something of a zero-sum game on the ability of leaders to mobilize protests and take the spotlight. Would-be leaders trying to organize great protests can be pre-empted and upstaged even accidentally by those doing their own thing with more modest means. When paired with the internal party struggle in part two, this creates incentives for would-be leaders of the party to push aggressive protests to the limits of the law.
In part four, we make the point is that the limit of the law is changing, and that this implication is not widely recognized. Between changes in institutional composition that have changed out more sympathetic actors who could have turned a blind eye, increased awareness of how the Democratic protest mobilization structure works, and the improved institutional understanding of the Trump administration on how to shape and act through the bureaucracy, the legal-enforcement environment has changed. When it is noticed, it will be probably be decried as tyranny, but there are non-tyrannical causes.
In part five, I want to make a point that these are not just individual facets that might each be an interesting observation of their own but part of a feedback loop. How the Trump Administration chooses to prosecute law-pressing protests is itself going to be a factor in the internal democratic power struggle in both future elections and the outcome of the Democratic power struggle.
The 2026 election argument is reasoning from (future) public polling. Will Trump and the Republicans be more or less popular if they crack down on lawbreakers involved in protests? If the public supports anti-ICE protestors over Trump, then the more anti-ICE protests, the better the midterm results. As a consequence, internal democratic party logic might be to maximize protests, even if it involves lawbreaking, for a net gain. Especially if/when anger at Trump administration arrest and prosecutions might turn out the base.
But this is an assumption, not a conclusion. While there are parts of the Trump migration policies that are unpopular, there are parts that remain popular. Moreover, prosecutions of protest elements can motivate the Trump base as well, and voter apathy/antipathy could deter Democrat support. It could well be a negative effect. We’ll see which proves right in the midterms.
What is arguably more important, however, is if the organizations that organize and execute start to being targeted, and what that might mean going into 2028.
Organizations that engage in mass protest politics, like Greenpeace, don’t only organize protests against Red Tribe-coded efforts. That money and manpower is put to use in other ways in other contexts. For Democratic party organizations, that includes things like voter mobilization, organizing fundraising, and coordinating communications. These take money and manpower, and when you lack the resources and the unified efforts, you end up like the Florida Democratic Party, which has practically collapsed in the third largest US state.
That is the larger 2028 election implication, if aggressive protest mobilizers in 2025-2026 lead to investigations/prosecutions in 2027-2028 due to the increased willingness to enforce against grey zone activities. The generational expectations of what could/would be prosecuted are shifted, so there’s the risk, and the consequence could be a partial paralysis of the Democratic Party mobilization/organization infrastructure in the next presidential election. Organizations frozen, donors uncertain/afraid to give to who, and so on.
This will obviously, understandably, and predictably alarm Democratic partisans. Condemnations will be demanded and almost certainly provided. However… it will also shape the inter-Democratic conflict as which organizations are affected/investigated first and most will matter.
After all, Democratic organizations don’t only try to help all Democrats get elected. Some, like Leaders We Deserve, would rather some Democrats lose so that a personal faction can get in place instead.
And if, hypothetically, some process error or rules violation were to expose that faction to legal risk- where the big bad Trump administration might act and convenient clear the field…
Well, the surviving winners would certainly happily condemn the Trump administration for doing so. And get the perks with the party base for doing so. But it sure would be convenient, wouldn’t it?
This is the risk of the Democratic civil war quote-unquote “escalating” in the midst of the Trump administration’s willingness to crack down where it can. It’s not just that Democrats are fighting each other, or that Democrats fight Trump. It can be that Democrats use Trump to fight each other as a tool for their internal conflict.
If anyone has studied (or, worse, lived in/through) a country going through a civil war, especially one with a resistance with little formal power but motivated by performative acts of defiance, this should not be surprising. This has been a common / well recorded dynamic where rival insurgent groups are nominally on the same side, but competing with each other, and leverage the hated oppressor as a tool in their conflict.
Sometimes it’s as direct as an anonymous informant dropping a tip, so that a raid can go after a rival. Perhaps that old, establishment incumbent is in the way, but wouldn't be if evidence of patronage-network corruption were passed on to a hostile FBI. Or maybe that young, reckless progressive who didn't learn how to play the limits of the protests of the 70s makes a mistake that could leave them out and unprotected. Action, or inaction, could have similar effects when a hostile administration is looking for something to act on.
Does such feuding it hurt the combined potential of the resistance overall? Sure. Does it improve the hated authority’s position to have one less threat? Also sure. But does it position you better for influence / control of the local resistance networks, i.e. the democratic party?
This is why David Hogg was called a jackass for trying to primary fellow democrats as DNC chair. It was an explicit break from the premise of the DNC as a neutral leadership institution for democrats anywhere. The value of a reputation of neutrality is that people don’t expect neutral actors to be that sort of backstabber, and they don't make plans to backstab the neutral actors either. It reduces internal coalition tensions.
But in making that power play, and then the institutionalist purge of Hogg through totally-not-pretextual means, the Hogg struggle helped reframe the nature of the competition. It is not merely ‘how do the Democrats struggle against Trump?’ It is now, increasingly, ‘how do the Democrats use existing institutions in the struggle against each other?’
And since Trump is still a relevant actor, both as a foil and as an agent in his own right, the emerging Democratic infighting paradigm may well become ‘how do we use Trump in our struggle against each other?’
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