Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[Sinekein]

She was unarmed, she was not engaged in immediate violence, and whomever shot her did not know about any IEDs. It was wrongful.

She was part of a mob storming the Capitol. How is a cop supposed to know that those people are not violent? Especially since one of them died of his injuries later on. From what I know of the situation, it is almost guaranteed that warning were issues, because she was killed while trying to breach a door or window or something. I am pretty sure that any normal human being would scream "do not enter", and would not issue warning shots because, y'know, they were inside, so a ricocheting bullet would be likely to cause harm.

Unlike a man lying on the floor and screaming "I can't breathe!", it is impossible to know whether an angry mob will be violent or murderous or not. Especially when you consider that the mob proved to be violent - a cop died.

Also when did that happen during the many left-wing protests last year? I honestly don't remember cops dying in those occasions. Property damage, sure. But law enforcement dying?

That would make sense if the USA had ever had that happen. I would wager that the average American probably could name 2 right-wing coups, tops.

Well, first, I hope the average elected official in the US knows more than that, and knows what kind of message it carries when a right-wing politician pushes a mob to attack the institutions of a country. The fact that it never happened in the USA is irrelevant - it never happened in the same country twice, so by that measurement, no country should ever be careful about right-wing coups because none of them experienced them beforehand.

Also, problem with the "most Americans don't know" is that among those 2 coups, one was literally orchestrated by the nazis in Germany. It's hard to claim ignorance. I assume most also know about Mussolini in Italy, or Franco in Spain, and can name at least one South-American coup (like Pinochet in Chile).

(The Kuomintang were a proto-republic. The circumstances of unifying China from a bunch of warlord states into a nation required more time than they had before Mao came along.)

The Kuomintang were allied with the Communists against the warlords. In 1928, they seized power and outlawed all other political parties. Sure, right now Taiwan looks way better a political system than mainland China, but at the time it was closed to a case than two allied enemies turning on each other, and one eventually winning. It wasn't dirty commies toppling a legally-estalished democratic/republican regime.

But if we distill the point down to a gut feeling a laymen would have, it makes more sense. Perhaps not articulate it. Which then raises the question if the belief has any validity given the reality of the political situation. I would expect leftist violence to be organized, sanctioned by power, and somewhat effective in goals. I would expect reactionary violence to be semi-organized, very small in numbers, and more directly destructive, but fundamentally unable to achieve non-material goals.

Except the only violence sanctioned by power so far has been reactionary, incited by a speech in which Trump talked about marching on the Capital and Giuliani mentioned "Trial by Combat". It is much harder to argue that it was a joke when basically everyone took it literally.

The BLM riots last year were not organized for a variety of reasons, chiefly because the Democratic Party is pretty centrist overall, and that even the more leftist elements (AOC, Sanders...) are very far on the right of historical left-wing revolutionaries. They don't call for armed insurrection for a start, and they don't have a fetish about military power. People were more numerous, but they chiefly asked that the government take action about a perceived injustice, they did not want to kick them out or hang them for their perceived treason.

One thing however I am very much not happy with in retrospect is Trump being banned from all those media platforms. I think the only one that could have a case to act is Twitter, because it is the one he directly used, and the one whose reputation has been affected the most by his ramblings - but since Twitter was not the first to act, it places them in the "bandwagoners" category, which makes the whole thing pointless.

All those social media networks are trying to buy themselves a virginity 12 days before he leaves office, which is about as turncoat a move as you can imagine - even collaborateurs in France during WW2 were a bit more proactive in sensing the winds shift. It is totally unprincipled, because Trump's rhetoric has not changed on those platforms in four years. He is no more vulgar or insulting or inflaming debates now than he was in 2016. Many have pointed out how convenient it was for that to happen the day where democrats officially took back both chambers of Congress - meaning they were now the ones able to control the laws regarding such companies.

The problem is of course that Twitter, FB et al are absolutely essential for politicians all over the globe (except China), and them arbitrarily deciding who speaks or not is dangerous. When one obviously breaches the terms of service by directly calling for someone's death, denying the holocaust or whatnot, it's fair play to remove them because the laws have been established beforehand. But here, again, Trump has not done anything last week that he hadn't done before. The laws have not changed. So either what Trump has said has always been illegal and Twitter just chickened out over angering someone who had power over them, or it has always been legal and Twitter has made itself a kingmaker. The second one is super-worrying, especially since it would work basically all over the world, but sadly I think the first one is way more likely: they know that Trump can't touch them now and are just cozying up with the new overlords.

There is no healthy solution here. Except of course to burn Twitter to the ground and spread salt on the ruins, but something identical would just instantly replace it. The people from all sides are now used to social media being the only way to interact with politicians, cutting themselves from their base would be suicidal.

I really think social media is the cancer of the XXIst century. There is just no way for it not to be toxic. I honestly don't know if I would rather Xi or Zuckerberg be the one deciding what can and cannot be said, and those are the only options we get.

[Alienmorph]

Meanwhile people keep being fucking infuriatingly stupid...



Some Florida-man moron snuck into a protected area and carved "TRUMP" onto the back of a live manatee. I just... what?

[Mobius_118]

And some of you question why trump supporters were called deplorable.

Shit like this is why I have zero sympathy for them when they get punished for doing stupid shit like this.

[Mazder]

Did....did they brand a fucking sea mammal?!
Why?
Just...why?!


Fucking cunts.

[TTTX]

Meanwhile people keep being fucking infuriatingly stupid...

Some Florida-man moron snuck into a protected area and carved "TRUMP" onto the back of a live manatee. I just... what?

there is a special place in hell for people like that.

[Mazder]

Trump's been impeached a second time.

[Sinekein]

I heard some analysts saying that everyone was happy with this impeachment in Congress.

The Democrats for obvious reasons.

The Republicans because they can both pick a side (either legalist supporting it, or hardliner) for political gain, and be rid of Trump, which means no risk of him being back again in 2024.

[Vol]

Bumped up to 25k National Guard at Biden's coronation. Also announced they cannot be trusted, so political testing will be employed. No parade or crowds of anything, so we're going for the "junta" aesthetic on this one.

I'm being flippant, but why even bother having the event? If you need a small army to keep all civilians away, and you don't trust the soldiers, just do the swearing in someplace hidden and secure, then hide from Americans for 1-4 years while the press wash your balls with their mouths. Same as Obama, only nobody is enchanted by Biden and the grub.

@Sine: Probably. Everyone dislikes Congress, and for the same reason the GOP are ineffective (no testicles, corrupt), they also won't give Schumer the 17 votes to convict. When teamwork involves falling on your sword, you'll find the people who send young men to die are not going to risk their power for anything.

[Sinekein]

I'm being flippant, but why even bother having the event? If you need a small army to keep all civilians away, and you don't trust the soldiers, just do the swearing in someplace hidden and secure, then hide from Americans for 1-4 years while the press wash your balls with their mouths. Same as Obama, only nobody is enchanted by Biden and the grub.

I think that without "proof" of the transition decorum happening, you would immediately see people claiming that 46 is illegitimate. Some people I won't mention pretty much built a political presence by claiming Obama was not legitimate due to his birth certificate. If you don't get a picture of Biden being sworn in office in the usual place, you would get people saying it means he is not really POTUS.

[Mobius_118]

I think we're a bit beyond "birth certificate" levels of stupidity.

Right now I'm more concerned about a certain group of terrorists trying to JFK everyone because their favorite dick-sucker lost.

[Alienmorph]

Well, congratulations for your new president, US friends. I remain skeptical about one man being able to heal the last few years of bullshit, let alone the generations worth of baggage that existed before that. But I don't see how he could do any worse than Trump, and a small hope is better than no hope.

Meanwhile my contry just barely survived another government crisis and now we're held togheter by spit and balsa wood sticks, and with two extreme right parties fighting over who's gonna take the lead if/when we go to elections, so wish me luck <_<

[SciFlyBoy]

Political question, I want to hear your opinions. Should the US Senate hold a trial to impeach Trump?

On one hand, I feel yes. Trump needs to be held accountable for his actions and what he incited.

On another hand, I feel no. Biden wants to mend the country and having a divisive trial right now stops that. Also bringing the trial to the Senate stops them from appointing his cabinet members when he needs those positions filled. Also having the trial puts Trump back in the spotlight only a week after Biden becomes president, overshadowing what should be the most important person in the country right now in a time when he needs to implement his ideas and policies.

I'm leaning more towards the side of 'No' for those reasons above and not because I sympathize with Trump or think he doesn't deserve it. I don't want to look at or hear about Trump in the news for at least the next six months.

Personally, I feel the other Ex-presidents need to coral him in and keep him busy and do something useful other than sitting around being appalled. I think they owe it us, the citizens, to help keep the peace.

[Mazder]

I am on the side of having a trial as soon as possible.
More time means more time for his supporters, both within the Senate and without, to gather more support, more preparation time and more chances at dodging crimes, or finding loopholes in the system.
I don't see why a trial would halt Biden's cabinet being formed unless they're Senate members and they're removed from their positions in order to do so?
The Spotlight argument is a little bullshit as even on the inauguration day the slimy weasel made a show of him leaving. And maybe a spotlight is needed so he, and his supporters, don't fade away into the background and hope everyone forgets a little.
It's why Ted Cruz is picking fights with Seth Rogen on Twitter, he's hoping that people will just see that fight and not the amount of people who seem to be calling for him to be investigated.

I also see that Biden could actually attempt to drain the swamp a little as the sooner the Trump trial goes ahead the sooner the internal investigation of those accused of helping the Capitol rioters goes so that the Senate can be at least somewhat stable.

And, as a final thing, the longer it's put off the more people will ask "when is the trial going to happen?" so it'd potentially give more long term spotlight to Trump.

[Sinekein]

I feel like people need time to investigate the details of what happened during the Capitol riots and clearly determine what everyone did. If Trump is judged now, it will be hard to properly prepare, and the slightest inaccuracy will be blown out of proportion and used as "proof" that it is rigged or whatever.

Plus right now in a couple of days Biden has established something of a new normal - no angry night tweets, no insults, no war with the media, no golf - and he need time to show that it is how it is going to work from now one after the last four years. If you already have Trump back in focus in February it will give him the opportunity to cause more of the kind of chaos he relishes.

If he is to be judged, it is better if that happens in a couple of months. First because the longer nothing happens, the dumber Qanon idiots look with their prophecies of martial law and murdered Democrats, so the more time passes, the less likely it is for those morons to organize any kind of mayhem. Second because a deadly pandemic is going on, vaccines are starting to get distributed, so you're better off delaying events that can cause spontaneous gatherings (whether it is to protest or to cheer) as much as possible. Third because it gives investigators time to clearly check what happened in detail and look at who is responsible of what, as said before. Fourth, because people will be calmer, and the heat of the moment is never the most adequate to judge the responsibilities of people.

And fiffh because honestly, I don't think giving Trump time will improve his performance. Because he has become less and less coherent over the last four years - if he was a "political animal" who was "playing dumb for show", he wouldn't have been so pathetic during his two debates vs Biden - for a reason I can only guess ; still, I doubt he will become any better at clearly and eloquently answering hard questions coming from Congress members (plus with what he did, the odds of him getting softballs are not that high).

Oh, also because he still managed the incredible feat of having a lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who is even less coherent than him.

I still think he should be held accountable however, his rhetoric was rather terrifying. The Congress needs to put a line clearly stating what the President can and can't do. All surrounding States are blue, imagine what would happen in the future if a populist Democrat pulls the same shit, except all the surrounding elected officials agree and refuse to send the National Guard.

[Mazder]

I didn't consider those points.
Yeah, calmer heads might prevail.

A populist Democrat could definitely be as dangerous and there does need to be better mitigation for that.
Hopefully once this whole Pandemic is sorted we can get back to healing the world.

And, yeah, even if it doesn't make that much sense I do fully wish China to pay for bringing this upon us.
I just hope the WHO investigations provide answers soon and that the CCP hasn't covered up their worst mistakes.

[TTTX]

And, yeah, even if it doesn't make that much sense I do fully wish China to pay for bringing this upon us.
I just hope the WHO investigations provide answers soon and that the CCP hasn't covered up their worst mistakes.

well China is a dictatorship, so I think it's a safe bet they have covered up as much as possible, even if they didn't China has a lot of leverage since they build a lot of components and stuff very cheaply and have a lot of money to grease a lot of gears in the political world (I mean lucas film have just joined up with china to make SW content just for them and let's be honest that will just be propaganda shit).

Of course I doubt the people around the world will put up with that should China get off very lightly, but China will put up a fight regardless I imagine.

[Vol]

Political question, I want to hear your opinions. Should the US Senate hold a trial to impeach Trump?

Also consider the precedent it would set. The legality of impeaching someone not in office is up for debate, as the process is entirely political, but carries with it legal ramifications, such as barring someone convicted from future office. Impeaching a private citizen has never happened, and convicting someone who became one between the House and Senate is also novel. Whether or not the Senate actually can do that is yet to be determined. Though by all accounts, they're going to go through the motions, and will peel a few GOP votes, 2/3's seems a far reach.

So do you want Congress having the ability to prevent private citizens from ever holding office? Because with no actual legal accountability involved in the impeachment process, being the total and vague prerogative of the legislature, you might see a lot of threats to the established power structure shut out of any office "To prevent another Trump."

Given how awful our Congress is, and how many of the people in it would be better served exiled to a lonely atoll, you might question why they should also have total power to decide who can run for office _beyond_ the de facto financial network you need to sell yourself into.

[Sinekein]

So do you want Congress having the ability to prevent private citizens from ever holding office? Because with no actual legal accountability involved in the impeachment process, being the total and vague prerogative of the legislature, you might see a lot of threats to the established power structure shut out of any office "To prevent another Trump."

Aside from the precedent so far only being the ability to prevent a private citizen from ever holding office again - the again is important - isn't it normal for a functioning country to have some safeguards to prevent completely amoral persons to hold the highest office in the country? Or, even more, to have safeguards to prevent completely amoral persons to hold the highest office in the country again?

You should ask Alien how it feels when a crooked billionaire gets elected time and time again because nothing stops him from doing so. How great for the country it is.

[Vol]

Aside from the precedent so far only being the ability to prevent a private citizen from ever holding office again - the again is important - isn't it normal for a functioning country to have some safeguards to prevent completely amoral persons to hold the highest office in the country? Or, even more, to have safeguards to prevent completely amoral persons to hold the highest office in the country again?

You should ask Alien how it feels when a crooked billionaire gets elected time and time again because nothing stops him from doing so. How great for the country it is.

No, our Founders, in their wisdom, did not empower the government to actively decide who is allowed to be in government. Morality tests from people who almost by definition are immoral would be foolish.

Alien, who should decide the criteria for who is allowed to hold office, and what should protect that process from its own corruption?

[Sinekein]

We're talking about the preservation of the country and its institutions as a whole here. Dealing with someone whose actions and words could have led the institutions to be overthrown. It goes way beyond simple "political disagreement" it is a safeguard against fascism. And not the buzzword used online to criticize far-right ideals, the actual use of intimidation and violence to try and overturn the results of a legal election - that is textbook fascism.

By his actions, Trump stood against everything in the second article of the Constitution that state the rules by which a U.S. President is elected. I don't really see how you can not be okay with the Second Article of the Constitution, and yet potentially be elected President. Especially with the precedent that you stood against peaceful transfer of power.

Trump already is lucky enough to "only" face impeachment. All his cronies from early January will face actual criminal charges as they should. He gets a treatment of favor there, just like other elected officials like Boebert.

[Mobius_118]

Nah, sorry. Trump instigated an insurrection against the United States. Him, every single enabler, every single jackbooted thug who breached Congress and attempted to murder congresspeople should be charged at the maximum level of the law.

The idea that he's out now and unimpeachable is fucking stupid, an invention of the GOP because they don't want to do their fucking jobs.

Fuck this "Common Ground" shit. That's how we got here in the first place. This country was involved in two world wars and a civil war putting down white supremacists and fascists, and we allow them to walk unmolested. It's long past time to treat them like the pieces of fucking trash that they are.

[Sinekein]

A NYT journalist has apparently been fired after being targeted for bias by rightwing critics. She tweeted she felt "chills" during Biden's inauguration.

Two things for me:
- That is a stupid reason to fire someone
- However, firing people over tweets has now become the norm, and most of those who fell victim to that were targeted by the left, not the right.

Yes, it's stupid and dangerous to hold public trials on social media, but you're supposed to always consider that, not only when you are the one being targeted. As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

If you want to have an ounce of credibility when calling your political opponents hypocrites, don't behave like this yourself.

(I have a dream that maybe with Trump's departure the U.S. society will start reconsidering the moral influence of Twitter, but I'm not holding my breath)

[Vol]

We're talking about the preservation of the country and its institutions as a whole here. Dealing with someone whose actions and words could have led the institutions to be overthrown. It goes way beyond simple "political disagreement" it is a safeguard against fascism. And not the buzzword used online to criticize far-right ideals, the actual use of intimidation and violence to try and overturn the results of a legal election - that is textbook fascism.

Ah, I see. Nothing of the American government has value in and of itself. The Congress is not important because it's Congress and it meets in a fancy, old (by our standards) building. It has value because it was meant to legislate, control spending, and otherwise ensure each autonomous state felt represented. Its value is contingent upon fulfilling that function. It does not. Therefore, it has no value. The man putting his boots on Pelosi's desk is more valuable than all of Congress and the building because he presumably has a job, he produces something of value with his labor, and he his fulfilling his part of the social contract. In fact, I'd say that a penniless crackhead is more valuable than Congress and the Capitol, because the crackhead does not enjoy official power. He might commit crime, be a public nuisance, and cost the legal system resources, but he doesn't command a third the government in his degeneracy.

To say nothing of the open fascism coming from the center-left authoritarians. The actual threat to the republic, as they enjoy support at all levels of society.

Fuck this "Common Ground" shit. That's how we got here in the first place. This country was involved in two world wars and a civil war putting down white supremacists and fascists, and we allow them to walk unmolested. It's long past time to treat them like the pieces of fucking trash that they are.

Sovereignty, tangles of alliances, long term strategic goals, those were rather important too. The Union Army was not fighting to keep white people from thinking too highly of themselves. The doughboys weren't fighting against monarchism. WW2, I'll grant you. The moral victories were part of the wars, not the overall objective.

That said, creating an ideological untermensch seems dicey, just going off history here.

Two things for me:
- That is a stupid reason to fire someone
- However, firing people over tweets has now become the norm, and most of those who fell victim to that were targeted by the left, not the right.

Social media is a gross mistake, firing someone for a stupid opinion is insipid, and cheering on the encroachment of your _job_ into your _personal life_ is vulgar.

So I agree with you on this. It's stupid, and it's not going to stop.

In lighter news, this Gamestop/American Airlines/silver stock rebellion is like a taste of fresh mint. Barring arcane financial shenanigans, or bailouts, it's nice to see us proles give the high finance people a black eye once in a while. I'm sure we'll be fucked over in some capacity for this insurrection, probably by old peoples' pensions being drained to cover the loss or something of the like, but a little show of force goes a long way.

[Mobius_118]

Man, the extreme right, motivated by Donald, attempted a coup.

Some are going to walk away from that. Some are still in Congress and the Senate. The terrorists who went into the chamber seeking out Democratic lawmakers were not going in to make biscuits, they were there to lynch any that they find.

These aren't the type of people you can negotiate with.

[Sinekein]

Ah, I see. Nothing of the American government has value in and of itself. The Congress is not important because it's Congress and it meets in a fancy, old (by our standards) building. It has value because it was meant to legislate, control spending, and otherwise ensure each autonomous state felt represented. Its value is contingent upon fulfilling that function. It does not. Therefore, it has no value. The man putting his boots on Pelosi's desk is more valuable than all of Congress and the building because he presumably has a job, he produces something of value with his labor, and he his fulfilling his part of the social contract. In fact, I'd say that a penniless crackhead is more valuable than Congress and the Capitol, because the crackhead does not enjoy official power. He might commit crime, be a public nuisance, and cost the legal system resources, but he doesn't command a third the government in his degeneracy.

The problem with your reasoning is that with the partisan state of the country, half the people will always feel like this - but the other half of the people will roughly be satisfied with Congress because its side won.

Case in point: the people who stormed the election were Trump supporters. Trump lost the election - and the Congress - so for them it might look like the Congress is going to be purely a hindrance to their personal agendas. However, the people who voted for Biden are likely to feel like the Congress is fulfilling its function, so seeing it under attack because some people were unhappy with the election results makes it look like some are thinking that they can use violence to overthrow the results of an election.

You are putting the personal agenda of a minority - one that was proven to be a minority during the election, whether you look at the Electoral College or the Popular Vote - over that of a majority. That is the entire point of voting, to make it so that a majority of people are represented by the government. If that's not the case, you're in either an oligarchy of some sort, or a straight up dictatorship.

Also, as a counter to your point, Biden has produced a number of executive orders since he came in office, EOs which, whether you like it or not, influence the lives of the American people (and not only them), and therefore have a value. The Capitol rioters were trying to make it so that he would not be able to take office, making it impossible to produce those EOs. They were not "simply" targeting Congress, they were targeting it as a means to stop Biden to rightfully go to the White House.

In lighter news, this Gamestop/American Airlines/silver stock rebellion is like a taste of fresh mint. Barring arcane financial shenanigans, or bailouts, it's nice to see us proles give the high finance people a black eye once in a while. I'm sure we'll be fucked over in some capacity for this insurrection, probably by old peoples' pensions being drained to cover the loss or something of the like, but a little show of force goes a long way.

There's already an app that reddit traders are using that is now denying them the ability to buy Gamestop stocks. Apparently hedge funds don't find this whole situation funny. It would be nice if those events led to some Barbra Streisand effect and if those hedge funds could get screwed on a regular basis now.

You are talking about Congress producing nothing of value - to me hedge fund managers are infinitely worse. Not only do they produce nothing of value, they actively work to destroy value for their own gain. Some Wall Street offices deserve to be raided way more than Capitol Hill.

[Ragabul]

Hello all,

I've been on a yearlong hiatus because internet goings on were sucking up too much of my time and I realized I didn't enjoy that time half so much as the vast bulk of other things I would be doing if I wasn't arguing online: reading, playing games, being outside, etc. I've divested myself of daily news consumption enough and have starting picking up PC gaming again (because of a new setup that is way more comfortable - yay!) that I'm cautiously optimistic I won't get sucked back down into the interwebs rabbit hole again if I re-engage some. That being said, if I *do* get sucked down the rabbit-hole again, I will probably drop off the radar again. I actually do like discussing meaty topics with people (of which current affairs is just one) but as in most things, you need to moderate or go nuts.

On the topic of the insurrection/impeachment:

It's like I told my sister who is a militant anti-Trumper: I am guilty of underestimating the threat he posed because he is just such an ineffectual idiot and because his worshippers have such little institutional power. They are *not* going to overthrow America and institute a Christian identity fascist state or whatever like some of the more histrionic people on the left have made out, but the "burn it down!" element which has always been strong with Trump supporters has apparently got more teeth than I thought. It remains to be seen if all of their energy was spent on Jan. 6 or if they can coalesce into something else. I don't doubt some more Lone Wolves will pop up here and there with harebrained schemes, but I am fairly skeptical they can ever reassert themselves enmasse without Trump or somebody who can replace Trump.

Inasmuch as a solid core of these people are Christian nationalist types, my gut tells me that they will incline toward "bunker" mode. I've mentioned before that I follow some Christian doomsayers as a kind of hobby and I also grew up surrounded by people like this. They live in a worldview that is bizarre to most secular modern people. For them, the world is awash in signs and miracles and symbols. Things don't just *happen* in their world. They *mean* things. Prayer can shape the world. Countries and individuals rise and fall according to the will and favor of God. It can be very hard to explain how potent this is to people who have never experienced real religion and for whom religion is just a thing you are hazily culturally aligned with. The uniquely American aspect of this that goes back as long as the country itself is the intense perception that America has succeeded and is exceptional because it is a *moral* country specifically founded to be a City on a Hill and thus has God's favor. They see themselves as fighting to retake the City on the Hill from the forces of evil that mean to corrupt it. (Hence the weird confluence of Jesus symbols with standard far right stuff at the insurrection).

A lot hinges on how they interpret their failure. They do not believe they will lose because obviously God always wins in the end, but there can be periods of "keeping one's head down" for lack of a better way of putting it. There are periods when Christians must meet in the catacombs of Rome and when the Jews are held captive in Egypt or carried off into Babylon. In those times, their job becomes to carry on the traditions, the true path, and to prepare for the right time to emerge into daylight again. The more thoughtful Christian conservatives have actually been advocating this for a while now. If they go into bunker mode, they will surrender what little political power they have and thus will be hardly any threat whatsoever. (This won't stop the secularists from being constantly paranoid and alarmed about them in much the same way as they stay constantly alarmed about Hasidic Jews and observant, conservative Muslims).

Obviously, there are major components of the Trumpist right that are *not* these people, but they are the core in roughly the same way that black people are the core of the Democrat party. Imagine for a moment what would happen to the Democrat party if there was a mass exodus of black people out of it for whatever reason. There is no Republican party without Evangelicals. Full stop. It's over if enough of them check out.

On the impeachment front, I'm of two minds. From the point of view of health of the republic, I don't see any way that impeachment proceedings can ever be anything but a waste of time in which various pontificators in Congress can try to make celebrities of themselves for use in future campaigns. I'm willing to give pretty much any president the benefit of the doubt when they first start and judge them on what they *do* and not on what I fear they will do. To that end, I'd like to see Biden do *something* and not have his entire term nothing but an endless revisiting of Trump. Obviously, the status quo is interminable and is why we are in this mess in the first place. Countless rehashing of the same old crap is not going to get anything done. A good rule of thumb for getting out of holes is to first stop digging.

On another front, I want Trump gone forever. Since I am a right wing communitarian (which makes me a de facto right wing populist on most issues at the moment), a continuing source of frustration for me has been how singularly wretched Trump has been at getting things I want done even though I agree with the general direction of his administration's philosophy (if you can even dignify him with that word) most of the time. I'm an immigration skeptic. I'm a free trade skeptic. I think the desires of localities should pretty much always trump the desires of federal technocrats and their grand plans. I am pro-religion and "little platoons." I am anti-globalist and the continuing homogenization of everything. I think urbanization is a great evil and am an unapologetic advocate of the pastoral as the correct and healthiest lifestyle for human thriving. I think multiculturalism is a fraud and a lie. I should be exactly what the Trump administration is looking for in a voter, but I've voted against him twice (even while voting for mostly Republicans down ticket).

He has been so singularly wretched on pretty much all of these fronts. Whatever he has won has been very temporary and tenuous and easily undone by executive order. And on top of that, his decorum violations and personal odiousness have cast a pall over anybody who is perceived as ideologically within the same general hemisphere as him. Pretty much nothing I want can even be seriously discussed as long as he is around because everything just gets sucked into never-ending jeremiads and panegyrics of his suffocating person.

To that end, the forcible retiring of Trump via even the dubious methods of mass deplatforming and impeachment from institutional powers I mostly detest and don't trust as far as I can throw them is not something I will be sorry to see happen. Maybe Trumpism sans Trump is a political dead end, but I *know* Trumpism with Trump is a dead end.

[Vol]

The problem with your reasoning is that with the partisan state of the country, half the people will always feel like this - but the other half of the people will roughly be satisfied with Congress because its side won.

Last I checked, the faith in Congress was near or below 10%, so even with a partisan divide, it is poorly thought of by nearly everyone. And I suspect that 10% is people who work in or around Congress in some capacity, heh.

You are putting the personal agenda of a minority - one that was proven to be a minority during the election, whether you look at the Electoral College or the Popular Vote - over that of a majority. That is the entire point of voting, to make it so that a majority of people are represented by the government. If that's not the case, you're in either an oligarchy of some sort, or a straight up dictatorship.

There should have been a herculean effort to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the election results were real, then. Calling half the country crazy and stupid, while claiming victory in the face of bizarre behavior at many levels, inspires no confidence voting has a point. As it stands, last I saw, a significant portion of Republicans, Independents, and even some Democrats, don't believe our election was real. It makes it difficult to claim a mandate to do anything if the seats themselves are in doubt by the people who are, theoretically, supposed to fill them with their votes. Searing honesty is the minimal expectation when an election is questioned en masse.

Also, as a counter to your point, Biden has produced a number of executive orders since he came in office, EOs which, whether you like it or not, influence the lives of the American people (and not only them), and therefore have a value. The Capitol rioters were trying to make it so that he would not be able to take office, making it impossible to produce those EOs. They were not "simply" targeting Congress, they were targeting it as a means to stop Biden to rightfully go to the White House.

Up to 42 as of today's paper, a new record by far! Never thought the US government could unify and work together quite so fast.

They did a piss poor job of it then. No armed squads, no tactical movements, not a single official killed or taken hostage, no clear objectives, didn't even destroy anything meaningful. I expected more of a right-wing coup than that, honestly. It reads more like stupid, but passionate, common people monkeying around the Capitol for a few hours, instead of the battle-ready jingoists we know they are.

[Vol]

Hello all,

Hello, stranger.

Glad to see you back, and that your year of internet asceticism went well. If you feel the old habits tugging, I can help with short sojourns, of course. That said, I have missed your input quite a bit, as you're a yard apart from me, facing the opposite direction, and you have an academic streak to back it up.

It remains to be seen if all of their energy was spent on Jan. 6 or if they can coalesce into something else. I don't doubt some more Lone Wolves will pop up here and there with harebrained schemes, but I am fairly skeptical they can ever reassert themselves enmasse without Trump or somebody who can replace Trump.

It was spent. That was the Boomer core, and they have 401ks and grandkids to worry about. That said, groups that none of us want to grow in power or size are growing in power and size right now, but they're still irrelevant and largely laced with paranoia of everyone else being a fed. But the way in which the neoliberals and neocons retook power was tremendously poor for not inspiring lone wolves or even some organized reactions. Regardless of the merits of anyone's platform, if you value peace and civility, the people in charge are bumbling retards.

Inasmuch as a solid core of these people are Christian nationalist types, my gut tells me that they will incline toward "bunker" mode. I've mentioned before that I follow some Christian doomsayers as a kind of hobby and I also grew up surrounded by people like this. They live in a worldview that is bizarre to most secular modern people. For them, the world is awash in signs and miracles and symbols. Things don't just *happen* in their world. They *mean* things. Prayer can shape the world. Countries and individuals rise and fall according to the will and favor of God. It can be very hard to explain how potent this is to people who have never experienced real religion and for whom religion is just a thing you are hazily culturally aligned with.

I've been doing a fair bit of reading about religion and Christianity over the last few months, in fact. And if it is the truth of things, that mindset is still rather archaic. More similar to how people would think in the age of the Patriarchs. Though I tend to read way more from the apologetics, as a God that would endow man with the ability to reason and develop logic seems as if He would expect us to use those unique gifts, be they specifically granted at some time in the recent past to differentiate anatomically modern man from himself, or through the process of billions of years of evolution. I cannot possibly place myself in the mindset of someone who earnestly believes the creator of all reality is micromanaging geopolitics or personally intervening in our affairs constantly, but it seems it would be more comforting, in a way. But also more prone to collapses in faith if and when bad things happen without an obvious "greater good."

Obviously, there are major components of the Trumpist right that are *not* these people, but they are the core in roughly the same way that black people are the core of the Democrat party. Imagine for a moment what would happen to the Democrat party if there was a mass exodus of black people out of it for whatever reason. There is no Republican party without Evangelicals. Full stop. It's over if enough of them check out.

It helps that the Democrats are married to abortion, full stop, and have to actively push for more. Though the GOP should be immolated anyway, it's a wedge issue with justifiably strong, immovable positions.

On the impeachment front, I'm of two minds. From the point of view of health of the republic, I don't see any way that impeachment proceedings can ever be anything but a waste of time in which various pontificators in Congress can try to make celebrities of themselves for use in future campaigns. I'm willing to give pretty much any president the benefit of the doubt when they first start and judge them on what they *do* and not on what I fear they will do. To that end, I'd like to see Biden do *something* and not have his entire term nothing but an endless revisiting of Trump. Obviously, the status quo is interminable and is why we are in this mess in the first place. Countless rehashing of the same old crap is not going to get anything done. A good rule of thumb for getting out of holes is to first stop digging.

I have the same view on it as I do on storming the Capitol, or drawing a weapon on a cop. There is no half-measure masturbation. Either you commit fully, do it, and accept the severe consequences, or you don't. Either you impeach the man, having felt out the GOP first, or you don't waste our time with nonsense theatre again. Either you go into the Capitol with a plan to execute, or you stay the hell out. Either you pull that gun on the cop and get ready for a short life on the run, or you get on your face and give up. There is no gradient for acts of those kind. Just a binary.

On another front, I want Trump gone forever. Since I am a right wing communitarian (which makes me a de facto right wing populist on most issues at the moment), a continuing source of frustration for me has been how singularly wretched Trump has been at getting things I want done even though I agree with the general direction of his administration's philosophy (if you can even dignify him with that word) most of the time. I'm an immigration skeptic. I'm a free trade skeptic. I think the desires of localities should pretty much always trump the desires of federal technocrats and their grand plans. I am pro-religion and "little platoons." I am anti-globalist and the continuing homogenization of everything. I think urbanization is a great evil and am an unapologetic advocate of the pastoral as the correct and healthiest lifestyle for human thriving. I think multiculturalism is a fraud and a lie. I should be exactly what the Trump administration is looking for in a voter, but I've voted against him twice (even while voting for mostly Republicans down ticket).

He has been so singularly wretched on pretty much all of these fronts. Whatever he has won has been very temporary and tenuous and easily undone by executive order. And on top of that, his decorum violations and personal odiousness have cast a pall over anybody who is perceived as ideologically within the same general hemisphere as him. Pretty much nothing I want can even be seriously discussed as long as he is around because everything just gets sucked into never-ending jeremiads and panegyrics of his suffocating person.

To that end, the forcible retiring of Trump via even the dubious methods of mass deplatforming and impeachment from institutional powers I mostly detest and don't trust as far as I can throw them is not something I will be sorry to see happen. Maybe Trumpism sans Trump is a political dead end, but I *know* Trumpism with Trump is a dead end.

Quoting in full, because this is a very interesting opinion. So you _are_ one of those alleged nominal supporters who felt a moral obligation to vote against him, then? Because that was one of the (many, many) planks of the stolen election case. And given that you exist, solipsism aside, there may have been many then, which would partially debunk the point about down ticket votes being higher than Trump votes.

Now, while I agree with you on just about all that platform, do you believe it's at all possible to have a leader, of any disposition, that wouldn't be treated like Trump? Yes, he made it very easy for the powers that be to make him look like Literally Hitler, even more so than they did with George W. Bush. Some found his nature charmingly refreshing, some found it onerous, I found it both at times, depending on how useful it was towards my goals.

But even had it been a masterful orator, a great conciliator, with a deep knowledge of both the system and people, under no circumstance would his agenda have been allowed to stand. The interests against populism, left or right, are completely dug in, a Maginot Line, and I don't see how a more cunning man could have gotten through. The only way was to go around, putting aside the unfortunate comparisons I'm drawing here. If you want immigration restricted or stopped, the border secured, the necessary measures and processes to do so will make you a monster in the public eye. Full stop. You can spend every waking moment swearing you love brown people and legal immigration, and you will still be a white supremacist. That's a fact of it. Same with any other populist issue he made an attempt on. They may have gone better, granted, if he was a tactful man, but there was always going to be a vicious fight, and no many who has the ability to rise to that office is pure enough to not be tainted the exact same way. It's been a 4 year experiment in gaslighting and it _worked_.

[Ragabul]

It sort of depends on what you think the purpose of Trumpism is. Is it mostly "burn it all down" because the elites are all terrible and even if there is no defeating them they deserve to have some rhetorical stink bombs thrown at them at least? Or is there actually content in there somewhere that could theoretically be implemented at least partially if somebody cared to be tactical and constructive?

I think the answer is actually both but that Trump himself was never about content of any particular kind other than self-aggrandisement. Trump happens to be a dude with some populist sentiments that he just acts on reflexively without really thinking about it but he's mostly interested in himself.

A right wing populist agenda was always going to produce massive backlash, of course, but trump was singularly spectacular at engineering such backlash and also undermining people that were actually getting things done. It's hard to find somebody that was more effective on the immigration front than Jeff Sessions was and yet trump ends up shit canning him because he won't go to bat on the stupid dead in the water Mueller investigation.

Trump has absolutely no use for competence and only judges people based on how personally loyal they are to him. He also was simply too easy a target for the kind of take down manoeuvres that were always going to happen because he really is a slimeball businessman and almost certainly a sexual predator. I mean good God is it too much to ask that we don't do the left's opposition research for them?

I was never under any illusions that that platform that I laid out above was ever something that was going to get taken up in some serious way, but I think you underestimate the public buy in that actually would be possible for components of it if there was a sane person at the helm.

Pretty much everybody is sceptical about globalisation right now. It's all over Europe and the United States and even left wing parties are swallowing it. Labour was given the boot spectacularly in Britain and the Democrats keep consistently failing to get this overwhelming demographic mandate that they keep imagining that they are gonna have any day now.

Compare Trump to, say, Mitch McConnell. Pretty much everybody hates Mitch McConnell's guts too and yet by God he actually gets stuff done all because he will think about something that's slightly past his nose once in a while.

[Ragabul]

San Francisco Schools, Radicalism and the Pandemic:
When normal life recedes, ideology fills the vacuum.

"No other progressive city is quite like San Francisco and there are lots of political impediments to things the far left would wish to do. But there is still a programmatic ambition that unites activists trying to play ideological commissar at universities with activists trying to defund the police with activists trying to get Washington and Lincoln canceled. The goals in each case are all things you could do, under certain circumstances — in a way that you can’t expose a Venezuelan voter fraud conspiracy that isn’t real, or defeat a pedophile cabal that doesn’t actually exist.

So an interesting question is which sort of radicalism is more likely to persist once the pandemic is gone and semi-normality returns. Does the fantasy aspect of right-wing radicalism make it more resilient and dangerous post-Covid — or more likely to dissolve, like an enchantment after midnight? Do the more realistic ambitions of left-wing radicalism enable its entrenchment, or inspire a swifter backlash against its overreach?"

[Ragabul]

Double post. Ignore. I fatfinger quote instead of "edit" all the freaking time.

[Mobius_118]

McConnell stonewalls any and every attempt to get any legislation done that helps out the people he's supposed to be elected by.

Saying he gets things done is the opposite of what he does.

[Ragabul]

I'm not using McConnel as an example of ethical, admirable, or an example of solving problems that most need solving. I'm using the exceedingly basic metric of success of "does this dude even get his own agenda done?" And, yes, he does. His agenda for 30 years has been to prevent "borking" and to get back the Supreme Court. He has done that and then some. You cannot say that of Trump. His only goal seems to be to not be a loser. Obviously that didn't work out.

The only semi-permanent thing that Trump did that I think he specifically did and hardly anybody else would have done is to stop pretending like China will start playing nice.

[Ragabul]

I am currently reading this:



I have mixed opinions about her argument so far, but I'll wait until I'm actually done with the book to see if she qualifies what she is saying better.

A more condensed form of her argument is here

*Edit*

One of the more interesting things she does is that she doesn't really talk about a "right to privacy." Instead she talks about a "right to home" or a "right to sanctuary." This is much better conceptualization. It also touches on why the left seems to go around wanting to create "safe spaces" everywhere. One of the more profound aspects of alienation that fuels people today is that they have no *place* that feels like a sanctuary. They don't have a physical location they can go that when they are there, there is an understood "leave me the fuck alone" sign on it. Our current framework is to try to make particular types of data or activity private. Your medical data is private. Your sexual habits should be private. I think this "sanctuary" framework is a much better one.

What happens in my home, outside of some very rare and specific circumstances, should by default be absolutely nobody's fucking business but mine and anybody that extracts such information out of my home without my explicit permission should not be able to use it. They should *especially* not be able to use it to harm me or my reputation or my business or whatever.

We need to expand the logic of the police warrant. Police warrants apply to actual places and the devices in those places. Not just to arbitrary categories of information.

I have always thought the "right to privacy" was an inane conceptualization. You do not in fact have the right to do whatever you want without people knowing and reacting to it. But *where* you do it matters a lot. You are in fact entitled to a space in which you can retire and perform disgusting or self-destructive or morally suspect activities that X% of society disapproves of. This outlet mechanism is essential to the realistic social management of vice. Think of how we currently handle drunkenness. You can be drunk all your want. You can drink yourself into black out status daily. *At home.* What you cannot do is drink and drive. Or be drunk and obnoxious in public.

[Sinekein]

I'm not using McConnel as an example of ethical, admirable, or an example of solving problems that most need solving. I'm using the exceedingly basic metric of success of "does this dude even get his own agenda done?" And, yes, he does. His agenda for 30 years has been to prevent "borking" and to get back the Supreme Court. He has done that and then some. You cannot say that of Trump. His only goal seems to be to not be a loser. Obviously that didn't work out.

The only semi-permanent thing that Trump did that I think he specifically did and hardly anybody else would have done is to stop pretending like China will start playing nice.

And yet Trump has more fans than McConnell, if only by looking at the splits in Kentucky where he scored 58% in his Senate run compared to 62% for Trump/Pence - and that was with Home-Court Advantage AND before McConnell was deemed "a traitor" for refusing to fully endorse the fraud claims.

Trump behaved more like a cult leader, a televangelist, than he did an elected official. He has secured fanatics tied to his personality, not people drawn by his ideas. That's the conundrum the GOP is facing right now: as long as he's here, they can't hope for any significant progress of their agenda, but trying to get rid of him is a gigantic gamble as it risks alienating his base.

Last I checked, the faith in Congress was near or below 10%, so even with a partisan divide, it is poorly thought of by nearly everyone. And I suspect that 10% is people who work in or around Congress in some capacity, heh.

If you refer to this poll, then the drop dates back to 2007, and it hasn't climbed since. Still, if you include the "Some faith" people, then you are roughly over 50%, which means that it's not a complete and utter rejection. I would argue that having "some" faith in your congress is fine and sufficient, in a polarized system like the U.S., when your party is in charge you're likely to verge on the positive side, and when it's not you fall back to the negative.

There should have been a herculean effort to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the election results were real, then. Calling half the country crazy and stupid, while claiming victory in the face of bizarre behavior at many levels, inspires no confidence voting has a point. As it stands, last I saw, a significant portion of Republicans, Independents, and even some Democrats, don't believe our election was real. It makes it difficult to claim a mandate to do anything if the seats themselves are in doubt by the people who are, theoretically, supposed to fill them with their votes. Searing honesty is the minimal expectation when an election is questioned en masse.

But all lawsuits were studied, then dropped or dismissed. What more could be done? Imagine, just imagine the country was put in stasis - in the middle of a pandemic, which makes it worse even though it's not quite relevant - because Trump was unhappy with the results and wanted more and more investigations.

First, as long as he's in charge, he can influence the proceedings. It's still his attorney general (or whoever he replaces the AG with), the judges he has appointed, etc.

Second, how effective is this Stasis? Because Trump has been elected for a four years mandate, and if he keeps taking decisions, then he's overstating his welcome to the WH, basically usurpating the seat. Is he removed and is there a vacancy in the White House while the victor is decided? Or does he keep doing his business and as such basically steals a couple more months of presidency by making those assumptions?

Third, how long can this Stasis last? Because if you want a herculean effort, you need months of investigations. What happens when it's proven that nothing bad happened? Does it mean Biden lost a few months of presidency because Trump is a sore loser? What are the consequences for Trump if he forced the country to either be leaderless for a couple of months, or if he overstayed his welcome by making false assumptions? Who pays for all those investigations that must be done?

Fourth, and more importantly, Trump's cult leader behavior means that it is absolutely impossible for his fans to admit he has lost. The only investigation outcome they will agree with are the one in which some fraud is found. If that's not the case - which, basically, is what's happening right now - they will reject it. He has spent five years saying that no one but him tells the truth. As long as he'll refuse to concede, they will refuse to believe anything but fraud. Even with "herculean efforts".

They did a piss poor job of it then. No armed squads, no tactical movements, not a single official killed or taken hostage, no clear objectives, didn't even destroy anything meaningful. I expected more of a right-wing coup than that, honestly. It reads more like stupid, but passionate, common people monkeying around the Capitol for a few hours, instead of the battle-ready jingoists we know they are.

Yeah a cop was killed. Also, do you deserve leniency because your coup sucked balls?

And it sadly fits into the mindset of some of those people. The "we need to keep our guns to defend ourselves against the government" kind, which is an idea that has been completely obsolete for roughly a century - since the government got functioning tanks, basically - and yet is still deeply ingrained.

I wonder if that has to do with the fact that the U.S.A have not known modern warfare on their home soil. And before you ask, I think it's a great thing, not a jab. But it also helps people realize what they can and cannot do against a modern military force. Especially when you consider that those people imagine going against the largest military on Earth - on said military's homeland, which means it has zero of the logistics/projection issues the U.S. Army faces on foreign soil.

When they see local populations in the Middle East winning wars against modern armies - including the U.S. one - they think they could do the same in the (large, square, almost impossible to barricade - because they are way more recent) streets of American cities, because they too would be defending their home. Ignoring the fact that the biggest reason rebels in Iraq or Syria hold their ground against the U.S. is not their willpower, or the fact that the G.Is are playing an away game, but that they can only deploy a tiny fraction of their firepower 10.000 kms away from U.S. soil in a country they do not rule over.

One of the more interesting things she does is that she doesn't really talk about a "right to privacy." Instead she talks about a "right to home" or a "right to sanctuary." This is much better conceptualization. It also touches on why the left seems to go around wanting to create "safe spaces" everywhere. One of the more profound aspects of alienation that fuels people today is that they have no *place* that feels like a sanctuary. They don't have a physical location they can go that when they are there, there is an understood "leave me the fuck alone" sign on it. Our current framework is to try to make particular types of data or activity private. Your medical data is private. Your sexual habits should be private. I think this "sanctuary" framework is a much better one.

I think it has to do with how much a fallacy the "right to privacy" is. People tend to want that right to privacy while continuing to use systems in which their personal data is the currency and an alternative to paying for those services. There's a reason Facebook or Google are free, it's because they make money with people's data - if they didn't, their entire business model would evaporate.

I like this idea of a sanctuary because it will help fight the pernicious social uses of the personal data - ie the reasoning that "if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't keep your data private whose contraposition (is it the actual term?) is the much more dangerous "if you keep your data private, it means you have something to hide", which is basically how the Chinese society is currently evolving.

As for home being that sanctuary, I think it should be a little more complex, because, for a start, not everyone feels safe in its home - whether it is victims of abuse, or LGBT kids in intolerant families, to give only two examples among many. It requires more work, but it is a good place to start.

[Ragabul]

And yet Trump has more fans than McConnell, if only by looking at the splits in Kentucky where he scored 58% in his Senate run compared to 62% for Trump/Pence - and that was with Home-Court Advantage AND before McConnell was deemed "a traitor" for refusing to fully endorse the fraud claims.

Trump behaved more like a cult leader, a televangelist, than he did an elected official. He has secured fanatics tied to his personality, not people drawn by his ideas. That's the conundrum the GOP is facing right now: as long as he's here, they can't hope for any significant progress of their agenda, but trying to get rid of him is a gigantic gamble as it risks alienating his base.

For all that Trump is *the* Twitter president, I don't think he is actually content to sit in his basement secure in his knowledge he has 20 million viewers or followers or whatever a la Alex Jones. He is not content to just have a mass following. He wants to turn that mass following into something actionable. He has always been about turning bluster into actual content or things be that a big ugly tower in Manhattan or a casino or a presidential term. To that end, I thing he construes "winning" as more than who has the most followers but as who actually wins in some material sense. I have no doubt he mentally spins his mass internet following into justification for why he can't possibly have lost in the real world, but everything indicates he does deeply care about who wins in RL. By the RL winning metric, leaving aside his own inability to accept this reality, he has become a big time loser.

[Mobius_118]

He got something actionable alright. Thousands of followers willing to kill and willing to push into Congress to try and kill them.

Just because they failed spectacularly doesn't excuse the action itself, nor does it excuse him from the consequences of his actions.

[Ragabul]

This is a true monster of a bill. It basically makes it a crime (not subject to FOIA request) for any online entity to fail to report content they feel is likely to lead to a crime.

Also, since my senator is a co-sponsor: come on, man, leave the blatant stupid up to Ted Cruz.

[Mazder]

While we're on stupid as fuck bills.
HR-127 can fuck right off.

I may be a simple britbong but even I think that bill is fucking stepping past the line and ruining the ability to get some actual cross ideology/party discussion going on.
Like, fuck sake, come on. You don't start out with that shit.

[Ragabul]

While we're on stupid as fuck bills.
HR-127 can fuck right off.

I may be a simple britbong but even I think that bill is fucking stepping past the line and ruining the ability to get some actual cross ideology/party discussion going on.
Like, fuck sake, come on. You don't start out with that shit.

That and I'm just laughing in "yeah, okay, good luck with that." Like let's just say as one example I know the location of a gun that got bought 40 years ago, then inherited when the original owner died, then bought from the widow that inherited it in a personal sale, then given away as a gift by the person who bought it from the widow. Good luck proving who has that thing and making them register it.

That thing will turn into an 18th amendment. Not that it will ever get by the Supreme Court.

*Edit* It would have some hypothetical effect over time in cities, but whoever proposed that has clearly spent 0 time with anybody, anywhere in anyplace in the US with a population less than 20,000. There are 4 or 5 or 6 times as many guns in any given rural county in the US than there are humans in it.

[Vol]

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

This is what we call "winner's write the history books." Remember, a secret cabal of incredibly rich partisans in public and private positions running a shadow campaign to control every aspect of an election is only bad if your guy loses. If he wins, they were brilliant stalwarts, saving democracy from fascist coups.

Also still a bunch of National Guard garrisoning DC.

[Ragabul]

There's an ongoing thing with Democrats of tacitly pretending like they have no institutional authority or that the bulk of their momentum and legitimacy comes from grassroots spontaneity. And then when you point out obvious organizational and institutional power and say something like "this is being funded and organized by coastal elites and they dominate its agenda and their agenda is very different from what average Joe actually tends to want" they will retreat behind accusations that you are a conspiracist and the worst of the worst will say you are using dog whistles for anti-semitism and white supremacy or whatever.

It makes stuff like this article written in a Jewish magazine fun: Is Warren Buffet the Wallet Behind BLM? So leaderless and spontaneous, that BLM. So nice and non-hierarchical and organic.

Also, entertaining is them responding to even the driest distaste for George Soros as the worst sort of belief in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion while simultaneously working themselves into fits about the libertarian Illuminati run by the Koch Brothers. And even writing books about it and winning prestigious book awards for doing so! Anybody who reads this book and gets her cartoon villain caricature of Tyler Cowen and then goes and spends even like 5 minutes on his blog will immediately get how full of shit she is.

Disclaimer: I am well aware the right is currently awash with conspiracy theories. I am not defending that or pretending it's not true. It's one reason QAnon sucks so much. It not only neuters the effectiveness of the right, but it provides a free weapon of dismissal to the left for even valid criticisms and true observations.

[Ragabul]

I keep thinking of more things and don't just want to keep stealth editing my post forever so an additional thought:

Also fun was reading this book last summer:



and realizing how many people who spent the 60s and 70s literally blowing things up and trying to kill people are now kicking around in high level Democrat spaces with so far as I can tell next to no objections from anybody.

Like this chick and Bill Ayers. Meanwhile, somebody like Jeff Sessions is the second coming of John C. Calhoun and Josh Hawley is nothing less than Goebbels.

[Vol]

I quite literally knew nothing about the revolutionary violence of the 60s/70s until my mid to late 20s. It never came up in school, though we spent a great deal of time on Kent State, Vietnam, and extolling the "virtues" of the cultural revolutions that have paid such wonderful dividends now. Oh and lots of time on MLK. Never heard of Malcom X until high school. It's a cunning way to normalize a fabricated sense of history to exploit student apathy with extremely selective texts.

Then having a conversation with a friend about how liberally "domestic terrorist," is now used, he mentioned bombings and street fights and such, from quite literal Communists and the like, and I was again sorely disappointed in the failure of the educational system to educate. So it goes.

So to tie it together with the QAnon stuff, we're staring down the barrel of an, ironically, traditional way of being governed. Tech nobility and secular priests will control the discourse at all levels, but for little pockets here and there. Difference being old nobility had, theoretically, a code of conduct and physical presence, while real priests have coherent beliefs grounded in something greater than arbitrary social jockeying.

QAnon, at least at first, seemed it might be real, given the rate of disgruntled employees leaking early on, but by the time it was clear Sessions was not secretly helping Trump turn the tables on that gibberish Russian collusion claim, I wrote it off. That it kept up for 4 more years despite, I assume, never being right about anything, is almost impressive. It makes for a more comforting world view, to think there are secret patriots in our corrupted institutions, working to right wrongs and get the truth out, than to accept we're dealing with the failed ideologies of the last century again. Except this time we don't have that strong patriotic culture to resist malicious actors. Instead of committees on rooting out Communists, we'll have committees on rooting out the kind of people who'd have sat on the old committees.

So, yes, the conspiracies can get puerile, but I can't begrudge people for having some hope when facing the reality of who actually runs things, or the ignorant malice of those who aspire to. I do begrudge clinging to it in the face of all evidence to the contrary, as that retards progress in consolidating any sort of effective response.

[Ragabul]

I understand the Q impulse. I think it is jointly captured by two points. One is a statement that I read from that author I quoted earlier, Ross Douthat. He is one of like 2 conservatives that still works for the New York Times and my respect for him has grown a lot over the last year. He manages to be genial, not apologetic about being a social conservative, and also capable of writing at a level of nuance that leaves 0 credible space for any even semi legitimate call for his canceling to gain traction, which given his employer speaks to a pretty hefty amount of talent.

Anyway, he said

"One way to think about this era is that religious conservatives were correct about what the decline of Christianity would mean for American society but watching their prophecies fulfilled has driven many of them insane."

The other is that the average Trump dude (my dad) was in fact in a solid popular majority from basically 1980 to 2010. They wanted a number of things and by virtue of being in the popular majority, they expected to get them. The most notable of these was they did *not* want massive demographic change; they did not want mass liquidation of good paying jobs that don't require college; and they wanted a culture framed in not too intrusive but meaningful Christianity. They did not get any of those things.

We can debate all day on why they didn't get those things. Many books have been written about it. But just like Democrats constantly feel cheated because they have a demographic majority that *should* mean they mostly get their way and get to dictate where the country goes, such is true with average Joe circa 1995. Diehard Trumpers are a story of those average Joe popular majority people that gradually lost it more and more as the world they wanted faded away and no popular majority enabled them to stop it. 2010 is about when they well and truly lost it.

*Edit*

This is a weird way to chronicle it, but one way you can chart the transition is through the evolution of country music during that time. The listeners to this music are the exact same people but the divergence in content is outstanding.

None of these songs are gems but it goes from

1985 - 40 Hour Week by Alabama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-G2J3RzURA

2008 - Beer for My Horses by Toby Keith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLugaDIcOGI

Just go read the lyrics somewhere if you can't stand country.

[Sinekein]

"One way to think about this era is that religious conservatives were correct about what the decline of Christianity would mean for American society but watching their prophecies fulfilled has driven many of them insane."

Correlation is not causation though. If at their core they think that it's the loss of religious values that led to the current state of the world, they might just be missing way more obvious causes for that - technological progress or globalism for a start. The current U.S. wealth is built upon the fact that they have a ton of highly profitable jobs, but blue-collar, uneducated workers are not what you need for those jobs. For a time, the country enjoyed both a large access to many resources and the possibility for many to still enjoy a good quality of life without a college education, but the situation could simply not last forever, and the first thing to go were the jobs.

Trying to put "America first" as Trump did is a conundrum, because it violates the way globalism works - and globalism is what has made the U.S. the richest country on Earth in the first place. If you are hellbent on recreating jobs for uneducated workers, you will not produce as much value as other countries...and since capitalism has no soul, it's likely those jobs will eventually be picked up by less-expensive (legal or not) migrant workers who feel satisfied with lower wages than the working class white people (who have been used to better quality of life).

That is a major issue to solve for conservatives at the moment, probably way bigger than the purely political aspect of Trumpism-or-not within the GOP: their base wants something that they cannot deliver. The Democrats, meanwhile, have a window of opportunity at the moment, because the poverty within black communities mean that they have a way to somewhat improve their lot, and as such satisfy them to a degree. But it seems to be completely impossible to go back to the lauded time of the 50's which is what conservatives are running on. You won't get to enjoy a carefree life for you and your family by being an auto mechanic without a diploma, not when there are dozens of countries in the world with similar infrastructures but infinitely cheaper workers. Trump ran on anger that those times had passed, but utterly failed to deliver on bringing them back, because you can't. And if they just go over a cycle of "building anger to get in charge/failing to do absolutely anything because they can't", eventually, you will get more and more people either dropping altogether from voting, going to QAnon circles, or worshipping figures that do more harm than good.

Though overall, I am pretty sure that the capitalist system will collapse, I just don't know whether it will be within my lifetime. At the moment China has started using African workers because they are cheaper, which is the logical continuation of the way the world has evolved, but unless they find a way to do that while completely cutting all forms of progress on the continent, eventually, African QoL will improve enough that it won't be as cheap to build stuff there. Though granted, for a variety of reasons (not least its borders), Africa is enough of a mess that it's doubtful we will see many emerging countries there in the near future.

Maybe India and its built-in unequal system in which it is deemed normal to exploit a certain category of people is the actual future of capitalism.

[Ragabul]

It's not just a conservative conundrum. The liberal/progressive conundrum related to it is just somewhat more indirect. Some quick googling gave me a list of the top ten most educated countries. They are all sitting in the ballpark of 40%-60% with higher education and the US is actually #6 on that list. There's several things buried in that information.

One is that you are still looking at roughly half of the population that doesn't have a degree. You are also looking at a sizable percentage of people who have a degree but the job they have still pays ass. Think something like phlebotomy. This will net you around $30,000 which is just enough that you will not be poor (if you have no kids). It also means your quality of life will mostly be shitty.

This is the conundrum. A large percentage of people will not or cannot attain degrees. And not just because of cost. For all the "cost of college" talk (which is a legit problem) it is still entirely possible for the vast majority of people to go to college without bankrupting themselves. I actually got an additional associates degree from the local community college from 2016-2018 that was relevant for my job that I paid for out of pocket. If it was my first degree and I had 0 money and I went the student loan route, I'd have ended up with something like $5000 in loans at a 6% interest rate I would have to pay back over 10-25 years depending on my income. Unless they are living under a bridge, this is within the attainable for most people.

The problem with that is that 40ish% of people do not want to do that for temperament reasons or *cannot* do that for temperament reasons. I keep going back to my dad. He has undiagnosed dyslexia and probably also ADHD. He would almost assuredly do *terrible* in college even though he is very hardworking and actually intelligent. Then there is another percentage that go to college (I'm guessing 20ish%) who get a degree but their bullshit degree in phlebotomy or whatever is only sufficient to just barely keep them out of poverty and then only if they exercise rigid financial discipline, forego a family, and give up all hope of ever owning a house.

Then the more people get the degree, the less valuable the degree becomes. (And the more expensive and competitive the top 10% of schools become as the elite desperately try to stay the elite). Humans are also hierarchical and care about social status and there is nothing we can do short of scary bioengineering to make them stop it. The economics of laissez-faire capitalism aside, there will always be jobs that people will not be willing to pay "decent" wages for because they are considered crap jobs. There is some cultural leeway as to what qualifies as "crap" but there is always going to be *something* that people consider a trash profession. People with higher social status will fight tooth and nail to prevent people with "trash" professions from attaining the same social status. This is one reason for bullshit certifications for jobs that shouldn't require them. Or for insisting that certain jobs should require way more schooling than they really need.

My point with all this is that "Send everybody to college!" is simply not the solution that liberals make it out to be. It will help at the margins (with as you point out destitute black people and poor migrant workers from Honduras). But it is simply not a society-wide permanent solution.

Laissez-faire capitalism is already collapsing. Capitalism itself will not collapse because nothing else works. (Note as I've pointed out before the Nordic model is still a form of capitalism). Markets will out. All trying to centrally manage everything does is create black markets. The question is how to create a new regulatory, cultural, and business framework that accounts for mass globalization and mass communication. Just like the classical liberalism of the 19th century had to be qualified with social democracy after the advent of mass production and mass industrialization to keep the peasants from overturning the system.

This is the thing with modern peasants. You cannot squash them into role-based compliance because they have had a taste of modern individualism and prosperity. You also cannot buy them off with welfare because welfare is intrinsically undignified. They neither want to be factory drudges working 16 hour days *or* paupers in the almshouse. They want to work and be paid to work while also insisting on having dignity and agency. And then once they are paid, they feel like they earned it and they resent lots of stipulations on what they can do with it.

It's a nasty pickle. I have no magic solutions for how to get out of it. I do know that "More! More! More! Faster, faster, faster!" on the globalization front isn't it.

*Edit* I have a whole other pile of thoughts on the Ross Douthat quote and the fallout of the Sexual Revolution on all this but I'm lazy so I'll just plug this:

[Sinekein]

Oh I don't mean that the liberal agenda is more realistic in the long-term - it's just that in the short-term, it can indeed improve the lives of its voters which will make it look like it's succeeding. If the country reaches a situation in which there are no racial inequalities anymore, then in all likelihood, black voters will then take the same trajectory than white ones have - ie complaining that the situation is not improving anymore and longing for the good old days. It is hard to say that such a situation will (or might) be reached in the future due to a variety of factors, which is why the left's plan looks more "realistic" than the right's.

Automating might be a solution for some jobs, but the problem is that it's not as simple as "only trash jobs can be automated". For one Fordian production line, you also have janitors who can hardly be replaced by robots. I also think that robots or AIs could theoretically replace some jobs that require a qualification. Since that Gamestop debacle, I started to wonder whether an AI couldn't be good at managing stocks, because after all, it's all about trends and numbers and announcements with keywords. Banking in general looks like a task machines could easily perform, yet usually bankers are "socially worthy".

I have no idea either as to what the solution is. I personally like negative growth because that might help postpone or cancel some absolutely disastrous natural events in the next century, but I am all too aware I am asking for it from a wealthy country and a not-worrying - even if it's not well-off - financial situation. I also know that I - and my brethren - have enjoyed the benefits of opulence for quite a while, so asking for everyone on Earth to stop behaving like we have for 100 years now is going to be a next-to-impossible call. Especially in a world where the gap between the wealthy and the rest is widening with every minute.

[Ragabul]

An additional thought. I did think of one thing that *might* cause the total collapse of capitalism. If automation and robotics and machine intelligence ever manages to take over some very high percentage of total production and renders the bulk of humanity extraneous. If there are simply way, way, way more people than there are even plausibly needed or useful jobs.

Even then, I think an entirely plausible response to that is that people will radically check their birthrate (probably partially at government insistence) and the population will drop back down to a state where humans who want/need jobs is approximately equal to the number of jobs available.

[Ragabul]

I started to wonder whether an AI couldn't be good at managing stocks, because after all, it's all about trends and numbers and announcements with keywords. Banking in general looks like a task machines could easily perform, yet usually bankers are "socially worthy".

This is already a thing with flash trading. It actually caused a mini crash a few years ago.

*Edit*

Also, I do think that whatever the solution is will almost certainly require that a majority of people's quality of life or autonomy or possibly both will diminish.