I.
If you are American, SSC endorses voting in this presidential election.
Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, and Aaron Edlin calculate the chance that a single vote will determine the election (ie break a tie in a state that breaks an Electoral College tie). It ranges from about one in ten million (if you live in a swing state) to one in a billion (if you live in a very safe state). The average American has a one in sixty million chance of determining the election results. The paper was from the 2008 election, which was a pro-Obama landslide; since this election is closer the chance of determining it may be even higher.
The size of the US budget is about $4 trillion, but Presidents can only affect a tiny bit of that – most of the money funds the same programs no matter who’s in charge. But Presidents do shift budgetary priorities a lot. GW Bush started a war in Iraq which probably cost $2 trillion; the CBO estimates Obamacare may cost about $1.2 trillion. Neither of these are pure costs – Obamacare buys us more health care, and military presence in Iraq buys us [mumble] – but if you think these are less (or more) efficient ways to spend money than other possible uses, then they represent ways that having one President might be better than another. If we suppose a good president would use these trillions of dollars at least 33% more efficiently than a bad president, then this is still $300 billion in value.
So order of magnitude, having a good President rather than a bad one can be worth $300 billion. A 1/60 million chance to create $300 billion in value is worth $5,000; even the 1/1 billion chance afforded someone in a safe state is worth $300.
We don’t know for sure that we’re right about politics. In order to add signal rather than noise to the election results, we have to be better than the average voter. The Inside View is useless here; probably every voter thinks they’re better than average. I recommend the Outside View – looking for measurable indicators correlated with ability to make good choices. Education’s probably a good one. IQ might be another. But overall, my suggestion is that if you’re seriously uncertain about whether or not you think more clearly than the average voter, by that fact alone you almost certainly do.
Suppose you live in a swing state. If you think (in a well-calibrated way) that it’s 10% more likely that your candidate will use $1 trillion well than that the other candidate will, your vote is worth $500. If you live in a safe state, it’s more like $30. If you value the amount of time it takes to vote at less than that, voting is conceivably a good use of your time.
II.
SSC endorses voting for Hillary Clinton if you live in a swing state. If you live in a safe state, I endorse voting for Clinton, Johnson, or (if you insist) Stein. If you want, you can use a vote-swapping site to make this easier or more impactful.
You might notice who’s missing from this endorsement. I think Donald Trump would be a bad president.
Partly this is because of his policies, insofar as he has them. I’m not going to talk much about these because I don’t think I can change anyone’s mind here – either you agree with me (and disagree with Trump) on things like abortion, global warming, free trade, et cetera, or you don’t. A two sentence argument in a blog post won’t change your mind either way.
In fact, I’m not sure any of this ever changes anyone’s mind, and I didn’t really want to write this post. But the latest news says:
This is going to be close. And since the lesson of Brexit is that polls underestimate support for politically incorrect choices, this is going to be really close.
And I don’t know if I’d go so far as Scott Aaronson, who worries that he will one day live in a nuclear hellscape where his children ask him “Daddy, why didn’t you blog about Trump?”. But if some of my blogging on conservative issues has given me any political capital with potential Trump voters, then I this is where I want to spend it.
So here are some reasons why I would be afraid to have Trump as president even if I agreed with him about the issues.
Many conservatives make the argument against utopianism. The millenarian longing for a world where all systems are destroyed, all problems are solved, and everything is permissible – that’s dangerous whether it comes from Puritans or Communists. These same conservatives have traced this longing through leftist history from Lenin through social justice.
Which of the candidates in this election are millennarian? If Sanders were still in, I’d say fine, he qualifies. If Stein were in, same, no contest. But Hillary? The left and right both critique Hillary the same way. She’s too in bed with the system. Corporations love her. Politicians love her. All she wants to do is make little tweaks – a better tax policy here, a new foreign policy doctrine there. The critiques are right. Hillary represents complete safety from millennialism.
Trump’s policy ideas are mostly silly, but no one cares, because he’s not really running on policy. He’s running on making America great again, fighting the special interests, and defying the mainstream media. Nobody cares what policies he’ll implement after he does this, because his campaign is more an expression of rage at these things than anything else.
In my review of Singer on Marx, I wrote that:
I’d always heard that Marx was long on condemnations of capitalism and short on blueprints for communism, and the couple of Marx’s works I read in college confirmed he really didn’t talk about that very much. It seemed like a pretty big gap. I figured…he’d probably made a few vague plans, like “Oh, decisions will be made by a committee of workers,” and “Property will be held in common and consensus democracy will choose who gets what,” and felt like the rest was just details. That’s the sort of error I could at least sympathize with, despite its horrendous consequences.
But in fact Marx was philosophically opposed, as a matter of principle, to any planning about the structure of communist governments or economies. He would come out and say “It is irresponsible to talk about how communist governments and economies will work.” He believed it was a scientific law, analogous to the laws of physics, that once capitalism was removed, a perfect communist government would form of its own accord. There might be some very light planning, a couple of discussions, but these would just be epiphenomena of the governing historical laws working themselves out. Just as, a dam having been removed, a river will eventually reach the sea somehow, so capitalism having been removed society will eventually reach a perfect state of freedom and cooperation.
Singer blames Hegel. Hegel viewed all human history as the World-Spirit trying to recognize and incarnate itself. As it overcomes its various confusions and false dichotomies, it advances into forms that more completely incarnate the World-Spirit and then moves onto the next problem. Finally, it ends with the World-Spirit completely incarnated – possibly in the form of early 19th century Prussia – and everything is great forever.
Marx famously exports Hegel’s mysticism into a materialistic version where the World-Spirit operates upon class relations rather than the interconnectedness of all things, and where you don’t come out and call it the World-Spirit – but he basically keeps the system intact. So once the World-Spirit resolves the dichotomy between Capitalist and Proletariat, then it can more completely incarnate itself and move on to the next problem. Except that this is the final problem (the proof of this is trivial and is left as exercise for the reader) so the World-Spirit becomes fully incarnate and everything is great forever. And you want to plan for how that should happen? Are you saying you know better than the World-Spirit, Comrade?
I am starting to think I was previously a little too charitable toward Marx. My objections were of the sort “You didn’t really consider the idea of welfare capitalism with a social safety net” or “communist society is very difficult to implement in principle,” whereas they should have looked more like “You are basically just telling us to destroy all of the institutions that sustain human civilization and trust that what is baaaasically a giant planet-sized ghost will make sure everything works out.”
And since then, one of the central principles behind my philosophy has been “Don’t destroy all existing systems and hope a planet-sized ghost makes everything work out”. Systems are hard. Institutions are hard. If your goal is to replace the current systems with better ones, then destroying the current system is 1% of the work, and building the better ones is 99% of it. Throughout history, dozens of movements have doomed entire civilizations by focusing on the “destroying the current system” step and expecting the “build a better one” step to happen on its own. That never works. The best parts of conservativism are the ones that guard this insight and shout it at a world too prone to taking shortcuts.
Donald Trump does not represent those best parts of conservativism. To transform his movement into Marxism, just replace “the bourgeoisie” with “the coastal elites” and “false consciousness” with “PC speech”. Just replace the assumption that everything will work itself out once power is in the hands of the workers, with the assumption that everything will work itself out once power is in the hands of “real Americans”. Just replace the hand-waving lack of plans with what to do after the Revolution with a hand-waving lack of plans what to do after the election. In both cases, the sheer virtue of the movement, and the apocalyptic purification of the rich people keeping everyone else down, is supposed to mean everything will just turn out okay on its own. That never works.
A commenter on here the other day quoted an Atlantic article complaining that “The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally”. Well, count me in that second group. I don’t think he’s literal. I think when he talks about building a wall and keeping out Muslims, he’s metaphorically saying “I’m going to fight for you, the real Americans”. When he talks about tariffs and trade deals, he’s metaphorically saying “I’m going to fight for you, the real Americans”. Fine. But neither of those two things are a plan. The problem with getting every American a job isn’t that nobody has been fighting for them, the problem with getting every American a job is that getting 100% employment in a modern economy is a really hard problem.
Donald Trump not only has no solution to that problem, he doesn’t even understand the question. He lives in a world where there is no such thing as intelligence, only loyalty. If we haven’t solved all of our problems yet, it’s because the Department of Problem-Solving was insufficiently loyal, and didn’t try hard enough. His only promise is to fill that department with loyal people who really want the problem solved.
I’ve never been fully comfortable with the Left because I feel like they often make the same error – the only reason there’s still poverty is because the corporate-run government is full of traitors who refuse to make the completely great, no-downsides policy of raising the minimum wage. One of the right’s great redeeming feature has been an awareness of these kinds of tradeoffs. But this election, it’s Hillary who sounds restrained and realistic, and Trump who wants the moon on a silver platter (“It will be the best moon you’ve ever seen. And the silver platter is going to be yuuuuuge!”)
III.
But I guess you’ve got to balance someone’s ability to pursue goals effectively with whether you like the goals they’ll be pursuing. I can imagine someone admitting that Clinton will probably be better at governing than Trump, but preferring Trump’s position on the issues so much that it still gives him an edge. In that case, I beg you to consider not only the mean but the variance.
I think even people who expect Trump to be a better President on average will admit he’s a high-variance choice. Hillary is an overwhelmingly known quantity at this point. A Hillary presidency will probably be a lot like Obama’s presidency. There might be a Libya-style military action; probably not an Iraq-style one. If something terrible happens like China tries to invade Taiwan, she will probably make some sort of vaguely reasonable decision after consulting her advisors. She might do a bad job, but it’s hard to imagine a course where a Hillary presidency leads directly to the apocalypse, the fall of American democracy, et cetera.
Trump isn’t a known quantity. Maybe he’ll kind of dodder around and be kind of funny while not changing much. Or maybe there will be some crisis and Trump will take what could have been a quickly-defused diplomatic incident and turn it into World War III. Remember also that it’s more likely the House and Senate both stay Republican than that they both switch to being Democrat. So if Hillary is elected, she’ll probably spend four years smashing her head against Congress; if Trump is elected, he will probably get a lot of what he wants.
Some people like high variance. I don’t. The world has seen history’s greatest alleviation of poverty over the past few decades, and this shows every sign of continuing as long as we don’t do something incredibly stupid that blows up the current world order. I’m less sanguine about the state of America in particular but I think that its generally First World problems probably can’t be solved by politics. They will probably require either genetic engineering or artificial intelligence; the job of our generation is keep the world functional enough to do the research that will create those technologies, and to alleviate as much suffering as we can in the meantime. I don’t see a Clinton presidency as making the world non-functional, whatever that means. I don’t know what I see a Trump presidency doing because, Trump is inherently unpredictable, but some major blow to world functionality is definitely on the list of possibilities.
The one place where Clinton is higher-variance than Trump is immigration. Clinton does not explicitly support open borders, but given her election on a pro-immigration platform and the massive anti-Trump immigration backlash that seems to be materializing, it’s easy to see her moving in that direction. If you believe that immigrants can import the less-effective institutions of their home countries, lower the intelligence of the national hive mind, or cause ethnic fractionalization that replaces sustainable democratic politics with ethnic coalition-building (unlike the totally-not-ethnic-coalition-based politics of today, apparently?), that could potentially make the world less functional and prevent useful technologies from being deployed.
I consider this one of the strongest pro-Trump arguments, but I think it exaggerates the scale of the problem. Hillary will have a Republican Congress to contend with; she probably won’t be able to increase immigration very much. Immigration rates are currently too low to cause massive demographic change before the point at which useful technologies can be deployed, and most immigrants are Asian and come from countries with pretty good institutions themselves. More important, Trump’s anti-immigration policies would prevent foreign researchers from attending top American universities, and probably slow the deployment of future technologies directly, far more than any indirect effect from Hillary would.
There’s another argument here – how exactly are we visualizing a world where immigrants damage American institutions? I envision it as America becoming more like Third World countries – constant ethnic tension, government by strongmen, rampant corruption, lack of respect for checks and balances, and overregulation of industry. But Trump is promising us all of that already, without even admitting any immigrants! If we’re going to become a Third World country, let’s at least help some people while we’re doing it!
IV.
US conservatism is in crisis, and I think that crisis might end better if Trump loses than if he wins.
Since a country with thriving conservative and liberal parties is lower-variance than one with lots of liberals but no effective conservatism, I would like conservatism to get out of crisis as soon as possible and reach the point where it could form an effective opposition. It would also be neat if whatever form conservatism ended out taking had some slight contact with reality and what would help the country (this is not meant as a dig at conservatives – I’m not sure the Democrats have much contact with reality or helps the country either; I’m wishing for the moon and stars here).
Nobody expects Republicans to win blacks and Hispanics. The interesting thing about this election is that college-educated whites are also moving into the Democratic column. If the latest polls are to be believed, the demographic – which favored Romney by 14 points last election – favors Clinton by 8 points now. The nightmare scenario is that Trump wins, his style of anti-intellectual populism is cemented as Official New Republican Ideology, and every educated person switches to the Democrats.
I’m not 100% this would be bad – maybe educated people who are temperamentally conservative would pull the Democratic Party a little to the right, turning them into a broad moderate coalition which has no problem winning elections and combines the smartest elements of liberal and conservative thought. But more likely, there’s a vicious cycle where the lack of intelligent conservatives guts the system of think tanks that produce the sort of studies and analyses which convince smart people to become conservative, which in turn makes there even fewer intelligent conservatives, and so on. In the end, intellectuals won’t just vote Democrat; they’ll shift their personal views further to the left to fit in. We already have a problem with a glut of leftist researchers and journalists producing evidence why leftists are right about everything, and a shortage of conservative researchers and journalists to fact-check them and present the opposite case. As intelligent people desert the Republican Party, this situation gets worse and we lose access to any knowledge that Vox doesn’t want to write an explainer on. In the worst case scenario, everybody develops a hard-coded association between “conservative” and “stupid people”, even more than they have already, the academies purge the hell out of everyone even slightly to the right of the loudest activist, and the only alternative is The Donald Trump Institute Of Research That Is Going To Be Absolutely Yuuuuuuge, which busies itself putting out white papers to a coalition of illiterates.
If Trump fails, then the situation is – much the same, really, but conservatives can at least get started right now picking up the pieces instead of having to wait four years. There’s a fundamental problem, which is that about 30% of the US population is religious poor southern whites who are generally not very educated, mostly not involved in US intellectual life, but form the biggest and most solid voting bloc in the country. If you try to form two parties with 50% of the vote each, then whichever party gets the religious poor southern whites is going to be dominated by them and end up vulnerable to populism. Since the religious poor southern whites are conservative, that’s always going to be the conservative party’s cross to bear and conservatism is always going to be less intellectual than liberalism in this country. I don’t know how to solve this. But there have been previous incarnations of American conservatism that have been better at dealing with the problem than this one, and maybe if Trumpism gets decisively defeated it will encourage people to work on the problem.
V.
I said I wouldn’t try to convince people about the big hot-button issues, but I’ve been told now thatthe guardrails of democracy have been broken lying is okay. So let’s talk about global warming.
Most hot-button issues are less President-influenced than most people think. No Supreme Court is likely to overturn Roe v. Wade at this point, so the president’s impact on abortion is limited to whatever edge cases come before the justices they appoint. I have no idea whether there was more or less capital punishment during Obama’s administration than Bush’s, but I doubt that the president’s opinion of the issue had much impact one way or the other. But it looks like the Obama administration made really impressive progress on global warming; needless to say Donald Trump feels differently.
I don’t want to argue climate science here. I want to say that, as usual, I support the low-variance position that’s not going to make the world vastly less functional before we can invent genetic engineering or AI. Even if you doubt modern climate science, are you so sure it’s wrong that it’s worth the risk? What chance of global warming being a real problem would it take before you agreed that we should probably reduce CO2 emissions just in case? How could that chance possibly be lower than the chance of something that 90-something percent of the relevant scientists believe to be true is true? Yes, we know here that science is not always as authoritative as it would like to be, but it’s not completely anticorrelated with truth either!
(also, if the research about high CO2 levels decreasing cognitive ability is true – and my guess is no, but I’m far from sure – that could be even more disastrous than the traditional global warming effects – remember that even tiny IQ decreases have horrible consequences on a society-wide scale.)
VI.
Okay, but what about the real reason Trump is so popular?
When I talk to Trump supporters, it’s not usually about doubting climate change, or thinking Trump will take the conservative movement in the right direction, or even immigration. It’s about the feeling that a group of arrogant, intolerant, sanctimonious elites have seized control of a lot of national culture and are using it mostly to spread falsehood and belittle anybody different than them. And Trump is both uniquely separate from these elites and uniquely repugnant to them – which makes him look pretty good to everyone else.
This is definitely true. Please vote Hillary anyway.
Aside from the fact that getting back at annoying people isn’t worth eroding the foundations of civil society – do you really think a Trump election is going to hurt these people at all? Make them question anything? “Oh, 51% of the American people disagree with me, I guess that means I’ve got a lot of self-reflecting to do.” Of course not. A Trump election would just confirm for them exactly what they already believe – that the average American is a stupid racist who needs to be kept as far away from public life as possible. If Trump gets elected, sure, the editorial pages will be full of howls of despair the next day, but underneath the howls will be quiet satisfaction that the world is exactly the way they believed it to be.
The right sometimes argues that modern leftism is analogous to early millenarian Christianity. They argue this, and then they say “You know what would stop these people in their tracks? A strong imperial figure who persecutes them. That’s definitely going to make them fade away quietly. There is no way this can possibly go wrong.”
Leftism has never been about controlling the government, and really the government is one of the areas it controls least effectively – even now both houses of Congress, most state legislatures, most governors, etc, are Republican. When people say that the Left is in control, they’re talking about academia, the media, the arts, and national culture writ large. But all of these things have a tendency to define themselves in opposition to the government. When the left controls the government, this is awkward and tends to involve a lot of infighting. When the right controls the government, it gets easy. If Trump controls the government, it gets ridiculously easy.
This has real-world effects. Millennials are more conservative than previous generations. Andrew Gelman, who is usually right about everything, says:
If you look at the cohort of young voters who came of age during George W. Bush’s presidency, they’re mostly Democrats, which makes sense as Bush was a highly unpopular Republican. The young voters who came of age during Obama’s presidency are more split, which makes sense because Obama is neither popular nor unpopular; he has an approval of about 50%
I would prefer the next generation end up leaning more to the right, because that will cancel out younger people’s natural tendency to lean left and make them pretty moderate and so low-variance. I definitely don’t want an unpopular far-right presidency, because then they’re going to lean left, which will combined with the natural leftiness of the young and make them super left. And this is the sort of thing that affects the culture!
VII.
One more warning for conservatives who still aren’t convinced. If the next generation is radicalized by Trump being a bad president, they’re not just going to lean left. They’re going to lean regressive, totalitarian, super-social-justice left.
Everyone has already constructed the narrative: Trump is the anti-PC, anti-social-justice candidate. If he wins, he’s going to be the anti-PC, anti-social-justice President. And he will fail. First of all, because he doesn’t really show much sign of knowing what he’s doing. Second of all, because all presidents fail in a sense – 80% of Americans consistently believe the country is headed the wrong direction and the president is the natural fall guy for this trend. And third of all, because even if by some miracle Trump avoids the first two failure modes, the media will say he failed and people will believe them. And when the anti-PC, anti-social-justice President fails, the reaction will be a giant “we told you so” from the social justice movement, and a giant shift of all the disillusioned young people right into their fold.
Trump is all set to be the biggest gift to the social justice movement in history. They thrive on claims of persecution, claims that they’re the ones fighting a stupid hateful regressive culture that controls everything. And people think that bringing their straw man to life and putting him in the Oval Office is going to help?
If you’re a Jew fighting anti-Semitism, the absolute minimum you can do is not actually kill Christian children and use their blood to make matzah. Likewise, if you are a principled classical liberal fighting the social justice movement’s attempt to smear anyone who disagrees with them as an overprivileged clueless hateful Neanderthal, the absolute minimum you can do is not actually be an overprivileged clueless hateful Neanderthal. Opinions on Trump range all the way from “he is definitely an overprivileged clueless hateful Neanderthal” to “he is remarkably and uniquely bad at not appearing to be an overprivileged clueless hateful Neanderthal”. In any case, having him as the public face of anti-social-justice for the next four years would be a godsend for them and a disaster for everyone else.
VIII.
There’s one more thought I wanted to mention which is vaguely in this space.
The enemy isn’t leftism or social justice. The enemy is epistemic vice.
When the Left errs, it’s through using shouting and shaming to cut through the long and painful process of having to justify its beliefs. It’s through confusing disagreement with evil, a dissenter who needs convincing with a thought-criminal who needs neutralizing.
Sometimes it might be strategically necessary to whack particular ideologies to make examples of them. But in the longer-term, replacing left with right just puts a new group of people in position to shame their opponents and silence dissent. The long range plan has to combine a short-term need to neutralize immediate would-be tyrants with a long-term need to slowly encourage epistemic virtue so that we don’t have to keep putting out fires.
Now, watch this video:
Trump’s not in that crowd. But does anyone think he disagrees with it? Can anyone honestly say that Trump or his movement promote epistemic virtue? That in the long-term, we’ll be glad that we encouraged this sort of thing, that we gave it power and attention and all the nutrients it needed to grow? That the road to whatever vision of a just and rational society we imagine, something quiet and austere with a lot of old-growth trees and Greek-looking columns, runs through LOCK HER UP?
I don’t like having to vote for the lesser of two evils. But at least I feel like I know who it is.
RELATED: Eliezer, The Unit Of Caring, Scott Aaronson
“Hillary represents complete safety from millennialism.”
-Not the case.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/04/murray-n-rothbard/st-hillary-and-the-religious-left/
The establishment, fundamentally, is millennialist. Just take a look at this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/25/hillary-clintons-alt-right-speech-annotated/
“And since then, one of the central principles behind my philosophy has been “Don’t destroy all existing systems and hope a planet-sized ghost makes everything work out”. Systems are hard. Institutions are hard. If your goal is to replace the current systems with better ones, then destroying the current system is 1% of the work, and building the better ones is 99% of it.”
-This is a good reason to have voted Trump in the Indiana primary.
“But this election, it’s Hillary who sounds restrained and realistic, and Trump who wants the moon on a silver platter (“It will be the best moon you’ve ever seen. And the silver platter is going to be yuuuuuge!”)”
-That’s it; “sounds”. As typical, a college-educated person focuses on style far more than substance.
“There might be a Libya-style military action; probably not an Iraq-style one.”
-I.e, a military action that creates an endless civil war after overthrowing a government without the approval of Congress, rather than one that leaves behind a stable government free of civil war with the approval of Congress.
“If something terrible happens like China tries to invade Taiwan, she will probably make some sort of vaguely reasonable decision after consulting her advisors.”
-That’s assuming Her advisors are reasonable. They aren’t:
https://twitter.com/rosenbergerlm/status/773684010526601216
As usual, all focus on Her style. No focus on substance.
“Or maybe there will be some crisis and Trump will take what could have been a quickly-defused diplomatic incident and turn it into World War III.”
-As Scott Adams point out, this assessment of the situation is based on precisely nothing except non-New Yorkers interpreting New Yorker speech as a sign of mental instability. Arguments from fictional evidence aren’t arguments at all.
“Hillary will have a Republican Congress to contend with; she probably won’t be able to increase immigration very much.”
-Step one: appoint Barack Obama to the Supreme Court to replace Scalia. Step two: sign an executive action giving amnesty to any present and all future illegal immigrants. Done.
“More important, Trump’s anti-immigration policies would prevent foreign researchers from attending top American universities,”
-This is literally the opposite of what Trump says:
http://sciencedebate.org/20answers
“US conservatism is in crisis, and I think that crisis might go slightly better if Trump loses than if he wins.”
-Two words. “No.” and “Courts”.
“and every educated person switches to the Democrats.”
-Screw ’em. We don’t need them. Lyndon Johnson famously lost the White college-educated vote.
“I envision it as America becoming more like Third World countries – constant ethnic tension,”
-“Black. Lives. Matter!”
“government by strongmen, rampant corruption,”
-Whitewater. President’s wife succeeding president.
“lack of respect for checks and balances,”
-Associate Justice Obama.
“and overregulation of vital industries.”
-Who’s the candidate saying he’ll reduce regulations on vital industries again?
“But Trump is promising us all of that already, without even admitting any immigrants!”
-Palm, meet face.
“I’m not 100% this would be bad – maybe educated people who are temperamentally conservative would pull the Democratic Party a little to the right, turning them into a broad moderate coalition which has no problem winning elections and combines the smartest elements of liberal and conservative thought.”
-Elizabeth Warren and Paul Wolfowitz! I.e., a totally evil party any sensible American should not vote for.
“There’s a fundamental problem, which is that about 30% of the US population is Borderers who are mostly not very smart, mostly not involved in US intellectual life, but form the biggest and most solid voting bloc in the country.”
-Are Irish borderers? Rhode Island’s Republicans went heavier for Trump in a contested primary than for Mitt in an uncontested one.
“mostly not involved in US intellectual life, but form the biggest and most solid voting bloc in the country.”
-I was not aware that Adlai Stevenson won the 1952 election.
“and conservatism is always going to be less intellectual than liberalism in this country”
-Not in 1964. Goldwater won the Deep South, but so did Northern Illinois, and the borderers overwhelmingly went for LBJ.
“No Supreme Court is likely to overturn Roe v. Wade at this point”
-It’s about conserving present institutions from Clintonite violence. Not rolling things back. Otherwise, the party would have nominated Cruz.
On Global Warming, real evidence suggests costly CO2 emission reductions aren’t worth it:
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/are-climate-change-mitigation-policies-a-form-of-insurance/
Also, there’s this:
http://www.cato.org/blog/current-wisdom-we-calculate-you-decide-handy-dandy-carbon-tax-temperature-savings-calculator
“A Trump election would just confirm for them exactly what they already believe – that the average American is a stupid racist who needs to be kept as far away from public life as possible.”
-Sucks for them. Great for us! Goldwater should have won, BTW, even if he was supported by all the racists.
“I would prefer the next generation end up leaning more to the right, because that will cancel out younger people’s natural tendency to lean left and make them pretty moderate and so low-variance.”
-But what if Trump’s successful (low chance, but bear with me)? In that case, young people will turn right, just like we see with New Deal and LBJ Democrats and Reagan Republicans. Nothing wrong with that. Young people didn’t turn all that much right in response to Johnson. They turned way left in reaction to Nixon.
“Millennials are more conservative than previous generations.”
-That’s an extremely misleading statement.
“If the next generation is radicalized by Trump being a bad president, they’re not just going to lean left. They’re going to lean regressive, totalitarian, super-social-justice left.”
-In short, to prevent the transformation of a whole generation into SJWs, we must elect an actual SJW. You know what? How about no?
“the claim that having a woman in charge will Change Everything is going to start looking kind of silly.”
-The Canucks have already got Kim Campbell as an example. We know that already. And what if Her is successful? Then we’ve got a generation of SJWs on our hands, thanks to your advice to do the opposite of the obvious.
C*ckservatism has failed. Electing Obama to mollify the far left has failed. It’s time for a new course: Donald J. Trump, the best presidential nominee since Ronald Reagan in either party. Vote Trump like your life depends on it. Because if Hillary’s neocon advisors will tell Her Russia has WMDs, it might.
“Hillary will be forced to govern from the center because all presidents govern from the center to some degree, and she’ll keep her party closer to the center too.”
-Just ask LBJ, who, at the time, was from the center!
“The far-left and the center-left will get more and more annoyed at each other, the Sanderistas and the Clintonites will keep sniping each other in the absence of a common enemy, and I think the results would be better for civil rights and for independent thought than the purges likely to result if a Trump election made people start feeling cornered.”
-Basically, if you have more of the same, it will lead to change. Hint: it won’t.
“Trump’s not in that crowd. But does anyone think he disagrees with it? Can anyone honestly say that Trump or his movement promote epistemic virtue? That in the long-term, we’ll be glad that we encouraged this sort of thing, that we gave it power and attention and all the nutrients it needed to grow? That the road to whatever vision of a just and rational society we imagine, something quiet and austere with a lot of old-growth trees and Greek-looking columns, runs through LOCK HER UP?”
-Yes. If somebody not named “Hillary Clinton” committed Her crimes, he would be locked up. Now, LOCK HER UP!
“I don’t like having to vote for the lesser of two evils. But at least I feel pretty sure who it is.”
-Agreed. It’s the Only Man Who Can Even Remotely Save The Nation, the Nominee of the Party of Lincoln, the first candidate outside the establishment to get elected since McGovern, Donald J. Trump.
TL; DR: all Scott’s reasons for voting Her are specious, disingenuous, and contain more than a hint of concern trolling. We’ll take it from here.
If you want to focus on substance, you can look at Trump too. Trump doesn’t just “sound” like he wants the moon on a silver platter, he has a literally preposterous view of the world. http://postlibertarian.com/2016/09/05/against-trump/
He thought we could renegotiate the US national debt like it was a business. He thought we should allow pretty much any country to have nuclear weapons. He said women should be criminally prosecuted if they get abortions. He said terrorists’ families should be targetted. He said we should shut off parts of the internet if necessary and “open up the libel laws” to target journalists who criticize him.
Some of this he recanted. Sometimes he recanted the recanted statements. If you only care about substance, Trump is terrible substance. Clinton is bad too, and I don’t support most of her policies, but it’s hard to argue against Trump’s “substance” being worse.
Full disclosure, I’m voting for Gary Johnson. But I live in a state Trump will likely win unless the election isn’t close. Hopefully my vote will help Johnson will reach the 5% threshold to get federal funds in the next election cycle.
There’s a difference between trying to negotiate on T-bills, which is ridiculous and unworkable, and prosecuting women who get abortions/encouraging reprisals against innocent civilians/censoring communications/using the courts to beat down your opponents, most of which have been hugely effective tactics for establishing political control at one point or other. The former is preposterous, the latter aren’t, although they’re probably terrifying for most of the population.
Having said that, I’m not an American, and judging what is preposterous could be a cultural thing.
The chance of Trump successfully using Federal Government to suppress opposition are very slim. Press hates him – and I mean hates, they’d blow up any semblance of the story into a huge deal and if they get a real deal – this would be on 24/7. Half of his own party is uneasy with him. Libertarian wing is terrified of him. Federal bureaucrats despise him. Judiciary, after his miserable performance in Curiel affair, largely hates or despises him. He has very little to lean on to achieve his potential overreach, and would be viciously fought on every step from every possible direction.
Compare to Clinton. Infrastructure of politically based suppression – check (hello, Louis Lerner!). Support of federal bureacrasy – check (as we can see, archives disappear, hard drives crash and backup tapes vanish as by miracle when the need arises). History of scandals involving dirty tricks in official capacity for political or personal gain – check. Immunity from the press scrutiny – check. Unquestioning support from wide coalition of celebrities, intellectuals and public opinion gurus – check. Intellectual platform that favors government involvement as primary positive force – check. Prosecutors itching to persecute political opponents for politically incorrect opinions – check. Full backing of SJW activist masses – check. Public promise to overturn SC decision that allowed political opposition to criticize her – check.
If I ever wanted to make a plan to build a platform for government overreach and persecuting opposition, I could hardly do any better.
Really?
Yes, really.
This is easily the most insane thing I’ve seen in weeks. And I have the internet.
Was it written from an alternate universe where the press didn’t spend the last three-ish decades breathlessly (and infinitely) repeating and supporting every random smear any time a right-wing kook comes up with?
No, the universe where Journolist existed, and CNN edited out Clinton calling NY attacks “bombing” while denouncing Trump for doing the same, and where CBS removes Clinton comments about Hillary’s health from the interview because he mistakenly says “frequently”, and PBS removes criticism of Clinton from Stein’s interview, and where debate moderators openly support talking points of one side, and where journalists send their articles for review to political operatives before publishing, and where head of DNC tells to Political Director of NBC “Chuck, this must stop” about their coverage and is met not with laughter but with compliance. This universe. What the color of the Sun in yours? How many moons on your planet?
OTOH, if that’s the most insane thing you’ve seen in weeks – I seriously envy you. Your selection of reading sources must be impeccable, and I bow to your superior skills and hope to be you when I grow up.
Nobody cares what the press thinks about the culture wars. Nobody. If they did the world would be as left leaning as they are. They have lost credibility here so it just doesn’t matter.
They spent four years of the Obama administration blaming Bush for everything, and the last 4 years blaming Obama for nothing. If Trump was elected he would be responsible for the entire world’s problems on day 1, including Syria.
So this expectation of bias is already built in so nobody will be surprised to see the media embarrass themselves further. They really can’t be more against Trump then they are now.
They really can’t be more against Trump then they are now.
Eh. We said that about Bush. And Reagan.
Next R president, they’ll find a way to dial up the fury again.
They could try, but it has already entered a counter productive phase. Republican trust in the media dropped 18% this year.
You can go from darling of the liberal intelligentsia to number one hate object. Ask Tony “fork hunts” Blair.
“He thought we could renegotiate the US national debt like it was a business.”
-Guess what? We can. We’re the United States of America, not the United States of Greece. FDR took the U.S. off the Gold Standard, thus defaulting on the U.S. national debt, and nothing bad resulted from that.
“He thought we should allow pretty much any country to have nuclear weapons.”
-No; he said it was inevitable. You might disagree with him, but he wasn’t saying it Must happen and the U.S. should guarantee it, like Her said Assad Must Go.
“He said women should be criminally prosecuted if they get abortions.”
-Why not? If abortion is to be made illegal, how would that law be enforced?
“He said terrorists’ families should be targetted.”
-They should be. And they are.
“He said we should shut off parts of the internet if necessary”
-So did Her.
“and “open up the libel laws” to target journalists who criticize him.”
-Nothing wrong with that.
Got any actually bad policies of Trump not explicitly advocated by Her, like restoring torture (which he has advocated)?
>-Guess what? We can. We’re the United States of America, not the United States of Greece. FDR took the U.S. off the Gold Standard, thus defaulting on the U.S. national debt, and nothing bad resulted from that.
This is economically illiterate. FDR did not default on the national debt by removing the gold standard. Those two things are not equivalent.
And we absolutely cannot negotiate T-Bills without raining down hellfire for at least a generation. Interest rates on US debt would instantly spike, and cost us trillions more in interest payments for at least a generation. It wouldn’t even save us money, and it’s one of the most uniquely stupid ideas ever put into practice as federal policy.
You… you do realize that most of the national debt is not indexed to inflation, right Danny?
And what happens to a debt when the currency it’s denominated in is devaluated or depreciates?
“FDR did not default on the national debt by removing the gold standard.”
-Yes, he did.
“Those two things are not equivalent.”
-How so?
“Interest rates on US debt would instantly spike, and cost us trillions more in interest payments for at least a generation.”
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/bond-vigilantes-and-the-power-of-three/
[Note: the above link may be trolling].
“FDR did not default on the national debt by removing the gold standard. Those two things are not equivalent.”
Pretty close. Dollars were exchangeable for a fixed amount of gold. Before FDR took the U.S. off the gold standard, the U.S. owed foreign countries a specified amount of gold. After, we owed them a specified amount of paper money which we could choose to print if we felt like it.
If, according to you, the US does not have any debt, then why is Trump talking about renegotiating the debt that the US doesn’t have?
Even if you were correct about FDR, that doesn’t mean we can renegotiate debt like a business. We could do things like try to increase the nominal inflation rate to reduce the real burden of debt the government owes, but that’s different. The reason why we have low borrowing costs is because we don’t renegotiate debt and because global markets expect long term US-inflation to be low. If you get rid of those assumptions, borrowing costs go up, and prices for consumers go up as the dollar sinks. It doesn’t automatically make us Greece, but it moves us towards that direction, which has real costs.
Related: the Tax Policy Center notes that Trump’s tax and spending plan would massively balloon the deficit (I think more than Obama has, but I’d have to double check). Hillary’s would not as tax increases offset much of her less ambitious spending plan. I don’t want the state to get bigger, but Trump would add significant borrowing risk to the US fiscal situation.
Trump talked about a real change in American nuclear policy. Over a long enough time period, nuclear weapons may be inevitable, but there is global risk reduction if there are fewer nukes. Trump would purposefully increase that risk. Hillary would not.
Abortion: Republicans have normally said that if illegal, people performing the abortions should be prosecuted, not the women getting them. I’m concerned you think it’s normal that the pro-life position is lock up women who get abortions. Also, Trump assumed it should be illegal. This is not a great assumption.
If you are ok with the targeting of innocents because they are related to someone who is guilty, I assume this means you have rejected most of classical liberalism, John Locke, individual civil rights and liberties, and so on. Corruption of blood is unconstitutional for crimes of treason, bills of attainder are unconstitutional period, killing people with state action without due process is unconstitutional, killing innocent people on purpose falls under the 5th amendment prohibitions, but it’s also just considered a dick move in bird culture. Frankly, this position is un-American even if you’ve rejected classical liberalism as a philosophy. Of course, it’s also against the Geneva Conventions.
On libel laws, I guess if you’re not concerned about individual rights and classical liberalism then first amendment violations wouldn’t matter to you either. I thought the biggest reason to vote for Trump was to fight against the censorious overzealous PC left…but if he’s just vowing to replace it with another type of censorship, that defeats the whole purpose. All it would guarantee is that when the left gets voted back in, they’d now have the state helping them crush free speech too.
And I’ve got a lot more critiques, not just those. Not all of them are saying Clinton is better, again, I’m voting for Gary Johnson.
Trump’s bad assumption is just a sign of his late and/or fake coming to the anti-abortion camp; he never developed his memetic immune system. Someone unfamiliar with the standard positions would reasonably assume women seeking abortions would be punished because that’s kind of what it means for something to be illegal.
“but if he’s just vowing to replace it with another type of censorship, that defeats the whole purpose.”
-Trump’s stronger libel laws will almost certainly be only enforceable against those with institutional privilege. The Left has institutional privilege. Mere right-wing internet trolls don’t. BTW, the Clinton campaign has sent out an email implying Breitbart is not a site that has a right to exist. In the 1990s, Clinton spoke up about the impossibility of loving your country and hating your government simultaneously.
“Frankly, this position is un-American even if you’ve rejected classical liberalism as a philosophy.”
-No, it isn’t. Obama did it. I can only presume his successor will, also, no matter which gender they might be.
Gary Johnson, as shown by his Aleppo comments, is an ignoramus. He’s too ignorant to be president.
.
This sounds exactly like SJW reasoning. “It’s not real racism if it’s directed at the privileged class.”
And let met guess, “privilege” is defined as being inversely proportional to your agreement with Trump. It’s just trading one form of ideological tyranny with another.
And there’s the rub. Hegel must be masturbating furiously wherever he is, because this whole century has just been one dialectic after another.
“This sounds exactly like SJW reasoning. “It’s not real racism if it’s directed at the privileged class.””
-Yup.
“And let met guess, “privilege” is defined as being inversely proportional to your agreement with Trump. It’s just trading one form of ideological tyranny with another.”
-Nope. Fox News has institutional privilege, for instance.
What’s inherently wrong with imprisoning women who have abortions?
As mentioned below, that’s kind of what it means for something to be illegal, and it’s really the only morally serious approach to the problem. If abortion is homicide, then normally you punish everyone involved in a homicide, including the people who solicit the hitman and the ones that pay for them.
(For what it’s worth, abortion laws that punish the mother are not at all uncommon across modern Latin America).
@Corey
I don’t think it’s comforting that someone running for president is too incompetent to understand the positions of their own political group/tribe because they’re a newcomer. Lacking a fundamental understanding of American politics and making governing decisions extrapolating on that poor understanding seems like a terrible way to make policy.
@E. Harding
I explicitly concede that Hillary also wanted to shut off the internet, which at best makes them tied. But the Trump critiques on national debt, nuclear policy, and abortion are still pretty bad, and none apply to Hillary. There’s also an implication that Trump wasn’t just advocating bad policy, he didn’t really seem to realize he was advocating policies that often radically differed from the status quo and what sort of implications that would have. This leaves open the option that many other policies of Trump are radically new and undeveloped, but even he has not realized that yet, much less everyone else. His misunderstanding of a blind trust seems like a good example that surfaced pretty recently.
Johnson’s Aleppo comment was a single mistake in a months-long campaign that is now repeated because there are only a couple of mistakes he has made at all. Trump, on the other hand, has redefined how ignorant you can be while running for president. For demonstration, check out any of counters of his false statements. There is no comparison to Johnson because it’s impossible to remember all the factual mistakes Trump has made. Johnson’s can be counted on one hand.
On libel, I agree with @Fahundo, you are just asserting that Trump will only go after people with privilege with no support. If “privilege” just means “people who disagree with Trump”, that’s just admitting the accusation of censorship is true. Crushing free speech counts as failure no matter who crushes it.
Also, saying Trump’s policies are not un-American because Obama did them despite being clearly against the constitution, doesn’t really make sense, unless Obama is now the definition of what’s “American”. As Trump’s central tenet seems to be opposing Obama and declaring Trump is the basis of “American”, I think we can reject this premise. Of course, Obama didn’t target terrorists’ families; he did execute attacks that had collateral damage including family members, but under a congressional authorization of force, these have the potential to be legal. I don’t condone them, nor think they are legal, but targeting of innocent civilians on purpose will never be legal nor morally defensible under any circumstance.
Finally, let’s just add in here that it seems you have in fact conceded a rejection of individual civil liberties, natural rights, and classical liberalism. But…I don’t get the feeling that you’re a Moldbug follower either, and you actually seem to think the American experience was a positive one for the world, and you actually want to make America great again. Rejecting huge swaths of what America was built on, massively increasing government power and surrendering individual rights in order to restore American values looks like the biggest case of doublethink I’ve ever heard of.
Agreed!
“Agreed!”
-Same here. That’s why I oppose Gary Johnson.
To buttress this, consider just one of Trump’s many, many mistakes:
“[My sister is] a brilliant judge. He’s been criticizing — he’s been criticizing my sister for signing a certain bill. You know who else signed that bill? Justice Samuel Alito, a very conservative member of the Supreme Court, with my sister, signed that bill.”
Perhaps one of the best arguments for electing Trump despite his flaws is that you think he’ll make good judicial appointments. But here he doesn’t seem to understand what a judge does. The President signs bills, not the justices, and certainly not random Third Circuit judges. How is he supposed to make good judicial appointments if he doesn’t even know what their job duties are?
Johnson may slip when trying to remember random foreign cities, but I guarantee you he knows what each branch of the federal government is for. There are several incidents (this is just one!) which seem to suggest Trump doesn’t.
Johnson may slip when trying to remember random foreign cities
The point is that Aleppo is not a “random foreign city”. It kind of sort of involves your country’s dealings with allies and others in attempts to broker and sustain a cease-fire:
@Deiseach
I already pointed this out further down, (https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/#comment-416384) but because this comment is further up and easier for people to find, and because I think it’s important enough to be worth beating a dead horse on, but I think it’s safe to say that the Aleppo comment doesn’t give you any information, one way or the other, on how well Johnson does or doesn’t understand the situation in Syria.
It wasn’t about him not knowing what Aleppo was, it was about him not realizing the interviewer had suddenly shifted topics.
Sure, it’s certainly still an embarrassing gaffe, and might even call into question his ability to think on his feet in front of the media, (though, not much more than any other candidate’s embarrassing gaffes) but the way the media has blown it into something it is not is frankly reprehensible.
> Over a long enough time period, nuclear weapons may be inevitable, but there is global risk reduction if there are fewer nukes. Trump would purposefully increase that risk.
Isn’t this a kind of Pascal’s wager to avoid nuclear war? Why would the increase in risk be that big? Plus there seems to be a counterargument, which I think some folks here brought up, that Trump is less hostile to Russia than Clinton is. Russia is the big nuclear kahuna, so this may offset (although I doubt entirely) the risk from more nukes.
What Vorkon said. And I don’t even like Johnson. (See why I try to avoid political media? Gah.)
One of Hillary Clinton’s most popular campaign promises is to overturn Citizens United, the Supreme Court case that ruled the first amendment allows people to spend money to make a documentary criticizing Hillary Clinton.
This. If Hillary is elected, the First Amendment is done. We already have 4 Justices who believe banning books/movies is perfectly legal.
Would you care to rephrase that in the form of a wager?
Failing that, would you care to address the fact that you guys have been saying things like this about the second amendment for generations, and have been wrong 100% of the many, many times you’ve cried wolf?
@TheWorst
Who are “you guys”? Who are you and where do you come from? You seem to shelter your stereotype progressive views here like a cocoon, lashing out in evidence-free anger whenever that cocoon is penetrated.
No, because there are reasons why not to take wagers even for propositions that you legitimately believe have a positive expectation.
What an excellent critique of E. Harding! Given that almost everything in the comment section here consists of your tantrum at having someone point out that your nonsense is nonsense, this is a hilarious thing for you to say.
Did you mistake this for a safe space where your delicate fee-fees would never have to handle the terrible boundary violation of being contradicted when you have false beliefs?
If you can’t handle disagreement, it’s probably best to limit yourself to spaces without ideological diversity, and/or to become less wrong.
Trump is a terrible, terrible choice for President. No one is obligated to help you pretend otherwise.
@ Jiro
There’s also the far more common reason not to take a wager, which is that you don’t want to pay the tax on bullshit.
The far-more-likely answer tends to be the true one. Hoofbeats mean horse, not unicorn.
The most common reason not to take wagers is that people have a general policy of not taking wagers. It proves nothing about whether they think it’s bullshit.
Furthermore, pretty much all the reasons not to take wagers apply to wagers in general. That is about as common as you can get and disqualifies them from being unicorns.
Proves? Correct, it does not. The fact that this “policy” seems to exist most commonly (almost exclusively) in people saying things on the internet which they know to be untrue–and seems to be forgotten whenever they aren’t doing that–strongly suggests that a certain conclusion is likely.
This does not exist only on the Internet. It happens in real life. Most people don’t make bets. Try modelling other people better.
And to the extent it is more common on the Internet, it is so because people on the Internet are not friends and are trusted less. It does not mean that the statement is false.
The Citizens United case was about what the government can regulate within the bounds of the First Amendment. The Obama Administration’s Solicitor General’s office argued before the Supreme Court that the government could ban all books criticising the president. That is the logical conclusion of the current approach to campaign finance law.
I don’t see how anyone who wants to reverse the CU ruling can be counted worse for free speech than Trump. At least Trump will get push back from the justices appointed by his own party.
True. I assume we are saying she would try to pass a bill and get it before the Supreme Court, not try and pass a constitutional amendment (which would never clear the 2/3 majority in the House and Senate). Even that is unlikely given Republican Control of the House and Senate filibuster rules. I’m more concerned about Trump because I feel he would just prosecute people who criticize him without caring if it would be successful. Just using the power of the state to start criminal or civil suits with not chance of winning still puts huge financial burdens on the targeted party, chilling speech.
(Disclaimer: Hillary’s foreign policy scares the hell out of me, and is my primary although far from my only reason for voting SEP over democrat this election)
The government controlling Mosul, like the government controlling Baghdad, would very much disagree that Iraq is currently run by a “stable government without a civil war”.
The gov’t controlling Baghdad was stable when Bush left office. President Obama set out to change that, since the only think he hates more than American power and success, is a Republican success.
The surge worked. Obama and Hillary sabotaged the results out of spite.
It was “stable” in the sense that it was an ongoing sectarian insurgency and not open rule of Mosul and Hawija, but the factors which led to Iraq’s current situation were well underway. ISI never stopped fighting.
Despite some short-lived gains in Anbar which crumbled once Maliki broke all his promises to the local shiekhs and US troops left.
(And yes, US troops leaving when they did was in retrospect a tremendous mistake. But there’s plenty of blame for that to go around, both American and Iraqi.)
Sure, it never stopped existing as an organization that could conduct terrorist attacks, but it was subdued from December 2008 to April 2013. That’s a long time in the grand scheme of things.
Unlike Trump/Pence, I don’t think U.S. troops leaving was a mistake. I think it was a fundamentally good idea.
Given that Maliki’s government was a puppet state with a leader literally handpicked by the CIA, there is somewhat more blame to be laid at the feet of the American President.
2 Trillion dollars for 5 years of “subdued” civil war = important in the grand scheme?
>It was “stable” in the sense that it was an ongoing sectarian insurgency and not open rule of Mosul and Hawija,
This is demonstrably false.
>Despite some short-lived gains in Anbar which crumbled once Maliki broke all his promises to the local shiekhs and US troops left.
Gee, it’s almost like leaving american troops in iraq was a good idea!
>. But there’s plenty of blame for that to go around, both American and Iraqi.)
No, there’s only one american to blame for that decision, the president.
Unlike Trump/Pence, I don’t think U.S. troops leaving was a mistake. I think it was a fundamentally good idea.
E. Harding, from the start I said that Iraq would be America’s Ulster (and not, as some were regarding it, Vietnam redux).
Just as when the Troubles kicked off and the British government thought they could temporarily send over the Army to restore order, and instead there were forty years of upheaval, the same thing with the US forces: you can’t just say “job done” and pull out and leave the same old tribal divisions simmering away behind you.
Obama ran on a withdrawal. It was what the American people wanted. If you think that was the wrong choice, consider why it was made in the first place.
Didn’t know so many Americans were single-issue voters. Guess that explains why he got the historic numbers of black votes he did!
“Are you saying he benefited from his racial tribe belonging, racist?”
Bitch please, me and my family’s main reason for voting him is so we could finally have a black president (note:lily white here). Don’t pretend like that election was even as simple as just ‘issues’.
It’s more than just an issue. Obama’s entrance onto the public stage was his Oct. 2, 2002 anti-war speech. It was the main policy-based distinction between the two candidates in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign (arguably the only one besides the health insurance mandate). It was also specifically about Iraq, and can be contrasted to his repeated statements indicating that he did not feel the same way about Afghanistan and would continue the occupation there. Obama had about as a clear mandate for withdrawal as one could imagine, and while, yes, he could have gone against that promise (as he did with the health care mandate) you need to acknowledge, at the least, that he would have betrayed his constituents had he done so.
I’d also note that you’re putting words into my mouth that I didn’t say and wasn’t going to say. I don’t actually give a shit, because I generally don’t have high expectations of the sorts of people who blame the contemporary problems of Iraq [primarily] on Obama and generally am no stranger to straw-manned invective, but if you’re posting here I’d wager you have higher expectations for yourself.
He also ran against the individual mandate and for closing gitmo.
“It’s more than just an issue. Obama’s entrance onto the public stage was his Oct. 2, 2002 anti-war speech. It was the main policy-based distinction between the two candidates in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign (arguably the only one besides the health insurance mandate). It was also specifically about Iraq, and can be contrasted to his repeated statements indicating that he did not feel the same way about Afghanistan and would continue the occupation there. Obama had about as a clear mandate for withdrawal as one could imagine, and while, yes, he could have gone against that promise (as he did with the health care mandate) you need to acknowledge, at the least, that he would have betrayed his constituents had he done so.”
but the argument you’ve put forth is that this was the issue that put him over the top, that americans overwhelmingly decided they wanted, and that’s what we need to consider. if you instead consider that, say, 10% of his support came because Black (maybe even more? Record Numbers), maybe another 15% because Democrat, another 10% because Hope and Change, and another few percent on the backs of other shit, then the Iraq War becomes merely another straw breaking the camel’s back, and we will discuss that fruitful metaphor and people’s perceptions of it in a moment so be right back
“I’d also note that you’re putting words into my mouth that I didn’t say and wasn’t going to say.”
Sorry, that was meant as a generalised rebuttal to all readers because I didn’t feel like having to explain that receiving overwhelming black support more than any other president ever clearly confers some sort of Melanin Advantage
” I don’t actually give a shit, because I generally don’t have high expectations of the sorts of people who blame the contemporary problems of Iraq [primarily] on Obama ”
and now you’ve done the same thing, haven’t you? I haven’t said that it’s Obama’s fault, merely that you have made a false statement.
But now we return to the camel’s back. People (I don’t think you did this, by the way) psychologically have a tendency to overvalue the last straw that broke the camel’s back over all of the other heavier clumps of straw. (of course, sometimes it’s reasonable to blame that last straw, but not always.) In that sense, Obama certainly did put down a straw in the form of a bad decision. On the other hand, I have heard that it was actually Bush who set the plans to leave in 2009, and I have to say that if that really was the case, then it would be a tall order for Obama to stay. So I don’t really blame him for his decision; a small portion of blame is deserved to him for what has happened now, but a much larger one to any of George Bush or Dick Cheney or Shadowy Advisor Number 504 or you get the idea. (Generals, maybe?)
“and generally am no stranger to straw-manned invective, but if you’re posting here I’d wager you have higher expectations for yourself.”
glad I forgot I read this and only read it at the end. cool it with the haterade my dude.
“but the argument you’ve put forth is that this was the issue that put him over the top, that americans overwhelmingly decided they wanted, and that’s what we need to consider. ”
No, I didn’t say anything like that. Project Manager said “The surge worked. Obama and Hillary sabotaged the results out of spite.” I pointed out that he had a clear mandate to do what he did, implicitly making the point that Project Manager is nuts to reach for such an extreme explanation when a very simple and straightforward one was available. “Mandate” is not a synonym for “the only reason he won.”
People will get angry with you when you try to correct people based on a faulty personal definition in a thread that implicitly puts you on the same side as someone positing conspiracy theories about their enemies.
“No, I didn’t say anything like that. Project Manager said “The surge worked. Obama and Hillary sabotaged the results out of spite.” I pointed out that he had a clear mandate to do what he did, implicitly making the point that Project Manager is nuts to reach for such an extreme explanation when a very simple and straightforward one was available. “Mandate” is not a synonym for “the only reason he won.”
“Obama ran on a withdrawal. It was what the American people wanted. ”
it sounds to me like you’re arguing this was a very large reason he won when in reality it may or may not have been. But yes, it does seem as though I missed some context and project manager may need to re-evaluate his conclusion.
Untrue. Unnecessary. Wildly unkind.
Can we hold off on just repeating whatever wingnut nonsense you heard somewhere?
The things Protest Manager says are, with one exception, all true. And, really, “repeating whatever wingnut nonsense you heard somewhere?”? What’s a guy with your inability to even consider evidence doing in this thread?
When you get caught lying, repeating the lies doesn’t have the persuasive value you’re hoping.
That you’re now trying insults where the gish gallop failed is further proof that you know what you’re doing. If you had non-fraudulent evidence, you’d have presented it by now, and wouldn’t have diluted it with clouds of bullshit.
That’s because, as I have recognized since at least May 2014 and Trump has understood since at least a month ago, Obama created ISIS, almost certainly deliberately. When Obama came into office, Bush left it with a stable government without civil war.
“Obama created ISIS, almost certainly deliberately”
[citation needed]
This assumes a level of competence that Obama does not have. I do not think he foresaw the consequences in any of these revolutions and actually thought the Iran revolution was going to work.
Can you please explain Obama’s motivations for “almost certainly deliberately” creating ISIS? I’d love to hear the explanation of why he chose to mastermind this plan.
he wished to support terrorist groups fighting Assad; he cared not for who they were. Then they became ISIS.
A more interesting theory also is that Obama has Plans for the middle east, sort of in the same way Israel does – though where Israel just wants chaos (whether or not it actually ends up creating it, the fact that Israel wants chaos in the middle east is a totally uncontroversial statement, and as a gamer that’s the play i’d make every time as well), but Obama seems to want some type of weird order. I’ve heard that he wants Iran and Russia to sort of jointly take control of the shit. Point is that Obama is making moves and no one knows precisely why – he’s on some Reagan shit.
but anyways, regardless of all that, he armed and trained a group to fight Assad and then they turned on us. So, actually, still on his Reagan shit.
“he’s on some Reagan shit.”
-Yup. Obama deliberately created ISIS to
1. Overthrow Nouri al-Maliki: mission accomplished
2. Centralize anti-Syrian-government forces into a more effective fighting force under the twin umbrellas of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State [Obama has no intentions of overthrowing Assad, just greatly weakening the Axis of Resistance]: mission accomplished
3. Expand the dominions of the Kurds and solidify their dependence on the U.S.: mission being accomplished
No, Obama clearly does not want either Russia or Iran to sort of jointly take control of shit. He wants to bleed them dry.
BTW: my official explanation for my Trump endorsement and vote, written in December of last year:
https://marginalcounterrevolution.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/how-you-should-stop-worrying-and-learn-to-love-the-trump/
> all Scott’s reasons for voting Her are specious, disingenuous, and contain more than a hint of concern trolling.
Exactly, and it’s strange that he refuses to reply to your excellent post detailing all the errors he makes. Love your blog btw!
probably because roughly every second statement is simply false? It’s like responding to someone screaming that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.
Everything I said above is true.
You might up your game, speaking in terms of rhetoric or debate, if as well as claiming falsehoods in your opponent’s positions, you also dare to go as far as exposing one. But I’m quite prepared for a lecture on ‘the’ burden of proof instead…
I think you overestimate the chances that no one here knows what a gish gallop is.
@Matthew.
Come on, don’t be the “it’s suspicious he won’t reply guy”, especially while you’re also calling someone disingenous. There are other reasons for someone not replying than “the argument were so flawless that I can’t face the shame!”
Scott is usually very good at owning up when someone successfully put forth good arguments. There are currently 2176 comments on this post. Have you considered he maybe just doesn’t have the time?
“There might be a Libya-style military action; probably not an Iraq-style one.”
Which Iraq one? The signing into law of the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, the purpose of which was to “It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime” by supporting opposition groups, including with materiel for waging
warrevolution? Which was then invoked as justifying Operation Desert Fox, under Bill’s aegis? When Madeleine Albright was his Secretary of State – ah, I remember the days when she was being condemned as the Wicked Witch of the West for her war-mongering ways!Yes, we won’t see any more of that kind of contributing to destabilisation in the region actions under Hillary – unless of course it will give her a bump in the polls.
(I am intensely cynical about politicians and military actions; Maggie Thatcher had the Falklands War which she milked to political effect to offset the domestic criticism over her taking on the unions re: the coal mines; Reagan saw this and had his own go with the invasion of that mighty bastion of threat, Granada; the interference in Libya by all comers and the various dabblings in Iraq/the Persian Gulf by everyone which has resulted in the USA being stuck holding that baby – I have always said, from the outset, Iraq would be America’s Ulster, not Vietnam Part II. And the ‘Arab Spring’ in various nations which has had mixed results, to say the least.)
I’m not 100% this would be bad – maybe educated people who are temperamentally conservative would pull the Democratic Party a little to the right, turning them into a broad moderate coalition which has no problem winning elections and combines the smartest elements of liberal and conservative thought.
Except the Democratic Party has been busy purging itself of such undesirable elements; see the fate of the pro-life Dems (including people like Bob Casey Snr) who got very firmly put in their place and were told “our way or the highway, there’s no room for you in our shiny new Safe For Women party”. Though there are signs that they’re softening that stance a little, the Democrat candidate for the State Senate in Queens, S.J. Jung, got hammered by his own party for his anti-abortion stance (he’s also anti-gay marriage, so that didn’t help either, even if he is Korean):
Just to respond to one part of your post, I find it odd you use Bob Casey Sr as an example of a pro-life dem “purged” by the party when his also pro-life son is a currently serving democratic Senator. I don’t think it’s fair to equate the social left’s focus on ideological purity with the Democratic Party as an organization (hell, Harry Reid is a professed pro-lifer)
You seem somewhat fixated on the idea of Obama becoming a Supreme Court judge. What do you think the odds of that happening are (conditional on Clinton winning)?
It’s unlikely. If the Dems get back the Senate, it would be someone further to the Left. If the GOP keeps it, it would be someone further to the Right. Obama’s just used as an illustrative example.
Also, Obama has said he does not wish to do so, for what that’s worth.
What do you think ISIS is if not an Iraqi civil war left behind by the Iraq War?
As Trump said, and I pointed out below, Obama created ISIS (Clinton’s a co-founder). Had I known this, I would not have been as strong an advocate against Mitt Romney as I was in real life. Not that I like Mitt Romney. Far from it. ISIS wasn’t founded until April 2013. We should all have listened to Glenn Beck.
Presumably by the same reasoning Charlie Wilson created Al Qaeda. Would Reagan be the co-founder?
No, by his reasoning Reagan himself would be the founder of Al Qaeda.
Sounds like a complicated thing to do, to purposely create ISIS in a far-away country. You seem very sure of Obama doing it, so you must have a lot of proof, as well as be familiar with any contradicting arguments. By which methods did he pull it off? Which parts of the ISIS campaign do you think he planned and which parts came as a surprise to him? Has he benefitted a lot from the coming of ISIS?
He funded the opposition to Assad, have them training and arms. At the time they were an Al-Quada branch, now they are called Islamic State, DAESH, ISIL, or ISIS. And it was all made possible by the chaos in Iraq, Libya, and even Syria to a lesser extent.
@AnonEmous:
You do realize that there are anti-Assad rebels who are not Al Qaeda, ISIL, ISIS, or Daesh, right?
When Glenn Beck ranted about the Caliphate, I thought he was nuts.
But, shit, he was right. Crazy.
If Obama is both evil enough and omnipotent enough to create ISIS, how is it that you are still alive?
The vast, worldwide, omnipotent conspiracy you’re pretending to expose would prefer not to be exposed, and thus would’ve killed you. That’s a hell of a lot easier than creating ISIS, and a hell of a lot more useful to it.
“If Obama is both evil enough and omnipotent enough to create ISIS, how is it that you are still alive?”
-You truly are incapable of reasoning logically, aren’t you? You’re only capable of lashing out in non-sequiturs. How is Snowden still alive?
“The vast, worldwide, omnipotent conspiracy you’re pretending to expose would prefer not to be exposed, and thus would’ve killed you.”
-Guess what? Lyndon B. Johnson wasn’t charged with anything for lying about the circumstances leading to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He wasn’t even assassinated. Why would Johnson kill those pointing out the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin incident? He had no need.
Clapper also was never charged with perjury. Why? Because millions will defend whatever the establishment does.
Truly, your inability to get outside your Democrat bubble boggles the mind. You’re almost at Jill level.
Because Obama is neither omnipotent nor infinitely evil. I’m not sure why you think pointing out further evidence that you’re full of crap is helping you.
Since your hilarious conspiracy theory only makes sense given infinite power and infinite evil, you should probably avoid pointing out absolute proof that you are wrong.
Insulting the people on whom your gish gallop fails is probably also not going to convince anyone. But that’s not what you’re really trying to do here, is it? You’re just having a tantrum about your bubble being violated.
I don’t favour trump, but really TheWorst you are being rather hypocritical here, in offering insults yourself along with extremely poor arguments.
It is obviously not the case that creating ISIS requires either omnipotence or infinite evil. Consider the following possible timeline:
time 1:
Advisor: Assad is being a big meanie. We should support resistance groups and encourage them to cooperate.
Obama: Sure, go do that.
time 2:
Advisor: Some of the hardliner islamic groups we supported have formed a bigger group called ISIS.
Obama: I’m a bit uneasy about their hardliner tendencies, but hopefully this will be a positive development against Assad.
time 3:
Advisor: ISIS is being an even bigger meanie than Assad.
Obama: Gosh darn it, who could have foreseen such a thing?
Simon, that was likely exactly what happened. But you must realize, that being a Republican is all about bashing Democrats and using Mockem’s Razor to determine explanations of what Democrats do.
Politics today is all about bashing. People support Trump because of whom he bashes, not what he stands for. He stands for nothing and no one except his own self-aggrandizement, but no one cares about that.
Have you heard of Mockem’s Razor? It is the principle that the explanation that characterizes the enemy tribe’s politician as the most evil or stupid or weak or incompetent must be applied– regardless of how convoluted such explanation turns out to be.
Politics today is all about tribes, MY tribe good, YOUR tribe bad– with lists of rational reasons for this set out, through the use of Mockem’s Razor.
As a clever turn of phrase that can be used in serious discourse without fear of embarrassment, “Mockem’s Razor” is on the same level as “Osama Bin Hidin'”.
That civl war was “left behind” by President Barack Obama’s decision to pull the US out of Iraq after the surge stabilized it.
The Democrats voted for the Iraq War, then fought to make sure the US lost. It’s yet another reason why I will never vote for any Democrat.
So you would have liked an indefinitely long troop surge so as to maintain an indefinite period of stability?
Worked out OK in Japan. More seriously, when the alternative is “region goes to hell, is worse off than when we went there in the first place, and pulls us back in anyway, except now at a major disadvantage”, yeah, an indefinite troop presence looks pretty good.
Slight correction: an indefinitely long troop surge so as to maintain an indefinite period of stability after the instability was created via a military intervention launched by people who made opposition to nation building a fairly central plank of their campaign and loudly promised everyone that the intervention would be quick and easy.
This is the reason friends who have memories that reach back to the early aughties don’t let friends vote (R).
Sure, but once Obama was elected, “magically undo the invasion” wasn’t on the table. He had a choice between fighting for a deal that kept a troop presence, or not doing so, and he chose the latter because his supporters wanted the magical reset and he figured that was the next closest thing.
That seems like a 100% accurate description of reality to me. I guess I just don’t understand getting mad at Obama for carrying out his clear mandate, a mandate which was, in turn, a pretty direct result of the previous administration misleading the public (accidentally or otherwise)
herbert –
I was against the war in Iraq before it started, and against leaving after we had.
The US doesn’t get to destroy a country and then leave it to ruin because it’s politically inconvenient to remain.
So yes, I’ll blame Obama for his policies, and I think it’s entirely fair to do so. If the voters didn’t want to clean up Iraq, they shouldn’t have elected the people who voted to go there in the first place, and saying “Well, the voters wanted it” doesn’t really justify anything.
Elections have consequences.
But they didn’t want it, at least not in a truly informed way. Their support for the invasion was tainted by the misleading case for it.
Also, while I agree that Obama’s attempt to extend the occupation was little more than going through the motions, those motions constituted a tango requiring two participants. If the (more or less democratically elected) Iraqi gov’t had wanted us to stay, they could have at least forced Obama to come up with a better excuse. You’re blaming the executive for making a decision which the most important stakeholders wanted him to make.
Obama made a good political move at the expense of making the world worse. A good excuse for making the decision doesn’t make it a good decision. It certainly doesn’t mean I shouldn’t count it as a mark against the people that made the decision.
Isn’t that the argument against Trump? Sure, he’s popular, but he’s popular because he’s playing to our nasty base instincts, and if we give into those instincts it will make things worse. Well, Obama’s base instinctually hated the war in Iraq, and he gave into that in a way that made things bad. That to me is a reasonable thing to hold against his chosen successor that helped implement the policy.
And the rebuttal to that argument against Trump is that they’re mad for a good reason, and that in criticizing Trump you should at least acknowledge those underlying reasons and consider apportioning partial blame in an appropriate manner.
edit: The Republicans made a huge mess. Granting, for the sake of argument, that Democrats made the mess worse, I’m still going to object to anyone saying “this is why you should never vote for democrats!”
On contemplation, I realize part of why we probably disagree my personal refusal to accept Trump as a legitimate turn against the philosophies and ideas that led to the Iraq war. Inter alia, I think he’s too focused on terrorism and displays of strength to avoid the trap of 2002. If you were instead to take him at his word and buy into the idea that he’s an Iraq war critic or isolationist, then I suppose it would make sense to let the 2016 GOP at least a little off the hook
Bingo. One of many reasons friends don’t let friends vote “D.”
So in your opinion, GWB and Cheney–the people who decided that the US would commit too few troops, and therefore lose–were Democrats?
GWB and Cheney made a mistake. Then they fixed it, despite vocal and vigorous objections of Democrats. It worked. Obama and Biden took credit for it, then proceeded to royally screw it up.
Thank you for telling me about your fantasy life. That was not what I asked, though.
But what’s this about? What do you get out of pretending not to notice that Trump’s a disaster, and that Obama didn’t do anything you think he did? Conspiracy theorists fascinate me, in a way.
TheWorst, your comments are, IMHO, unhelpful.
E. Harding: Coming from you, that’s almost a compliment.
But I appreciate that this comment is the first one you’ve made here that didn’t contain any deliberate falsehoods. Good job. May this be the start of a trend of participating in good faith.
@TheWorst
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Do you mean the SOFA expiring? SOFAs get renegotiated all the time. That’s just how they work, and it’s not on Bush that Obama decided not to do so. It was well understood at the time of its passing that if the situation on the ground required it to be changed, it would be changed.
Moreover, we were in a position to say to Malaki, “screw your half-assed ‘government,’ we know you can’t handle this without us, we’re staying.” That’s kind of the prerogative of a conquering power. The optics might not have been good, but it would have prevented the rise of ISIS. It wouldn’t have come to that, though, because if we had pushed for it, we would have gotten it.
If you’re talking about something OTHER than the SOFA expiring, though, I don’t even know how to respond. You can’t seriously mean to be arguing that we “lost” because we needed to do the surge in the first place, are you?
If you were participating in good faith–and let’s be honest, you’re not–it would be worth pointing out that the surge was a gesture set up to create a temporary illusion of order in order to give us the political window to declare victory and leave.
It was only necessary because we’d lost the war, and we lost the war the instant Bush and Cheney decided to launch the war with too few troops and no plan whatsoever. Remember “Greeted as liberators?” I do.
I know you do, too, which is why it’s so obvious that you’re not participating in good faith.
Ah, so you have no idea what you are talking about. Got it.
You might have had an argument if you were talking about Bush and Cheney being the ones that set the withdrawal date on the SOFA, but you have no clue what you are talking about when it comes to the surge. Shifting your strategy to meet changing conditions on the ground is simply how military strategy WORKS. It’s clear you have never studied it.
I was in Iraq both before AND after the surge. That’s not what defeat looks like, in either case. The idea that it was just a PR stunt is laughable. The surge accomplished its objectives, and resulted in a situation peaceful enough that, if the advice of every competent general and strategist hadn’t been summarily ignored, and a small force had been left behind to help keep that peace, it could have lasted.
No one is arguing that the Iraq war was a good idea to begin with, and the Bush administration deserves plenty of blame for that. But the surge was the correct strategy for fixing that mistake, and it was subsequently wasted.
I find it quite funny that both HRC and Obama have used the term “surge” in favorable ways to describe their policies. The “Afghanistan surge”, the “intelligence surge”. There is no question these are allusions to the Iraq war surge.
>What do you think ISIS is if not an Iraqi civil war left behind by the Iraq War?
An outcome of the Syrian civil war, a conflict which the obama administration has repeatedly poured gasoline on, then lamented the burning.
“There might be a Libya-style military action; probably not an Iraq-style one.”
-I.e, a military action that creates an endless civil war after overthrowing a government without the approval of Congress, rather than one that leaves behind a stable government free of civil war with the approval of Congress.
Ok, honestly, you’re doing that thing anti-vaxers do where rather than saying 1 untrue thing that people can actually address you’re throwing out a giant document filled with factually untrue stuff so that whenever someone calls you on something there’s still a months worth of debunking in the rest of the bullshit.
So I’m just going to point to a very simple lie here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Civil_War_(2014%E2%80%93present)
Iraq is still having a civil war.
most of your post appears to be of a similar quality re: truth and correctness.
The present Iraqi Civil War started on Jan 3 2014 with the IS capture of Fallujah. Iraq had no civil war when Obama came into office. That’s why the title of the Wikipedia article you linked to says (2014-present). Please read at least the title of the article you link to next time, preferably before you link to it.
OK, so a recession is defined as at least two subsequent quarters of negative economic growth. Consider the following sequence:
Q4 growth: 4%
Q1 growth: -0.5%
Q2 growth -0.2%
Q3 growth: 0.2%
Q4 growth: -0.7%
Q1 growth: -1.1%
This is clearly two separate recessions, right?
Iraq was not in a state of civil war for seventeen quarters.
Conceded that the current civil war is much worse than the insurgency, and that the withdrawal of US troops is correlated in time with the transition. I hadn’t realized how stark the difference actually was.
The thing you describe is known as the Gish Gallop.
Thanks for this, I’ve always kind of been aware this was a thing but never knew there was a term for it.
It’s probably a good “dark art” to consider if you want win a verbal argument against an unprepared opponent.
I have no response to the content of the post, but I found the format hard to read, and gave up partway through.
Be specific.
I dislike the style of:
“Quote a single line out of context”
-Reply to the single line.
“Quote another line out of context”
-Reply to this other line.
I’m not accusing you of misrepresenting Scott’s claims or meanings, but I need my paragraphs. Obviously I’m not demanding you change the way you write to cater to me; I’m just giving a single point of feedback. If you receive similar comments, consider changing your style. If response is generally positive, it’s probably better thought of as my problem, not yours.
Agreed. I would much rather someone gave a paragraph explaining many points in detail.
The number one reason to format a post in this format is to counter gish-galloping. If gish-gallops work by making a mess quicker than a feasible cleanup, respond so rapidly that the mess never gets made.
If Rational Wiki is right about one thing (for once) it’s that gish-galloping cannot be magic-bullet’d away; what the wiki doesn’t say is that if a certain type of argument is highly persuasive and resilient, that means it works and you’d better just accept it as a fact of competetive discource.
I would strongly prefer to cultivate a forum where the discourse is not competitive – or, at the very least, where that type of argument is not as effective.
So long as you understand this means cultivating a forum where no-one disagrees, fair enough.
Use the blockquote feature to reply to quoted sections.
[blockquote]This is what a quote looks like[/blockquote]
(With the square brackets replaced by angle brackets)
It’s nicely offset, and my response is clearly distinct.
Or just hit the “quote” formatting button right under the reply box. If you select text first it’ll wrap that text. (Requires you not to have disabled JavaScript, of course, like the rest of the quality-of-life features of the comment system.)
I do this on occasion. Quotation marks are quicker.
Not posting at all will result in nobody reading my wisdom.
It’d be even quicker not to post at all. If no one is going to read it because it is a pain in the ass to follow, then what’s the point?
>The establishment, fundamentally, is millennialist.
So we should destroy it and hope the global spirit gives us a new one? Hmm.
no, we should destroy it and hope Donald Trump gives us a new one, because he’s said he will.
oh, and large parts of the establishment, like our regulatory systems, are pretty useless anyhow. I don’t care if the Global Spirit doesn’t find a replacement for them. Not that it’d be difficult to, I can’t imagine it’s hard to build a regulatory system as such.
> I can’t imagine it’s hard to build a regulatory system as such
If you want to reduce the degree to which your regulatory system is subject to capture and general cronyism, I think we have a lot of evidence it’s not super easy at least.
OK but that’s already the current system. My point being that, if Trump smashes the regulatory system and the Great Global Spirit fails to provide, as I was apparently hoping for, then it shouldn’t be hard to find a replacement.
Just a note on your technique.
Implying that it’s objectively a positive thing for someone to “be a member of the party of Lincoln” makes me call into question any part of your ideas that depend on your own judgment, as opposed to depending on verifiable facts.
Don’t worry; I’m not a fan of Lincoln. In fact, I didn’t even support the nominee of his party in 2012. Also, I said “Nominee of the Party of Lincoln”.
The obvious, obvious gish gallop is another excellent reason to question every part of his ideas. If he had any reasons for his beliefs that weren’t demonstrably false, he would doubtless have presented those instead.
Actually, he wouldn’t. He says what would have better result for his poll (and ultimately election) numbers, which may or may not be true. He will gladly say outrageous things to signal his supporters and attract press coverage. That doesn’t say anything about his beliefs – he will say completely opposite thing next day. If you want to know what he really believes in, look for his old actions and sayings, his campaign speeches are useless for it.
If you’re sane, the fact that you’re pointing out excellent evidence why Trump should never, ever be allowed anywhere near the presidency will have had an impact on your beliefs.
I wasn’t talking about Trump, though. I was pointing out that E. Harding’s use of the gish gallop is strong evidence that he can’t think of anything that supports his position and is also true.
Non-morons with access to good evidence tend to use it. People attempting to baffle the audience by sheer volume of bullshit aren’t those people.
@TheWorst
-Nobody has yet named a single statement in the first comment on this blogpost that is even remotely wrong. Your lack of specifics strongly indicates inability to wrangle with new ideas and cognitive dissonance. Come on. Just name one false statement I made anywhere in my first comment here.
“If you’re sane, the fact that you’re pointing out excellent evidence why Trump should never, ever be allowed anywhere near the presidency will have had an impact on your beliefs.”
-“If you’re sane, the fact that you’re pointing out excellent evidence why Catholics should never, ever be allowed near the presidency will have had an impact on your beliefs”.
-Just because somebody made a case for something does not mean it has even the remotest legitimacy.
“Non-morons with access to good evidence tend to use it.”
-I did. TheWorst, name one bit of evidence that would change your mind about the utility of voting for Trump.
Scroll up and pick one. Given that you’re attempting the gish gallop, I see no particular reason to entertain your isolated demand for rigor.
Lying about your previous lies works very poorly in a text medium, fyi. Lying, then lying, then insisting that your previous lies didn’t happen is a strategy best used when the people you’re attempting to deceive can’t scroll up.
Anything suggesting that Trump would be a better choice than Hillary. Anything at all. Any fact that even hinted that any of your claims was true. Note that I mean facts, not just asserting that Hillary is a lizardperson. To be honest, I’m kind of predisposed to suspect her of lizardpersonry, but she’s probably the single most-investigated living human at this point, and the fact that all of the allegations you guys have made turned out to be specious presents a very strong prior that all of the new ones you make will be too.
Basically, stop crying wolf. Point to the damn wolf. If you can’t, consider admitting that there’s no wolf, and updating your beliefs accordingly.
Dude, I’m sympathetic to arguments against E. Harding, but you really need to stop making an Argument By The Invocation Of The Phrase Gish Gallop. His original comment was a point-by-point response to the original post. Pretty trivially, it has fewer points than the original post by Scott. The natural conclusion of your own argument is that Scott attempted a gish gallop. Since I don’t think you intend to make such an accusation, you need to stop.
Yes, I’m aware that the people making gish gallops would prefer the audience to attempt to debunk each individual false assertion, since it’s very easy to lie faster than anyone can debunk a lie. And then they’d prefer to pretend that as long as you haven’t finished debunking their endless stream of bullshit, they still have a valid point.
Rather than get on the idiot-treadmill, it’s more efficient to just identify the gish gallop as what it is, and move on, because no one who could be making a point uses that tactic instead.
After years of being called bigots many conservatives don’t care.
I must have a fast reaction time. After just months of being called a “cuckservative,” I no longer care.
PS: We’re used to being called names.
Maybe Aaronson deserves to one day live in a nuclear hellscape where his children ask him “Daddy, why were you stupid enough to vote for the woman who threatened to go to war with Russia over rumours they hacked her email?”
Just not an opposition that, you know, ever dares to oppose anything you’re trying to push.
Really? They don’t just spend 8 years fellating their saviour and giving him Nobel peace prizes for attendance? And focus all their considerable vitriol on the plebs they consider to be scum beneath their boots, rather than attack anyone involved in the administration?
I just hope you’ll be able to look back at this in a decade and laugh at yourself as much as I’m laughing now.
I know a lot of leftists who don’t like Obama, but I didn’t say the infighting was about him in particular. I think Hillary vs. Sanders is a good example.
“A lot of infighting” that doesn’t include Obama is not a lot of infighting. At least it’s not enough to actually weaken the left. Obama worship is far more a unifying factor for the left than Hillary vs. Sanders is a factor in the opposite direction.
Hillary vs Sanders is a very good example, but that’s also the kind of party in-fighting which is par for the course in any political party.
It’s no secret Hillary is ambitious and wants the job; she ran against Obama (and though I think he should have taken her on as Vice-President, he was smarter and knew she would be tussling with him for power to make decisions and give that position some teeth if he did, so it was easier to pick someone like Biden and gamble that he could fight Hillary) and there was plenty of Obama vs Hillary in-fighting, with her lack of support being put down to how she had enemies in the party and had garnered a lot of dislike for various reasons.
Hillary is not going to be a popular choice by any means, more of a “the lesser of two evils”. I don’t think anyone is going to be enthused by the prospect of President Hillary, and I wonder who the likely candidate for the 2020 election is going to be?
Look at the Republicans – the only reason Trump is the candidate is that they failed to pick one and stick with him out of the bunch that put themselves forward; Jeb Bush probably should not have run at all since that really, I think, handicapped the party – nobody wanted to put forward a third Bush for president as that would have been rather too nakedly dynastic politics (which is fine at lower levels but not at this position), but who did they have instead? Cruz appears to be poison, and of the others Carson was a no-hoper, Rubio was Romney-esque bland, and Kasich and Gilmore were “who?”. I think Rubio was probably the best choice out of that lot (which isn’t saying much) and maybe he’d have been able to put it up to Hillary; certainly, had he been the Republican candidate, I think the Democrats would have split much more badly on Hillary versus Bernie because they’d have the luxury of thinking “we can win this, so our preferred guy can win, and I don’t want the other guy from our party”.
As it is, you have either Trump or Hillary, neither of whom would appeal to me.
“I think Rubio was probably the best choice out of that lot (which isn’t saying much)”
-He was, in fact, the second-worst, if we dip our toes the slightest bit into foreign policy.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-2016-foreign-policy-report-card/
There’s a reason Trump won nearly as many votes as Clinton during the Florida primary and Rubio only won Miami-Dade. Rubio is what most scares me about the general tendencies of the preferences of the college-educated these days.
Don’t vote for bought robots, people. They can rehearse their canned lines, but the line their fed may is usually a disaster.
After a term of Obama we got the modern social justice cult. They defined themselves in opposition to the government via the 40 Stalins route.
Trump wins – the Left knows they’ve lost the center and needs to reform, that the tidal wave of nagging bullshit is counterproductive. The Right is forced to acknowledge their base doesn’t want unlimited immigration, pointless wars, and hand-wringing over non-issues like gay marriage.
Hillary wins – the center moves left and the far-left drifts even further, and the right is recowed into silence over touchy subjects like immigration.
There’s a chart somewhere showing the opposite process for extreme rightists; the militia movement consistently gets stronger under left wing Presidents and then declines in numbers under conservative Presidents.
Asymmetry?
I’d like to see that chart.
This graph only shows the median, but it seems to show both parties drifting left during Clinton’s terms, the Right moving back right during GWB, and then both sides becoming more extreme during Obama’s terms (the Left more so, by a hair).
Incidentally you can almost pinpoint the SJ singularity event in that graph, right around 2011.
Since the right is broadly reactive and the Left is revolutionary, you would expect polarization when the Left is in power. Since the Left can start to implement the revolution, and the Right would need to start building its bunkers to fight it. The reverse is not necessarily the case.
@mjg235
Can you explain what you mean by the start of the revolution? The Social Justice movement, something Obama implemented, or something else?
@anonmoose Very cool chart! I wish there were a line for the median of the public as a whole. I wonder whether we might be experiencing Simpson’s paradox during the first Bush term: Both parties move left but the country moves right because of people switching allegiance from Democrat to Republican.
I broadly agree with this; it stands to a certain sort of reason that the status quo-positive, reactionary conservatives would stand for a cooling of, well, stances, and a peaceable moderation in politics. The fierier, zealous revolutionary (radicalising even!) liberales would in turn incense, feed disagreements and engorge ideological clashes.
The (repeated) failure of communism is always blamed on its victims.
I don’t buy the argument that, if you hate SJW-type stuff and think they go too far, then electing a president who parrots their rhetoric and is vaguely sympathetic to their causes and who will appoint Supreme Court justices sympathetic to their causes and their rhetoric will, in the long run, be better for you than electing a president who makes fun of their rhetoric, isn’t really sympathetic to their causes, and appoints Supreme Court justices who aren’t sympathetic to their way of thinking.
Straw men are still pretty powerful when they’re the president.
I’m coming at this from a position of being more against SJ tactics than SJ positions. I’m glad gay marriage is legal now. I’m not so happy people who oppose gay marriage have been ridden out of town on a rail.
That makes the choice easy for me, but I think even principled conservatives will be more interested in preserving the ability to think freely about gay marriage than about preventing actual gays from actually marrying – especially since the latter is likely to be a short term victory at best.
Do you want it to be made illegal for states to ban affirmative action? Hillary does.
Is that relevant at all? Even the most far right wing states never consider banning affirmative action. It’s the law or universal practice in all 50 states and has been without any kind of challenge for over 40 years.
Schuette v. BAMN is literally in the state Scott and I live in.
Affirmative Action was banned for public institutions in California way back in 1996 with an amendment that remains in force. Hardly the most right wing state, and hardly “without any kind of challenge”!
Michigan did the same in 2006, and their ban was ruled constitutional by a 6-2 vote in the US Supreme Court. These are not the only two states with similar laws.
To be fair, even though that law’s on the books, most CA institutions find ways to actually do affirmative action, just without calling it that or making it obvious that they are. Even though I’m against affirmative action on an object level, from a procedural standpoint I’m not happy with laws that are so out-of-step with the cultural/social views of the group being regulated that people just start ignoring it.
Time to crawl out of your bubble.
California, Florida, and Washington all ban affirmative action for college admissions. The Supreme has heard multiple cases on affirmative action just in the last 4 years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-reverses-decision-that-tossed-out-michigans-ban-on-racial-preferences/2014/04/22/44177ad6-9d8f-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html
Only 28% favor affirmative action in college admissions.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/163655/reject-considering-race-college-admissions.aspx
Of course it depends on how you ask the question…
http://www.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/169358/americans-race-factor-college-admissions.aspx
Several states have been forced by citizen initiative to publish rules against affirmative action racial preferences.
Publishing rules doesn’t put them into practice. The state universities and hiring and contracting agencies in those states still apply AA the same as they did before. Sometimes there are fabricated new reasons or the policies are hidden, but the practice is the same.
You can’t depend on bureaucratic judgement—as you must in hiring and university admissions—and then tell the bureaucrats to go against what they deeply believe. And you certainly can’t do so when the bosses of the bureaucrats in the state government believe just as fervently as they do and would punish any state employees that followed the published law.
I think even principled conservatives will be more interested in preserving the ability to think freely about gay marriage than about preventing actual gays from actually marrying
I think many conservatives perceive a millenarianist strain in the current establishment, as E. Harding noted above, and believe that leaving the courts in the hands of the current establishment is a gamble. While many are pleased with the Obergefell result, I’ve read convincing arguments that the Obergefell decision may end up having fairly serious consequences for religious freedom and speech related to religious freedom. And respected legal scholars have argued that the bar to legalized polygamy is much lower now – this is a large potential societal change, even for those not in opposition on the merits. Other lesser-known recent court decisions had a fairly radical strain – Maryland v King comes to mind on the compulsion to provide evidence against oneself. The conservative focus on the courts is not strange when you consider conservative priorities, and the fact that these priorities are often expressed in terms of the (generally stricter and more originalist) conservative stance on constitution.
I don’t think conservatives have any expectation that voting for the “status quo” candidate Hillary Clinton will preserve their ability to think freely even if they lose on the particulars on gay marriage, or any other issue in the SJW orbit. The #NeverTrump contingent is weighing their expected loss in freedom of speech, religious practice, and right to bear arms against a perceived increased potential for existential danger associated with Trump. It is an extremely pessimistic calculation. Those who believe that Trump does not pose a danger to world security are much more likely to support Trump, with varying levels of enthusiasm.
And respected legal scholars have argued that the bar to legalized polygamy is much lower now – this is a large potential societal change, even for those not in opposition on the merits.
Sure. If gender doesn’t matter a straw when it comes to marriage, why should an arbitrary number? Why confine it to only two partners in a loving, committed, family relationship instead of three, sixteen or whatever? Plenty of other cultures have models of socially acceptable more-than-two-partners marriages or family relationship bonds that have persisted for centuries in a workable fashion, and there’s more solid Biblical backing for that than the “Naomi and Ruth were lesbians!” stuff I saw quoted as to why Christians should be pro-same sex marriage.
There are, however, limits. According to Maimonides–I’m reading The Book of Women at the moment–a man shouldn’t marry more than four wives. Legally permitted but disapproved of, because that’s the maximum number with whom he can be confident of managing sex at least once a month with each.
On the other hand, he also says that a healthy young man with plenty of leisure ought to have sex with his wife every night, from which it seems to follow that such a man is entitled to up to 28 wives. Obviously Maimonides is thinking of the scholar whose studies only let him make love once a week.
Now I’m wondering if the four wife limit in Muslim law was something Mohamed borrowed from Jewish law/tradition.
principled conservatives will be more interested in preserving the ability to think freely about gay marriage than about preventing actual gays from actually marrying
And how has “thinking freely about inter-racial marriage” worked out, now that everyone knows that being anti-inter-racial marriage means you are a KKK-style white supremacist racist? I think that opposition to inter-racial marriage is wrong, but never mind that – if anyone tried constructing an argument versus inter-racial marriage, would they get a polite hearing or would they be crucified? Same for anyone trying to discuss a position that is anti-gay marriage – you are not going to get “safe conversational space” for this, you are going to be pilloried as a homophobe (get back in that basket, you deplorable!) And how are homophobes ranked on Hillary’s List Of My Most Favourite People, remind me again?
There’s a fundamental problem, which is that about 30% of the US population is Borderers who are mostly not very smart, mostly not involved in US intellectual life, but form the biggest and most solid voting bloc in the country.
*sigh* Yes, isn’t it horrible having to share a country with oiks what are not smart like we is and won’t be told by their betters what to do? I know that’s not your meaning, Scott, but it comes perilously close to sounding like it 🙂
@Deiseach
Not to get all savior-complex in here, but it strikes me that the principle reason for oppose gay-marriage in general is in worldviews and epistemological based in part or in whole in theistic or religious thinking, and which take religious thinking seriously, and that sort of approach to the world is already held in contempt by many of the shiny happy college-educated people millennials these days. Those of us who have such sympathies with religious thinking should, at this point, cut our losses and just try to protect our right to enforce traditional church doctrine (or other religious doctrines) on the matter (and others), whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, or in the synagogue or mosque.
But Brad, that surrenders the very point: that the only reason to oppose gay marriage is religiously-based, that no-one could possibly oppose it on secular grounds or for reasons of concern that were not to do with “My faith disapproves”.
I’ve seen the same when someone was pro-life and not religious, and got attacked by fellow atheists as a traitor because obviously the only reason anyone could be anti-choice was for religious reasons.
If we give in on “there are non-religious concerns over this huge social and cultural change”, then there is no point in trying to maintain conservatism, since the liberal opinion is by default the realistic or natural or what’s really out there in the world one: we’ve conceded we’re not the “reality-based community”.
Do you really want to throw your hands up and say “Yep, you’re right, I’m only disagreeing with this because I’m a stupid, prejudiced, bigot”?
See the posts here.
Defense is not possible under the current conditions.
I’m coming at it from thinking they’ve already gone too far on most issues and show no signs of slowing down, gay marriage being an exception (in that it was just).
And now that they’ve gotten more of what they wanted, have their tactics gotten better or worse? Yes, the US has a strong tradition of freedom of speech, but it’s already clearly being eroded, as it already is gone in places like Australia. Electing HRC takes us strongly in the direction of Europe and Australia on these things, and I certainly don’t see how an HRC presidency would better preserve freedom of speech than a Trump presidency. She seems much, much more likely to appoint justices willing to abrogate that in favor of SJ causes than he is.
Gay Marriage has not been an SJ issue for a long time, on the order of decades. SJ means tolerating ruthless motte-and-bailey exploitation of the word “rape” as a harmless, amusing novelty, and not something terribly sexist.
What you’ve got to understand is that the gay marriage crowd never had to stoop to such horrible tactics. Because they were right. The truth only needs to be out. Lies, by contrast, necessitate bullying, and so the SJ crowd lies and harangues.
I doubt many who consider themselves SJ-aligned would agree with your definition, but moving past that… I agree that sodomy laws shouldn’t exist, and that gay marriage should be legal.
I’m part of a conservative christian church. Should we be able to discriminate against practicing homosexuals in hiring? In use of our facilities?
My church has christian primary schools, high schools and universities associated with it that operate according to its moral rules. Should those universities be able to discriminate against practicing homosexuals? The students attending those universities have to agree to a student conduct policy that requires them to abstain from sex outside of wedlock while attending the school, on pain of expulsion. Are they required to recognize gay marriage as valid?
Should any of the above be tax-exempt, as they currently are?
I appreciate that a great many people see views like those of my church as ugly and hateful. I myself wish my religion didn’t prohibit homosexuality, but it does, and I have actually committed to following it as best I can, because I genuinely believe that’s the right thing to do. We have actually been here a long time, and have roots in this country going back a long, long way. How much of that is going to have to be torn down, and what value is created in doing so?
At some point, actual diversity means putting up with things you really don’t like. Where does that apply to us?
When people actually get serious about genital mutilation for male infants, are you going to go after the Jews too?
Let’s hope. I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be allowing that kind of thing even for religious reasons.
…Why is diversity valuable again?
Holy gibberish, yes. Non-consensual mutilation, especially genital and via extremely backward methods, is horrifying, and the risk of disease and defect is overally increased to boot.
You may well be telling the truth, but the thing is there weren’t too many christian voices saying the first part when they were live issues. So this just looks like a fighting retreat rather than a principled line drawing exercise.
@FacelessCraven:
In response to your request from the other thread…I’ll respond to these here but will likely respond to your other points in the open thread so it doesn’t get mixed up.
1. I do not think you should be able to discriminate against practicing homosexuals, although I might be willing to fudge that a little depending upon what you mean by “use of facilities.” I certainly think you should not discriminate in hiring.
2. The universities should admit practicing homosexuals; however, they should be held to the same standard of conduct as everyone else.
3. Are the students required to recognize gay marriage as valid? No, they can think whatever they’d like.
4. I’m areligious and I sort of dislike the tax exemption for religious institutions. That said, religious institutions also fund lots of other useful social services, such as schools, hospitals and charities. So, for that reason, I’ll endorse the tax exemption for your church, if weakly.
5. I’m not really sure how much of it needs to be torn down, if anything, and I’m sort of unsure of how to answer this question. So here I’ll just put my operating principle on these things: you are not allowed to discriminate. You are, however, allowed to condemn homosexuality in your doctrine and speak out against it if you wish. In practice, this may mean that few, if any, gay people will opt to use your church’s facilities and services and/or belong to the church, and that’s fine. But you can’t discriminate against them in hiring; if you run hospitals you have to give them the same medical care as everyone else, etc.
6. I think I pretty much answered that in #5.
7. I do not have an opinion on this and would be inclined to defer to medical experts in formulating one.
@Anonymous – “You may well be telling the truth, but the thing is there weren’t too many christian voices saying the first part when they were live issues. So this just looks like a fighting retreat rather than a principled line drawing exercise.”
Be that as it may, we lost and you won. Now we have to find a stable set of rules that we can all live under. What we have currently isn’t stable, hence the questions.
@neonwattagelimit – thanks for taking the time.
“I certainly think you should not discriminate in hiring.”
…Does that include hiring preachers? Regarding facilities, should we be compelled to perform same-sex marriages?
“Are the students required to recognize gay marriage as valid? No, they can think whatever they’d like.”
Apologies for being unclear. There are policies against fornication by students. Heterosexual students can obviously get married. Is the university required to recognize gay marriages in its student population as well?
“I do not have an opinion on this and would be inclined to defer to medical experts in formulating one.”
I don’t really see what medical experts have to do with it. I’m not jewish, and I rather would have prefered to keep my foreskin, all things considered. Genital mutilation is pretty clearly genital mutilation. On the other hand, it seems to me that communities should be free to play by their own rules as much as possible, which obviously includes how to shape and raise their children. Enlightened moderns deciding how best to raise outgroup children makes for some of our ugliest history. I think tolerating practices I do not myself want is a stable position. Banning practices that fall outside a rigidly defined code is also a stable position. It’s hard to paint as “tolerant” or “diverse”, though.
Generally speaking, it seems much the same to me with religion. The whole point of diversity was supposed to be that people are different, and those difference should be tolerated. If pursuit of diversity leads to a position where basic religious belief and practice are banned, what was the point in the first place?
There are tens of millions of Christians in America who actually believe that homosexuality is wrong. How much of their culture are you willing to dismantle to minimize the harm they do to homosexuals? How much room are you going to leave them to stand on their beliefs?
@FacelessCraven:
There are tens of millions of Christians in America who actually believe that homosexuality is wrong. How much of their culture are you willing to dismantle to minimize the harm they do to homosexuals? How much room are you going to leave them to stand on their beliefs?
I’m starting here because you have correctly pointed out some difficulties with my position, so I think it would be helpful to articulate first principles. I’ll also try to cover some of your comments from the open thread, rather than replying there.
Anyway, my answer to this question would go something like: I don’t think the government should compel them to give up their beliefs. I think the government should compel them to avoid doing material harm to homosexuals as much as possible.
However – and please note that I do not mean this as a personal insult – I think those people are wrong. I do not think they should be humiliated. However, if the Overton Window shifts to such an extent that their views are no longer acceptable, I’m fine with that.
I do think the way in which the Overton Window shifts is important. We should err on the side of being respectful and gracious. For example, I thought the hate directed at that pizza shop owner in Indiana who said s/he wouldn’t serve a gay wedding was a bit overmuch. But, I’d be fine with people trying to change the ideology of, say, your church. A church has power and resources; a random shop owner does not.
To bring this back to the election…
They have no allies, no bargaining position, nothing to negotiate with. They are looking at a future of pure tribal politics, and they’re the minority tribe. What’s the rational response at that point?
Good question. I really do not have a dog in this fight. I tried to make this clear in the open thread, but inasmuch as I may have an issue with SJ types it is more, to borrow Scott’s formulation upthread, about tactics rather than positions. So I just don’t view this as a threat in the same way that you do.
With that said, I’ll take a stab at answering.
Ideally, the rational response is to shift emphasis with an eye towards moving public opinion back in the other direction. Maybe compromise on a few things. Develop an actual, workable, plan for what happens in the future in accordance with your principles. You noted in the open thread that the Republican Party has become worse than useless; I agree. Make it useful again! I lean left, but would welcome a sane right-of-center party, in fact I think we need one.
You (and here I mean ‘you’ in a general sense, not necessarily you specifically) could also, I suppose, throw your support behind a demagogue who plays to your prejudices but doesn’t really give a shit about you. This might be rational in a very limited sense – nothing else worked, so let’s give it to ’em! – but in the long-run it’s a terrible strategy. What happens from here? You either a) lose, marginalizing yourselves even further, or b) win, in which case…I don’t know. Best-case scenario, you’ve aligned yourself with the American Silvio Berlusconi. Worst-case, you’ve dragged the whole world down with you in the electoral equivalent of a hissy fit. Neither outcome, or anything in between, seems very appealing to me, even from your point of view.
What’s worse, it’s not even clear that Trump shares your priorities. He certainly doesn’t care about religion. Inasmuch as he may agree with you on social issues (and, again, it’s not clear that he does at all), he only appears to do in the most superficial possible way, like some some sort of caricature of what your opponents imagine you to be. He is literally a walking embodiment of everything the left hates about you, void of any redeeming qualities or thoughtfulness. He’s not going to do much to help you, because he probably doesn’t care and he also probably lacks competence. In the short-run it might be psychically satisfying to see him sticking his finger in your opponents’ faces, in the long run it is hard for me to envision a scenario in which he does not hasten your demise, one way or another.
This is a nicely articulated paragraph of nothing. There is no chance of “moving public opinion back in the other direction” on most issues — imagine where most conservative stances on immigration will be after the 11 million illegals already in the country are legalized and millions more keep pouring in over the decades to come. The vast majority of immigrants and minorities will not vote for small government policies or any of the “less objectionable conservative stances” associated with the Republican Party. The Chairman of the Civil Rights Commission has literally said “religious freedom” is a codeword for “Christian supremacy”; they are not going to be content with businesses, eventually they’re going to go after the churches too. There will inevitably come a point where the left pushes for churches to have their tax-exempt status stripped or some other punishment inflicted for not allowing gay marriages on their premises. And as the country diversifies, is the problem of tribalism working its way throughout society, culture and law supposed to get better?
As has been reiterated several times in this long maze of comments, including in direct replies to Scott, a lot of liberals who talk about the need for a “responsible right-wing platform” have never and will never consider voting Republican under any circumstances; these comments are essentially concern trolling from people who are fine with a conservative opposition so long as it never actually wins anything and conservative policies on major issues never stand a chance of becoming law. Well, given that the Republican Party will either die or become Democratic-lite, you’ve got your wish. You’ve won, I don’t know why you bother with this charade. Crowing about it would be far more honest.
@Sandy:
1. So it sounds to me like you are arguing that, essentially, the right has no chance of winning elections in a small-d democratic process. I do not agree with this.* However, if this is what you believe: what’s your solution then?
2. I have voted Republican in state and local elections in New York. I was a child at the time, but in retrospect I probably would have voted for H.W. Bush in 1992.
*Republicans control both houses of Congress and and a majority of governorships. Evidently, they are still capable of winning elections.
Also, there are fewer illegal immigrants in the U.S. today than there were in 2007.
The problem, which you and the Pew Research Center are pointedly ignoring, is that the children of illegal immigrants are considered US citizens.
If the population of illegal immigrants stablizes, then the population of illegal immigrants and their descendants is steadily increasing.
That is a problem. We already have tens of millions of people here who never should have been, and leaving the status quo alone that number will only continue to grow over time. Even as the native population contracts.
Ending birthright citizenship and deporting all current illegal immigrants is a first step to seriously correcting that problem.
@neonwattagelimit:
I have no solution. There is no solution. The left’s victory and utter dominance of American politics are inevitable. I do not think this is a good thing, but it cannot be stopped. I am just naturally averse to quietly rolling over. I have no illusions about what kind of candidate Trump is. I do not think he would make a good President. At best, he is the last chance I have to spit in the other side’s eye before they wipe away the flecks and take over everything.
As have I. Interesting though, how the New York Republican Party studiously avoids getting entangled in social issues, or takes the common Democratic stance on them. Not surprising, considering this is the party branch of Fiorella LaGuardia and Nelson Rockefeller, but you’re shit out of luck here if you have higher terminal values than money.
Right, the midterm elections that Republicans win because the ethnic coalition the Democrats rely on can’t be bothered to vote as often as the old, dying-off whites that the Republicans rely on. Literally the only reason Rick Scott became governor of Florida when no one expected it was because Latino turnout dropped. There’s something to be said for a steady collapse of civic sensibilities in this manner, but the Democrats aren’t going to say it out loud.
Oh, yippee. There were 12 million illegals in 2007 and now there are 11 million in 2016. What a radical, game-changing difference.
Does that change the fact that Mexico and Central America are perpetually one failed government away from a new exodus into the United States?
“You may well be telling the truth, but the thing is there weren’t too many christian voices saying the first part when they were live issues.”
I can’t speak to Christian voices, not being a Christian, but it’s been the conventional libertarian position as long as there has been such a position, and mine through my adult life. Freedom means both that gays are free to have consensual sex with each other and that people who disapprove of it are free to avoid associating with them.
One of the reasons that lots of libertarians are unhappy with Gary Johnson this campaign is that he wasn’t willing to stand up for the second half of that.
Somehow what seems to me the obvious and desirable meaning of freedom has been gradually worn away in the public discourse by infinite repetitions and expansions of the mantra “discrimination is evil.”
I believe that private organizations should be able to hire whomever they want, and discriminate against whomever they want. So, if you run a bakery, you should be free to refuse to serve cakes to gay people.
At the same time, though, I think that our government should neither enforce nor endorse any kind of morality that is based on a specific religious faith. Thus, your conservative church would be free to discriminate against whomever it wants to… as soon as it gives up its tax-exempt status.
@neonwattagelimit – “However – and please note that I do not mean this as a personal insult – I think those people are wrong.”
Lots of people think that lots of other people are wrong. The question is, how do we live together in peace despite this? There was a time when the answer to that question was “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” A lot of people thought that was a terrible answer, and we’ve fought for well over a century to change that. Unfortunately, we’re now at risk of ending up right back where we started, just with a different group on top. it may be that broad tolerance is only a metastable state. It may be that it’s not sustainable at all, and that once you implement it, conflict escalates until the whole system collapses back to unipolar dominance. If that’s true, though, the entire project of liberalism and civil rights was for nothing.
“I do not think they should be humiliated. However, if the Overton Window shifts to such an extent that their views are no longer acceptable, I’m fine with that.”
Are there hypothetical Overton Window positions that you won’t accept? Is anything society does acceptable so long as the majority think it’s the right thing to do? My argument is that there should be, and that making the window as wide as possible and as stable as possible are pressing priorities.
Hence the importance for the circumcision question above. If it’s easy from our current position to formulate persuasive arguments for why, say, practicing Judaism should be a felony, it’s pretty clear to me that we’ve made a wrong turn somewhere, and we need to stop and turn around rather than head further down this road.
“But, I’d be fine with people trying to change the ideology of, say, your church. A church has power and resources; a random shop owner does not.”
All the power and resources a Church has are currently on the block. It’s pretty clear at this point that we’ll lose our tax-exempt status and our schools and universities. Should social pressure be deployed as well? There’s no shortage of people in this comment section who will argue in favor of spotlighting people with unacceptable views to get them fired or ruin their businesses, even when their views have no perceptible impact on their business. Such actions are entirely defensible as free speech; you have a right to your views, other people have a right to ostracize you or deploy legal social pressure against you for them.
But what’s the result of another thirty or forty years of social balkanization look like? Is that the sort of future you want to live in? If not, what are you going to do about it?
“Neither outcome, or anything in between, seems very appealing to me, even from your point of view.”
I think it is better for everyone that the current Republican Party die right now, rather than a decade or two decades from now. It would have been better for the party to die a decade ago, in fact. A Trump victory accomplishes this nicely. This is one of my fundamental disagreements with Scott: a nice, orderly, safely irrelevant Right Wing is not a low-variance strategy, it’s a recipe for actual, no-shit civil war.
“What’s worse, it’s not even clear that Trump shares your priorities. He certainly doesn’t care about religion.”
No, he doesn’t. Nor do my priorities involve a politician that “cares about religion.” The Religious Right was a horrifying mistake, and is a massive part of the reason we have this problem in the first place. The road we’re currently on is a bad one, and we need to stop and turn around. I would prefer using the breaks, but a derailment is technically a form of stopping. If the Republican Party is actually dead, we need to get its corpse out of the way as fast as possible.
@Bugmaster – “Thus, your conservative church would be free to discriminate against whomever it wants to… as soon as it gives up its tax-exempt status.”
We both know this is going to happen, and sooner rather than later. But we also both know that this won’t actually fix anything, that it is in fact motivated out of spite rather than a pursuit of greater utility, and that once the tax-exempt status is removed, your tribe will move right on to the next stick to beat us with.
@FacelessCraven:
I will need to take some more time to chew on this a bit. But I will admit that I am highly uncertain of where or what the Overton Window should be. Part of me wants to endorse the idea of it being as wide as possible. But then I think “well, what about overt racism? What about forced sterilization? Maybe we should start rethinking how we view genocide?”
Certainly, people should be legally allowed to have and express all kinds of opinions on these things, but the Overton Window is about what’s socially acceptable and I’m having a hard time endorsing the idea that, yeah, the pro-genocide position should be socially acceptable. So obviously there’s got to be some limit, but where?
I am also curious as to why you are so certain that your church is about to lose its tax-exempt status. Has there been discussion of this?
@Sandy:
Well, at least you’ll admit that you are mostly just interested in spitting in the other side’s eye. So…credit for honesty, I’d guess.
@Dr Dealgood @Sandy
My link to the Pew study was meant to rebut Sandy’s contention that illegal immigration will keep rising inexorably. It has been on the wane for some time now. Theoretically, it could begin to rise again (though I don’t view this as likely in the medium-term), but clearly it can move in the other direction.
Neither Pew nor myself is “pointedly ignoring” anyone, as the US-born children of illegal immigrants are, as you point out, US citizens.
Moreover, millions of Americans today are the descendants of immigrants who, while perhaps not technically “illegal,” arrived at a time when we would take pretty much anyone who showed up from Europe. The US hardly had any immigration policy at all until the late 19th century; we didn’t enact limitations on immigration for Europeans until the 1920s. Until around 1900 there was no standardized national procedure for granting citizenship. It’s quite reasonable to assume that many of the millions of immigrants who arrived in the US in the 1800s and early 1900s would have, if today’s laws had been in place, been “illegal immigrants.”
@FacelessCraven:
What, for real ? Are you saying that churches — or, perhaps, only conservative churches — are likely to lose their tax-exempt status anytime soon ? Are we, perhaps, speaking in terms of astronomical time here ?
In any case, I can’t speak for this tribe that you’re currently at war with, I can only speak for myself. And I stand by what I said. As long as you give up your tax-exempt status, and any other special privileges granted to you by the government, you can do whatever you want as far as I’m concerned.
Unless, of course, you wish to infringe upon someone else’s rights. For example, you don’t have to hire gay people, but you can’t prevent them from applying for a job at some other, less radical organization — even if that organization is also some sort of a church. Or, to use a more realistic example, you can mandate that your female parishioners all wear burquas — but you can’t force other women to do so. In fact, you can’t even force your own congregation to do so; all you can do is expel them from your church. Fair’s fair.
@neonwattagelimit – “I will need to take some more time to chew on this a bit. But I will admit that I am highly uncertain of where or what the Overton Window should be.”
Yeah, it’s a doozy, and the whole cultural conversation is just tiptoeing around it right now.
“Certainly, people should be legally allowed to have and express all kinds of opinions on these things, but the Overton Window is about what’s socially acceptable and I’m having a hard time endorsing the idea that, yeah, the pro-genocide position should be socially acceptable. So obviously there’s got to be some limit, but where?”
This is obviously legal, and further there’s no practical way to make it illegal. Generally, the problem I’m gesticulating at isn’t one that law can solve. It’s a question about social norms. When Christians did have the social power to inflict serious harm on homosexuals via boycotts and ostracism, was it right of them to do so? I say no.
As for advocating genocide, here’s the best answer I’ve got. Essentially, I think we learned the wrong lesson from the 1960s civil rights era. Coercion, whether social or legal, does not make people change their minds. Persuasion does. Law doesn’t shift the OW, the OW shifts law. If you want a stable society, you need the OW to be as stable as possible. If you care about a just society, you need the OW to be as wide as possible. Ignoring the latter is the fundamental mistake we Christians made, and we are going to pay dearly for it for a long, long time. Learn from us, and don’t make it yourself.
“I am also curious as to why you are so certain that your church is about to lose its tax-exempt status. Has there been discussion of this?”
Some. As I understand, the Obergefell decision opens up a whole lot of possible avenues of attack along these lines. Beyond that, as Bugmaster’s response illustrates, it’s an obvious attack mode generally. The basics of Social Conflict are to find something you share with the outgroup, and threaten their access to it by making exceptions for why they don’t count as a normal citizen any more. Religious donation is tax free, unless your religion is bigoted. It’s the way these things go.
Given our history, I can’t say we haven’t earned it. On the other hand, it rather undermines all the sanctimony about toleration and diversity.
@Bugmaster – “What, for real ? Are you saying that churches — or, perhaps, only conservative churches — are likely to lose their tax-exempt status anytime soon ? Are we, perhaps, speaking in terms of astronomical time here ?”
I think the Religious Right is dead as a political force, so yes, I think that’s pretty likely in the near future. I don’t think it will make the world a better place, but I don’t think we can stop it and it’s not actually important in the grand scheme of things. I could be wrong about this; I guess we’ll see how things play out.
“In any case, I can’t speak for this tribe that you’re currently at war with, I can only speak for myself. And I stand by what I said. ”
And it’s a respectable stance to take. What’s your opinion on genital mutilation, though? Obviously infants can’t meaningfully consent, and it’s hard to argue that it isn’t harmful. Should it be illegal?
[EDIT] – I’d like to emphasize that I am in complete agreement with everything you posted. That is indeed exactly how I think things should work. The problem I am pointing to is that our current OW doesn’t fit that view in several ways, starting with harm of infants, and that your description seems to assume that the government is all that matters to society.
Somehow I can’t remember you ever posting something similar in response to the constant caterwauling about Eich.
When it comes to excluding gays it’s always freedom of association, when it comes to excluding bigots it’s always freedom of expression.
Similarly it’s always Hillary Clinton’s cattle futures and Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry that come up. The anecdotes you like to push somehow don’t include that time Trump bought off the mob to build an ice rink or when Paul Ryan blatantly lied about his best marathon time.
Apparently libertarians are all star struck by authoritarian right wingers and can’t help flirting with them all the time.
That’s probably because Mozilla only got rid of Eich because they felt compelled to by the angry internet/media mob whipping up hysteria over the issue. There’s a world of difference between “I don’t like you or want to associate with you” and “I want to associate with you, but these other guys won’t let me,” and it’s not hypocritical to be fine with the former situation and opposed to the latter.
So if the board of directors of a church has no problem with a gay pastor, but the church members raise a stink and then he gets fired, then all you guys are going to come to his defense?
Or does this exquisitely crafted set of principles have yet another contour that just so happens to mean that only conservatives ever need to be defended under it?
@Anonymous – “So if the board of directors of a church has no problem with a gay pastor, but the church members raise a stink and then he gets fired, then all you guys are going to come to his defense?”
You… don’t appear to understand how Churches work, or even what they are. Moral behavior is actually central to being part of a church; if a congregation’s members and leadership can’t agree on what behavior counts as immoral, the church has already by definition split.
Getting your preacher fired over political opinions that had nothing to do with bedrock morality would be incredibly wrong. Working to get the preacher from a different congregation fired would be incredibly wrong, arguably even for reasons of bedrock morality; if someone else’s congregation has different views than ours on what does and doesn’t count as moral behavior, that’s between them and God. It’s not our job to enforce our views on them.
More to the point, the entire purpose of a Church is to form a voluntary community built around a shared understanding of moral truth and a desire to conform to that truth. Enforcing conformity is the entire purpose of the institution. If you don’t agree with your church’s stance on morals, the correct thing to do is to leave.
@FacelessCraven:
I can see why you’d interpret the push to strip churches of their tax-exempt status as a targeted political attack; however, I personally do not see it as such. I don’t think that any church should have that status — neither yours, nor the progressive gay-friendly one down the street, nor the Hasidic temple on the corner, and not even the Buddhist temple up on the hill.
Tax exemptions should be reserved for organizations who perform measurably good works, such as charities. If your church does that, great — spin off a separate charity, and have it apply for tax exemption just like everyone else.
As for genital mutilation, I am generally against it, for the reasons you’ve stated. Similarly, I’m against denying life-saving treatments (such as blood transfusions) to infants, for the same reasons.
The problem I see with removing tax exemptions for Churches is that, as the Supreme Court said in McCulloch vs. Maryland, “the power to tax is the power to destroy”, or at least the power to influence. Governments already try to influence people’s and organisations’ behaviour by taxing certain things at higher or lower rates, and giving the government the ability to do this to religious organisations would be very worrying from a religious freedom/First Amendment point of view.
“Somehow I can’t remember you ever posting something similar in response to the constant caterwauling about Eich.”
My view is that Eich’s employers had the right to fire him for his political views, but should not have done so.
Similarly, my view is that a firm has the right to fire an executive because he is gay (in both cases subject to the terms of the employment contract, of course), but should not do so.
There are lots of things I object to other than rights violations–but I think it’s an important distinction to make.
I have no objection to Christians refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding or to left wing publishers refusing to publish right wing books, or other such cases in which people are acting reasonably in terms of their beliefs.
I’ve been arguing things, online and in print, for fifty years or so, and I don’t think my views on such subjects have changed.
@Bugmaster – “I can see why you’d interpret the push to strip churches of their tax-exempt status as a targeted political attack; however, I personally do not see it as such.”
…Say rather, when it happens, I am pretty sure it will be a targeted attack, because Moloch.
That does not make advocating for it a political attack, and I apologize for implying that you were making one. It’s been a long thread. From what I can tell, your stance is entirely principled, and I have a great deal of sympathy for it. I think tax-exempt status for religious institutions is probably a good thing, but as I said before, it is not actually a very important thing at the end of the day, and I personally hope we let it go gracefully rather than fighting for it to the bitter end. Turning the Church into a political movement was a very bad idea, and we are pretty clearly going to have to pay for it over the next few decades.
“As for genital mutilation, I am generally against it, for the reasons you’ve stated. Similarly, I’m against denying life-saving treatments (such as blood transfusions) to infants, for the same reasons.”
The later seems an even better illustration than the former. I come down on liberty in the case of both, with something of a theory of concentric circles of community, with the innermost having the highest priority. For me, State-based paternalism has too much of a conflict of interest, and is just too easy to abuse. Even beyond that, though, freedom of conscience and self-determination just seem too valuable.
But that’s what happens when you make opposition to gay marriage akin to homophobia and racism. You can’t avoid running people out on a rail when you make opposition to it, well, evil. And its been cast as pure evil, with no real redeeming reasons to oppose it.
I don’t think it’s about being better for “you”. He’s just panicking that the wrong people might get ridden out of town on a rail.
It’s much easier when it only happens to people you don’t like, and you can sit on the side lines saying “tut tut, I don’t really approve of this tactic”.
The other side of “Brendan Eich ridden out of San Fransisco on a rail” isn’t “rabid SJW ridden out of San Fransisco on a rail”, it’s “innocent black guy ridden out of Birmingham on a rail”.
I doubt it, 90% of the populous would be upset about that- was even 50% upset about Eich?
Does 50% of the population know who Eich is?
A lot less than 90% were upset about (insert name of a black person being shot by the police).
Few people know about Eich because the story isn’t toxoplasma, because nobody cares about a “homophobe” being crucified.
How many people are speaking up to defend Palmer Luckey right now, amid the cries for his head? No one cares. The Left has a monopoly on victimization.
@anonmoose: Some of it is that many people are too insensitive to the suffering of others to appreciate that what Brendan Eich endured being pressured into resigning as CEO of Mozilla was no less horrible than the gross physical suffering of crucifixion.
@ChetC3: I know right, who cares about small-fry stuff like people’s livelihoods being ruined for having the wrong opinions? There are much more important problems in the world, like stunning and brave women having mean things said about them on Twitter.
“All aboard! Ha ha ha”
[guitar]
“Eich!, Eich!, Eich!, Eich!… [fade]
[guitar]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMR5zf1J1Hs
@anonmoose: Eich’s livelihood was ruined, now? He’s CEO of another company in the same industry.
@ChetC3: He was forced out of the major company that he founded, and now works at a tiny startup.
@anonmoose: Which is a very far cry from his livelihood being ruined. “Executive forced out of company he helped found” is business as usual in the free market.
@ChetC3 – the free market ostensibly creates significant value, or we wouldn’t tolerate its externalities. Fucking with peoples’ lives because you disagree with their politics does not create significant value.
Whereas forcing someone out of his job because you don’t like how he gets off is just good ‘ole ‘merican freedom of association.
Four legs good, two legs better!
@Anonymous – “Whereas forcing someone out of his job because you don’t like how he gets off is just good ‘ole ‘merican freedom of association.”
I am not actually in favor of that either. But the “freedom of association” you sneer at is probably necessary to keep us from killing each other. I am for as few irreconcilable differences as possible, but I strongly suspect the actual number of irreconcilable differences is greater than zero. If those differences exist, people need to actually be able to leave each other alone.
A market in which certain classes of people are prohibited to work isn’t free.
Really? I could have sworn I saw a post of your yesterday arguing that church’s and church affiliated businesses should be left alone to discriminate against whomever they like.
Did you mean that they should be able to legally do so, but you and the rest of the Eich crowd will attack them for it as freedom hating culture destroyers forever?
After Ring Lardner Jr. was blacklisted by Hollywood, he got a gig writing for the BBC. No harm, no foul!
Who’s prohibited to work? Brendan Eich has a job. Gerv Markham still has his job at Mozilla.
@:Faceless Craven: So it’s your contention that the US private sector is dangerously under-regulated? Or do you feel that Brendan Eich had an inalienable right to other people’s money?
@Anonymous – “Really? I could have sworn I saw a post of your yesterday arguing that church’s and church affiliated businesses should be left alone to discriminate against whomever they like.”
“Whomever they like” is blatantly inaccurate. People who are serious about their religion do not select their beliefs for maximum personal convenience; if they did, we’d all worship the god of tits and heroin.
More generally, if you do not understand the differences between a church and a corporation, and between conflict within a group and conflict across groups, I’m not sure there’s much to discuss. [Unbecoming rudeness edit]
…On the possibility that you haven’t started your replies yet, I’d like to apologize for my combative tone. Do you think Churches are a net positive to society? Assuming they exist, and that some of them believe homosexual sex is immoral, how should they and society hash things out? Given that freedom of religious belief is specifically enshrined in the Constitution, how should antisocial religious beliefs be handled?
@ChetC3 – “So it’s your contention that the US private sector is dangerously under-regulated? Or do you feel that Brendan Eich had an inalienable right to other people’s money?”
Very much no. This is not a legal problem. There is no possible law that will fix it. Everything Eich’s opponents did was entirely within the bounds of free speech as enshrined in the First Amendment.
This is a social problem, in that entirely legal actions lead to an escalation spiral that eventually makes civil society impossible. I argue that spiral is a predictable result, and should be avoided if at all possible.
If you want to live in peace, and particularly if you want to live in a diverse society, you are going to have to tolerate people who do things you strongly disapprove of. Defining all the things you disapprove of as “intolerance” and prohibiting them is not a viable workaround. See the thread here if you’d like to discuss it at greater length.
@FacelessCraven
You seem to want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to exempt the type of institutions you care most about from the norms you assert all other organizations should have to follow.
You’re right the constitution does specifically mention religion. Maybe that means you have a legal leg to stand on. I have no idea really. But as a matter of philosophical consistency you have nothing. The Mozilla community, and yes it’s a community, has just as much or little right to decide that they don’t want to be lead by a bigot as your church has to decide they don’t want to be a homosexual.
Have you ever contributed code to Mozilla? Written documentation? Done design work? Run alpha or beta versions and given detailed feedback? Contributed to the discussion forums where Mozilla’s positions on various technical bodies are hashed out?
Most of the people that do these things aren’t paid anything for their contributions. Mozilla it is a cause driven organization that relies on persuading volunteers for much of what it does.
Some of those people — the larger Mozilla community — objected to Eich leading Mozilla. Some said they would no longer participate in the community if he did. To them it would be inconsistent with their values to contribute to an organization lead by him. Just as it would be inconsistent to some Christian’s values to be a part of community lead by a gay man.
For myself, I take the position that both of those things are okay. But second best is neither of them is okay. The position that one is a beautiful part of a pluralistic society and the other a dastardly attack on our bedrock principles is simply garbage. Take one or the other consistent position.
@BBA:
The goal of the people whipping up hysteria about Eich was to create a situation whereby people with certain views aren’t able to work in certain positions. The fact that they haven’t so far been fully successful doesn’t change this.
@Anonymous:
Except that Mozilla’s decision was clearly coerced by outside pressures. Saying “Well, Mozilla has the right to say it doesn’t want to be led by a bigot” is a bit like saying “Well, that business owner has the right to take out insurance from the mob” or “Well, that kid has the right to donate his lunch money to that bigger, more threatening kid.”
@Anonymous – “You seem to want to have your cake and eat it too. You want to exempt the type of institutions you care most about from the norms you assert all other organizations should have to follow.”
Maybe so, but I don’t think so. I don’t like communists, and I don’t particularly care about screenwriters. I don’t think screenwriters should be fired because they happen to be communists. On the other hand, if there is some sort of organization dedicated to advancing the cause of communism, I don’t think they should be forced to hire Randians, and if they find out one of their senior executives is a Randian, kicking them out seems obviously fine.
I am asserting that some organizations are about utilitarian things, and some organizations are specifically and exclusively about beliefs. The utilitarian orgs should discriminate about beliefs as little as possible. the belief orgs have to be able to discriminate about beliefs to function.
Wedding cakes seem like an obvious counter-argument, but even there it seems to me there’s a difference between refusing to participate in a specific event for reasons of conscience, and treating someone as “unclean” and ostracizing and/or demanding their removal from any context whatsoever. Would you object to a Muslim or Jewish caterer to turn down working a social group’s pork festival event?
“Just as it would be inconsistent to some Christian’s values to be a part of community lead by a gay man.”
I am happy to live alongside practicing homosexuals, just as I’m happy to live alongside people who practice all the other sins. I am happy to be part of organizations that include adulterers, blasphemers, and so on. I am happy to participate in communities led by fornicators and bigamists. None of this is a big deal or any great sacrifice; it’s what living in the world means.
Church, though, is about me and my fellow Christians actively working to submit ourselves to what we understand to be the will of God. This is the only point of Church; there are no secondary goals. If someone disagrees with us about what the will of God is, what interest do they have in joining our congregation?
It seems to me there is a difference between saying that organizations explicitly and exclusively built to nurture a specific belief set can exclude those who are openly hostile to that belief set, and saying that anyone in any organization type is justified in kicking out anyone who they find personally objectionable.
If this still seems self-contradictory to you, I’d be interested in hearing why.
@ChetC3 – you’re doing the usual apologist thing where you conflate what is legal with what is right. Were Eich’s constitutional rights violated? No. Does that have any relavence to the question of whether it’s okay to sabotage people’s careers for having the wrong political views? Also no.
@anonmoose: Who said anything about right? I’m saying there’s an yawning chasm between unremarkable business-world BS like Brendan Eich’s resignation and the importance ascribed to it in many online subcultures. People lose jobs for morally dubious reasons all the time, and no one outside of their immediate social circle cares.
@FC
To use the LW phrase, I don’t think this is cleaving reality at the joints. There’s no neat separation between utilitarian organizations and value driven ones. Mozilla or a similar non-profit is a perfect example of why it is not so clean.
To take an example from your side of the aisle, look at the Hobby Lobby case. There the company successfully argued that the religious beliefs of the owners/managers ought to exempt them from a particular government regulation that conflicted with it. Again, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t have an opinion on whether it is legally correct, but as a philosophical matter that decision seems hard to justify under your utilitarian / values driven dichotomy.
I don’t see how this fits in with what you’ve outlined above. A bakery is a utilitarian organization. It is a for profit entity whose existence is premised on making money. The case for Mozilla is much weaker given that it is a non-profit.
It seems like you are jumping between treating organizations as having separate personalities — under which view it isn’t the owner or baker that is participating but the bakery — and looking behind the corporation at the people involved.
Not sure if this answers your questions or if you are even still reading. But there it is.
ChetC3 – Eich wasn’t forced out by his immediate social circle, or regular company politics. It was a product of a wider social movement that thinks these types of tactics are justified to punish people with the wrong opinions. That’s why it is more significant than someone getting fired for everyday corporate BS.
Eich is far from an isolated example. Here’s a particularly nasty one – but there are countless others.
If don’t think these tactics are justifiable, great, we agree. From your combativeness it seemed like you were taking the position of defending the mobs, but I’m happy to be wrong in this case.
“SSC endorses voting for Hillary Clinton if you live in a swing state. If you live in a safe state, I endorse voting for Clinton, Johnson, or (if you insist) Stein. If you want, you can use a vote-swapping site to make this easier or more impactful.”
But don’t cheat your counterparts. If you would otherwise have voted for Johnson in a non-swing state, sell to a Stein voter in a swing state.
“Suppose you live in a swing state. If you think (in a well-calibrated way) that it’s 10% more likely that your candidate will use $1 trillion well than that the other candidate will, your vote is worth $500. If you live in a safe state, it’s more like $30. If you value the amount of time it takes to vote at less than that, voting is conceivably a good use of your time.”
One should compare against the best uses of money, not generic US govt spending. E.g. contrast against more OpenPhil budget. Nonetheless, I agree that voting for Clinton in a swing state (swapping a third party vote in a non-swing state for a Clinton vote in a swing state) beats donating to AMF for most people’s opportunity costs.
“Nobody expects Republicans to win blacks and Hispanics. The interesting thing about this election is that college-educated whites are also moving into the Democratic column. ”
Also the rich:
“All of the evidence suggests Hillary Clinton is the candidate overwhelmingly preferred by the super wealthy.
She is, for instance, the first Democratic nominee in more than 20 years to be leading among those making over $100,000, according to a Bloomberg News poll. She clobbered Trump among millionaires by 13 points in a CNBC poll. She also has a 20-to-1 fundraising edge among billionaires, and an even bigger one among top corporate earners.”
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/9/28/13059582/clinton-trump-taxes-1-percent
I’m starting to think that if so many people keep mentioning the game-theoretical advantages of reneging every time vote trading is brought up, then it will become an open secret and the reciprocally-altruistic motivation not to renege will completely disintegrate, making vote trading a total waste of time.
C Murdock:
Technically you are right. Vote trading is a waste of time only to the extent that it is public knowledge, that this is the case.
However I would gladly suffer to all evil Hilary or Trump can bring upon this world before I actively prevent something from becoming public knowledge. At least if that something can be derived by straightforward analysis. (As opposed to let’s say a spy’s identity).
To me your argument is equivalent to “let’s ban teaching of game-theory, it will corrupt our youth”.
And I am to no end annoyed by Aaronson who took the opposite stance. Aaronson, who became internet-famous for betting his life-savings on what he believed was true, Aaronson who wrote heartbreking pieces about laughing in the face of a mob with pitchforks, repeats what up to that point could have been seen as a folly of his youth and endorses vote trading. It feels like treason.
Do you have to have knowledge of game-theory to be iffy about vote trading? I think most people’s objection will be “yeah, but how do I know you voted like you said you would?”
Given that things like taking photos of your ballot etc are illegal (? are they, I imagine there is something about not showing ballots if we’re trying to have a secret ballot), how can you provide any evidence that yes, you voted for my guy and I voted for yours?
Only the very idealistic or trusting would take it on faith that C. O’Mplete-Stranger will vote for me if I vote for them, they promised in an e-mail and everything!
Ballot selfies are illegal as an anti-coercion measure, so you can tell your boss, when he demands proof that you voted his way, that the polling place supervisor forbade you from providing any.
(Substitute “union steward”, “guy who paid you to vote”, or “mom” for “boss” as appropriate)
I’m not sure that I understand the question. I think the argument brought foward by C Murdock was that knowledge of game theory implies “being iffy”, therefore we should keep our knowledge to ourselves. My counterposition, not argument, is that I value the spreading of such knowlege higher than I value preventing either candidate from presidency. Nobody suggested that knowledge of game theory is neccessary (your question?), so I suppose the answer is “no”?!
I have to backpedal a bit, but not much regarding my criticism of Aaronson. Aaronson seems to (naively [“idealistic or trusting”?]) believe that all the good folks are united in the case to prevent Trump (and Bush jr. before him) and that preferences for anything else are a mere fluke.
Depends on your circuit:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/new-hampshire-law-barring-ballot-selfies-is-unconstitutional-court-rules/
Not in New Hampshire. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/09/28/n-h-ballot-selfie-ban-is-struck-down/
I’m very surprised by the high values given to votes in this post ($300-5000 depending on state). I’m eligible to vote in Michigan, which 538 currently has as the state third-most-likely to tip the election and with the fourth-highest voter power. I don’t plan to vote, but if anyone out there actually values a swing-state vote at hundreds of dollars, please contact me, as I could be convinced.
problem is, it’s that amount of money spread over 300m people, not all in one person.
Think about it. If it’s worth $1000 to me for my vote to go against Trump, compared to neutral, it’s also worth $1000 to me for my friend Alice’s vote to got against Trump rather than neutral. It’s like the value of a pothole in my street being filled in – it’s worth $10 to me no matter who fills it in.
The reason it feels bad (and may indeed be bad) to buy a vote is actually more complicated – I’d guess you’re thinking of it as a free rider problem, where many people value the vote, so why should you specifically have to pay? (Like how I might feel put-upon if I have to fix that pothole instead of the city at large doing it).
I’d say it’s closer to your vote being worth ~5000/300m$ for each american.
Illegality aside, I’m concerned that it’s bad game theory to try to buy votes from people you can’t coerce. There’s no enforcement mechanism to show that you will vote if I pay you, and there’s no enforcement mechanism to show that you won’t vote if I don’t pay you, both of which raise separate issues.
You can pay someone to register to vote by mail and then give you their blank, signed ballot form before the deadline. It’s illegal, but you can do it, and it gives you enforceable control over their vote.
@ John Schilling
You can pay someone to register to vote by mail and then give you their blank, signed ballot form before the deadline.
As with hiring fake walk-in voters, the leverage is wrong. Each fake vote raises your chance of getting squealed on, more than it helps your candidate.
Although this might be a way to make the vote trade work, at least for a while, with some traders.
That’s a different objection than “there’s no enforcement mechanism”. But even so, the detachment of vote-by-mail allows fraud-by-mail, which limits the down side of “getting squealed on”. You agree to participate in the scheme, and you get an envelope in the mail with a $10 bill and a SASE for a mail drop in Nigeria (one of many, rotated frequently). Your signed ballot arrives at the mail drop within a week, and you get another envelope in the mail with a $50 bill. You go to the cops, and they know that someone with an office in Nigeria is branching out into a new sort of fraud. Now what?
This is not a coincidence. If people started doing the vote mail fraud thing on a wide scale, mail voting would probably become illegal too (unless whichever party gained by it decided to stonewall it in government, which given the current level of polarization seems depressingly plausible).
That’s illegal.
Clinton’s threatened no fly zone over Syria is a pretty direct path to direct military conflict between the US and Russia, from which it’s pretty easy to spin apocalyptic scenarios (while similar direct military conflicts during the Cold War didn’t end the world, how many Vasili Arkhipovs are out there?). Trump is friendly to Russia in a way the American poltical establishment isn’t, which would be bad for people in Russia’s desired sphere of influence, but better for world survival.
Here’s a video of Gen. Joseph Dunford talking about the consequences of Kerry’s proposed no fly zone over Syria, for context.
So yeah, just in case anyone thinks the above is just our usual hippie republican peacenik scaremongering about the dangers of war.
To be fair, that’s a pretty context-sensitive question. If the Secretary of State is the one suggesting it, I’m pretty sure he has something in mind along the lines of “Get Russia to agree to this, and give Assad fair warning.” Sure, it might be unrealistic to expect Russia to agree to such a proposal, but it’s also unrealistic to expect such a policy to be carried out if it meant war between the USA and Russia.
I do ultimately suspect that HRC would exercise caution in Syria, despite her visceral dislike for Putin. But I’m not sure the same can be said for her likely advisors (especially if HRC becomes unhinged or incapacitated due to her various suspected maladies).
If the US was to intentionally knock a Russian warplane out of the skies in Syria, they might calculate that Russia would be unlikely to retaliate (and I agree! Escalation there is extremely unfavorable, and one which Russia is bound to lose on account of Khmeimim’s distance from mainland Russia). I can definitely see someone like Samantha Power, let alone any of the old-school neocons who have actually openly called for shooting down Russian warplanes in Syria, pushing for such a gambit.
There will then be immense public pressure for Putin to retaliate. If he doesn’t, he will be consumed with managing the domestic nationalist backlash, which I suppose would be a “win” in terms of global stability since it might also force a Russian withdrawal from Syria and maybe even Donbass. But history suggests that is not the likely outcome. The simpler and more natural decision would be to retaliate where NATO is weak, i.e. Ukraine or even the Baltics.
Are there any chances that she will become more unhinged than Trump currently is? Elections aren’t between (Real Candidate) and (Imaginary Posthuman Perfection).
@ TheWorst
>> But I’m not sure the same can be said for her likely advisors (especially if HRC becomes unhinged or incapacitated due to her various suspected maladies).
> Are there any chances that she will become more unhinged than Trump currently is?
That’s a legitimate factor. If Hillary, or Trump, were losing zis judgement, which one of them would admit it and ask someone else to step in — and which would fight any such interference? (And who would the respective someone else, or the advisors, be?)
I’d guess Hillary would turn first to Bill, then to Kaine.
@houseboatonstyxb:
I think you’re right, and this election should’ve been a much more difficult choice than it is–I don’t necessarily trust Hillary’s judgement, and I’m confident of neither her ability to choose the right advisers (see: 2008 campaign), and don’t know much of anything about her ability to listen to advisers if she has good ones.
Trump, by contrast, demonstrates daily that he’s terrible at choosing advisers and terrible at listening to anyone about anything, and has terrible personal judgement as well. So it’s the known versus the unknown; maybe Hillary’s judgement will eventually (for whatever reason) reach a point where it’s as bad as Trump’s is right now, but maybe it won’t.
Clinton has specified that she’d have to get agreement with Russia before implementing a no-fly zone.
Even the latter isn’t so obvious.
The two cases of Russian external aggression under Putin was as a direct response to Western intrusion into its sphere of influence, or in the case of Ukraine, what it (and half of Ukraine itself for that matter) sees as its common cultural space.
This was in the context of American promises not to expand NATO made to the Soviet Union as a condition of it agreeing to German reunification.
Wait, we promised not to expand NATO? Why would we do that (and mean it)?
This is not a conspiracy theory or anything like that, it’s a pretty well known fact. E.g.:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal–20160530-snap-story.html
This was promised to encourage the USSR to vacate East-Central Europe, and in particular to agree to the reunification of the two Germanys (incidentally, the latter was something even Margaret Thatcher opposed, so for the USSR it was an extremely radical step).
In international relations, breaking your promises isn’t really a great thing because of your credibility suffers. People are then less likely to make deals with you in the first place. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not.
“a direct response to Western intrusion into its sphere of influence”
Did anyone ask the countries affected whether they agreed to be in Russia’s “sphere of influence”?
I mean, look, maybe it’s a bad idea tactically to go around poking the bear, I’m not speaking to that. But morally, Russia has no case here.
When did Mexico, Canada, and various Caribbean nations agree to be in our sphere of influence?
It’s just silly to inject morality into the Great Game, IMHO.
And yet I’m pretty happy Vietnam invaded and brought down the Khmer Rouge.
Sure, there’s no point in faulting those countries for wanting to hitch themselves to Western security structures ASAP. In fact, their stance was perfectly understandable.
However, the US (as the country that for all intents and purposes runs NATO) had no pressing reason to let them in. Especially since it ran against promises it had given to the USSR (which Russia as its successor state inherited), and at least in the case of the Baltics, its commitment to defend them is of questionable credibility.
What makes it even worse is that in some of those countries the US pushed for NATO expansion or expansion of NATO military presence even when domestic public opinion in those countries was unfavorable to it. There was a push under the late Bush, for instance, to get Ukraine into NATO, which at the time was opposed by close to 90% of Ukrainians. (Even today NATO accession is only supported by half of Ukrainians, despite the war in Donbass).
Hey, but we don’t need to be concerned over Syria, right? I mean, Johnson’s little slip over Aleppo was nothing to criticise the guy about, because who cares about that, somewhere else will be hot news in four weeks’ time and it will all be forgotten!
Also there’s no reason to keep up on the details of a war you think your country has no business intervening in.
No one (that I know of) has ever said that Johnson’s slip over Aleppo is nothing to criticize the guy about “because who cares about that.”
What people are arguing is that the slip does not demonstrate the thing the prevailing media narrative is trying to tell us it means: That Johnson does not understand or care about the situation is Syria. He certainly does, and even if he didn’t, the Aleppo slip wouldn’t give you one damn bit of information as to whether he does or does not.
The only thing the Aleppo slip tells us is that he might not be well-suited to dealing with the sort of hostile, rapid-fire questions a President will have to deal with from the press. That’s not an unreasonable concern, but it has NOTHING to do with whether or not we need to be concerned over Syria.
The guy didn’t understand that the interviewer suddenly shifted topics from a back-and-forth conversation about how his campaign might effect the demographics of the election to, out of nowhere, a question about Syria with no lead up or context, and thought A.L.E.P.O. was some acronym that he didn’t know, or something else related to the topic he thought they were discussing. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what “Aleppo” is!
Don’t get me wrong, the incident certainly highlights a problem he would have as President, but the fact that so many people seem to have bought the media narrative around how serious a problem it is, and more importantly, WHY it is a problem, hook, line, and sinker, has been seriously bugging me lately.
+1
The entire strategy of “Assad MUST go!” is entirely flawed to begin with, and the No-Fly-Zone is to service that strategy (Not being able to fly hurts Assad and helps ISIS). This is part of my big problem with Hillary, that Neoconservatism has become bipartisan, and she wants to continue making the world safe for democracy rather than making the world safe.
Of course, Trump only understands this on a good day, and then he’s back to bashing Iran. No one can stop Neoconservatism at this point.
“a group of arrogant, intolerant, sanctimonious elites have seized control of a lot of national culture and are using it mostly to spread falsehood and belittle anybody different than them”
When has that not applied to the United States? In the rosiest picture, the nation was founded by a bunch of sanctimonious lawyers and scholars who brilliantly recognized that they weren’t 100% perfect and therefore needed checks and balances to be applied to both their and every other American leader’s actions. That’s enormously valuable, but it doesn’t change the fact that our leaders tend to be well-educated, prosperous elites. Voting for the occasional Andrew Jackson-like candidate doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the country, nor does voting for a “typical politician”.
I see no difference between Hilary Clinton and nearly every other American President throughout history aside from (a) the obvious bit and (b) the fact that more skepticism has been paid to her actions than any other President or candidate (aside from Nixon). “Establishment” seems synonymous with “government” at this point; I don’t understand how the former has become some grand insult.
Voting for Andrew Jackson got us this caliber opposition:
https://books.google.com/books?id=WUwm39YKfmQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
and this dominant-party platform:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29572
Overall, a pretty good outcome for the cause of liberty (except for Native Americans).
Hahaha… I’m “triggered” at how the Democrat Party platform of 1840 is indistinguishable from the views of Ron Paul.
Seriously, though, I think the comparison to Jackson is a good one–know-nothing, populist borderer president with an unpolished personal style hated by the elites and definitely one of the better presidents for liberty and prosperity (except, as you say, for Native Americans).
Big differences: Jackson had no children and only one wife, was not known for braggadocio he couldn’t back up, was generally not in favor of protective tariffs or local federally-funded infrastructure spending, and had a decent amount of legislative, judicial, and military experience.
I have no idea how to compare Trump’s policies to anyone else’s, mainly because his policies are so flexible. Trump will say whatever he thinks will give him an advantage in the present moment, so long as it doesn’t go against his superiority complex. All I know about Jackson is that (as mentioned above) he was a very populist candidate perceived as a plebeian by his contemporaries who seems to have acted fairly impulsively (killing off the national bank, Trail of Tears, all those duels, etc).
It has more or less always applied to the United States. And the average quality of governance during this long American experiment has been abysmal. Its good of you to recognize the stakes, though. Most don’t.
Out of curiosity, would you consider the average quality of governance in the USA to be better or worse than other countries over the same period (to make it simpler, you can limit the comparison to western Europe)? Would the quality of governance have been improved if the USA had drawn its politicians from a larger portion of its populace?
And the average quality of governance during this long American experiment has been abysmal.
This is a pretty bold statement to make with no evidence or argument to back it up.
“a group of arrogant, intolerant, sanctimonious elites have seized control of a lot of national culture and are using it mostly to spread falsehood and belittle anybody different than them
When has that not applied to the United States?”
When has this not applied to… well, all of history?
Well, technically, absolute monarchs weren’t groups. But yes, elites tend to be the ruling class, largely because of how flexible the definition of “elite” is.
Even absolute monarchs tended to be part of a wider ruling class (see Game of Thrones: King Robert ruled pretty securely, but only with the support of the other great houses).
Game of Thrones did not actually happen.
Of course Westeros is a fictional place, but a lot of the events in Game of Thrones did actually happen, only to people Lancaster instead of Lannister.
Status comes in two forms, prestige and dominance. “Sanctimonious”, etc, tends to label the prestige cluster. There have Dominant elites as well. Prestige-orientated people tend to call them thugs, bullies, neanderthals, etc.
>When has that not applied to the United States?
It never has, at least not since 1860, but in the past, the sanctimonious elites had less power so it didn’t matter as much. Now that they control a government that has its fingers in literally everything, the scope for damage is much greater.
“Don’t destroy all existing systems and hope a planet-sized ghost makes everything work out”
You mean, the way Democrats wish to destroy the US Constitution, and replace it with “whatever the left wing Justices says, goes”?
“So let’s talk about global warming”
Yes, let’s talk about ClimateGate. Let’s talk about a field so corrupt that you have to sue people in order to get the methods and data behind their published papers. Let’s talk about a field so corrupt that, when it comes out the East Anglia authors themselves are incapable of recreating their results, they are not forced to retract all their papers, and the people whose papers depended on the EA papers aren’t forced to retract theirs.
“Even if you doubt modern climate science, are you so sure it’s wrong that it’s worth the risk?” Wait, really? You’d better start believing in God and praying every day, because the “risk” that the Christians are right is far greater than the risk that the Warminists are right.
When you’ve converted to Christianity, let us know. Until then? No, empowering gov’t to further destroy the economy is a far greater risk than the fantasy of AGW
As Scott says — no matter how bad you think science may be, it is still not anticorrelated with the truth. An overwhelming consensus in favor of the anthropogenic warming hypothesis is evidence for anthropogenic warming, even if it’s not bulletproof evidence.
Like, the fact that you’re arguing against that is just so confusing to me. There is no logical line of attack for you here.
The logical line of attack is against CAGW not AGW. You are simply assuming they are the same, as many, without thinking, do.
You continually do both. Motte-bailey, etc.
See your recent spat with Picone wherein you defend taking a simple average of cherry-picked endpoints to calculate trend.
“cherry picked end points.”
Do you think you can defend that claim? I believe that each of my lines was taken from the date of the IPCC report whose predictions I was testing to the last date for which I had data when I wrote the post.
I propose a simple experiment. Try cherry picking the end dates, checking ends within two years either direction of my starting points and within two years backward (I couldn’t use data I didn’t have) from my ending points, and see if any pair gives slower rates of growth than mine.
If none do, your claim could be true although as it happens it isn’t. If some do you owe me an apology.
The data are webbed.
How on earth would that show a) using a flat average between two points makes any sense when regression is what’s required, and b) show that you weren’t cherry picking dates.
“I picked the years that minimize the apparent rate of climate change” is not a defense against cherry-picking.
And once again with the umbrage and demands for apologies.
@HeelBearCub: I don’t want to get too involved in this, but where does David say that “I picked the years that minimize the apparent rate of climate change” ?
Searching that sentence in the comments here only yields your comment.
I am not sure what the point with the average is. If David made a claim about an average temperature change in a certain time period then you might say that that is not a good metric and criticize him for that but that has little to do with him cherry picking the data or not.
From this thread it seems to me that it is you who uses “motte and bailey” tactics. You claim that David cherry picked the data and then you fall back to basically saying “your methodology is bad”. David’s methodology might be bad for all I know (as I said, I don’t want to spend too much time in climate discussions) but that is different from being dishonest. If you accuse someone of that, then you should back it with an evidence of dishonesty.
@Tibor:
You can start here if you want to see the back and forth I am referring to.
And I didn’t accuse Friedman of dishonesty vis-a-vis cherry picking. Cherry picking isn’t dishonest, per se. One can be technically true and still misleading.
“How on earth would that show a) using a flat average between two points makes any sense when regression is what’s required, and b) show that you weren’t cherry picking dates.”
There are two different questions. One is whether it was proper to simply calculate a slope between end points instead of doing a linear regression. I explained at some length why I did it that way, and you, like Picone, continue to demonstrate the reason for doing it that way–the more complicated the measure, the easier it is for someone who doesn’t want to believe the result to find some excuse for rejecting it, so I used the simplest measure, which people could check by simple arithmetic.
You are welcome to take my data source, which I linked, type in all the data to a spreadsheet or statistics program, and check what it gives you as the slope for the periods for which I calculated a simple end to end slope.
The second issue is the choice of end points. You claimed I was cherry picking. If so, I would have picked, among the plausible end points, the ones that gave the lowest slope, since my argument was that the actual slope was lower than the IPCC prediction.
I described a simple test by which you could check whether I did so. I don’t understand why you find it difficult to understand that. I further suggested that if you found by that test that I could have selected end points that would give a lower slope, you owed me an apology for accusing me of cherry picking.
You don’t owe me an apology for objecting to my not doing a least squares fit unless you do such fits for all my intervals and find that they support my claim at least as well as what I did. I have no idea whether you would find that or not, since I didn’t do the least squares fit. Picone, if I followed him correctly, claims that the least squares fit for the first interval is still below the bottom of the predicted range, but not by as much.
Your claim now seems to be that you could have picked dates that made the rise even flatter. That’s not a defense against cherry-picking either. If the end points didn’t support the conclusion you wanted to “explain” would you have published that particular analysis?
And your defense of why you would use two datapoints in analysis (net rise) when more data points are available, does not make you look good. “You can check it yourself” is a con man’s line.
Do you think people actually interested in correctly analyzing trends based on many data points over time should use the net change from the end points? Would you criticize a scientist who published such an analysis?
You can continue to try and defend using mere end points in trend analysis, but I think it only serves to highlight your bias in this area. Similarly you can claim you are only attacking catastrophic scenarios, but when you continually impugn the integrity of those who do the actual scientific work and attempt to claim we should not believe they have produced valid science, you aren’t actually attacking the catastrophic scenario. You are attacking the idea of AGW as a whole.
There are two catastophrist positions. The other is the one where any attempt to do anything about GW will absolutely definitely wreck the economy. You would have more credibility if you attacked both.
There are lots of mistaken claims out there on lots of subjects. I don’t think I am obliged to attack all of them.
Could you point me at the particular claim you are referring to? In the form you give it–”any attempt”–it sounds quite implausible. Current subsidies for solar and wind are an attempt and the economy is still here. Biofuels were sold as an attempt, and while they have done a great deal of damage by raising world food prices they haven’t wrecked the economy.
That’s quite a strawman view of the economic argument against GW policy interventions. A steelier version is that those advocating such interventions have not produced convincing cost-benefit estimates. The complication being that “convincing” here is doing all the work, and hiding very subtle and difficult questions, some of a non-empirical nature, regarding issues such as proper accounting for tail risk, discount rates, and intergenerational equity. It’s ludicrous to claim that the pro-intervention side of the debate has engaged with these questions more honestly than their opponents. Indeed, their entire political strategy has revolved around using the media to argue that the *modal* outcome of “business as usual” is so obviously terrible that the subtle questions surrounding a proper cost-benefit analysis need not be considered. Critics such David Friedman are pointing out, primarily, that this claim is far from substantiated and — in contrast to the basic physics of the greenhouse effect etc — does not warrant the high epistemic status it enjoys on the left. Once you are willing to question this premise, the economic issue is not whether a proposed intervention will “wreck the economy” but whether it is sensible to spend *any amount whatsoever* — even just as a hedge — until you have at least some loose bounds on the costs and benefits that you’re relatively confident in. “Insurance policy” is not an argument, since there are many tail risks we rationally *don’t* insurance against.
For that matter, there are certain policy “interventions” like removing tax preferences for fossil fuel companies which David Friedman and you probably agree about. So I’m not sure why you are attacking his credibility instead of trying to find common ground or understand his position better.
You don’t comment at all on most of “lots” of subjects, but you do comment frequently on GW.
Someone on this blog was claiming 7 billion deaths from anti-GW measures.
No evidence for the claim doesn’t mean no evidence anyone has made the claim.
@Anon
Weakman, maybe, but not strawman.
There are indeed two catastrophist positions– so why does SA’s appeal to the Precautionary Principle only apply to one of them? What chance of anti-AGW measures being a real economy-wrecker would it take before you agreed that we should probably avoid them just in case?
If economies were subject to unpredictable runaway effects, then the PP would suggest that you basically never do anything, never touch the interest rates, change tax levels, spend on infrastructure or anything else. Anti GW measures are not unique in having economic impact.
There’s the answer then: applying the PP to economics lays bare its unworkability as a decision-making rule.
To be fair, the US electricity industry is literally Soviet – prices are set by government boards according to 5-year plans. So there’s no market to be distorted by electricity subsidies. (Transmission and distribution has to be that way. Generation could be a market, and it is in a few States).
@ TheAncientGeek:
Defending his claim that:
“There are two catastophrist positions. The other is the one where any attempt to do anything about GW will absolutely definitely wreck the economy.”
Wrote:
“Someone on this blog was claiming 7 billion deaths from anti-GW measures.”
From any anti-GW measures? That’s your claim. Can you quote something supporting it?
A search of this comment thread for [7 billion] finds nothing but your comment. If lots of people are making the claim, as lots are making the catastrophist claim I complain about, you should have no trouble finding two or three examples. So far you have provided none.
“No evidence for the claim doesn’t mean no evidence anyone has made the claim.”
The fact that the claim as you stated it is obviously absurd is a reason to suspect it was a straw man. If not, you should be able to cite someone making it. Every couple of days on the FB climate discussion someone gives some version of “AGW will destroy all life on Earth/all Human life/human civilization.”
By the same reasoning, there is no real GW catstrophism. Looks like we can all go home.
“By the same reasoning, there is no real GW catstrophism.”
I will be happy to provide real examples of GW catastrophism. I asked you to offer examples of people arguing that “any attempt to do anything about GW will absolutely definitely wreck the economy.”
You have so far offered none.
Note how any effort leads inevitably to disaster!
Closer than I expected, but that’s still limited to only two possible approaches for dealing with AGW. No claim that the tactics currently being used, such as subsidizing electric vehicles and the recyclable industry, must lead to disaster.
Your claim was “any attempt to do anything about GW will absolutely definitely wreck the economy.”
Which is also a good deal stronger than “cause tremendous economic damage.”
Don’t social science studies replicate less than half the time? That actually would be anticorrelated with truth, unless the math is a great deal more complicated than I’m grasping.
Randomly generated social science claims are much less than 50% to be true; being the conclusion of a social science paper raises a claim from “random junk” to “plausible” (but, as you say, not to “probably true”)
That’s evidence of weak or non-correlation. Evidence of anti-correlation would be if more than half of studies showed an effect that was in the opposite direction of the true one.
List of ways Trump has pledged to violate the constitution.
I don’t think it matters at this point. Upthread, you have people saying there’s nothing wrong with Trump expanding libel laws to allow himself to sue people who criticize him.
What’s he going to do, sick the IRS on political groups he doesn’t like?
That would be dreadful (for a non-democrat to be able to do)!
Besides, I thought we had to become more like Europe in all things. Well, here’s a start!
You know the IRS/tea-party thing was almost entirely lies, right, and that the tiny grain of truth at the center of it involved solely Republicans?
Either you don’t know this or you’re pretending not to know it. Either possibility suggests reducing the weight anyone should give your opinions.
I think you need cites for this. I am pretty sure you are totally wrong. I think the tea party / IRS thing was greatly over-stated, but it did happen.
@TheWorst:
When the central figure in a purported scandal takes the Fifth, that is at least presumptive evidence that there is something there.
Why do you believe the opposite?
The people who made the joke about filtering applications by tea party names were both registered Republicans. They were both fired for making an offensive joke–an offensive-to-the-guilty joke which correctly described reality–but for some reason that’s not what the scandal was about.
I wish the right–if they had to make a fake scandal out of this–had picked “no firing people over jokes” rather than whatever you’re doing with this instead. I wish even more that Tea Party groups hadn’t decided in huge numbers to commit tax fraud (which was what the joke referred to).
I believe the opposite because that’s what I read at the time, and while that shouldn’t be strong evidence, I trust it a great deal more than I trust right-wing kooks on the internet. I’ve developed a very, very strong prior–with the help of all of you–that internet rightists can’t be trusted. I wish there was a way around that, but I can’t force you guys to start telling the truth, and I’m unable to make myself easier to con. I’d be more than willing to reevaluate that prior, if I’m ever presented with a reason to do so.
Every once in a while, I notice a right-leaning person adopt better intellectual habits and begin evaluating their beliefs for truth content rather than for tribal signalling value, and it gets my hopes up that a reality-based right is going to develop.
…Then they break with conservatism and declare themselves progressives, and shortly thereafter abandon any interest in truth content over signalling value and turn into SWJ nutjobs. It’s a painful cycle to watch.
@TheWorst: I don’t think it’s possible to escape reality bubbles without giving up the relevant affiliation, because of entanglement effects.
@TheWorst: The Wikipedia article says otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy#Findings
@Outis: Yeah. And fixing that seems like a very hard problem, since option C (“Don’t join a bubble and let its memes overwrite your ability to perceive reality”) seems to be basically nonviable for fully-functioning humans. Finding out that some of what your bubble believes is bullshit shouldn’t necessitate joining a different bubble that believes the truth you just noticed but also believes a different line of bullshit, but it keeps looking like there’s no other option for people.
@Outis
I read the part you linked to, and it didn’t. It said nothing of the party affiliation of the low-level employees involved, and it mentions that zero applications were denied as a result of it. That means it contradicts exactly zero of the claims I made.
Did you read the link you posted?
Why did you claim it “says otherwise,” when it doesn’t?
And Hillary will destroy the First and Second Amendments.
Trump would have to contend with an adversarial media and adversarial Congress.
I’m sure the guy who offered a his conventional-Republican primary opponent a VP slot with effective authority over foreign and domestic policy and who loudly prides himself on his ability to Make Deals would have a lot of trouble dealing with the GOP Congress.
There’s a solid argument that what would happen is that Trump would sign pretty much anything a GOP congress put in front of him, so your views of the legislative side of Trump’s governance should be shaped by your views of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.
In return for letting them do more or less as they wish, the investigative aspects of Congress would be largely unused against President Trump. This will give him significant unconstrained freedom. The media will be adversarial, but Trump’s demonstrated that he doesn’t give a damn what they think anyway.
I wonder about this. I strongly suspect that Ryan would infinitely prefer a President Pence to a President Trump, and that’s the most likely-seeming result of impeaching Trump.
That makes me less confident the investigative aspects of Congress would be completely unused; it seems to suggest there’s at least a non-zero chance that Trump would be impeached and convicted. Possibly for nothing beyond irritating Paul Ryan.
Oh yeah, *Hillary* will be the one to take the guns. Grade-schoolers getting shot wasn’t enough, and a sitting US Congressperson getting shot wasn’t enough, but she’ll find a way, I’m sure. So buy AR-15’s and ammo while you still can!
Supreme Court. Yes.
Overturning Heller/McDonald would allow some states and cities to return to legislatively implemented handgun restrictions. It would not change the legislative factors which prevented, e.g., the renewal of the “Assault” Weapons Ban in 2004 (4 years before Heller).
Thanks for the reminder. I haven’t bought any guns in months (I think).
Same here. I’m easily identifiable as a progressive leftist in RL, so while I think the possibility that the Redcaps will start rounding up people like me and/or plunge us into a Mad Max hellscape is very, very low, it’s still worth a couple hundred bucks to hedge against (especially given how much fun I had the last time I went to a firing range)
Look, there isn’t much of a point in arguing the case on constitutional grounds. The left has long since figured out that the Constitution is just a piece of paper that means whatever 5 of 9 Ivy Leaguers say it means. They’re absolutely right about that, and quite frankly it’s stupid to argue the point. The right has some cherished delusions about the Constitution, but these are delusions nonetheless. If you want a right-wing interpretation of the Constitution, elect a right-wing President and/or Senate. There really is no such thing as a pure Constitution that lacks political inclinations to the right or left, and there are no “constitutional violations” if the Supreme Court says there aren’t. When the Supreme Court was originally given the power to interpret laws on constitutional grounds, they were tacitly given the power to decide what the Constitution is.
Before Marbury vs. Madison, which I understand to have set the precedent for the Supreme Court to declare laws unconstitutional, how were unconstitutional laws challenged?
They weren’t. The Alien and Sedition Acts were blatantly unconstitutional by nearly any standard, and were only overturned legislatively.
I’ve seen the occasional proposal to sanction Supreme Court justices for unconstitutional decisions, but AFAIK none of the proponents have ever elaborated on what that would mean, or what Supremer Court would make the determination.
Well, Congress always has the power of impeachment…
Yes, let’s. You first. Do tell us how a misleading graph which improperly truncates a single tree proxy series invalidates a century of atmospheric physics going back to Arrhenius.
People who use “ClimateGate” as a handwave against the entirety of global warming either (a) don’t know what it actually is or (b) know what it is and make an unwarranted leap from “Mann and Jones were dishonest about the reliability of dendro proxies” to “world-spanning lizardman-tier conspiracy to forge data and suppress dissenters.”
I guarantee you that ClimateGate-scale deception takes place in every field of science, ever. Scientists are not angels, especially when it comes to choosing how to graph ambiguous results. That doesn’t make it an effective or compelling argument.
Climate science is not some shaky Jenga tower where pulling out the Mann brick causes the whole thing to collapse. You could construct a brief for it that completely excludes any paper authored by any scientist who sent any questionable emails and it would be pretty much unchanged.
The biggest problems with ClimateGate was the way academia and the press reacted to it. Mann had some serious math problems here which isn’t really that big of a story. It was his inability to admit it, demonization of the people who pointed it out, and the entire “nothing to see here” reaction that made it as bad as it was. One could argue that climate science exposed an inability to police itself.
Trees aren’t very good thermometers. When this is combined with dubious pre-filtering introducing selection bias, invented statistical routines, appending a high frequency / high resolution data set (the temperature record) to a low resolution / low frequency data set and then proceeding to make finding that “the stuff at the end sure is changing faster”, and ignoring the fact that after the training period the tree rings sets and temperature record diverged quickly leads one to believe it possibly wasn’t worthy of all the acclaim it received.
It was speculative work and upon closer examination full of gaping holes. Fine, run of the mill research. This combined with a refusal to share data and code made for a lot of smoke, but perhaps no fire. It was an unnecessary self inflicted wound and things have improved since then.
I mostly have problems with the reporting of climate science versus climate science itself. I have examined the actual science (IPCC) on sea level rise, hurricanes, and other extreme events and find the coverage to barely reflect what the IPCC says. Media coverage is heavily biased toward doom and gloom which I think is due to environmental journalists having a rather large activist streak.
Agreed. I like to cite the IPCC against the alarmists.
The deal I like to offer is “I’ll accept the IPCC’s lower bound if you’ll accept their upper bound.”
Their upper bound for what variable when? I’m happy with their upper bound for sea level rise by the end of the century.
Also, of course, different bounds are for different scenarios. I don’t think 8.5 is very plausible, since it implicitly assumes away both substantial declines in the cost of renewable power and substantial increases in the cost of fossil fuel.
For whichever variable and time period we happen to be arguing about when I make the offer. (Since the other party is usually American, the variable is usually sea-level rise, since our countrymen’s reaction to temperature increase alone tends to be some variation on “Bring it on!”) For the sort of people I’m talking about here, getting them to accept even the 8.5 scenario’s upper bound on whatever whenever would usually be a step in the right direction.
Assumptions in RCP8.5 will consume all of earth’s known coal reserves by a fairly large margin by 2100. I think this was put in specifically to just bound estimates. Unfortunately many people quote RCP8.5 numbers as if they were the most likely outcome.
As a Christian who believes in global warming, I agree with this statement.
I’m really not sure why conservatives resist throwing the left a bone on Climate Change. Tackling CC doesn’t require revolutionary socialism, for kek’s sakes. Perhaps the left passes a carbon credits scheme and an extension of subsidies for solar. Big deal. There’s nothing majorly destructive going on there. Inefficient from the standpoint of lowering the cost of doing business, but not economy devastating. Everybody else thinks that CC is a big deal, so they’re going to win anyway. You might as well make a bipartisan effort and guide things towards solutions that involve tradeable permits rather than flat limits.
Giving in on CC and going full bipartisan would help the image problem of conservative parties tremendously. Young independents would have less of an “ewwww” reaction.
A revenue-neutral carbon tax seems like a policy that everyone but voters could buy into.
Making compromises in order to look more respectable has not been a winning strategy for Republicans.
Are you unfamiliar with the names Reagan and Bush? Pretending to compromise in order to look respectable (and/or responsible) has in fact been the winning strategy for Republicans for my entire lifetime.
Re: making compromises.
Yeah, but why not split the difference? You can in the bigger picture look like no compromise badasses sticking to your principles and appeal to your base while making small tactical compromises to appeal to an outsider group that leans your way.
Think about young savvy independents whose class interests are conservative aligned, but then imagine that they are turned off by Republican “science denialism”. That group wants low taxes, likes guns and so on, but the Republican Party is too uncool, fuddy duddy, and anti-intellectual for them.
Theoretically, the Republican Party could appeal to these types by compromising on climate change and secularism, but then double down on low taxes, lower regulation, gun rights, free speech, immigration and other issues, more than portraying themselves as “principled” overall, while losing their anti-intellectual, anti mainstream science elements that make them look dumb and uncool to status obsessed youths who are fine with looking cold and self-interested (nationalism and capitalism), but thoroughly not okay with feeling embarrassed and stupid when explaining they’re Republican (religious fundamentalism, anti-climate change, anti-vax, awkward conspiracy theories).
I don’t know how you compromise on climate change and then double down on lower regulation.
Because all the Republicans need to to is appear to be on the side that wants to “DO SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO SOMETHING!”
All a Republican candidate needs to do is propose some sort of carbon credits/tradeable permits scheme. Then in literally anything else you can imagine he can push for lower regulation, such as anything to do with starting businesses. This is “splitting the difference” and it would also help make lower the costs of complying with the credits scheme.
The Democrats know how to triangulate, so why can’t the Republicans learn to do it? Though arguably, Trump is triangulating somewhat by embracing protectionism (and his lower corporate tax rates might just offset the harm to the cost of production caused by protectionism).
Other hypothetical forms of difference splitting would be promising to get tough on the evil big banks that caused the financial crisis while making the same lower regulation and lower tax overtures to industry/business.
EDIT:
Yet another form would be… National Socialism. Heh.
Wouldn’t it work as well to offer a scientifically correct criticism, not of AGW but of CAGW? It isn’t as if there is any straightforward scientific proof that a few degrees of warming–raising Minnesota to the temperature of Iowa–will bring Hell on earth.
Why, by the way, are the young pro-science types you describe not put off by the rejection of evolution by the left–not stated rejection of the theory but consistent rejection of the implications? Hard to see any other way of getting a prior of “women have the same distribution of intellectual and psychological characteristics as men,” given that evolution implies we are as if designed for reproductive success and males and females precisely in their role in reproduction.
If you want to determine what a 2C warmer world looks like, get in your car and drive 200 miles south. Welcome to the apocalypse. Extinctions, refugees, horrible storms, floods, droughts and untold manner of suffering.
Instructions unclear, sitting in Cuban reeducation camp after it was presumed I was a spy.
I went home with the waitress, just like I always do.
How was I to know she was with the Russians too?
If you want to determine what a 2C warmer world looks like, get in your car and drive 200 miles south.
200 miles south of my country is in the middle of the sea. If we keep going in a straight line, then further south is the blighted hellscape of – Spain.
Going south-east direction brings us to the unbearable living conditions of – France.
Is the poster seriously overestimating the actual distance that 200 miles constitutes? I mean, apart from the fact that in my case doing as they suggest would result in visiting some of the most fertile farmland in my country, there’s nowhere near that sort of temperature difference.
“Is the poster seriously overestimating the actual distance that 200 miles constitutes?”
I believe that when I did a rough calculation on rate of temperature change N/S, it was about one degree C per hundred miles, but that’s by memory. Going to my country and using state data, the average temperature of Minnesota is about 3 1/2 degrees below that of Iowa. Minneapolis to Des Moines is about 250 miles. I think Minneapolis is a bit farther south in Minnesota than Des Moines in Iowa, so that comes out pretty close to a degree per hundred miles.
If you have a more precise source for how temperature varies with latitude, feel free to give it.
Average temp NYC – 55F (12.8F)
Average temp Miami – 77F (25.0F)
Distance 1089 miles
1089 miles / 12.2C = *** 89.2 miles / degree C ***
It is of course is more complicated. Changes are latitude dependent, most of the difference is winter temperatures, changes from climate change will be larger for higher latitudes, etc.
@David Friedman
That’s a valid long term strategy, but you are working against a lot of momentum, so you have to make some small level of concession to the “correct” position as of now.
They may well be put off by that sort of thing from the left, which accounts for them being independents.
You’re assuming that it will be reported in that fashion. If the GOP stops being, for the sake of argument, “anti-science” on climate change, something else that the GOP supports will simply be redefined as anti-science.
This assumes that the GOP is only anti-science in one area, rather than everywhere being anti-science is useful for tribal signalling (they are a political party, after all).
For instance, you seem to be assuming a world in which the GOP doesn’t claim that contraceptives cause abortions. We don’t live in that world.
“contraceptives cause abortions”
Boy, I hope you’re not one of those people who was claiming the GOP wanted to ban contraception last time around, because those people were the most staggeringly dishonest arguers I have ever seen in American politics, and that includes this election cycle.
Anyway, since we’re flinging accusations around willy-nilly, remind me again how scientific the left is in regards to GMOs and nuclear power?
We also don’t line in a world where nuclear energy and GMO’s are so dangerous they need to be banned, but the “pro-science” left is taking those stands.
Guys; some left-wingers (mostly Bernie Sanders supporters) might oppose nuclear power and support labeling GMOs. But these constitute a minority even of Bernie Sanders supporters. The majority of Republicans believe in a literal Adam and Eve. Nothing equivalent.
“contraceptives cause abortions”
-They do under some circumstances, as in the U.S. in the 1960s.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/1996/08/childrenfamilies-akerlof
Contraceptives reduce abortions under others, as in Russia in the 1990s.
Guys, we get that you hate Democrats and/or the left. I’m willing to stipulate to that; no need to keep reciting memes.
This changes exactly zero facts about Donald Trump, the right, or the Republican Party. When someone notices you have a broken arm, accusing other people of having a missing finger is not a counterargument.
Facts aren’t soldiers. Saying negative things about the Hated Enemy Tribe might make you feel better when someone points out the flaws in your own, but it doesn’t make your tribe stop having those flaws.
I’m glad you wrote this.
One section gave me pause, though: I wonder if the sentence “If the Right, in between its spurts of religious fundamentalism, xenophobia, and anti-intellectualism, has any redeeming feature…” is both harsher than your real position and (more importantly in this context) likely to turn off some of the people you’re trying to reach.
(By ‘harsher than your real position’ I don’t mean that you’re being insincere, just that the passage doesn’t seem to fit with your obvious respect for some elements of conservatism and even some elements of more extreme right-wing thought; so I suppose you have a specific definition of ‘the Right’ in mind here, which might not be clear to the reader.)
Edit: Oh hey, he took it out. Props to Scott.
Too late for me to edit, but I’ll have no complaints if my post is deleted.
No, I’d rather you left it in. Because it’s nice sometimes to remember what Scott is and what he isn’t.
Not sure what this means, but if you think that’s how Scott thinks of everyone on the right, I can only assume you don’t read this blog regularly.
I can only assume that if you do read this blog regularly you don’t read it carefully.
Scott is on the left. Scott knows the-philosophy-that-cannot-be-named-here-because-it-undermines-the-basis-of-Scott’s-act is basically correct. Scott does not care because he’s emotionally attached to the left so all he’ll ever do is say “hey, guys on the left, maybe try to be a little nicer” (the little nicer only applies until there’s enough victory to stop being nice – like Scott’s piece “Be Nice At Least Until You Can Coordinate Meanness”. To the right, his message is always “surrender to the left just this once so we can get closer to coordinating meanness”.
Niceness to the right is only ever a tactical concern with Scott.
Every time I start to doubt Scott’s charity, I read something like this, imagine that James A. Donald has reproduced by budding and that his brand of “you know I’m right about everything and are just terrified of my dank truths” posturing is being repeated as farce by a smaller, simpler version of him, and am just a little bit more impressed with him.
It’d be fun to pit you against those MetaFilter people who are convinced that Scott is an ardent reactionary ideologue. Maybe you’d like their imaginary Scott and they’d like yours.
When Scott’s self-control slips, it’s not always in the same direction, though. He once posted some ardently anti-SJ things in the comments, which he then deleted. Clearly what we get in the posts is a sanitized and controlled version of Scott, with lots of emotions repressed, but isn’t that kind of the point?
Hm – I’ve obviously read the later, redacted version where that bit was edited out.
Should I be outraged that I can’t be outraged about being classed as a religious zealot xenophobe anti-intellectual? 🙂
Hint: I’m not a xenophobe, I’m a misanthrope – I dislike everyone equally!
It nibs me off, too. Perfectly wasted opportunity to grumble.
Xenophobe is over-generic. My hatreds are very specific.
That’s a bit disappointing. And here I was thinking I might read an entire article on the election without the now required name calling being trotted out. Oh well.
Do you think this has happened with race? It seems to me like 8 years ago, the claim was that Obama would bring racial healing, and that mostly didn’t happen (or it’s not clear that Obama being in charge helped).
It’s not clear to me that the position that, say, having minorities in charge will Change Everything looks any sillier than it did 8 years ago. Yes, you have more disillusioned youth trending conservative, but under a McCain or a Romney I think you also would have gotten 50-50 approval that didn’t skew the youth as left as they were under Bush.
I’ve taken that paragraph out because it seemed to get a lot of criticism while not being vital. I think that probably Obama was a moderating factor for a movement that could have been worse, but in the absence of a control group maybe I’m wrong.
From my perspective on the ground (knowing a lot of young SJW types) I do think Obama made things worse in that respect. A lot of people who were young enough in 2008 to believe that electing a black president would lead to racial healing feel like they’ve been lied to and need to take matters into their own hands. Views on Obama the man range from admiring but cynical to a feeling that he’s a genuine traitor to progressive values, although no leftist I’ve ever made would go so far as to blame him for many domestic problems directly.
“although no leftist I’ve ever made would go so far as to blame him for many domestic problems directly.”
-It’s worse than that:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/us/politics/obama-after-dark-the-precious-hours-alone.html
Read the comments.
I don’t get what I’m supposed to notice in those comments. Please help.
The comments are basically worshipful.
I remember the zeitgeist at the time. The MSM was intensely curious about the likelihood of white Americans choosing to vote for a competent individual despite his being black. A related question that received less attention from discussion-starters, primarily because it implicated themselves: How many white Americans are likely to vote for him SOLELY because he’s black?
You could easily argue the converse: that electing a black president got the hopes unrealistically high up, and the subsequent disappointment when the inevitable happens and a cop shoots an unarmed black man, aggravates the feelings more than it would otherwise have done.
On the other hand, the people who still – after Cleopatra, Marie-Antoinette, Merkel, Thatcher, Albright, Rice, etc etc etc – think a woman will make much of a difference just because she’s a woman, are probably not going to be let a Clinton presidency rob them of their enthusiasm.
A good example is the Oscars. Did giving the Best Picture Academy Award to “12 Years a Slave” a few years ago quell black demands on Hollywood?
No, it exacerbated black kvetching by an order of magnitude.
In contrast, the Oscars almost never give any consideration to Mexican-Americans (as opposed to Mexicans) or Asian-Americans, and you almost never hear any criticism of Hollywood from those quarters. Nobody cares that Mexican-Americans or Asian-Americans win only a tiny percentages as many Oscars as African-Americans do. It’s a non-issue.
There is actually a very small portion of minor, politely-worded complaint by Asian Americans about the non-existant rate of Asian male leads. The content of the arguments presented is usually identical to the black arguments, but it’s voiced with moderation and decorum.
Guess what gets done? In the game of identity politics, you squeak your wheel or vanish.
It’s funny you point to black people being more frustrated by racism — my immediate thought was that white racists have become more racist. I have heard loud, proud racism a LOT more than I did eight years ago, and I think Obama is part of the reason why. Racists feel on the defensive, and conservatives who weren’t racist seem to be more willing to entertain racist ideas because, hey, Obama is so horrible, maybe it’s because he’s black after all.
I expect we’ll hear a lot more sexism if Hillary wins, too. But I’m not 100% sure that means that things are necessarily going backward — it might just be that certain crowds get louder as they discover society isn’t going their way. It’s hard to tell, especially going just by anedotes and general impressions.
So what you’re saying is that the next 8 years of Gender Healing will look pretty much like the last 8 years of Racial Healing?
Oh boy, I wonder what will be on fire by then. I’m sure that will be all my fault too, somehow.
This looks especially interesting if you’ve just been reading about extinction bursts.
I look forward to eight years of being lectured on Sexism by Alicia Machado.
Racists feel on the defensive, and conservatives who weren’t racist seem to be more willing to entertain racist ideas because, hey, Obama is so horrible, maybe it’s because he’s black after all.
Or it may be “might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb”. Since any kind of demurral about Obama was put down to racism, pure and simple, why not go the whole hog and be racist in reality? Not like it’s going to make a difference to how the other side think of you or treat you.
At least in some circles, there is fatigue on racial issues. I know some upper-middle class conservatives who, while voting for McCain, were optimistic about the impact on race relations of a black president –perhaps now blacks would consider themselves part of the mainstream.
After 8 years under Obama, these same people are inclined to think that if 8 years of a black president can’t make blacks behave any better (and by some measures, worse), then probably nothing will. These are people who don’t really intellectualize much about race and would agree with the mainstream view that white/black differences are driven entirely by environment.
Though I suppose there were plenty of opportunities for Boomers to experience the same kind of fatigue. My father seems to have transitioned from utter enthusiasm to utter fatigue on racial issues between 1965 and 1980.
And as I understand it, the mainstream Israeli reaction to the Camp David accords and the Gaza withdrawal are similar. “We gave them their won semi-state, we completely disengaged from one portion of it, and that only encouraged them. The fate of the Palestinians is tragic, but I guess we just need to turtle up enough that we can live our lives without being hit by a rocket or suicide bomb.”
Or, and this is just a thought, perhaps the
deplorable right-wingmedia set out with a narrative in mind and then found examples to confirm it? Which would be completely unprecedented, you’ll agree.@Leit – The racism definately exists. Racism is way, WAY more mainstream on the right than at any time in my entire life. The problem is it’s also way, WAY more mainstream on the left as well. The 90s concept of being “colorblind” is now openly condemned in favor of explicitly race-based identitarian politics, for instance.
Both sides appear to be moving toward a consensus that peaceful coexistence is impossible.
“The problem is it’s also way, WAY more mainstream on the left as well.”
I think if a group of white students at a university wanted a student group called “the race” with the obvious meaning of the white race, they would be unlikely to get it.
The parallel case of a group that calls itself “La Raza” is common and uncontroversial.
“I think electing Hillary would actually work better here. By the time she bombs her second or third Middle Eastern country, the claim that having a woman in charge will Change Everything is going to start looking kind of silly.”
Nah, what accomplishes that (temporarily) is having a right-wing woman in charge, like Margaret Thatcher in Britain from 1979-1990. During the Year of the Woman after the Anita Hill imbroglio in 1991 that led to Bill and Hill going to the White House as a “package deal” in 1992, I had access to Lexis-Nexis so I read a lot of books reviews online. American reviewers at the time were wildly enthusiastic about low-brow feminist bestselling authors such as Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolfe, but British reviewers were acidic about these American dim-bulbs talking up the Year of the Woman. They’d just been through _11_ years of a woman as prime minister and they were not impressed.
Since then, of course, the Brits have forgotten all this experience and fallen meekly in line with feminist ideological hegemony, but for a few years the Thatcher Example had a salutary effect on freeing British intellectual life.
Theresa May may have some of this effect in the UK again.
@ Steve Sailer
Bill and Hill going to the White House as a “package deal” in 1992
Nice to see a mention of the 1990s “package deal”. As that package, the Clintons did a lot of things that contradict the current speculations about what Hillary would do in future.
Bill really does have health problems, which is one reason I wish the Clintons had won in 2008 — but he is still part of the package. There’s no reason to expect that the White House will be much different just because the red phone will be on Hillary’s side of the bed.
I assume you’ve seen this. Bill’s disappointed face here gets me every time.
After eight years of Obama you now have Black Lives Matter, so you tell me. People are still happy to trot out “the reason Obama has not ushered in the New Millennium of Utopia is because of racism because the bad old Republicans keep blocking him because he’s an African-American”. Why would it be any different with sexism as the excuse for why Hillary has not ushered in the New Eden?
As for finally discovering that having a woman in charge does not mean kinder, softer, cuddlier, duvets and kittens and bedtime stories for all – for the love of fishknives, do none of you children remember Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady? Or Golda Meir, who had to be tough to do a tough job?
I’ve never seen this in my life. Nobody has expected Obama to create a utopia.
Or maybe you just don’t know what the word “utopia” means?
I would think it’s safe to assume Deiseach is not being literal. Nobody expected an honest-to-goodness utopia, but a lot people did expect, you know, “hope” and “change.” They’ve mostly been disappointed, and a lot of people have blamed obstructionist, racist Republicans for that disappointment.
“Last, best hope on Earth” Sounds pretty Utopian to me, even if it was a deliberate nod to Lincoln’s speech? But I could well be mistaken.
I apologize for misreading you, then. Though I always interpreted that to mean “the best society possible in a shitty world,” or “the best society that currently exists,” or simply “America, indeed, is the best country on Earth when it wants to be,” not “the ideal society” or the New Jerusalem.
I agree Obama used Utopian rhetoric to his advantage and got a lot of people to buy into vague promises regarding ill-defined goals about how everything’s going to get better and we’ll all feel good about everybody like John Lennon’s Imagine…
Oh fuck it; for all intents and purposes that is utopianism.
i think a lot of people expected that Obama would bring about a world with far less racism (an America, sorry)
I certainly did
what I realised is that it won’t because he’s not going to try and tamp down on that he’ll try to double down on it. Now every black person sees in the newspaper “black president held down because RACISM’ and the constant cries of RACISMRACISMRACISM and meanwhile Obama constantly validates those beliefs. Now imagine Hillary who has shown 100 times the inclination to play the sexism card, not only the media doing it for her but her doing it directly. and that’s the Hillary presidency nutshelled for you.
Most people don’t know what the word “utopia” means. It combines a positive-sounding u- with a negative-sounding -opia, to conjure a place that seems positive at first but which is deeply disturbed beneath the surface.
The only difference between a utopia and a dystopia is that the latter is obvious, which whether deliberate or not is a feather in dystopia’s hat. Utopia lies.
I used to interpret “u topia” as “good place.” But I gather the Greek actually means “no place.”
I used to interpret “u topia” as “good place.” But I gather the Greek actually means “no place.”
That was the pun Thomas More intended. In an addendum to the book he wrote, “Wherfore not Utopie, but rather rightely my name is Eutopie, a place of felicitie.” The book is full of other “nowhere” and “nobody” names and puns: the capital of Utopia is Amaurot (shadowy or unknown place), the river is Anyder (without water), the ruler is Ademos (without people), etc.
Either, actually, as I understand it (warning, hearsay): Greek doesn’t have a bare “u-” prefix, but it does have both an “eu-” prefix, roughly meaning “good”, and “ou-“, roughly meaning “no”. So a little ambiguity there.
The u- prefix is ου-, since in the traditional transliteration Greek ου is rendered u. The ευ- prefix is rendered eu-, or ev- if it comes before a vowel (e.g., Evagoras for Εὐαγόρας). So no, there isn’t any ambiguity: Utopia is Οὐτοπία, with an ου-.
I was just talking to my Uncle, a 50-odd transvestite feminist about this. He was talking about how big a deal it is for a patriarchal society like America to have a shot at a woman President. I mentioned how we already did it with Thatcher and he gave the stock response:
“Ah! She doesn’t count. She was pretty much a man!”
Later on in the conversation, he changed the subject and accused me of being a “redpiller” because I asked him to back up his claim that there was gender inequality in America.
/blogpost
Or Cristina Kirchner, or Dilma Roussef, or Keiko Fujimori, etc.
Hillary Clinton criminally exposed US Gov’t secrets to every US adversary, because she thought that was better than letting US voters see her corruption via FIOA.
Do you seriously think that President Clinton will be more security conscious? Do you think President Clinton will be less corrupt?
If you are risk adverse, you can’t possibly be in favor of giving Hillary Clinton any sort of power.
Having Russia know a bunch of boring low-level classified stuff about us isn’t an x-risk. I assume Russia already knows a bunch of boring low-level classified stuff. I think even insofar as that speaks to a more general tendency of Clinton to be careless, she has shown less carelessness in important policy matters than Trump.
“she has shown less carelessness in important policy matters than Trump.”
Benghazi? Four dead Americans, including the US Ambassador? Because Hillary couldn’t be bothered to give them the security they needed?
What “more important” policy matters has she not been careless on?
She’s “been in gov’t” since the 1980s. She’s been legally part of the gov’t since 2001. What positive accomplishments has she accumulated? What responsibilities has she successfully executed?
In your opinion, how many Americans were killed by terrorists during the last republican presidency? Was it somewhat more than four?
Quiz: which candidate during the primary debates claimed (correctly) that President Bush failed to keep Americans safe and lied the U.S. into the Iraq War?
To be clear, I don’t think the Bush administration bears any special responsibility for the September 11th attacks, for much the same reasons I don’t think Hillary can reasonably be blamed for the Benghazi attacks. And if you think a Trump victory would somehow grant us all magic terrorism-proof armor, you’re living in a fantasy world.
Clinton can easily be blamed for the Benghazi attacks, as she was the one leading the effort to destabilize Libya in the first place. Bush seems more innocent.
“And if you think a Trump victory would somehow grant us all magic terrorism-proof armor,”
-I don’t. I think his election would reduce the probability of terrorist attacks on American and European soil.
@ suntzuanime
Oh, I definitely think that’s a legitimate criticism. But it’s not the one Protest Manager made– he holds Hillary responsible for the attacks in Benghazi “because [she] couldn’t be bothered to give [the diplomatic compound] the security they needed,” i.e. because BENGHAZIIIIII!
@ E. Harding
Wait, how would Trump’s election reduce the probability of terrorist attacks on European soil? What’s the proposed mechanism here?
I strongly doubt that anti-immigration policies, or giving intelligence services even more privileges, or aggressive posturing in foreign policy will do more good than harm in keeping the US safe from terrorism. The “War on Terror” is about as successful as the “War on Drugs”, for roughly the same reasons. If you ignore the causes and attack the symptoms, all you’re getting is different symptoms plus collateral damage.
As for Europe, the imperialist stance of the US in the Middle East (and their sphere-of-influence squabble with Russia over Central Asia) is what got us into this mess in the first place. Making the US even more impulsive and jingoistic wont help here, either.
Not that Hillary isn’t plenty interventionist already – but if you believe Trump would be less hawkish than Hillary, I suspect we are not living in the same world.
“but if you believe Trump would be less hawkish than Hillary, I suspect we are not living in the same world.”
-He is in terms of rhetoric.
Honestly, at the national scale four dead is a rounding error.
“she has shown less carelessness in important policy matters than Trump.”
-[citation needed].
even insofar as that speaks to a more general tendency of Clinton to be careless, she has shown less carelessness in important policy matters
Oh, Scott!
“Well, sure my flat-mate never does the laundry even when it’s his turn on the rota, and he takes the food in the fridge even if he never chips in for the groceries, and he plays his music really loudly when we’re trying to sleep, but I’m dead certain he’ll be 100% reliable when the rent will come due and it’s time for him to pay his share, you just see!”
Yeah, I’ve kind of wondered who there is who thinks Trump will be better on matters of following Federal IT use policies.
Elevating people who are seemingly above the law to even higher office moves us closer to a failure of the rule of law.
Do we know that’s all they know? I thought she deleted a number of emails.
Also, her carelessness may extend to areas we aren’t aware of… you are making a generous assumptions.
I’ve yet to hear any actual evidence that the Clinton emails got into foreign hands, let alone did any substantial harm to US interests. And as President she and her advisors would understandably be hypersensitive about letting any such thing happen again.
I do believe, with ~75% confidence, that the Clinton presidency will be the most dishonest since, um… the previous Clinton presidency. But corruption is more of a domestic issue and I still have enough confidence left in the US political system to believe that we’ll survive it.
Hmm, so the Democrats panicing over “Russia releasing Hillary emails as an October surprise” doesn’t count?
What would “qualify” as “evidence”?
I believe the conclusion was, “It is fairly likely that enemies had the opportunity to get these emails if they wanted them, but no solid evidence either way, and evidence other than a leak is pretty unlikely.”
Huh? Bill Clinton was dishonest? Yes about getting a blow job. About anything of importance?
Bill Clinton was dishonest? Yes about getting a blow job. About anything of importance?
So sexual harassment in the workplace is not something of importance? I don’t know if modern Third Wave feminists would consider me a feminist, but I think it’s a pretty damn big thing if you literally cannot keep your trousers zipped and are having an affair with a younger person working in your place of business where you are the superior.
I generally like Bill, even if I think he is a bit of a chancer, but I was amazed at how even self-described feminist women, if they were at all left-leaning or Democrat supporters, brushed the Monica Lewinsky affair under the carpet. Something that is an impeachable offence? No, not at all. But something that is not what a responsible superior in a position of authority should be doing? Definitely!
I’m not going at this from the angle of adultery, but there wasn’t even the excuse of “she’s not my mistress, she’s my fiancée, as soon as the divorce goes through we’ll be married”. She was a fling for him and yes, it was in the context of the President and the intern, which is unacceptable as an employer-employee relationship.
It’s almost as though basically nobody actually gives a damn about their stated beliefs and is only using them for signalling purposes, isn’t it? 😉
I don’t think the ability to be a good husband or to avoid committing sexual harassment are necessary prerequisites for being a non-disastrous president,* but even a minimum of honesty requires noting that Bill didn’t have those traits.
*Sure, I have low standards. So what?
The thing that people seem to forget is that the Bill Clinton was already suspected of corruption (bribery mostly), and had been accused of sexual harassment and even rape by several different women during his time as governor.
Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury, and Al Capone went to jail for tax-evasion.
Okay, I didn’t hear much about dishonesty in these posts. hlynkacg does talk about him being accused of dishonesty as a governor, and I do recall now there were lots of rumors about that during the Clinton presidency (although these rumors are pretty much impossible to judge because of the immense partisanship on both sides).
But I have still heard nothing about dishonesty as president, except the natural aversion to admit illicit sex in the White House. And yes, that was certainly unimportant as far as presidential acts go. I don’t even think it was sexual harassment, at least I never heard of any coercion of Monica Lewinsky, and I doubt it would have been left out if there was the slightest evidence of that.
Lewinsky started as an unpaid intern. She was moved to a paid position the month after she started… servicing the president. I believe that the many other interns in the program were not promoted, although I can’t find a firm source for that.
Is it sexual harassment to promote your female subordinates based on their on-the-knees performance if some of them are willing?
@ several
Bill did not harass the intern. She delivered a pizza, snapped her thong at him, and kept after him for later and better sessions.
This true story was not serious, and the serious stories were not true.
Bill harassed her by his feminist allies’ standards.
The funny thing here? Almost none of his defenders acknowledge that they only apply these standards to members of the Hated Enemy Tribe. It’s exactly the same as when the same people claim that it’s rape any time you don’t verbally ask your partner to have sex with you… while somehow failing to notice that they never ask their partners that, but still don’t think of themselves as rapists.
The switch to sane-people standards when defending (from insane-people standards when attacking) seems like a subset of the motte-bailey fallacy, but I don’t know if there’s a name for it. It’s pretty close to the isolated demand for rigor, but I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing.
After hearing about the shenanigans the DNC used to get Hilary the nomination, us electing such a damaged candidate encourages the DNC to ignore the will of the voters in future elections, too.
What doomed Bernie was demographics, not the Democratic National Committee.
I think Bernie was the better candidate, but nominating Hillary was the better tactic. A centrist gets you more of the juicy middle part of the bell curve…
And in the end, none of them will get anywhere, because Republicans can and will block anything they try. They might have just as well nominated a flowerpot. Which wouldn’t be the worst choice, either. Look at Belgium: They didn’t have a stable government for decades, and are still doing quite well.
What “shenanigans”? IIRC, the worst thing in the DNC emails regarding Sanders was “they considered asking him a question about his religion…but didn’t”.
The Democratic primary was substantially less of a mess than the Republican primary, in large part because the 2008 Democratic primary was such a goddam mess. Not in the “Hillary didn’t win” sense, but in the “nobody expected a meaningful primary race, so enormous numbers of votes had uncertain-at-best effects” sense. Compare Ted Cruz trying to get pro-Cruz technically-unbound delegates elected as Trump delegates.
The Democratic primary of 2016 was marred by the tendency of news organizations to show the superdelegate count from the beginning (convincing Sanders voters that Clinton’s lead was fake), and by the tendency of news organizations to focus on the atomic results of each primary, rather than delegate totals (Sanders won big in small states; Clinton won big in large states; they tied most other places – Clinton thereby won the primary, and had it plainly won by mid April at the latest, but Sanders voters who were not putting in supererogatory effort to be informed had reason to believe this was not the case).
I briefly read that in a different sense, and chuckled.
The decision of what information is and isn’t classified is the purview of the president. It’s weird enough to say that a cabinet officer (the most senior cabinet position, in fact) appointed by the president criminally mishandled information that was classified under the authority of the president. It’s pretty literally impossible for the president to mishandle classified information because it is the president who determines what information is sensitive and therefore needs to be handled in a particular way.
pneumatik:
In a legal sense, of course. But you will surely concede that there is lots of classified information that leaking to Russia or China or Iran would materially damage American interests. Hillary has shown that this concern is less important to her than (at best) her own personal convenience or (at worst) hiding her corrupt pay-for-play deals.
Perhaps this experience will make her more careful as President. But to me the important point is that it shows us where her priorities are.
One thing that concerns me is Supreme Court justices. Because the right has little power in media and academia, the most dangerous attacks on free speech come from the left. We see this in Europe, where you can be imprisoned for making politically incorrect speech. Now the US, and in particular the Supreme Court, has been a much more stalwart defender of the freedom of speech than any other country. But given how many have fallen prey to PC ideology, I worry about possible cracks in our defenses. Trump speaks out against these sorts of speech codes, while Hillary has endorsed the people behind them. I’d trust his appointees more with the freedom of speech than hers.
So far I’ve been very impressed with the Supreme Court on freedom of speech. I have been assuming that this isn’t immediately under legal threat, especially since it’s hard for the Court to reverse tack suddenly, but if someone who knows the state of constitutional law wants to convince me otherwise, I could imagine this being important.
Citizens United was 5-4. It was about people trying to put out an anti-Hillary Clinton movie “too close” to an election. You think if Hillary gets to appoint Scalia’s replacement, CU will survive?
Exactly where have the 4 left wingers on the SC been “pro-free speech”? Hell, they weren’t willing to protect wedding photographers from being forced by the government to take part in SSM. What could possibly lead you to believe they’re going to favor free speech?
Less worried about CU (I could take or leave corporate donations) compared to individual free speech, for which see eg (as Carl mentioned above) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/13/the-supreme-court-9-0-on-student-organizations-freedom-to-express-the-thought-that-we-hate/?utm_term=.ee6f5bb0dc3b
CU is more that just corporate donations:
http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/25/what-you-wont-hear-about-citizens-united
And let’s be honest, this election proves money doesn’t buy elections.
@Nebfocus …. and if they left out “so vote for X” then they could publish it.
Or they could apply to the X campaign to have their spending included under that campaign’s spending limit.
If you’re going to have a limit on how much money can be spent to promote a candidate, then you have to restrict third-party spending as well as first-party spending.
We had an Article 10 case on this which concluded that third-parties could not be wholly prohibited from spending, but that the spending limit could be lower than that for the campaigns. It’s currently set at 5% of what a campaign is permitted, for each third party. So a national campaign is £10,000,000 and each third party is limited to £500,000.
I’d need to read the minority opinions on Citizens United again, because my recollection was that they were inclined to interpret the First Amendment similarly to how SCOTUK interpreted Article 10 – ie that the book could only be banned if it constituted spending too much, and you could spend some money without the permission of a campaign, but not enough that you could run a bunch of third-party campaigns under a transparent cover (ie SuperPACs) to get around the spending limit.
Except you shouldn’t need to get permission from the FEC to publish a book.
Permission and compliance measures that are incredibly costly (as well as legally risky) chill speech.
Your favoured scenario leads us right back to this. “Sure you were allowed to say you liked that candidate, but since you didn’t fill out form 49573 and register as a political committee first… you’re going to jail”.
Disgusting.
I think you need to step back and re-read what you just wrote. Under what principles of freedom or democracy is it okay to have to get permission from the government or a political party in order to write a book advocating a political position?
Advocating a political position is not the same thing as advertising a candidate.
What if I say “Vote for that lady whose first name starts with H”? What if I say “You should vote straight ticket Democratic party”? What if I say “This really seems like the year to have a woman president”? What if I say “Vote for someone who’s never made fun of a beauty pageant contestant”? What if I say “We need a President whose commitment to NATO is unquestionable”?
Which of those put me over the line, and do you trust the person making that determination? That last part is really the key. I don’t trust anyone to make that determination given the heavy politicization of the regulatory branches of government, and if you’ve been paying attention to (for example) the recent shenanigans at the IRS, you wouldn’t either.
My understanding of CU is that it said that groups have First Amendment protection, not just individuals. Thus both corporations and unions now have this protection. I approve of this expansion of free speech protection, but it isn’t critical to free speech, as long as individuals maintain this protection.
Disagree. If I want to have a voice to counter Paul Krugman (for example) I would need funds from like minded people to broadcast my (our) opinion. This is why I view CU as critical.
Even without Citizens United, private individuals can still subsidize your broadcast. The issue was whether organizations could.
Not even that – you could still use a PAC. I went and actually read most of the opinions in CU today (because I am insane, apparently) and the thing prohibited by the law they struck down was extremely narrow.
You did follow the same-sex marriage decisions, didn’t you? The current Court is fully capable of pulling a 180 on major issues in a matter of a few years, given sufficient pressure from liberal opinion– and that was while they still had Scalia.
I’m somewhat familiar with constitutional law, so let me know if you’d like more detail.
Trump, on the other hand, has endorsed making libel lawsuits easier, which is also something whose disastrous effects we can see in Europe. I don’t think either will succeed, because freedom of speech jurisprudence seems robust and respected in US legal circles, and while technically you can nominate any wise latina you want for the Supreme Court, tradition demands a basically competent jurist. But if it were something I worried about, it’s not clear that Trump would be better for it than Clinton.
I’m not grocking Euroe as having any consistent situation wrt libel laws. The Uk specifically has laws that strongly favour the wealthy…somehow combined with a very irresponsible press.
Basically, it costs a couple of hundred grand to take a libel case to court. So you can say whatever you like about anyone who either (a) doesn’t have a couple of hundred grand or (b) would be too embarassed to take a case to court.
(b) is mostly politicians and the royals.
And the laws have been significantly changed recently, to not favour the litigant so much. Unfortunately, it still costs a couple of hundred grand to defend a libel case, which is fine if you’re a national newspaper with insurance, and not much cop if you’re a blogger – even if it is a case you’d be pretty sure of winning.
Since I am an Englishman, let me ask you: what exactly do you mean by an “irresponsible” press, and who is telling you that?
Spoiler: what that means is “the papers keep taking moral positions the filthy plebeians agree with!” and the people cabling out the irresponsible line are the usual sneering classes.
It means they have an unfortunate fondness for finding individuals who have done something salacious, often people who are not national figures, and publishing a dramatic exaggerated story, including their name and town (“doxing them”) prominently in their paper as outrage porn. They were Gawker before there was an Internet.
A recent example would be the time they picked up on a tidbit of local news, a primary school teacher called Lucy Meadows coming out as trans in order to transition, and decided to direct national attention to them so they could write an opinion piece about their life; shortly thereafter Meadows committed suicide. The Daily Mail is an old newspaper, dating back to 1896, so naturally the specific moral outrages they’ve peddled have varied a lot in their lifetime, but the tactics are old.
Another of their favourite topics is people on benefits doing bad things, example 1, example 2, example 3 just from googling “Daily Mail benefits” and looking through the results, all with full names. Even if you think the people in the stories acted inappropriately, this is a ton of doxxing and public shaming in the second most widely read newspaper in England, elements of whose readership will, naturally, be willing to go further than the newspaper does. “Irresponsible” is fair.
Since the norm we use online (banning doxxing) is not really viable to expect from newspapers, the grudging balance that got accepted was that they’re allowed to do it so long as they make damned sure the people whose personal lives they’re delving into really did in fact do the thing.
(A part of this is public morality being kind of crap and not caring if people get awful treatment so long as they “deserved it”.)
In more general misconduct, not specifically related to libel laws, there was the whole phone hacking scandal thing where people at another newspaper broke into the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl and victims of the 7th July bombing in London in search of a scoop. I think that could reasonably merit a description of the press as ‘irresponsible’.
(I’m still inclined to think that the Internet and mass democratisation of publishing has broken libel laws to the point that they’re ineffective and more harm than good, but I don’t really have anything to base that on but intuition, because the quality of the discourse around libel is 15th century biology levels of abysmal, and if I want any kind of non-awful, consequentialist argument for anything I have to write it myself, and I don’t really care to put in the time.)
@Anonymus
I am an Englishman too, and I am wondering how you managed to miss a little thing called the phone hacking scandal, to name but one.
These “wise Latina” cracks would be more convincing if Sotmayor hadn’t turned out to be the most refreshingly consistent liberal on the court in terms of rolling back surveillance and police overreach.
(As a pragmatic quasi-libertarian, I don’t expect major candidates to nominate people with my views to the bench. But I at least appreciate when candidates nominate actually consistent liberals and conservatives, because they will at least be counted on to overrule some bad laws instead of emulating the rubber-stamp jurisprudence of Holmes, Breyer, etc.)
Aye. Good opinion in Utah v. Strieff.
Can you give three examples of people in Europe being imprisoned for making politically incorrect speech?
Even in my country that has free speech restriction on for example denying the Holocaust, I am not aware of any such case. Even most cases of “Volksverhetzung” which differs from political incorrect speech, you would get off with a fine in all but the most extreme cases.
Here’s one from Spain: puppeteers going to prison for a very politically incorrect show, on charges of glorifying terrorism.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-is-the-spanish-government-afraid-of-a-puppet-show
Wow, ok this is really dangerous.
It doesn’t fall into eyeballfrogs narrative as this is the right using an anti-terror pretext to suppress leftist views, but good to know.
I hope this will go up to the European court for human rights and they overthrow this madness. (Or the Spanish court itself)
Here’s one : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieudonn%C3%A9_M'bala_M'bala#Court_actions
He also got two suspended prison sentences in France. By a quick eyeballing, he got more than €300,000 in fines in his cumulated trials.
Also : Georges Theil (9 months), Vincent Reynouard (1 year), Siegfried Verbeke (1 year), Gaston-Armand Amaudruz (1 year), Roger Garaudy (6 months, suspended prison sentence), Ursula Haverbeck (10 months), David Irving (1 year), Jean-Marie Le Pen (5 months, suspended), Horst Mahler (11 years !), Jean Plantin (6 months, suspended-then-confirmed-then-suspended-again), Germar Rudolf (14 months), Sylvia Stolz (3 year… this one is spicy : it’s a lawyer, that defended a holocaust denialist by basically defending denialist thesis. This “unexpected” defense strategy got her condemned. Yet another evidence that common sense is a machine that degrade over time), Ernst Zündel (Sylvia client. 5 years).
Source : fr.wikipedia
Most of them are holocaust denialists which I don’t count. These laws are in effect for over 50 years and it’s not some novel Zeitgeist of suppressing the free speech of anti PC.
While I personally don’t think you should outlaw questioning historical facts, this is not a slippery slope and served a function at least in post war Europe.
Have to look more into what Dieudonn actually said to judge his case.
A 50 year old ban on speech is still a ban on speech. It sets a precedent to make questioning other things illegal, by deciding what is and isn’t a “fact” (like recent proposals to ban climate change denial).
Just because everyone’s kept their footing so far, that doesn’t mean the slope isn’t slippery.
@RCF
No changes in 50 years seem exactly like evidence for a slope not being slippery.
Michel Houllebecq had to leave France for a while after he was charged with “inciting racial hatred” for an unflattering portrayal of Muslims in one of his books.
Progressives often support hate speech laws.
Euro Logic: We Must Kill Free Speech to Promote Free Speech
He was sued by a civil-rights group for hate speech and won on the grounds of freedom of expression.
Here’s some –
– https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/oct/08/april-jones-matthew-woods-jailed
– http://www.anorak.co.uk/318963/news/olly-cromwell-calling-someone-a-cunt-on-twitter-is-now-a-crime.html/
– http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2330809/Lee-Rigby-death-11-people-UK-arrested-making-racist-anti-religious-comments-online-British-soldiers-death.html
I hear about this stuff all the time.
Ok, I didn’t know the UK is going this far already. Some of them are clearly personal insults that I wouldn’t expect in any country to be covered by free speech. But they obviously stretch this laws a lot.
What is the clearest example where they overshoot?
Is there anything qualitatively like such a comment:
“We should ban kosher and halal meat because it causes avoidable extra suffering to animals”
Could this trigger this laws on either antisemitism and/or anti-islamism?
Or would it be required to add a
“and those people are f*cking c*nts anyway” in order to be prosecuted?
You have very low expectations! That kind of thing is absolutely covered under the 1st Amendment in the US. If the government here tried to abridge the right to personally insult people I would view it as grounds for a violent uprising tbh.
The Lee Rigby case makes my blood boil.
Do you have more information than those articles provide?
It’s super hard for me to get any emotional about this because all of them provide zero information about the actual content that was posted.
Something “racist and offensive to religious people” is so super unspecific. It might actually be: “people of [religion] should be [harmed in some horrible way]”, which is fine to be arrested for. But it might also be “I don’t want any more of [people] in my country”, which is racist but should be perfectly legal to express.
I’m not concerned so much with the other articles, but information about Lee Rigby’s murder can be found on wikipedia and just through googling. An army drummer was murdered in broad daylight on the streets, the killers gloating and boasting to the camera. That’s the centrepoint of the case.
Paging Keranih….
I’m posting this here where comments above and below give evidence supporting your concern about opinions in the US someday being criminalized and leading to jail etc. (Not a full steelman, though I should get a few SSC points for it, but not an attack either.)
It’s just struck me there’s a clear difference between SJW-style tactics and Rightwing tactics against their opponents. When the SJWs attack, it’s straightforwardly against the behavior they don’t like: make the behavior/thought itself a crime, make a whole new law dedicated to it. When the Rightwing attacks an opponent, they find something there is already a law against and accuse the opponent of that, whether it relates to their actual beef or not — for example, people who hate Hillary’s policies, accuse her of misbehavior about cattle futures.
The US SJWs have some weapons in hand for getting an opponent fired or denied a platform, but sending zim to jail would require pushing a new law through various legislatures (which are mostly controlled by Republicans).
That does seem to line up with what we know of Left and Right extremists. I will say that a lot of SJWs settle for taking extremely charitable interpretations of existing laws to “count something as rape/racism”, but usually with the bent of establishing this interpretation as the new norm. And mob Right-wingers prefer ousting of key individuals, often mass exodii to representing Driving The Villains Outta Town.
“for example, people who hate Hillary’s policies, accuse her of misbehavior about cattle futures.”
It’s worth noting that the cattle future charge goes way back, long before Hillary was a major political figure in her own right. The events were almost forty years ago. The detailed account that convinced me of what had happened–by a libertarian speculator who was a Soros protogee–was in Liberty Magazine perhaps thirty years ago.
@ David Friedman
Hillary did the cattle trading while she was First Lady of Arkansas, and pregnant with Chelsea. The charge against her was spread, iirc, around the time she became First Lady of the US.
I read (and was persuaded by) that same article in Liberty, but I remember it as dating from the mid-1990s.
“Rightwing tactics” might better be labeled “Everybody-but-SJWs tactics”– or so the ghost of Richard Nixon tells me.
Edit: Found it! The PDF is of the entire (July 1994) magazine; scroll to the article “The First Speculatrix”.
@houseboat
I grant you your earned points, plus a few brownie points on the side for active constructive engagement!
I think you’re correct in your assessment of the general trend – RWers think that Things Which Offend are obviously infractions of long standing Proper Codes Of Behavior, and so should be charged according to the rules of yesterday.
PWers (I thought to say ‘LWers’ but remember that here that means Less Wrong and not Left Wing, so I will use Progressive Wingers) hold that the Old And Antiquated Rules were Wrong, and that we need New Proper Rules to make the better society.
Where I see the largest practical error in the “make new rules” method is that somewhere along the way one has to savage the Old Rules enough to get a majority to discard them, and there is a strong tendency to savage Rules In General – and the concept of “Following the Rules” with it – so that the power of the New Rules is much weaker. (This is viewed as Bad Luck.)
Having agreed with your principle thought, I will disagree with two parts of your examples/conclusion – first, that the issues with Hillary’s cattle futures are a result of distrust/dislike of her policies, rather than a *cause* of dislike/distrust of Hillary, and her willingness to bend the rules when it suits her. (*)
Secondly, in the US system, with the ability to re-interpet the law, it is not needful to control local or even national legislatures, so long as the federal courts can be adjusted to produce the correct result. Cue RW fury that even though “we” wrote the laws, the PW-controlled courts are undoing what we intended.
(And yet again, bravo to the long dead and rotten Founded Fathers, who knew they could not outsmart their heirs, and so set out to force their heirs to battle each other. It is a Republic only so long as we can keep it so.)
(*) I was old enough to have voted for Bush I, and I remember being exposed to some early anti-Clinton people, who imo were very much too invested in politics and not enough in the Real World. It was like, wow, crazy people who get worked up over this aren’t just liberals in big cities, my side & my people have them too. Bummer, man.
Denying the Holocaust is illegal in 14 European countries, and is often punished with prison terms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial
“Hate speech” is criminalized in various countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
For a recent example, the French comedian Dieudonné was imprisoned for posting “Je suis Charlie Coulibaly” on Facebook after the Charlie Hebdo shooting (a reference to Amedy Coulibaly, who perpetrated the concurrent shooting at the kosher supermarket).
Not imprisoned, but still convicted: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-19883828
And not even charged, but apparently a tasteless (not racist) joke about Nelson Mandela had a guy hauled in for questioning for hours: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/365825/british-man-arrested-making-nelson-mandela-joke-charles-c-w-cooke
Oh, and someone’s facing charges for using the “kill all white men” slogan: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/06/london-woman-charged-over-alleged-killallwhitemen-tweet
(I should add that, even as a white man who grinds his teeth when people think it’s clever to say stuff like this, I do not find that hashtag “threatening”. I would not be afraid for my safety if that woman was near me. It’s too obviously non-literal.)
And Anjem Choudhury jailed for promoting radical Islam.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/16/radical-preacher-anjem-choudary-behind-bars-after-drumming-up-su/
As an anti-Trump conservative in a non-swing state, I’m kind of biased toward accepting this. And given the statistics you cite, I don’t necessarily expect a lot of Trump voters to be reading this. Nevertheless– well argued.
I’m voting for Johnson, but to be honest there’s a part of me that’s hoping Trump will win. It’s a little bit like rooting for the wolf in “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”.
There’s a part of me that wants to see Trump win too. I think it’s the same part that’s secretly a little disappointed whenever terrorists plan a really impressive terrorist attack and it gets foiled at the last moment, because come on, those terrorist plans were really ambitious, and it would have been such big exciting news, and having a Caliphate around would be pretty metal.
I assume this is what people used to call the Imp of the Perverse.
“and having a Caliphate around would be pretty metal.”
-Who’s more likely to destroy it? Clinton, who succeeds the man who created it, or Trump, who establishes a whole new administration in the spirit of Jackson.
Politifact rates this claim pants on fire!
In a recent thread someone pointed to two Politifact reports on two almost identical sort of maybe defensible claims, one by Sanders and one by Trump. Trump’s was rated mostly false, Sanders’ mostly true. That strikes me as a reason to ignore the ratings, although the arguments and evidence for them might still be of interest.
I think the always on-point Hillary PR Team had the best response to this. It’s the serious vs. literal thing again.
@David Friedman (I can’t reply to your post directly, is this normal ? I rarely use the comment system).
Would you be able to provide a link to either the discussion or the claim that is rated differently ? It interests me greatly.
@ David Friedman
I remember a thread like that, concerning claims Sanders and Trump made about unemployment. It turned out in that case that, if you actually looked into the matter, Sanders’s claim was correct while Trump’s claim was wildly off-base.
If you think politifact was wrong or inconsistent in one of their judgments, you’ll at least have to provide a link. I’m sure they’re not infallible, but if you’re convinced they’ve made a mistake there had better be pretty strong evidence.
@ a n o n
We’re already at maximum thread depth, you can’t embed comments any further.
The Politifact comparison was here. Though there was enough daylight between the two claims to maybe justify the difference between “mostly true” and “mostly false” (I found them both misleading at best), I saw a striking difference in the level of interpretive charity extended to Trump vs. Sanders.
In June of this year, Trump claimed the black youth unemployment rate was 59%; in July of last year, Sanders claimed the unemployment rate among black youths not presently enrolled in school was 51%. Sanders was citing the U-6 measure, the standard way of gauging underemployment. Trump was citing the employment-population ratio, which just takes the number of black youths without jobs divided by the total number of black youths. This latter figure includes, as you might expect, a huge number of full-time students who have no interest in finding work. The number Sanders gave actually reflects unemployment, although it was misleading for him to describe it as the “real” unemployment rate, hence, his claim was mostly true. Trump’s figure has only the most tenuous connection to unemployment, hence, his claim was mostly false. Politifact got this one exactly right.
“Politifact rates this claim pants on fire!”
It’s largely a matter of opinion, so it’s a bit odd to be citing Politifact.
“It turned out in that case that, if you actually looked into the matter, Sanders’s claim was correct while Trump’s claim was wildly off-base.”
Trump’s claim was literally true.
“Trump’s figure has only the most tenuous connection to unemployment, hence, his claim was mostly false. Politifact got this one exactly right.”
It was the percentage of people unemployed. One can argue that the term “unemployment” has become so strongly associated with a something other than the percentage of the people who are unemployed that it’s misleading to use its literal meaning, but saying “You used a term to refer to what it literally means, rather than another meaning that has considerable currency” is a rather weak basis for labeling their claim “mostly false”.
““It turned out in that case that, if you actually looked into the matter, Sanders’s claim was correct while Trump’s claim was wildly off-base.””
The Sanders case. The Trump case.
Sanders used the term “Unemployment rate” twice and “real unemplyment rate” the third time, in a parallel construction. None of the numbers was the BLS unemployment rate.
According to Politifact:
“The statistic EPI used, known by the wonky shorthand U-6, is officially called a measure of “labor underutilization” rather than “unemployment.” EPI itself used the term “underemployment” in its research.” It includes, among others, people with part time employment.
Trump, by Politifact‘s account, used the Employment/population ratio, and so included people who didn’t have a job and were not looking for one.
Both statements were false in terms of the conventional definition of the unemployment rate. In each case, there was something that one could with a stretch describe as an unemployment rate for which the number was true. I don’t see any reasonable defense for Politifact concluding that one was mostly true and the other mostly false. Both were false in one sense, true in a much weaker sense. Both were stated in ways that clearly implied that they were “the unemployment rate.”
Which neither was.
@ RCF
Since you’re counting full-time students as “unemployed,” why not infants and nonagenarians? Why not the dead? Why not housecats, or rocks? The colloquial meaning of “unemployed” is vague enough that you may as well just make up a number, there’s guaranteed to be some gerrymandered class or other that will fit it.
The unemployment rate is the percentage of a population jobless and actively looking for a job. If you stretch it, you can count people who are working part-time but wish to be working full-time, and people who want a job but have given up searching. But it is still a technical term with a specific meaning, and a figure which includes full-time students not looking for work is not the unemployment rate, no matter how generous we’re being.
@ David Friedman
There’s room for dispute over whether the official BLS statistic or the U-6 measure offers a more accurate picture of unemployment. There’s no room for dispute over whether the employment/population ratio gives an accurate picture of unemployment– no reasonable person thinks it does.
More accurately, I’m not counting full-time students, I’m accepting someone else counting them. Infants are clearly a different class than students.
That’s one meaning. I reject the idea that there is a monopoly on the definition.
No, if one wishes to make it clear that one is talking about the BLS Unemployment Rate, one can say “BLS Unemployment Rate”. That one group has a particular definition does not make it a “technical term”. There’s a group that defined being able to “afford” a particular level of rent as the rent being 30% or less of one’s income. That doesn’t mean that if someone makes $250,000/year and is paying $100,000/year in rent, and says “I can afford my rent”, they are using a technical term incorrectly.
Because…? Counting full-time students not looking for work as “unemployed” seems just as ridiculous to me as counting infants or chickens.
Because students are people who could be working. There is some economic activity that could be happening that isn’t. Calling students unemployed refers to a perfectly reasonable counter-factual. Almost all students could be working if they weren’t in school and there were jobs available, and most students could be doing at least part-time work if a good enough job were available.
As long as we’re looking for logic, why are people who have given up on looking for work not included in “unemployed”? The BLS number is hardly a full picture of the job market.
Because it isn’t people who have given up on looking, it’s people who aren’t looking. There are more reasons to not be looking than having given up, and it may be hard to separate out the “given up” portion from these others.
Serves to show only the lack of depth of Politifact’s understanding and the frequent uselessness of its ratings. It also rated “false” Obama’s claim in the middle of 2008 that the U.S. was in recession. IIRC, it has stood by that rating.
I usually don’t listen to the part of me that wants Trump to win, because whatever it might try to insist about the Revolution actually arriving this time, it’s also cheering along with That One Friend on Facebook, “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!”
And That’s Terrible.
It is. Yelling for blood for the blood god is a waste of life.
But have you heard the good news? Slaanesh loves you, just the way you are.
(Also, every other possible way.)
I hear this around me all the time: “ha, that robber was really stupid!” or “only an idiot would hide the victim’s body so badly”. It’s like we, as a species, have an instinctual aversion for stupidity, whether it affects us negatively or positively.
Like it’s almost a pleasure to be robbed by a very clever thief.
It would make a wonderful Labyrinth scenario.
Hah. When a really cool prison break – like by making an airplane out of spare parts from the woodwork class or something – is foiled, do you ever feel like the people involved should be freed anyway for sheer class and chutzpah?
I definitely feel like everyone on this list deserves to be set free. Especially Nordin Benallal. (“He has previously run from a prison van, walked out of jail wearing a wig and sunglasses and scaled a prison wall with a rope ladder.”)
That would get my vote.
And you know what? I just realized that I might actually believe that anyone who wants to be out of prison that much more than I want them to be in it, probably shouldn’t be in prison.
Have you considered voting for Evan McMullin, if he is on the ballot in your state?
I want to congratulate you, first off, for managing to write a piece on the election that is lucid and convincing, even to Death Eater me. It’s good to see that even in a 99% awful category, SSC continues its long-term streak of being Not Awful; being able to come here and see this is remarkably refreshing. (Of course, I’m still not going to vote.)
After this, of course, I need to argue with you.
After the ceremonial eye-roll at the standard practice of confusing a 100% chance of $1000 with a 0.0001% chance of $1,000,000,000, there’s a question on variance. It’s the conventional wisdom this election, and also basically true, that Clinton is the candidate of the status quo and Trump is the wild card. In normal terms, this would make Clinton the safe bet and Trump the high-risk play. But right now, the status quo is an empire in decline, and empires in decline lash out. In foreign policy at least, Trump has made at least perfunctory signals against globalism and American Empire, however seriously you take that. It seems to me entirely plausible that Clinton would follow the globalist lead in trying to force global interests through, and provoke another major war. (Syria? Ukraine? South China Sea? It’s not like we lack for trouble spots.) Even just more standard regime change operations would be pretty bad, given that in our last round of interventions we triggered ISIS and the European refugee crisis; if we got into a shooting war with Russia or China, it could become far worse. In this realm — probably the one with the greatest plausible chance of extraordinary catastrophe; even a domestic civil war probably wouldn’t turn nuclear — Trump seems to me legitimately like the lower-risk candidate.
You mention the probability that Trump will be more able to effect change, due to not fighting a Congress likely of the opposed party. This is making the standard mistake of confusing Republicans with actual rightists. It doesn’t seem likely that a Republican Congress will be any more effective at checking a President (H.) Clinton than they were at checking President Obama; whatever follies of bombing, gasoline thrown on the culture wars, or imperial expansions of the domestic civil service she desires, she’ll basically get. Meanwhile, in the domestic realm at least, Trump would be fighting a civil service that is overwhelmingly leftist and hates him. This seems far more likely to be an effective check than an also-globalist Republican Congress; for instance, if Trump attempted using regulatory agencies as weapons against his enemies, he would immediately face the full force of the entire Cathedral pushing back with all its might, whereas Clinton would presumably be just as able to do this as Obama was.
You also mention the likely consequence of a Trump administration being radicalization of the upcoming generation in the direction of the social justice left. I honestly have no idea whether this is likely or not; your analysis does seem plausible. However, the position of many rightists is likely to be that Clinton, positioned in this matter as Obama 2.0, is simply intolerable. If I had not consciously eradicated the bit of me that cares about the President as a symbol, I would likely agree. More, a Clinton administration would presumably continue Obama’s policies in consciously diving as far down the social justice whirlpool as possible, which does have real consequences. To the degree that federal policies could encourage the absurd social justice politics and policies on college campuses, for example, Clinton could materially damage me personally. The encouragement of a hypothetical backlash may well not outweigh this consideration in most people’s minds.
None of this constitutes any endorsement of Trump, or anyone. (One of the benefits of being a Death Eater is one no longer has to sacrifice one’s dignity by a personal endorsement of either the Zombie Felon or the Hypersensitive Clown.) In purely consequential terms, I don’t know which candidate to prefer, though I don’t see many good outcomes in any case. But even consciously choosing the lesser evil, I don’t think it’s so clear-cut which it is.
Does your use of “globalism” here mean “foreign interventionism”? I usually think of globalism as the integration of global trade markets and supply chains. If it does, I agree somewhat.
I also submit that if Hillary continues the Obama administration on healthcare and entitlement spending, these could also be problems that were manageable before, but are on a collision course with the American government’s ability to continue borrowing at cheap rates.
I thought Republicans did an ok job blocking most of Obama’s policies once they retook Congress in 2010. I can’t think of many big policy victories he had after that. Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and the stimulus were all prior to the 2010 midterms. Most of the things I think of for the Obama administration were either solely controlled by the executive (foreign policy, surveillance, diplomatic and trade negotiations).
Are you so sure that the Cathedral would win against Trump-controlled instruments of the state? The DoJ, DHS, CIA, and so on sound pretty scary with Trump in charge. Do you think it would be a good idea to elect a president who will likely cause a constitutional crisis? Even if Trump didn’t “win” these conflicts, it seems like it would at least be as divisive for the country as the Left getting Clinton as president.
“Globalism” in the sense of “foreign interventionism” is very often tied to “globalism” in the sense of “integration of supply chains”. The whole reason anything’s happening in Syria is because the US decided to topple Assad, which was caused by Assad refusing to allow a natural gas pipeline from the Arabian Peninsula to Europe (which would have undercut Russia, Assad’s ally). I’m not sure how much truth there was behind it, but the idea that the Iraq invasion in 2003 was motivated by oil politics was at least a common accusation. South China Sea only matters because trade routes. And so on.
It’s true that since 2010, Obama hasn’t managed any Obamacare-alike major legislative reorganizations. But that which is controlled solely by the executive branch is vast, and what supervisory powers Congress has have been left idle while Obama uses them at his whim. I see no reason to expect this to change under Clinton.
In “the Cathedral”, I include many of the executive bureaucracies themselves. Should Trump attempt overreach using the regulatory agencies, >50% of the pushback he would get would come from the agencies themselves. Remember, they’re staffed by leftists who all hate him. To overcome this, he would need to spend huge amounts of effort and political capital in retaking those agencies before he could do anything nefarious with them. This would certainly be divisive, but we aren’t fixing the divisions in this country anyway, so I don’t consider it that strong a factor.
[citation needed]
I’m reminded of the various accusations that the US was invading Afghanistan in order to make way for an oil pipeline. Because, you know, no nation would ever declare war on someone merely because they bombed two of its cities killing thousands of people, really, the very idea is absurd on its face.
We didn’t go to war with Saudi Arabia though
Look, if you’re proposing that every city in Saudi Arabia be turned into a flaming crater by noon tomorrow, your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. But that doesn’t mean that 9/11 wasn’t directly carried out by the government of Afghanistan. (And yes, Al Qaeda was part of the government of Afghanistan, so don’t think of starting with that.)
I’d settle for no longer being allies.
No backsies! Flaming craters by noon tomorrow it is.
The “empire in decline” is already a thing. And I’m not very confident that Trump marks a reversal of this trend, as much as the actual “lashing out” part that turns the slow decline into a very fast one. (Clinton won’t reverse it either – but it is more likely that she will buy a little more time).
And as for the allegedly left-leaning civil service pushing Trump against the wall until he sqeaks – that brand of “checks and balances” rarely works as well in practice as in theory.
I agree, I figure about 4 years.
I don’t expect Trump will reverse the decline; that’s very likely impossible. I think he’s less likely to lash out with violent foreign interventions over it, given most of his signature policies are domestic. And if US “world power” declines I would take that as a positive.
I’m not very stirred by “This could trigger WWIII” claims as I’ve lived through a couple of them and we’re still here with nobody having flung nukes around, but I do think we should be more worried about Syria (which is part of why I’m so hard on Johnson about the Aleppo slip).
How the First World War started because of a Serbian nationalist assassinating an Austro-Hungarian princeling was precisely because of the web of alliances and treaties and using other states as proxies in international disputes. Both Russia and the USA are involved in Syria, and Russia is more conspicuously – if not putting “boots on the ground” – helping in a concrete fashion its preferred side.
Bad relations between the West and Russia, particularly between the US and Russia, mean that places like the Ukraine and Syria are the theatres where the tussle is played out, with both sides backing their tokens. And so what happens in Syria, and what that means if Russia’s selection gets the upper hand or doesn’t, has a knock-on effect which I think we are very much downplaying – to our detriment, because I don’t think Aaronson’s putative kids will be asking him “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” about Trump versus Hillary, it will be “And in our history classes we learned what caused the war, and Daddy, how could a civil war in a faraway country have set world powers at each others’ throats like that?”
I think this is a pretty literal case of “survivor bias”, isn’t it? If we’d gone nuclear war, you couldn’t express an opinion on the internet, or perhaps at all.
Just to be non-apocalyptic about it all, India and Pakistan have demonstrated that a conventional war is possible between nuclear powers.
Mind you, a big conventional war with modern weapons is one of my nightmares.
I don’t think the current mini-war in Kashmir is something one should be sanguine about. At least not yet.
>If the Right, in between its spurts of religious fundamentalism, xenophobia, and anti-intellectualism, has any redeeming feature, it’s that it’s traditionally been more aware of these kinds of tradeoffs.
The three things you name are all the low-variance end of the issue.
Don’t get fundamentalism confused with traditionalism. Traditionalism may be low-variance; fundamentalism is not.
The language is muddled here, and I don’t think it cuts at the joints–it is not possible to call fundamentalist religion low- or high-variance as a class.
So let me be more specific: I think the positions advocated by the Christian right in the United States are the “adhering to previous tradition” type of belief rather than the “god is displeased and we need to burn everything to the ground” type of belief.
A high resistance to social change is low-variance.
Huh; I was thinking that you were thinking of as the relevant distinction as low-variance tradition vs. high-variance reasoning-from-principles (or “modernism”), fundamentalism as such being an example of the latter rather than the former.
But, while the Christian right indeed does not seem to be of the “god is displeased and we need to burn everything to the ground” variety, a lot of it — or at least the parts that were politically influential back in the Bush days, less clear how relevant this is now I guess — is literally millenarian. Use all the natural resources because Jesus is coming back; Israel is important because of their role in the Apocalypse; etc.
…I get the sense that this argument has probably drifted away from the point…
Yeah probably. When you mentioned Israel I realized that the foreign policy of the Christian right is way higher variance than their social policy, so I guess maybe that’s more important?
But the larger point is that very few people are actually evaluating political beliefs based on variance. Scott said upthread that he is partial to the SJ positions, but mucking with all the norms about sex could very well lead to “tiny IQ decreases that have horrible consequences on a society-wide scale”.
The appeal to variance rings hollow to me. It feels like an isolated demand for a high level of scrutiny that matters only for this specific case.
Watercressed, Scott didn’t say that– he was talking about the possible effects of increased CO2 on IQ.
The comment about SJ positions is here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/#comment-415264
I know Scott was talking about CO2 in the quote from the post. My objection is that he doesn’t seem nearly as concerned when it comes to the SJ positions.
Yeah, I was disappointed to see this pot-shot in an otherwise responsible post.
On a factual and personal level I’m most annoyed at the fundamentalism accusation, since fundamentalism has always been a small minority (assuming “fundamentalism” is something besides a loaded code-word for “serious religious belief”) and religious orthodoxy is *much* better at countering it than the Left’s anti-religious rhetoric is (think Toxoplasma).
But on an ethical level I’m most annoyed at the xenophobia accusation, because just a few sections later Scott is painting a cultural/ethnic minority (the “Borderers”) as low-intelligence and dangerous to the country.
I don’t see much responsible about the post, other than that Scott left the comments open.
Borderers’ election preferences included
*Tilden 1876
*Hoover 1928
*Stevenson 1952
*Nixon 1960
*Johnson 1964
*Nixon 1972
*Carter 1976
*McCain 2008
Anyone see a consistent pattern here?
No.
Most of them end in ‘n’?
2 syllables?
Stevenson 1952.
As admirable as I find this article, I also find the point about “LOCK HER UP” suggesting a crowd that is definitively lower on the epistemic virtue scale unconvincing, in light of all the crowds I’d seen yelling “LOCK THEM UP” wrt to Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.
The people chanting “lock her up” don’t seem to be doing so on the basis of war crimes trials (for which I support locking up all four individuals, along with everyone else convicted by the international criminal tribunal for the American Invasion of Iraq).
I’m not really aware of any real dispute about whether the US government committed a crime against peace with regard to Iraq, so I don’t see the relevance to epistemic virtue.
“I’m not really aware of any real dispute about whether the US government committed a crime against peace with regard to Iraq”
Hmm, quick question: was Saddam Hussein fully in compliance with the truce agreements that halted Iraq War 1.0? No?
Then I guess we know who committed the “crimes against peace”, now don’t we.
Oh, and I’m really sad you weren’t living in Saddam’s Iraq. People like you deserve a police state, and all the crimes it commits against the defenseless civilians.
And now half of Iraq is a police state that makes Saddam’s regime look positively utopian, and the other half is a “democracy” where opposition parties get banned, opposition politicians get arrested, and whoever the Americans want always wins “elections”, often because the other side boycotted.
Saddam Hussein was a monster, and yet the US invasion and it’s aftermath (in addition to making a further mockery of international law) made Iraq a far worse place. Both statements are compatible.
It’s now only a fifth of Iraq and half of Syria.
@ birdboy2000:
Sorry to be extremely off-topic, but, um, did you post on the Bulbagarden forums like 12 years ago?
Mayleaf, indeed I did. Still a pokemon fan but hang out more at /vp/ these days (with no username attached).
Protest Manager is (somewhat ironically) banned indefinitely for the above comment
The “people like you” line, I presume? Makes sense to ban for that; again though, as with Deiseach’s case, I suggest “indefinitely” not extend all the way to “permanent”.
Off topic: I’m hanging out for a return to posts on scientific misconduct and pharmaceutical regulation, because my god has this post turned your comments section to shit.
I would guess that the people chanting “lock her up” included many thinking of her attitude toward classified information. This is actually a very serious charge; lots of people lower down the power chain were summarily tried and convicted for doing less, and some of them got a lot of people hurt for doing less. I’ve heard it argued that it was all “minor stuff”, but I don’t think people would be keen on letting someone get away with reckless driving just because they happened not to hit anyone when they did it, let alone elect them for office.
And this is just one of the accusations against her.
I don’t endorse PM’s crack about wishing you had been in Iraq, but this comment sounds like a hypocritical selective justification of calls for someone’s head.
To suggest no politicians should be locked up for actions undertaken in office, no matter how criminal, is to suggest that politicians should be effectively above the law – something I strongly disagree with.
I simply think some suggested charges carry far greater moral weight than others. Nothing hypocritical about it. What Hillary did regarding e-mail data was wrong, that she’s called for Snowden’s arrest while doing it is tremendously hypocritical, and yet I don’t consider obstruction of justice or leaking “state secrets” to be on the same level as starting wars.
You vastly underestimate the potential damage of leaking classified information. Such leaks weaken the ability to negotiate favorable terms in everything from trade deals to peace treaties, and tip off malicious actors, state-supported, paramilitary, or otherwise, about our capabilities, which makes wars more likely.
This isn’t typically revealed in history, since the causal chain is often not known for decades, and laying it out for the public even when it’s known could easily cause further damage. That said, there are plenty of examples from studies of 19th and 20th century wars for the studious.
One of the main causes for wars is that at least one of the sides is misinformed about the capabilities of the other. As long as both agree about their relative strength, they can reach a stable deal that reflects the actual power distribution (within the range of what a war costs them). But when they disagree, it may happen that one side believes to have the upper hand, and threatens war, while the other side disagrees, and calls the bluff. War ensues.
Wars can still happen with perfect information (for example when current technology favors the attacker, or when the conflict is about something indivisible), but it removes many of the more common reasons for failed negotiations.
“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged today” – Chesterton
The FBI director (previously a registered republican) strongly disagrees:
“Mary or Joe, if they did this in the FBI, would not be prosecuted,” the FBI director said. “They’d be in big trouble, but they would not be prosecuted. That wouldn’t be fair.”
Despite the second-guessing from Republicans, Comey said he remained convinced that prosecution wasn’t even remotely appropriate given the facts.
“As painful as this is for people, this was not a close call,” he said. “This was done by pros in the right way.”
Do we lock people up on the basis of accusations, or do we demand that there be actual evidence?
The FBI report details more evidence than was required to earn Kristian Saucier (12 photos containing CONFIDENTIAL/RESTRICTED information) a year in prison. There should absolutely have been charges filed in both cases. Or perhaps Kristian needs to change his name to Mary or Joe.
Wrong!
http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/16/politics/navy-sailor-clinton-email-defense/
“Mr. Saucier admitted that he knew when he took the pictures in 2009 that they were classified and that he did so out of the misguided desire to keep these pictures in order to one day show his family and his future children what he did while he was in the Navy,” Hogan wrote in a court filing.
Saucier’s conduct is different from Clinton’s email controversy, even his lawyers admit. The former secretary of state has said she did not knowingly send or receive emails that were classified, while Saucier has admitted knowing his conduct was illegal.
So either Saucier is honest while Hillary is a liar, or Hillary has demonstrated a level of ignorance that makes Trump and Johnson look like polymathic scholars.
I agree that Clinton’s handling of classified materials was some combination of grossly irresponsible and grossly incompetent. But the question we were addressing was whether Clinton was being held to a different standard than Mary or Joe, and you certainly can’t show that there’s a double standard by pointing to a case where someone confessed to intentionally breaking the law.
I’m given to understand that we rather frequently lock people up on the basis of accusations. Seems like the social tide runs toward removing barriers to that, too, especially in the case of sex crimes.
Oh, but maybe you meant to ask if we find it morally disgusting? Much less so in the case of Clinton than any other, I assure you, since she is and has been complicit in degrading the system. In her case it would merely be poetic justice; a spice of irony on top of a well-deserved incarceration.
Really? Clinton has advocated imprisoning people on the basis of mere allegations? Where?
That’s just making excuses. It’s okay for one ignorant mob to chant “lock him up” but it’s not okay for the other ignorant mob to chant “lock her up”? Do you really think that the folks marching with giant bleeding papier-mache heads of Dick Cheney had been thoughtfully poring through volumes of international law the night before the parade, trying to determine if the war was legal or not? Were they one iota less a bunch of random thoughtless folks caught up in the excitement than the attendees at a Trump rally?
And what international criminal tribunal would this be?
You may wish to rethink that statement, as are you freaking kidding of course there is a real dispute on that point, have you been in a cave for the past sixteen years?!! A quick spin around the conservative blogosphere and publications, and you can find innumerable right-wingers who will still defend the Iraq War for various reasons. And even those who agree it was a mistake will most likely violently dispute claims that it was a “crime against peace,” whatever that means.
“I’m not really aware of any real dispute about whether the US government committed a crime against peace with regard to Iraq”
Given that “crime against peace” has no factual content but rather simply expresses the speaker’s disapproval of the behavior, I don’t see what dispute you expect there to be.
While I don’t like people screaming “lock her up”, there’s the fact that Republican politicians actually get locked up as a means of knocking them out of political races or otherwise causing them political harm.
Take Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. He was subjected to a federal corruption trial, found guilty eight days before the election, then lost the election. Afterwards, the conviction was vacated for “gross prosecutorial misconduct”. Also, incidentally, Republicans as well as Democrats called for his resignation (including Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin, then running for president), a far cry from the ‘you can’t prove anything happened, and I’ll stall until everyone forgets’ we often get from Democrats when a Democratic politician is in a scandal.
Then there’s the Wisconsin John Doe investigations, carried out against supporters of a Republican collective bargaining bill (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisonsins-shame-i-thought-it-was-home-invasion-david-french). There was a gag order put in place preventing the people raided from discussing the case, but somehow information from the Democratic prosecutor was leaked to the media, allowing them to frame the story.
As someone with Republican policy leanings ‘Trump might do what Democrats currently get away with doing’ isn’t a reason to vote against Trump. The barn door has been opened. The genie is out of the bottle.
Add Rick Perry to that list. And Tom DeLay.
So are all GOPers as innocent as the driven snow, while all Dems are guilty until proven innocent, of anything any Right Winger decides to accuse them of?
No, of course not. But these were. Did anybody make any stronger claim?
I certainly didn’t. The topic was: are GOPers sometimes the targets of dishonest politically motivated prosecutions? And the answer is yes — indeed, more than one of the highest-profile politicians running for President have been targeted, in this election cycle alone. (Walker and Perry.) Jill, do you dispute that?
I feel some balance is needed here and I am well placed to provide it. When Obama came to the UK and asked us all to vote Remain he annoyed enough people to result in Brexit. (I know this to be true because, well, stuff)
So to sabotage Scott’s completely persuasive article all I need to do is this:
People of America! We British implore you: ‘Vote Clinton. Not Trump. Trump’s an idiot.’
Sorry everyone – good luck with your new president.
I never understood this. Why would Obama’s comments annoy anyone, let alone someone who would otherwise have voted Remain?
You enjoy having smug upstart foreigners tell you how to vote in a national referendum?
The all-time Smug Foreigners with Zero Actual Knowledge of Anything Award, as awarded by myself, goes to this endorsement of Grace Poe in the recent Philippine presidential election, by the Economist.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21697850-danger-personality-driven-politics-fatal-distraction
Read it and tell me if you believe that the author(s) have the slightest personal knowledge of any of the concerns that ordinary Filipino voters might have, ever even stepped into the Philippines, or have any general understanding of any of the issues in that election besides the fact that Mr. Duterte once made some off-colour remarks about something sometime somewhere.
I’d be pretty fecking annoyed if I was Filipino.
Wow, no wonder calling foreign leaders sons of whores makes him more popular.
Foreigners aren’t allowed to have opinions?
As it is so charmingly put these days, your having an opinion doesn’t protect you from the consequences of having that opinion.
Go right ahead and tell Americans what stupid slack-jawed yokels they are for letting Trump get this far. A bunch of them will figure out ways to vote for him twice just to spite you.
Have you never met a USian who is annoyed at being told what to do by “Eurotrash”?
Yeah, but they’re all (at least, all the ones I’ve met) already far-right and wouldn’t vote the left side of any issue in a million years.
Brexit was more right than left but it doesn’t split that neatly. It got quite a lot of votes from Labour heartlands. It’s the anti-elitist thing again. If your heart says Leave but your head says Remain, you might decide to give your heart the casting vote when someone who is richer, cooler, famouser and Americaner than you comes along to explain why your heart is wrong.
That being said, a lot of Brits like Obama and I wouldn’t be surprised if he also decided a fair few for Remain. The real problem for the Remain camp is, of course, that they decided to stomp around social media declaring that anyone who even considered voting Leave was a stupid racist. This won about as many hearts and minds as you’d expect.
To clarify, I was referring to americans who use the term eurotrash.
Obama’s charismatic and well-liked enough that I doubt he alienated a lot of people – and the sort of people who’d be alienated by him were probably so because they hate foreign intervention in British affairs, so they were probably already pro-brexit anyways. But I’m not British, and may be overestimating how liked he is there.
No, but I don’t live in the US.
I don’t recall ever talking to anyone from New Zealand who was upset because foreigners were expressing opinions on our politics, but I suppose I don’t get out much here either.
How often does that happen, and how hostile/contemptuous are the opinions when it does?
It’s certainly not just a US thing. Folks like Orban in Hungary make bank on resentment against Foreigners Telling Us What To Do.
I doubt that Obama presented his opinions on Brexit in a hostile or contemptuous way. I may be wrong. The Trump situation is rather different, but that’s not what I was talking about.
Obama’s comment about how an extra-EU Britain would have to wait “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal was widely seen as contemptuous, IIRC — a kind of “Oh, your country is so small and puny, nobody’s going to pay attention to your insignificant island” attitude.
Perhaps, but I don’t see why. Where should Britain be waiting, if not at the back of the queue? (I should think the British of all people would understand that!)
There shouldn’t be a queue – the United States has more diplomats than the world has nations; we can negotiate trade agreements with everyone in parallel. The obvious implication of “back of the queue” is that, even though we could start negotiating a trade agreement with a Brexited UK immediately and, based on our common interests and good working relationship, have it in place rather quickly, Obama would chose to stonewall.
Hmmm. I’d have thought the politicians, not the diplomats, would be the bottleneck, but I’ll take your word for it. But even if the “queue” is only metaphorical, how quickly could a deal really be made? In my experience, such as it is, trade deals are always a slow process.
Seems to me that this would be a bit of an empty threat, given the timing.
… but regardless of whether this interpretation really holds water or not, I can see why some people might take it that way, perhaps even some who were otherwise well-disposed to Obama and/or planning to vote Remain. So your point is made.
Because people don’t like foreigners lecturing them on how to run their own country?
It’s not as if this sort of reaction was unprecedented. A similar thing happened back in 2004:
Apparently so. I just find myself unable to imagine why. (But then again I’ve never been very good at that game.)
It isn’t even as if Obama didn’t have a legitimate interest in the outcome, which will certainly affect both the US government and US businesses. It’s perfectly acceptable, of course, for a British voter to decide to consider only the interests of Britain rather than those of the world as a whole, but it should be equally OK to ask that voter to consider the bigger picture. Not to demand, mind you, but to ask.
I did finally remember a perhaps relevant example from my part of the world, a United Nations ruling on legislation intended to correct previous legislation that had unintentionally given certain Maori tribes a claim for ownership over parts of the foreshore and seabed. (With a few grandfathered exceptions, such ownership is otherwise prohibited.)
And yes, I remember being a bit cross about it, but so far as I can tell that’s entirely because at the time I thought they were wrong [1]. Everyone who agreed with them was perfectly happy as far as I know – nobody was saying “well, yes, I was opposed to the legislation, but if those horrible foreigners oppose it too I’ll have to change my mind”, or at least not very loudly.
[1] For the record, based on the item I’ve linked to, the report was in fact much more reasonable than one would think from what was presented in the media at the time. I hate to think how parts of the British media may have presented Obama’s comments.
Since we’re weighing in as filthy foreigners, I’ll up that one level, but in the other direction:
* When travelling in the US, I see zero evidence of racism
* The Democratic party is telling black people that all their trouble is because of racism
* Since it’s not, this results only in a lot of futile anger at the “racists”
* (it also discourages attempts to figuring out what is really the problem, but that’s a side issue)
* Eight more years of unchecked political correctness carries a significant risk of full on race-war
* A United States bogged down with civil war will not be able to project sufficient conventional military power to curb Putin
* Given the pitiful state of Europes conventional forces, we will have to go Nuclear to stop him
* Therefore: A vote for Hillary is a vote increasing existential risk!
(I’m only semi-trolling here, PC resulting in significant racial unrest seems realistic at least.)
I can’t see it resulting in racial unrest myself but the following is at least somewhat plausible:
* real, pervasive racism caused the introduction of anti discrimination laws in the field of hiring and firing workers (this is in the UK, not sure about the US)
* discrimination in society is now way, way less – few people want to discriminate racially in their hiring practices
* if you are found to have racially discriminated when you fire someone you can be sued for an unlimited amount (and its balance of probabilities to decide if you discriminated or not which is a pretty low bar)
*did I say unlimited? I did indeed.
* fear of being sued for discrimination when you dismiss someone leads some businesses (especially small business) to avoid hiring people who might bankrupt them with an anti discrimination lawsuit
* its true they could be sued for discrimination on failing to hire in the first place, but that is really tough to prove even on balance of probabilities
* so anti discrimination laws lead directly to discrimination
So could the UK change these laws if it wanted to? No sure. Who knows what conventions and treaties apply. Until quite recently the UK was quite happy contracting out its political process . . .
I will contend that the racial unrest is already happening in the form of BLM and that electing a president who promises to fan the flames is not going to improve matters.
If I voted in the US, this issue would outweigh all my other concerns due to it’s immediacy.
I’m not aware of any treaties requiring anti-discrimination legislation. Politically speaking, though, repealing such laws would be so easy to frame as “Evil Tories want to bring Jim Crow to the UK!!!1!” that I don’t see them being repealed any time soon.
But you probably wouldn’t, either way – the claim is that racism is often invisible even to white americans, taking the form of biased police/judicial prosecution and other hazards such as environmental toxins (see Flint). I’m not sure to what degree these claims are backed up, but they are plausible, in the sense that I can easily imagine a world in which they’re true that would look, to me, pretty much like the one I live in. And if they are, you definitely wouldn’t see the evidence just traveling through.
On the other hand, I see many and frequent examples of people actually judging their fellow man by the content of their character and not the colour of their skin.
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence especially when accompanied by evidence for the alternate hypothesis.
That’s not the alternative hypothesis. This is like someone saying “there’s a river in that valley, but it’s shallow and you might not see it just casually riding by”, and you responding with “I haven’t seen the river but I saw a bunch of dry land, the river probably isn’t there.” I mean sure, the original person may or may not have been lying about the river, but that’s hardly conclusive evidence.
Another way in which Brexit is relevant is that when the plebs voted the wrong way, the predicted (threatened) economic apocalypse didn’t happen and the self-appointed “expert” class were once again shown to be Intellectuals Yet Idiots.
The UK hasn’t left the EU yet (the process hasn’t even started). So it’s a bit early to talk about the economic impact.
Literally a day after Exit won, the Remainers were on social media shrieking about how the drop in the stock market which took place was Great Depression 2.0 and those evil racists had destroyed everyone’s retirement savings. Saying “well, no, it’s too early, we have to wait and see what the real results are” would have been more useful to say to the Remainers back then.
Most people expected article 50 to be triggered almost immediately, not this kind of extended limbo.
Actual economists (e.g. Krugman) were pretty openly skeptical about that.
Maybe the actual economists should have spoken up a bit more loudly.
here.
That said, I’m sure some economists said the opposite and, due to media sensationalism bias, got disproportionately heard. Due to this bias I can’t tell if easily Krugman was a lone voice of reason here or represented the majority opinion.
Lots of the predictions I read talked about a downturn “in the event of a Leave vote”, not “two years or more after a Leave vote, when the UK has actually left the Union”.
My brother-in-law lost quite a bit of money due to the drop in the exchange rate as a result of the vote. I also gather that there’s a fair number of people who have lost money because of a fall in house prices, and that job openings are down. So I’d say predictions of a downturn (as opposed to a catastrophe) after the vote were correct.
The exchange rate fell, but not nearly as much as people were predicting. I don’t know what your sources are for house prices and jobs, but none of the statistics I’ve seen indicate a noticeable change from the pre-vote situation.
I stand corrected. Looks like only some parts of the job market were affected, and perhaps not all that strongly.
See here and here but cf here.
I still think it’s too early to celebrate.
See also here.
While I don’t actually expect the Brexit to cause a complete economic apocalypse (isolationism tends to cause slow decay, not rapid meltdown), the result isn’t in because the Brexit hasn’t happened yet. Only the referendum has.
(EDIT: Ninja’d)
The Trumpocalypse is a bit overwrought. It’s amusing that Scot doesn’t make the connection between a consistent series of theories that being against the left results in the end of the world. Brexit, Climate Change, Trump. There is almost zero pushback on these theories, you can literally write ANYTHING on these subjects and not expect to be rebuked by the media or the left.
“The Guardian” tried that in 2004 with a letter-writing campaign asking people in Ohio (a swing state?) not to vote for Bush 🙂
Why would Obama’s comments annoy anyone, let alone someone who would otherwise have voted Remain?
Part of the rationale for the referendum was “Do you want foreign politicians telling you what to do in your own national affairs?” so you can see why some “undecided” might have been influenced 🙂
Good point. Seems to me there’s an important distinction between asking and/or advising (Obama) and telling (EU court rulings and whatever) but I suppose I can understand how they could become confused.
If I remember correctly, part of Obama’s “asking and/or advising” was a pretty clear threat that the U.S. would be reluctant to make trade treaties with the U.K. after it pulled out of the E.U.
Oh right, the “back of the line” bit. I believe that was on a different occasion, but I guess it’s still relevant.
(I’d interpret it as saying only that the UK wouldn’t get special treatment, and since trade treaties tend be a slow process, they would need to expect to lose out in the interim. Not so much a threat as an observation, albeit a rather pointed one.)
Hillary will get at least one Supreme Court pick, and probably several. As such, her effect is not limited to the four years of her reign. (Or eight, maybe, if she’s not as sick as she appears.) Outside of the Court, I agree with you. She’s the conservative choice.
But her Court will rule for the next thirty years. Her Court will be hard left compared to any court before it. By contrast, President Trump will appoint much safer Justices.
>But her Court will rule for the next thirty years. Her Court will be hard left compared to any court before it. By contrast, President Trump will appoint much safer Justices.
What makes you believe that? I’m not very convinced that Trump will choose respectable conservative justices who believe in the spirit of the constitution and Bill of Rights and whatnot over “this person will probably make SOC more likely to vote in favor of things Trump is favor of”.
Trump has already produced a list of Supreme Court nominees, largely drawn up by the Heritage Foundation. They’re all accomplished conservatives, albeit unremarkable choices.
The question is, is there any reason to expect Trump to stick to something he has previously said?
There’s no reason to expect either of them to stick to anything they’ve said. But I know what kind of judges Hillary would like to nominate, and I know what kind of judges the Republican Party will let Trump nominate. The latter group is vastly more preferable as far as I’m concerned.
Trump has thus far been relatively unrestrained by what the Republican Party “lets” him do. I’m dubious about Congressional Republicans Borking a Trump nominee they aren’t happy with, given how much they’ve rolled over for him thus far.
Really? Because I doubt Mike Pence was Trump’s idea.
>Trump has thus far been relatively unrestrained by what the Republican Party “lets” him do
Trump doesn’t need the party to get elected. He does need them to pass legislation and nominate justices.
I think the arc of Cruz’s position re Trump is pretty emblematic to what can be counted on as far as Republican resistance to a president of their party in the Senate. (Especially re Court nominees, where there’s a tradition of deference give or take a Harriet Miers.)
If he names someone not on the list, they’ll grumble and drag their feet, and express shock that he’s going back on something he said. (Who could have imagined?) And then they’ll do what he wants for fear of being primaried later if they don’t.
@LHN
>I think the arc of Cruz’s position re Trump is pretty emblematic to what can be counted on as far as Republican resistance to a president of their party in the Senate.
Cruz needs trump to beat Hillary. Once trump is in office, the incentive to cooperate vanishes.
>If he names someone not on the list, they’ll grumble and drag their feet, and express shock that he’s going back on something he said. (Who could have imagined?) And then they’ll do what he wants for fear of being primaried later if they don’t.
Why would they do this for trump and someone when they didn’t do it for Bush and Meyers?
Unless the republicans in senate go “ah, screw it, we’ve already blocked judicial appointments for one year, we might as well go another four”.
I’m somewhat skeptical that any Supreme Court nominee at all could get through any plausible Senate of the next several years. Even if the filibuster is eliminated, there are probably other parliamentary maneuvers that can and would be deployed (though it may require shutting down the whole thing).
Yeah this is the thing that really bothers me about Hillary. The Supreme Court has the ability to change a lot of things over a long period of time.
I am a Johnson voter, but live in NC. I am not sure I buy the vote the lesser of two evils argument right now. Even in NC I dont’ think my odds of being the pivotal vote are high enough to not vote my conscience.
But if I changed my mind on that, the thing I have a hard time weighing is the supreme court vs Trump tail risk. I am pretty sure what we will get from a Clinton presidency and court, but I can’t really put a reasonable downside estimate on Trump.
I can’t get my arms around what is the likely distribution of outcomes under Trump.
Every president gets about 2 supreme court picks. This election isn’t special in that regard.
@Anonymouse
Hmm, dunno.
We have one vacancy already. The three oldest justices (Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kennedy) are at least 78 years old; for comparison, Scalia and Rehnquist were 80 and 81 respectively when they died. Ginsburg and Breyer, and maybe even Kennedy, would probably feel comfortable retiring under Clinton’s watch, and Thomas (at 68) could always have a heart attack. So it’s not hard to imagine Clinton getting to make three or even four appointments.
In contrast, it’s also easy to imagine the three oldest hanging on to avoid being replaced by Trump, and Thomas is young enough he probably wouldn’t see a Trump presidency as a window of opportunity for retirement. Best guess is that Trump would get one, maybe two appointments.
This assumes that both Clinton and Trump are one-term material, which I’m sure we all hope. If the next Presidency stretches to eight years the Supreme Court may be the least of our worries.
[You’re right that 2 is the median number of Supreme Court appointees; the average is 2.6 but that’s skewed by Washington with 10 and FDR with 9, counting the elevation of Stone to Chief Justice. (And they say he didn’t manage to pack the court!)
[I was surprised to learn that only four had no appointees: W H Harrison and Taylor, who died early in their terms; Andrew Johnson, who was universally despised; and Carter (!), who I think just had bad luck in his timing.]
You say this:
and your conclusion is “vote anyone but Trump”?
Trump basically has one policy – stop importing terrorists and parents of terrorists and stop importing third world workers.
It’s as far from insanely apocalyptic as is possible. The “mainstream” has all agreed to never discuss how amazingly insane it is to continue the status quo of importing low IQ Democratic voters from South American (and Africa) and people who have a terrorist attack rate of about 4000% higher (yes, that’s the real number (from before the most recent NYC bombings – so it’s higher now (by a lot))).
But don’t worry – once you’ve started down the road towards millennarian insanity it’s actually millennarian to propose stopping! Circle squared.
Can you explain why terrorism is interesting given the miniscule death toll from terrorist attacks compared to everything else?
Terrorism helps the government destroy your civil liberties and generally reduces quality of life.
Are police shootings of innocent young Black men interesting given the minuscule death toll from them compared to everything else?
Death tolls are minuscule is supposed to be a reason not to oppose increasing them?
A tiny number of muslims are in this country. They disproportionately do things like fly planes into office buildings and leave bombs in dumpsters near where I live. I’d rather not wait until this is a huge personal risk to reverse this. I’d like to reverse this while my personal risk is still quite small.
Scott: “C’mon, Archduke Ferdinand was just one dude.”
Terrorist attacks destroy faith in institutions to solve problems, lowering social trust, economics damage, overreactions in legal systems, providing spurious casus belli. They provoke governments to act, and given the relative increase in size and network effects in the modern era, this is a huge problem.
It’s admittedly easy for me to say that but couldn’t you guys just, like, not be provoked?
When you try that, you get replaced by people who promise to do something about it.
Your options are to actually do something or to cover it up/downplay it.
Do they not have human beings where you’re from? Humans usually get upset and react strongly when they are attacked.
@ThirteenthLetter
Where I’m from we have a really shitty terrorist group that recently became more active than usual.
The amount of people casually advocating for a return to fascism on social networks has not increased. The same people who have been saying we should go back to being a police state (because someone they know got mugged in the street, or whatever) are now saying we should go back to being a police state because of terrorism.
The positions are the same, just the excuses are different. Do you see? Terrorists have nothing to do with it. The low social trust and lack of faith in institutions was inside them all along!
And if your shitty terrorist group kills more people and the government keeps not stopping them, everyone in your utopian land will just relax and keep shopping as the bombs go off around them? Or will they start to get angry and demand sterner measures?
We do have a lot of this sort of thing going on, only instead of being about ISIS it is about thieves, muggers, corrupt politicians, windshield cleaners, panhandlers and so on.
Terrorism barely registers, though I do admit our terrorists are very pathetic.
Altogether, we still have weaker civil liberties than the US because old habits die hard, but people are now very cynical about surrendering to a strong leader out of fear. Most old people are all “been there, done that, almost got disappeared” and the young people think they are immortal and don’t need no rules.
On reflection, I think what keeps people sane (re: our local terrorists) is that they are local. If they were foreigners maybe people would freak out a lot more. Then again our last dictator used that trick and it didn’t turn out very well for the people, so hopefully the people will from now on be wary of that.
If you could say that about America in its response to terrorism, you could say that to grieving parents in the aftermath of their child’s murderer gloating on air. It’s just inhuman to expect less than vengefulness against those who merrily commit grave wrongs against you and yours.
If my friend wanted to chase the killer of his family, Liam Neeson style, I would try to stop him. It would be irresponsible not to.
But if he wanted to buy an alarm system and build tall walls around his house, I suppose I wouldn’t blame him.
If you were to equate a feeling of anger, injustice and vengefulness with a lone man rampaging against an entire organisation, I’d advise you against making metaphors in the future. Nevermind that if you asked anyone about the odds of a major terrorist attack on September 10 2001, they’d have probably answered “low” and would’ve predicted a train blowing up or something. And, of course, the signal that erected a wall and security system sends to the trangressor – “we’re afraid of you”, as opposed to “you will be punished”.
But you were the one who started that metaphor of the vengeful parents.
Anyway, don’t you think Trump’s policies are closer to the guys that fortify their houses than the guy that hunts down the bad guys? After all, he likes to compare himself favorably against Bush, who was more interventionist.
In a scale from my “I pretend not to give a shit” position and Bush’s interventionism, Trump is somewhere in the middle, right? Where do you lie on that scale?
What if he wanted to make Mexico pay for it? :op
I can’t speak for a non mous(e), but I’ve often maintained that the threat from terrorism is substantially greater than the threat from other threats with similar kill rates, such as lightning strikes, because terrorists are conscious. If I announce that I’m spending only $1 million on fighting lightning strikes next year, the world’s storms will keep zapping things as they always have. If I announce that I’m spending only $1 million on fighting terrorism next year, the world’s terrorists will plan accordingly.
Yes, terrorism is a matter of game theory rather than decision theory in a passive environment.
I think that people who are concerned about terrorism instinctively understand this, while people who talk about death rates, comparing terrorism to natural catastrophes, seem to miss this crucial point.
That was what I thought and then someone told me I was forgetting outliers and I started worrying again.
People have feelings. Dying from a meteorite is actually pretty cool, getting butchered by muslims brought in for political reasons is not very cool. People act on these feelings, a lot, regardless of what you might think of them.
In fact this is so strong that many things are considered worse than dying, by some people. Sometimes very small, apparently inconsequential things are the most important.
More generally, Scott, most people are not utilitarians. So the fact that counting lives doesn’t put terrorism high in the list is irrelevant.
Same reason why Civil Rights activists were so concerned about lynching in the South even the death toll was minuscule. When you kill people in dramatic and spectacular ways with the purpose and effect of inflicting terror on others, there is a lot more harm than just the body count.
As a mental health professional, you should know that psychological harm matters.
If the government was actually concerned about psychological harm caused by terrorism, the general message would be a lot closer to “Keep calm and carry on.” than to “War on Terror!”.
At the moment, it seems they are quite happy with the public being in equal parts angry and scared shitless. Gaining popularity by fighting bogeymen is a lot easier than dealing with such subtle matters as economics and diplomacy.
You do realize that people who were genuinely concerned about lynchings didn’t send this message about lynchings, right?
“Keep calm and carry on.” => “We don’t give a shit. Put up with it.”
“War on Terror!” => “We are working to protect you.”
Which message do you think is more effective?
That assumes that general exhortations not to “keep calm” and “don’t let it bother you” are an effective measure against psychological harm. I don’t think they are.
The fact is that experiencing spectacular and dramatic harm to people is very disturbing for most people, even if they are not the direct victim.
Rational people appreciate that we are all somewhat irrational in certain respects. That’s why it’s a serious crime to grope somebody on the subway even though there’s no actual physical harm.
???
Scott, didn’t you just write a post about why the fat-tailed nature of deaths from terrorism makes it very much worth paying attention to?
Yes he did. It was https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/31/terrorists-vs-chairs-an-outlier-story/
Aw man, I was JUST about to write a snarky comment where I linked to that post and said something like, “I recently read a blog post that made a very good attempt to answer that question. This guy is pretty insightful, you should probably read more of his work!”
Level-headed people like you make trolling no fun! No fun at ALL, I tell you! :op
Until it’s not.
What do you do in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma when the other party defects against you?
Scott, you’re smarter than this. Terrorist attacks are low-probability, extremely high-cost events. Counting the number of deaths ignores the knock-on effects from terror attacks that we all know will come – restrictions on civil liberties, misguided wars, dumb alliances that could force us into even greater conflicts, etc.
You mean you don’t like those things?
Then stop.
Terrorists don’t force you to do those things. You can choose to live in a place victimized by terrorists and still not vote for the person most likely to be provoked by them.
Yes, you can do that. And then you can watch helplessly as the people who insist that we should all relax and not make a big deal over this get voted out of office in favor of the Kill Them All party.
“Can you explain why terrorism is interesting given the miniscule death toll from terrorist attacks compared to everything else?”
Because terrorism has a potential to escalate in a way car accidents won’t?
Lots of existential threats could come in the form of terrorist attacks. If you’re worried about x-risk, that’s a reason to favor some kind of war on terror.
Can you explain why rape is interesting given the miniscule death toll from rapes compared to everything else?
Because it’s pretty much the same reason. The act is designed to elicit an emotional response – or perhaps two emotional responses, one in the perpetrator and one in the victim. The nature of the emotional response in the victim, and the victim’s friends and family and really anyone who hears about it, causes substantial social and personal harm. Independent of any associated mortality.
Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe we should perceive a terrorist act as the equivalent of a car accident. Maybe we should also perceive rapes as the equivalent of a really hard noogie or wet willy. If we did so, we’d probably all be a lot happier, and it would be harder for people who don’t like us to cause us harm. But we’re pretty strongly wired to see things like rape and terrorism as intolerable evils, and they cause harm well out of proportion to the material impact.
We are going to rate the elimination of terrorism at least as high a priority as the elimination of rape. I believe this is right and just. You may disagree, and it’s not an entirely unreasonable proposition but you have to understand it is a politically untenable position. The politically relevant questions are how, not if, we will approach the high-priority task of eliminating terrorism.
For that matter, why does anyone care about gropings on the subway? They cause no physical harm to speak of.
I think everyone intuitively understands that the “body count argument” is flawed and you see it when a minuscule death toll can be blamed on a Preferred Villain.
Take the example of Iraqis going to the polls.
Everyone knows dozens of bombs are going to go off that day, it’s just your civic duty to carry on, and get your vote in, so your sect doesn’t end up getting oppressed.
Now import that reality to our system of government. Imagine if early on election day, East coast polling stations were hit around opening. How would that effect voter turn out to the west? What if all the bombs were in a particular political or demographic super majority polling area?
The point is, the losing side would NEVER accept the legitimacy of the election in such a scenario, and the winning side would be loathe for a redo, and would in turn reject the legitamacy of a losss for them in a redo election. This would effectively end our run as a polity.
And yet a dozen suicide bombings is a far lower toll in life and planning then what the 19 men did in September, 2001.
i think your argument is just another part of the new left’s failure to understand that it doesn’t matter if something is logical if it isn’t also PsychoLogical
let’s say that terrorism barely matters logically. OK, but neither does sexual attraction or happiness. but clearly people still value those greatly. the only way to stop terrorism from mattering is the ignorance-is-bliss hermetic seal the new left has been trying to implement. but the problem is that they’ve failed pretty hilariously, torpedoing media’s credibility in the process, not to mention that if they could succeed then we’d all be at the mercy of whatever totalitarian system managed to control information hard enough to make that a success. I know a lot of people are hectoring at CNN and such to stop giving such attention to terrorism, but it’s so bloody profitable that they probably never will. They do try and pretend like it’s not Islamic but people figure that out eventually anyhow because islamic terrorism is frankly the main kind in this country, in before someone starts showing me 40% of the population getting as many kills as 1% of the population as if that didn’t just prove my point further (referencing your pre 9/11 graph if you’re curious, personally I always just debunked it via obvious per capita)
so that was a tl;dr but the point is: you’re logically correct and psychologically incorrect. Something will happen eventually. Will it be a massive anti-Muslim backlash? A super police state? Or maybe the destruction of an evil state raping, killing, sex-enslaving, regular-enslaving, with plans to stick around, albeit with a somewhat risk of us killing civilians or becoming re-embroiled in the Quagmire known as the Middle Fuckin’ East? Honestly, I prefer the third. But you don’t have the hermeticist strength to avoid the seal from being broken.
Two words: Black Swan.
I saw “Orange Swan event” recently (might have been in one of the blogs linked in Scott’s post) and am enthusiastically adopting it.
Terrorism constitutes a willing attack on a nation by outsiders. You yourself argued this point in Terrorists vs. Chairs. Furniture-related incidents claim way more lives that Terrorism – but furniture isn’t deliberated arranged for lethality by a group that we can signal to stop. Terrorism is, so we oppose them to do just that – signal to them that they made a mistake.
I regard terrorist attacks from the like of ISIS to have import above the number of people who they kill. In fact the etymology of the word “terrorism” is that the terror caused by the attacks is the point of the attacks, not the actual deaths.
Imagine if you could press a button that would replace 30,000 annual deaths from road traffic accidents in the US with 30,000 deaths from AK-47 and bomb attacks in major US cities. I don’t think you should be indifferent about pushing that button.
The answer is in the question. Terrorism creates terror. More people were effected by 9/11 than the people who died that day or had to deal with the property damage. Thinking it doesn’t effect anyone besides the people directly effected must require hard work.
I’m not going to pretend that terrorism doesn’t affect anyone besides the people directly accepted… except, I’m pretty sure that pretending that terrorism doesn’t affect anyone besides the people directly affected is one of the best ways to fight it.
Do you also believe that for lynchings?
That’s actually pretty great rebuttal, and I wanna commend you for it in the technical sense. The only answer I have is that if the costs of doing more about lynching beyond calmly using the law enforcement system to go after identifiable perpetrators were as high as the costs we’re being asked to bear for terrorism, and if the means of intervention seemed as likely to me to simply perpetuate the problem, then, yeah, the right answer might be to keep a stiff upper lip about them.
I think 9/11 proved that argument wrong. The first attack on the WTC was treated that way, as were many other attacks before 9/11.
The underlying assumptions are false. But the argument was hashed out endlessly after 9/11. Ughhh…
“Trump basically has one policy – stop importing terrorists and parents of terrorists ”
It’s a nonsensical policy because
1) The only terrorists we “imported” were the 9/11 terrorists
2) The parents of terrorists; this only makes sense if Trump develops some sort of Minority Report like technology that can predict whose children will be terrorists and whose won’t.
The recent Muslim terrorists’ parents came to the US ~30 years ago, when Muslims were on “our side” engaged in war with our enemy from 30 years ago. Chances are, 30 years from now when the children of the current so called parents of terrorists are of age, we’ll have a different enemy.
So the major premise of Trump’s one policy is pretty idiotic.
We imported both Tashfeen Malik and the Tsarnaev brothers. All post-9/11.
Edit: And some others: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/25/us/us-muslim-extremists-terrorist-attacks.html?_r=0
the mainest problem of course is that A) why should there be more terrorists at all? Even arguing against The End of History – (which a teacher actually assigned me an excerpt from back before I knew what this shit was all about) – we still might avoid pissing off a region badly enough to provoke terrorism, though we might provoke a large-scale war. In fact I think that’s reasonably likely.
and B) the reason that they are committing terror is not solely because of “enemy” but also because they will be cleansed of sin if they die a martyr, at least according to their holy book. *unless that sin involves debt, you gotta pay that off before you die, which makes sense I guess
what is the guarantee that future enemy countries or semi-coherent regions we piss off enough to generate this type of reaction, will have the religion necessary to spark such a large amount of terrorism?
look at previous terrorisms: the IRA is a great example, because it’s two neighboring countries and they’re trying to do some real ass shit, sort of thing, get free from the English. We haven’t actually taken control of any of those countries, especially not many of the ones that still sent terrorists at us. the IRA’s terrorism had a lot of actual military value and was done against the people next door. most terrorist groups do not simply act in the way that Muslims seem to and they tend to need more provocation. they’re also some of the most prolific ever. ISIS has hit like 100 countries and the IRA hit like 1, maybe even 2 or 3?
“Aside from the fact that getting back at annoying people isn’t worth eroding the foundations of civil society”
I think you underestimate how annoyed I am. This is the theory of the Mandate of Heaven, that it was civil society’s responsibility not to provoke me, not my responsibility not to burn it down. It’s the same theory that the BLM riots are working under. No justice, no peace.
I see where you’re coming from (sometimes, it is rational to commit to an irrational response), but utilitarian consequentialists tend to give very little fucks about what is or is not someone’s responsibility.
Does it increase overall utility? Do it. Does it decrease overall utility? Don’t fucking do it.
Are there enough utilitarian consequentialists in America to form a meaningful voting bloc, do you suppose?
Given that Scott took a long time doing something he finds unpleasant just so he could convince some of the readers of his blog (which has a disproportionate amount of utilitarians), I think it’s likely that they do make a meaningful bloc.
This election looks like it’s going to be close, so even small blocs can be meaningful.
This is the theory of the Mandate of Heaven, that it was civil society’s responsibility not to provoke me, not my responsibility not to burn it down.
I have got to read more Chesterton.
You paint a caricature of Trump and his supporters that is very uncharitable and lacking in depth. I don’t think I could convince you to take the green pill so I’ll just leave this kabbalistic sort of argument here:
I’m not sure how to interpret this as an argument that is relevant to the OP at all, but I am interested. What is the “green pill” and can you drop any more hints or would that ruin the magic?
The giant frog didn’t give anything away? Kek.
Meme magic is incredibly dumb but if you’re tired or high can be pretty eerie. Kind of like Kabbalah itself.
I have it on some authority that what we call “meme magic” is largely confirmation bias. That doesn’t make it any less powerful or dangerous, however.
I’m intrerested how this interacts with the idea of separation of powers. In the scenario presented, Trump gets elected president, massively changes everything into another New World banana republic; when one would think a Trump presidency, combined with the fact that more Democrats are headed to Congress and the unification of the entire traditional media/academic apparatus against him would make his actions much more limited in terms of variance. Whereas Clinton would have the entire establishment force behind her, and would thus be more practically speaking absolutist in power.
tl;dr the proverbial “they” wouldn’t let Trump get away with anything, “they” have already given Clinton carte blanche
I mean, maybe there are examples of a Trumpian mandate totally reshaping a government in a nominally democratic state without some kind of revolution. People who know more history than me, please comment. But until then, I don’t really see why my analysis is wrong.
The police and intelligence agencies are both powerful and conservative.
They definitely are not
Partisan gridlock means the executive does what it wants. Even outside of that, the executive has already got a lot of legal discretion formally delegated to it (some by design, some by Congress’s unwillingness to take political risks).
Trump is the best case for breaking up partisan gridlock. Republicans will oppose Clinton tooth and nail, and they’ll still hold the House and a supermajority of states. Not only will Democrats – who predominate in the media, academy, and federal bureaucracy – hate and fear Trump, but a significant part of his own party will be highly uneasy with him. If you dislike the executive, Trump’s the best chance in a long time for a bipartisan coalition to rein it in. A 21st Century Andrew Johnson.
“When I talk to Trump supporters, it’s not usually about doubting climate change, or thinking Trump will take the conservative movement in the right direction, or even immigration. It’s about the feeling that a group of arrogant, intolerant, sanctimonious elites have seized control of a lot of national culture and are using it mostly to spread falsehood and belittle anybody different than them.”
Consistent with the cross-country findings of Inglehart & Norris (which I haven’t vetted):
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818659
My (admittedly cynical) view on voting and the value of the individual vote goes something like this:
Your vote doesn’t matter at all. It’s always wasted. Oh not in the strictest sense. In the aggregate of course, every vote winds up mattering in as much as it contributes to the final numbers. But your individual vote, doesn’t really matter the way you think it does. Sure everyone will try to convince you that if you don’t vote for X you’re just voting for Y, with the values of X and Y being substituted for whichever political side the arguer thinks is right, but to me, a vote is only ever a vote for the person you voted for, and it’s precisely because your vote always wasted. Consider the options:
A) You live in a “safe state”. If you vote for the person that would always win your state, you wasted your vote because they were always going to win your state, and your singular vote didn’t give them the win. If you vote the the other of the two evils, you also wasted your vote because they were never going to win your state anyway. Finally, as we’re always told if you vote 3rd party, you “wasted” your vote. So if you live in a “safe state” go ahead and vote for whoever you actually want for president, because your vote doesn’t matter and the outcome is already determined.
B) You live in a swing state. If you vote for either of the two evils, your vote was wasted. If you voted for the person who won, again, it wasn’t by a singular vote, so your vote didn’t actually make them win. If you voted for the person who lost, your vote was wasted because your candidate didn’t win, so it didn’t actually matter. And again, 3rd party votes are always “wasted”
Once you realize that your individual vote is always a “wasted” vote, you’re now free to actually vote for the person you want to be president. Yes, I know about the problems with FPTP voting, and yes I know about the benefits that might come from alternate voting schemes and yes I’m aware of how if everyone did exactly what I’m suggesting it would have actual consequences for how the vote turns out. And yes, that is exactly what I want. We’ve been voting (and being told to vote) for the lesser of two evils for generations now. And voting for the lesser of two evils is how we’ve wound up with 16 years of the last 24 with presidents from one of two families, and wound up in the situation where that number could be as much as 24 of the last 32 years. That’s a disaster. It’s stupid. It’s terrible and it’s exactly the end result of voting for the lesser of two evils.
Every one of the major political candidates that ever gets to the election stage should absolutely and always fear that their voting block will vote for a 3rd party every election. They should never feel so assured in their positions that they can resort to the extremisms that they currently do, and have debates in which literally nothing is debated and they sling playground insults at each other. Our politicians don’t fear us enough, and it’s partly because every election we obediently hold our noses and roll over like the good little dogs we are.
Vote for who you want to vote for, the person you actually think will be the best president, not the lesser of two evils, not the one you’d prefer so that you don’t get Trump or Hillary. And vote for that person proudly knowing that while you might have wasted your vote, at least you didn’t waste it on the person that was already going to win/lose.
If anything convinces me to actually vote this time, it will have been this.
If only our third party choices weren’t also terrible. 🙁
Whose idea was it to just run four Democrats this time around?
Oh gosh, imagine a “gun to the head: Stein or Johnson? Pick!” question where you can’t answer “Can’t I grab the gun and shoot them both*?” or “Shoot me! Shoot me now!” 🙂
Nah, that’s a bit rough, they’re not that bad. But crikey: ‘eat your organically grown, ethically sourced, holistically harvested vegetables’ versus ‘grey is my favourite colour’? How do you make a choice on that?
If all socialism ended up was “eat your organically grown, ethically sourced, holisticlly harvested vegetables” I would be a socialist. Sadly it ends up “eat organically, and anyone who doesn’t goes to prison”
Or rather “fund your own organic vegetable diet, OR ELSE”.
@baconbacon
>If all socialism ended up was “eat your organically grown, ethically sourced, holisticlly harvested vegetables” I would be a socialist. Sadly it ends up “eat organically, and anyone who doesn’t goes to prison”
You forgot “and then you run out of vegetables.”
That is communism, not socialism!
Aren’t third parties generally more extreme than either of the major parties? Clinton can be as moderate as she is because she isn’t afraid of the far-left voting Stein.
Point of information – it’s 20 of the past 28 years.
G.H.W. Bush: 4
W.J. Clinton: 8
G.W. Bush: 8
B.H. Obama 8
And possibly then 28 of 36 years.
H.R. Clinton: 8
Another way of looking at that is that at the moment it’s one GHWB term from being completely normal. A string of two-term Presidents helps with that. (You could also have bolded Obama and not-bolded Clinton.) It’s only with HRC’s election that it would get really dynastic.
You have to get a really long string for these kind of stats to be surprising; like, the last time the GOP won without a George Bush or Richard Nixon on the ticket was 1928. Or, there was a Bush or Dole on every GOP ticket from 1976 through 2004, and Nixon on 5/6 of the run before that.
What percentage of social psychologists thought that the results their field was putting out were valid?
Don’t worry though – there are totally different incentives in climate science as there are in social psychology.
I don’t think that stands as very valid evidence against Global warming. First of all, the replication crisis in Social Psychology led to a lot of papers being disproved, but the major thrust of social psychology in the last 50 years remains pretty true; people have not become homo economicus just because people did some shitty research.
Secondly, What percentage of social psychologists thought that the results their field was putting out were valid? Do you actually know the answer?
Thirdly, climate science tends to be a lot harder than the social sciences. You can never really directly observe causation within social psychology whereas climate science can be simulated down to atomic interactions.
Finally, simply observing that one branch of science fucked up in recent times is highly selective. Across all papers in all scientific disciplines, how many have been proven false, how many branches of science have been shown to be false? Social Psychology is the outlier, not the expectation.
It’s an argument against CAGW not AGW.
I don’t see how social psychology having a replication crisis would act as evidence against catastrophic anthropogenic global warming either. The same arguments still hold; social psychology remains an outlier and poor evidence that other scientific disciplines could suffer the same problems.
It’s more than just social psychology.
“What percentage of social psychologists thought that the results their field was putting out were valid?”
A pretty small one. Social scientists in my experience are a very fractious bunch.
In any given Presidential election I would generally not have any problem at all voting for the Green Party Candidate. This year there has been too much controversy about what has been Stein’s anti-vaccine positions and anti-vaxxer rhetoric. As a firm believer in not holding my nose to vote – I will leave it up to the rest of you.
Trump is without a doubt the worst possible Presidential Candidate, but that doesn’t give the major parties a pass on:
1. The candidates they produce to the American people. As anyone can tell this is about much more than who the people elect in primaries. I could stand on a street corner and pull passersby out of the crowd by Augenblick who would be better Presidential candidates. I heard a rapper suggest Obama for a third term and that is a better idea than either Clinton or Trump.
2. Ralph Nader liked to use the term duopoly and until the duopoly is broken we will continue to have two political parties that are entrenched for their own benefit and the benefit of their clients. The idea that Democrats or Republicans are going to do something useful for the American people is one of the grand illusions of my time.
The “empire is in decline” almost completely due to this corrupt process. At least a third of the population who don’t identify as Democrats or Republicans have nobody to vote for and that is just how the major parties want to keep it.
The anti-vaxxer thing is mindkilling bullshit. Here’s Stein on the subject:
She’s not a loon denying science, she’s worried about other things. Like shitty vaccines or moloch-optimized vaccines or covert-sterilization friendly infrastructure, etc. I’m sure it’s the same thing with GMOs.
There’s an article in the subreddit about how certain anti war opinions were made so taboo everywhere that the only ones who spoke against them were “hippies” and if you spoke against it you were a “hippie”.
The paranoid me think it’s Monsanto who funds the dumb science denialists and the loonies, so that every time someone has a reasonable problem with what they are doing, people get mindkilled and react with hostility.
See, here’s the thing. Why did she feel it was necessary to add that? Of course medical procedures of all kinds should be tested by a neutral third party. Everyone believes that (assuming they’re not an abolish-the-FDA libertarian, of course.) So going out of your way to say such a thing comes off as a dogwhistle to the anti-vaxxer base on the left.
Imagine Straw Donald Trump saying “Mexicans should be treated like members of any ethnic group — if they are accused of rape it should be investigated and, if found to be true, punished harshly.” Let’s just say some eyebrows would be raised.
Well, they’re politicians for God’s sake. Of course they have to use dogwhistles. That she manages to get the anti-vaxxer vote is a plus, a testament to her skill.
If you have a problem with that, that’s fair but it should apply to politics and democracy not Jill Stein, imho.
Then there’s the fact that anti-vaxxers are anti-vaxxers for some reason, some are legit paranoids but many are alienated, members of certain subcultures and some people with pretty understandable reasons like half your ancestors getting sterilized and half your compatriots hoping you would too, people who are against the state forcing things even if they are super good, etc. I mean, in a perfect world, someone’s going to do the job of approaching these people, educating them and un-alienating them, restoring trust in institutions and so on, and it’s going to start with a dogwhistle of some kind…
No one has sterile ancestors.
One’s ancestors might be sterilized after they’d successfully procreated at least once.
What if they sterilize them after they have one kid? Low effort m8.
Though I was actually thinking of their parent’s siblings and so on.
Then why do we see lots of people on her side complaining when they believe that Trump is going for the KKK vote? It seems like a double standard.
(And anti-vaxxers are a lot more numerous than KKK members.)
Many anti-vaxxers live in upscale, fashionable zipcodes. Most Klansmen don’t.
People indeed have double standards.
I think this illustrates the primary problem with dogwhistleism. At this point you can’t even make reasonable observations without dogwhistling something to someone.
“Trump is without a doubt the worst possible Presidential Candidate”
-Christie.
Duopoly is the natural state in a first-past-the-post voting system. If you split your party in half because you can’t agree on a candidate, you haven’t “broken the system,” you’ve just handed the election to your opponents. This is why uncompromising demands for ideological purity are a bad idea.
I suspect that either you think politics is a lot easier than it actually is, or that you have way too dim an opinion of establishment politicians. Winning elections is hard. Passing laws when 537 other people have their own opinions on what the law should be is hard.
I’m not sure there is a way out of this whether Trump wins or loses. If Trump wins, yes, I can imagine the Social Justice left going “See! We told you America was a racist sexist Islamophobic fatshaming imperialist hellhole!”. If Trump loses, I can also imagine them crowing about their victory over the angry white men and feeling empowered to keep going down the path they’re already on. If this is your big issue and both roads lead to the same destination, you might as well take the one you’re more comfortable with.
2012:
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2012/11/09/newsweek-hey-whities-you-re-old-you-re-white-and-you-re-finished/
i agree this is bad either way, but the news cycle will move onto the next thing in a few months if he loses, and not for 4/8 years if he wins.
Yes; if he loses, the news cycle will, as it did in the aftermath of 2012, move toward the direction of greater, not lesser, SJWry.
Right. I’m puzzled as to exactly why Scott thinks having the liberal candidate win is going to change the media. The media blitz against Trump is caused by the media’s liberal bias, it’s not a cause of the media’s liberal bias. Electing Hillary is going to do as much for the media as electing Obama did.
Most people don’t have political believes. They respond to power. If leftism wins the election, people will decide that leftism has power, and they will want to be on the winning side.
A Hillary win means that white people are powerless, and the winning bet is to loot and destroy them to your hearts content.
Pew Research Centre study on “Political Polarization and Media Habits” from 2014.
This tackles the audiences rather than the media sources themselves, but if we assume “consistently liberal” audience for source A and “consistently conservative” audience for source B means A is seen as liberal and B as conservative, I don’t think we’ll go too far astray.
IIRC, the research shows that bad presidents reduce support for their party among young voters, but bad candidates (or good candidates, and maybe even good presidents) are quickly forgotten and do not have a significant long-term effect.
I was with you until the last part. She is a criminal. We should lock her up. But yea, you’re right. She is the lesser evil. God Damnit.
No. Trump is an evil far less than any of the other Republican candidates, who are losers.
Well, if we locked up every criminal politician, there’d be precious few of them left. Not that it would necessarily be a bad thing…
Part of the problem is that the type of person who makes a career out of pursuing power is the very last one should entrust with it. Well-designed democracies mitigate the problem by making sure power is diluted as much as possible, with varying degrees of success.
You’re not wrong.
I also think that there’s something extremely scary about a polity that prosecutes its politicians when they lose. Even when they are objectively criminals who absolutely deserve it like Hillary. That’s the sort of thing they do in third world failed states. That’s the sort of thing they did in the late Roman republic.
So even though I think from the perspective of rule of law and justice that she should be in a cage, even though I don’t even think it’s debatable, even though every argument against it I’ve ever read is a pathetic, gibbering pile of lies, self-deception, willful ignorance and wishful thinking, even for all that, I don’t really think the FBI director made the wrong choice. Because as bad as that is, it’s not as bad as a high-level intelligence and law enforcement election official unilaterally deciding an election by prosecuting one of the candidates. Yet alone deciding the election for Donald Trump.
You sure the election wouldn’t turn in to Trump vs Johnson in that case?
Much though I’d like to think so, it seems pretty clear to me that Johnson just isn’t going to reach that sort of takeoff. If Clinton abandoned her candidacy (or was forced to by the legal process), it would be Trump vs. the replacement Democratic nominee, probably Kaine at this point.
I’d have thought that the Democratic Party would put Sanders forward in that case. I don’t see any reasonable scenario where Johnson becomes a frontrunner, unfortunately.
True – but that means they should be prosecuted, when possible, before they have a chance to win or lose the vote. Otherwise, are you saying politicians shouldn’t be prosecuted at all? Isn’t there also something extremely scary about a polity that places its politicians above the law?
No, that’s the mundane scary of any polity with a social hierarchy.
Assuming that global warming will result in severe negative impacts, do you really believe that those impacts will arise before we invent genetic engineering or AI?
I’m not sure of the time scales of any of these things. I also expect subtle problems from global warming like IQ decrease (CO2 concentration, parasite load, possibly direct effect of heat) before it becomes catastrophic.
Well have you considered the possibility that attempts to mitigate global warming could delay the development of genetic engineering and AI?
Global warming mitigation schemes are likely to raise the effective price of energy, and research is energy intensive.
All true but effect sizes really matter here.
I guess the effect size would depend on the elasticity of the demand for research.
I don’t really have a good estimate for this, but the demand for research doesn’t strike me as being particularly inelastic.
Don’t we see in Trumpish kakistocracy
and dystopian retro-albocracy
that Flynn’s Effect saves
elections from knaves
to the embiggening of democracy? 🙂
This is why it’s far from evident (to me at least) that stupidity induced by heat / CO2 ranks all that high among the manifest dangers of global warming.
Conversely, high IQs provide scant protection from ideology-driven prejudice and willful scientific ignorance, isn’t that so?
I’ve spent some time thinking about this exact question and while the future is hard to predict, I would say yes, for the following reasons:
Timeline for climate change:
The most disruptive effects seem to predicted to start during the time frame 2050-2100. That’s just when the effects are felt; to prevent them, acting sooner is better than later. Moreover, any alternative energy technology needs decades to scale up. So in some sense, there isn’t _any_ buffer time available.
Geoengineering might allow some reversing of climate change, but seeing as it hasn’t been tested at all, I wouldn’t depend on it.
Timeline for genetic engineering:
The needed tech largely exists. You can do a little with IVF embryo selection today, but nothing game-changing. What’s needed are even-larger-scale GWAS, with better phenotype data, to identify interesting variants; and improved versions of CRISPR with fewer off-target effects. Research on these is underway, and although I can’t give you a precise estimate, 10 years isn’t an unreasonable guess.
The problem with genetic tech is: 1. any enhancement being applied needs to be tested cautiously and 2. human maturation time is long (20+ years). Even if all the tech needed exists by 2030, it’ll be 2050 at earliest before any edited individuals become adults, and probably later just because of testing needs.
So, unfortunately, we can’t rely on superintelligent humans to solve our climate problems. If we delay the climate problems even by just a few decades, on the other hand, it might work out.
Timeline for AI:
The current state of machine learning is very very far off of AGI. What AI has going for it is that the iteration time is fast (no need to wait 20 years for your AI to mature) and it doesn’t have the ethical concerns that genetic tech has.
Because we’re so far away but the progress is so fast, it’s extremely difficult to make a reliable estimate when it will happen. In Bostrom’s survey (http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf), the 50% mark for human-level machine intelligence was put at a mean of 2081.
You answer “yes,” but your numbers appear to me to say “no.”
Wouldn’t super-intelligent humans circa 2050 be able to invent carbon capture technology or something else that could mitigate the assumed negative effects of global warming?
Edit: Also I put to you the same question I asked Scott above: Have you considered the possibility that attempts to mitigate global warming could delay the development of genetic engineering and AI?
That’s true, if super-engineers invented negative-emissions tech in 2050, that could make a big impact. (To be pedantic, the term “carbon capture” only refers to preventing carbon emissions from otherwise carbon-emitting energy generation. What you’re thinking of is “carbon sequestration”, which refers to taking carbon out of the air and storing it somehow.) I don’t know much about carbon sequestration, so I don’t know how realistic that would be.
It’s just that if those 2050 super-engineers were to invent a tech that’s merely zero-emissions, like say maybe they make fusion power practical, it’s too late to prevent serious bad effects (assuming no emission-lowering action had been taken previously).
If people want to read about climate intervention, recent ports from the National Academies here.
The first one is about carbon sequestration or recapture (from injection to ocean fertilization), and makes costs estimates, other impacts like land use and energy necessary. It’s not just that no one found the magic button, it’s that it is very hard to coax CO2 to stay put, especially in a timely fashion.
The second one is about changing the albedo of the Earth. Basically creating a long-standing SO2 haze to reflect to space incoming sunlight. It has a lot of issues, chiefly that the temperature distributions would flatten (so still polar ice would melt in the long run) and it only solves the temperature issue, not the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (relevant for ocean acidification).
@blueblimp
Yes, I meant carbon sequestration. Thanks.
Economic impacts from shifting land values could be a nontrivial problem on their own; I read that a small drop in value-increase rates cause some economic knock-on problems a few years ago, but don’t remember the details. Maybe the paper is paywalled.
I would think that the more effective application of genetic engineering to global warming would be by developing plants that could sop up CO2 quickly and/or be good crops in the heat. It’s at least simpler and quicker than improving human intelligence.
Has there been progress on food crops which can thrive on brackish water?
Entangled with arid-condition plant physiology is a hugely complex set of geochemical phenomena that is collectively known as “soil salinization”.
Sustaining the present carbon-energy economy will require that humanity remediate both food production and soil salinization problems … simultaneously … under intense short-term time pressure … yet stably in the long-term too … which is not a particularly low-risk strategic “deal” for humanity to embrace, is it?
Unless we delegate management of the planetary biome over to “Trumpastic” golf-course managers, that is! 🙂
I saw one wildly incorrect claim in this otherwise reasonable post:
“…most immigrants are Asian and come from countries with pretty good institutions themselves.”
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/chapter-5-u-s-foreign-born-population-trends/
% of US immigrants by country of birth, 2013
Mexico: 28%
Other Latin America: 24%
South/East Asia: 26%
Europe/Canada: 14%
Other: 8%
There is not a single thing reasonable about the post.
Snort
What? Which part of the post is reasonable?
The idea that a woman who has been a central part of two presidential administrations and spent some time in a legislative body all while presenting a central message of technocratic competence and continuity with the current administration is a safer bet than the guy with no political experience whose central theme is undisguised revanchism?
Or maybe the candidate who is less of an actual person than she is a shambling gollum made of up of every characteristic of the Establishment, both good and bad, will start a nuclear war with Russia because she talked some shit about Putin… because the various presidents who got us through the Cold War never talked shit about Russian leaders.
#1 -All style, no substance. Not reasonable.
#2 Who knows? Her website, unlike Liddle Marco’s, has no information on this.
Not just style. History and constituencies, as well–and, in contemporary politics, all three are a lot more important than formal policy positions that aren’t underwritten by one of those three things. It’s nothing for a president to turn around on a wonky bit of detail like, e.g., the health care mandate. It’s far less likely to see a one-eighty in basic temperament.
This is especially true in this election, where one candidate talks out of both sides of his mouth even when he isn’t directly lying (“Iraq was a mistake, but I’m gonna take out ISIS and bomb terrorist families!”) and the other has both a record of flip-flopping and of working under other administrations. Style and support-bases and history are really the only things we should be looking at.
“It’s far less likely to see a one-eighty in basic temperament.”
-Trump, on most issues, clearly has a better, more pro-American instinct than Her. He’s been complaining about other countries ripping us off since forever. Now it’s time to see whether we can accomplish a swift end to that.
America cannot afford another affirmative-action presidency.
So that’s a concession of my point? Because I agree, a Trump presidency would be focused on trade in a way where it most certainly will not be focused on the issues that mostly just appear on his website for coalition-building reasons (pro-life) or that are clearly instrumental means towards the needs of his campaign at this particular moment (solving crime problems in minority communities). Similarly, HRC will continue to follow the trajectory of her lifelong career of stamping her name on the technocratic consensus de jour and statements that are recent efforts toward coalition-building (her quarter-hearted adoption of Bernie’s tertiary education agenda) or clearly related towards a particular campaign end (bellicose statements about Putin) can be largely ignored.
(I’d say entirely, but technocratic consensuses de jour DID give us the Cold War)
This appears to contradict standard US immigration policy, which, according to several sources, admits no more than 7% of any year’s immigrants to be from any one country.
Then I looked closer at the Pew report. It seems to be talking not about annual immigrants, but rather demographics of immigrants as far back as – their lifespans. (Which can make sense mathematically, if Mexico hits close to 7% every year while other countries, mostly Mesoamerican and SE Asian, tag-team making up the rest. So both the report and policy can be consistent.)
Also, it’s not clear whether the Pew report is including illegals, the population of greatest concern right now.
Meanwhile, proposed methods for addressing illegal immigration seem to be a mix between stemming the future flow and deporting whoever’s already here. I don’t know how many current illegals are Asian vs. other; I’ve seen claims either way.
Stocks, meet flows.
“Hillary will have a Republican Congress to contend with; she probably won’t be able to increase immigration very much.”
Wow! Please open up a public wager on this. I will bet you with odds in your favor.
From Hillary’s website, “We need comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to full and equal citizenship.”
“comprehensive” is a code word. full amnesty + more. Peter Thiel is right.
If you want to bet that number of immigrants per year (legal, illegal, or both – your choice) will not double during Clinton’s first four years, I’m happy to bet that at even odds. If you’d prefer this framed differently, let me know.
But Trump, fortunately, will probably win the election (his LAT poll # went up after his debate loss!), so this will all probably be irrelevant.
Why would you care about the direction of a single bump when prediction markets and polling models both agree he will lose?
Brexit proved prediction markets worthless. FiveThirtyEight has Trump gaining by, on average, one point in the NowCast each day since August 25, due to the professionalization of his campaign. I expect that to continue in October, barring a disastrous debate performance (i.e., not one he gains in the LAT poll as a result of).
To E.Harding
Prediction markets did not express a 100% chance of a win for Remain. IIRC, the odds ended up something like 75% to 25%. So thus you would expect the minority position to win 1 in 4 times.
If the minority position was consistently winning with such odds then prediction markets would be ‘worthless’ so to speak, but I’ve not seen any evidence that this is the case.
Prediction markets were off on Brexit due to elites vs. non-elites. Larger bets by elites moved the market toward remain.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/big-london-bets-tilted-bookmakers-brexit-odds-1466976156
@E. Harding
Well-calibrated betting markets giving implied odds of 90% will still have the other outcome 10% of the time.
Given how often they’re on the money, I don’t think there’s any reason to conclude anything other than “Brexit was one of the 10%”. It would be miscalibration if the thing they assign the highest odds to /did/ always happen.
But if you do think, outside view, they’re definitely massively off now, there’s hundreds of thousands there for the taking. Elites pumping money into the market would basically just be paying other people to take it and fix the market; if anyone thinks that’s what’s happening, there is a very lucrative opportunity there for them.
(Of course, the obvious thing to do would be to try to analyse previous markets for an establishment bias, then consistently lay against establishment candidates, to get a profit. If you don’t think anyone has done this, then there’s free money; if you do, then you should expect that to have eliminated the bias. Markets going to market, as they say.)
Edit: Also, the currency markets were wrong, too- exchange rates had trended back to thinking that Brexit wasn’t going to happen, restored most of the value of the pound, then collapsed immediately after the vote. (Currency/commodity markets *also* behave as implicit prediction markets)
This means it wasn’t just small illiquid markets you could imagine as being manipulable which got it wrong, it was huge highly liquid ones. This is a strong point in favour of it being a case where the best guess that could be made was wrong, and the fact that betting market participants tend to be upper class only broke betting markets insofar as upper class ideas dominating investment breaks capitalism, i.e. a little but it still mostly works.
I believe that taking political bets is a bad idea, even for things which I think would produce an average positive return.
More generally, saying “if you believe that, you should take a bet about it” conflates “I don’t really think it’s true” and “I don’t like taking bets, even for things I think are true”. This conflation should be avoided.
I think “I very strongly, outside view, believe that there is free money on the table, but also I have this very specific prohibition against taking the free money to the point I’m turning down free hundreds of thousands.” is a bit suspicious.
I know it’s a common thing, but it’s a common thing which emerged because people are so awful at taking the outside view, so they’re compensating for overly strong beliefs by adopting a position of epistemic humility when finances are involved.
And it’s reasonable to say that people doing that should display epistemic humility the rest of the time, too, and criticise them when they obviously aren’t.
Reasons to not take bets include:
— risk aversiveness
— not trusting the other guy to make the strongest case as to why he is confident of winning his bet (in a politcal bet, this manifests as the other guy carefully phrasing the bet so that it can come true in additional ways which don’t support the point he was using the bet to make, and glossing over this)
— the general association of bets with irrationality among typical human beings
— the general fact that some people have more money to spare than others and we don’t know the relative budgets of the two parties, which enables someone with a large budget to use bets to falsely signal confidence relative to someone with a small budget
— having a policy of accepting bets creates bad incentives, so one should precommit to not taking bets (note that some “irrational” behaviors of normal humans can be modelled as precommitment)
Another reason for not taking bets:
I don’t value money I didn’t earn. Earning implies performing some service for fellow human beings. Being more right than them isn’t performing a service for them.
Thus, I’m trading something I do value – the potential to lose money I’ve earned – for something I don’t value – the chance at money I haven’t.
Another point is that “free money” only happens when you reasonably expect a continual stream of offers for which you can do somewhat better than the given odds. There is no one thinking, “The betting market is giving 35% to Trump; I’m sure it’s actually 100%.” They’re thinking, “The betting market is giving 35% to Trump, I think it’s actually 40%.” You look for value, but you have to have an expectation that you can consistently find value. The adage in football betting is that you have to be right 57% of the time to come out ahead. You need lots and lots of consistent little value for it to be “free money”; just a few moments of even relatively substantial value isn’t going to cut it.
I used to bet on Intrade. I stopped because it led to unhealthy mental habits for me. I already spend too much time thinking about politics for my own good. Having money on the line, even in small amounts, *greatly* increased the amount of time and attention I devoted to thinking about trivial bullshit (he wrote on SSC during work hours).
Scott, what you might be betting on here is just the state of the economy, if you say illegal immigrants count.
By state of the economy, I mean relative to our neighbors.
It might take a pretty big force to take Mexican immigration from its current small negative rate to +11 million over 4 years. That would seem to need both a collapse in Mexico and a 90s-style boom in the USA.
@Corey:
He said immigrants per year, not total in country.
And it was negative, but now seems to be positive again.
Hah, now *I* got stocks & flows crossed! Thanks.
Hillary Clinton accused Russia, a nuclear armed world power, of attempting to influence U.S. elections by hacking her servers, despite the total lack of hard evidence. So, either she’s willing to lie and cause an international incident with a nuclear power to score political points, or, worse, she actually believes that Putin is part of some vast right-wing conspiracy to stop her from becoming President. That is far more dangerous than anything Trump has ever done.
Hillary shows an inability to predict the consequences of her actions, which is also dangerous. Regardless of how serious you think her server issue is, the important part is that she took a big, unncessary risk (for her personally, even if the risks to the country weren’t large), for a trivial benefit. She also totally failed to anticipate how her interventions in Libya and Syria would work out.
If you look at foreign policy advisors, Hillary is clearly the more dangerous choice. She has surrounded herself by the neocons (the ones Trump has single-handedly purged from the Republican Party) who got us into Iraq, and worse, from a ‘risk to the world’ perspective, constantly advocate for conflict with Russia (who, remember, Hillary claims is responsible for trying to rig the election in Trump’s favor).
You can argue that Trump is more dangerous for other reasons, but to totally ignore all of the risks to the world of a Hillary presidency is crazy.
Was it not Russia? It might have been Russia, right? I’m not gonna count that one too hard against her until there’s good reason to believe it wasn’t actually Russia. (Although I’m not going to ignore the revealed corruption like she would like me to, either.)
It could have been Russia, yes. It could have been anyone. But there’s no hard evidence that it was, so it was still clearly very irresponsible to make the accusation. And really, it would be even more dangerous if the accusation is true–if Hillary were President, and there actually was real proof that Russia hacked the server, it would make conflict with Russia more likely.
I support the rights of women to accuse nation-states of hacking their servers if indeed those nation-states are in fact guilty. If it’s too “irresponsible” to call Russia out, what are we supposed to do, let them have free reign to meddle in our elections? Maybe Russia should consider being responsible for a change and not get all pissy about being caught.
I’m not saying it would be wrong of her to accuse them of hacking them, if they actually did (but like I said, there’s no evidence). Just, from the perspective of ‘what is most likely to cause a nuclear conflict’, it would be worse for the world if it were true.
Oh, you’re saying that if Russia cares enough about our election to try and meddle with it, it would be dangerous to provoke them by not giving them what they want. I totally reject that way of thinking. You have to strike back when you are being pushed around rather than allow yourself to be bullied forever for fear of the immediate consequences of standing up for yourself. (Which is why I’m voting for Trump.)
That’s actually not what I’m saying. I’m saying that if Hillary Clinton is President, then someone finding proof of Russia trying to rig the election in Trump’s favor would cause her to be more likely to cause a conflict with Russia. So, the overall likelihood of conflict with Russia increases if the accusations are, in fact, true.
And this has nothing to do with why we shouldn’t vote for Clinton, you’re just bringing it up as an interesting factoid. Pardon me for assuming you were following the thread of the conversation.
i too support the rights of women to make unsupported accusations for political gain which could cause international incidents
what keeps bothering me is that Trump’s thing is to be wild, new, throw out fresh ideas and break the rules. and yet Hillary is just as dangerous. Hillary is supposed to be the dependable one, not the one who could spark WW3.
So you are saying… the US should be completely passive whenever another nation illegally meddles in its business.
You certainly should if you don’t have proof that the other nation did, in fact, meddle in our business.
Hillary Clinton accused Russia, a nuclear armed world power, of attempting to influence U.S. elections by hacking her servers, despite the total lack of hard evidence. So, either she’s willing to lie and cause an international incident with a nuclear power to score political points, or, worse, she actually believes that Putin is part of some vast right-wing conspiracy to stop her from becoming President. That is far more dangerous than anything Trump has ever done.
Yes, this. I don’t know how someone as rational as Scott has gotten to the funhouse mirror world of thinking “candidate who wants to be nice to Russia is a nuclear war risk, candidate who accuses Russia without evidence of espionage to prevent her from becoming President is no risk.”
Trump is erratic and volatile, Clinton is fairly cautious. The US and Russia have been meddling in each other’s affairs for a century and will probably continue doing so for another century, calling it out is fine but escalating is not.
Everyone just asserts this without evidence and lets prejudice carry them the rest of the way.
yes, it’s incredible how all the actual words that have been said perfectly contradict people’s impressions and no one notices
You badly need to distinguish between verbal nastiness and physical incursions. If Russia were any other nation, saying that they are and and do bad things could escalate. But Russia is Russia, the West accuse them of bad things all the time, half the time their response it not to care, and the other half they take pride in how badass they are being. They killed Litvinenko, everyone knows so, most people say so…and Russia barely denies it.
@TheAncientGeek – “You badly need to distinguish between verbal nastiness and physical incursions. ”
…Like the longstanding policy of containment we’ve pursued for the last two decades at least, which Clinton has pursued unerringly, despite increasingly ominous push-back from Russia?
Increasingly ominous compared to what? Are things now worse than the cuban missile crisis.
@TheAncientGeek
-No. Do you want them to be?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/politics/spy-agency-consensus-grows-that-russia-hacked-dnc.html
“American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.
But intelligence officials have cautioned that they are uncertain whether the electronic break-in at the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage — of the kind the United States also conducts around the world — or as part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.”
U.S. intelligence agencies don’t exactly have a great track record, when it comes to things they accuse America’s adversaries of.
If you look at the actual evidence they have, it is clearly not enough to justify a “high confidence” that the Russian state is responsible.
https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr/the-dnc-breach-and-the-hijacking-of-common-sense-20e89dacfc2b#.u5tlvbwtt
It’s arguably not generally possible to have high confidence of assigning attribution for *any* cyberattack.
https://medium.com/@jeffreycarr/faith-based-attribution-30f4a658eabc#.xn7op0lx7
It’s great that you think that. But you can scarcely accuse Hillary of conspiracy-theory-mongering for repeating what the intelligence community tells her, can you?
Can you blame the Bush administration for believing the intelligence community’s claims about WMDs?
Have you considered that a somewhat smaller burden of proof attaches to repeating claims made by intelligence agencies than going to war on the basis of claims made by intelligence agencies?
Regardless, your accusation that Clinton was spreading baseless conspiracy theories was false. You should retract it.
Just as under Bush, they came to the conclusion that the party in power wanted them to come to. Clinton had already been claiming that Trump was conspiring with Putin, and then, conveniently, the cyber security firms the DNC hire to investigate the hack, conclude that the narrative the Democrats have been pushing is true. As noted in the article above, the security firms investigating the hack admit that they excluded evidence that didn’t implicate Russia, because “we are not profiling all of APT28’s targets with the same detail because they are not particularly indicative of a specific sponsor’s interests.”
You started out by accusing Hillary of trafficking in conspiracy theories. But now, I think, it has become quite clear who the actual conspiracy theorist is.
I guess me and Hillary both shouldn’t be president then.
shut up Michael, arguing that a firm hired by the DNC would be willing to push forward a narrative highly favored by the DNC, and by-the-by the DNC’s preferred candidate as per that same DNC hack, is conspiracy theories.
It’s not the firm hired by the DNC whose opinion carries weight, it’s the FBI’s.
Given typical Russian cyber stuff, I think the hack was just to get donor credit card numbers, and the political part is an accident.
>she actually believes that Putin is part of some vast right-wing conspiracy to stop her from becoming President
No, that does not sound like crazy conspiracy theory. All in all, stuff like that wouldn’t be very extraordinary for intelligence agencies of rival great power to do. Consider everything what happened during the cold war.
Compare and contrast what is business as usual in Russia:
Putin declared earlier this month the only remaining independent pollster in Russia “a foreign agent” (read: hostile Western). According to a controversial piece of legislation, any organization labeled thus can be shut down (like many opposition / government critical NGOs / media outlets have been). This has been the only pollster considered reliable by the West, and only pollster that recently reported declining support for Putin’s party.
It is a crazy conspiracy theory because the vast majority of actual Russian nationalists would go apoplectic at the claim that Putin is one of theirs. He sometimes panders to their concerns and even includes a couple of nationalists in his government (well, Rogozin, pretty much), but Russian nationalists get locked up for hate speech (the infamous Article 282), and were Putin a Western politician, the Alt Right would be calling him a “patriotic-cuckservative” or something of that sort.
The pollster issue is a storm in a teacup. The Levada Center’s funding and “foreign agent” status has actually been a matter of legal dispute for *years*, but this has yet to lead to its shutdown (here is an article I translated back in 2013: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/lev-gudkov-the-levada-center-is-not-a-foreign-agent/). It is quite irrelevant what “the West” (who is that?) “considers reliable.” The *fact* is that its measures of popular support for Putin (last approval rating: 82%) are in fact consistently in concordance with both state-owned pollsters (FOM and VCIOM) and Western pollsters such as Gallup.
@ Michael
Hillary Clinton accused Russia, a nuclear armed world power, of attempting to influence U.S. elections by hacking her servers, despite the total lack of hard evidence.
Last I heard, Hillary’s own servers were the only ones that had not been hacked.
The whole “spilling secrets” accusation is such a nothing anyway.
Nothing Clinton could send legally on a state department non classified server couldn’t be sent clear text to a domain outside of state department control. It was all subject to FOIA request anyway. The state servers aren’t hardened to the level they would need to be to prevent intrusion, so you have to assume that all if its contents will be likely available to state actors anyway.
The only real issue is the small number of things that may have been classified, but those would have been verbotten on the state department email servers as well.
The whole reason she did it was that she didn’t want to be subject to FOIA request. The fact that it also was sending classified information over insecure channels is just icing on the cake.
No. The whole reason she did it was that she wanted to keep using her Blackberry, and the NSA wouldn’t set it up for her. Additional fact from that link of which I was previously not aware: Condoleezza Rice had previously received waivers for herself and her staff, but there were getting to be too many waivers and the NSA phased them out.
And if we’re going to talk about FOIA requests, it seems kind of relevant that Colin Powell did effectively the same thing (albeit with an AOL account, not a private server). As far as I can tell, more of Clinton’s emails have been made available under FOIA than Powell’s, although if somebody has a source that shows otherwise, I would gladly accept a correction on that point.
@ Iain
Thanks for the leads. I can’t go very deep into anything here because there are already so many comments that my old computer may explode at any download.
Could you write a post on immigration? I’m not sure what your position is on it. Also, Canada, Australia and other countries have a lot higher immigration levels(as a percentage of their population) then the U.S. does and (as far as I know), they have a lot less ethnic strife than than the U.S. does. Also I’m curious how you would count the immigrant’s well being in this situation too. If (for example) immigration imposes a small decline in wages or institutions of the native population(this is almost certainly not true, almost all of the research shows that immigration is a net positive on the average native born citizen and the question of whether or not there is a negative effect on the poorest Americans is debatable), but ends up increasing the material health of the immigrants themselves, wouldn’t it still be worthwhile?
Canada is up north and has a continent-sized country between it and Latin America. Australia is an island. They have natural barriers that affect the kinds of immigrants they receive. The United States has a large, porous border with Mexico and by extension Central America. That means the US cannot control the kinds of immigrants who flow in by the millions. You will have a lot less ethnic strife with a better class of immigrant; Canada and Australia can guarantee such a class with greater ease than America can.
Canada has an esoteric immigration policy that relies on IQ correlates. If you actually look at how its points system works the reason it succeeds when Europe’s fails is obvious.
If you are a nationalist (like most people on Earth were through all of history and probably still are despite the attitude being out of favor in the media), no. The United States Government exists for the benefit of citizens of the United States, not foreigners, full stop the end.
Nationalism is relatively new, actually. People have mostly been tribal.
Fair point. I was carelessly using “nationalism” to refer to the generalist case of “the governing institution of my [tribe, village, city-state, nation] is responsible for the welfare of its citizens only.”
Hell, you don’t even need to care that much about nationalism. You just need to care more about your friends and family than strangers.
The problem of immigration as viewed in the US is primarily about low-skilled migrants coming to the US and working illegally. This occurs primarily via the US border with Mexico. There is far less opposition to immigration in general, especially for skilled workers.
@Aaron: you wrote
Another obvious difference is that Canada never had plantation slavery. The legacy of plantation slavery is kind of huge for explaining ethnic strife in the US. Trying to explain Canada’s lower rate of ethnic strife but only mentioning immigration is like trying to explain the US’ lower rate of English vs French speaker tension without mentioning Quebec.
Another obvious difference is the different ethnic groups. Canada has 4% South Asian, 3.9% Chinese, and 2.5% black. The US… doesn’t.
Well, the demographic differences have a lot to do with the plantation slavery. A high % of black Americans are descended from people taken as slaves to the plantations in the US south – I’m having a hard time finding a precise %. In Canada, the black population is made up mostly of people from the Caribbean/of Caribbean ancestry (where they would have slave ancestry, but not in Canada) and immigrants from Africa.
The total percentage of Asians in Canada is almost the same as the percentage of black people in the US – but they are a lot less spread out, so it’s harder to make comparisons. About double the Asian % as in the US, despite the fact that for much of Canada’s history Asians especially Chinese were the group most affected by official discrimination (and sometimes the only group – I believe that at one point the only immigration restrictions were on Chinese).
(Also, where are your stats from? Wikipedia’s telling me 4.8% South Asian, 4% Chinese plus 0.5% Korean and 0.3% Japanese plus 0.9% SE Asian).
“This is going to be close. And since the lesson of Brexit is that polls underestimate support for politically incorrect choices, this is going to be really close.”
I actually disagree with this. The Brexit polls were actually about right within the margin of error. They were about tied, and Leave won by about 2 points. It was betting markets and expert analysis that overestimated the chances of Remain.
There’s also been no evidence that Trump out performed his polls. In the primaries, he actually had a tendency to underperform among late deciders. In the primaries, he seemed to underperform the polls as much as overperform them (click on some states on this map), and if anything his underperformances were often larger than his overperformances.
Leave won by 4 points. Yes, betting markets on elections are worth about as much as random carpet dust.
Trump outperformed his polls in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and the Acela primaries, most notably. There are more examples:
http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2016/04/trump-outperforms-polling-expectations.html
That post is misleading. Yes, Trump will tend to overperform the polling averages in terms of his percentage of the vote, because surely some undecideds will come into this camp come election day. But I would bet that Cruz tended to overperform as well on that count.
What matters is if he overperformed in terms of his margin of victory/defeat over his strongest competitor, because that’s what decides elections in a FPTP system (and that’s what I was referring to). On that count, though I haven’t done a rigorous analysis, it seems he was as likely to do worse than better than the polls predicted. (I’m open to being corrected on this if somebody has the time to go through all the contested primaries.
Trump could lose every state to Hillary by a larger margin than the RCP average *and* outperform his raw percentage in all of them at the same time. If 25% of undecideds break to him, but 75% break to Hillary, (and assuming the polls get the previously decided voters all correct), then he overperforms in a sense, but loses by a greater margin because Hillary would “overperform” in this sense too.
Folks, I feel like citing 4-5 specific instances out of a 50-state primary kind of proves the opposite of what I think you’re going for. Random noise dictates that 50% of the time you should overperform your polls. 50% of the time you should underperform them. In fact, since “undecided” is not actually an option at the ballot box, you should more often than not overperform. If it was really true that Trump only overperformed in the states E. Harding mentions, for instance, that would seem to imply the opposite conclusion he wants.
It seems more important to get a specialist to do a holistic approach and report the results. That seems to be both of you are right. Trump underperformed amongst late deciders up to the latter stages of the contest, and then overperformed subsequently.
https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/725129390401662976
And there’s a fairly intuitive explanation for this, isn’t there? Rubio/Kasich/Bush/Christie/Walker/Perry are basically fungible goods, close substitutes of each other. If you were “undecided” until late in, say, Iowa, it was most likely that you were already a NotTrump voter picking between the R/K/B/C/W/P basket and not truly between them and Trump. Subsequently, the fungibility disappeared and the only remaining undecideds became true neutrals, open to all candidates equally.
Now, similarly, Clinton/Trump are obviously not close substitutes. Adding Johnson and Stein makes it narrower, but not by a lot. It follows that we should not see this phenomenon continue into the general.
Note: This is known as the shy Tory factor.
This type of social desirability bias used to be called the Bradley effect in the US. Then after decades of sporadic claimed sightings, it was not detected as a statistically significant effect in the 2008 presidential election. Polls do not always underestimate support for politically incorrect choices; accurate demographic models are invaluable.
I think you’re underselling the immigration argument here.
Immigrant families vote Democratic. The exact split depends on which immigrant group, but basically every significant immigrant group I’ve ever seen will, at least, lean towards the Democrats. And usually not just *lean*, but by a huge margin. The impact has been lessened because immigrants tend to vote at low rates or in non-competitive states, but it’s a huge trend nonetheless. I believe you’ve blogged about this before.
Given all that… this isn’t just one issue. It’s the whole ballgame! Democrats don’t even need to *increase* immigration, just keep it where it is, while helping existing immigrants gain citizenship and bring their families over. Meanwhile the Republican base of elderly voters shrinks every year. It’s not a secret, Democrats openly brag about these trends. Within a generation, if these trends continue, the Republican party will drastically shift platform, or die off altogether. The only hope for them, as I see it, is to massively restrict immigration *immediately*, both illegal and otherwise, as well as eliminating birthright citizenship. Hence the appeal of Trump… no matter how distasteful he might be, he’s basically their only hope for long-term survival as a major political party.
What you say makes sense except that your plan wouldn’t help – demographic trends will have the same effect even without new immigrants. Somebody’s going to have to figure out a better solution.
Personally I’m not too attached to the idea of elections for exactly this reason. One party is trying to game the “get lots of votes” by simply importing voters.
The upside to a Hillary election is that it discredits “choose head of government by voting” as an idea.
My views are much more in line with the military units that actually fight and with citizens that own firearms. I know why I’m anxious to see them come to the same conclusion about voting that I have. I don’t know why you are though.
I think it was Erdogan who once said that democracy was a train and that everybody got off when they reached their stop.
I’ve long believed that the main thing driving
Trumpism was a panic about America’s chaining demographics, but very few people just come out and say it like that.
As scott said, the demographics are already baked in, even the most extreme versions of Trump’s immigration policy will make very little difference in the long run.
To achieve your vision millions of American citizens would have to be stripped of their civil rights, do you think they are apt to take that lying down?
When you imagine a white nationalist authoritarian state, what do you actually see?
Even if such a regime could be established,
it would face a ticking demographic time bomb. If the racially undesirable elements are allowed to live, their population will continue to grow thanks to higher fertility rates, and they will form huge base of insurgency and civil unrest that stands a good chance of eventually toppling the government.
The only alternative is physical elimination.
Latinos and African American together constitute about thirty percent of the US population; to exterminate them would require the greatest genocide in human history. You might want to familiarize yourself with the logistics of the final solution; good luck finding enough Americans who have the will to carry something like that out.
I don’t think that’s true. The military may lean conservative, but the average American fighting man takes that whole constitution thing kind of seriously.
“The alternative is physical elimination”
This is not true in Europe, at least, or more exactly in some European countries. Many immigrants aren’t especially happy in their current countries of residence, and would leave if conditions were right, especially if nativist sentiment continues to rise. In Austria, for example, over 80% of Muslims say they would currently prefer to live somewhere else (many say they would prefer to return to Turkey), especially if they received financial compensation. It’s not impossible that if an anti-immigration president is elected (as he is currently narrowly favoured to do, in December), Austria could be more white five or ten years from now than it is today.
My personal views are in the opposite direction on this one, but I’ll concede that my political enemies neither need nor are asking for a genocide. Their thinking is that if you turn off the spigot for a generation or two, existing communities will assimilate. I don’t see any particular reason to doubt them, and it did happen historically with Eastern/Southern Europeans.
(except for the consciously racist ones, that is)
but 30% is not impossible to deal with especially in light of the fact that some will and do integrate every so often
it’s nothing to do with mass extermination: we bit off more than we can chew, now we have to digest. (integrate, not flood with acid or anything of that nature)
I don’t know, Donald Trump seems to have done a pretty good job of firing up young white people on the internet to vote for him. More so than any Republican in my lifetime, anyway.
But less than Bernie.
Bernie is a leftist Democrat- of course he appeals to young voters. One of his key issues was making college free- essentially giving tens of thousands of dollars to young people. Of course that’s appealing.
Trump is the only time I’ve seen young people get really fired up about a *conservative* candidate. Even people who disagree with him will sometimes admit that they *want* to vote for him anyway.
Cruz had the largest youth skew in the New Hampshire exit polls, not Trump. Young people are the demographic least likely to like Hillary, and least likely to like Trump.
You’re forgetting the dank memers, who at this point have to make up a significant part of Trump’s support.
Most of them have to be young, right?
@Fahundo
All of 4chan’s /pol/, 8chan’s /pol/, TRS, frogtwitter and assorted other alt-right abodes probably only make up a hundred thousand people at most. They have an outsized impact in terms of media presence which can lead people to believe that there is a large youth contingent for Trump, but compared to the youth populace as a whole, I think that they’re extreme outliers.
Here’s one: Republicans could stop playing white identity politics and go back to focusing on policies that foster economic growth.
Lots of immigrants left the place they were born explicitly for the purposes of getting away from the statist economic policies in place. And lots of immigrants are more religious than the median native born American. If the contemporary Republic Party were not so dead set on alienating brown people, they might actually make some inroads with a sizable percentage of immigrants.
I don’t think the option to stop playing white identity politics exists. There is zero chance that the other side will stop playing identity politics because it is to their benefit to keep doing so. As long as identity politics is defined as “people of color’s struggles to live under the pernicious specter of whiteness”, the incentive for some growing number of white people to turn to their own brand of identity politics will exist and strengthen.
And I greatly doubt there is any chance of making inroads with many immigrant groups for any substantial period of time, particularly Latinos in the Southwest. There is a meme that Trump supporters circulate on Twitter that is somewhat crude, but effective at emphasizing the role of incentives — there’s basically three stick figures, one a conservative, one a progressive, and in between these two, a Latino immigrant. The conservative tells the immigrant, “Hola, amigo! Let me explain to you the wonders of limited government. Friedrich Hayek once said….” and the progressive interjects: “Fuck that. Vote for me and you can have his stuff.”
Have you read much history? That is a serious question.
And more importantly, there is no small amount of irony in choosing to use that example to try and show that Hispanics can’t be anything but big government leftists. Maybe you’re doing that on purpose. The implication is that brown people cannot be made to understand the argument for classical liberal economics and limited government. Forget for a second how bad that tries to slander Hispanics and think about how much it tries to flatter whites. Just what percent of the white population is routinely willing to forego government benefits? I don’t see a whole bunch of old white people voting to reform social security and medicare.
I honestly believe voting hillary increases the probability of a race war, she’s a bully after all, as are some of her supporters. Trump and his are more like trolls. Whites have mostly bought the narrative but that’s changing rapidly, Neo-nazism is cool now, new narratives are appearing…
But Trump is no neo-nazi, he actually likes other races though in a way that’s not politically acceptable; “I love the greedy kikes” kind of way. He would serve as appeasement for disenfranchised whites. A more authoritarian approach to police could help black communities, all in all he could help ease racial tensions.
Plenty. It’s a minor hobby.
Oh, I don’t doubt that they can be something other than big government leftists or that they can understand the principles of limited government. I just don’t see that they have any incentive to buy into such concepts. American libertarianism is rooted in a very particular conception of American history and culture. The model of big, pervasive government is not so culturally-specific — it is the norm the world over. Immigrants have to be acculturated into certain American traditions before they have any reason to give a crap about this stuff. That worked for a long time, but the prevailing sentiment now is that there is no need for immigrants to be acculturated into anything because All Cultures Are Equally Valid and there’s room in America for all sorts of political traditions, especially ones that leftism most easily accommodates into its coalition. I bring up Latinos because they are far and away the largest immigrant group in modern America — I don’t doubt that this would largely be true for most white immigrants today as well.
If it makes you feel any better, I am neither white nor a small-government conservative. I have no issue with Social Security or Medicare. I have no issue with big government so long as it is efficient and run more like a corporation with performance incentives and penalties than a lumbering bureaucracy where incompetent employees have to commit criminal acts before ever running the risk of getting fired. But I have no delusions that I am representative of my immigrant ethnic group, and virtually no one with my particular racial concoction in the personal and professional circles I live in believes in the principles of limited government, because it is tied to a political tradition that they have no relation to. Libertarianism is just a thing white people believe in.
I agree, anyone can understand classical liberal economics. Where in the US do you think they might learn this? Public school? University? I don’t think so.
Yes, colleges still teach classical economics, in good old Econ 101. At a high school level, Micro and Macroeconomics are both available as AP exams.
Can we stop stereotyping colleges as liberal indoctrination centers bent on starting a race war?
@Sandy:
Do you actually have any experience working in corporations, or alternatively have you ever gotten any insight into how they work by, say, reading about them or anything?
It’s not a universal law or anything, but many corporations are themselves “lumbering bureaucracies where incompetent employees have to commit criminal acts before ever running the risk of getting fired.” And, in some cases, corporations are lumbering bureaucracies where competent employees have to commit criminal acts to avoid getting fired, as we see from the Wells Fargo case among others.
I only say this because a lot of people seem to treat it as a law of nature that government agencies are always incompetent and private entities are always hypercompetent, but that’s just not my experience with either government agencies (which are sometimes, but not always, surprisingly efficient) or private entities (which I find are frequently inefficient, or in some cases efficiently shitty).
Only commies say things like that, and commies are wrong about everything, ergo, you’re wrong. It’s just basic logic, which you would know if you were more Rational.
@wysinwyg:
Some. I’ve worked in a couple. I also grew up in a rapidly liberalizing and corporatizing culture — my father co-founded a logistics company in my home country that thrived in direct opposition to the national postal service and was eventually bought out by a European multinational looking to expand into that market.
Generally I think federal employees have far too much job security. This disincentivizes them from ever improving on their glaring faults, while for the most part your career in the private sector will hinge on performance reviews and the satisfaction of your employers and customers. I don’t claim that this is a universal law or anything, but as a generalization it seems to hold true. Wells Fargo did eventually come to light and people will be punished over that scandal; Congress is openly discussing throwing John Stumpf in jail. Contrast that with the TSA, an agency that is deeply unpopular, terribly inefficient, notoriously corrupt and has been condemned by Congress for all of these things, but that nonetheless has fired a grand total of one executive over the last five years.
My Econ 101 was pure Heilbroner and Keynes. Granted, it was a long time ago.
@wysinwyg
+1. Large corporations are much more like govt. departments than either is like a small private company.
“Here’s one: Republicans could stop playing white identity politics and go back to focusing on policies that foster economic growth.”
-That’s what Trump is doing right now.
“If the contemporary Republic Party were not so dead set on alienating brown people, they might actually make some inroads with a sizable percentage of immigrants.”
-There are more Islamophobes than Muslims. There are more people who want to secure the border and would consider voting GOP if it supported it than there are people who want to reduce border security and would consider voting GOP if it opposed it.
For now, maybe. But they’ll be dead at some point.
“But they’ll be dead at some point.”
-Whoa, whoa, whoa, man, are you advocating for or predicting White Genocide? Or simply predicting a change in tastes and preferences?
What were Trump’s policies for fostering economic growth again?
Making the best deals. He wrote a book about it!
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/fact-sheet-donald-j.-trumps-pro-growth-economic-policy-will-create-25-milli
And then vote heavily for those very same policies in their new country.
Yes, but look at where they stand on most of the issues where politics and religion intersect in the US; for example, look at how “Catholic” Hispanics poll on issues like abortion, gay marriage, or at their out-of-wedlock birth rates.
I keep seeing this myth repeated, but it is a myth. Polls show that however much Hispanic voters are “turned off” by Republican party positions on immigration, this effect is dwarfed by the degree they are turned off by Republican economic policies. (See here for a sample.)
And read this: Non-Whites of Every Stripe Vote Democrat:
Yes, this. Most of the immigrants j r is speaking of left the place they were born to get away from the results of the statist economic policies, without a clear understanding that those policies were the cause of the crappy situation. Even college-educated Americans seem shaky on that connection.
I don’t see Asians in there (although they are in the link).
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/02/07/second-generation-americans/
Second generation Hispanics: 19% Republican/71% Democratic
Second generation Asian-Americans: 32% Republican, 52% Democratic
General public: 39% Republican, 49% Democratic
I think you’re being fatalistic.
Of course the plan would help. The severity of demographic changes will have a direct impact on the rhetorical and policy concessions the Republican will have to make.
Trump can:
– deport illegal immigrants
– make it harder for anchor babies to become citizens/vote
– restrict the extended-family-based legal immigration paths
Low skilled immigrants have the exact opposite values that so many of us want — socially conservative and economically socialist. I *can’t* understand why you think immigration won’t drastically change and worsen aspects of American life — especially regarding questions of regulation and taxes. I think you of all people understand how crucial and underrated the “Demographics is Destiny” idea is.
Could you explain, “Somebody’s going to have to figure out a better solution.” What does that mean? What’s a possible better solution?
Low skilled immigrants have the exact opposite values that so many of us want — socially conservative and economically socialist
Well, that would be me – socially conservative, fiscally liberal. Are you trying to persuade me Hillary is really my kind of people? 🙂
(It’s probably good for everyone concerned that I don’t have any kind of vote in any kind of American election).
Assuming social change is slower than demographic change, which is not in evidence (it might be slower, but I don’t think anyone even tries to figure out if it is).
Socially conservative and economically socialist is certainly the worst of both worlds. But why have Democrats gotten so much traction with the second part while Republicans have gotten nowhere with the first?
Unfortunately, the solution is to go back in time and not make a lot of mistakes. Don’t replace the idea of the melting pot with the idea of the tossed salad. Don’t make the state so all-encompassing that it can buy the votes of rent-seekers. Don’t decide that it’s racist to prefer immigrants from places with cultural affinities to American culture.
What if we sent back the people already here. Including all those that have received amnesty since Reagan. We can do it you know. Get them on the trains and get those trains moving.
If you don’t like that outcome, it was your fault for allowing them to come in the first place. Illegal immigration has been wildly unpopular since Reagen, and Democrats ran a very hard line against it until recently themselves (even if they never enforced it). Trump is to the right of Bill Clinton ’96 on immigration. These people are here because of the elites, so anything that we have to do to them to protect ourselves is the elites fault.
“To achieve your vision millions of American citizens would have to be stripped of their civil rights, do you think they are apt to take that lying down?”
I’m already being stripped of my civil rights. If demographics get worse then my children will be stripped of even more. Politics in a multi-cultural society is a winner take all racial spoils game. Win or die.
I think this calls for a moment of reflection.
An assumption shared by many around here, including (to some extent) our gracious host, is that the American left are dangerous totalitarian bullies who use trumped up charges of bigotry to silence politically incorrect free thinkers.
And accordingly, that a “safe space” must be provided away from the reign of the social justice warriors where the Overton window extends far enough right that all manner of wonderfully subversive racial and political samizdat can be discussed.
Asdf, I really hope Scott reads your post just to see what his experiment in “niceness, community, and civilization” has come to.
Now just to be clear, I enjoy hearing from people who hold views very different form my own, and am not arguing for any kind of censorship.
But if the more responsible members of SSC’s right wing would like to have their ideas taken seriously perhaps they should think about how they can distinguish themselves form the sort of deplorable person who responds to a discussion of the historical precedent set by the Endlösung der Judenfrage with a call to “get the trains moving”.
As for the substance of your post
This is of course trivially true; everybody would prefer there be less illegal immigration, even illegal immigrants, who I presume would prefer that they and their families could enter the country lawfully.
What we ought to ask instead is if immigration itself is unpopular, or if people would simply like more control over who is coming in. On this question the polling is not exactly favorable to your cause.
Even restricting ourselves to the relatively modest goal of deporting only those in this country illegally, there are enormous logistical and political challenges.
No one has exact figures in the number of illegals in the US, but it is thought to be somewhere between eleven and twelve million. Of those roughly eight million are Mexicans, and most of the remaining three million come from the nations of the northern triangle of central America. The countries of this region are weak impoverished states, with long bloody histories of civil war. Each of them owes between ten and twenty percent of their GDP to remittance payments from the their citizens in the US.
Now, I am going to tell you a story; It is the story of three people, a priest, a soldier, and a peasant woman; It is also the story of the nation of El Salvador.
In 1969 El Salvador and Honduras fought the so called “guerra del fútbol”, mostly over Salvadoran immigration to Honduras. at the end of this conflict three hundred thousand Salvadorans were deported from Honduras back to their home country. There they found themselves in a nation were eighty one percent of the arable land was owned by just fourteen extended families.
Over the course of the next ten years poverty desperation and violence spiraled out of control, and the government launched a campaign of repression that introduced the world to the phrase “death squad”.
In march of 1980 the first protagonist in our story, Monsignor Óscar Romero, then archbishop of El Salvador, and now a Roman Catholic saint and martyr, gave a sermon in which he said the following:
” I would like to make a special appeal to the men of the army…. Brothers, you come from our own people. You are killing your own brother peasants when any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God which says, “Thou shalt not kill.” No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law… I implore you, I beg you, I order you in the name of God: cease the repression!”
Ten days latter he was shot while giving mass to his people, and the country descended into open civil war.
Almost immediately Cuban and Nicaraguan arms began flowing into the hands of the rebel Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front as they prepared to launch what they called, with bitter irony it would turn out, their “final offensive” against the government.
This uprising was largely a failure in the urban areas of the country where the death squads had already done their most effective work in eliminating guerrilla sympathizers , but it was more successful further from the cities; in particular in the rural province of Morazán, which largely fell to rebel control.
In Morazán there was one village in particular that did little to help the rebellion, this place was called El Mozote. This small settlement differed from its neighbors in that most of it’s residents were members of the assembly of god, evangelical Protestants not known to have much regard for Marxist revolutionaries, or Catholic priests for that matter .
On the tenth of December of 1981 the second character in our story, lieutenant colonel Domingo Monterrosa Barrios lead members of his elite Atlacatl counterinsurgency battalion to El Mozote and secured the village.
On the tenth of December there were one thousand people in El Mozote, on the thirteenth of December there was one. This campesina, the peasant woman I told you about, was named Rufina Amaya, when she reached the refugee camps in Honduras she told the following story.
That the soldiers had come to El Mozote on the morning of the tenth and occupied the village. That she had managed to slip away in the confusion and hide. That while hiding she listened over the course of the next two days as the atlacatl battalion raped most of the women of the women of the village, tortured nearly every man; and then killed, without regard to age, sex, or military capacity, every man, woman, and child. Including Rufina’s son Cristino and her three daughters, María Dolores, María Lilian, and María Isabel.
María Isabel Amaya was eight months old.
Why, one might ask, this act of seeming madness? What would a government have to gain by killing so many who, if anything, were more likely to support the state then it’s enemies?
The answer is brutal in it’s simplicity. El Salvador’s problem was fundamentally demographic in origin, it’s quasi feudal cash crop economy could not support it’s population; there were too many people, on too little land.
The government’s public spectacles of brutality were designed to strike terror into the civilian population, and solve the demographic crisis by driving them from the country; across the border to Honduras, or north to the United States.
It was Mao Zedong who once said that the guerrilla is like fish that swims in the sea of the people, and Monterrosa aimed to drain the sea. The people of El Mozote, were simply targets of convenience because, unlike most people in
Morazán, they did not flee when the soldiers came.
Immigration to the US has served as an economic life line for the nations of central America. This social pressure valve has kept the peace, such as it is, for the last twenty five years. If it is slammed shut the pressure will build again, and things will be as they were in the early 1980s.
The truth is that if we deport millions of illegal immigrants back to central America, those nations will descend in to civil war and there will be a thousand El Mozotes. If we send those people back we are sending them to the grave; mass deportation is mass murder.
I suspect that in your case, this may be more a feature then a bug. But you should consider the sheer weight of what you imagine. Thanks to years of immigration, Morazán is no longer in Morazán anymore, it is in Adams Morgan and langley park, it is in east L.A. and upper Fells point. It is outside your window, as it were.
Though I am a white man with blond hair and blue eyes, I am also in part someone of Hispanic heritage. Why you view the people of Latin America, my mother’s people, with such fear I will never know.
They need not be your enemies. They have come to this country to work and earn on honest living and, to put food in the mouths of their children. They are not hear to hurt you, or take your rights away.
The next time an Arab complains about American imperialism, remember what the US has done in Latin America, and remember that no Salvadoran or Guatemalan, or Chilean ever flew a plane into an office building in revenge.
I don’t suppose you have killed many men, much less women or children. But understand this , even if your dream of a white America is possible, and I don’t think it is, you will have to do much killing to get it. You will have to wade up to your neck in shit and blood through the streets of our cities; you will have to become, as Monterrosa was, una especie perversa de “pescador de los hombres”.
You think about that.
Pretty sure you answered your own question right before you asked it, m8.
In what way? All I said was that
central American diaspora had formed large communities in the US. Why is the presence Latino immigrants innately freighting to you, what could they possibly have done to so merit your animosity?
Your poll shows that people have net preferred decreased immigration, even legal immigration, for some time. When you break it out by race (separate NAMs are East Asians) the rejection of immigration is ever sharper. You can find that breakout at Pew.
“They need not be your enemies. They have come to this country to work and earn on honest living and, to put food in the mouths of their children. They are not hear to hurt you, or take your rights away.”
Democrats have already taken my rights away. They have done so in the name of minorities and with their votes as the source of their power. They have hurt family and friends personally and deeply. Both at the elite government level and at the petty street crime level. Every two weeks huge chunks of my paycheck go to pay for NAMs and their political masters. Huge swaths of my city are slums because of NAMs.
Also, based on statistics they have not come here to earn a living. They have come hear to collect welfare, even when they have some kind of job they are collecting welfare. Even if they don’t intend this, they don’t have the genetics to be anything but antagonistic parasites.
Moreover, there is no configuration of political policies that non-whites will accept. It’s not about policy. It’s about getting what you can for your group, however you can, with any bullshit justification you can.
http://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/09/02/non-whites-of-every-stripe-vote-democrat/
Places where whites become a minority are dysfunctional societies in which they become persecuted and spend all day trying to save NAMs from themselves.
I would prefer to get my country back with as little violence as possible, but the lesson we ought to learn here is that if you are completely unwilling to use force under any circumstances, people will push you every time. It’s the basic game theory of a game of chicken. If you know for sure the other person will always flinch, there is no end to what you can demand. People tried electing politicians for decades, and not one did a thin about immigration. Now they gloat more openly then ever about finally being able to destroy white people. The time for moderation is over.
“This place thrown into prolonged poverty, desperation and violence thanks to its people reproducing faster than its feudal cash crop economy could feed them is now all around you, what’s so bad about that?”
Throw on top of this demographic argument the fact that the native population of middle to low class whites are scapegoated for most of the US’s problems and the major institutions (media/university/big corp) discriminates against the this group. Add that they are losers of free trade and globalization and live an objectively less prosperous existence than their grandparents. And finally add that they no longer even have a viable chance at winning an election and being represented by a governemnt that resembles the ones of their past…..and you are looking at an embittered population that had their country taken from them and are now completely powerless to do anything about it.
…that’s not a recipe for civil tranquility. That’s a recipe for civil violence.
And when one is successful in pointing this out to a coast progressive, the answer is “good, when they start shooting, we can get rid of them faster!”.
And, they may be right. The will probably win the resulting civil war.
But I, and people like me, will make that victory very very very expensive.
How?
The obvious implication is by shooting a lot of people before they get plowed under.
Less of that, please.
[EDIT] – Actually, let’s be a bit more explicit than that. EMB, speaking from personal experience, fantasizing about the coming civil war does no good and just makes you look bugfuck nuts. It feels good, and I’ve had to swallow a number of dire blood-oaths of enmity myself in this thread, but you probably should consider chilling out. You’re obviously very, very angry, but venting here achieves nothing useful.
For an insight into this mindset, a rather biased history of firearms legislation in the US, and the author’s interest in trying to find a young attractive bisexual polyamorous unicorn, take a look at Unintended Consequences by John Ross.
@Leit – I’ve read it. It’s dumb as hell.
The people who argue that armed resistance against the federal government is impossible are idiots. Armed resistance is totally possible. The people who think that anything even remotely resembling a functional society comes out the other end of that process are even worse.
As the rare leftist who is [mildly, but genuinely] supportive of the Second Amendment, I am continuously aghast that people try to argue against this. Like… have they not heard of Iraq and Afghanistan?
@Faceless:
Oh yeah, it’s Marty Stu: The Doorstopper. But it also hits really close to the mindset I’ve seen expressed by wannabe civil warriors.
It also pointed out the issues with civil forfeiture long before they became semi-mainstream, so there’s that to its credit.
I think as Americans our expectations are skewed because our Revolution was almost uniquely successful.
My dudes. It was a real winner on the enjoyment to quality ratio, put it that way. But yeah, probably counterproductive to trot that sort of thing out around the normies. (Edit: or treat it as a serious policy blueprint.).
Being mostly Americans, they have also heard of the United States of America. And to be fair, we’ve done this twice with a functional society coming out the other end.
Doing it in anything resembling the manner described by Ross, no, that’s not going to work out well.
@FacelessCraven
Yeah, that’s what I thought he meant, but I doubt that such would prove very “cost-raising”, as it were.
I don’t know, I’ve read some fairly solid works on guerrilla warfare, and on modern military logistics and technological dependence, and they were pretty convincing that such resistance doesn’t really “work” in the sort of situation we’re talking about. (Most guerrilla fighters fail; those that succeed are usually fighting foreign occupiers, receive significant aid and support from outside powers, and have individuals sympathetic to their cause within the enemy’s leadership structure.) And I say this as someone who grew up shooting guns, whose brother sells them, and whose parents are lifetime NRA members.
@herbert herbertson
See my parenthetical; those are both much more “expel the invader/occupier” than a civil war/domestic uprising situation. And, of course, the heavily restrictive ROE imposed on our troops, particularly with the aid of those parts of our government for whom the Pentagon is the hated local rival and the Iraqis and Afghanis the exotic fargroup. (As someone once said, the US military was defeated in Vietnam not by the Vietnamese but by the State Department.) You think those same people wouldn’t “take off the leash” when deploying troops against their hated domestic enemy?
But this may just be my pessimism, where I see no hope of long-term survival for any of the institutions and groups I care about.
I think if they did take them off the leash, they’d be making a terrible mistake, or at least a Hail Mary prompted by the war starting to go very badly for the government. The Iraqi ROE wasn’t there because we’re super nice people, it was there because preventing (or at least mitigating) the civilian population from turning against you is probably the single most important strategic consideration in counterinsurgency. I think that would be at least as true in a domestic insurgency situation.
take a look at Unintended Consequences by John Ross
I’ve read it.
It’s pretty stupid.
In fact, even the notorious socially-conservative, stoic and traditional East Asian demographic consistently votes left, at least in foreign nations.
I’m not American, but for what it’s worth, I agree so much with this part:
These technologies are nearly inevitable unless something big happens to disrupt technological progress. Whether President Trump could be that “something big”, I don’t know, but it’s possible.
I don’t disagree with the statement you’ve quoted (though I am not personally in Scott’s “AI is how we can finally beat Moloch” camp), but I suspect that it would make most Trump supporters tune out. If “Make America great again” appeals to you, you’re probably not banking on AI or genetic engineering saving the world.
Clinton fails the only important test, the “who will prevent World War 3?” test. I’m voting Trump for global catastrophic risk reduction. As a young person, my leading cause of death in the next 5 years is a nuclear war with Russia started under a Clinton administration.
Our ruling class’s attitude toward Russia is the most dangerous thing about it.
Russian ruling elite has lots of valuable land property all over USA and Europe, so I see nuclear option as unlikely.
Epistemic status: kidding on the square
I don’t expect either Clinton or Trump to serve a full four-year term. They’re both elderly and in poor health, and both are particularly scandal-prone. Although there won’t be enough votes to convict her on impeachment, I can see Congress forcing Clinton to either resign or default on the debt, and Clinton grudgingly leaving office for the good of the country. Trump actually could be removed, because are there really 34 Senators who would defend him?
So you should compare Kaine to Pence, or as best I can tell, generic Democrat of the centrist wing to generic Republican of the god-bothering wing. As a non-Christian I naturally lean Democratic, but I’m not going to proselytize. Vote your conscience.
Bob Dole’s still alive. I expect the next president to serve out one full four-year term, like George Bush I or Carter (both of whom led to renewed calls to “Make America Great Again”). Both Kaine and Pence are somewhat to the right of the median for their respective parties.
And Paul Tsongas died before the end of what would have been his first term. We can do this all day.
It’s a fun game for the whole family!
I don’t see anything that Congress can do that would force Clinton to resign. They can lead the situation to default on debt, but the situation would be almost uniformly (excepting Fox News and Breibart of course) presented as “Republicans, driven by hate and sexism, gamble with country’s destiny for lowly politicking”. And if they do lead to default, everybody would hate them for that and pity Clinton for having to deal with such assholes. But they’ll never have the guts to actually do it, they’ll cave and agree to everything 5 minutes before, because they are adults who know what’s at stake. And they will both lose and be blamed for the whole thing. We’ve seen that movie already. We know Republicans lose the game of chicken 100% of the time.
Also, nobody in their sane mind would agree that “elected President should just resign because we want it, no other reason, or we’ll break the country” is a valid action by Congress and Republicans know it. Last time it was over budget, and Republicans caved, so it can’t be over budget anymore. And Clinton would be smart enough to not give them any other opening to get the foot in.
For now. I’d expect one of two things to happen eventually with these debt ceiling clusterfucks:
A) We accidentally slide into default when something goes wrong with the last-minute cave-in
B) A critical mass of Republicans lose sight of what’s at stake (e.g. by believing their own rhetoric that a default would be a good thing by reducing spending)
People seem to be assuming that running into the debt ceiling means defaulting on the debt. It doesn’t. It means reducing expenditure down to income. One way would be by stopping the payment of interest on the debt, but that’s a small part of the budget so there are lots of other ways.
The question is, if Congress refused to raise the ceiling and the Administration responded by cancelling payment of interest on the debt, which would be blamed for the default?
>The question is, if Congress refused to raise the ceiling and the Administration responded by cancelling payment of interest on the debt, which would be blamed for the default?
Presumably, whichever side was Republican.
The executive is not allowed to NOT spend appropriated funds; Nixon tried this to defund things he didn’t like, Congress was unamused and forbade it. (Nor are they allowed to not pay interest, either, but if out of money something has to give).
The problem is that Federal law is overspecified; the executive is directed to raise $X in taxes, spend $Y, and issue $Z in debt, where Y-X is smaller than Z.
The platinum coin gambit is probably *required* if we ever hit the ceiling; it’s the only technically-legal way to resolve the problem. It’s stupid, but so is the whole situation.
Since defaulting on the debt is unconstitutional, as is borrowing money or imposing taxes without Congressional authorization, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is necessarily unconstitutional to the extent that it requires one of the above options be taken.
Which is to say, I think the platinum coin option, stupid as it is, is required by current law, and if Congress eliminates it they’d be leading to the much more dangerous situation of arbitrary Presidential control over the budget in debt ceiling scenarios.
So, bad example on my part. I’ll have to come up with some other Constitutional crisis for Congress to invoke in case Hillary does something bad enough for most of the population to demand her ouster but not bad enough for Senate Democrats to desert her. This is a remote possibility (see my header on my initial comment?) but it’s far more likely for Hillary than for any other president in recent history.
> I don’t expect either Clinton or Trump to serve a full four-year term.
I’ll take that bet at even odds, for up to $1000 and probably more.
Where are you getting your probability figures? IEMputs it st 67:33 for Hillary.
538 National Overview
Thanks, Scott and Suntzuanime.
How confident are you in the current conventional-wisdom predictions?
Perhaps they’re wrong, and Trump’s number inch up everyday?
Sam Wang has it uncomfortably close, and his model is famously simplistic poll aggregation with no thumbs on the scales.
That looks like 538’s election forecast, although I see slightly worse numbers for Trump there ATM.
EDIT: It looks like he’s reporting the polls-plus forecast and I was looking at polls-only. Given that polls-plus was less accurate than polls-only in the primary, I feel happier about polls-only, although the two are pretty close.
The math you use to justify voting has a few things wrong with it that others have probably pointed out. But if you have the chance to revisit your equations, I hope you will also add in the costs of voting and of participating in the political fooferaw. These things are harmful to you, to the people around you, and to society in general. For more on this: https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=09Aug15
Well there’s no way I can vote for Hillary Clinton. Just absolutely not. She’s a bottomless pit of deception, and every goal she wants to achieve is something I strongly oppose or outright fear. I tried telling myself that she’s pretty politically mainstream and would probably just coast and not do anything. I’m just so opposed to her policies and goals that I can’t stand the thought of her making any progress on them at all, to say nothing of the Supreme Court appointment(s). And Johnson and Stein don’t help me.
I have not decided whether I will skip the presidential portion of the ballot or vote for Trump. If I vote for Trump, it will be 70/30:
70% Hillary is so bad, extreme measures must be taken to prevent her, even though that won’t work where I live, including holding my nose to vote for someone so unpredictable. This is basically the opposite of your post.
30% My desire to punch the “group of arrogant, intolerant, sanctimonious elites” in the face if they keep telling me who I just cannot possibly vote for because eww, while they simultaneously insult my entire family and all my values.
You can eliminate that 30% by giving me a satisfying alternative method of punching them in the face. (Advice about being mature and virtuous is unnecessary. I’m already working that angle, usually with much more success than is indicated here.)
Stay out! Join us! Your mental health will improve! You’re effectively punching them in the face by doing that anyway!
Seriously, having been around the internet in the past couple of weeks, a strong, intellectually serious “don’t vote” movement would be an amazing thing to have. I would love to be part of it, but it’s currently fairly restricted, and this election is about the worst thing that could have happened to it.
A strange condition. Why would SSC endorsing other people voting in a presidential election depend on me specifically being American? Especially that I am not.
(On the other hand, “SSC endorses voting for Hillary Clinton if you live in a swing state.” reads fine to me. I’m not sure why.)
Further nitpicking:
Either you might have accidentally a word, or this is just a strange way of saying “I’ve been told lying about the guardrails of democracy having been broken is okay”.
This kind of conditional is called a biscuit conditional (names after “If you’re hungry, there are biscuits in the kitchen”) in linguistics and does not mean what you (pretend to) think it means.
No, the sentence is alright apart from the missing space.
“I’ve been told [ [now that the guardrails of democracy have been broken] [lying is okay] ]”. Easier-to-parse reordering: “I’ve been told that lying is okay, now that the guardrails of democracy have been broken.”
It needs a clarity comma, I think. These are “technically” optional, but my belief in descriptive grammar is strong enough to wrap back around into perscriptivism, so I say fix it in the name of good clear style.
The statements both contain an implicit “you”, in the sense of “For all instances of [reader] matching [condition], SSC endorses [action]”. The difference that makes the first one seem strange is that the set of non-Americans voting in the presidential elections is (AFAIK) empty, making the condition superfluous. Except maybe in the sense that Scott doesn’t want to incite non-Americans to commit election fraud…
It’s another case of Internet-Aspergers. I’m not sure that’s the best name for it, but we have to call it something. There’s a tendency for people on the Internet to parse statements extremely literally, without accounting for implicature or context, and to think that this is some kind of gotcha when the literal interpretation doesn’t make sense.
It is also used as a weapon when the Internet guy knows better but wants to misrepresent someone, but not all instances of it are even that.
You are getting an unusual amount of angry pushback, so I just wanted to counter it a bit by saying that this is almost exactly the article I was secretly hoping you would write. Congratulations.
Boooo. As I’ve said and substantiated, Trump is the greatest Republican nominee since Reagan. It would be nuts not to vote for him.
He was the only candidate during the primary to explicitly name and renounce the failures of Bush.
You don’t actually need to reply to *every* nice thing that anyone says about Scott’s post. Your opinions are already pretty clear!
I agree with the vast majority of what E Harding has said here, but yeah, this. Reigning the boo instinct is important.
I’d consider voting for Trump if he promised to deport E. Harding back to his beloved Putin.
Quickly googling ‘e harding’ (no quotes), I find three brits, two Americans, and two streets. Deporting some of these might be a challenge even for Teddy Roosevelt.
The consolation prize, no matter who wins, is that one political dynasty has been destroyed and that the media has taken a huge hit in their credibility and power.
Yes, congratulations indeed.
Yes. Kudos for the courage of your convictions.
Sadly, regarding “But if some of my blogging on conservative issues has given me any political capital with potential Trump voters, …” – I think we’ll find out how well that works, and I suspect not too well. If “gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you”, then talk long to an abyss, the abyss will talk to you – and it won’t say pleasant things.
Death Eater here and looooong time reader. I am sad that Scott wrote this. If the job is to preserve a (at least one) functioning western civilization through 2100 to make sure AI, genetic engineering and space travel occur, the “vote hillary” and accelerate demographic trends and anti-intellectual SJWism….doesnt seem smart.
Europe is dying. Demographically it will be like Turkey. Turkey is not going to maintain cutting edge scientific research.
The US is turning into Brazil. Demographically, Brazil is incapable of a SpaceX. (They had a rocket blow up on the pad in 2003, effectively ending their program).
Perhaps Scott is going full Nick Land and counting on Asian civilizations to pick up the torch. I think that is the most likely scenario. Unfortunately i have kids and i dont want them growing up in a 3rd World Country.
I think Scott needs to tackle the immigration Q. I know he’s been wrestling with it behind the scenes. He is aware of the demographic/genetic implications. I suppose he believes that genetic tech will storm to the rescue before the US goes under, but that is a bet I’d rather not take.
Much of this post was spent arguing that voting Trump is more likely to accelerate SJW-ism than voting Hillary, for all that Hillary more popular among SJWs.
Which implies that people who agree with social justice should vote Trump.
If long-term amount of SJW power is their sole concern, then yes, voting for Trump out of Land-style accelerationism would make sense.
With Trump, SJWs would be much more vocal but much less powerful. Which is actually much better place for them for society’s sake – they are supposed to be guard dogs, attacking the distortions of the society. So if Trump tries to do something racist (not “having borders is racist” but really racist) or equally bad, they’ll be screaming on top of their lungs and with small addition on non-SJW people effective pushback can be mounted. If Trump would do the usual stuff, they’ll be still screaming but nobody would join them so nothing would happen.
With Hillary, I wouldn’t exclude things like speech codes, quotas, gendered/racialized policies etc. actually being enacted into law or at least enforced by the executive. Which would delight SJWs to no end and also make them ignore any transgressions she would commit (as they ignored Bill Clinton’s appalling behavior and were proud to admit that) or even actively defend her.
I couldn’t take those parts of the argument seriously. Sorry. I apply the rule that when there is an on-the-face-of-it absurd argument you should think straussian. Other people in the comments fleshed out why this is an absurd argument.
What are Death Eaters? I get the Harry Potter reference but what does it mean politically? It is Pepe/alt-right?
Neo-reaction. “Death Eater” is in use here because Scott wordfiltered the names of the movement and its most prominent (albeit now quiet) writer, and people started referring to him as Voldemort – he-who-must-not-be-named.
“The US is turning into Brazil.”
If we’re lucky. If we’re unlucky, we become South Africa instead.
You know, this article would probably make more sense if the recent local and municipal elections hadn’t shown decreasing support for the ruling ANC, despite their racially charged rhetoric.
The demographics are tilted so heavily against whites that they’d hardly even be a blip if they couldn’t manage significant support from nie-blankes. South Africa is actually moving in a post-racial direction – slowly but steadily, as the general population becomes more invested in economic and service-delivery issues.
Citation very much needed.
Okay, I’m going to address your “references”, none of which pass the laugh test.
– A site that hasn’t been updated since 2013
– An article that makes several factual errors and explicitly references “anecdotal data”, written by an author whose timeline reads like the worst kind of clickbait
– You see the beret in that photo on the Independent story? That’s the symbol of the Economic Freedom Fighters. He’s so far outside the mainstream that the faction that *does* actually want to nationalise everything booted him because of his constant inflammatory rhetoric
– An article on xenophobic violence, which you don’t seem to have noticed talks about black South Africans attacking blacks from other countries, and the blurb under the video explicitly talks about how it’s a metaphor for black on black violence
Meanwhile, you’re welcome to go and google the results of the recent elections, if you consider wiki an unreliable citation. And take a look at the articles that come up talking about reconciliation.
Yes, there’s rape and violence. It’s mostly, as in the US, black on black. There’s xenophobia, but it’s again mostly against Nigerians – who tend to set up businesses and are very entrepreneurial, which may come as a surprise if you’re only familiar with 419 scams – Mozambicans, and Angolans, and it’s mostly because they’re “stealing” jobs and money from SA blacks. Near mode vs. far mode, maybe. Or targets of opportunity.
Either way. You’re basically citing fearmongering, not reality.
Neither Hillary nor Trump will pardon Snowden. Why should I vote for either?
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/395683702757662721
The fact that Trump wants to execute Snowden unless Snowden material that promotes Trump’s causes does not engender optimism in Trump’s future treatment of whistleblowers.
Huh, in the other threads I got the impression you wanted to argue for Trump.
It’s almost like E Harding is a human being with nuanced views…
How principled of him.
Interesting post, thanks for making your position clear.
I especially liked…
“They will probably require either genetic engineering or artificial intelligence; the job of our generation is keep the world functional enough to do the research that will create those technologies, and to alleviate as much suffering as we can in the meantime.”
My view of our future has been pretty bleak, but this is an interesting take.
It’s basically technocracy for nice people (i.e. the ones who aren’t fantasizing about going off to Galt’s Gulch, or a Libertarian island, or Mars, while the rest of the world burns). The theory is that since government by current humanity is hopeless, the only thing we can do is try to hold on until scientific advance makes it possible to have a better humanity or non-humanity (AI). This is why such people get really concerned about evil-AI. It’s a very short leap from the AI-savior to the AI-Satan.
“technocracy for nice people” – I like it!
I’d only considered the AI-Satan aspect before, the flipside just hadnt occurred to me. Natural pessimist.
Of course now I’m wondering what happens if we get multiple AI-Savior’s all with different goals.
Fighting special interests is not always a hard problem. Getting rid of corporate welfare for example should have little in the way of downsides. There are a lot of cancerous growths like that that should be possible to remove if someone has the political will to do it, without “dismantling the civilisation”.
Removing corporate welfare means giving up a large measure of control. For good control you need a carrot and a whip, and carrot is usually much more efficient. If you want to make companies develop solar panels, you can of course fine everybody who doesn’t develop solar panels, but that’d be hard policy to enact. Making grants and tax breaks for those who do develop solar panels is much easier. But then you have corporate welfare. And since removing these tax breaks would mean “raising taxes on the upstart and promising industry of solar panels” – these tax breaks are forever now.
What if, beyond a certain tipping point, certain processes become irreversible/inescapable in practice? It’s going to happen unnoticed, of course. If you believe something like this is going on and perhaps even accelerating, Trump sounds like a reasonable choice. Stop digging and all that.
Unless you want to see those processes become irreversible/inescapable, of course, but one should be honest about this and not reduce the other side to a caricature or pretend one’s side is really the best for everyone. If anything, they are trying not to be food for the monster some people like so much.
Personally, Hillary and the vectors she represents remind me of stuff like this:
Wow, that would be neat! Is there a candidate that supports that?
Moloch 2016
Why vote for a lesser Evil?
Square Cube law pls
They could be hearts with many small valves and really thick walls.
I was kind of disappointed that in the source material, this description wasn’t some metaphor for a Moloch-like tendency of humanity in general and instead was just na npghny tvoorevat ubeebe sebz orlbaq gvzr naq fcnpr
It definitely was though. And it’s more of a pbnyrfpvat Zbybpu-yvxr graqrapl bs yvsr va rirel “qvzrafvba”, abg whfg uhznavgl, “vasyhrapvat vg’f bja cnfg”.
I have no say and small stakes in this election. Just an anticipation of the Schadenfreude seeing the world burn. (By world I mean something sufficiently far away from where I live)
That being said, isn’t a big part of your argument more against Johnson than against Trump?
Isn’t that the party that basically says: Here are XX% of the system that are actually cancerous, by removing them the planet-sized ghost makes everything work out better.
Don’t want to argue about whether or not this claim is true, just by your way of stating it we should be EXTREMELY skeptical of Johnson.
What is the point in advocating a vote for non-swing states anyway? To signal lesser attachment to Hillary and gain a bit of credibility?
Even if a third party candidate gets 25% of the votes, this won’t change anything on the two party system. Majority voting style democracy always stabilizes in a two party system.
” If something terrible happens like China tries to invade Taiwan, she will probably make some sort of vaguely reasonable decision after consulting her advisors. She might do a bad job, but it’s hard to imagine a course where a Hillary presidency leads directly to the apocalypse, the fall of American democracy, et cetera.”
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/there-is-an-international-disease-which-is-hillary-clinton/
When we had minor stand offs w/ China Hillary wanted to send in the gun boats immediately, over small things, if China invaded Taiwan she would probably also send in the gun boats and much much more if that were to happen. Obama was reining in Clinton more then we actually know about, not to mention she became an anti russian war hawk over being embarrassed.
I think people don’t realize how much of a hawk she uniquely happens to be compared to literally any other dem politician.
But what if the Chinese boats make rude gestures? It gets really hard at that point to tell who is more likely to start an armed conflict with them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
That’s three cases (one under Bush Sr, one under Bill Clinton and one under Bush Jr) of a serious diplomatic incident being peacefully resolved. What’s your point?
Just context.
There’s an inherent problem with arguing “less variance, more staying the course!” to conservatives – we aren’t all that comfortable with the course (Cthulhu may swim slowly, but he always swims left, as the dictum goes). For a young conservative like me who’s looked at the last several decades of history and seen an inexorable slide to the left on virtually every axis, “keep her steady” is a less than alluring choice. I’d much rather risk a higher variance, if it brings with it a chance of altering the intransigent leftward crawl, than cynically embrace oblivion.
Also, a thought: can we play the Trumpkins off the SJWs and just let the two groups rip each other to shreds while we of a more libertarian bent unite against both? I have this vague but delightful sense that if we could just get the right- and left-wing authoritarians focused on each other, the right- and left-wing libertarians could forge an epistemic virtue alliance and re-define the national political conversation along strictly authoritarian vs libertarian lines. I realize this might be a touch utopian, but it doesn’t strike me as totally unrealistic.
How do you propose to make this happen? And does it become more likely to happen if Trump wins, or loses, and why?
Heck if I know how to make it happen, but I suspect it’s more likely if Trump wins. Speaking in broad strokes, the authoritarian left is generally a pretty elite group, while the authoritarian right is generally a pretty low-class group. My sense is that a Trump presidency would give the a-right enough power/credibility to attract the ire of the a-left and make them temporarily forget their battle with the libertarians, but I don’t pretend to have any kind of data with which to support that sense.
Practically speaking, I expect the best your average libertarian could do is exactly what Scott’s trying to do – point out, repeatedly, that epistemic vice is a far more important enemy than the other side of the aisle, to anyone who will listen.
The Trumpists and SJWs are trying as hard as they can to rip each other to shreds. I’m not sure it weakens either party.
I think trying to run things behind the scenes is a better alternative for the small libertarian minority than uniting our enemies in a libertarian vs. authoritarian conflict.
Unlikely, for two reasons:
– SJWs prefer fighting heretics over fighting heathens.
– SJWs tend to avoid hard targets, which includes Trumpets, in favor of soft targets like nerds.
I think you’ve hit at what Scott’s really scared of here.
4 years of the SJWs realizing they can’t hurt us because we just don’t care, so they have to get their jollies by hurting him.
That paints Scott’s role as a voice of reason among the left in a surprisingly negative light. It’s essentially saying that Scott is criticising SJ only because at last they have come for him.
I think this is called a “party realignment.” The GOP has a lot of different factions, and it’s possible that Trump’s takeover of the party could get those factions to jump ship because they don’t think it’s a winning strategy.
I don’t think you’ll get pure authoritarian-vs-libertarian – the various factions have several different interests that could hold them together, and they don’t all neatly map onto that axis, and the Trumpets and the SJWs get along like matter and antimatter – but I do think that if you want to shake up the party coalitions, now is the time to do it.
Plus, the inevitable problem that if you managed to ignite an authoritarian vs. libertarian conflict, the authoritarians would win.
Seriously, they would. It’s the way the incentives roll. In a struggle between people who believe in accumulating and utilizing power, and people who believe in not accumulating and using power, the first group will tend to get an edge in power. So the second group will either lose or change tactics to keep up, and then it’s back to Authoritarians vs. Other Authoritarians.
Siccing them on each other won’t hurt them, it will make them stronger. Every outrage they work upon each other is doubly motivation for revenge and evidence to support the persecution narrative that’s working as the driving engine.
It would be trying to use human wave tactics to defeat a necromancer and his army of zombies.
If they want the national conversation so badly, let them have it. We simply need to reclaim the local conversation. Be good to your friends, call bullshit on local authoritarians, and let the rest spend their energy elsewhere.
It’s unrealistic in the extreme. Left Vs Right is much stronger than Authoritarian Vs Libertarian. Even among libertarian leftists, the problem is that they largely define their libertarianism in terms of being against capitalism. Right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism don’t even agree on what libertarianism means. I remember many times where ancaps tried to reach out to ancoms and got told to go and die with the fascists.
In the surfactant and pragmatic sense, yes. It’s important to understand that this dichotomy only exists to manage the deeper, less resolving dichotomy between authoritarians and libertarians. These two groups cannot compromise, but they can vote for the same political party if it a) bears a neutral label and b) will vote in some mix of policies that furthers their agenda.
Generally in any election one of the two “Wing” parties will align greater with Libertarian interests (civil rights, free markets) and another with Authoritarian interests (witch hunts). If both parties seem to be going the same way, it’s an indicator of the times, and perhaps a sign of the remaining lifespan of a nation.
You’re a good man, Scott; I’m thrilled to see you standing with Scott Aaronson and Kelsey on this. =D
A random thought occurs. You mentioned that
Prediction markets put Trump at around a 29% chance of winning the election. Given that prediction markets are often utilized by center-left and libertarian techie types, whom I’m going to assume are more opposed to Trump than the general populace, do you think there might be some bias in the prediction markets that makes Hillary seem more likely to win than she actually is?
I’m a huge fan of prediction markets and see them as some of the best sources of information we have for political outcomes, but nevertheless I remain skeptical in cases like these. In the moments leading up the Brexit vote, predictwise had around a 70% chance of a “remain” vote, but the price of the instrument smashed through the floor within 5 hours of the final vote tally. It seems like the world of prediction markets has yet to acclimate to how catchy hard-right politics is these days.
I’m curious as to your take on this.
The risk that you might not get your money back from a prediction market even if you win means that it might not be worth betting on Trump, even if you think his odds are 43.4%.
I read an article by a real economist as a response to this. I don’t think you get it. If there’s 1/6 of chance dice roll is 4 and you roll 4 it doesn’t mean 4 is more likely. Sometimes you just roll 4. And the prediction scores don’t measure the poll outcomes. They just give 70% chance of remain and 30% of brexit. If the result is 49-51 it doesn’t mean prediction markets failed.
Great epistemic principle: seek expert opinion!
It’s a great explanation but then – when would one conclude it failed? I mean, if we had 100 brexits and 70 of them ended one way and 30 another, we’d have 70% confirmed. But we have one brexit, so what 70% means and which result would mean 70% figure was wrong? This explanation seems to suggest 70% doesn’t mean anything and no result could either confirm or deny it.
@Ari and @SM
It’s really hard to empirically verify prediction markets for the reasons you guys have mentioned. We can measure their accuracy as a whole, but not for particular events like Brexit or the 2016 election outcome.
The only way to verify anti-neonationalist bias in prediction markets would be to aggregate all contracts that deal in events directly affected by recent right-wing enthusiasm and test them collectively, but I think there are only so many data points to be found. I brought up 1, and that’s certainly not enough to draw any conclusions. =P We can speculate, though. If we collectively compare enough of our non-prediction-market-updated-priors to the price of the instrument and find that it consistently underestimates the probability of a Donald Trump victory compared to the average SSC commenter, then we have reason to be cautious.
Is this a rigorous empirical test? Nah. But I think it’d be a fun experiment. =)
My reason for being suspicious of the usually very accurate prediction markets is that our human psychology might treat a very bad outcome–like a Donald Trump presidency–as a sunk cost, and betting that he’ll win as cutting our losses. I can picture prediction market participants viewing the money they’d win from a Trump presidency as meager compensation for the loss of their country as they know it. If the market isn’t perfectly efficient and enough participants have this bias so that no other, more rational participant comes in to correct it, the instrument might forecast an incorrect chance of a Trump victory.
I personally think prediction markets would underestimate Trump because the types of people that frequent prediction markets would be exactly the types of people which would tend to naturally underestimate Trump and his supporters, not count them as important and thus, consciously or unconsciously, under-count their numbers and their influence.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any idea how to quantify it and I’m too risk averse to bet any serious money on it.
I generally prefer poll-based statistical models to prediction markets for this reason. 538 currently has HRC’s chances at about 65%; she bottomed out at around 55% before the debate (you can see the graphic for the latter in Scott’s post). This feels about right to me given the state of the polls, she’s up by ~3 points now, and the margin was about 1-2 points prior to the debate. A 55% chance is essentially a toss-up, while a 65% chance is something like “likely to happen, but far from a certainty.” (“Feels about right” is admittedly not an empirical observation.)
Prediction markets may have underestimated Brexit, but the last round of polls had it as a toss-up and were generally within the margin of error.
I agree with much you say. In particular, both Trump and Clinton claim to be anti-free trade but I suspect Clinton is lying, and since I am in favor of free trade that’s a point in her favor. I also agree with your point on variance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the median outcome with Trump was better than with Clinton. But we know about how bad Clinton will be and Trump could be much worse.
One point I don’t think you mentioned in your initial argument, although I may have missed it, is that your calculations all assume perfect (national) altruism–that each of us values benefits to other Americans as much as costs and benefits to himself. One can argue that we should act that way but I think few people do. If you substitute a more realistic assumption on preferences, your payoff figures collapse.
The one point where I disagree with you is on global warming, for reasons I have discussed in the past. AGW is probably real and might do damage, but believing that it will wipe out life on Earth, or human life, or even human civilization requires an enormous stretch that a lot of people are unreasonably willing to make.
Which brings me to the one thing you wrote that I think is not true, although I could be mistaken:
“How could that chance possibly be lower than the chance of something that 90-something percent of the relevant scientists believe to be true is true?”
Assertions about what the relevant scientists believe routinely confuse the question of AGW with the question of CAGW. It is probably true that well over 90% of those in the field believe that global temperature is trending up and that at least part of the cause is human production of greenhouse gases–a view I also share. I have not seen any evidence that 90% believe that the result will be catastrophic, even very bad, which is what you appear to be claiming. As you probably know, the famous 97% figure was for the belief that humans were a cause of global warming–not that they were the major cause or that the consequences would be bad.
It’s useful looking at the scientific part of the IPCC report rather than just the summary for policy makers. It has a table showing estimates of the net effect of various levels of warming measured by the loss of world income that would have the same effect on human welfare. For warming of about three degrees, well above the supposed two degree limit, all estimates but one are in the range of zero to three percent.
William Nordhaus, the economist who seems to be responsible for the two degree limit, wrote a piece a few years back in the New York Review of Books attacking a WSJ op-ed that had argued that AGW was not a crisis requiring immediate action. In the piece he gave his estimate of the total cost of waiting fifty years to do anything instead of taking the optimal actions immediately. It was about four trillion dollars. His comment was “Wars have been started over less.”
Four trillion dollars, spread out over the entire globe and the rest of the century, comes out to a reduction in world income of about one twentieth of one percent.
I plan to vote for Gary Johnson, mostly as an expressive act, not an attempt to change any outcome of the election. But the fact that Trump is less likely than Clinton to use the perils of AGW as an excuse for doing things is the one argument I can see, other than his not being Clinton, in his favor.
Hey David! I’m a big fan of your work, you’ve got a great writing style and I salute you for keeping the anarcho-capitalist movement breathing in the 21st century.
I have to respectfully disagree with you on the subject of global warming, though; while you’re right that the discourse around the subject is shoddy in America, you’ve gotta cut the left some slack. There is a large portion of America’s left wing that retains an objective and clear-sighted view of global warming and the problems it poses. They typically favor carbon taxes or marketable permit schemes, and see the present use of a regulatory sledgehammer as a silly and unproductive tool to fight climate change. Discussions about carbon policy with such people are typically held in the language of science, not of blue-tribe ideology.
Most of my closest friends are in this category, so they do exist, I promise. =P
The other portion of the left that propagates a lot of the awful discourse we see about global warming at least has an excuse for their bad behavior. You’re an intelligent critic of traditional policies to reduce emissions, but most of the world’s environmentalists haven’t met you; instead, their intellectual opponents consist of Republicans in congress and uneducated laymen, who tend to deny the very existence of anthropogenic global warming at all. They feel angry for the lack of consensus on the most basic issues about climate change, and rightfully so. When they make silly claims about carbon emissions causing the end of the world and veer away from more legitimate concerns–like habitat loss, ocean acidification, and long-run food supply disruptions–it’s a reaction to what they perceive as the worst kind of denialism. It may not be acceptable, but it is at least understandable.
Most of this is orthogonal to my main point, however.
I think we can both agree that more rational discourse around climate change is desirable, regardless of which direction (do more to prevent emissions, or do less) rational discourse ends up taking us. Toward that end, I’d say that Hillary Clinton has an edge over Donald Trump. She believes that climate change is a pressing challenge for our generation–a view you likely disagree with, and disagree with her suggested policies for fighting it even more, but it is at least defensible. I’d like to live in a world where she represents one side of the climate change debate, and you represent the other.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, believes that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to make US manufacturing non-competitive. This is clearly silly, and links climate policy to the most absurd of protectionist thinking. I would not want to live in a world where Donald Trump represents your side of the climate change debate. It would reduce rational discourse, not encourage it.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. Cheers! =D
I agree that some people concerned about AGW are much more reasonable than others. I even had a blog post on it some time back.
I don’t think Clinton is interested in a rational conversation on the subject, however, and have no good guess on which outcome to this election would result in better results in that dimension.
I remember that post! People like Hansen are the norm rather than the exception in my experience; I think we differ mostly in the ratio of Hansens to Manns that we’ve personally encountered.
Clinton probably isn’t herself interested in a rational conversation about climate change, but I think that’s something intrinsic to the nature of politicians. Their time is mostly devoted to the promotion and implementation of ideas, rather than deciding which ideas are best to promote and implement. I wish the world operated differently.
Rather than focus on how willing the candidates are to engage in honest questioning of their own views, I think we should judge them by two measures:
1. How likely they are to pass policies based on their beliefs about climate change
and
2. What views about climate change will they normalize by being in office (compounded by their tendency to address the nation via the bully pulpit).
On #1, I think we’re gonna have to agree to disagree. =P
I simply see Clinton’s plan to cover the entire US in a garden of solar panels as superior to doing nothing. I’d prefer some more elegant market-oriented scheme, but beggars can’t be choosers.
On #2, however, I hope to convince you that Clinton would be the preferable candidate.
Bernie Sanders advocated for the use of a carbon tax, which is supposed to be politically impossible in the United States, yet was wildly popular among his left-leaning base. Why might this be? Intuitively, a socialist crowd seems like they’d prefer command-and-control, or perhaps Hillary’s chosen scheme of public investment; environmentalists tend to dislike commoditizing nature, and command-and-control treats the environment as a sacred, non-negotiable public good (and sticks it to those no-good corporations). Similarly, public investment has been the left’s love interest since FDR.
I asked some Bernie supporters I know to explain their off-kilter beliefs, and their answers made a lot of sense. As people become more concerned about the consequences of climate change, they become more willing to “take a hit” in order to do something about it. Since they all saw climate change as a problem, they were okay with paying a few extra dollars in taxes to deal with it. By contrast, economic moderates I talked to were more likely to view carbon taxes as too costly to be worth it. Clinton’s public investment appealed to them more because it didn’t directly attach itself to any source of taxation.
Ignoring the irrationality behind these differing motivations (pigouvian taxes should be viewed as incentive-changers, not taxation proper, and revenue neutrality makes this distinction explicit), I’d like to encourage the Bernie supporter mindset as best as we can. Hillary Clinton as president would go a far longer way toward making the “climate change is a problem worth paying for” mindset commonplace than Donald Trump.
+1. A kind, cogent reply that considers the opposing point of view and is not stated with either vitriol or overconfidence! Well done.
Thanks, Buckyballas!
They typically favor carbon taxes or marketable permit schemes, and see the present use of a regulatory sledgehammer as a silly and unproductive tool to fight climate change.
There was a broad-ish consensus in favor of cap-and-trade (which is what I assume you mean by “marketable permit scheme”) in the U.S. in the late 2000s. Both McCain and Obama supported it in the 2008 election. The Obama administration attempted to pass a cap-and-trade bill through Congress, but was stymied by Republican opposition.
I am not an expert on environmental policy, although I am inclined to support the Obama administration’s regulatory efforts (for the most part, anyway), on the grounds that other action is not politically feasible and that we need to take some action as a kind of insurance policy against the worst-case scenarios for climate change. But I’d vastly prefer cap-and-trade or, better yet, a carbon tax. This a pretty mainstream view on the U.S. left, and I suspect Clinton would support cap-and-trade or a carbon tax if the political will existed to get it through Congress (or if the Republicans were willing to have a rational debate about it).
Of course that and some more magical fairy dust will get me a nice magical fairy….
On the optimistic side, it’s been observed that Clinton’s better than Obama at political scheming, so that’s the sort of thing she just might actually get through (say, p=35%, assuming she’s as good at that as I hear).
David Friedman, You will be coming to my city October 22nd and I’m thrilled. Thanks for coming.
As Obama, Clinton, and Trump have been using my city as a terminal the past few months, I cannot have them wasting anymore of my time in traffic to bother wasting time voting.
Very disappointing. I hope you read the comments and realise you made a mistake. This is not why people like you Scott.
I hope you delete this hit-job. Trump will be a great president.
I like Scott because he doesn’t write things merely to be liked. We ought to be able to disagree without resorting to this sort of condescension.
It’s about the future of the country and the world. Read Scott Adams and Mike Cernovich, they have really taken on the mantle of LW and rationalism, and are very strong Trump supporters. I feel Scott just didn’t do his research. If you want to talk about deadly outliers, maybe he should have brought up how Hillary killed four americans in Benghazi?
Trump has no blood on his hands.
Don’t troll.
Could you specify what you disagree with before accusing me of acting in bad faith?
Identifying Scott Dilbert as a rationalist (or holder of the mantle thereof) seems particularly crazy. The dude’s fundamental point is that rational argument is more or less irrelevant and that the methods of persuasion which are (at best) orthogonal to rationality constitute an important skill that he holds personally and which should be highly valued.
I don’t even disagree with him factually (only morally), but yeah, definitely not a “rationalist.”
A recent OT had a longish discussion of whether you could reasonably call Scott Adams “rationalist” and what the reasons are rationalists like him. Don’t recall the consensus (or if one was reached).
He’s white guy with a background in engineering and a vocal anti-feminist. How could he not be a rationalist?
Not cool, man. Somebody making a calm and sincere appeal for their political position is rare enough that it’s churlish to act disappointed just because it’s not your political position.
if you hide how HRC is responsible for the Iraq war, the Libyan Invasion, Benghazi and is a lackey for Wall Street I don’t think you can call it sincere.
Trump is the most qualified candidate for president since Washington.
And for a moment I thought you were serious ^^
Scott already has deleted things.
Assuming that you are not a troll, in what way will trump make a great president?
keep in mind that this is a much stronger claim then saying he would be better than Hillary. In terms of policy, what do you expect out of a trump administration?
Yes, obviously years of experience in reality TV and real estate, better prepares you to be president then being the supreme ailed commander.
He has actual real world experience and is the first candidate to openly dare to talk about HBD.
But please, disprove me if you think he’s not. You can’t.
This does not contribute to the discussion. You could express the same thing far better by saying “If you disagree, I’d be interested to know why”.
Please go ahead governor.
I don’t disagree, although I might quibble about the relevance of his experience. I’m just trying to work towards positive discussion norms.
He’s mentioned HBD? So far as I can tell, he doesn’t even know what those letters stand for.
Trump’s attitude toward different ethnic groups seems rooted in a strange blend of business-oriented pragmatism and traditional stereotyping. He’s willing to call illegal Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists because that seems like a fair characterization of them based on his cultural priors, but doesn’t do so with the passion and dislike that you’d find from white nationalist types. Instead, he’s just stating the facts. In his eyes, Mexican immigrants just are that way; is it so wrong to call a spade a spade? He certainly isn’t motivated by the dispassionate rationalism that someone like JayMan, for example, possesses. They’re as similar as a brontosaurus and a hamster.
Naturally, I view his attitude with a lot of distaste (an understatement) due to my political leanings, but this isn’t about me. I just want to focus on your perceptions about Donald Trump’s beliefs. If you’re a fan of the HBD movement, a Donald Trump presidency is not going to move us toward a more scientific view of ethnicity and the biological origins of human differences. It will instead move us toward a world where right-wing beliefs about race become more dominant and left-wing beliefs become less so. While the HBD movement mostly focuses its efforts rebutting the left, that’s only because they’re more prominent opponents at present. There’s nothing to be gained by replacing one ideology with another one.
To provide an example, imagine a modern day HBDer trying to convince someone like Gobineau (I can’t post a link, look him up) that Asians actually do have a higher visual-spatial intelligence than non-Hispanic whites, and don’t just possess some “unnatural level of materialism that has propelled the growth of their civilization”, as he would put it. Bringing back elements of Gobineau’s thought into modern society might give HBD some cultural leverage, but you’d soon find those ideas are only on your side out of coincidence. Give us a few years and whatever new right-wing consensus emerges will be just as hostile to HBD as the prevailing view in academia today.
As Scott once said in his piece “How The West was Won”; don’t confuse the sorcerer with its summoned demon. HBD is the sorcerer here, and Donald Trump is the demon. Don’t mistake him for something he isn’t.
Donald Trump’s has experience, but it is not in the real world. The man has spent almost his entire adult life surrounded by sycophantic yes men and it shows.
He is at best an average business man; he inherited a large amount of money form his father and depending on which estimates of his net worth you believe he either slightly under or over preformed the market.
Only his core real estate and hospitality businesses have ever been truly successful, every time he has branched out into something new, from airlines, to publishing, to Trump stakes, it has been a miserable failure. Trump Mortgage, for instance, suffered from particularl incompetence and bad timing.
As for “Human Biodiversity”, I could of course argue that it’s ninety percent pseudo scientific bullshit (it really is), but I don’t have to; Donald Trump has never said a word about genetic differences between ethnic groups.
Booo! on this comment. This post is the exact reason this site is on the leading edge of the Enlightenment.
I’m not sure there’s a single other quasi-political website with a loyal fanbase and commentariat where a majority disagree with the host’s political endorsement, and then carry on like good British citizens with a peaceful transfer of power.
It is implied that Trump will be an incompetent spendthrift. In terms of competence, Trump has ran a business empire for decades (how well he’s run it is subjective, but it hasn’t imploded). He’s managed to outmaneuver the GOP while spending much less than opponents. He is currently presenting a viable threat to an exceptionally well-connected presidential candidate while again spending much less. Trump is ruthless, calculated, and manipulative, but also competent and thrifty.
Another implication is that because Trump plays hardball, and unconventionally, that he’s dangerously unpredictable. Trump certainly takes risks, but my guess is they are calculated. And Trump certainly makes enemies, but he’ll later negotiate peace when the alternative is painting himself into a corner. So despite Trump’s persona, my guess is his decision making is rational and no more dangerous than Hillary’s. Trump seems to be trying to build a dynasty and apocalypse wouldn’t help much.
To paint Trump supporters as themselves unpredictable, you show the “lock her up” chants, but HRC did flagrantly break the law and you didn’t show video of the physical violence that Trump opponents have directed towards Trump supporters (Google “san jose trump violence”) nor did you mention efforts to attack and assassinate Trump that Clinton hasn’t faced.
Is Trump a known quantity politically? No. Is HRC? Yes: she is a fairly obvious proxy for Wall Street and intervention beneficiaries. Obama wasn’t much for intervention, but he never had the solid backing of the neocon community that HRC has. My guess is that backing isn’t free. And HRC voted for the fraudulently sold Iraq war while Obama rightly rejected it.
Will Trump engage in corrupt practices? Likely, but given Clinton’s myriad connections, knowledge of the system, and experiencing surviving investigations her corruption will likely occur at a more ambitious scale.
In terms of immigration concerns, there seems to be a very concerted superclass effort to not only push it, but attack the very idea of controlled immigration. Clinton, to keep future political options open and increase her international profile, may attempt to outdo Obama’s relaxed approach to immigration and ramp up inflows leading to further acceleration of ethnic tensions. Republicans could theoretically resist this, but a lot of Republicans have been surprisingly flexible about immigration issues, given they too like to keep their future political options open by retaining superclass favor.
Of your post, section VII is the most convincing, but cultural authoritarianism is consolidating power fast and another four years of a sympathetic president will further embolden them. The old left, which was more concerned about foreign policy and globalization, is being drowned out by well-funded, Utopian neoliberals that have much less interest in socioeconomic class issues. Pushing back against cultural authoritarians isn’t about “getting back at” then, but about establishing that they have no mandate to define “the right side of history”.
Trump’s support comes from a realization that the globalist superclass is pushing hard to make political, economic, and cultural changes that will be much harder to fight in the future.
I think you’re giving Trump way too much credit here.
Obviously, neither of us know what is in Trump’s mind but my best guess is that he is motivated primarily, if not entirely, by self-aggrandizement. He wants to feed his massive ego; to feel like his winning, always and forever. If he were really “ruthless, calculated and manipulative, but also competent and thrifty,” why would he regularly lash out when things don’t go his way? Someone who is “ruthless, calculated and manipulative” picks his fights carefully; presumably he would not go after a Muslim-American veteran’s family just because they hurt his feelings, because he would know that’s a bad look. And that’s just one example of many in which Trump needlessly picked fights with people who criticized him that any rational person could see he was going to lose.
The available evidence strongly suggests that Trump will mostly do whatever results in him being the center of attention, and will continue to do so, consequences be damned.
I kind of wish that all this “we don’t want millennialism!” had been around when Obama was running in 2008, ‘cos that was his platform. It generally used bigger words than Trumpian millennialism, but the whole blank-slate-who-will-change-everything-because-he-is-who-he-is thing, that was Obama ’08, through-and-through.
Obama 2008 was going to lead us to a bright and glorious future, but he wasn’t going to tear down the foundations of society doing so. It’s the tearing down that’s the dangerous part.
“but he wasn’t going to tear down the foundations of society doing so.”
-Neither will Trump. What’s your point?
Yeah, the irony is that this HRC endorsement is fundamentally an appeal to conservatism, and Trump is one of the most fundamentally conservative candidates we’ve had in a long time. If he were Ron Paul he’d be called an isolationist kook–he not only wants to let other countries fight their own battles, he literally wants to build a wall! He’s an “America-first” candidate like Brexit was a “Britain-first” position. In many ways, it’s the opposite of the millenarian impulse. He largely wants to preserve all the traditional American institutions–even ones which have only become traditional in the past fifty years, like social security.
I’ve been saying around here that HRC is the status quo candidate and Trump the “change” candidate, and that is true relative to the past 16 years, but there is another sense in which Trump is the super-conservative, “make America like the 50s again” candidate–wanting to slow demographic change, bring back the old manufacturing jobs, etc.
He’s the “I’d rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard” candidate. That’s populism, not millenarianism. And yes, talking like the first 2000 people in the Boston phone book will make you sound more unhinged than your average politician, but it doesn’t mean you are.
Isolationist populism may be a break from what we’ve been having, but does one feel we’ve moved closer to or farther away from WWIII in the past 16 years?
I think you’re confusing conservative with right wing. conservative in the small c sense of the word just means a preference for social stability and the status quo. Blowing up the liberal world order by pulling out of NATO and throwing up massive trade barriers don’t strike me as conservative in that sense at all.
With the exception of racial demographics,
I don’t think trump wants to preserve traditional American institutions in the least bit.
I have always taken the core American institution to be constitutional democracy, and Trump has spent this campaign promising, among other things, to use libel laws to shut newspapers that criticize him, and to order the military to violate the UCMJ by committing war crimes.
“I think you’re confusing conservative with right wing.”
No, that’s definitely not what I meant. Wanting to preserve social security is conservative, but not right wing. As I said, Trump is change relative to the past 16 or 28 years, but conservative, maybe reactionary, relative to 20th c. America. When I hear “make America great again,” I hear “let’s go back to the 50s when we had manufacturing jobs and social cohesion (and Jim Crow laws, I’m sure a Trump critic would chime in).”
I did also mean conservative in the sense of “not overly ambitious about e. g. American foreign policy as a force for good in the world.” I’d say “make the world safe for democracy” is a “liberal” (or “millenarian”) foreign policy in some ahistorical sense, while, “let’s just take care of our own and let Japan protect itself” is a “conservative” policy in some ahistorical sense.
Anti-immigration is also a conservative stance in some ahistorical stance, I’d say, because it’s fundamentally about “conserving” the demographics we have now. Of course, immigration is an American tradition in some ways, so you could say being anti-immigration is “liberal,” but I think that would be mangling “liberal,” which not only implies “open to change,” but “liberal values,” which implies accepting of difference.
Really, I’d say Trump is a very “conservative” but not very “right wing” candidate. Basically a dumber, louder Pat Buchanan (note that Pat Buchanan is very smart, though).
In support of my “make America great again”=”bring us back to the 50s,” contention, /pol/ just put up a “50s nostalgia thread” with pics like this.
Link is entirely SFW, for anyone wondering.
Since 4chan is ephemeral, here’s another host for it.
The irony of channers longing for an era when almost everything was SFW.
I have a great image like Tedd’s (locked away on a computer needing maintainance) that shows an idealistic vision of the 50’s, with everyone looking into a portal to the future and seeing morbidly obese people in grotesque clothing loitering outside a grey Walmart. It’s very popular on all boards of 4chan.
Sack suit, goon posture, slim tie matched to superwide lapels… God spare me from ever returning to THOSE Fifties.
Nice car, though.
post physique
Looking more closely at the clothing, the thing that strikes me most is that the women dress like my grandmother. Which makes sense, of course, because she was probably about that age in the 50s.
But to my mind, subjectively, those are “old lady clothes.” It’s weird to see young women wearing them.
Well, so does the guy. Haven’t you ever heard of “grampa pants”, jokes about how old people are so stupid they pull their pants up too high? That’s obviously impossible to actually do unless the pants are cut high; high-rise pants were the norm from forever to our parents’ generation, who started wearing hip-hugger jeans and mocking people who used the regular old (and much more comfortable because it’s how it makes logical sense to cut pants) cut as being old fogies. The reason pants have a “waist” is that they’re supposed (in some sense) to sit at your natural waist.
Uh, that ended up being a pretty long digression, but the point is, they’re all wearing grandparent clothes, not just the women. (Although I admit that it’s more striking on the women in this case since they look very good in them, and like the other anon said the guy just looks like some goon.)
Well, you also can’t see the man’s waistband in the picture. Other than the hat, he isn’t dressed that differently from a man in formal dress today, though the suit does seem a little too big for him by our standards.
Out of curiosity, why do you think sitting higher on the waist is the logical place for pants to sit? I don’t disagree, but I also can’t necessarily think of a good reason why one or the other position is superior.
The term was “fundamentally transform.” Bigger words, same meaning.
I remember, right after Obama was elected, cherishing a faint hope — God knows what he said that made me think this! — that for all his flaws he might at least be the level-headed President With a Mandate who would finally address the national debt.
Instead, in one single Presidency, he freaking doubled it.
If his anointed successor were pure as the driven snow, this would be enough reason for me to vote against her.
@Doctor Mist
the level-headed President With a Mandate who would finally address the national debt.
Er … Bill Clinton did address the national debt and made some progress with it, and Hillary will put him in a similar position.
In absolute terms, the national debt increased every year Clinton was in office.
Relative to GDP, he did indeed reduce the national debt from 64% of GDP to 60%. Good for him. But he did it on the back of an astonishing asset bubble that increased the GDP itself by more than a third.
I was hoping that Obama might provide an “Only Nixon can go to China” event: If a Republican tries to be fiscally responsible, he’s just pandering to his base of rich white businessmen, but if a Democrat does it, we have to take it seriously. Oh well. As I say, I really don’t remember what Obama might have said to give me that impression, but it’s plain I misunderstood.
Wait, who are we voting for again?
Thank goodness your irrational Puritan hatred of debt didn’t rule the day. It would have been insane not to take advantage of unprecedentedly low interest rates, particularly in a period which there were large demand shortfalls.
You don’t find it worrisome that the national debt is larger than the GDP?
The boundary for Puritanism has really shifted.
Thank you for your input.
This is a compelling case, but I’m still torn. My concern is procedural. While I very, very, very, very strongly dislike SJWs, I don’t believe that they represent an existential threat to the republic. America has survived populists of all stripes, anarchists, progressives, McCarthyites, teetotalers, and the proto-SJWs themselves, the Abolitionists. America will endure, and our culture will change and evolve in ways no-one is now predicting. The worst the SJWs can do is take us back to the ethnically balkinized electorate of the late 19th century and early 20th century, and while that’s really unpleasant and super-unconducive to good government, it’s something that will inevitably change again within a generation or two.
What is an existential threat to the republic, as far as I’m concerned, is the centralization of power in Washington, most specifically in the hands of the executive branch and its subordinate agencies. Congress’ complete abdication of responsibility when it comes to policy-making (and the high-profile failure of the one Congressionally-crafted initiative of recent years, the ACA) have created a Presidency and civil service that wield tremendous power. Democrats and Republicans each like to further this trend – Democrats to get their social programs enacted, Republicans to benefit the Pentagon and remove obstacles from the President’s path in the field of foreign policy. While at the moment there are significant constraints on arbitrary and capricious action by Presidents, each administration sees more and more of them fall away. The more this trend continues, the less state and local communities are able to safely deviate from national orthodoxy, and the more potential there becomes for a fringe kulturkampf faction to do real and lasting damage by writing its program into the DNA of the Federal behemoth, rather than just banging on noisily for twenty years then fading.
I view Trump as the solution to this problem because he is the one person who I think might actually get some liberals to reconsider their ideas about centralization. If it becomes clear that not only can they not always count on their guy/gal/person/thing being in office, but every now and then there’s a real danger of an absolute nutball taking over, the intellectually-honest among them will have to think long and hard about the wisdom of putting all the policy eggs in a single basket.
I freely admit this might happen, but the chance that it might is what’s keeping me sane this election.
If the office of the presidency is already too powerful, electing a terrible president could be utterly disastrous. If not, it’s unlikely that a reduction in presidential power would increase the power of Congress, which is tremendously unpopular, or the states. The power would go to the judiciary and civil service.
It strikes me that right now the Presidency is still constrained by enough legal and cultural cuffs that a terrible president isn’t a sure bet to screw things up too royally. Especially one as politically divisive as Trump, who all the bien pensant would be focused on destroying from day one. I admit, however, that this isn’t a sure bet.
Congress might take up some slack (which would be good but as you say seems unlikely), but I really hope that the states might take up a good chunk of the slack. To a certain extent this is already happening, what with federal gridlock and all.
The judiciary is usually pretty good about remaining neutral. This is both good and bad: with certain exceptions (usually just endorsing a broad national trend), we aren’t ruled by unaccountable judges, but to the extent that the judicial branch recognizes a problem of inaction on the part of the other branches, there is little it can do to solve the problem (eg the class action denial in last week’s Short Circuit: the concurring opinion pinned the representation crisis on Congress, but there’s little the courts can do to compel Congressional action or resolve the problem directly).
This is probably inevitable in any presidential system (one with separately-elected executive and legislative branches) when the political parties are ideologically coherent. Unless the parties do some decohering, which doesn’t seem likely given the ease of reality bubbles, that’s probably the best option, because the others are:
– Lurch from one Constitutional crisis to another until it all falls apart (we’re doing a little of that with the recurring debt ceiling clusterfucks)
– Go the other direction, where Congress controls everything and executive fades into irrelevance (unlikely, because path dependency)
– Major Constitutional changes, e.g. become a parliamentary system, or something like multi-member districts that dissolves the two-party system (very difficult even if there’s political will, which there probably isn’t)
Not necessarily. The more restrictions that are placed on the administrative state, the more Congress will be forced to step into the breach and actually specify what policies it wants enacted. Or perhaps Congress declines to do so, and so the power lies fallow at the federal level, to be reclaimed by the states. Just because some power is reclaimed from the executive doesn’t mean it is going to “fade into irrelevance.” Like it or not, the President is now our national avatar, and as such will retain an immense PR advantage over Congress. Further, the main mechanisms by which power could be clawed back from the executive – judicial decisions, legislation, and popular pressure – seem highly unlikely to lead to such radical changes that the Executive would “fade into irrelevance.” A President Trump would piss off and frighten so many people that it seems to me that the likelihood of both Left and elite-Right becoming hyper-vigilant against executive excesses is fairly high, but both the Left and elite-Right would retain the hope that they would return to power some day, and so would not want to completely neuter the President.
In section III you are ignoring the countertransference. Electing Hillary leads to the fall of the American democracy by way of the flyover half of the country feeling that the presumptively corrupt establishment has pulled away the football of political choice and self-determination at the final moment of forlorn hope. This factor may outweigh any plausible direct action that could be taken by any candidate.
It is a theorem that the fall of the American democracy will not take place in another civil war or armed revolution, but in the gradual decay of respect for federal power and ensuing fragmentation into petty chiefdoms. This is already happening, as several states today openly defy federal law with popular support, and shows signs of expanding. An election which almost inevitably leads to large sections of the population viewing the entire federal system with total contempt can only complete the cementation of this process.
Apologies in advance for existential terror caused by this comment.
The left (at least some version of it) has sanctuary cities for immigration.
If the right starts sanctuary cities for the most extreme of their policies, I don’t think the left would allow that to continue without calling in the National Guard.
I’ve only rolled my eyes at the headlines so farb and not looked into it but a sanctuary city for the second amendment is apparently in the works?
Isn’t there a small town somewhere that made gun ownership compulsory?
Montana tried. Alaska took a slightly different tack–I don’t believe this one has gone before the courts yet.
As a practical matter, anybody who lives in those states and has the tools, materials, and desire to make suppressors or full-auto Sten guns (though I don’t think either of those laws protects full auto, but that’s by the way) probably just does it and keeps quiet about it, having little to gain from suing the feds and little to fear from state or local law enforcement.
Nelson, GA, tried.
Or, at least, they would all boycott it like North Carolina.
Conservative case:
Trump proposed using stop and frisk to confiscate guns. And he supports deliberately weakening first amendment protections for religion (ie muslims) and the poor (libel/slander lawsuits). Hillary might want to confiscate guns, but she isn’t going impose stop and frisk to do it.
Second, Hillary has a grandchild and struggles to reconcile her faith with being pro-choice. Trump has no doubt paid for his mistresses abortions. Like the 2nd amendment proponents, pro-life conservatives are siding with a facist who agrees with them on the most superficial level. Someday, Americans will view the death penalty and abortion like dog fighting and recycling and abortion will become so rare it will end without any legislation. And just like with gay marriage Hillary will be the last politician to jump ship. But unlike Trump, Hillary’s ideal world never included abortion.
All of the religious and gun rights and pro life conservatives are definitely going to be betrayed by Trump. Clinton might not be their friend either. But she isn’t going to trample the Constitution to get them. To her, the Constitution is more important than gun control. Trump doesn’t even understand why stop, frisk, confiscate has the 2nd amendment crowd up in arms. He doesn’t even know what the Constitution says, and has no intention of following it.
“But she isn’t going to trample the Constitution to get them. To her, the Constitution is more important than gun control.”
-I honestly don’t think the Constitution is the least bit important to either of the Clintons at all. Just look at the notorious RBG.
It doesn’t have the 2A crowd up in arms AFAIK; stop/frisk/confiscate would never be applied to whites.
I don’t know a single 2A person that carries guns illegally or is in a position where stop and frisk would get their weapons confiscated directly.
There are a few that might get in trouble for firearms indirectly if they were searched often enough for drugs, but that would be after a trial and felony conviction.
I think that electing Trump is likely to drive the government in a more conservative direction. Which specific parts of conservatism Trump himself endorses is irrelevant to this.
Telling your political opponents “if you vote against your preferred side, things will be better for your side than if you vote for your preferred side” is, at best, so obviously subject to motivated reasoning that it should be rejected out of hand without stronger evidence than merely a plausible-sounding chain of events which might make things better for their side.
Also, if you really believe that reasoning, since voting against Trump is better for conservatives than voting for Trump, by that reasoning you, a liberal, should vote for Trump for the same reason that you claim it is good for conservatives to vote against him. After all, you oppose conservative policies. Voting for Trump would, by your own reasoning, weaken conservatism relative to voting against him, and therefore increase the chance of policies that you prefer coming to pass.
You try to explain this away by saying that you want conservatism to be an “effective opposition”, but that just pushes the problem back a level–if being an effective opposition decreases the chance of policies that conservatives prefer, then conservatives shouldn’t want to be an effective opposition, and if being an effective opposition increases the chance of policies that conservatives prefer, liberals should oppose it.
(You can’t fix this up by saying “well, it increases the chance in the short term and decreases it in the long term”, either, since I can replace “increases the chance of policies that conservatives prefer” with “increases, on the net after balancing long term and short term effects, the chance of policies that conservatives prefer”.)
Yet somehow, Heller and McDonald managed to split exactly on party lines. One more liberal justice and there would be no right to bear arms in the Constitution. It actually matters who the President nominates to the Supreme Court.
(And I know Trump isn’t very good on gun rights himself, but he’s more likely to appoint someone who is.)
This is still “voting for my side is better for you than voting for your side” and as such, should still be rejected as motivated reasoning without more than just a plausible scenario for it to happen. I could write an equally plausible scenario that works in the opposite direction; for instance, perhaps even an unpopular far right presidency manages to move the Overton Window right.
Scott’s claiming that Trump is an authoritarian who will push both conservatives and liberals towards authoritarianism. This is bad for non-authoritarians on both sides.
Scott doesn’t want things to become worse for conservatives.
If “worse” means “worse in general”, that might be true. But if “worse” means “worse for spreading and implementing conservative ideas”, yes he *does* want things to be worse for conservatives, by definition.
Conservative and progressive are relative terms, Scott is on the slower side of progressivism, in 10 years people will laugh at him for identifying that way.
I think Scott’s largely wrong here – he makes some decent points, and in a few places he’s arguing for things I disagree with but which I can see are differences reasonable people can have over complex issues.
I think he’s largely wrong on his assessment of conservatism, of Hillary’s competence, and that he’s completely missing the significance of our press and academia being in the tank for the Democrat party in terms of maintaining a check on government and on presenting issues for public debate.
I think those errors have led Scott to miscalculating the downsides of her presidency, esp vs the downsides to Trump’s, and I think he does harm to the nation (and probably the world) by urging people to vote for Hillary.
It’s a mistake, a big one, and one I’d rather Scott have not made. And some of what he’s written here has made me mad.
But – and this is a big but – it has made me respect Scott and value SSC even more. Because it’s obvious from this essay (and his comments) that Scott’s not a conservative – not even close – he’s Blue Tribe, absolutely, and not at all Red Tribe, and while he might respect Red Tribers as people he doesn’t share or respect our values.
What he does value, obviously, by his actions and tolerance, is free speech and freedom of expression. He has maintained SSC as a place for people to say what they think not because he secretly supports conservative thought, but because he openly supports free exchange of ideas.
That’s walking the walk.
*tips hat*
As a fellow conservative who also is somewhat pissed off by this article, I wholeheartedly endorse this comment.
Ditto caethan’s post, although the *tips fedora* made me want to slap keranih. On the back, like a friend. But also on the face.
LPSP, sweet heart, you wanna unpack that, just a hair?
(I will note I said *tips hat*, not *tips fedora*, and the hat I was thinking of was more like this.)
(And if that leads to face slapping, honey, I’ll knock you down. :))
Oh god, it’s getting worse.
But you have to tip your own hat. Not like this, even if it is Da Duke giving you a hand with the hat.
Agreed, whole heartedly
This sentiment is definitely worth endorsing, yeah.
I think you do a good thing here, Scott.
New Zealander here just posting to endorse this comment.
This is why I come to SSC
The problem with the high vs low variance argument is that it asks you to weigh quantitatively a nearly infinite number of scenarios using only your own bias. The current state of the comment thread confirms this- it’s just a shouting match of subjective, personal weighting.
It also elides the ‘who, whom?’ problem in favor of a pseudo-objectivity. I’m willing to take environmental destruction as a likely enough, and catastrophic enough, potential outcome of the current direction of the world to play this game (race wars, economic catastrophe, etc… are cyclical and work themselves out, whereas environmental devastation is frighteningly permanent (e.g. Easter Island)), but the high-variance, low-variance weighting becomes purely personal once you leave this realm – it starts depending on whether or not you’re a Libyan or European citizen, a minority transexual, or a white, male, church-going Christian working for a public university or governmental office.
Scott, as a center-leftist(ish), white-collar professional has a pretty vested interest in the Molech-ian status quo and doesn’t risk anything pulling for Team Hillary. I do too, but I’m not sure for a second that I would were I a religious, law-abiding, working-class man living in a neighborhood becoming distinguished by its unemployment, overdoses, and low rates of English-speaking.
Scott’s right about all the downsides to Trump, but my major disagreement is saying people in swing states should still vote Clinton rather than third-party. I really, really don’t want to see Trump be President, and at this point consider Clinton significantly the lesser of two evils…
But both parties are broken and corrupt out the wazoo, and need to be punished accordingly. Votes for third-parties are only meaningful if they happen in swing states. It’s only when they realize that they will lose an election, even to a candidate as awful as Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, that they’ll be incentivized to run better candidates and better policy platforms. Saying “I’ll only not vote for you when I’m sure it doesn’t matter anyway” fails to achieve this.
Holding your nose and voting the party line in a swing state just makes you an enabler. Sacrifice one election to send a serious message that you won’t tolerate being abused by the parties, and hope enough people on the other side do the same that it all cancels out in the end. Otherwise you’re
literallybreathing life into Moloch, and things will continue to spiral downhill in the endless race to the bottom.It was this attitude of partisan tribalism, every election being more important than the last, the inevitable collapse of society if the other guys possibly win, that got us all into this terrible mess. Nothing will change so long as that behavior continues.
ETA: It was probably also a bad idea to conflate the labels of millenarianism, millennialism, and Millennials so close together in the same post.
Did the 2000 election lead to better candidates and better policy platforms?
Two problems with your counterpoint:
(1) Nader didn’t really cost Gore the election, more registered Democrats voted for Bush than for Nader (in Florida: ~97k total votes for Nader, only 24k of which were registered Democrats, to ~309k registered Democrats who voted for Bush), and exit polling showed that in a two-way race Bush would have won by a larger margin (as opposed to basically being handed it by the conservative Supreme Court).
(2) The influence of 9/11 dwarfed pretty much any other changes in policy direction. It’s reasonable to argue that big events will be happening all the time, so any influence voting behavior has on policy needs to be able to account for that. But having the biggest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor was huge, plus the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the unbridled jingoistic patriotism that followed is exceptional, so it’s hard to say how the Democrat platform might have changed by 2004 had it not occurred.
Even then though, see (1) above: if either party wanted to pick up more votes the obvious conclusion would be to “do more of what Dubya did,” which is basically how things have played out in the past 16 years, and was only reinforced by Bush’s actually winning in 2004 without resorting to Supreme Court shenanigans. But again, see 9/11.
(as opposed to basically being handed it by the conservative Supreme Court)
How well do you know Bush v Gore? My sympathy in that case lies entirely with the Court. By the time it reached them (not just the actual hearing, even the emergency stay of the recount), there were no good options. I think they arguably could have made better choices, but with a deadline that tight it’s hard to see how.
They could, and should, have just let the Florida court be wrong about Florida law. It’s wasn’t their job to correct that.
@Gazeboist:
Barely at all – law isn’t my thing, so perhaps it was poor phrasing. My point, in the context I was writing, was that it was about the most unclean win possible – well within the margin of error in Florida, essentially decided by the Supreme Court, with a 5-4 vote on the stay of the recount, when Bush had lost the popular vote. Whereas, according to the exit polls, had Nader not been in then Bush would have simply won, and his winning in 2004 tends to show the effects of 9/11, two wars, and Bush’s presidency, were more important regarding voter behavior than Nader’s campaign in 2000.
In the long run, I agree that third party support needs to translate into decreased support for main party candidates. However, in the short run, third party support needs to build strength and get beyond some minor threshold to get critical mass. This makes vote swapping and other measures more effective. Getting into the national debates would be a good goal.
No.
“Vote for this candidate or the other one wins” is blackmail.
If I capitulate to blackmail, it encourages the blackmailer to keep doing it, both to me and to other people.
Committing to refuse to give in to blackmail only works if your blackmailer has not already credibly committed to doing it anyway.
Since your opponent is an abstract process, it is going to continue doing it.
For what it’s worth, I’ve refused to vote in the last 4 presidential elections on this reasoning, and I consider it extremely likely that I’ll return to not wasting my time in the future. But I’ve been sufficiently convinced that the probability of outright catastrophe is higher (not high, but still) under Trump.
I’ll give into blackmail when the stakes are sufficiently high.
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/775672519042957313
I can say much more, but I’ll leave it at that.
I can see why Kristol would support Clinton, but it seems counterproductive to do so publicly.
Unsurprisingly, this contains the most convincing arguments for a Clinton presidency I have ever seen. But, perhaps also unsurprisingly, while it did manage to shift some of my views, it did not succeed in convincing me to change my bottom line.
And I think I can pinpoint the reasons for this: they are less due to disagreement on the assessment of the choices before us than certain unspoken assumptions on where we are right now:
(1) Scott argues against millenarianism and “tearing down the system” and I agree (and the “variance” argument is quite sound). But at the same time, he implies that we just have to hang on with the broken status quo until “we can invent genetic engineering or AI”, basically “we just need a little more time to get to the singularity and then everything will be fine”. This is millenarian to the core even if it’s “grey” rather than “blue” (or “red” in terms of Marxism) millenarianism. I do not agree with this. I think we will have to soldier on and fix our problems step by step. And I believe we will only be able to do this if we can maintain a functioning first world society.
(2) The second unspoken and imo flawed assumption concerns the stability of the status quo. I do believe the current elites are actively destabilizing the system. The current president is practically endorsing blackshirt violence against the *police force* and basically stoking up a race war — it doesn’t get more toxic than that. I do not think this can go on for another four years without a very real danger of the US going the way of the Soviet Union, or worse.
(1) and (2) taken together lead me to the conclusion that maintaining the status quo amounts to maintaining the active dismantlement of the country. Trump is a high risk effort to prevent this from happening. Lots of bad things can happen under Trump, but at least some of the high variance has the distribution leak into positive outcomes, while a Clinton presidency is a low-variance ticket to almost certain self-annihilation.
It would be great to have Clinton make things worse for another four years in order to *really* rev up the anti-social-justice backlash, I can’t say the thought doesn’t appeal to me, but I do not think that at this point this is a luxury we can afford. And the main reason for this is immigration, which Scott justly identifies as the strongest pro-Trump argument, and which I honestly believe does push the balance in favour of Trump. If immigration isn’t actively tackled over the next term, America will irrevocably become a second-world country. That’s not intrinsically bad (Brazil is a perfectly nice country), but there is no shortage of second-world countries, while there is a desperate shortage of first-world ones, and if the precious few first-world corners we have left are given up now, there will be no way to *ever* fix the climate problem, and there certainly will be no way to “invent genetic engineering and AI”.
So maybe the true “grey” master plan here is “vote Clinton to cause America to break up into a collection of Brazils and Mexicos by 2040, end technological progress, and so prevent extinction by unfriendly AI by 2060”. But this wasn’t Scott’s argument. The argument he did make strikes me as “Choose Saruman over Denethor because Saruman is really predictable and efficient and Denethor is a really bad statesman”. Well, you are correct, but your logic just made you recommend people vote for Saruman, so maybe that should give you pause.
While the “high variance” and the “anti-anti-social-justice backlash” arguments seemed really strong to me, and if nothing else will make me rue a Clinton victory a little less, the “LOCK HER UP” thing at the end was really weak.
Why would you not be in your moral rights to demand that a criminal who only escaped persecution via high level corruption should be duly punished? Yes, I do believe unironically that the way to a more just and rational society involves locking up corrupt politicians.
The argument he did make strikes me as “Choose Saruman over Denethor because Saruman is really predictable and efficient and Denethor is a really bad statesman”.
Which only works if you are going by the movie adaptations, which mangled Denethor’s character for plot reasons. Book Denethor is a perfectly capable ruler, only giving in to despair due to the pernicious influence of the palantir, a long war of attrition that can seemingly only end in total destruction of his city and his people which will also mean the fall of the last free lands everywhere, the death of his elder son and heir, and an admixture of pride and jealousy over being supplanted by someone he does not consider a legitimate heir of the royal line.
If we’re making analogies, then based on her previous experience of power as part of an administration, Hillary is Denethor, not Saruman. But she is neither Saruman nor Denethor; if I thought you could trust her as much as Denethor to work for the good of the state, I’d say “vote her in” with few to no qualms.
On the other hand, if she is to be equated with Saruman, and her counsel would be as the following, I would have many qualms:
Trump isn’t even – I can’t make any analogy with him. Ted Sandyman, maybe?
Trump Bombadil.
Bingo.
Trump has all the power that the ring can offer – he’s immensely rich, he has the money, connections, and savvy to be permitted to bribe politicians (“I wanted Hillary to come to my wedding, she came to my wedding”) if he needs political favors.
The first serious attack when he started to gain support in the Republican primaries was a coordinated attack on his wealth – golf tournament organizers pulling tournaments from his golf courses, Macy’s pulling his clothing line, etc. A ring-wraith billionaire cringes in horror at that and will retreat. Trump didn’t.
Trump might have the power to bribe local bureaucrats to look the other way on the occasional zoning or permitting dispute. This is rather less than the power one has as President to veto anything short of a 2/3 majority of Congress. To make a difference on a federal level you are looking at competing against many other billionaires who have different views and just as few compunctions about lobbying (I doubt Citizen Trump has the firepower to go against the Chamber of Commerce on tariffs, or Silicon Valley on surveillance, or either of them on immigration.)
To say nothing of the near-unilateral authority over the military or the ability to appoint SCOTUS justices (institutions which are by design isolated from the more sordid aspects of lawmaking).
Frankly the “Trump is rich and therefore incorruptible” argument strikes me as kind of infantile given the eagerness with which he’s lent his name out to all kinds of shoddy products and MLMs.
This is an important point, and the main reason I prefer Clinton over Trump, albeit as a distant second to Johnson. The gridlock between Clinton and the Republican House worked out really well for big-government skeptics, with real per-capita federal spending in 2000 being about the same as it was in 1988. We had similar results during the last six years of Obama’s administration. The sample size is small, but Democratic President plus hostile Republican Congress seems to be a good combination.
I do worry about the long-term effects of getting too many Democratic judges in the USSC, but Republican-appointed judges have dropped the ball on striking down laws that overreach federal authority anyway, so I’m not sure how big the downside is there.
The other major danger is that Clinton will get a cooperative Democratic Congress at some point. This could be pretty bad, as this combination tends to result in major new spending programs that never go away.
Voting responsibly is hard. Good thing my vote won’t matter anyway.
“We had similar results during the last six years of Obama’s administration.”
-Ruth Bader Ginsburg still went through the (Dem, but not filibuster-proof) Senate almost unanimously. And after their 2015 restoration of Senate control, the GOP basically gave up on the cause of deficit reduction.
“so I’m not sure how big the downside is there.”
-YUGE. States being prohibited from banning affirmative action is just the tip of the iceberg.
As a complete outsider, whose country will mainly be affected by “Will American multinationals be forced to pay the taxes our beneficent tax regime affords them, either by their own country or the EU, move out and leave us without jobs?”, my interest is not-wholly-theoretical but I have the luxury that it doesn’t matter a damn what my opinion is, whatever happens will not be my fault.
That being said, purely as information-gathering, why do you prefer Johnson to Stein? Why do you think Stein is the worst of the choices? Wouldn’t she be sound on global warming?
(Re: Trump and abortion, I think that’s a red herring. I really do not believe he has any particular opinion on it one way or the other and only tried the appeal to religious voters as a vote-getting strategy. I think his – or his campaign management – opinion on this was the view at large: those redneck Bible-thumpers are agin’ it, so we sound like we’re agin’ it too, or at least make the right mouth-noises about it, and we’ll scoop up their votes. In the unlikely event that a giant asteroid is headed right for us in six months’ time, Unfriendly AI suddenly arises in the morning and declares itself our god-emperor and everyone please line up on the right so the iron in our blood can be extracted to make paperclips, and Trump wins the election, I do not for a second believe he will keep any campaign promises – if he made any – about abortion ).
I do agree Hillary will be more of the same. The question is – do you (the great American people) want that? We know what Hillary will be like, more or less, from her being Secretary of State (and from Bill’s administration before). She plainly feels she’s smart and capable enough for the job, and her biggest flaw is probably that she gives the impression that she wishes she didn’t have to put up with the clods who for some unknown reason don’t immediately declare her the most capable and hand her the job on a plate. So why would she change any of her habits (e.g. emails) once she gets the job she does appear to think is hers by right? And I don’t think Libya was a great idea, either, and you are very lucky it did not turn out worse than it has – sure, they’re still enmeshed in a civil war and the fringes of that are not helping stability in neighbouring countries, and Gaddaffi’s replacements are inclining towards the Islamist ideology but agreed, the situation was a mess before the UN bombardment etc.
I don’t know if she would give you a better tax system. Taxing law is a huge, huge tangle and mess, and there is no real chance of a root-and-branch reform in any country. The best she can do is tweak it here and there, which means extra layers of regulations and uncertainty as the civil servants try to interpret “What does New Amendment mean when we take it in conjunction with Existing Rules And Exceptions?”
Big organisations and those wealthy enough to make it worth their while to have their citizenship and domicile in another country which is more favourable for their tax situation will simply pay their accountants and tax lawyers the extra fees to get around the regulations in perfectly legal fashion. Joe Soap, ordinary citizen, will maybe get a few extra dollars on this easement and pay a few extra dollars on that, and in the end of the day some will do slightly better and some will do slightly worse – just as at present.
The educated whites will go Democrat? I thought they already had, or was I completely missing the tenor of all the studies about “liberals score higher on Nice Things, conservatives score higher on Stuff Fascists Like”? The problem is that the “uneducated” (that is, have no chance of going to university) whites are stuck in a world that is reorganising to be global capital, where employment has moved from manufacturing to service industries (with concomitant fall in pay) and they see that if they were POC, the Democrats would be all over them with sympathy and help, but being a white guy in the exact same circumstances, everyone is telling them “so what?” and even “you deserve this as payback for the centuries of privilege your people had”. The Republicans talk a good message but in practice care about the bosses more than the workers, for various reasons.
That’s where Trump’s core support is coming from – the sense that nobody cares about them. What happens when Clinton is elected? What happens to those people who know damn well she meant them when she was talking about “half of them are a basket of deplorables” (and no, her qualification that she didn’t mean the nice stupid bitter clingers doesn’t count here)? They have to live under a president that they think, rightly or wrongly, doesn’t care what happens to them and indeed would be pleased if they all died in a fire so she didn’t have to apologise for their existence the next time she was stumping for funds in a banquet hall of rich, gay, donors.
If everyone is scared that if Trump gets into power he will be racist and xenophobic and will attack the groups he has used as punching bags in his campaign, what happens when Hillary is elected to the people she designated as “Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it”, “irredeemable” and “not America.”
Well, those people will still be in the country after the election. Is Hillary going to do something about them? Oh, don’t be silly, that was only campaign rhetoric, she has no plans to sweep away the deplorables? But the underlying attitude is there: what do the homophobes (to pick one blossom out of the nosegay) think is going to happen when she’s in power – well who cares, whatever happens will serve them right, isn’t that so?
There’s still time to go in the campaign, so maybe we’ll see some bridge-building and some outreach efforts; after all, she likes to emphasise how she’s a Methodist and this means a lot to her and has shaped her values. So maybe we’ll see some “when I said homophobes, I didn’t mean you” talk – but I do wonder.
@ Deiseach
I’m too lazy to look it up, but I’ve seen her whole ‘deplorables’ statement. Unless she’s playing double acting chess or something, she used the wrong order. She spoke of ‘two baskets’, with one basket of nice people with a reasonable complaint that she will try to fix. The other basket was full of ‘deplorables’.
Unfortunately she talked about the deplorable basket first, and most people ran with that.
Yeah, but that’s “half of Trump supporters” which, if you take it as not being something she pulled out of the air, means a quarter of the electorate.
Who are still going to be sitting in their racist, xenophobic, sexist, Islamophobic, homophobic ratholes when the election is over and the anointing of the Queen can proceed with all due ceremony.
So what is going to happen to them? Will they see her as their president? More importantly, will she see herself as their president? If the deplorables aren’t America and are irredeemable? If “I don’t think legalising same-sex marriage is necessarily a great idea” is homophobic (as apparently it is), then what about the homophobes with such opinions who have wormed their way into jobs above their station – maybe even *gasp* working in the civil service itself!
I don’t think any politician should call any section of their people hard names, but I realise that is a vain hope. Still, leading with “all the crazy people who like Trump – oh yeah, and the rest who probably aren’t crazy, just too dumb to know better” isn’t much of a basis for “we’re stronger together, so let’s heal those divisions!”
Saying that “Half of Trump’s supporters” are deplorable might mean Half of 2016 republican general election voters, or it might mean half of the people who constantly supported Trump in the primary. The second claim is much more defensible.
The second claim is much more defensible.
But is anyone reading it in that limited manner? Because I’m seeing all the chin-stroking think pieces about “Trump is appealing to the basest elements of our institutionally racist society” and nobody is appending “But that only applies to about half of the people who have consistently supported him from the beginning”.
As in this Vox article:
Matthew Yglesias is a very partisan liberal commentator, taking his views as indicative of what Hillary Clinton thinks would be as wrong as assuming that the average Victor Davis Hanson, or Jonah Goldberg column at the national review expresses the views of John McCain or Mitt Romney.
A former senator who has held elective office and worked with republicans in the past is less likely to take as hostile a view of the GOP.
Well, the charitable interpretation is that the “Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it” people aren’t going to get their racism, sexism, xenophobia or islamophobia made into policy.
This wins the “best use of the word ‘nosegay'” award. That’s a work of art there.
Scott says:
“I don’t think he’s literal. I think when he talks about building a wall and keeping out Muslims, he’s metaphorically saying “I’m going to fight for you, the real Americans”. When he talks about tariffs and trade deals, he’s metaphorically saying “I’m going to fight for you, the real Americans”. Fine.”
I think Scott’s expertise at abstract thinking is misleading him here about, say, the Wall, which appeals to Trump’s supporters and outrages Trump’s detractors precisely because the concept is so tangible.
Americans have gotten themselves confused about how it must be nearly physically impossible to build border barriers, even though lots of other countries, such as Israel (whose borders are about 35% as long as America’s), have had no problem doing it.
Building big things really isn’t that hard if you have the political power to override environmental regulations and NIMBYism. If, say, you gave Gov. Jerry Brown the power to declare his California High Speed Rail essential to national defense, he’d get it built as fast as his dad got the California aqueduct built two generations ago.
Similarly, reducing Muslim immigration through extreme vetting is the kind of thing that other countries have done without much trouble. How much Muslim immigration is there to Israel or Japan? The ruling class in those countries doesn’t want much Muslim immigration so the technocrats make sure there isn’t much.
A nation governed by alt*technocrats,
with religious freedom abandoned,
behind a gigantic wall;
now there’s a vivid image.
” Israel (whose borders are about 35% as long as America’s),”
Not even close to true. Where do you come up with this stuff?
He disregards the Canada-US border. Trump doesn’t want to build a wall there, AFAIK. Israeli borders are about 35% of the US-Mexico border.
The US-Mexico border is 3200 km long. The Israeli West Bank security wall is about 700 km long.
700km/3200km is 21%, not 35%, but it’s not an order of magnitude difference. Certainly if you calculate the price per unit population, a security wall along the border with Mexico would cost the average American much less than the West Bank security wall cost the average Israeli (320 million vs 8 million people).
Other notes: the West Bank security wall is much windier than the actual Israel-West Bank border, which is very roughly 400 km, and that’s counting counting the length of the Jordan Valley on the eastern side where there is no wall. The total length of Israel’s international borders (not counting the West Bank as part of Israel) is about 1290 km.
Israel has been building fences on most of its other borders as well as the West Bank, such as the highly successful Egyptian border for keeping out economic migrants. Netanyahu ordered the construction of a fence on the Jordan border deep in the Negev Desert the morning after Orban gave in to Merkel about the migrants in September 2014.
From the CIA World Factbook:
Land boundaries:
total: 1,068 km
border countries (6): Egypt 208 km, Gaza Strip 59 km, Jordan 307 km, Lebanon 81 km, Syria 83 km, West Bank 330 km
From the same source on the U.S.
Mexico 3,155 km
So, Israel’s borders are 1068/3155th as long as America’s Mexican border, or 33.9% rather than my guesstimate of 35%.
My apologies.
You didn’t say US-Mexican border. Though it is telling that you just assumed everyone would understand that’s what you meant.
Duh. Telling of what? Has Trump been even slightly ambiguous about what border he was talking about?
Your innuendo falls a little short here.
There’s also the minor problem of whether a border-with-Mexico wall solves anything (at current rates of immigration, it would be keeping Mexicans *in*).
There is such a thing as motivation: Israel built that wall to stop what was at one point near-daily bombings. For america to spend five times that (at least; there are other added costs such as setting up infrastructure to get to some areas) they’d need a five times greater need – and even assuming a border wall would stop 100% of illegal immigration, I don’t think most americans believe that illegal immigration is as bad as five terrorist attacks a day.
Given that significant part of illegal immigration happens by people coming in legally and overstaying, wall alone probably won’t help. Wall plus other policies might. Then again, comparing to Israel is useless as Israel has completely different situation to deal with – the problem is Israel not people coming to work illegally in Israel (which also happens, but that alone wouldn’t bother anyone, it happened since forever and was no big deal) but people coming to murder Israeli citizens. So the whole calculation is different. Which of course everybody ignores and nobody does real analysis because one side is “Trump is sooo stuuuuupid” and other side is “Trump is da best!” and end of discussion.
I don’t know why this never occured to me before. It makes perfect sense; people are aversive to change, and we dislike the feeling of singling someone out for punishment if they haven’t commited a direct transgressive act (violence/murder, serious theft, rape). The same reason why companies struggle to fire people that don’t do their jobs explains why legal immigrants know they can stay much longer than they say they will stay. Who will grass them up?
Only a culture with absolute “you have X minutes to do what you must, you are a shameful specimen if you exceed this boundary” type honour-norms would ever succeed at dismissing the overstayers.
A nation-state with a cashless economy could probably arrange for their money to automatically turn off the day their visa expires. Black market, yes, but that’s better for e.g. buying drugs than for e.g. arranging electricity and running water for your apartment.
Eh, if we cared enough to spend the money we could ankle-bracelet visitors. Or penalize employment of illegals, but let’s not get crazy here. (I know the counterargument, “SJWs force hapless business owners to accept birth certificates written in crayon from Mexicans.” Meh.)
Good point from the tech-advancement angle John, although the date at which that becomes plausible (and the culture needed to pass that into law) is enigmatic to me.
Ankle-bracelets just strike me as a part of what the society I outlined would see as acceptable (ie what our society would call monstrous, akin to tagging wild animals).
“Israel built that wall to stop what was at one point near-daily bombings.”
Since then, Israel has been building fences to stop economic immigrants, largely sub-Saharan Africans, from crossing over from Egypt and Jordan. This hasn’t gotten much publicity in the United States, but it’s easy to read up on Israeli news in English-language Israeli or American Jewish publications.
For example, from Wikipedia:
Israel–Egypt barrier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Egypt_barrier
The Israel–Egypt barrier (or Israel–Egypt border fence; Project name: Hourglass, Hebrew: שְׁעוֹן הַחוֹל, Sha’on HaḤol, lit. sand clock) refers to a border barrier built by Israel along sections of its border with Egypt. It was originally an attempt to curb the influx of illegal migrants from African countries.[2] However, following increased insurgent movement across the southern border in 2011, Israel upgraded the steel barrier project to include cameras, radar and motion detectors. In January 2013, construction of the barrier was completed in its main section.[3] The final section of the fence was completed in December 2013.[4]
A number of countries, including the United States and India, have sent delegations to Israel to study border security and the various technologies used by the IDF to secure Israel’s borders, including the Israel–Egypt border. Some of these countries may implement these technologies as part of their own border fences.
The 245 miles (394 km)[dubious – discuss] fence from Rafah to Eilat took three years to construct, at an estimated cost of NIS1.6 billion ($450 million), making it one of the largest projects in Israel’s history.
… The barrier was originally planned in response to high levels of illegal migrants who successfully entered Israel across the border, mainly smuggled by Bedouin traffickers, from Eritrea and Sudan. Tens of thousands of people try to cross from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula into Israel every year, predominantly economic migrants. During Hosni Mubarak’s regime, Egyptian border guards sometimes shot African migrants trying to enter Israel illegally.[7][8] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the barrier is meant to “secure Israel’s Jewish and democratic character.”[9] The 2011 Egyptian revolution, the demise of Mubarak’s regime, increased lawlessness in the Sinai as well as the 2011 southern Israel cross-border attacks led to the project’s upgrading with surveillance equipment and its timetable for completion being expedited. …
While 9,570 citizens of various African countries entered Israel illegally in the first half of 2012, only 34 did the same in the first six months of 2013, after construction of the main section of the barrier was completed.
This SSC essay is admirably illuminating, as too are the comments, as too is Scott A’s classy reference (in a comment) to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Imp of the Perverse” (1845).
Poe’s story was first drafted as an essay on human psychology. It asserts:
It’s evident that no small portion of SSC’s alt*commenters “most vividly desire” a perverse Trumpocalypse, don’t they?
So perhaps safe-state voters should simply write-in “Scott Alexander”? It’s plenty tempting! 🙂
It would also be neat if whatever form conservatism ended out taking had some slight contact with reality and what would help the country
The trouble is, evidence for “having some slight contact with reality” is interpreted as “agreeing with liberal/left principles”.
Well, naturally you are going to accept the rights of queer people to marry same-identifed-gender-as-themselves persons, aren’t you? That’s not liberalism, that’s basic justice because marriage is a fundamental right! And naturally you are going to be pro-choice, because bodily autonomy is a basic human right! And [insert menu of liberal/left/progressive items here] because that’s not at all politically biased, that is genuine [insert evo-pysch/social studies research as evidence here]. Just plain common sense backed up by evidence from the real world.
So what is left to be conservative about? Money, is about all. There we are free to be good capitalists pushing for the free market.
I don’t see “Agree with you on 99% of everything but you are for minimum wage and I’m not” as being in any way meaningful conservatism.
Pretty much this.
It strikes me as bizarre when I see conservatives being all about FREE MARKET! FREE TRADE! CAPITALISM! but curiously silent about reversing the damage to mores that the left has done so far.
“it’s hard to imagine a course where a Hillary presidency leads directly to the apocalypse, the fall of American democracy, et cetera.”
Who is more likely to make a deal in Syria? Hillary is far more likely to lead directly to the apocalypse(literally… as in Gog and Magog) than Trump.
And America has institutions with a veneer of democracy, but there’s not much real democracy in America.
If your goal is to replace the current systems with better ones, then destroying the current system is 1% of the work, and building the better ones is 99% of it. Throughout history, dozens of movements have doomed entire civilizations by focusing on the “destroying the current system” step and expecting the “build a better one” step to happen on its own. That never works.
Case/s in point: the Arab Spring. In Egypt, a lot of nice people launched a beautiful movement that brought down a dictator. Then there was a period of speculation as to who they would want to replace him. Apparently they hadn’t made any plans about that; they didn’t have anyone in mind. So of the powers that were left, the strongest stepped into that vacuum.
My cynical view is that by the time the good guys get their movement together and produce a vacuum, the aged and cunning have seen it coming and made plans to step in and take over. (Or have infiltrated the movement itself.)
Are electorates woke to suborning?
Yes, they are woke and so
perhaps democracy is viable.
— — — —
With apologies to Walt haiku-Whitman 🙂
For a person who knows that AGI represents massive existential risk, Scott seems curiously displeased at the prospect of immigrant researchers getting prevented from working on AGI.
That Trump’s immigration policy might slow down AGI research in the short-term (and prevent the corruption of the discipline by “Aint nobody got time for dat safety testing” affirmative action hires in the medium term) is amongst the most compelling reasons to vote for him.
In any case I would enjoy a more detailed discussion on this point. A Cold War 2 nuclear escalation is survivable, and therefore not very X-risk relevant, and therefore not very relevant full stop. An unfriendly AI; less survivable.
What are the Trump’s and Hillary’s influential advisors’ opinions on burning CompSci textbooks to prevent information hazard?
The epitaph of vulgar Yudkowskyism: “A Cold War 2 nuclear escalation is survivable, and therefore not very X-risk relevant, and therefore not very relevant full stop. An unfriendly AI; less survivable.”
I got it from Bostrom, actually, but whatever, I bite your bullet.
“Vulgar Yudkowskyism” is by analogy to so-called “vulgar Marxism”. You’d probably have to have spent time in communist culture to get all the nuances, but you can look up the term to get some idea.
One of the things that most concerns me about Trump is not his policies but his personality and potential mental state. Scott, I know you presumably don’t like to speculate about the potential mental disorders of third parties and I can appreciate good reasons for that, but it does strike me that Trump would likely score extremely highly on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist – Revised. I know the ghostwriter of Art of The Deal said earlier this year that he felt a more appropriate title for the book in retrospect would be “The Sociopath”. Do you have any concerns that Trump might in fact be a psychopath or, at the very least, exhibit significant symptoms of antisocial personality disorder? If so is that not extremely worrying for the world given the President’s almost unilateral control of the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal?
Apologies if there is some rule here against speculating about mental conditions that I have not read and if so please delete this post.
Well, you’ve conflated sociopathy, psychopathy, and ASPD, so … I doubt your questions will be given much credence.
This line:
just seems like a bad idea to me. Could you not come up with an analogy that doesn’t involve the blood libel? I know it’s tempting to go for the strongest image you can think of, but sometimes it jars so much that it just drags the reader completely out of the argument entirely. This is one such case I think.
Why do you see it as a bad idea?
My first thought was, “but the maximum a Jew could do is join up with the Allies and firebomb Dresden.”
Scott writes: “[Trump] lives in a world where there is no such thing as intelligence, only loyalty. If we haven’t solved all of our problems yet, it’s because the Department of Problem-Solving was insufficiently loyal, and didn’t try hard enough. His only promise is to fill that department with loyal people who really want the problem solved.”
Maybe this is because lack of loyalty is the bigger problem.
Take immigration. The solution is simple; build a wall. It’s been done before. Others are doing it now. Nations have been successfully keeping their borders secure throughout recorded history, but in 2016, with supercomputers in our pockets and SDVs and a Mars colonization project underway… Vox et al. patiently explain to us that border control is suddenly an intractable problem. “People will just tunnel under the wall!”
An alternative hypothesis is that the failure to control immigration results from an absence of *loyalty*. Democrats see mass Latino immigration as a reliable path to permanent supermajority government. Republicans are influenced by farm and business owners desirous of cheap labour. And perhaps the motivation for the never-ending, unpopular, politically costly, and bipartisan efforts to diversify America are the result of a more sinister and fundamental disloyalty. Either way, this is a problem that does not require more intelligence. The solution is as simple as Trump’s deliberately simplistic speaking point formulation: Build A Wall. President Camacho could probably figure it out.
Consider other issues from the perspective of Loyalty Vs. Intelligence as the missing factor, and I think you’ll find similar results. We have a big government with lots of smart people, but its performance ranges from incompetent at best, to ruthlessly effective in pursuit of goals that are opposed to our own.
Bottom line: Trump offers us an America that will ignore petty distractions and free the American mind to Think Big: Friendly AI, space travel, a non-malthusian post-scarcity economy. Hillary offers us present-day Brazil, but with fewer microaggressions.
I thought most illegal immigrants entered legally and overstaid their visas.
This article is perhaps the best argument I have seen yet for Hillary. I found myself nodding along with many of the arguments, after this morning swearing that there was nothing that could make me consider voting for Hillary (as opposed to switching from Trump to Johnson or None of the Above).
The problem in the end was that it wasn’t enough. For each argument, there’s a counter argument that even a Trump wins worst case scenario is just as bad as the likely effects of a Hillary win.
I think the variance is the difference in our outlooks. You see a Republican congress as naturally being a limiter as how much damage that Hillary can do. As a DC area native, I believe the real limiters on government are the executive branch bureaucracy and the supreme court, and both of those dampen movement to the right much more effectively than they dampen movement to the left.
Is the IRS practically an arm of the Democratic party? I don’t know; there’s strong allegations that there is, and congressional investigation has been stonewalled, strongly suggesting that it’s true (if it wasn’t, the Democratic administration would want a quick, independent investigation to prove their innocence). But I do know that even changing people at the top won’t make the rank and file politically agents of the Republican party. Same goes for the Department of Education with regards to Title IX, the Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights, the EPA… all are currently taking actions moving the country left and congressional oversight doesn’t mean squat when the agency is allowed to stall against legal oversight. Under a leftist president, the state agencies of power run unchecked further tilting the playing field left. Another example: right now, environmental groups file suit against the EPA, the EPA doesn’t defend, writes a generous settlement giving money to the environmental group and changing the regulations; congress and the public have no say in the matter while things move left. The environmental groups might be right, but if they are, they can win fairly rather than have their opponents throw the game.
The Supreme Court is another case, probably because it’s the one place in the government where ‘conservative’ has anything like its original meaning. We could have a bizarre series of accidents allowing a Republican president to appoint all nine justices, and I’d have trouble believing it would move the country substantially rightwards. (At worst, you’d have things like overturning Roe vs Wade allowing states to make abortion illegal. If, then, most states made abortion illegal the left has a bigger problem than the Supreme Court). On the other hand, even appointing a solid Progressive to the remaining vacancy has the potential to move the country significantly leftward. Overturning Citizens United would significantly unbalance the playing field further towards the left, even before you get to the easy assumption that the government is only going to use the power against those opposed to the government on the right (even under the Bush administration, nobody used the laws against people making movies critical of Bush).
If Trump takes office, he’s going to have to struggle to move government right or even stop moving it left. If Hillary takes office, she could spend the time sleeping and the government would still move left.
Section VI is worth its own point (though much of this also applies to point VII)
Right now, from the perspective of the right, the foundations of civil society are being eroded by the left, and voting for Trump is unlikely to speed up the process. Think of it as a game of iterated prisoners dilemna against an intelligent opponent where there are multiple pairs of players and the objective is to get one of the highest scores across all the games. Your opponent plays ‘defect’ for the first handful of moves, while you start out with all ‘cooperate’ as a show of trust to try to get the opponent to ‘cooperate’, but the opponent keeps playing defect. Do you keep playing ‘cooperate’, or do you start throwing ‘defects’ to let your opponent know his strategy won’t work?
Also, “Leftism has never been about controlling the government, and really the government is one of the areas it controls least effectively” seems wrong. Taken uncharitably, leftism is about controlling the power, which is in government. It’s just not as much in the elected parts of the government; leftists have learned you can control the government without controling the elected positions. In my suburban county, more than half the money goes to the school system, controlled by the school board, which is in thrall to the teacher’s unions, which are tied to the Democratic party. The pension plan is tied to the government employee unions. At the state level, education is a third of the budget, with health services another quarter; both of those are Democratic power bases.
I have to laugh at “all of these things have a tendency to define themselves in opposition to the government”. One of the classic right wing image memes shows Black Block style anarchists clashing with the police. Invariably, the self-described anarchists are protesting for more government power (in the form of ‘crush the banks’, ‘smash the 1%’, ‘free college’ and the like) and the caption helpfully points out that the police they are clashing with are a product of the additional government they are calling for. Yes, the leftist establishment has acheived the trick of convincing the opposition that they too ‘oppose the Man’ while they control the government; that’s how you get anarchists protesting for more government power.
The balance of power, to me, seems to be like a pendulum. When Obama won the election, it was part of the pendulum swinging to the left. The argument four years ago was ‘Romney is too far to the right! We can’t let the pendulum swing back!”, so they pulled the pendulum further left. Now, when it swings back, it’s going to go past Romney to Trump. The way I read the argument, we’re told we need to keep pulling the pendulum further to the left to stop Trump. Trump worries me, but not as much as what happens if we keep pulling left, because when it eventually goes, the pendulum may very well swing even further right past Trump.
“Trump worries me, but not as much as what happens if we keep pulling left, because when it eventually goes, the pendulum may very well swing even further right past Trump.”
Yes. Trump is not Hitler. Hitler is what happens if we don’t get Trump.
There are a lot of failure modes for American democracy besides Hitler.
The problem is that everything seems to mess with the balance of the oscillations of the political process pendulum. It’s a useful metaphor, but one that only goes so far before it gets into useless territory (and I’m dangerously close to using a pendulum metaphor to describe a pendulum metaphor).
The reason this is important is that the pendulum is on the left, and Scott’s worried about it coming up too high on the left NEXT TIME after going back right and coming back again. This is a real issue, but it ignores the pressing questions of ‘is it too high on the left now?’ and ‘how high will it go when it goes right?’
Scott’s ignoring the nature of the Red Tribe. The Red Tribe voters (not the recent neocon leaders) want to live quietly in their nice little neighborhoods with their God and their guns and be left alone. They do not want to be taxed to fund pointless social programs for people who are not them.
If Clinton gets in, the pendulum as you said keeps going left, she grants amnesty to the millions of illegals, Texas flips blue, and we never see a Republican president again. For the Red Tribe, the ones who Scott has in several posts correctly identified as the ones who feel the most “American,” the Republic is over. They will no longer have representation. The nation that their ancestors created to give them a place to live quietly with their God and their guns is gone. They will be forever taxed to provide for Others, while all their culture and traditions are mocked and then torn down.
At that point they will have nothing to lose. They have a lot of guns, though.
The Red Tribe voters (not the recent neocon leaders) want to live quietly in their nice little neighborhoods with their God and their guns and be left alone.
Can’t tell if sarcastic…
That still doesn’t lead to ‘Hitler’. More than likely, a lot of the Red states with big illegal Hispanic populations say ‘heck no’ and secede (more than likely, a de facto secession rather than a real one).
One of my most feared cascade failure modes for the US as a political whole is a ‘rule of law’ failure. Local jurisdictions in red tribe areas could just start ignoring federal laws and lawsuits. We’ve already seen local outbreaks; the clerk that wouldn’t handle gay marriages, for example. It’s going to get worse. It’s not going to lead to a shooting civil war.
The reason we’re going to see a cascade ‘rule of law’ failure is that the red tribe already sees the blue tribe ignoring laws, both from the top (Hillary’s email) and bottom (tolerance for illegal immigration, tolerance for BLM rioting, etc). The red tribe is ‘cooperating’ with the law, the blue tribe is ‘defecting’ from the law, the blue tribe is winning. This can only go on for so long.
“One of my most feared cascade failure modes for the US as a political whole is a ‘rule of law’ failure. Local jurisdictions in red tribe areas could just start ignoring federal laws and lawsuits. We’ve already seen local outbreaks; the clerk that wouldn’t handle gay marriages, for example. It’s going to get worse. It’s not going to lead to a shooting civil war.”
Do you see a scenario where that becomes a successful strategy for the red tribe?
The KY clerk was pretty helpless against the machinery of the state
what would it take for a local red state government to defy the machinery of the federal blue state government?
what’s the situation and scenario where that’s not a fools errand?
[you almost need a separate banking system, no? if they fined the KY clerk and then tried to enforce the fine by garnishing it from her accounts, is there any bank that would have prevented them from doing that? is there any policy that they can’t enforce on any marginally serious actor through such methods?]
Just wanted to thank you for the excellent comment. It’s one of the best breakdowns of the essay so far.
seconded, this was the best response I’ve seen to this essay
If I were an American I’d vote Johnson and if someone put a gun to my head and told me to choose between Clinton or Trump, I’d grudgingly choose Clinton too.
But there is one element of politics in Europe (Europe is not one country of course, but this seems to be a repeating pattern) is that you have a party which is in some way “Trump-like” (Like the French FN or the Dutch PVV) and which is getting ignored and ostracized by the “established parties” and mainstream media. The party continuously gains support – Marine Le Pen now has a decent chance of becoming the next French president (although I still think the chance is less than a half). But instead of “letting the steam out” by allowing the party to get elected to a local government or considering a coalition with them (i.e. treating them as any other party), you have these stunts where all “democratic forces” join together just to prevent the FN forming the government. This includes the French social democrats withdrawing their candidates in the last elections from the second round (so that the remaining candidates were from the center-right republicans and the FN) so that people vote against the FN. It worked in the short term but in the long run it only makes the FN stronger. You end up with a “national unity” (that’s not what they actually call it) coalition consisting on everyone from communists to the center-right (such a platfrom has basically zero political intersect, except for being against the FN) and the FN. And this only reinforces the picture of the “establishment” vs. “anti-establishment” parties, where there are no real differences between the different establishment parties any more.
And so the support of the FN grows and eventually they will have enough support to form a majority more or less on their own, by which time they will have become way more dangerous that if they had been treated normally. In Austria, the FPÖ (which also roughly belongs to this group of parties) has been several times in the coalition with the government (which resulted in EU sanctions against Austria a few years back). But their support usually sinks after that. They don’t tend to be very competent at actual governing. If the FPÖ were treated the same way FN is in France, they would have eventually ended up with way more power than they’ve ever really had.
In a sense these parties can be useful and exist for a reason. They make sure that the “establishment” does not grow too comfortable and does not start ignoring the voters (the relatively recent comment by the German Bundespräsident that the problem is not in the elites but in the general population is exactly the kind of thinking that these protest parties can keep down.). As long as they only remain a threat, capturing a minor office here and there from time to time but never really becoming a major political power, they can be very good. They are the proverbial sword of Damocles.
So in a sense, Trump can serve the same function in the US. True, we are talking about actually giving him the most power he could have, but imagine that Clinon wins, here presidency is bad and the anti-establishment people notice that even many Republicans ended up endorsing Clinton, making his position even stronger. Eventually you might end up not with “just” president Trump but also a Trumpist congress and senate, making it a truly dangerous combination. If he “just” becomes presidents and does a bad or even a horrible job, his support will drop and the things might get less heated and divided politically.
I have to say I am not entirely convinced that this really is a good argument. I am quite convinced about it being good in the European parliamentarian (or semi-presidential as in France) system, less so in the US, mostly because I think the difference between a strong president Trump and “just” president Trump would not be that big and that in turn because I would expect Republican represenatives to vote for his proposals anyway for party-loyalty reasons.
Yeah, your caveat at the end I think accurately presents the problem with this analogy, since the FN, SD, etc., represent third parties that are wholly independent from the mainstream center-right (such that the center-right usually rules them out of coalitions even if it means a minority or unity government). The big-tent duopoly of American politics means that Trump, while conspicuous and loud, is not without precedent.
Just look at the Republicans who have been relatively quick to endorse him. Giuliani is the former mayor of our largest city, Christie the governor of a decent-sized (in population) state. They have definite parallels with Trump in their concern with bellicose signaling over intellectual consistency, their collecting of political vendettas, their lack of concern with religiously-tinged social issues, their general disregard for civil liberties in favor of “law and order.” A Trump Republican would be unprecedented in the Presidency, but hardly so in a Republican leadership capacity generally.
That’s quite an intereting take on european politics. I have one disagreement with what you suggest (allowing the Trumpish parties to get some power) and one possible counterexample to the proposed mechnism.
Some of the far-right/anti-establishment parties are very much against the current system, i.e. Rechtsstaat (wow, I had no idea english used the german word for that; how stereotypical). They either want or believe in some form of pure democracy (when you win te election you can do whatever you want) or, perhaps more commonly, don’t like democracy much at all and prefer some form of authoritarianism. Obviously getting them into a coalition with a party that does care about legal principles will not allow them to ignore those principles and your solution of “showing they aren’t realy good at governing” works. However I’m afraid that this pushes the Overton window in a very dangerous direction. (Sorry, Death Eaters. <_<")
The counterexample might be the current polish government — I think they aren't as Trumpish in their rhetoric as your examples, but I'm not sure, Poland is, uh, very conservative, so I might be badly callibrated. They were in power 2005-2007 in a coalition government and lost the next elections for reasons your theory would predict (they weren't very competent). But after 8 years of the other big party being in power they won elections again, this time needing no coalition partner to govern (unprecedented in Poland after 1989, so a very impressive result). They immediately started ignoring the separation of powers and, if anything, acting way more radical than the previous time. My point is, this seems to be a counterexample to your proposition working in the long term, but maybe this is just an outlier.
I think the term in English is actually “rule of law”. Although I would say that this is a little bit more and a little bit more libertarian-leaning than the Rechtsstaat. But that might be my impressions simply because libertarians are very fond of using the term “rule of law” 🙂 In any case, those are very similar terms.
As for Poland, I don’t know much about their politics. As you pointed out, they are very conservative. For example, Poland has the least liberal laws on abortion in all of Europe (which has less liberal abortion laws than the US by the way, I was surprised that the US rule is abortion is ok till viability…there are no European countries with this liberal abortion laws, usually it is 12-14 weeks after conception, save for medical reasons and perhaps a few more exceptions). Polish abortion laws would not look out of place in South America (it might be stricter than in some countries there actually) and in fact there is a minority of Polish bishops which wants to make them even stricter (banning it even in case of rape for example, but this is too much even for conservative Poland).
But, with the necessary disclaimer that I don’t know much about Poland (which I should probably be ashamed of a bit, since it is a neighbouring country), I think that PiS does not seem to be a protest party in the sense FN is. This kind of strongman catholic conservatism simply seems to be a worldview which is an integral part of the Polish society and it does not go away when they do a bad job, just as the social democrats don’t disappear from Czech politics even when they do a bad job. And if they really represent a coherent worldview that a part of your population adheres to, then you have to treat them as such whether you like their ideas or not. Trump is much closer to being a “protest party” leader.
A protest party is rather something that comes and goes and collects the votes of those who feel that the government ignores them. Then the “establishment” usually realizes it eventually, changes its course a bit, starts listening to these voters again and the protest party disappears. Or they don’t and then the protest party replaces them. That is bad if the protest party is something like Trump or FN but it can be good if they are more reasonable. This simply ensures at least some competition on the political market and that it does not completely turn into an oligopoly (I would like to add “like in the US” but I think it is probably wrong to view the two US political parties in the same way one sees the European parties – both major US parties seem to be grand coalitions of what in Europe would translate into several parties, so it is probably a bit more complicated).
You are right, I have been terribly uncharitable to them in my last post. I am probably too emotionally invested in this discourse and it was, hm, I guess triggered by the “building systems is way harder than destroying them” statement in Scott’s post — they seem to really not care about that.
If you are interested, the actual protest party is Kukiz’15, whose only proposition was to introduce FPTP voting to dismantle the two-party system. Yes, seriously. What is even more surprizing they actually got some reasonable people in the parliment — essentially voting for them was a vote for actual randomness.
> As for Poland, I don’t know much about their politics.
Heh, it shows — a proposition to outlaw post-rape abortion is at this moment being proceeded through the parliment and has a nontrivial chance of being passed. But still, you were right about my statement of PiS being Trumpish being wrong.
Wow, really? It’s worse than I thought then. If they pass it, Poland will have stricter abortion laws than Latin America.
I’ve always been slightly sympathetic to the Catholic church, not because I’d think they do not support some terrible ideas (they do) but because I like the rituals and stuff like that, it kind of makes the world “a more margical place” to use a cliché. Also I really find the prevailing Czech anti-religious sentiment (“They all just stole other people’s property and they abuse young boys”) a little bit too simplistic. But I guess my view of the Church is a bit overly romantic and in the light of what is going on in Poland, I am very happy that Czechs are so (even if a bit uncharitably) atheist so one does not have to deal with religious fundamentalists in politics.
I am an atheist myself by the way, as I said, to me the Church is like a big LARP where you pretend some things exist which don’t but that can make it more fun 🙂 For this reason I prefer catholics to protestants, because protestants try to remove the fun part of the religion and only keep the belief part 😀
As for Kukiz, what two party system do they mean? Poland does not have a two party system, does it? Or is that why you write “yes, seriously”?
For the last 10 years we had two “main” parties with ~30% support each gettiing most of the seats in the parliment. They claim this is a two-party hegemony that should be broken. So yes, not really an accurate portrayal, since those parties always needed some coalition partner (this is the first time one of them doesn’t need one), but I mostly meant to point out the irony in using FPTP voting as a tool against parties — the evidence around the world suggests this is the voting system that creates two party equlibria.
Oh, I see, I missed the first past the post voting in your first comment. Yeah, that sounds funny. On the topic of funny political parties – there is a Czech anti-immigration and kind of nationalist party which is lead by a guy called Tomio Okamura…who is half Japanese, born in Japan and then came (still as a child I think) to the Czech republic :-))
On the other hand, what I just wrote about the political competition etc. does not hold in Swiss politics at all, even though I think the country is the most well-run in Europe. From a certain perspective their Konkordanzsystem is exactly this “party of national unity”.
I think that the difference is that through referendums, the people themselves (it is telling that in Switzerland “der Souverän” is pretty much synonymous with “das Volk”) fulfill the positive role of protest parties. When the “elites” get out of touch with the “normal people”, they can veto their laws in a referendum. In other countries, where this is usually not an option and one gets to vote once every four years for a party instead of whenever someone finds a few hundred people to have a referendum voting for or against actual laws, the Konkordanzsystem would probably be a really bad idea.
Interesting that the same media and political consulting class which Trump conspicuously didn’t pay hundreds of millions of dollars to to get this far happens to predict the end of the world if he wins. End of their world, maybe. Hopefully.
You don’t like millenialism, but your major political priority is to hold things together until AI or genetic engineering come along, because those are the last problems?
An interesting article- since I was never going to vote Trump anyway, I can’t really comment on how effective the content is.
Since I see scattered commentary about the courts- and since that aspect is a lynchpin of Clinton’s appeal to the Sanders constituency- I wanted to offer my thoughts on that. I’m not really qualified to have an opinion, but thankfully neither are any of the other people who have to have one anyway, so I’ll take that as leave.
1) ‘Associate Justice Obama’ – There’s really no particular reason that Clinton would nominate Obama, and I’m not aware of any statements which suggest that she would. As for the currently-open seat, my suspicion is that if Clinton wins or is about to win, the Senate will suddenly discover that the will of the electorate was inside us all along and confirm Judge Garland. I could be wrong about that, but that’s the obvious move.
2) ‘Destroying the Constitution’ – It is true that Democratic nominees are less likely to be as originalist as Republican nominees. But I’ve never met an ‘originalist’ or a ‘living constitutionalist’ (although it’s clear from old cases that at least the latter did exist), but instead people who are informed to greater or lesser extent by both of those philosophies. And here’s what I note; no matter what high concepts of judicial interpretation a judge holds, they ultimately seem to vote their heart. Sure, every judge issues the occasional ‘I don’t think it’s right to burn the American flag but this is the promise of freedom in America’ opinion, but mostly judges use the law to justify their opinion, not develop it.* And if THAT sounds terrible, I don’t know what to tell you because it was ever thus.
3) ‘Free speech’ – Neither candidate will manage to destroy free speech. Even if Trump throws away his Heritage-approved list, I have no reason to believe he’ll be adept at finding judges who will both get through the Senate AND secretly loathe the foundation of American freedom. It’s possible that Clinton will have the nominees to narrow the holding in Citizens United, so I guess if that’s your biggest concern I can’t allay your fears.
I prefer a Clinton court because I’d like to avoid a challenge to Obergefell, I don’t want to see Equal Protection narrowed, and I think she’s marginally more likely to appoint justices who aren’t too hostile to criminal rights. I’m a little concerned that they’ll narrow second amendment rights, but them’s the breaks. I think Citizens United was correctly decided on the law, but in effect has served to do nothing but escalate spending to no apparent benefit to anybody.
*I want to note here that I am referring exclusively to policy cases like ‘Can the government imprison you for speaking out against draft dodging’ or ‘Is it constitutional not to permit same-sex marriage’, not the vast majority of cases like ‘Do we have jurisdiction here’ or ‘Has the appellant sufficiently alleged a violation under Title One Bajillion’. There’s a reason that most cases don’t have dissents- whether or not a judge feels like a party should have standing, if they think the law is against the party they won’t invent it.
Hi Scott, is there any specific reason why some of my comments don’t show up?
You are almost certainly hitting the longstanding wordfilter, which bans a number of words including e.g. neo-reactionary. If you posted a lot of links it is possible you are hitting the spam filter instead.
I actually had the site break for me a few days ago. It wasn’t a wordfilter problem – I was able to post exactly the comment I wanted after a while, but I was getting timeouts (IIRC) for about ten minutes before I managed it.
EDIT:
Though in vV_Vv’s case it was obviously the filter.
[Ants]
EDIT:
Found the banned word. Would it be possible to have a complete list of banned words so one can avoid using them?
“Scott Aaronson, who worries that he will one day live in a nuclear hellscape where his children ask him “Daddy, why didn’t you blog about Trump?””
Concerns about war with a nuclear power is why I ultimately decided that war-hawk Hillary Clinton is more dangerous than Russophile Donald Trump. Quoting Peter Hitchens:
“I lived through the Cold War and never believed we were in real danger. But I genuinely tremble at the thought of Mrs Clinton in the White House. She appears to have learned nothing from the failed interventions of the past 30 years, and scorns Barack Obama’s praiseworthy motto: ‘Don’t do stupid stuff.’”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3805989/The-world-s-fixated-Trump-Hillary-drag-catastrophic-war-writes-PETER-HITCHENS-America.html
If “politics is the mind-killer”– and I see no reason to believe otherwise– then it scarcely matters what sort of mind you had before it got killed. When it comes to politics, we’re all Borderers of one sort or another.
This is an intellectual appeal to well-off intellectuals, and both you and they, by and large, aren’t feeling any of the discomforts your argument is ultimately demanding other people continue to put up with.
Clinton -is- a vote for a status quo that has gone on since the first Bush administration. Entirely. And since your life is comfortable, this looks like a good thing to you.
Thing is, though, the longer this goes on, the angrier the people you’re ignoring are getting. They’re angry enough to want Trump this election. What kind of candidate would four more years of anger get you?
ETA:
Which is to say, you’re ignoring all the structural problems that make Trump a viable candidate in the first place given the rhetoric he’s employing, treating him as a one-off fluke.
The zeitgeist of the era is already underway. I don’t see a resurgence of SJW nonsense – that zeitgeist is over and dying, bleeding out from self-inflicted wounds. You’re fighting yesterday’s war. Stop it, and pay attention to the war that’s beginning.
The biggest risk right now isn’t a resurgence of SJW rhetoric. It’s bottling this anger up even longer, until whatever bottle you employ can’t take the pressure anymore.
Yes, I think many of the hysterical calls to defeat Trump at any cost are predicated on an assumption that he is a one-off, uniquely bad candidate not likely to appear again for decades, and that, if he loses, the GOP will have to, for some reason, become more reasonable.
Yet I see absolutely no reason to expect that the angry people supporting him now will get anything but angrier over the 4-8 years of Hillary presidency. Whom will they support next time?
I don’t think a farther right candidate than Trump would necessarily be worse. Would a farther right candidate necessarily share his stance on libel laws, opening fire on people who make rude gestures, prisoners of war, torture, killing the families of terrorists, or wanting to execute whistleblowers? I’d be willing to roll the dice on getting a candidate who is farther to the right, but less insane.
Oh, and where was all the anti-establishment outrage when we could have had Ron Paul over Romney?
Most of the anti-establishment outrage has been building since the 2012 election, in part in regard to the shenanigans pulled by the Democrats for the 2012 elections. The Benghazi and IRS revelations are all because of the 2012 elections.
The perception from the right is that the Democrats played foul to win in 2012, and the Republican establishment rolled over for it. Then the Republican establishment tried to push Jeb in 2016, and that was the final straw.
I think what made Hillary a uniquely bad Democratic candidate is the perception from the right that as far as the law goes, she can ignore the laws with impunity even beyond what we normally grant Democratic politicians. From the view from the right, she’s gotten away with an awful lot, and there’s no reason to believe she’s going to suddenly become honest as president.
What we need is an independent counsel as a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’ to do a bipartisan housecleaning of the worst of the dirty laundry and corruption. That would at least placate most of the right. Any Democrat without the Clinton baggage could have probably pulled it off from the perspective of the right; the problem is, if there really is anything to cover up, the Democratic establishment would have fought against it tooth and nail.
I used to think that the real problem will be in 2018/2020, when we get the inevitable politicians who embrace white nationalism and trade protectionism without being cartoonish buffoons.
But I think much of Trump’s appeal *is* the buffoonery; the base is explicitly anti-intellectual, and having had a taste of the real thing the base isn’t going to be satisfied with faux anti-intellectuals in the W mold.
Give it 8 more years along a few of the more negative possible trajectories and they won’t be supporting a candidate at all, they will be supporting an overthrow of democracy.
If democracy usurps the republic, yes.
The Good King was supported by the people because he was just and fair. After his death, the bitter Queen wants to enslave the people, but cannot for they are too many. So she opens the castle gates and lets in mercenaries who outnumber the people and enslave them.
That is the future with Clinton. She gives amnesty to the 15-30 million illegals (it’s been “11 million” for 20 years now), Texas flips blue, we never see another Republican president, and the Blue Tribe votes to enslave the Red Tribe. The end.
I think the idea is that the Republicans decided to give the angry Trump crowd a shot, but if it doesn’t work, they’ll go back to the establishment candidates that most strategists said they should have gone with in the first place. The conventional wisdom is that Trump’s base is too small to win an election on its own, and so far from the mainstream that appealing to them means losing the moderates.
Also, as the saying goes, demographics are destiny. Trump’s base is likely going to shrink – he’s appealing to people who want the Good Old Days back, and the Good Old Days get farther away every year. Meanwhile, minority populations are growing. So again, the conventional wisdom is that the Republicans should move left to try and win over new supporters, rather than cling to their shrinking base.
(This was the conclusion of the Republican postmortem in 2012. Apparently nobody listened.)
If Trump fails, and the Republicans try the same strategy again in 2020, the Democrats aren’t going to say “Gosh, we’d better do something to appease to the people who hate our guts and will never vote for us,” they’re going to shrug and say “Your funeral.”
The first coherent article I’ve read justifying voting for Clinton. I don’t agree with your analysis of the dollar “value” of a vote, but other than that, something to think about. Excellent as always.
I’m in New York, so my vote won’t change a damn thing, and I was going to vote for (sigh) Stein anyway, but maybe I’ll change it to Johnson for shits and giggles. So you didn’t convince me to vote for Clinton (I would never vote for Trump). What you did change, though – and I think this is a big deal – is that I’m nowhere near as annoyed and impatient with people backing Clinton to the hilt, and maybe I can learn to tolerate my friends who are essentially accusing me of treason for not being a Clinton supporter. I’m near losing a very close friend over this, and it’s insanity. A story for another time.
You make a strong argument that voting for Trump doesn’t advance the anti-elitist, anti-PC cause, and I agree with you that that is what animates most Trump supporters (it’s the reason every Trump supporter I know cites). The big hole there, though, is the one that always rears its head when people argue against voting against the status quo. It’s the one that goes like this:
Sure, Mr. Voter, I understand that you have a serious, important concern that hasn’t been addressed by anyone in politics for decades – more, that politicians and elites have insulted and belittled you for years for even bringing it up. And now there’s someone to address it. But he’s the wrong person. Just keep waiting, and I promise we’ll get around to you eventually.
It’s not compelling.
There’s a bigger hole.
If he doesn’t actually advance the anti-elitist, anti-PC cause – maybe he’ll defuse it. Given what the country looks like right now, a candidate who discredits the anti-elitist, anti-PC cause might be necessary.
I think he’s going to win; I’m not out to convince anybody to vote for him, because honestly I don’t think it will matter. Even if he loses, the public expectations of the president right now are unachievable outside of a miracle; something is going to have to crack soon.
But I don’t think any of this hand-wringing does any good, either, it just gets in the way of seeing clearly.
I find it interesting that Scott thinks that only disgruntled Hillary voters are going to switch to Johnson. In a swing state, people aren’t that sure of Trump either. I’d encourage all swing state voters to vote for Johnson and throw the election to the House.
The House is Republican-controlled, and they’re almost certainly going to give the election to the Republican candidate.
I suppose if you want Johnson elected, that’s the most likely route, but I would say this is far more likely to get you a Trump victory than a Johnson or Hillary victory.
Sure. But Johnson’s chance of winning the election straight up are nil, and lots of mainstream Republican politicians seem appalled at Trump. I’d say throwing it to the House increases Johnson’s chances.
Personally, I’m excited at the thought of a President with a surname shared by two previous (unrelated) Presidents. That would be a New Thing. And for the three to be from three different parties is icing on the cake.
I know, I won’t hold my breath.
They were both actually pretty terrible presidents.
Oh yeah, no question there. So a chance to redeem the name! Another plus!
Where are you getting your “chance of winning” info? I’ve been using electionbettingodds.com
It’s the variance issue that really clinches it for me. I think Hillary will make the country about 3% worse+-1.5%, but I’d put trump at 3% better +- 15%. A big chance he’ll mess up a lot of stuff. I can’t vote for Hillary though, so it’s either Johnson or spoil the ballot.
Responding specifically to Section I, every “odds of changing outcome” analysis I’ve seen shares the same flaw. All of them compute the likelihood of balanced votes, and then assert that one more voter would tip the scales.
In 2000, we saw the closest-to-tied election in modern history. And we saw that count-recount errors in a single state are in the hundreds or thousands of votes. And that the rules of recounting are determined by partisan election officials. And that the entire event can be scrapped by a Supreme Court decision. So in the event of a genuinely tied election, marginal votes don’t change anything, because the decision isn’t going to turn on a one-vote-accurate count.
If we want to rescue a single voter expected value calculation, we have to push back a level to the odds of one vote tipping an election out of decision by bureaucracy. This is a way harder question, shaped by the officialdom of your district and a heap problem where there’s no clear cutoff.
Even ignoring that fuzziness, it should still be clear that this diminishes the value of voting. If my marginal vote breaks a tie, or (say I switch candidates) flips the election, I collect the whole value of that change. But if my marginal vote is simply freeing the winning candidate from trial-by-bureaucracy, I collect only the gap between “winning by votes, likely to win recount” and “winning by votes”. Say that the system isn’t totally random, and the leading candidate has a 2/3 chance to win the recount. That alone means cuts 66% out of my EV for voting.
If we add back in the marginal probabilities of triggering legal wrangling, things get even worse. It’s a heap problem, and so there’s no clear cutoff that I can “capture”. I can at best slightly alter the odds of a recount triggering, producing another massive decrease in the EV of my vote. I can’t compute this number, but your odds of causing an election-changing recount are low, and lower still outside of swing states.
So I endorse voting (for assorted reasons), and I endorse voting for not-Trump. But I think the monetary calculation here is too high by 1-2 orders of magnitude.
Why would anyone listen to a manipulative AI?
I’m very confused by where you located the comment – I didn’t mention an AI of any kind.
If you’re talking about the arbitrarily-persuasive AI I cited in a different thread, though, my answer is you wouldn’t.
You are low variance. So am I. But I don’t think there is any low variance path out here.
Looking at the broader global context, Trump isn’t a fluke. Trump-esque / right-wing populist politicians are rising everywhere. Some of them are more effective politicians than others.
So why should we expect that if Hillary Clinton, a candidate far, far worse than Obama across several axises, is elected, that this rising tide will recede?
I personally don’t expect that at all. I think it’s _much_ more likely that a Trump failure will be followed in 2020 by a version of Trump who’s much more skilled at selling his America-First, Nationalist message. Much more likely. And that will be, by nature, a high variance event. Perhaps even much higher variance, if he/she is a more skilled and focused politician than the erratic blowhard Trump.
Here’s the flat reality as I see it. The Great Depression and World War 2 are getting to be a long, long time ago. Humanity’s memory isn’t so long. Most of our creaky institutions were forged in those fires. The basic resource those institutions feed on, Trust, is utterly collapsing.
Our elites are products of the systems largely forged in the Great Depression and World War 2. So are you. So am I. But the moral fabric of those elites is in tatters. And consequently trust in those elites is in tatters.
I mean, think about this. The Iraq War was an utterly discrediting debacle. To be only slightly hyperbolic, the small towns of America filled with Hillary Clinton’s deplorables are stuffed with maimed people who fought in that mistake of a war. And our government is still full of the same damn people who voted for it, and can barely bring themselves to say oops.
The 2008 financial crisis was recognized as the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. It hit the country in uneven ways, and the country has recovered in uneven ways, but there are still many, many people who’s lives have been badly damaged by the whole process. And our government is still full of the same damn people who supported policies that led to it.
There should have been a massive, high variance reckoning to this fact. But I think that the election of Obama, who was personally mostly untainted by both of these debacles, largely put off that reckoning. If Obama wasn’t nearly as unifying as his original rhetoric had suggested he wanted to be, I think there’s a case to be made that he was unifying enough to paper over the Iraq War and the 2008 Financial Crisis, at least for a time.
But that time is over. Unlike Obama, Hilary Clinton (and her husband) have their fingerprints all over nearly EVERYTHING that has transpired since the collapse of the Berlin wall. Almost everything that people hate about the bipartisan moral decay of our elite class, the Clinton’s exhibit in spades.
There will be a reckoning. Actions have consequences. America’s post Cold War track record, especially in relation to its own citizens, has been one long string of failures, one long downward glide. And there have been no meaningful consequences for our elite class.
I’m not saying Trump wouldn’t be a disaster. But I think you are FAR too sanguine about what a Hillary Clinton presidency actually means, in terms of variance and risk. We are getting very far from the end of the Great Depression and World War 2.
Hillary admitted she was wrong about Iraq in her most recent book. Trump still can’t even admit that he was wrong on it at all. The fact that he was wrong on it as a guest on Howard Stern while she was wrong on it as a US Senator, while significant in terms of moral culpability, isn’t significant in terms of evaluating their foresight.
It took Trump days to change his mind about the war. For Her, it took far more than eight years. I’ll take the guy with quicker judgment, thanks.
“There’s a fundamental problem, which is that about 30% of the US population is Borderers who are mostly not very smart, mostly not involved in US intellectual life, but form the biggest and most solid voting bloc in the country. […] I don’t know how to solve this. But there have been previous incarnations of American conservatism that have been better at dealing with the problem than this one, and maybe if Trumpism gets decisively defeated it will encourage people to work on the problem.”
A lot of very influential people share your sense that the percentage of Borderers in the United States is problematic, and whatever their cited reasons, the mainstream of both “conservatism” and “liberalism” in this country have agreed (at least until quite recently) on what has been seen by many as a solution: altering the demographic makeup of the US until they are no longer so significant a political force.
The thing is, “conservatism” and “liberalism” mean little when taken as abstractions divorced from any particular set of cultural, familial, or historical interests. You point out that conservatism’s best parts are the ones that urge us not to throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to currently existing institutions–but surely we do not apply this logic equally to every possible world of institutions. Would you tell an anti-regime activist in Germany circa 1936 that he should take heed of those voices which tell him to preserve existing institutions rather than those calling for their overthrow? Somehow I think that’s a situation in which you’d be more likely to side with the incendiarists, though perhaps I’m wrong.
Now one of the ways previous iterations of American political action dealt with the “problem” of the Borderers was by giving them a sense that they had a place within a broadly post-European demographic cohort and a purpose within the logic of economic life–in other words, by not treating their existence as though it were a problem. People in general, and perhaps especially Borderers, don’t tend to take very kindly to that sort of existential condescension.
The problem with the Borderer-theory is that it does not explain e. g. Brexit or Marine Le Penn. And maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe US-style new conservatism and European-style new conservatism are completely different phenomena. However, then we have to discuss why the similarities are coincidence.
I think it explains it perfectly, sick of the existential condescension, they’ve decide that they will no longer “play along” and will instead look to their own.
I don’t know much about France, but the sentiment that England is divided into London and not-London is not all that different from America’s dichotomy of the coasts and flyover country.
Reavers are exactly the kind of people who voted for Brexit without exception. The defining principle of Border Reaver-ism is opposition to annoying strangers.
Since this has been a recurring theme in several clapback posts, I want to address the “vulgar dove” assertion that Hillary is worse than Trump because she will provoke Russia into global thermonuclear war. This is practically an article of faith among paleos of various stripes and has led to some of my formerly favorite libertarian authors turning into unreadable Trump-bots and excusing all manner of fascist horseshit on the certainty that Trump is Gandhi and Hillary Genghis Khan, so I think it deserves to be put under a microscope.
Item: Hillary, for (slightly) better and (mostly) worse, is a known quantity, both personally and philosophically. She had stints in the Senate and at SecState and also represents a strain of small-scale liberal interventionism that dates back at least to Truman. This philosophy has many flaws and has resulted in great suffering in places such as Vietnam and Iraq. It has not, however, led to extinction, despite its sheer ubiquity at the highest positions of the diplomatic and military bureaucracy during the highest of Cold War tensions, when such outcomes were much more likely. The variance in outcome is, while probably slightly negative, therefore much narrower than Trump’s.
Item: Trump’s nationalism, by contrast, has virtually no precedent in America. Nixon at his most realpolitik never openly questioned the viability of NATO as an alliance. Thus, I don’t think you can seriously dispute that the variance in possible outcomes is much wider than it is with Clinton. Perhaps Trump’s coziness with Putin would augur a new era of peace. Perhaps it’s equally possible that Trump’s inconsistent signaling leads Putin to overplay his hand and force a disastrous response. I described this scenario in an earlier open thread here. At the very least I don’t think it is inherently obvious that getting chummy with Russia is an unquestionable route to lower x-risk, given Putin’s willingness to play the parabolic scorpion to our parabolic frog (as shown by the many, many failed ceasefires in Ukraine and Syria which seem to have basically been a method for Russia to use our good faith to buy time to rearm and resupply before promptly breaking the ceasefire via proxy).
Item: Trump’s non-intervention instincts, such as they are, manifest exclusively in hindsight. The sum total of his pre-war statements on Iraq amount to “I guess so” and “either do it or don’t do it.” He was even more stridently wrong about Libya. This is not the voice of a principled dove, this is the voice of someone who is ignorant and unsure. He has also repeatedly stated his intention to rely on advisors, where his stable is thick with career hawks, starting with Mike Pence and continuing on through Rudy Giuliani, John Bolton, James Woolsey, etc. 16 years ago we also elected a Presidential candidate who made vague promises about a “humble” foreign policy while also picking a hawkish VP, a hawkish stable of advisors, and promising to govern in the style of a CEO relying on advice from his experts. Did that result in a new era of peace?
Item: Perhaps I overstated the case earlier that Trump’s policy has no precedent in America. It might be more accurate to say that it has no precedent in the nuclear era. With his disregard for international law, his zero-sum view of global power, and his advocacy of war and mutual defense treaties primarily as an avenue to generate revenue, he much more closely represents the old-school imperialism that America briefly flirted with in the 19th Century through conflicts with Mexico and Spain. This nationalism also seems to parallel Russia’s view of the world as well. The problem is, of course, that Russia and America sharing this goal will inevitably lead to conflicts. Suppose he wants to “take the oil” in Iraq and Syria. That will not only make an enemy of ISIS, but it will also make an enemy of the “legitimate” governments in Iraq and Syria, since they view that oil as rightfully theirs. But Syria’s “legitimate” government is a Russian client and Iraq’s also flirts with that orbit because it is dominated by pro-Iranian Shia factions. Suddenly we’re in conflict, again, only over different (and far less reconcilable) principles.
I’ll edit more objections as I think of them, but this view definitely deserves more pushback among libertarians, if nothing else. Being a principled American anti-imperialist does not and should not amount to excusing and cheering Russian imperialism.
“Nixon at his most realpolitik never openly questioned the viability of NATO as an alliance.”
-Because NATO actually had a purpose then other than helping Muslim terrorists. BTW, Nixon was crazy cozy with the USSR.
“He was even more stridently wrong about Libya.”
-Nope. He said to take the oil at the time, and that we don’t know who the rebels are. Like it or not, US policy towards Libya was not anywhere near fully Trumpian.
“Perhaps it’s equally possible that Trump’s inconsistent signaling leads Putin to overplay his hand and force a disastrous response.”
-Where and why? Russia acts aggressively to its neighbors only when provoked. Such provocations would be much more likely With Her.
“as shown by the many, many failed ceasefires in Ukraine and Syria which seem to have basically been a method for Russia to use our good faith to buy time to rearm and resupply before promptly breaking the ceasefire via proxy”
-Are we living in the same universe? The responsibility for both these ceasefire collapses cannot, especially in SY, be put solely on Russia’s feet.
“He has also repeatedly stated his intention to rely on advisors, where his stable is thick with career hawks, starting with Mike Pence”
-Who criticized the Libya intervention at the time, unlike Liddle Marco.
“Did that result in a new era of peace?”
-Gore supported the regime change policy in Iraq, as well. And Trump was and is the anti-Bush of this campaign, literally. He called for Bush’s impeachment.
“Suddenly we’re in conflict, again.”
-They’ll figure it out.
Having Christie, Giuliani, and Bolton as advisors is worrisome; I admit. But Her advisors are, so far as I can tell, a mixed bag, with some being just as incompetent.
I really dislike CX-style point-by-points, but okay. I will combine these when possible when I feel they can be addressed by the same argument.
NATO’s purpose is to dissuade Russian aggression, which has been a historical constant for most of living memory. You’d need to do a lot more work than bald assertion to convince me that Russia acts aggressively only when provoked, or doesn’t break ceasefires whenever convenient (I suppose the nonexistent ISIS air force bombed that UN aid convoy last week?)
The pro-Russia view of Ukraine, for instance, depends on some hand-waving equivalency argument between propaganda and money (which the US gave to Euromaidan) and actual soldiers storming parliaments and seizing chunks of territory (the Russian response to same). It also elides the repeated instances of post-Soviet Russia’s willingness to carve out Potemkin states such as Transnistria, South Ossetia, etc., out of former clients who show too much friendliness to the West (a sort of geopolitical isolated demand for rigor, given Russia’s crushing of Chechnya).
It is easy to rely on whataboutism and say, as Russian advocates often do, “well, America does the same thing.” But consistent opposition to imperialism demands that one not whitewash these events any more than they would whitewash America’s interventions in the Middle East. And a mutual defense treaty such as NATO does not, no matter how much one gyrates, amount to imperialism. I also don’t follow the tossed-off implication that NATO cultivates terrorism, given that the sole invocation of Article 5 has been to destroy the Taliban/al-Qaeda. We can debate the wisdom of this intervention, or the manner of its execution, but I don’t think we can debate the purpose.
My contention was that he was stridently wrong about Libya, not that he advocated a policy identical to that pursued by the US. He said, and I quote: “We should stop this guy which would be very easy and very quick. We could do it surgically, stop him from doing it and save these lives.” This proved to be wrong, for the same reason it was wrong in Iraq; the country descended into civil war.
He also said, again quoting: “Frankly I would go in, I would take the oil — and stop this baby stuff. … I would go in and take the oil and I’d clean up everything.” As this is a counterfactual, we can’t evaluate its wrongness. What we can say is it flatly contradicts his earlier assertion that intervention in Libya should be surgical and quick. “The oil” is not sitting there in barrels for us to grab-and-go. It would require ongoing protection of the entire supply chain from the rigs at the inland petroleum deposits to the pipelines stretching across the desert to the major coastal refineries and ports such as Brega and Zawiyah.
Even if we put the onus on a puppet Libyan government to meet these terms via contribution of revenue rather than direct collection, we would still have to prop up such a government against the inevitable Islamist and nationalist rebels who would see such a deal as a humiliating sellout that merely exchanged a petty, direct tyrant for a superpower proxy tyrant.
Again, this goes to hindsight. So what if Trump has criticized Bush? Everyone has criticized Bush. Bush as a candidate criticized Clinton and Gore’s foreign policy as too hawkish. That hindsight didn’t stop his advisors from steering him into the arms of neoconservatism. Perhaps Gore would have invaded Iraq too, perhaps not. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is whether we can estimate with any certainty that Trump would avoid falling into the same trap Bush did. I have not yet seen evidence of Trump criticizing an intervention with foresight rather than hindsight.
This is essentially the Universal Trump Argument, and it’s precisely what Scott (correctly) criticizes above in his analogy to Marx and Hegel.
“I suppose the nonexistent ISIS air force bombed that UN aid convoy last week?”
-A very real ISIS airforce bombed a Syrian Army base in the Deir-ez-Zor pocket a week or so ago. Any bombing on the UN convoy was either a mistake or was done by the US.
“a sort of geopolitical isolated demand for rigor,”
-All national geopolitical demands for rigor are, by nature, isolated.
“given that the sole invocation of Article 5 has been to destroy the Taliban/al-Qaeda”
-If someone says something, it’s by no means necessarily true.
“This proved to be wrong, for the same reason it was wrong in Iraq; the country descended into civil war.”
-No; this proved to be right. The intervention took a few months, the NATO bombing killed fewer than 100 civilians, Libya quickly established a democratic government, and the Americans were greeted as liberators. Everybody neglects these aspects of the intervention, as it serves nobody’s political purposes.
“we would still have to prop up such a government against the inevitable Islamist and nationalist rebels who would see such a deal as a humiliating sellout that merely exchanged a petty, direct tyrant for a superpower proxy tyrant.”
-Libya had, at its peak, a population smaller than that of NYC. Keeping it secure could have been easy.
“Everyone has criticized Bush.”
-No presidential candidate this year criticized Bush anywhere near as hard as Trump.
“I have not yet seen evidence of Trump criticizing an intervention with foresight rather than hindsight.”
-Syria airstrikes trial balloon, August 2013.
“They’ll figure it out” is a MUCH more often-used magic asterisk by Clintonistas than Trump supporters. Just look at our host’s post. Magic asterisks abound.
And, in any case, Trump’s a deal-maker. He and Putin will negotiate control over the Syrian oil. Clinton has negotiated some deals as Secretary of State, but Her Syria policy is antithetical to U.S. interests, so the US won’t even get a drop of oil.
That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, Ambassador Churkin.
Let’s assume for the moment that Trump’s opposition to airstrikes in 2013 was a correct judgment. At some point in the last three years, Trump changed his mind and now supports not just increasing the intensity of aistrikes, but a five-digit occupying force and a “plunder the oil” policy which would necessitate the same ongoing support against rebels as it would have in Libya. So now the debate is no longer over the wisdom of intervention, but the wisdom of particular strategies for intervention. This strikes me as a substantial pullback from the dovish case for Trump.
Furthermore, Syria is not the oil bonanza that you or Trump imagine it to be. In 2011, their oil revenues amounted to just under $4b. Let’s make the wildly optimistic assumption that their revenues can immediately return to that level despite the drop in prices and the damage to infrastructure and the likelihood of ongoing sabotage by rebels. Let’s make the even more wild assumption that Trump’s Master Persuader filter gets us 50% of that, or $2b a year, leaving Russia and the Syrian government to split the rest. There is no sane estimate for the costs of a full-scale intervention that does not dwarf these costs. Our current, half-assed intervention against ISIS cost 3x that amount in a span of 18 months, and it hasn’t proven sufficient to defeat ISIS at all, let alone ISIS plus the mega-coalition of other Sunni and Kurd groups who would also turn on us if we switched to backing Assad.
Thus, not only does Trump’s stance fail on anti-imperialist grounds, it also fails based strictly on national interest grounds.
That statements do not always match actions is true generally. What is the evidence it is true in this case specifically? How has NATO acted to help Muslim terrorists, as you assert?
I quote your first reply in this thread:
Well, which?
“and now supports not just increasing the intensity of aistrikes,”
-He said “bomb the shit out of ISIS”, not “bomb the shit out of the Syrian government”.
“Furthermore, Syria is not the oil bonanza that you or Trump imagine it to be.”
-I never said it was. The IS has to be defeated somehow, and it’s only for the best the U.S. gets some of the oil it captures.
Libya and Iraq definitely can be made oil bonanzas, though.
“How has NATO acted to help Muslim terrorists, as you assert?”
-Every single major intervention NATO has done since the fall of the USSR has helped Muslim terrorists.
-Both. One is 2011-12, the other is 2014-today.
Your early firstie comment said, in part, “a military action that creates an endless civil war after overthrowing a government.” This could only be referring to Odyssey Dawn. Your second comment to me said, in part, “The intervention took a few months, the NATO bombing killed fewer than 100 civilians, ” which could also only be referring to Odyssey Dawn.
Which of these do you claim refers to the current stage of the civil war? Because it looks to me like you’re clearly arguing in bad faith and just trying to refute everything without regard to internal contradiction and I’m disinclined to continue any other part of the argument unless you can show how your claims square with each other.
Ah, you were asking which military action. In that case, yes, I was referring to Odyssey Dawn in the case of both.
“Which of these do you claim refers to the current stage of the civil war?”
-What do you mean?
By “leave behind”, I mean at the end of the U.S. presidential administration conducting the intervention.
“unless you can show how your claims square with each other.”
-I’ll be glad to do so.
consistent opposition to imperialism
I want effectiveness out of my anti-imperialism, not some abstraction that you have named “consistency”. The idea is to stop the bombs from falling, not winning a signaling contest.
If minimizing the crimes, real or imagined, of the people our imperialists try gin up as targets can grit the gears, than so be it.
This is a defensible position only if the crimes do not themselves constitute falling bombs.
I don’t oppose Trump because I wish to win a signaling contest. I oppose him because he will not turn away from imperialism. He will simply return it to its roots. Feverish Deus Vult dreams of Putin and Trump teaming up to prop up a series of dictators and stomp the Muslim world into submission are neither morally tolerable nor pragmatically sustainable.
This is a defensible position only if the crimes do not themselves constitute falling bombs.
I don’t see how that changes anything. I am an American citizen whose only influence, and hence responsibility,(however miniscule) is over American government. I’m not going to start hauling water for the killers I have some remote chance of maybe slowing down just because some other killers somewhere else happen to exist.
Which is why I have repeatedly pointed out that Trump’s plan is not anti-imperialist. He will not stop dropping the bombs. He might (if we dare to take him at his word) start dropping them on different people, and this change in policy will have unpredictable and highly variable consequences. That falls far short of making him the obvious choice for doves.
I feel it’s important to reiterate that I’m making the case against “vote for Trump because war is bad.” I readily admit that Hillary Clinton is also a warmonger. My point is that the difference between them on this point is not as dramatic as Trump supporters would like to pretend, which means either a lesser-evil vote on other, domestic issues, or a third-party / write-in / abstention if you view anti-imperialism as overriding any domestic concerns.
I’m standing up for whitewashing, not for Trump. Feel free to continue not voting Trump.
“Nixon at his most realpolitik never openly questioned the viability of NATO as an alliance.”
Yes, but that’s because the Cold War alliances were in America’s national interests. The answer to why we did anything was “Because we are busy fighting a global war against Communism, and we’d much rather have Europe on our side than theirs”.
It’s becoming increasingly unclear that in a post-Cold War world (especially in about 5 years when the Russian birth rate collapse post-Communism starts hitting their 25-30 cohort in a big way) that continuing to effectively occupy Europe at extortionate cost is a net gain to America.
Especially when our “allies” do things like go home at 5:00 or not have enough tanks or…
And once Russia is not only no longer the USSR, but no longer a functional horde AT ALL… at that point, why bother?
Europe has threats, but they’re generally not the sort of threats that you fight with armies. So what do we gain from constantly occupying them?
/This argument was made in a much better way in “The Accidental Superpower”, and I’d love to see what Scott thinks of that book at some point.
You’re missing a rather large and risky variable in this calculation. As long as Russia sits on a reserve of 5,000 nuclear warheads, their relative weakness in terms of manpower or economics is only a marginal drain on NATO’s cost-benefit, which is primarily a hedge against nuclear war.
One could even make the argument that NATO becomes more important, as Russia’s inability to prevail in a conventional conflict (indicated by their slog in Ukraine) leaves nukes as the only trump card available to back up the salami tactics demonstrated in Ukraine and Georgia.
Why would withdrawing be more likely to trigger a nuclear war than staying?
The ceasefires in both Ukraine and Syria have invariably aided Ukraine and the Syrian rebels. After the encircelements at both Ilovaysk and then at Debaltseve, the Ukrainian front had been smashed, with only last-minute diplomatic intervention by the West preventing easy major advances by the Novorossiyan Armed Forces.
The ceasefires in Syria have likewise usually been signed in the aftermath of regime successes, and been invariably broken by the rebels themselves, on account of the “moderate rebels” containing radical factions which are uninterested in any kind of negotiated settlement.
How exactly was he wrong about Libya? You’re aware the country has splintered into two, with numerous factions (one of them Islamic State) vying for control?
In the 19th century the US focused on its own hemisphere, where Russia’s interests are next to zero. By far the single most biggest aggravating factor in US – Russian relations is the expansion of Atlantic security structures into the territories of the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire, against the advice of men such as Henry Kissinger and George Kennan. So long as Trump puts a stop to that, US – Russian relations will become much better.
The current Syria – Russia relationship is a very recent development and not a particularly strong one. Before the war, Assad had more foreign visits to Paris than Moscow. If the US agrees to stay out of Eurasia, I suspect Putin will be fine with reciprocating in kind on the Middle East (of course it helps that Trump has no messianic wish to topple secular dictators for make benefit of bearded Wahhabis funded by the same people as the Clinton Foundation’s biggest foreign donors).
I was not following developments in Ukraine as closely as I am in Syria, so I will concede your point pending further inquiry I don’t have time for at present. But the Assad regime is most certainly on the back foot; the most recent ceasefire came after a significant rebel victory in Aleppo by breaking the siege and linking up with outside forces at Ramouseh.
I am very aware of this. Are you aware of Trump’s comments about the Libyan intervention in 2011? “We should stop this guy which would be very easy and very quick. We could do it surgically, stop him from doing it and save these lives.”
Again, Trump is a perfect dove in hindsight. In the moment, not so much.
You will get no disagreement from me that NATO expansion is an unwise policy. I would not support further enlargement. But with regard to the 2004 round of expansions, that cake cannot be un-baked, and Trump should not be making rumblings about leaving them to twist. I think this is at least equally unwise, and probably worse because it leads to ambiguity in a situation where there should be absolutely none.
I haven’t been following Syria as closely as Ukraine, but from what I’ve read on /r/syriancivilwar the temporary relief of the Aleppo cauldron was only enabled by the mobilization of thousands of fighters from as far off as Idlib and involved very heavy casualties.
Having a ceasefire while that Ramouseh corridor was in effect was I would imagine a net negative for the SAA since the Aleppo pocket could be resupplied during that time whereas, otherwise it would have been more difficult due to SAA artillery bombardments along that route.
Unfortunately no, I wasn’t, thanks for bringing that to my attention.
Trump has the right anti-neocon instincts but they seem to require some amount of thought to kick in. That said, I still consider that to be a better deal than being a liberal-interventionist-neocon-in-all-but-name.
It’s interesting, I didn’t think my opinions had changed much in the past couple of years, But this the exact argument I would have made last year and now I’m really leading the opposite way.
Scott your entire argument stems from the idea that trump, being high variance, could pose a potentially existential risk to human civilization and thus even the corrupt “turd sandwich” of Hillary would be better.
The problem is no Other elections in the world work this way. The US federal government has been high jacked by the executive and in-turn high jacked by the most corrupt, but stable, factions of the two parties.
Trump is not an existential risk. Every democracy deals with numerous Trumps every decade or so. (Justin Trudeau, Rob ford, Nigel farage, Barrack Obama, Marine Le Pen, Kevin O’leary) people who can get into power on a wave of identity, confidence projection, and rejection of the status quo. This is normal for democracy. And in the US (where complete massacre election (where the for me governing patty is reduced to 2 seats) never happen) we should expect it to be doubly common since there’s no other way to punish the insiders at the ballot box.
Trump Is not an existential threat. THE US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT.
For the same reason that superman has to die, the US government has to be broken up. It is fundamentally dangerous to have that much power concentrated in the hands of one person.
I support trump (actually Johnson then trump, but im a foreigner so cant vote anyway) because A. he’s not likely at all to start a war with Putin (only scenario where thousands of bombs fly) and B. He’s most likely to permanently damage the authority, legitimacy and power of the US federal government.
The US prez is the only person who can kill a freedom for everyone everywhere (see NSA (executive branch) and right to privacy).
The position needs to die and Trumps a solid try.
They’re not hard to hold together at all if you’re familiar with the backstory of Gulf War I.
On global warming: The science is settled. Global warming would be a nuisance but would not bring the apocalypse.
On Borderers: Back in the days of Andrew Jackson and William Jennings Bryan, weren’t they the backbone of the Left?
On immigrants: We might get more deregulation with more immigration.
Please let me know, with specific quotes, what part of that eight-year-old summary you believe equates to “the science is settled.”
Or are you just engaging in some sarcastic red-tribe signaling?
Red-tribe? You mean gray or violet.
Specifically, I was referring to the estimate of $43/tC from the IPCC. (I’m somewhat less critical of the IPCC than the red tribe, partly because their actual estimates are more moderate than the blue-tribe claims.)
I can’t really consider Jackson left-wing (certainly not in a modern sense, he would be close to Cruz in policy preferences). Bryan was an agrarian populist who lost West Virginia and Kentucky in 1896.
I think Trump would be a bad president, worse than Clinton. (I truly dislike Clinton, but Trump is even worse.)
I may vote for Trump nonetheless.
That’s for a simple reason: I believe that the continuing expansion of the administrative state, the growing power and collusion of unelected civil bureaucrats, and the continuing expansion of executive power are serious dangers to our national future. Those things are largely driven by the liberal branch these days, who seem to have fully lost track of the concept of one’s own weapons being used against them.
A Trump presidency, in my view, trades off a short-term loss (a worse president) for a high probability of a long-term gain (stopping the expansion of the administrative state, and quite probably reducing the problem significantly since so much of the existing structure opposes Trump.) This doesn’t seem unsurmountable: We’ve had bad presidents before and we’re still here. But if we lose track of the structural limitations which make things work (and which have allowed us to weather bad presidents, bad senators, etc.) then we’re screwed.
A Clinton presidency would be better in the short term, for sure. But Clinton is essentially the poster child for the type of back-room administrative dealings which I am discussing. She would not only maintain the problem, she would almost certainly expand it.
Note that this has nothing to do with liberal/conservative. If Trump were a political insider with a demonstrated ability to co-opt the civil service (like, say, Jeb) then my argument wouldn’t hold water.
Why would Trump be a worse president than Clinton? Makes no sense.
I would like to stop the expansion of the administrative state, but I don’t expect Trump to be helpful in that regard – quite possibly, he could be worse than Clinton in that respect.
I interpret @Realist as meaning that if Clinton were elected, she would have at least one party backing her in pursuing expansionist policies, whereas if Trump is elected, the parties are more likely to unite against him and restrict the power of the executive.
Here is the thing, the elected Republicans are mostly united in stating that they support Trump.
Yes, there is a significant number of the broad Republican commentariat who are against Trump, but that does not extend to the elected officials. Even Cruz is now endorsing Trump.
So I really failing to see how the Republican Congress is going to be in opposition to a Trump who wins the election.
Stating a preference for Trump to Hillary for President, and supporting anything he sends to Congress once elected, are two different things.
I don’t think they’ll go out of their way to obstruct him, but I doubt they’d go along with something unpopular just because he wants it. There will likely be at least attempts to “rein him in”, and I suspect some willingness to endorse him is dependent on the belief that they can do so successfully.
Realistically, a significant split between President Trump and a Republican Congress is unlikely, but seems much more likely than a split between a President Hillary and a Democratic Congress (not that Democrat control of both houses is likely in this cycle).
@gbdub:
If Trump wins, his style of Republicanism will be ascendant. Much of what he has proposed that is concerning can be very popular with a plurality of the Republican base. As a for instance, re-implementing a regime of torture to attempt to get information from suspected terrorists.
You really think the elected Republicans are going to buck the Republican base voters to stop him doing something that is unpopular with the rest of the country?
Can someone recommend any sources (articles, blogs, whatever) that make an intelligent and reasoned case for Trump? I was thinking that the comments here might point me to something, but, well.
The best pro-Trump arguments I’ve found to date amount to protest votes — fear of some consequence of the current trajectory of governance, or more-or-less coherent visions of why we should just burn the whole thing down. Does any intelligent and reasoned person want Trump for who he actually is? This is a real question.
[Edit: a couple appropriate comments have recently appeared here contemporaneous with my writing /submitting this question; would still love to be directed to other sources.]
Trump’s base is anti-Social-Justice, and if you can’t find intelligent and reasoned anti-SJers here you can’t find them anywhere.
It’s not so much that I’m pro-SJ or anti-SJ (I’m probably 50/50 depending on the specific issue under discussion) as I’m unconvinced that SJ views are a voting issue compared to economics or foreign policy.
How can you not realize that the most important issue of the day is bratty college kids on twitter?!?
Yes, that is certainly what people are talking about and the only thing people are talking about. You cracked the code. Go back to ratanon and report your success.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/#comment-415349
I honestly don’t think Trump is an optimal candidate. But he was the best of those that ran.
This is the election of voting-against.
Any ‘for-Clinton’ or ‘for-Trump’ arguments have to overcome how horrible the candidates are. “Yes, Clinton/Trump’s horrible, but Trump/Clinton’s worse” doesn’t make for a good argument. The only reason Scott’s article had any traction with me was that Scott doesn’t try to pretend Clinton’s not horrible, which for most people is impossible when making political arguments, but it fails as soon as my rational mind adds “Clinton is just as horrible AND is a Democrat”.
I look on the following arguments about this election as equally logical:
1. “Trump and Clinton are both horrible, but I’m Republican/conservative/libertarian, so I’m voting for the horrible Republican.”
2. “Trump and Clinton are both horrible, but I’m Democrat/liberal/progressive, so I’m voting for the horrible Democrat.”
3. “Trump and Clinton are both horrible, and I’m Republican/conservative/libertarian, but Trump is too horrible, so I’m voting Johnson.”
4. “Trump and Clinton are both horrible, and I’m Democrat/liberal/progressive, but Clinton is too horrible, so I’m voting Stein.”
5. “Trump and Clinton are both horrible, and the whole thing’s so bad I’m not voting / voting SMOD2016.”
To me, the argument “I’m a Democrat/liberal/Progressive, and Trump’s so bad you have to vote Clinton” fails because it comes across to me as either you’re someone that believes number 2 and wants to trick me into supporting your candidate, or you’re blind to how bad your own candidate is. Either you’re lying, or you’re not paying attention. Anyone that makes this argument (and recently I’ve seen a lot of celebrities making this very argument) immediately pushes me towards Trump.
I have started to dismiss the arguments “I’m nonpartisan/independent/Republican/conservative/libertarian, and Trump’s so bad you have to vote Clinton” immediately, because I disbelieve the initial assertion due to the existence of number 3. If you’re really Republican/conservative/libertarian, why wouldn’t you put Johnson / Not Vote / SMOD2016 before Clinton in a ranked preference list? If you’re really nonpartisan or independent, why not Stein? Why vote for either?
No, there are actually many positive arguments for Clinton.
You don’t like those arguments, but they exist in great measure.
And there are many positive arguments for Trump. Still, he’s a horrible candidate, just as Hillary is. Just because there’s something nice you can say about Hillary doesn’t make her a horrible candidate. (Almost all of the arguments for Hillary come back to ‘yes, she’s a lying corrupt enabler, but she votes like a good Democrat.’)
The way to demonstrate this is to compare Clinton to a generic Democrat and Trump to a generic Republican, and try to make some arguments as to why they’re better. If the end result is ‘a generic Democrat/Republican would be better’, then you have your answer.
For Tim Kaine, I can say he was a reasonably successful VA governor on the positive side. There’s nothing negative I can say about him that would not likely apply to a generic Democrat. Likewise, Mike Pence appears to have been a successful governor of Indiana. There’s nothing bad about him that wouldn’t apply to a generic Republican. Kaine is ‘generic Democrat + governor experience’. Pence is ‘generic Republican + governor experience’. I’d much rather have either Kaine or Pence as President than either Trump or Hillary. Yet we’re stuck with Trump and Hillary in top billing.
For Hillary, what? She’s a ‘generic Democrat + Secretary of State – scandals’? John Kerry is ‘generic Democrat + Secretary of State + Military Experience + Longer Senate Career’. Why isn’t he the candidate?
Mike Pence was an awful governor of Indiana; we are a very conservative state and we hate his fucking guts. He’s a grandstanding piece of shit who doesn’t care what his constituents want, just what gets him attention.
How about #6? “Trump and Clinton are both horrible, and I’m Republican/conservative/libertarian, but Trump is too horrible, and I understand that this is a first-past-the-post election, so a vote for Clinton is more effective at stopping Trump than a vote for Johnson.”
#3 only makes sense if you think that Clinton and Trump are precisely equally horrible. But if you think that Clinton is “about as horrible as the usual Democrat” and Trump is “Holy shit how did someone this horrible even become a politician?,” then you have a reason to prefer Clinton over Trump, and vote accordingly.
I think the crux of our disagreement is ‘Clinton is as horrible as the usual Democrat’. Do you really believe that? Who else in the Democratic party has half the scandals that Clinton has amassed? Has half the lies she’s amassed over her decades in the public limelight? If she’s merely slightly lower than average for Democrats, I’m going to have to re-evaluate my opinion of the party as a whole.
Even if Clinton marks the bottom of the barrel for a Democratic establishment candidate, it’s still possible to believe that Trump is worse. Trump came from an entirely different barrel than the establishment candidates.
One more, then:
I value the interest of our citizens much more strongly than the interests of other folks. So when I look at things like “immigration,” for example, I primarily ask “will this be good for citizens?” and not “will this be good for potential non-citizen immigrants?”
More to the point, I think that selectively advancing the interest of citizens is part of why we have a government, just like “selectively advancing the interests of members” is why we have unions. It’s the JOB of the government to play favorites. It isn’t fair, but I don’t care much about fairness in a global context. If I did, I’d sell my stuff and move to Myanmar.
Trump appears to openly place more value on our citizenry. This allows us to openly discuss a lot of issues which we don’t usually discuss. For example, it’s quite likely that we should admit more immigrants because it benefits US, but that can only be discussed properly if we are willing to ask tough questions. It’s possible that we should give a lot of foreign aid, but that should happen because we want to.
In Clinton’s world we don’t discuss things openly; we use proxies and codes to talk about stuff which should be up front. Hilary does not appear to put the same relative values on the citizenry vis-a-vis “humanity,” “refugees,” “other countries,” or anything else. This means that we are having a different conversation.
I value the interest of our citizens much more strongly than the interests of other folks.
Why?
Trump appears to openly place more value on our citizenry.
What achievable (read: not a wall that Mexico pays for) policy positions has Trump proposed that indicates this is true vs. Hillary?
“Why?”
Because we are us. Do you care more about your family than you do about mine? If not, please give me all your money.
“we are us” is not much of an argument.
Like most people, I do care more about my family than others, but that’s still not an argument for citizenism. My relationship with my family, for example, is quite different than my relationship with a random person on the other side of the country; there are quite obvious reciprocal effects when interacting with my family.
And, of course, there is the general confusion of justification with explanation. I care more about my family than others, but that’s a simple fact of behavior, not a justification that I should care more about my family than others.
Your family is on the order of 10 people or less. There are more than 300 million U.S. citizens.
It’s a big stretch to say that I should care a lot about some random member of those 300 million just because I care a lot about those 10.
You’ve already admitted that you weigh the lives of those who are close to you higher than those who are not. How is that Not an argument for citizenism (or any other number of isms)?
A wall that Mexico pays for is much more realistic than Clinton getting Her detailed legislative plans through Congress.
I recognize what you’re trying to do by capitalizing “Her”, but please stop. It’s uncivil and unnecessarily obnoxious; it just makes the discussion worse.
Clinton has some chance of getting some of her positions through with small changes in the electoral winds (if one of the houses of congress goes Democrat in 2018, for example). There is a 0% chance that a Mexico will pay for a wall.
Yes, considering we’re already having to pay for their wall with Guatemala. Funny how that one’s ok.
I know Americans like to pretend the Third World countries are all the same, but you guys need that wall with Guatemala as much as they do.
That wall Trump wants to build to keep unlucky people away already exists. It’s called Mexico.
“It’s uncivil and unnecessarily obnoxious; it just makes the discussion worse.”
-When she drops the slogan, I’ll stop it.
Urstoff, you are clearly ignorant of Trump’s plan for Mexico to pay for the wall (curiously dropped from his site for the moment, but seen as recently as of two days ago):
https://archive.fo/FG9E9
E. Harding: just because Hillary’s branding is also obnoxious doesn’t make your capitalization any less obnoxious. This would be true even if she were participating in the conversation and is even more true given that she isn’t.
As far as I can tell, your position here is “I dislike this politician’s branding, so I am going to be deliberately obnoxious in the SSC comments to call attention to it”. Is this accurate?
A combination of self-interest and functionality.
Personally, I don’t really care about everyone in the US. I don’t really care about 99.999% of the world’s population, in a general sense. But I do care that the government treats ME correctly. And the main distinguishing factor is that I’m a citizen of the US. I maintain that preference out of self interest.
Also, from a functional standpoint I think that’s largely a requirement of any functioning high end country. When a government begins to treat non-citizens as equal or superior, then it risks giving up the benefits to its citizens. You can see it happening in Europe; I don’t want that to happen here.
The selfish-interest response is coherent, if not necessarily morally justified.
The latter seems like an obvious prisoner’s dilemma to me, except where everyone thinks they are in a prisoner’s dilemma when they really aren’t (e.g., free trade actually benefits both countries, whereas people think tariffs are really the only way to benefit one’s country).
Just out of curiosity, where do you come down on the Orthogonality Thesis (“an artificial intelligence can have any combination of intelligence level and goal”).
Arguing in good faith might conceivably convince somebody they are wrong about facts, but it’s hard to imagine it convincing them they are wrong about values. (Except maybe at the margins, and surely everybody here has already made their terms with trolleycar problems.)
“Likewise, if you are a principled classical liberal fighting the social justice movement’s attempt to smear anyone who disagrees with them as an overprivileged clueless hateful Neanderthal, the absolute minimum you can do is not actually be an overprivileged clueless hateful Neanderthal.”
it works in the other direction as well.
Likewise, if you are a principled standard liberal fighting the conservative movement’s attempt to smear anyone who disagrees with them as an overprivileged clueless hateful snob, the absolute minimum you can do is not actually be an overprivileged clueless hateful snob.
If you succeed in that, try not to sound like an overprivileged clueless hateful snob. (I have trouble with that too.)
Speaking as someone who, in all honesty, isn’t all that far from the stereotype you describe (the only one I’d seriously dispute is “clueless,” I’m trying to fix the hateful part but it remains a work in progress)–if you think that’s even remotely close to describing Scott you’re totally fucking crazy. He couldn’t possibly bend over further backwards to be charitable to the pro-Trump argument and cognizant of the possibility that he may be wrong about certain assumptions or predictions.
What you miss is that he grants Clinton a measure of charity he fails to grant Trump.
Consider that half the population sees Clinton as worse than Trump. Consider they’re seeing the same Trump you are. Consider, for a moment, that they might have a point.
Which isn’t to say Clinton IS worse than Trump, but when you have two people who are hated by most of the country, and the election is basically being decided by an argument over which of the two is the worse person, maybe, just maybe, your perception of which of the two is the worse person isn’t entirely accurate.
What you miss is that there are perfectly rational reasons to grant Scott’s particular form of charity to Clinton. She’s been an-inner-circle-insider for two administrations, to say nothing of her career as an establishment attorney before that and her time in the Senate in between. There’s every reason to think that she will continue to be a pro-Establishment, pro-status quo president who continues the trends of those administrations. If you think that trend is unsustainable or untenable and want to make the Flight 93 argument that the relatively open question of Trump is worth the risk, that’s all well and good–but I think Scott gave plenty of time to that argument as well.
No, I get that. Which is why I wrote elsewhere that his argument only makes sense to comfortable intellectuals; the status quo is good for them. When the status quo is bad for you, this charity makes no sense.
I would hazard a guess that you don’t understand why anybody wants Trump, and assume it’s just idiots wanting to burn down something they don’t understand?
Because there are perfectly rational reasons to prefer Trump, as well, even if they don’t make sense to you, in your relatively comfortable lifestyle: The current situation isn’t comfortable for many other people. They’re bearing the costs for the current situation, and you aren’t.
So when you say “Trump might change things, and things might get worse!” they see a Win-Win; Trump could change things for the better for them, in which case they’re happier, OR Trump could make things worse for everybody, in which case maybe the comfortable intellectuals will stop ignoring the problems in society.
And Scott rebuts that by saying, in part, that the status quo trend is very positive from a utilitarian sense, but also, far less controversially (in this very particular context), that it is good enough to get us to the Singularity in 30-odd years. Do you dispute that, or do you think that correcting the problems currently faced by the white lower-middle-class are is so critical that it’s worth a risk (even if it’s only a very outside one) of delaying or preventing that eventuality?
So don’t worry, things will get better as soon as we finish building that windmill, right?
You understand that, from your position of comfort, this is not a convincing argument to those in discomfort?
Objectively they are. They mistake jealousy for privation. If they burn everything down maybe they’ll eventually realize the difference. Though if history is anything to go by, they’ll instead find some scapegoats to blame for betraying the revolution.
Well, I sure don’t expect them to know about, let alone count on, the singularity.
For clarity’s sake, I’ll say this–I’m not big on false consciousness (instead, http://readsettlers.org/). I accept that a great many of Trump’s supporters are rational to spin the wheel by supporting him. I would just say that:
a.) for the audience here, that does know about and count on the Singularity, Scott makes a really solid argument against that risk-taking
b.) and, if you want to zoom out, I think those supporters are making a selfish choice that wages a possible benefit for them against a possible deprivation for both the comfortable people you mention and a whole lot of people who are no more comfortable than them. That second part could be rebutted if, like many, you identify Trump as a dove and/or rightist isolationist in the mode of Buchanan/Paul, but personally I think that’s crazy (for several reasons I don’t have time to get into, unfortunately)
They’ve been deprived of any good choices, and you want to exorcise them for being selfish even as you support a position which is currently benefiting people like yourself at their expense?
And again, argument-by-singularity is effectively argument-by-windmill. Maybe it will happen, maybe a storm will knock it down.
(And I have a fully general rule against any utilitarianism in which the decision-makers are accruing benefits where somebody else to pay the costs.)
it is good enough to get us to the Singularity in 30-odd years
I don’t believe in the Singularity, not in 30 years and maybe not even in 300 years. Pinning all our hopes on “and then
magicscience happens” is pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die thinking.For my universal salvation needs, I’m sticking with the Eschaton, thanks.
But can you see that “she’s been an inner-circle insider for two administrations” might make someone react “Oh, God” with a sinking heart?
That the prospect of more-of-the-same comfy crony politics is not an appealing dish to anyone, and the only straw that can be clutched is that Trump would be so much worse, more-of-the-same is at least the devil we know?
I certainly don’t want abandon the global poor and domestic minorities to the bloodthirsty bleating of a bunch of people who hate me because just because I have an okay job (which, btw, is an extremely low-paying do-gooder job in comparison to my field, although it pretty explicitly excludes the interests of the kind of Trump supporter we’re talking about here), a lovely wife, and some comprehension of just how fragile the civil society everyone takes for granted really is.
Point taken as to my overestimation of the Singulatarianism here. Certainly, if you don’t think the nerd rapture is right around the corner, it’s a 100% reasonable to change your calculation of risk.
But yeah, it sucks, I guess. Welcome to America, as it always has been and always will be, unless we’re unlucky.
Judging by your tone here, I’d say the hatred is coming from you.
But the thing is – you’re the one taking our civil society for granted. This is a group of people pushed to their breaking point, and your response is that they should just suck it up and deal with it; it’s a tone-deaf response which completely lacks the empathy you claim to have for the global poor, who, I will observe, you’d almost certainly find just as contemptible (if not more!) as your local poor if they weren’t so safely remote and removed from you.
Without doxing myself, I’ll say I work with plenty of local (and rural!) poor even if they are unlikely to be Trump supporters, and hold no illusions about them. Poverty is not ennobling.
I feel like we’re in danger of talking past one another now, though (probably my fault, I have a tendency to drift into generalities and/or an idiosyncratic vernacular). Part of the reason I have less sympathy for the Trump supporters is because I don’t think they’ve been pushed to the breaking point so much as they have sold some beachfront property on the breaking point by a group of sensational fear-mongers. What kind of consideration do you think a Trump opponent owes to them and their considerations? Because, fuck man, I support good free tech schools, a strong safety net, harm-reduction approaches for the heroin epidemic, a universal basic income, (to say nothing of seizure of the means of production and distribution of said means to the proletariat, at least in, you know, theory), and most of these people don’t seem remotely interested in any of that. In my opinion that’s in large part because we’re not talking about the rural poor here so much as we’re talking about the rural (and suburban) middle class and they don’t actually need that kind of help with their basic needs… so what is the problem here, in your view, and is there an alternate prescription besides blaming political correctness and immigrants for everything?
It’s depressing how often conservatives turn out to be reverse Marxists. But whatever, I’m sure heightening the contradictions will be a great idea this time around.
herbert –
The problem is that they see your side as ignoring them at best and hating them at worst. Your solutions are designed for the conditions of inner cities, and you cry racist when they (rightfully, for their communities) point out that these solutions are gutting rural areas.
Imagine what the average rural individual, who can’t get a steady job in any case, thinks of minimum wages that push jobs – already out of reach – further still.
Or in other areas, where there is work, but it pays little – and welfare, catering to the cost of living of urban areas, pays better.
Or in the consistent cultural hatred thrown down on them from urban individuals – predominantly Democrat – who regard them as ignorant and evil.
Then they get told they’re racist and evil because they don’t get, and thus do not acknowledge, the “privilege” that wealthy urban white people have.
When it comes to the urban poor, particularly if they’re minorities, Democrats preach endless patience; they come from bad places, they are dealing with massive social problems, the system is working against them. The most racist attitudes from poor black people are considered a problem caused by society, not a moral failure on their part.
When it comes to the rural poor, particularly if they’re white, Democrats preach endless hatred.
It’s the same goddamn group of people. Black Lives Matter and Trump supporters are the same goddamn people.
It doesn’t freaking matter what your policies are. It literally doesn’t matter. You – the plural you, the Left – makes it plain that you don’t want them, that they’re worthless and evil and deserve their fates. Yeah, they’re going to vote Republican. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Trump is one of them, not because of where he was born or how much money he makes or what his policies are, but because of how the Left is treating him.
You missed his best point, there aren’t enough poor rural people to explain Trump.
John –
That’s because it assumes rural refers to where you live, rather than how you live.
You understand how difficult that is for me to work with though, right? I’m not going to start suddenly liking Red Tribe culture, I’m not going to change my views on race and history absent good reason. What’s the solution here? Pretend otherwise and get accused of insincere condescension? I’d be down for some of the substantive stuff, except, like I said, there seem to be plenty of jobs around here right now in a way there wasn’t a couple of years ago. The real estate market is hopping, there are help wanted signs everywhere–it’s not 2008 anymore. Didn’t stop my area from turning out strong for Trump in the primary.
Or is there no solution, and we just need to accept a cultural divide of mutual animosity? (and don’t tell me it’s not mutual, especially absent an explanation of your own background, because I can see it every day in my facebook feed)
Federalism?
Tricky when we’re talking less about state vs. state and more about rural and outer-suburbanites vs. the people in the cities. Also, of limited value for the cultural stuff that Orphan Wilde, correctly I think, identifies as the heart of the matter.
Still worth a shot, though. I’ve actually come around on this one recently. In principle, I’d prefer (as progressives typically do) a central government capable of protecting isolated minorities, but in practice under the country as it currently exists and is trending, I think it is more important to work out ways to live our differences separately before shit starts to get even uglier.
Also, would I have any takers for free speech protections in the workplace? Might be tricky to balance the competing interests for the “hostile work environment” type stuff, but as a leftist I don’t like seeing people lose their livelihood for political reasons, even when those politics are shitty.
Just to LARP here: walled off progressive city-states and business areas that are arranged in a federation of city-states with a common tax pool with great socialist infrastructure such as a nationwide network of high speed trains connecting all the cities through underground tunnels. Then the conservatives can live outside and are allowed to make their own laws, forming a separate federation and reverting to a Amish-like way of living. High tech socialist robotic gun turrets and drones will exterminate the conservatives if they get too near to the city walls.
The year is 2070, and one man must blah blah blah… separated at birth, they must fight to… but the only thing that can stop the….
“free speech protections in the workplace”
Can you think of a way to do that legislatively that doesn’t turn into “organizations that aren’t politically favoured can’t resist entryism and takeover by activists with political backing”?
If we had a norm on tolerating opinions, it could work. But if you try to enforce it with political power… well, only groups with political power get the protection.
And what do you know, we destroyed that norm without realizing how valuable it was…
My preferred theory for “explaining Trump” is that there are some people who, on an intuitive level that stems from their everyday experiences, understand the value of cultural homogeneity, and there are some people who, due to either lacking those experiences, having extreme social anxiety (which, IMO, often arises out of a lack of these experiences) or being the sort of malcontent who distances himself from others on the grounds that he’s ‘better’ than them (i.e. a ‘nerd’ in the pejorative sense; note that these days, since the kitschy trappings of STEM nerddom went mainstream, a lot of these people are in the humanities fandom and fanatical adherents of some variety of communism or ‘critique’ — partially because that’s what the humanities fandom entails in American academia, and partially because their humanities fandom membership failed to provide on the implicit nerd mythology promise that someday they’ll be universally recognized as ‘above’ the ‘jocks’ who ‘bag their groceries’), don’t, and completely fail to comprehend how anyone could possibly see any value in them.
Go to any major city on the Acela corridor. Live there for a while, in the city proper, and not in the expensive parts. Walk around outside. Feel the hostility. Observe that, incomprehensibly to those of us from more civilized areas, the constant urbanite complaints about “randos trying to talk to me!!!! #ugh” are in fact justified — the experience is almost universally unpleasant, even when you don’t have good reason to suspect it could end with you in the hospital or worse. Then live somewhere rather different from a major city on the Acela corridor, and observe that everyone talks civilly to everyone else and that people can have interesting and genuinely worthwhile interactions from zero.
Some of this is that the streets aren’t filled with the sorts of unsavory characters who congregate in the cities, to be sure, and some of it is that the, shall we say, culturally heterogeneous elements within these cities are systematically indoctrinated (by progressives, even!) into ethnosupremacist ideologies far more extreme than anything on the ‘alt-right’ (look up Your Black Muslim Bakery sometime), but some of it is just that there’s much more cultural heterogeneity there.
(Those of you who are regular commenters, involved in ‘the SSC community’ or some similar one: you know the feeling you get when you’re around people of that community? Imagine if your life could be like that all the time.)
We never had such a norm. People like you were just happy with whose ox used to be gored.
@AndrewJackson
Tokyo is pretty culturally homogeneous compared to most US cities, yet it’s still impersonal and alienating. Go to the country in Japan and it generally feels a lot more friendly and idyllic in the way you describe.
Maybe it’s not the homogeneity but just the total number of people? Something like Dunbar’s number. Past a certain threshold you just can’t manage it.
Example: I recently lived in a very small town for a couple years. It wasn’t a huge melting pot, exactly, but it wasn’t culturally homogeneous either. Yet there was very high social capital because everybody knew everybody else, or at least was not more than one or two connections removed.
There was an email listserv for the community, for example, and you could pretty much make any deal you want on it with a handshake, from selling your used cookbook to selling your car. You could even say “I’ll leave the thing on the porch; leave the money in the mailbox” to someone you had never met.
It wasn’t because everyone had the same culture, it was because we knew were you lived. If you stiffed me it was too small a place for you to fade away. Everyone was someone’s cousin’s friend’s wife, and those people would hold you accountable.
I think it was mostly the small numbers which made this possible, more than the homogeneity.
My young childhood was in a city, my adolescent period was in the country, and since then lived in cities.
As an adolescent, I believed the country was a terrible place filled with terrible people with crazy religious ideas and bizarre cultural mores. Then I moved to the city and discovered that, actually, no, my standards were just too high, and city people are even worse, albeit in different ways; but instead of being obsessed with who you have sex with, they’re obsessed with how tall you let your grass get, or what social cliques you belong to (rural areas only have one hostile social clique, churches; urban areas have dozens), or what your political beliefs are.
Suburban areas straddle the line between these two attitudes; generally, urban people go in for HOAs, rural people avoid them if possible (it can be difficult to avoid them, and urban people will impose the same sort of nonsense with city ordinances if they get a majority).
And as far as intelligence goes – urban culture values the appearance of intelligence, rural culture values the practical ramifications of intelligence. On average intelligence, I don’t notice a difference, but between the rural and urban person, the urban person will make an effort to appear intelligent, whereas the rural person won’t. It’s not that rural culture opposes intelligence, they just find intelligence signaling to be a useless activity. Doc Hollywood demonstrates some of the difference, if you’ve ever seen it, in the interactions between the older small-town doctor and Michael J Fox’s character.
There’s “impersonal and alienating”, and then there’s “I notice that I am modeling people as horrifically unpleasant and threatening megafauna, and there is no other option”.
I’ve lived in a major Central European city and a major Acela Corridor city. Both were impersonal and alienating compared to a small town, especially given the crimes against humanity that are Communist architecture and American city planning, but in the European city, I didn’t have good reason to fear for my life every time I stepped outside, and didn’t feel pressured to make myself appear as generally hostile as possible to avoid beggars and the like.
I live in the most heterogeneous part of the biggest acela corridor city. There probably isn’t a more heterogeneous spot on the planet than my county. John Rocker, who is overdue to be recognized as a prescient forerunner to the alt right, famously insulted it.
I don’t recognize what you are saying at all. I don’t feel in danger for my life every time I walk outside my apartment or hostility from people on the street.
I suspect PEBKAC.
@Anonymous: Judging by your description, I live in the same Acela Corridor city that you do. I am more cautious on the subway here than I have ever been walking down the streets of the Third World, homogeneous, monocultural city I was born in.
“There’s “impersonal and alienating”, and then there’s “I notice that I am modeling people as horrifically unpleasant and threatening megafauna, and there is no other option”.”
I mean, Tokyo is safer than NYC, for sure, but is that because of its cultural homogeneity?
Hong Kong had the lowest murder rate in the world not too long ago and it’s culturally quite diverse. Singapore is only slightly less safe and very diverse. Honduras is not very culturally diverse, yet it’s also home to the “murder capital of the world.”
It would seem to depend on the specific cultures, then. Singapore is about as diverse as the United States, but a lot safer than any major American city.
Honduras is not very culturally diverse, yet it’s also home to the “murder capital of the world.”
Eh.
I think it depends on where you stand.
On the one hand, a Swede will swear that he is nothing like a Norsk(*), except if you compare him to a Dane. And no Scandinavian is like a Finnlander, nor a German of any stripe.
Honduras is fairly homogenous in terms of race – well, so long as you ignore the Garifuna – but that doesn’t mean that there are not strong-and-obvious-to-anyone-who-has-eyes-and-ears differences in ethnic groups – some are more European, others more Indian (and there are those who were Mayan, and those who were not), some are pure hillsfolk, others are urban dwellers from who flung the chunk.
Just why San Pedro Sula is as homicidal as it is…well, if you figure it out, do let the authorities know.
(*) They have 47 varieties of regional dress in Norway. 47.
@Sandy
Maybe the problem is your irrational fear of the other rather than any objective measure of danger or hatred or anything else rooted in reality?
And then you start talking to modal Trump supporters and realize that no, they don’t have a point. To be fair, neither does the modal Hillary supporter. It’s incoherent tribalism all the way down.
There’s a difference between having a point, and having the skills to effectively communicate that point without shooting yourself in the foot in some other fashion.
The modal supporter of either candidate doesn’t have those skills.
But then what evidence could there be that the modal supporter has a point (i.e., some sort of coherent argument with at least some evidence behind it)?
n/a
Okay. OTOH, he sounded a little like an OCHS.
To make matters worse, the OCHS detectors frequently have false positives.
You:
Scott:
Since, apparently, it is necessary, let me say: as a fairly long-time reader, I greatly appreciate and respect this post. I think it lays out a clear argument in a fairly indisputable way, although, clearly, people coming from a certain set of biases may not agree.
Did you read the first comment on this post? Every single argument our host presents here is, at the very least, disputable.
I said “fairly,” and I did it on purpose. Saying that a sketchy real-estate deal from well over 20 years ago is more suggestive of strongman rule than an otherwise ideologically-void campaign based on revanchism, nativism, and the personal negotiating skills of the candidate, or citing a comic strip author whose public commentary is based almost entirely on the preposition that facts don’t matter as an expert on NYC dialect is not fair.
No; Whitewater I used as an example of “rampant corruption”. Argentine-style political dynasties was my example for “strongman rule”.
You mean the blog length comment? Why would anyone want to do that?
Yeah, the amount of (somewhat vituperative) pushback on this is depressing, if not surprising.
I think this goes back to the discussion we had the other day about the differences between: 1) the audience Scott imagines when he is writing, 2) the audience that reads his posts, and 3) frequent commenters.
By post frequency, the plurality of #3 are those attracted by the anti-“SJW” posts. That means that on any other issue this group is going to seem quite alien to Scott. Even though he knows he has right-leaning commenters, I don’t think he quite realizes just what flavor of right-leaning dominates down here.
But as I said on the other post, maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe #1 and #2 are closer aligned and the yawning gap between #1 and #3 is of little consequences.
Eh. The only reason I ever discovered this blog was Scott’s anti-SJW posts, the main reason I continued reading was that I liked those posts, and I mostly agree with his points on Trump.
I don’t think it’s too surprising; there are a lot of people here who think the SJW/anti-SJW culture war is much more significant than it actually is, and Trump sort of seems to be anti-SJW if you squint hard enough.
You think you need to squint? Seems to be fairly front-and-center to me.
In Trump’s case, it’s hard to tell the different between being a conscious anti-SJW and just a crude buffoon.
Well, not only that but he isn’t against SJW tactics, and certainly isn’t against them on principled ideological grounds.
If you hate identity politics and love Trump …
I love how you explain disagreement with you by “biases”, making it fully bulletproof – the argument is indisputable, so any person who disputes it must have a broken mind, so hopelessly distorted by biases that he can’t really see the truth. That removes any further needs to address any opposing arguments – after all, can you really argue with people whose minds are broken and uncapable of seeing the indisputable truth? They have to be healed until they are rid of biases (which is recognized by them agreeing with indisputably correct opinion, by pure chance identical to yours) or ignored.
I’m releasing a lot of pent up frustration here, which actually may be good. That Atlantic article you cited, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-seven-broken-guardrails-of-democracy/484829/, is one of the best arguments FOR Trump I have seen in how absolutely clueless it is.
“The first guardrail to go missing was the old set of expectations about how a candidate for president of the United States should speak and act.”
Does President “I Won” ring a bell? President “Punch Back Twice as Hard”?
“The second broken guardrail is the expectation of some measure of trustworthiness in politicians.”
The following paragraph has nothing about “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”, and nothing about “If you like your health care, you can keep your health care”. Nothing about how “Benghazi was a spontaneous demonstration all about a video”. Nothing about all the lies told to congress about destroyed hard drives, IRS audits, or SCI classified email.
“A third broken guardrail is the expectation that a potential president should possess deep—or at least adequate—knowledge of public affairs.”
I must have missed back during the 2008 election all the news articles talking about how much more experienced John McCain was than Barack Obama.
“One guardrail that Trump’s opponents all assumed would hold fast was the fourth: the guardrail of ideology. Hardline conservatives would surely reject a candidate who barely understood what a principle was!”
There might be a point behind this one, if it wasn’t for the simultaneous castigating Romney for being a hard line Republican and the gleeful pointing out that Romneycare was kinda sorta like Obamacare if you shuffled all the words together and randomized them, then run it all through a bad English to Chinese dictionary and back again. When Republicans compromise, it’s that they have no principles; when they don’t, they’re to the right of Ghengis Khan.
“Donald Trump would have been hemmed in a generation ago by a fifth guardrail: the primacy of national security concerns. rump has no relevant experience, no military record, scant interest in the topic—and a long history of casual expressions of sympathy for authoritarian rulers.”
I could just copy and paste my point three, about the 2008 McCain versus Obama election.
“A deep belief in tolerance and non-discrimination for Americans of all faiths, creeds, and origins also once functioned as a guardrail against destructive politics.”
The Little Sisters of the Poor would like to speak with you about their Supreme Court case. Brendan Eich would like to speak to you about his job.
“Which brings us to the last and perhaps very most ominous of the broken guardrails. The generation that bore arms in World War II returned home with a strong—arguably unprecedentedly strong—loyalty to the nation as a whole.”
I will repeat the last paragraph in the last guardrail, just for the irony.
“Once you’ve convinced yourself that a president of the other party is the very worst possible thing that could befall America, then any nominee of your party—literally no matter who—becomes a lesser evil. And with that, the last of the guardrails is smashed.”
Once you’ve convinced yourself that Reagan/W/McCain/Romney/Trump is the very worst possible thing that could befall America, then any nominee of the Democratic party – literally no matter who – becomes a lesser evil.
The guardrails were broken long before Trump hit the curve. Every single one (except the confusing fourth) is trivially reversible and applicable to previous elections.
“Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake. ”
I can understand and accept people who think “Trump’s horrible, and I lean Democratic, so I’ll vote for the horrible Democrat over the horrible Republican”. I can’t deal with those who write arguments like this while being blind to exactly how their opponents see what they’ve done over the past couple of decades. I’ll check my eyes for specks, but Frum (the author) better pull the plank out of his.
Once again I’ve shown up late to the party, but ^ this ^ a million times this.
If you knock down enough walls sooner or later the roof will come crashing down.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean you should vote for President “We Don’t Need No Water, Let The MF Bern!”.
Why not?
What space is there in the nation you’re building for the people you’re talking to? Voting for Trump offers them the solace of spite; do you have a better offer?
You can spite those who hate you without cutting off your nose to do it. I’m a Torontonian, so the comparison with Rob Ford has been coming up a lot – Ford spited exactly the same people, and in basically the same way, but he was fundamentally a good, well-meaning man who just happened to be a clown. Much like Trump, he reached out to people who had been largely ignored and they loved him for it. But he also argued consistently for a vision of what the city government should do, and then implemented it successfully. He held himself to basically the same standards as those around him. He fixed some serious issues, and did it successfully because he kept his focus on a handful of issues and kept hammering away at them.
If the goal is spite, elect a Ford. If the goal is seeing how hilariously stupid a way you can come up with to cause WW3, elect a Trump.
And the logical reaction to that is: “Okay you want to scorch the earth, let’s do this”.
Yet somehow the reaction to that is “this sort of thing is what we really, really need to avoid” rather than I guess that makes sense from your perspective.
Empathy for your people is easy …
@Alsadius – Former Londoner and Vancouverite here. how’s the old sod these days?
“If the goal is spite, elect a Ford.”
We didn’t have a Ford on offer. We had a pile of establishment mush, Doctor Pyramids, Bush Part III, and Yet Another Religious Right Freakazoid*. Hostility to the Republican Party itself is a large part of why Trump won the nomination in the first place.
*and I say that as a Conservative Christian.
@Anonymous – “And the logical reaction to that is: “Okay you want to scorch the earth, let’s do this”.”
Yes, it is. If you are amenable to a fight, that does seem to be where we’re headed, so it’s your lucky day. On the other hand, it loops back around; support for Trump is the “okay, you want to scorch the earth, let’s do this” to several years’ worth of unrelenting Blue Tribe belligerence. Both tribes are escalating. I’m asking you where you think it stops.
FacelessCraven: If by “the old sod” you mean the city, it’s great. If you mean Rob Ford, he got a nasty form of cancer mid-election, and dropped out so his brother could run in his place. He died in March of this year.
That said, you do have a fair point that there was nobody quite like Ford on offer. Cruz was probably the closest in some ways, but Cruz was a passionless debater, and Ford was nothing but passion. If you’re looking to attract those sorts of voters, being a bloodless lizard won’t do it.
> Doctor Pyramids,
I am so grateful I wasn’t sipping my tea just as I read this.
One thing you notice very quickly when you get involved in politics is that politicians have a vested interest in trying to convince their supporters that this election is the most important election ever, that an apocalypse will come if the opponent wins, and that therefore you need to come and volunteer, donate, vote, and perhaps also give blood just to be safe. Obviously this is not true in most cases – I doubt I’ll see a Presidential election more important than the 1860 election in my lifetime, for example. It’s a natural enough appeal to make, but it leads to short-term thinking, and to throwing away the future carelessly to get a fleeting advantage today.
I think the “I hate Trump, but he’s slightly better than Clinton” voters are mistaking that line of BS with reality. Yes, Clinton is a pretty bad candidate, and yes, she’ll probably appoint lefty judges to the Supreme Court. Given that the Court has been the only decent protector of conservatism for at least a decade, this is a big deal. But it’s not worth permanently tarnishing the whole brand of conservatism over it. Getting one or even two or three justices in over the next term won’t do any good when the Dems can ram through five of theirs in 2020-2032 over the shattered corpse of the Republican Party. And while the Court is really a big deal, so are NATO and the WTO. I’d gladly trade away Heller and Hobby Lobby to keep the global free market alive.
FWIW, I don’t think the same is true of grudging Clinton voters. One, a lot of them are Republicans, and thus are perfectly okay with tarnishing the Democratic brand. Two, the Democrats don’t have the same sort of farm system the Republicans do, in the sports sense of the term. Their candidates are usually seriously lackluster – their only three serious candidates in the last three elections were an unqualified pretty face, a flagrantly corrupt woman who got in because she’s married to someone who actually had political experience and charisma, and a guy who wasn’t even a member of their party. The Republican primary in this year alone had half a dozen candidates better suited to the job than any of Clinton, Obama, or Sanders. This means that Republicans can do a lot better if they come back and try again next time, while Democrats probably won’t have a much better candidate to offer up. And three, their control of big parts of the culture insulates them from the worst effects of brand destruction.
“But it’s not worth permanently tarnishing the whole brand of conservatism over it.”
2004 was, to be honest, totally worth it, even though it did just that.
“This means that Republicans can do a lot better if they come back and try again next time,”
-You don’t win by losing. And Trump is “next time”. He was the best possible nominee.
“I’d gladly trade away Heller and Hobby Lobby to keep the global free market alive.”
-WTO ain’t free market, man. Trump says he’ll make great trade deals. He’s no more anti-trade, per se, than William McKinley or Abraham Lincoln. He’s far more pro-trade than John Quincy Adams.
“I think the “I hate Trump, but he’s slightly better than Clinton” voters are mistaking that line of BS with reality.”
-Agreed. Trump is much better than Clinton.
What happened in 2005-08 to make Obamacare a good tradeoff? I mean, Iraq got sorted out pretty well by the end, and if that had stayed intact long-term then I might see the argument, but it hasn’t.
Nobody wins every election. If you have to lose, then knowing when it’s safe to take a fall can be important. I bet the Democrats spent a generation thanking their lucky stars that they lost in 1928, for example.
WTO is more free-market than Trump’s insanity. I don’t think he even knows what a good trade deal looks like, because insofar as he’s consistent on anything, it’s on hating the best trade deal in US history(NAFTA). And given that he didn’t even know that China isn’t part of TPP, it’s not like he’s exactly well-educated on the issue.
And no, Trump is worse than Clinton. He’s economically to her left, he’s more of a liar than she is, he’s even more in the pocket of sketchy foreigners, he knows perhaps 1% as much as she does about the operations of government(and I mean that literally, not as hyperbole), and he has the temperament of a spoiled kindergartener. He scares the bajeezus out of me. She’s merely awful.
“He’s economically to her left”
-No. Check Her voting record and Trump’s advisors on the economy.
“he’s even more in the pocket of sketchy foreigners”
-No.
“He scares the bajeezus out of me.”
-Why? Because he wants border security, a Muslim ban, and good relations with Russia?
“She’s merely awful.”
-No; she’s worse than Mitt Romney, who was so awful, I supported Obama over him in 2012.
“What happened in 2005-08 to make Obamacare a good tradeoff?”
-Alito and Roberts. McCain would have picked more liberal justices.
“he knows perhaps 1% as much as she does about the operations of government(and I mean that literally, not as hyperbole)”
-No.
“and he has the temperament of a spoiled kindergartener”
-He has the temperament of a typical New Yorker, a reality TV show host, and a winner. He’s not bought or a robot.
“then knowing when it’s safe to take a fall can be important.”
-I agree. It’s not safe to take a fall now, when Scalia’s seat is being threatened.
“And given that he didn’t even know that China isn’t part of TPP”
-It might join in the future.
I don’t think Trump will listen to his advisors on anything of importance, so I don’t care who his advisors are. And her voting record is pro-trade, not in favour of single-payer healthcare, and generally centre-left. Trump sounds like Sanders on most economic policy positions I’ve ever heard him give a coherent sentence on.
Every interaction between Trump and Putin has been horrifying. I’m not opposed to peace between the US and Russia, but there’s peace based on mutual tolerance of each other’s interests and desires, and then there’s peace based on a foreign strongman saying something nice about you and then you slobbering all over him on Twitter. Trump is so obviously desperate for respect that he’ll sell the metaphorical crown jewels to the first guy to show him any. That’s not a man I want in charge of a banana stand. Also, the Muslim ban is utterly ridiculous, and everyone should know that just from looking at it. You don’t establish real security by asking a single question that’s easy to lie about on immigration papers. It’s like a stupider and more intrusive version of telling everyone to take their shoes off in the airport.
I’ll agree with you that Clinton is worse than Romney.
Alito and Roberts have been pretty good, no question. I don’t think McCain would have done much different there, though – it’d be different names, but not appreciably to their left. Roberts is a swing vote on a lot of cases, remember.
She’s been heavily involved with government for most of her adult life, between her career and her husband’s. Trump can’t even put together a policy on basic issues that stays the same from day to day. I thought “I have a pen and a phone” was bad, but I think Trump will actually run with it seriously. Some Presidents work well with Congress and some work badly, but I’m not convinced he’ll even try.
He’s not bought, and he’s not a robot, but he is a textbook narcissist. He’s a deeply insecure man with the emotional range of a child who plasters his name on everything that’ll pay him a buck in giant gold letters out of the hope that it’ll fill the hole in his soul. Have you ever heard Trump tell a joke? Not a mean-spirited bit of mockery, but something unrelated to his opponents that gets a laugh. Have you ever heard him be self-deprecating? Express uncertainty, even when it’s obvious that he doesn’t have a clue? That isn’t how normal people work, that’s a damaged man. Yes, a lot of people like him become successful, because that’s the only thing that gives them hope of filling in their insecurity. It doesn’t, of course, and that’s the saddest part – if Trump were healthy, he’d actually know he was successful. But he says it so often precisely because he doesn’t believe it, and he calls people losers so often because he knows it’s the word that hurts him the most. I know New Yorkers, I know winners, and I’ve watched enough reality TV to get a sense of what they’re like. Yes, some of his verbal tics and habits are described that way, but the gestalt is not.
I’d rather have Garland replace Scalia than have Trump replace Clinton. One’s bad for legal precedents, one’s a danger to the world order. No contest.
Anything might happen in the future, but if the US is part of the TPP, they can negotiate a deal with them, and pull out or veto it(depending on how exactly the TPP works) if it’s not good enough. If they’re not, all the US’s biggest trading partners will become conduits for Chinese goods, and the US will have no real leverage to stop them. Is that really a win?
“Trump sounds like Sanders on most economic policy positions I’ve ever heard him give a coherent sentence on.”
-Do you understand the difference between tax “cuts” and “increases”? Between banning fracking and unleashing America’s energy resources? Sanders and Trump agree on trade and visas, but that’s about it.
“and then there’s peace based on a foreign strongman saying something nice about you and then you slobbering all over him on Twitter.”
-Hm….
https://twitter.com/mcurryfelidae07/status/776101739300786176
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsIhFog4aJg&feature=youtu.be
Russia at least has some element of democracy. Saudi Arabia doesn’t.
Trump’s defence of his praise of Putin shows balls, quite the contrary to what you’re suggesting, given Russophobic dominance in the MSM.
“You don’t establish real security by asking a single question that’s easy to lie about on immigration papers.”
-Of course you don’t. You do “extreme vetting”. Check family history. Do detailed interviews about religion.
“her voting record is pro-trade,”
-Voted against CAFTA. See http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/12/nation/na-trade12
“but he is a textbook narcissist.”
-Only he thought he could win the primaries. Only he was correct.
“He’s a deeply insecure man with the emotional range of a child”
-This is just a completely unsubstantiated allegation without any backing behind it.
“Have you ever heard Trump tell a joke? Not a mean-spirited bit of mockery, but something unrelated to his opponents that gets a laugh.”
-The most commonplace emotion at a Trump rally is laughter. Does “Turn off the lights!” count?
“Have you ever heard him be self-deprecating?”
-Yes, his I don’t even deserve the evangelicals’ support offhand remark in his convention speech.
“Express uncertainty, even when it’s obvious that he doesn’t have a clue?”
-Yes, often. Off the top of my head, he was clearly uncertain as to what decision Bush should make about the Iraq War on Neil Cavuto’s show in early 2003.
“That isn’t how normal people work, that’s a damaged man.”
-Or you haven’t actually watched Trump all that much.
“But he says it so often precisely because he doesn’t believe it”
-He does.
“One’s bad for legal precedents, one’s a danger to the world order.”
-And both, as demonstrated by their record, are the same person: Hillary Rodham Clinton. She’s done more damage to world order than George W. Bush.
As usual, you focus almost all on style, leave little focus on substance. And you even get the style wrong. Sad.
“If they’re not, all the US’s biggest trading partners will become conduits for Chinese goods,”
-Elaborate.
“This means that Republicans can do a lot better if they come back and try again next time”
They can’t though. If Clinton wins she gives the 15-30 million illegals amnesty (it’s been “11 million” for 20 years now), Texas flips blue, and we never see another Republican president. For the Republican way of life, this is the last stand.
Parties move around depending on voter coalitions. There’s no reason why a pro-immigrant, economically conservative, pro-American party can’t exist. It just doesn’t right now in the US.
Also, I don’t think Clinton is any more likely to pass an amnesty than Obama was, and he hasn’t. But even if she would, the Democrats are going to win an election someday. If an amnesty is going to happen, best to plan for it rather than drive all those new voters away for the next 50 years. It’s not like expulsion will actually work, after all.
“Pro-immigrant” and “pro-American” may be mutually incompatible, for certain definitions of “pro-immigrant” and “pro-America.” Especially insofar as “pro-immigrant” means anti-assimilationist multiculturalism, and “pro-America” means a unified national/cultural vision.
If you define them that way, I suppose, but it seems to me that pro-assimilationist and pro-immigrant views are a very natural pairing. “We want to bring the best people in the world here to make America stronger!”, etc., etc.
The lack of that pair in modern American discourse surprises me a little.
I completely agree. It’s just that assimilation has become strongly disfavored on the left, for the sensible reason that it conflicts quite strongly with the currently-ascendant strand of identitarianism, and also with the general trend in left sociology to prefer critique of “mainstream” American culture to critique of less-wealthy and less-white groups.
The only immigrants who would likely be pro-America in the sense the Red Tribe thinks of America (limited constitutional government, rule of law, christian at least culturally) would be some white europeans. Both major Mexican parties are socialist. So the party you’re describing would essentially be a nationalist party literally trying to Make America White Again by mass importing white european nationalists. That’s couldn’t happen today, much less once Hillary has given amnesty to millions of illegals and kept the flow coming (plus muslims!).
Like I said, last stand. Trump either wins and boots out the illegals or America becomes Brazil (now with muslims). There will no longer be any sense of cultural unity. This is a great hodge podge of people for a wealthy elite to rule over though, constantly pitting them against each other. Divide and conquer.
I think the biggest problem there is that nobody takes integration seriously any more. The American dream is explicitly not racial or particularly religious, it’s ideological, and ideologies can spread to any group if they’re good. The American ideology is one of the best.
The fact that most Americans think of immigrants as Mexican day labourers complicates the problem dramatically, of course. I’m Canadian, and up here the modal immigrant is an Asian(east or south) shopkeeper. There’s a reason we don’t really worry much about the issue. If Americans saw the word “immigrant” and thought of Bill Singh at Google, the pair would fit very naturally.
Best is subjective. Immigrants do not enter the country as empty vessels to be filled with American ideology. They enter with preconceived ideologies of their own.
Half of your country disagrees with the other half on what the “American ideology” even is, by the way.
The conservative brand is already irredeemably tarnished in the eyes of non-conservatives for the short to mid-term future, primarily because of the way U.S. politics is breaking down on identitarian lines. Even without Trump’s explicit white identity politics schtick, the fact that the Dems have gone so hard in the paint on diversity/minorities/ethnic issues means that the GOP was already de facto the party of white people. Insofar as the GOP continues to resist SJW principles and minority identitarian essentialism in the future, they will continue to be the de facto party of white people. It doesn’t make any difference whether they do so on white nationalist or classical liberal grounds. Either way the Left will continue to decry them as racist-sexist-bigot-homophobe-transphobe-evil. It doesn’t matter whether the GOP puts up a caricature of 1950’s American rectitude, a long-time Senator with a reputation for breaking with party orthodoxy, or a mangled-apricot buffoon; the Left will despise them, and will use its megaphone to tar and feather them, and put KKK hoods on their heads.
The only way this ends is if the identitarian trend in U.S. politics breaks down. The only way that happens is either some radical transformation of the body politic. The only ways the body politic can be radically transformed are through godawful political or ethnic cleansing – which I really, really, really, really, really don’t want to happen – some catastrophic geopolitical event which provides a convenient rallying point, or the inexorable hand of time.
Sometimes identity politics just die out on their own. I remember when religion vs. atheism used to be a huge deal, now it’s pretty much died out as its own identity politics (except as part of the more general culture wars, which mainly focus on pro/anti SJW these days).
It’s pretty much died out on its own because secularism stomped Christianity to death, buried it in an unmarked grave, and replaced it with Unitarianism.
How so?
True. The country is much less polarized along believer/secularist grounds, though an argument could be made that those are just one small proxy of the larger Red/Blue dichotomy. In any event, that’s the “inexorable hand of time” at work.
I suspect the religion vs. atheism thing died out more as a result of the social justice vs anti-social justice schism in the atheist community than anything else. As the social justice schism formed, religious and atheists joined up on both sides of the new war.
Now social justice is dying out as a result of schisms in the social justice communities; you can already see the lines forming for the next battle, which looks like it will be on class lines; I’m expecting the alt-right to join forces with the far-left, while the conservative right joins forces with the establishment left.
Historically, the Republicans have been the Status Quo party, and the Democrats have been the Reform party; these roles have switched, and everybody is racing to catch up.
I’d have put it more on demographic change – each generation is less religious than the last, so that debate is dying out, because the atheists largely won (sorry, theists). Something else comes in to fill the void, and each generation also seems to be more concerned with social justice than the last (sorry, bigots), so that’s what’s replaced the
neverendingatheism wars. I’m just interested what the next thing will be once the social justice millenials grow up and curb some of their enthusiasm. Maybe good old class warfare is the answer – possibly unfortunate if so because, thinking of major historical “class wars,” that would have potential to be far uglier than the (a)theism and (anti-)SJ stuff has been.Zombielicious –
It happened too fast for generational drift to be the dominant cause.
You may be right, but it also seems possible that a threshold gets crossed where there is or isn’t enough critical mass to sustain widespread toxoplasma about a given subset of issues. See how rapidly marijuana got legalized in four states – the momentum had been building for a while with medical marijuana, but putting aside hindsight bias, I doubt many people back in 2005 or 2010 would have said, “Yeah, we’re definitely gonna have legal weed in around ~8% of the country in under 10 years.” Same story for “in 5-10 years debates about transgender bathrooms and campus safe spaces will have mostly replaced religion vs atheism debates.”
>I suspect the religion vs. atheism thing died out more as a result of the social justice vs anti-social justice schism in the atheist community than anything else.
To say that the “religion vs atheism thing” is dead is to take a pretty myopic view of the world. Let’s not forget that a majority of the US population still identifies as religious, and religion remains an extremely dominant force in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East…
I understand that you’re just talking about the phenomenon of atheist vs theist internet debates, but it still feels like a really weird thing to say.
>I’m expecting the alt-right to join forces with the far-left
No way, not in a million years. The alt-right is opposed to homosexuality, the far left is not; the alt-right is explicitly racist, the far left is explicitly egalitarian; the alt-right wants to establish a white nation-state, the far left wants to destroy all national boundaries. And there are many other differences besides those. Far left Antifa groups get into literal, physical fights with far right groups.
The two groups just completely hate each other and have diametrically opposed worldviews. The mere fact that the alt-right uses some populist working-class rhetoric sometimes isn’t nearly enough to change that.
@anime avatar Anonymous:
You’re right that there’s not going to be an alliance between alt-right and leftists. I think there is, however, a possibility that individual leftists of the sort who got called “BernieBros” or “brocialists” will start, instead of denying allegations of racism, sexism, etc, actually saying “we don’t care what the liberals say about us” … and I think that’s a mindset where some alt-right stuff will start to look good. Few people jump into anything 100% at the beginning – political views, hobbies, musical tastes, usually develop.
*most self-proclaimed radicals are really liberals if you look at what they actually do.
@dndnrsn
Ah yes, that’s a good point. That’s how a lot of young men are getting pushed further to the right, with some of the eventually ending up at the alt-right: people are getting fed up with the standard leftist accusations of racism, privilege, etc, to the point where they either don’t care anymore, or those words become badges of honor and people actively work to live up to them.
On the subject of people drifting to the alt-right. It’s surprising how many alt-righters claim to be ex-libertarians, given the alt-right’s absurdly totalitarian views on issues like gay marriage and freedom of expression. Makes me wonder how strong their libertarian convictions were in the first place…
> On the subject of people drifting to the alt-right. It’s surprising how many alt-righters claim to be ex-libertarians
One standard path to libertarianism is hate of politics, where politics is defined as a coalition-building effort in order to capture the sovereign authority. There is two ways of getting rid of politics thus defined : getting rid of the sovereign authority (“orthodox” ancap solution) or making the sovereign authority non-capturable (alt-right solution). I think it can explain your observation.
@anime avatar Anonymous:
you wrote
For purposes of clearness, what do you mean by “leftist”? I’ve always seen it used to refer to people who are Marxists, or something similar. As opposed to “liberals”, who make up the rest of the left (or, the left wing). Leftists use “liberal” as a sneer word the way many people on the right do – but people on the right tend to call anyone on the left a liberal, whereas many leftists will insist that liberals aren’t even left-wing.
I suppose I should expand on my statement that a lot of self-proclaimed radicals are actually liberals: someone isn’t a radical if they don’t want to drastically remake society.
Among people who think of themselves as radicals there’s a school of thought that seems increasingly common that doesn’t really have a problem with capitalism except insofar as the fruits of capitalism and the positions of power are unequally distributed – if the Fortune 500 CEOs perfectly mimicked the US population in terms of race, sex, gender identity, sexuality, etc they would probably be happy. They often relegate class to second or third place in their analyses, or ignore it entirely (uncharitable explanation: wealth is the easiest kind of privilege to divest yourself of, and a lot of left wing activists of this variety are educated and well-off, so they leave the way society advantages them out of their advantage).
A lot of them seem to have come to the conclusion that full-on libertarianism can only work with certain conditions: they think it only can in a high-trust society (which they interpret as inevitably being a homogenous society) with a certain intellectual tradition (European or specifically Anglo). If you only consider free-market economic libertarianism, you’ve got the ones who are fans of Singapore, but that’s mostly a Death Eater thing, isn’t it?
Imagine if a pacifist were to say “well, pacifism works, but only if everyone is peaceful. We need to get rid of all the unpeaceful people.” It’s kind of like that, I guess.
Re: Alt-right and libertarianism.
There is a certain segment that has called itself National Libertarians. Nationalism being a means to the end goal of libertarianism. Advocates include Christopher Cantwell and Stephen Molyneaux. Their hero is an ahistorical meme version of Pinochet rather than Hitler.
It mirrors how anarchists on the left join with Marxists, only ideologically speaking the alt-right are acting more like the anarchists and the libertarians/ancaps are acting more like the Marxists (I’ll explain).
Both alt-right and left-anarchists think that the revolution is itself the solution. For the broader alt-right, once you’ve shipped blacks and Jews and whoever else abroad then you’ve achieved your goal of a white nation-state. For the anarchists, once you’ve removed the bourgeoisie from power in the revolution then you’ve achieved your goal and your communist society is achieved immediately.
Nationalist libertarians take a different tack that is more similar to the Marxists. For the National Libertarians, the removal of Jews and blacks is not the perfection of society in of itself, but merely the means by which a transitory society can be established that can lead us to authentic minarchism or even statelessness. For the Marxists the removal of the bourgeoisie is not communism in of itself, but merely the means by which a transitory society of socialism can be established that can lead us to pure communism one day.
You seem to be defining alt-right at least in part as white nationalist. My impression is that it includes lots of other people and that the defining characteristic is something more like the rejection of the changes of the past two centuries that everyone else thinks are good.
I wouldn’t expect Moldbug, for instance, to be a white nationalist.
@David Friedman
I used to think Death Eaters were alt-right. But apparently alt-right is its own thing. Or whatever. You’ve got Computer Programmer For Monarchy types who maybe aren’t white nationalists, but certainly would agree with the notion that there are certain sorts of people who the free market needs to be “protected” from. By, for instance, not letting them have suffrage. To some of them, at least, the job of authority is to protect those they consider “makers” from those they consider “takers”.
Mencius Moldbug isn’t alt-right or white nationalist (he wrote an article on that even). The media is conflating the two “movements” (Death Eaters aren’t even a conventional political movement since they explicitly disavow the populism or “demotism” on which the alt-right is based) and trying to draw a ridiculous line of influence in which Moldbug has more sway on the alt-right than 4chan’s /pol/ and TRS.
The alt-right is not a single ideology, but to the degree that it’s a big tent, it’s a big tent of populist white nationalism. The two main strains are classic National Socialism, and something you might call National Libertarianism. Then you can divide them into two degrees of antisemitism with groups skeptical of Jewish influence and willing to moderate and groups who outright follow Hitler on the question. I’ve been hanging around these types since before they were even called alt-right, and the vaguely neo-nazi frogtwitter lot are pretty representative, I’m afraid.
EDIT:
Now, of course, since “alt-right” has become a thing it might get more popular and become watered down. Milo Yiannopoulos has tried to portray them as 90% jokers who use Nazi memes for shock value and are actually just cultural libertarians and civic nationalists. This has made a great deal of alt-right types upset at what they see as entryism. It’s possible this entryism will work and so many bogstandard conservatives will take up the “alt-right” label that it becomes denazified, but places like TRS, the DailyStormer, and the wider frogtwitter contingent might just manage to spread their message to broader quadrants instead.
@Hwold
>or making the sovereign authority non-capturable (alt-right solution).
Very interesting point. It reminds me of Slavoj Zizek’s criticism of anarchism: “I don’t want to live in these small local communities based on direct democracy where I have to participate in every decision and debate every single decision. I want to live in a nice alienated state where things are decided for me and things like education, healthcare, utilities, and so forth, just work.” This is, paradoxically, something that is appealing to the right-libertarian personality while also basically being a description of fascism.
@dndnrsn regarding the word “leftist”. Yes, you’re right, technically socialists have a sort of monopoly on the word “leftist”. There’s unfortunately no good word for the people in between classical liberals and socialists. Those are the people I refer to as “SJWs” when I’m in friendly company, but that’s a pejorative and isn’t an appropriate name for a real movement or ideology. This problem is compounded by the fact that SJWs absolutely refuse to see themselves as a distinct political bloc with a certain pattern of beliefs, and thus refuse to adopt any name besides “rational person”, “good person”, etc. I guess “feminist” would work the best?
@Tekhno thank you for introducing me to the term National Libertarianism! They sound like my kind of people. I am familiar with Molyneux and I enjoy his work.
@David Friedman yeah, I am defining the alt right as being fundamentally white nationalist. The WN communities are extremely vocal about the fact that anyone who is not WN is not alt right, and it seems like all parties involved have agreed to cede the term entirely to them. Some people think that certain “garden-variety anti-SJWs” like Milo are alt right, but Milo has never explicitly stated that he’s alt right, merely that he’s a “fellow traveler”.
@Tekhno again. Interesting that you say that the alt right tent has room for any type of libertarianism right now. The neo-Nazi types are so extremely vocal in the community and are so extremely socially conservative that any libertarian who hasn’t already left will soon be forced out, I think. But, the movement is young and small and could still develop in many different directions, and if and when it makes the jump to more frequent IRL organization, people will be forced to moderate their rhetoric when they no longer have the anonymity of the internet. So, we’ll see.
Of those who are active in daily political debate, yes, that’s probably true. Remember, most voters are not political nerds. Remember also, attacks tend to stick a lot better if they seem accurate – if the left had tried to slam McCain as a pathological liar or Romney as a clueless narcissist, it’d have failed. But those attacks work on Trump, because they’re true of him. Just throwing in the towel and saying “Well, they’re hitting us as hard as they can anyways, let’s not bother trying to prove them wrong” is disastrous PR tactics.
The racist-sexist-homophobe-bigot-transphobe-classist smear worked on McCain and Romney despite being patently inaccurate – that’s why they didn’t get elected.
They didn’t get elected because they were running against Obama.
Yeah, I hate it when the good candidate gets successfully smeared as being bad by a bunch of malicious baddites, especially when it results in the bad candidate getting elected. Why is it legal to willfully misrepresent the facts like that?
That, and McCain sabotaged himself with his running mate pick.
Fahundo, I’m pretty sure McCain over-performed the fundamentals in that election. Romney underperformed, though.
Nit:
“The problem with getting every American a job is that getting 100% employment in a modern economy is a really hard problem.”
Actually this is somewhat a confused goal. Like, if nothing else it’s really hard to guarantee that if someone gets fired, they will *instantly* get a new job, and if they don’t, they will show up in the unemployment statistics for that month or three or six.
If you set a more reasonable goal of people who want jobs & are capable of doing anything useful at all being able to get jobs in a reasonable time frame, this is easier. Do normal macroeconomic stimulus, or if you don’t trust people to spend money on labor-intensive things rather than buy lots of goods made in robot factories, have a government-run temp agency with a policy of turning down no one for a job.
Well I don’t like Clinton at all, and I found this essay reasonable enough. The argument from continuity is probably the best one for voting Clinton if you don’t particularly love any of her policies or her as a person. Trump is a wild card, I must admit.
One issue with this view is that Clinton, while probably not particularly committed to leftism, seems to be adopting all the bad parts of leftism (social justice, BLM, etc) while ignoring the better parts (inequality, safety net, etc). The best case is that she isn’t really a sincere SJW and is just pandering, but even then it can’t be a good sign. Trump, for all his faults, doesn’t give a crap about social justice.
I guess that makes me sound like I just don’t like the social agenda of leftists, which is fair–I do think it has rather jumped the shark.
Another issue is that Clinton isn’t really that cautious at all when it comes to foreign policy. She’s been in favor of every stupid war that’s come along as long as she’s been in politics. Trump has shown some skepticism of the current foreign policy establishment, though it’s debatable whether he has the character to pursue that path in the face of unanimous opposition.
It’s pretty easy to be skeptical of foreign policy, or anything else, when nothing is riding on your skepticism, nobody takes what you think very seriously, and, in the event that they later should come to take you seriously, you needn’t be constrained by any of your earlier positions or opinions.
Trump also supported military action in Iraq and Libya. I honestly have no idea what he would do if similar circumstances arose while he was president. This does not fill me with confidence, although I suppose for ardent anti-interventionists a Trump-maybe is better than a Clinton-probably.
Good piece by Conor Friedersdorf arguing that Trump is, in fact, more hawkish than Hillary, at least when he makes up his own mind and isn’t just pandering.
Your vote-value math implicitly assumes clear knowledge of the future, which is questionable. The expectation of value relies on accurately forecasting the difference in two policies. If one policy is for the US. Govt to melt Alaskan glaciers with Napalm vs. invest in education, it’s a safe assumption. In retrospect Iraq vs. Obamacare might seem obvious (as much as Obamacare could suck, Iraq is clearly a disaster), but was it super obvious at the time?
Even if it was, people also tend to have super random and strange nonlinear expectations associated with perceived differences in cultures (or more generally, higher dimensional considerations) . “If Clinton wins her social justice team will literally rape American freedom to death. Expectation of Trump vote: $1,000,000.” “If Trump wins he will put all minorities into death camps. Expectation of Clinton vote: $1,000,000.” Granted, no one thinks this quantitatively, but it seems close enough to the truth.
But maybe this is where you were going with that, since you worry your hyper-rational readers won’t vote while culture-fearing voters will vote as though $1,000,000 is on the line.
Some of these arguments prove too much. For example, suppose you’re right that a Trump win would give liberals greater control over society, and therefore conservatives should vote for Hillary. By this logic, liberals should vote for Trump to give themselves greater control.
Land-style accelerationism would indeed be a reason for liberals to vote for Trump, but probably not sufficient on its own unless that “ultimate amount of power liberals have over society” was the sole concern.
Yes, but the argument still works if you replace “would give liberals greater control over society” with “would benefit liberals, as part of an overall balance including the effect of giving liberals greater control over society”. If it’s a good reason for conservatives to vote against Trump, it still follows that it’s a good reason for liberals to vote for him.
I think what you say is probably true, but Scott’s apparent goal is not for the liberals to win/become the eternal masters of the universe. He’s not in their camp, he’s just pushing for the candidate that in his view doesn’t push America too far away from stability.
“There might be a Libya-style military action; probably not an Iraq-style one.”
I don’t think Scott Alexander is knowledgeable enough about this topic to make any comments on it. Libya was a disaster of epic proportions, pushed forward under same dubious circumstances as Iraq (it has nothing to do with human rights). The person cheerleading it was Hillary along with her State Department. Also, Hillary was incredibly gung ho about overthrowing Assad, supporting the influx of tons of jihadis into Iraq and Syria. The conflict between her and Obama over this is well known.
” If something terrible happens like China tries to invade Taiwan, she will probably make some sort of vaguely reasonable decision after consulting her advisors. She might do a bad job, but it’s hard to imagine a course where a Hillary presidency leads directly to the apocalypse, the fall of American democracy, et cetera.”
Again, I don’t think Scott Alexander knows enough about China-US politics over the pivot to comment on this subject. The pivot to China was masterminded by Hillary, which China views as a de facto containment attempt (which it basically is). Hillary isn’t all that popular over there. Hillary might consult her advisors, but considering how her advisors came up with Libya, Cold War with China, Syria, (and Ukraine! Russia considers the revolution in Ukraine a completely States Department affair) I wouldn’t put too much faith in her advisors.
Not saying Trump wouldn’t make a mess with foreign policy, but I get the feeling people thinks a Hillary foreign policy wouldn’t be so bad simply because they know nothing about her foreign policy record. Her actual record is kind of depressing and doesn’t inspire a lot of faith.
Russian diplomats blame the State Department when the UN cafeteria gets their lunch order wrong. This isn’t exactly compelling stuff.
For people without a good grasp of recent history, the current downward spiral of Russia-US relations started with Libya (again for people who do not remember, Russia and China ALLOWED the imposition of no fly zone in the UN, what they were against was helping rebels overthrow Gaddafi). Then came Syria which made relations worse, and finally reached the peak with Ukraine. So it is rather compelling stuff. Also I’m assuming they started blaming State Department for everything AFTER this series of disasters, not before.
Relations were on a downward spiral well before that. The whole Georgia / South Ossetia dust-up was back in 2008.
Yes but George W Bush was in office back then. Obama wanted a reset which ended… nowhere and not very well. Also, Obama admitted that Libya was mistake probably to make point that it was State Department’s fault (aka Hillary’s). People seriously underestimate the political effect of Libya on Russia, China, and US relations. I don’t blame SSC for making this mistake since I don’t think a lot of people knows about Hillary’s foreign policy but it is rather jarring when people write about Libya as if it is no big deal and how Hillary’s advisor will come up with a somewhat reasonable plan. If people want to advocate for Hillary I suggest they stick with domestic policy since Hillary’s foreign policy is actually her weakest point.
Add the fact that the disaster in Libya and Syria is the main cause of the surge of refugees and other immigrants to Europe (the EU had a deal with Gaddafi to stop immigrant boats from departing from the Libya, and Syria is now a main source of refugees, not to mention immigrants who pretend to be Syrians in order to pass as refugees).
This mass immigration crisis, with the bonus terror attacks by al-Qaeda and ISIS, destabilized European institutions which didn’t respond to it effectively. The Brexit referndum would most likely have not succeeded, or even held in the first place, if it wasn’t for this. More destabilization of the EU could follow. Eventually, some countries might even leave the NATO and ally with Russia, as Putin is starting to look as a safer ally than the Clinton.
Yes the scale of the Libyan and Syrian disasters is understated. Honestly, it’s as bad as Iraq, the only difference is we don’t have a lot of ground troops over there getting killed so CNN can’t run a body count. Basically, the immediate price for America is much smaller, but in terms of geopolitical instability and general nastiness, Iraq was less disastrous.
I would say that Syria is significantly worse than Iraq, but Libya is not as bad. Both the initial Libyan civil war and the present splintering of the transitional government have resulted in casualties in the single thousands. Even adjusting for population size, it has been a much more sparse and intermittent conflict.
One can still convincingly oppose intervention in all three conflicts, but I feel it’s important to be accurate.
A 1 in 60 million chance to to create $300 billion isn’t worth $5000 – if offered the choice between the two, the $5000 is obviously better. For a once-in-four-years event, that low of a probability means it’s not going to happen, so the expected value is basically zero.
But also, I think that both the probability of deciding an election is lower than 1 in 60 million.
It is MUCH lower:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/e410/pc2.htm
I’m not sure how good his approximation here is. If I simply try to compute
exp(gammaln(n+1)-gammaln(n/2+1)-gammaln(n/2+1)+n/2*log(p)+n/2*log(1-p))for n=50e6 and p=.501, then I get 4*10^-48, not 10^-91.Still ridiculously negligible, but let’s continue:
This is the correct probability if you are completely certain that voters have a 50.1% chance to vote for one candidate over the other.
However, if you are so certain, then you also know that the probability of the disfavored candidate to win is
betainc(1-p,n/2+1,n/2), or about 10^-45. Maybe I’ve made an arithmetic error, but the general point doesn’t require calculation: it’s a binomial distribution with a standard deviation of like 3500 voters, and you’re hoping to hit an outcome that’s more than 50,000 voters away from the mean? Not going to happen.In other words, under Caplan’s assumptions, it is indeed unwise to vote, but that’s mostly because you will be far too busy betting every penny you have and every penny you can borrow on the greatest sure thing you’ll ever see in your lifetime.
But if you do not in fact know who the election winner will be with a certainty up to one part in a quattuordecillion, then the contrapositive argument applies, and the assumptions you used to calculate an even smaller probability of changing the election are false.
Try instead starting with epistemic uncertainty and working backwards. If your prediction of the election winner is centered around a 3% margin of victory and is only 70% confident (to grab numbers from 538), and there will be around 140 million voters, then your epistemic uncertainty has a standard deviation of around 8 million voters. If we use a normal distribution and other grossly back-of-napkin arithmetic (which doesn’t affect our results much) and we ignore the electoral college (which affects our results by orders of magnitude, but some states will give you higher and others will give you lower numbers), then your estimate of the odds of casting a deciding vote in the upcoming 140 million person election should be better than 1 in 25 million.
That still might not be worth getting out to vote, but at least make the decision with correct numbers.
Thank God I don’t have to make this choice being non-American. (Now, ramble…)
I’m not of the view that the status quo candidate is stable, because I believe the status quo itself is unstable. Hillary is (effectively) a Neocon and a progressive at the same time, and that to me is the worst possible combination (“Invade the world, invite the world!”). She may be resisted on her progressive immigration policies effectively, but hawkishness is much more bipartisan. She’s going to continue the mistakes being made in Syria which are just like the mistakes made in Libya which are just like the mistakes made in Iraq. Just out of raw self-interest I don’t want the migrant crisis to get worse (destroying Libya destroyed southern border control and exactly what Gadaffi said would happen if he was deposed did in fact happen). Hillary Clinton as revealed by the emails wants Assad gone to appease Israel on Iran, which is insane. The “Assad MUST go!” strategy helped ISIS rise by providing weapons to “moderate” rebels like Al Nusra which were then confiscated.
So I don’t think Hillary is going to be devastating because her personality is unstable or her policies are wildly outside of the Overton Window, I think she’s going to be devastating because the status quo itself is rapidly approaching tipping points.
The effects of Neoconservative-style foreign policy are getting worse all the time – ISIS is worse than Al Qaeda – and the effects of those policies are making progressive national policies all the more untenable – the migrant crisis is worse than previous controlled immigration waves. Mexicans are pretty civilized, but third worlders from Africa and the Middle East are tremendously incompatible with European culture without a prolonged period of integration. This is leading to the rise of far-right parties in Europe, meaning that Hillary helps create the impetus for Trump-like politicians in the first place. Characters like Merkel are doing the “invite the world” part, but politicians like Bush, Obama, and Clinton are fulfilling the “invade the world” part that is exacerbating the problems of the first policy, and leading to destabilization. If a continuation of the Obama government was stable just because it was status quo then Trump wouldn’t exist in the first place (we’d have another Romney type), and far-right parties like the Front Nationale wouldn’t be gaining power in Europe.
I still agree with the article that it can’t be Trump. I just think Hillary is a lot worse than Scott is crediting her as being, if not as a politician, than as a continuation of a trend, and I think we are deeply deeply screwed if that trend continues. Trump offers that little hope of breaking free of the Neocon/progressive nexus point, but he’s a deeply unstable flip flopper who has no concrete plans to govern, so he can’t save us.
If only there was a smart version of Trump who wasn’t a protectionist, who wasn’t nuts, but had a concrete plan for ending nation building in the Middle East, focused on attacking ISIS by working with Russia and established dictators, and had a plan to restrict visas from third world countries. Just having a guy like that in America would help us tremendously in Europe, but alas, the guy opposes the deteriorating status quo is a senile demagogue (PLEASE GET SOME LOWER AGE RESTRICTIONS IN PLACE FOR BECOMING PRESIDENT!).
V-vote Hillary you lot!
Unfortunately, if we had somebody in this race who fit all of those criteria almost exactly, the media would loudly proclaim that a vote for anyone but Hillary was a vote for Trump, and then as soon as he made a gaffe that they felt would resonate with enough people, (such as, oh, not recognizing the name of a city when he thought the interviewer was on an entirely different topic) they would latch onto it and try their best to make him look like a fool.
I hate Trump and wouldn’t vote for him if you literally paid me $500 to do it (Hillary either), but there are some pretty gross statements in this post.
1. Trump is more likely to overreact and cause WW3. What caused 1 and 2? The answers that historians give sound a lot closer to Hillary style foreign intervention than to Donald style blustering and over reaction. Who is the only guy to authorize the use of nuclear weapons in history? Not Stalin, not one of the nutters in North Korea. Harry S Truman, “reasonable” and “measured” are far more likely to be used to describe him than “reckless” or “erratic”. International relations and war are far to complex to reduce the likelihood of another major war to this type of analysis, this is fear mongering and nothing more.
2. “The world has seen history’s greatest alleviation of poverty over the past few decades, and this shows every sign of continuing as long as we don’t do something incredibly stupid that blows up the current world order.”- It shows every sign of continuing? Every sign being that growth has been historically slow for the past 8 years across the first world, with the specter of Japan and their 20+ years of stagnation showing that this at least has the potential to drag on indefinitely. The status quo was pretty good for 60 years, but that doesn’t mean that where we are now is that same place. If 8 years of Hillary end up on the same trend as 16 years of Bush/Obama you are talking about a debt to GDP ratio of ~%125+, the status quo for countries in these ranges is not so good.
3. “When the Left errs, it’s through using shouting and shaming to cut through the long and painful process of having to justify its beliefs. It’s through confusing disagreement with evil, a dissenter who needs convincing with a thought-criminal who needs neutralizing.” And then “The long range plan has to combine a short-term need to neutralize immediate would-be tyrants with a long-term need to slowly encourage epistemic virtue so that we don’t have to keep putting out fires”- This is why you (people who want to be correct) need to read a lot of Hayek above anyone else. The Left’s biggest issues (that is screw ups) don’t come from blocking out dissent, they come from assuming that they can solve problem X in a reasonable time frame, their problem is hubris. The Obama administration did not go into Syria without preparation or thought, but they started with the assumption that they COULD get the outcome they desired and then set about describing how to get there. The lessons of Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq (and even Germany and Japan) are not “X,Y and Z need to be done for successful nation building” but “holy effing hell nation building is complex and probably requires specific characteristics of that country going in that most don’t have, so just stay away.”
At least one of the proximate causes of WW2 was the assumption that Hitler was a rational leader who could be assuaged by dealmaking and territorial concessions based on supposed ethnic affinities (e.g., Sudetenland).
How so? Did Hitler go from plans of just taking small parts of Europe and then settling down quietly to grand schemes of world domination and eradication of the Jews after concessions were made? Did Stalin go from reasonable to extreme on the expansion front after witnessing this? Did Japan bomb Pearl Harbor because they thought the US wasn’t going to get involved in the war?
On the other hand, the Korean War and the Gulf War both did happen in part because the invaders thought the US wasn’t going to get involved in the war (thanks to Dean Acheson and April Gillespie respectively). Which is why Trump’s waffling on our commitment to our NATO allies, when Putin is sending troops into the near abroad and openly speculating whether NATO troops are prepared to “die for Narva” if
hemysterious fighters without insignia were to intervene in the Baltics, strikes me as incredibly dangerous.(Much more dangerous than actually breaking up NATO, which while I’d be highly opposed would at least not create that sort of deadly ambiguity– assuming we really meant it.)
This is a very thin explanation for the Korean War. Even if you accept it (I don’t) the Korean War was peanuts compared to WW1 which came down to pretty much everyone honoring their commitments to go to war if X went to war. A couple of countries bailing on such a commitment (it would have to be specific ones) might have prevented WW1 AND WW2.
Hitler was always pretty explicit in his book. Sometimes, politicians don’t lie.
Are you talking about what caused the World Wars, or what caused US involvement in the World Wars? Because those are two different things, and there are furthermore two different answers for the two wars.
But they all come back to August 1914, and every bit of historical analysis I’ve seen of that looks like straight-up blustering and overreaction, from like five different directions at once. Nobody was proposing any sort of intervention – everybody assumed that if they Laid Down The Law and Took No Guff, there wouldn’t be a conflict to intervene in.
And for that matter, the buildup to 1939 didn’t involve much in the way of anyone intervening anywhere. Hitler was doing straight-up military occupations without any pretense of intervening in a third-party conflict; everbody else was Making Really Great Deals with Hitler.
I suppose you could count the Spanish Civil War as “Hillary style foreign intervention”, and at least count that as a contributing factor for WWII.
Europe pre WW1 was a mass of tangled alliances, the immediate aftermath of the assassination of the ArchDuke was that virtually every country had a reason to enter the war with many of them claiming they had an obligation to enter the war. IIRC prior to the war a fair number of pundits argued that these treaties would prevent a major war- who would attack France if they thought that would simultaneously bring the Royal Navy to blockade all your ports? Instead it worked out more like storing all your explosives in the same place and hoping no one is lazy in putting out their cigarettes.
The closest thing to an individual cause for WW2 was the economic condition in Germany at the end of WW1, which is heavily impacted by the surrender conditions of WW1, which were able to be dictated because Wilson got the US involved and screwed with the balance of power quite severely. Hillary style (its not fair to call it Hillary style since Obama, Bush and Bill also are guilty of this as well as any number of former presidents) interventionism is to take a complex foreign situation, describe why it is bad, describe why what you are going to do is good and use that to justify your actions. Later, when things have not gone the way you said they would, act shocked (shocked I tell you) that a complex situation wasn’t diffused by you sending in lots of men with guns.
Scott – you’re a smart person. I am surprised you would show the meaningless Nate Silver forecast over the betting market odds. Even though, by definition, the latter is more accurate.
I’m going to just assume you did so to show a closer race so that you can convince people who are on the fence to go out and vote.
What?
It is impossible for anything to be more accurate than a high-volume betting market (going forward) because it would imply unlimited money for anyone who had access to the alternative.
Did you hear the one about the economist and the $20 bill?
For curiousity’s sake, I haven’t.
Two economists walking down the street. The younger of the pair exclaims, “Look – a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk!”. His older, wiser colleague retorts, “Nonsense. If it were, someone would have picked it up by now”.
Thank you, I’ll be here all week.
I don’t even know if that’s groanworthy or not.
Betcha $20 it is…
You leave out lots of words. “going forward” isn’t the same as “going forward into infinity”. Once you drop “infinity” you are forced to realize that the amount of money the better predictor has access to is limited by several factors. 1. The size of the edge he has over the betting markets, 2. the costs of participating in the markets (for futures this includes the vig + opportunity costs of tying your money) and finally 3. The amount of time it takes for the market to properly incorporate this new information.
Simple proof: Betting markets get MORE accurate over time, the only ways this can happen is if individuals are introducing better models all the time, or if the dumber elements are perpetually dropping out (which makes it hard to have a high volume betting market).
Nate Silver’s model is widely disseminated (or the output is, at least). The information that comes from his model is already implicitly incorporated in market odds.
Again, if you don’t think this is the case, I’m assuming you’ve got a lot of money on Trump no? Looks like a fairly large arbitrage opportunity.
This doesn’t mean what you think it means. A market doesn’t automatically know if a model is better than the current average of models (or however you want to describe the market), it is only after it has run through X numbers of cycles that it will be accurately reflected.
But that is neither here nor there, you said betting markets are better “by definition”- they aren’t better by definition unless they are perfect (or at the maximum of predictive knowledge), and then you said that a person would have access to unlimited money if they could beat a market, which is also wrong.
Sigh. So because I correct you on your assumptions that must mean I think Silver’s predictions are significantly better than the markets? What kind of logic is that?
Which “high volume” betting market offering “unlimited” money is this, again?
The foreign exchange market (USD-peso).
I would generally agree that prediction markets are better than pundits, but I’m not sure that’s true in this case. Prediction markets in the US are pretty limited in order to avoid the wrath of regulators. Iowa Electronic Markets has a $500 limit on each contract, and PredictIt has a $850 limit and a limit of 5000 traders per contract. This seriously limits the scope and value of the information added to the markets.
Betfair in the UK doesn’t seem to have the same regulations, but it is limited to UK residents. Moreover, not that much money is wagered in that market anyway.
I’ve been watching PredictIt and it seems like a lot of the investing that goes on there is expressive. It feels good to buy shares on your own team, and the people with less biased views are limited in their ability to correct the effects of expressive gamblers. For a long time–like months–there was an arbitrage opportunity available on the US Pres. and Republican Nominee markets. Given PredictIt couldn’t even clear that low bar of EMH that implies no pure arbitrage opportunities, I’m skeptical that the markets are certainly better than the 538 forecast. At least Nate Silver’s estimated probabilities add up to 100%.
I assume you have a sizable wager on Trump then?
Case in point: Soccer world cup betting markets tend to skew (slightly) towards european teams, since europeans have more money to bet than south americans.
You mentioned in your old livejournal that you used to be pro-life at one time. Cast your mind back to that point in your life, and you’ll understand how we’ll be voting.
Hillary is pro choice. Trump is less so. The Supreme Court is old.
I’m pro-life, but I’m still inclined to vote for Hillary, since I don’t believe Trump is. And a pro-choice republican is way worse than a pro-choice democrat, since at least for a democrat we can count on republican opposition.
Mike Pence is, and I’m certain he’s helping out with the SCOTUS picks.
Depending on a vice president to be influential is the epitome of grasping at straws. It’s not entirely unknown (e.g., Cheney), but the overwhelming majority of them might as well be stored on a shelf for 4-8 years, barring an emergency that results in presidential succession.
Not trying to get into a debate or anything, just curious:
Are you opposed to the morning after pill? If not, where is the line?
Not sure what his stance is, mine is something like this:
Assume that killing babies after birth counts as murder, full stop. If we do a QALY calculation, we get that it costs, say, 75 QALYs. Assume going through with an unwanted pregnancy – well, the costs are complicated (and there’s costs to abortion, too), but let’s say 1 QALY just to fermi it.
Now, it’s absurd to say that the transition from “not human” to “human” occurs precisely at the moment of birth; after all, that’s basically just a change in location. So the “percent of a murder” at point x in the pregnancy (or equivalently, probability that abortion at at point x is a murder) should be an increasing function throughout the pregnancy. There are a bunch of ways to guess this – jumps at certain developmental milestones, estimates based on brain size, just saying it grows linearly – but the variance between them isn’t crazy high, and we should ban abortion when the expected cost becomes greater than the expected prize (somewhere in the first few weeks – my conclusion is up to around 12 weeks, but this varies a bit depending on your calculation). This approach also has the advantage of being flexible to hard cases – for example, in cases of genetic disorders the expected gain from the life of the person is lower, and in cases of rape the loss to the mother is much larger, so we should be more flexible.
…Of course, that’s the rational explanation. The emotional explanation is more like “HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY BE OKAY WITH KILLING BABIES YOU MONSTER”. Which is more honest, but probably counterproductive.
I think if those who can afford it would like to donate to Scott’s Patreon, it might be a nice gesture of thanks to him for posting this and for putting up with all of us telling him “But Scott, you’re wrong!”
I appreciate the effort he went to, and that he does want conservative/right-wing thinkers to have a place in the public square, rather than slinking off in well-deserved ignominy once the Right-Thinking Right Side Of History side wins.
Scott has a Patreon? Where is it?
On the side bar on the left. Or here
44 Patron exclusive posts? Hmm…
> 44 Patron exclusive posts?
So far, the “patron exclusive posts” are all just links to Scott’s blogposts here.
I’d like to share my reasons on why I dislike the Fed (and by extension, Hillary Clinton) so much.
In a healthy economic system, there are ups and downs. Both of these are vital to the churn of wealth which contributes to a level playing field. For example, in the housing bubble of 2008, a lot of stupid wealthy people lost money. By contrast, I ended up benefiting, since I had been waiting for prices to drop before investing any money into the stock market. Effectively, 2008 was a wealth transfer from stupid people to smart people, which is how the platonic ideal of capitalism is supposed to work. Why should stupid people who happen to be born into privilege get to keep their cash? Why should smart people who happen to be born poor never have the opportunity to rise? In my mind, the stock market is one of the great equalizers.
However, in the past few years, the Fed has become increasingly unhinged in its focus on keeping stock prices high no matter what it takes. Think about what this means. Smart people with less cash will never be able to invest in the market because prices are too high for them to afford the buy-in. Dumb people who are rich will never lose money because the Fed insulates them from the consequence of their poor choices, manipulating the market so that stock prices rise and fall much more slowly than normal. Is this the kind of economic system we want? A system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? A place where no matter how clever you may be, you will never be able to profit in the market because of governmental interference?
Hillary Clinton is obsessed with Federal control of the economic system, so that we never have bumpy stock markets. She wants everything in the market to always run nice and smooth, so that all her rich and privileged friends on Wall Street continue to make money. God forbid that they have to face the consequences of poor decisions like the rest of us plebs. 🙁 Furthermore, the Fed’s control of the market means that it is impossible for smart people like me to exploit our intelligence or other people’s stupidity since my superior ability to predict value would pale in comparison to simply having insider information about what the Fed plans to do. The people who win in Hillary Clinton’s stock market are not the most intelligent analysts or best forecasters of value – quite simply, the winners are those who have superior access to the Fed.
Donald Trump has said the Fed is corrupt and that one of the first things he wants to do is fire Janet Yellen (Chairman of the Fed). It’s true that he articulated it poorly, but what’s important is that when it comes to our economic system, he is on the right track.
I fully acknowledge that Trump is a flawed candidate, and some of the things he has said concern me. However, I want an America where everybody can live up – or down – to their full potential, instead of continuing along the current course of becoming a corrupt plutocracy.
Experience seems to teach that there is no sure fire way to get rich. But for the past 10 year or so “buying the market” itself has been advocated by many sides to be just that … or at the very least a surefire way to comfortable retirement. And because that usually is a sign that something is fishy, I kept asking myself what that could be.
You might have provided the missing piece of the puzzle.
How could experience possibly teach that? At best you would find many ways which were not sure fire ways to get rich, but this doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
In any case, I don’t normally see people claiming that it’s certain, just an extremely good bet.
Ok, in rationalist lingo:
My priors regarding the quality of financial advice, as calibrated by my experience with financial advice, using indicators like the ubiquity of said piece of advice and its claimed success probability, suggest that the advice to “buy the market”, which in the US seems to default to some combination of 401k and a Vanguard product (?), might not be as good as it sounds. They also suggest that the people giving that advice have ulterior motives.
The other Alex’s theory, while containing a bit too much conspiracy for my liking, provides at least a hint from what direction that ulterior motives could come.
There is certainly a lot of terrible financial advice, but I don’t think this should be that strong of weight against there being no good financial advice. And I don’t think it’s entirely sensible to count the ubiquity of advice against it: after all, it’s possible for something to be ubiquitous because it’s true.
“Buy the market” means very specifically investing in a broad-market low-fee index fund. Vanguard has several funds which qualify, such as VTSMX. (Schwab does too, e.g. SWTSX.) People will merrily quibble over details, but that’s the thrust of it. A 401k is a type of account, not an investment; you can have investments, such as VTSMX, held in a 401k.
For what it’s worth, this was the advice I got from my (wealthy) family, back when I was first getting enough money for it to matter. I don’t think they or I have ulterior motives.
I suspect buy the market is not unlike the old “buy as much house as you can afford” advice that was common for people who lived through (and bought homes) around the time inflation picked up. Most people aren’t really thinking about why the idea is good (increases in inflation and fixed rate debt combine to be a giant wealth transfer from lenders to borrowers) it just saturates their thinking. It wasn’t ulterior motives, it was just people noticing things without exploring what was actually causing the results.
The Greenspan Put is a pretty uncontroversial concept among those who did discuss the why of buy the market advice.
There is a “sure fire” way to get “rich”- save high %s of your income and invest conservatively.
The tricky part in trying to keep it all smooth is when it fails. And it will eventually fail – you can’t fool all the people all the time, and if you mis-invest, the money will run out eventually. If you let stupid behavior have consequences immediately – it will be painful, but limited. If you let the consequences accumulate – the pain accumulates too, so when it fails, you get the pain not of one wrong decision, but of accumulated decades or so of wrong decisions. It’s like having a drug that allows you to feel no pain, as long as you take it, but once you stop, you feel all the pain you should have felt at once. If you ever run out of this drug, after taking it for years, you’d be really screwed. And I have a feeling that’s exactly what is happening with government economic interventions. Last time was so painful that the press (stupidly, of course) talked about “the end of capitalism”. I wonder how the next time would be.
I agree with you, but I think you may be failing to see the point of why the Fed wants to stabilize the market. They claim that they are doing it for our good, but in fact policy-makers in the Fed just want to inflate losing stocks or bonds for long enough for their friends to drop them. That’s why quantitative easing is so popular now, and why the movers and shakers in the Fed are speculating about adapting quantitative easing so that the Fed can buy benchmark stocks directly. Obviously the policy will eventually fail, but the point is that they will be able to use taxpayer money to inflate the market for long enough for their friends to get out without suffering any losses. Then later when the market collapses anyway, do you think that they will admit that they were wrong? Of course not! They will say “Well, the economy would have been even MORE of a disaster had we not taken the extreme measures that we did to stabilize it.”
I’ve worked in banking and I have friends on Wall Street. I can’t understate how corrupt and incompetent the Fed is, or how deep their ties to the banking industry run. Shit, some Fed officials don’t even work from their own office – they are embedded into the banks that they work closely with, are given a cubicle there, and if you didn’t know about the distinction in their role you would think that they were bank employees.
You consider yourself smart because you got lucky timing the market? Virtually all experts agree that market timing is a disastrous strategy. Don’t confuse your luck with intelligence.
Also, the stock market is essentially a reflection of the net present value of the economy. Of course it makes sense to keep that stable. When stocks go down, that is essentially people revising downward their estimates of the future health of the economy. The Fed’s job is to keep that stable. It has absolutely nothing to do with cronyism.
If your living room thermostat is accurate and shows 400 degrees your house is likely on fire.
Replacing the thermostat with one that always shows 72 degrees will obviously stop the fire.
Sorry but this is a terrible analogy. The stock market is in no way manipulated. We don’t live in China. The markets go up when the Fed eases because easing is expansionary. This is fairly basic monetary economics.
The stability of the stock market is a fantastic thing, it means the Fed is doing its job. In fact, if the Fed acted earlier and stronger in 2008, the impact of the recession would have been much, much milder. There was an implicit tightening when the stock market plunged and dollar strengthened and the Fed held. Even Bernanke confesses it was a mistake.
> “The average American has a one in sixty million chance of determining the election results.”
Does anyone else think this is probably way too high?
Yes, given that there have been more than 2 billion House votes in the 20th century in 18,000 elections and only 1 House election was decided by one vote (back in 1910).
It might be more instructive to limit ourselves to close elections – the vast majority of elections are completely predictable and shouldn’t count.
Yes. It is. Way, way, way too high. The math is actually pretty straightforward.
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/e410/pc2.htm
I’m not American, so I’m not going to weigh into the discussion.. But if nothing else, this post is good for my giving up on the commentariat entirely. Wow.
Yeah… helpful tip: Use the SSC blocker and block everyone who makes a post that makes you give up on them. The rise in the average quality of comments you read is amazing.
(Of course, you may have already both done this and found a really bad post by me, in which case you probably aren’t reading this).
For people who aren’t familiar: here is a Chrome/Firefox addon which will allow you to collapse-by-default comments per author.
That looks useful. For those of us not familiar with javascript, what do we have to do to install this in Firefox?
With firefox you have to install GreaseMonkey. After that you will be able to install the userscript by just clicking on its link.
I installed Greasemonkey, restarted Firefox, went to
https://github.com/bakkot/SlateStarComments/blob/blocking/block.user.js
and tried to figure out what to do from there, which was not obvious.
“Manage User Scripts” now shows SSC block when I am on that page. When I am on this page it shows “no installed scripts run on this page.”
Obviously I am doing something wrong. I took a look at the Greasemonkey manual. It tells me to navigate to a user script, but not how. I navigate Firefox to the user script in question and nothing happens–no installation window opens.
If it’s obvious what I am doing wrong, tell me. If not I don’t think I’ll bother.
It’s the link that was wrong — GreaseMonkey doesn’t recognize Github interface to source code, it needs a direct link to the raw source code. On github, you can click on the “raw” button, or directly follow this link
Many thanks. Now all I have to do is to figure out how to use it.
My first computer was a superclone of the TRS80. It’s odd to feel like a novice in the new world of Javascript, Greasemonkey, and the like.
On the topic of risk:
I think it is very likely (at least on the scale of “really bad things that could possibly happen”; maybe 1 in 50 to 1 in 1000 per year) that in the next 8 years Russia will invade a NATO, European Union state (probably one of the baltic states, “Oh I just want Ida-Viru, the Estonian county with 70% ethnic Russians and large deposits of oil shale”). Crimea was a dry run, a test of strength, and the west pretty clearly failed.
I’m not sure any president could prevent a nuclear holocaust in such a situation, but Trump has several advantages here (at least when it comes to keeping the US out of the mix):
1) he’s high-variance, like you said. This may make the Russian government think twice. Or not.
2) Because he’s high variance, there’s a chance he’ll just let the Russians take it. Appeasement is the correct strategy here in my opinion. Let the Europeans fight it out if they want, but it’s not our problem. Appeasement looks even better if we buy your theory that we’re only maybe a few hundred years at most away from a technological singularity that makes most/all of this irrelevant.
He does have some disadvantages:
1) because he’s high variance, there may be more of a chance he’ll throw some nukes onto the dogpile if Russia launches at Europe.
2) It’s arguable that his bluster could provoke Russia, but really, I’m not convinced that the demeanor of politicians has a significant impact on international diplomacy on the macro scale. Look at Putin; level headed, intelligent, and by and large doing what the people of Russia want, and we hate his guts here more than you could imagine.
I don’t know. It’s tough and I’m not sure a) if I’m right and b) If so, if anyone can stop it. But of the two candidates, Trump seems the more likely of the two to avoid the US being nuked. regardless of his flip-flops, he has been consistently more isolationist and more anti-NATO than Clinton.
As a capitalist I love the various tigers: the 3 Baltic, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea. But your right, compared to a 1 in 100 or even 1 in 1000 chance of a nuclear showdown involving the US and all 5000 nukes.
It’s not even close. Let China or Russia do as they please. Then Their neighbors double down on defence and alliances with non-nuclear states and we’re back to stable equilibrium.
In the absence of international communism the US war machine is just to dangerous to maintain.
That result sounds very plausible and very unsurprising to me, but it’s not like doubling the outdoor CO2 level would double the indoor CO2 level. (All other things being equal, I’d guess 100 ppm more CO2 outdoors would mean 100 ppm more CO2 indoors, but the warmer it is the longer people keep windows open so all other things are not equal.) IIRC the worst-case prediction for the outdoor CO2 level in 2100 is around 900 ppm (up from 400 ppm today), and the indoor levels in the study you linked are around 500 for “Green+”, around 700 for “Green”, around 900 for “conventional” and “moderate CO2” and around 1400 for “high CO2”.
Also, technologies that avoid CO2 have the side effect of preventing a large number of other pollutants, at least some of which probably reduce IQ.
I’ll just comment on one thing – Scott, like many liberalish technocrats, thinks that the erosion of American manufacturing jobs is something akin to a natural disaster or an act of God, completely unavoidable.
I once embraced this view, but it makes no sense. Congress could easily pass a law saying, for instance, ‘Cars bought in America must be made in America.’ Same thing for computers, smartphones, or whatever the wave of the future is. The despondence and dispossession of America’s heartland is seriously so easy to solve, and the cost is some short-term instability while supply chains adjust and some (easily addressed) risk of higher prices in the long term. Elites collude to pull the wool over smart peoples’ eyes with economic sophistry about how all this is inevitable.
Move payroll taxes into income taxes (with a transitionary law requiring everybody’s salary be increased by an equivalent amount – that is, keep it as revenue-neutral as possible), and replace the PPACA mandate, unemployment insurance, and all other employer-funded government programs with federally-funded equivalents (yes, even if that means single-payer). Ensure the cost to employ an employee is the employee’s salary, and nothing more, and eliminate all federal subsidies which help assist companies automate; that is, stop all our insane federal incentives to companies to employ fewer people.
+1
Easily address it for us naïfs who accept the tenets of classical economics regarding deadweight loss and the disparate impact of tariffs on the poor.
You address it with strong incentives to save – higher interest rates on bank deposits, and maybe something resembling the war bond program. Provide federally-subsidized loans, below the prime rate, for industrial refurbishment.
I don’t care about ‘the poor’, poverty is too difficult a problem to comprehensively tackle. I care about the productive middle class who have become poor due to the bad and/or malicious decisions of their leaders to send jobs and productive capacity abroad. For them, tariffs would clearly be a godsend.
So your solution to rising prices, which would hinder aggregate demand and possibly trigger a recession, is to raise interest rates, which would further hinder aggregate demand and even more possibly trigger a recession?
This is fascinating stuff.
Is this a Modest Proposal or are you serious? (If the latter, it’s insufficient: your law would have to say “Cars bought in America must be made in America, using no production technology invented later than [date].”)
Leaving aside the political and economic consequences of tariffs and embargoes –
The main decade-scale danger to manufacturing jobs is not China; it’s automation. Are you going to try to ban power looms?
There’s already lots of manufacturing in the USA, until a few years ago more (by value of what’s produced) than in China. We just don’t employ very many humans to do it.
I saw an argument (with supporting data) a while back that manufacturing jobs had stayed about constant over the past fifty years, once you controlled for the fact that a lot of non-manufacturing work is now outsourced to services companies – the example given was that, whereas manufacturing plants used to employ janitors, now they employ janitorial companies, whose employees are counted as service workers instead of manufacturing workers.
I don’t know if that’s continued to hold up, and IIRC it did point out that, although the total number of workers has held about constant, both the population and the value of the manufactured goods have increased considerably.
When you say “complete safety from millennialism” you mean “complete safety from millenarianism,” right? It’s very confusing to talk about millenarians here when it sounds like you could also be talking about millennials, and when you first introduce the term it’s not as clear as it could be whether you’re defining “millenarian” or making some sort of weird claim about millennials and referring to them weirdly.
I am on the fence, but I want to give a steelman argument as to why reasonable people could support Trump. Try viewing the situation in light of the following claims:
1) A centerpiece of modern American politics is a colonialist project, which is perpetrated by Urban Coastal Elites (UCEs) against Rural Non-Coastal Whites (RNCWs).
2) Trump is a revolutionary anti-colonialist leader.
If you think that colonialism is an overriding evil, then you must immediately admit the power of this argument. Liberals have supported far worse people than Trump, under the rationale of opposing colonialism. You could argue 1) it is okay to colonize people in your own country or 2) UCE culture really IS superior to RNCW culture, but you must see the problems with those counter-arguments.
This view explains why Trump doesn’t talk much about policy details. It is not that RNCWs don’t like health care, or public education, or welfare, or other nice social programs, it is just that they don’t trust the Colonial Power to administer these programs fairly.
While some of the more extreme leftists might support Robert Mugabe, the vast majority do not.
Right, they only support driving off the cliff. They’re 100% opposed to crashing into the canyon afterward.
I cannot vote for Trump. In my mind, that would be me putting a stamp of approval on the man, and I do not see any way to honestly claim that he would be a good President.
That having been said: I hope Trump wins.
I’ve spent 35 years of my life becoming a middle-class professional. I am reasonably well-off. Yet having done all of the things I was supposed to do, I am still single. I’m lonely. And life is beginning to bore me. I think Trump would be exciting. Moreso if it does lead to some delightful nuclear holocaust. I am beginning to understand why married men tend to get lower car insurance rates.
My advice: Google pick-up artist or seduction.
Do those ever actually work? Everyone I’ve known who got into that was either good with women before he started or stayed bad after (but just lied about it more).
Neither of those search terms sounds as though it will lead one to a long term solution to being lonely. Or bored.
I don’t know Garret, but my suggestion would be to find some social context he enjoys which has a fair number of women in it. Folk dancing. SCA. Activism for his preferred politics/ideology/religion. Try to make friends not only with prospective romantic partners but with other people suited to his friendship–in part because they may have friends who could be prospective romantic partners. In part because loneliness can be reduced by things other than romance.
@David Friedman
I really respect you, but why would you reject something that you don’t have much insight into? You’ve probably been married for over forty years, and you don’t strike me as someone who would try to get something on the side. Anyway, don’t knock it until you try it or at least take some time looking into it.
Edit: After rereading my post, I’ve decided that it may come off as too confrontational. I realized that it’s possible that you know someone who’s tried pick-up and had a bad experience. If that’s indeed the case, then it would be more useful to Garrett and the other readers of the comment page to explain that rather than just dismissing pick-up out of hand.
@ Bland:
I’ve been married to my present wife for thirty years or so and have remained faithful to her. But during earlier parts of my life when I wasn’t married I had some, although not extensive, experience of casual sex. I have nothing against it if nothing better is available, but in my experience it isn’t a substitute.
The son of my first marriage had an open marriage (loose description–I’m not privy to contractual details) preceded by what seems to have been a pretty lively life. He wrote in defense of polyamory. That marriage ended.
He is now engaged, has been in what appears to be a strictly monogamous relationship for some years, has written about his current reservations on polyamory. He is a pretty sensible and intelligent person, and I think his more extensive experience supports the conclusions from mine.
I could, of course, be mistaken. But I don’t see how casual sex, however pleasant it might be, would provide a solution for the problems that the poster complained of.
@David Friedman
I think you’re having a common misconception regarding pick-up. You’re confusing the marketing with the actual product. Pick-up is not about having a lot of casual sex. It doesn’t coach its users to have any particular goal. (At least it didn’t when I was studying it. It could have changed in the last several years since then.) Pick-up is about adopting a set of behaviors and developing a set of skills that make you more attractive to women.
I’ll use an example from my own life to illustrate one type of behavior that’s coached in pick-up. Before studying pick-up, my body language was poor. I had poor posture, and I had trouble with eye contact. Practicing standing up straight and holding a woman’s eye contact were easy fixes that made me more attractive.
Whatever a practitioner of pick-up chooses to use his increased attractiveness for is up to him. I don’t have access to any kind of survey data, but I would guess that most people who study pick-up settle down in committed monogamous relationships once they’ve attracted partners that they really like.
In my experience yes.
It takes some effort to screen out ethically questionable advice and find something that works for you, but if you spend the time talking to women and the effort to change your thinking and behavior in the correct ways then it should work. Being good with women is a skill, and like any other skill you can learn to improve.
I’m not saying anyone can become some kind of Casanova who can bed any woman (I’m certainly not, and I’m not completely sure I’d want to be). But you can probably go from being single and lonely and not knowing how to change that, to being successful with women, like I did.
Now, David’s advice to find activities that you enjoy with favorable sex ratios is good. However, I don’t think you get to the level of existential despair that I detect from Garrett’s post without having a sustained lack of success with women. If that’s the case there’s probably something that Garrett is doing wrong. I’ve been there, and now I can see other people making the same mistakes that I did. If Garrett doesn’t fix whatever he’s doing wrong (assuming he is in fact doing something wrong), then the women that he meets at any activities probably aren’t going to be interested.
There’s grains of truth in the broader teachings, wrapped up in a lot of babble and some nastiness. But the idea that it will impact your success or reputation with women is spurious; the advice boils down to “be inherently motived more by sex than comfort, and derive your sense of self-respect from your ease of access to the act”.
Modern dating is a mess because everyone follows the naive assumption that because men are inherently more bothered about sex (which they are) and women by the other benefits of a relationship (which they also are), that’s what each gender must be seeking on the scene. In reality, men already get sexual gratification from porn and women from the nature of egalitarian employment, so the genders are actually seeking the opposite stimulus from each other: most men only want a girlfriend or wife for the physical comfort (it has to be friggin’ spectacular sex to make up for the cost), and most women only want a husband or boyfriend for exciting sexy times (as the benefits of boosted income and shared home resources have to be substantial to outweigh being tied down).
The pickup artist community will get you as far as understanding that seemingly stand-offish women are inherently beddable, but not the underlying reason why, nor will they tell you how to get one to marry you for your personality.
Eh, your dichotomy between sex and comfort is a bit artificial.
If you can get a woman in bed then getting her to stay for breakfast the morning after is hardly an insurmountable obstacle. Guys aren’t usually worried that the girls they pick up aren’t getting attached enough: typically it’s the opposite problem.
Does anyone do that?
Not sarcasm, I would be interested to hear if there was good advice on that.
I can’t tell how you’re defining comfort, but from what clues I can garner it seems weirdly narrow. Comfort isn’t having a breakfast partner, it means having someone basically softer and nicer than you to stand by your side and, you know, provide comfort. Sex is almost always a part of it for a red-blooded male, but sex is powerful enough a motive to recieve its own feature.
Of course, attachment is neither a positive or a negative in this realm, but an intensifier. If a woman whose habits and attitudes revolt you becomes clingy, it’s as much a nightmare as that of a highly pleasant woman would be a dream.
Missed the gag there, although there is an element of truth to it; ideally similar broad motives works well in relationships, even if nitty-gritty differences bond well.
@LPSP
I strongly disagree that pick-up can be reduced to this advice.
Have much time have you really spent looking into pick-up?
Given that we are both members of the SSC commetariat, I would wager that if you were to find anyone who had exclusively visited and studied the less frothy parts of the pickup community, it would be hear. That said, I’d also be willing to wager that people who innately do value sex so much more than partnership with a woman would likely PU as a normal, helpful body of observations that totally doesn’t mean growing a new set of deep-seated motives.
@LPSP
Is that last comment in response to me?
I don’t completely understand what you are saying in it.
My position is that pick-up is goal and motive neutral. If your goal is to have sex it will help you do that, but if your goal is to find a partner it will help with that too.
I’m more worried about Clinton finding ways to work around an oppositional congress while getting a pass by the media outlets with the resources and talent to actually investigate and call the president on overreaches than I am on Trump who is uniquely hated by democrats and those same media outlets. Clinton will expand executive power and the next version of Trump will take advantage of those increased powers.
Also the driving forces behind Trump won’t dissipate if he loses for similar reasons, Clinton is uniquely hated by these people and that force will increase with her as president. Combine that will a recession due in the next few years (7 years since the last one technically ended, generally we get one every ~10 years) and whoever wins this time will very likely be a one termer.
I can’t support Trump. But it is telling to me that not even Scott can come up with a great argument in favor of Clinton (as opposed to anti-Trump). This whole article is “why Trump is bad”, even including the de riguer low-blow at his speaking style (I have been assured that any criticism of Hillary’s tone is sexist).
And I can’t in good conscience support Clinton either, even though I tend to think she’d be a better president for many of the reasons listed. Equality under the law / rule of law is one of the most important elements of a free society, and the fact that Clinton has been explicitly given a pass for committing a felony, destroying the evidence, and lying about it repeatedly to Congress, the FBI, and the American people suggests that she considers the law to be something for the little people. Worse, the crime was committed with the most likely motivation being avoiding accountability and transparency for other possibly shady stuff.
My other issue with her is that, while her “experience” is played up, her experience seems pretty bad – I’m not sure how you can look at today’s (or 2013’s) foreign policy situation and say it’s improved since 2009. That doesn’t make Trump better than her, but “high variance” does look a bit nicer compared to “low variance, but very low ceiling”.
So basically, given the utterly miniscule likelihood my vote will decide anything, I can’t give Hillary even the tiny endorsement of my vote. Probably Johnson, I guess, though I’ve been unimpressed with him as a candidate. At least his party’s platform aligns more closely with mine than the alternatives.
I’m pretty sure Scoot could, if he tried, but decided this tack was more likely to convince people that might be convincible than trying to convince them to like Hillary. (the convincible demographic mainly being “hate Hillary but worried about Trump”).
This is a very long essay with multiple sections. He couldn’t spare a few hundred words for “Here’s some good stuff I think Hillary will do that you guys should want”? If Scott was the only one arguing this way it would be one thing. But seriously, I’m seeing very little “Hillary is great” from anybody, and if you want to swing the probable Johnson voters (who I suspect make up a decent chunk of this blog audience, myself included) to Hillary, or get the totally disaffected to go out and vote for Hillary, that’s an argument that needs to be made.
You may be right – but Scott has a strong aversion to making object-level arguments, and even a short pro-Hillary section might be enough to get a lot of people to write the whole thing off as Hillary shilling.
In the interests of making some pro-Hillary arguments, I’ll go:
1) most importantly, renewable energy – Scott already addressed global warming. But *even if* you’re a climate skeptic, right now taxes on fossil fuels are well below what they should be to compensate for effects on lung cancer and other health issues or even road maintenance, and reducing pollution seems like one of the best money/life quality exchanges developed countries can currently make. She’s probably going to be pretty good on that. Furthermore, basing your economy on natural resources extraction (like Trump wants to) seems like a recipe for disaster (and has been a major contributor to Venezuela’s woes, though admittedly they have no lack of other issues).
2) Skilled immigration – Skilled, legal, immigration is pretty universally agreed to be good for a country. Hillary wants to expand H1B, Trump wants to dramatically reduce it.
3) Economy in general – Hillary’s generally viewed as a third Obama term, and over Obama’s time in office the economy’s done pretty well (especially in the last few years, when his policies had time to take effect – e.g. average wages had a record rise in 2015). If you’re a Johnson supporter you probably don’t like overly liberal economics, but Hillary and Obama have both been pretty good about staying reasonably centrist and backing off from extremities.
4) Administrative ability – Obama’s biggest and most undervalued contribution has been just getting government to work more effectively by being a competent administrator (e.g., I have a friend in the VA who says it’s way more efficient now than a decade ago). Hillary has a history of competent government administration and would probably continue this trend.
5) Social justice issues – Hillary’s generally pretty robotic and solution-focused, which may help make the SJ movement more reasonable. e.g. while a lot of her supporters talked about how terribly she gets treated as a woman, her personal example has mostly been, to the extent that she believes she’s treated unfairly, to man up and deal with it. Overall, she’d probably be a moderating effect on the SJ movement (not 100% certain of this, but I’d say p>65%).
More generally, I’d say I agree with about half her ideas and dislike the other half (which, considering idea-space is pretty large, is okay). But the half I dislike are probably the ones she’d have the hardest time passing through the republican congress, so she’d probably do a decent job.
I don’t expect you to agree with all these points, but the point that arguments for her can be made stands.
I think most people on a place like SSC are well aware of Clinton’s downsides, and since they see the cost/benefit as going against her, there’s little reason to vocally promote the advantages versus what they see as the net outcome. But to play devil’s advocate, she’ll likely pass TPP after a while, wants to add a public option to the ACA (plus may be able to rework it into a more effective, less costly program), expand it to cover the people not already covered, seems to have a good balance of trying to mitigate climate change without stalling energy production or the economy too much, wants to use Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, wants free tuition at community colleges and a debt-free plan for families up to $125k income at in-state public universities, and has a plan for refinancing and eventual debt-forgiveness for student loans, wants to overturn Citizens United and get the SEC to require disclosure of political contributions, has some plan to reduce the number of mentally ill people winding up homeless or in jail, reduce or end racial profiling programs like stop-and-frisk, claims to support matching funds for police body cameras, end mandatory minimum sentencing, claims she will reschedule marijuana to Schedule II, reduce or end private prisons, try to upgrade U.S. internet infrastructure to not-god-awful, and has various plans to increase funding for stuff like Alzheimer’s, HIV/AIDS, and basic neuroscience research.
That’s not an exhaustive list, just some stuff I pulled together from her website. It’s somewhat skewed towards what I think is not-awful, or at least would please some people, and depending on your preferences you may hate some of it (e.g. passing TPP or adding a public option to ACA). But it’s not like you can make a case she won’t do anything positive. Plus I expect she’ll be considerably more competent at navigating and manipulating the system than Obama was during his first two years, and certainly more than Trump will ever be, so some of it will likely actually get done.
The downsides can be pretty big too, though: possibly another Iraq-scale war, way more prosecution of whistleblowers and expansion of the nat-sec/military-industrial complex, possible rampant scandals and corruption, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a very Nixon-esque presidency – lots of good mid-scale policies for both sides implemented, but overall the whole term ruined by corruption, narcissism, foreign policy belligerence, and executive overreach. On the other hand, Trump is basically guaranteed to be all those things except worse, with none of the positives.
This is suppose to be a positive?
For people who think free trade is one of the biggest issues, protectionism hurts the economy, and that it outweighs the shitty parts like enforcing U.S. IP laws on the rest of the world… yes?
Personally I’m kind of mixed – I’d rather see the bad parts of TPP removed than it trashed altogether. But it’s hard to find reasonable, even-remotely-non-biased information on how good or bad it would actually be. From the research I did into the NAFTA outcomes, and assuming it basically tracks those, the net effects will probably be smaller in either direction than most proponents or detractors are claiming.
ETA: Also with regards to the criticism of gains from free-trade going to capital rather than labor, that seems more like justification for redistribution, more progressive taxes, and a social safety net, rather than protectionism. It’s unfortunate the two issues are uncoupled to the degree that they can’t be agreed to as a compromise.
I’d say the “bad parts” are a dealbreaker.
Fair enough – it’s not really an issue I’m super well educated on. But it’d probably be an advantage for lots of SSC readers, hence why I listed it, particularly as a lot of my list was skewed in favor of liberals.
TPP is a huge negative, and is actually a primary reason I flirt with the idea of voting for Trump (and I live in a swing state). The biggest reason isn’t even the intellectual property thing, it’s the very concept that corporations could sue us for lost profits for regulating them. That’s a road to governance de facto by a global corporate elite. You want friendly AI and genetic engineering? Okay. But I want those things not to be controlled by oligarchs and ensure their dominance forever.
I, for one, will not vote for a candidate who doesn’t promise to push the government to ban consideration of schooling credentials in hiring and remove disincentives against testing, and will not vote against a candidate who does.
Unless anyone has any better ideas for how to raise the fertility rate, at least.
Does this include occupational licensing? I want to have some way of knowing what the specialists I’m hiring (doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, electricians, etc.) know and how they learned it.
Aphrodisiacs in the water supply and broadcasts of smooth R’n’B music on PBS?
Content warning: serious oversimplification follows
TPP isn’t about reducing tariffs, they’re more or less gone already.
The big effect would mostly be exporting our IP law. Whether that’s good or bad depends on your opinion of our IP law.
Every trade agreement has ISDS or something like it. The US government approximately never loses ISDS cases. They’re not very favorable for developing-world governments though.
You joke, but.
(I recall this result making quite an impression on Mr. Jackson, or at least his stylistic doppelganger.).
Who thinks that’s a good idea? US IP law is a perfect example of “completely different rules for regular people and for those with power”
Ironically, the class of people who should support it the most are those who are pro-American and don’t give a shit about the rest of the world. Our most relatively important industries are very dependent on that kind of approach to IP.
Domestic evil corporations may be preferable to foreign evil corporations, but that’s damning with faint praise.
If you’re concerned about the rule of law, a lynch mob should be just as concerning as a criminal who gets away.
In other words, if the FBI (led by a Republican!) found that there was no felony, no reason to even go to trial, then what makes you so sure she’s a felon? Are you actually trying to uphold the rule of law, or did you just not like what she did?
Accountability and transparency, sure. Those are problems and it’s doubtful that Clinton is going to make improvements there. But there’s a huge leap between that and calling her a felon, saying that she should be locked up, saying that the FBI must be in on the scam because Clinton must be guilty. And I’m a bit fed up with it.
“In other words, if the FBI (led by a Republican!) found that there was no felony, no reason to even go to trial, then what makes you so sure she’s a felon?”
The fact that I’m given a briefing every year (that Hillary was also required to get, that she claims not to recall) that says that if I did what she did, I’d be subject to a punishment up to a $10,000 fine and 5 years in federal prison? The fact that someone taking selfies of a submarine did in fact face serious punishment? As did General Petraeus? The fact that she found it necessary to destroy a bunch of evidence, and got her underlings to plead the 5th or take immunity deals (that were offered strangely easily)? The fact that she lied, repeatedly, about what was actually on her account and implausibly claimed not to know what classified paragraph markings meant – clearly the actions of either an irredeemable fool or someone trying to avoid prosecution?
Comey’s been asked about this and the best he can do is dance around “intent”, which is not actually part of the law in question. And if “deliberately setting up a system to avoid safeguards” isn’t gross negligence, what possibly could be? Comey can’t answer that – can you?
At best it could be argued that there’s not a beyond-reasonable-doubt case that would survive a trial. But we’re not even talking about that, we’re talking about giving her a major promotion, and that I can’t in good faith endorse. “Felon” or not, she has demonstrably put her own dealings and reputation above the security of the United States, something us little guys are emphatically not allowed to do, and I can’t support her as Commander in Chief for that reason.
I’m a bit fed up with people ignoring Hillary’s and the FBI’s own on-the-record statements and evidence and just assuming that because the Republicans want her to be guilty, she must be innocent, and heck, even if she’s guilty, it’s just a little felony, nothing to see here.
Intent isn’t part of the statute in question, but it is part of the law as it stood after being partially overturned in 1941: http://warontherocks.com/2016/07/why-intent-not-gross-negligence-is-the-standard-in-clinton-case/
Both of them were found to have done so knowingly and intentionally, as the law requires. Clinton was found to have done so by accident. Again, are you actually sure that this is a “rule of law” thing, or are you just saying that it looks the same so it should be punished the same?
Taking the Fifth is not a sign of guilt. That would destroy the entire purpose of the Fifth Amendment if it was! Any lawyer worth their salt would have told Clinton’s staff to do the same. If you want rule of law, “rights of the accused” are a pretty important part of that law.
As for the missing emails, they were not an attempt to destroy evidence. Comey stated “I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed.” If you’re trying to prove Clinton and the FBI are conspiring to conver up her crimes, you need a little more than vague “strangely easy” accusations.
Setting up the email server was not a deliberate attempt to expose classified data – the classified info would have been just as forbidden if she had sent it via official state department computers. Setting up the private email server allowed her to evade FOIA requests for her emails, which is shady, but not illegal, and not an attempt to evade the safeguards on classified data. And also, done by the previous SoS without trouble.
So again, is this a rule of law thing? Do you actually think that the FBI was conspiring to allow Clinton to break the law and get away with it? Or are you just wishing that the State Department was more transparent?
What? Of course taking the Fifth is a sign of guilt; how could it not be? (Of course it’s not proof of guilt; nor is a sign of Joe Serverguy’s guilt necessarily a sign of Hillary Clinton’s guilt, though it could be.) Recognizing this does not destroy the purpose of the Fifth Amendment– that would only happen if the state were allowed to treat the plea as evidence of guilt in a criminal trial, which it isn’t. The rest of us are under no such restriction.
I am well aware that the taking the 5th is not a legal sign of guilt – but it’s generally something you don’t do unless answering the question truthfully potentially sounds incriminating. I’m not a court of law, and “looks pretty guilty” is, to me, enough of a reason to make her un-endorseable for president.
She intentionally set up the server. She intentionally failed to report it, and the classified information on it. She intentionally hit send on emails containing those baffling little (C) marks. Failing to notice that it was against policy was either intentional, negligent, or remarkably incompetent. Again, Comey himself called her “extremely careless” and admitted that a random schmuck at the FBI would have faced serious administrative punishment (though not, in his opinion, prosecution).
Really, my issue here is that, based on the evidence and the text of the law, it looks an awful lot like this should have at least been an indictment. Yeah, there’s prosecutorial discretion. But to me, part of “Rule of Law” does mean that higher profile cases like this should be held to a somewhat higher standard, because the optics are terrible – even the appearance of favoritism severely erodes confidence in the judicial system. For her to escape any punishment at all other than bad press from the investigation, sure looks bad. Again, were I to do this I would be, at a minimum, fired summarily and would never be able to find work again in anything going anywhere near secure information. We’re discussing whether Hillary should be promoted to the country’s highest office – so to argue that we should just totally ignore this is baffling to me.
Someone would have to be a submarine to take selfies of a submarine.
What makes me sure there was felony is that FBI found there were facts and deeds which would be – and has been – prosecuted in other instances, but in this instances were excused under arguments like “she didn’t mean it” or “she didn’t know what the letter C means”.
Clinton must be guilty because if it weren’t Clinton but a rank-and-file worker of a nondescript facility, they’d be fired, stripped of clearances, prosecuted and jailed. People lost jobs and ended up in jail for much less – e.g. see the case of Wen Ho Lee.
What makes me even more concerned is that “extremely careless, extremely bad judgement but technically still short of being a felon” is now considered a valid qualification for being The President of the United States of America.
There is a meaningful legal difference between Constitutional officers like the SOS and others, FWIW
If we’re going on details of classification law, for anything that originated at the State Department during her tenure as Secretary thereof (to be fair I don’t think any of that is at issue in Emailghazi), she’s the final authority on what’s classified and what isn’t.
Corey, to some degree that’s true (she would potentially be the classifying agent) but there would be others with classification authority as well, and in any case it would apply only to novel information that her own office created – she can’t unilaterally declassify existing classified, or unilaterally rewrite the classification guidelines for existing programs.
Also, there is a set standard for what “should be” classified – even if she determined it was not, it’s possible for her to have made a serious error in that determination and that’s worthy of censure.
Finally, her defense wasn’t “I went through the proper steps to declassify that information”. It was “I didn’t know that was there, if I did know I didn’t know what ‘C’ meant, I trusted the judgment of my subordinates to not send classified”. If you see something marked classified you’re not supposed to just pass it along! If it’s classified and shouldn’t be, there is a procedure to declassify. But the FBI determined it was appropriately classified (and sensitive enough that some of it could not be released, even redacted).
I’m sure there is. However, I don’t think it’s “you get to walk free from stuff others get jailed for if you can pretend not knowing what classified document is and FBI chief says you didn’t really mean it”.
So I get it. The person who is the ultimate authority on what is classified and what’s not claims to not know how classification mark looks like, being unable to tell classified document from unclassified one, says she doesn’t even remember if she had a briefing on handling classified documents and was officially deemed “extremely careless” by the FBI – and that’s why we should make her President. And giving nuke codes, all state secrets and command of the biggest Army in the world to such person is just fine. Unlike that other totally crazy guy that thinks we can build a wall on the border, like dozens of countries already did. Sure, makes sense.
She’s the final authority on classification for materials originating from within the State Department. Not for materials coming from DoD, NSA, etc… which is what this whole scandal was about in the first place.
Accountability and transparency, sure. Those are problems and it’s doubtful that Clinton is going to make improvements there. But there’s a huge leap between that and calling her a felon, saying that she should be locked up, saying that the FBI must be in on the scam because Clinton must be guilty. And I’m a bit fed up with it.
+1
I’m so sick of this “Hillary’s a criminal” stuff, as though it is obvious and self-evident. No, it isn’t. There were lengthy investigations into the emails, conducted by law-enforcement agencies. There were hearings in Congress. They did not charge her with a a crime. They could have, and didn’t.
And before you cry “the system!,” well, what’s your alternative? Appoint Sean Hannity judge and jury? The FBI, as the above comment points out, is led by a Republican. Investigations such as these have found criminal wrongdoing by public figures many times before.
Theoretically, could the fix have been in to get her in the clear? I suppose. But the only reason to think there was any wrongdoing here is that she was cleared of a crime, and if that’s your reason…well, that’s the very definition of circular logic.
Moreover, theoretically anything is possible. And in the absence of any other evidence who are we to believe: the FBI investigators, who are professionals and spent countless hours poring over this stuff? Or you, because you’re just so convinced that Hillary Clinton is a felon, because [mumblesomething] Clintonbad [mumble] corruption [mumble mumble]?
I’m not saying Hillary Clinton is a totally selfless public servant with the highest ethics (do such people even exist?). But, according to the best available evidence that we have, she is not a criminal.
EDIT: gbdub makes a better case for Clinton’s guilt than I have heard in the past. I remain skeptical but acknowledge that I have underestimated him/her.
“Theoretically, could the fix have been in to get her in the clear? I suppose. But the only reason to think there was any wrongdoing here is that she was cleared of a crime, and if that’s your reason…well, that’s the very definition of circular logic.”
You seem to be the one saying that she clearly did nothing wrong, simply because the FBI decided not to indict. I’m saying that the evidence points pretty clearly to her doing something wrong, despite the decision not to indict. I’m not peddling a conspiracy theory here – you’re the one arguing that the Vast Right Wing conspiracy is a valid reason to reject claims of her wrongdoing!
Here are things we know, based on the FBI and Congress’ own investigation reports – these should not be disputable / controversial:
1) Clinton set up a private, poorly secured email server on private property and used it extensively for official business, something that was against official policy (both for security and for legally required federal record keeping).
2) This server was vulnerable (we found out about it from a hacker who hacked it)
3) Many emails containing classified information, some of it classified at very high levels, were contained on the server. Clinton made multiple on-the-record statements that it did not contain such information.
4) Clinton had thousands of emails deleted prior to releasing the server to the FBI – she claimed repeatedly that they contained only non-official personal correspondence. Some of these emails have been recovered and found to contain official business. Hacked emails have been leaked again showing business correspondence to the server that was not released to the FBI.
5) Clinton claims not to recall any security briefings (these are an annual requirement for all personnel dealing with sensitive data). She claims not to have known what the classified paragraph markings on some of the emails mean. She claims that she essentially blindly trusted her subordinates to not send classified information to the server (the briefings she claims not to recall would have explicitly rejected this logic – you are expected to be vigilant to inadvertently leaked data, know what is classified, and report immediately if a “spill” has occurred).
Here is US Code Title 18 Section 1924:
“(a) Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both. ”
(This would be a misdemeanor if violated)
US Code Title 18 Section 793:
“(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
That one would be a felony.
There are additional laws relating to the keeping of federal records, FOIA, etc. but you get the idea.
So, knowing those facts, and that law, how do you conclude that the only possible reason to be concerned is “because you’re just so convinced that Hillary Clinton is a felon, because [mumblesomething] Clintonbad [mumble] corruption [mumble mumble]?”
It’s pretty clear to me the FBI decided not to indict because it would have turned the election into a farce that would be widely regarded by the Democrats as illegitimate, and might even have caused civil war.
Not because she didn’t do anything wrong.
Have you ever prosecuted or defended a criminal case? Do you know mens rea is? Burden of proof?
The “gross negligence” standard of 18§793(f) seems likely to significantly reduce the mens rea standard required to show a violation.
Have you ever prosecuted or defended a criminal case? Do you know mens rea is? Burden of proof?
Have you ever held a security clearance?
First, see bluto’s point. Gross negligence is sufficient. Second, see part (2) of the second law I quoted – merely having “knowledge” of information improperly stored or transmitted is sufficient to be criminal if you don’t promptly report the incident.
Second, what would you consider sufficient to demonstrate negligence or burden of proof, if the evidence so far available is not? I’m struggling to think of how she could have been more negligent, short of posting it on her Facebook page.
Finally, so what? There is a pretty big gray area between “definitely a slam dunk conviction” and “definitely did nothing seriously wrong”. Hillary’s supporters here seem to be saying that, because she fails to be the former, she’s clearly the latter – but the evidence seems strong that she’s in that gray area. Comey himself called her “extremely careless”, and that seems pretty bad on its own, given the importance of what we’re dealing with. Why is that unworthy of being considered a mark against her as a candidate?
@Edward Morgan Blake
I have not. How is that relevant?
@bluto
Gross negligence is no walk in the park. Take a look at how the jury would have been charged.
@gbdub
It is worthy of being considered and weighed against other pros and cons of each candidate. But you wrote:
which is mostly indefensible.
“Destroying the evidence and lying about it to the FBI and the American people” is perfectly defensible. We know she deleted relevant emails. We know she made multiple statements regarding the existence of classified information and the content of the deleted emails that later proved false.
Our only disagreement is (or should be) whether her extreme carelessness is just above or just below the legal standard of gross negligence (and then again, note that one of the laws doesn’t require gross negligence, just failure to report if you have knowledge of improperly stored information, which either she definitely had, or she’s literally stupid and unobservant to the point of incompetence).
As for “the crime was committed with the most likely motivation being avoiding accountability and transparency for other possibly shady stuff”, what’s your alternative explanation? Poor old Hillary was just too inconvenienced by those newfangled computers to have to use a work email address? You’re seriously that credulous?
@gbdub:
I apologize for the tone of my comment. Most arguments I have seen that refer to Clinton as a “criminal,” as though this were a foregone conclusion, seem to regard the fact that the investigation cleared her as prima facie evidence that she committed a crime. This argument infuriates me, as you can see. However, clearly this is not what you meant and I should not have tarred you with this particular brush.
I also carelessly conflated the word “wrongdoing” with the word “criminal.” The investigation did not, in fact, clear her of wrongdoing; it appears that she did at least do *something* wrong. I agree with this. I’m not convinced she broke the law (and am inclined to think she did not seeing as the investigation cleared her) but it was definitely fucked up.
Yes there were, and the results were pretty damning, but the Democratic party is above such petty proletarian concerns.
This is a prime gripe of mine as well. Can one of the backers of this please point to an area of the world that is looking lower variance now than it did 8 years ago? The Middle East moved from “Iraq is a mess” to “Iraq, Syria, and Libya are messes, ISIS is a thing, and the other countries aren’t looking too stable either.” Europe is starting to show strain at the seams. And the fact that we’re even considering the possibility of nuclear war with Russia is a giant step into variability; 4 years ago Obama was able to portray Romney as laughable for talking about Russia as an adversary. Our relationship with Russia was Clinton’s personal project. Doesn’t that make her demonstrably high variance (so far only with the downside of that variance)?
You can’t compete with imaginary Trump variance by showing real Clinton-Obama variance. Since imaginary Trump has no upper scariness limit except for the limits of your imagination, he can out-scare anything. It’s a Pascal mugging variation – maybe there’s only one billionth chance of Trump killing us all, but that’s like killing whole 7 or 8 people right now! And that’s not counting future generations! How can you risk it – are you a serial murderer or what? Even if there’s even a trillions chance, you can’t really risk it – no risk worth taking! Everything is better than infinite imaginary risk.
I’m skeptical that most of these can be laid at the feet of Obama admin foreign policy. Iraq is still a mess because the Iraqi government would not budge on the 2011 date specified in the Bush SoFA and we had no leverage over them since neither their population or ours wanted anything to do with extending the occupation. Libya and Syria are a mess mostly due to uprisings that began during the Arab Spring, which was largely spontaneous. Syria was a bloody stalemate before either Russia or the US intervened. Libya you can partially blame our policy, which I do, but only at low confidence. My personal view is that without our intervention either Gaddafi or the rebels would’ve eventually prevailed and been stronger for it, but it’s important to acknowledge the limits of counterfactual thinking; Libya might have also descended into an even worse stalemate just as Syria did.
Europe has been showing strain at the seams because of inherent faults in the design of the EU (specifically lax enforcement of the Maastricht criteria on Eurozone members). As for Russia, the Russian reset largely failed after a promising START (heh) due to a combination of internal politics (specifically Putin sidelining Medvedev and establishing a more hardline policy) and a desire on the part of Eastern European countries to escape Russia’s sphere of influence. As with Libya, there’s a low-confidence partial-blame argument to be made that this latter desire was stoked by the USA, but overtures to Eastern Europe were hardly a bold new twist in US policy.
(Everything above this is low-confidence except for the Iraq stuff, which I’m very sure on; I’ve argued it a lot and every no-withdrawal counterfactual I’ve seen involves some kind of magical thinking about the US government, Iraqi government, or both.)
One doesn’t need to lay them all at the current admin’s feet (I would agree that Europe dug its own grave). I just don’t think you can argue that Hillary is the low-variance candidate when we’ve seen risks raise dramatically in her sphere of influence. Whether she is helpless to stop the chaos, or whether she causes the chaos, choosing her is still choosing chaos.
If she was helpless to stop the chaos, wouldn’t Trump be too? Incompetence (on the part of her and the people immediately responsible to her) would be her fault in a fairly meaningful sense where random, uncontrollable variation would not.
@Gazeboist
Not necessarily. Let’s assume for the moment that both candidates are incompetent. If Clinton prescribes a set of policies, and we’ve seen that those policies either cause or do not impede chaos, but Trump prescribes a set of policies that are relevantly different from Clinton’s policies but have not been tried, then we’re agnostic as to whether Trump is actually helpless to stop the chaos. Note that this does not require Trump to be competent; it’s just that one monkey on a keyboard will eventually get it right, and we’ve seen that Clinton is not that monkey.
I’d separate helplessness and incompetence; helplessness seems to indicate that there is essentially no action a person could take to meaningfully affect an outcome, while incompetence just means the person in question can’t see the otherwise available correct action.
I guess you could claim that Trump’s random flailing is more likely to succeed by accident than Clinton’s random flailing, but I’m not really sure how you would draw that conclusion (under the assumption that both are incompetent).
I don’t think the president is helpless to address the issues plaguing the nation; unless we assume everyone is helpless, the president has to be counted among those who can do something by virtue of the extreme power and influence conferred with the audience.
The argument raised in the posts above is that Clinton has had ample time to do something while having significant (although not quite presidential) power. Instead of seeing things improve, it seems like the world has gotten worse on her watch. Therefore, whatever she’s doing is not the right stuff; Trump, who claims he’ll do things differently than Clinton (and almost certainly will, although who knows if the things he does are the things he promises) therefore has a better chance of getting it right simply by narrowing the space of choices by cutting out demonstrably failed strategies. Thus, Trump’s flailing is likely to be better than Clinton’s flailing.
I think this is the argument Jaskologist was putting forward. My personal opinion follows:
1. I agree that foreign affairs have gotten worse under Clinton.
2. I generally disapprove of Clinton’s policy proposals.
2a. I’m also pretty terrified of Trump handling foreign policy.
3. I don’t think that “foreign affairs worsened under Clinton -> Clinton did a bad job” follows; I think that we’d need to see what happened without Clinton’s policies to claim that.
4. Adding on to point 3, it’s actually pretty likely that the main reason things are going to hell in a handbasket doesn’t originate in Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State; things in the real world, particularly in the Middle East, often operate on long-term trends and causes. In the case of the Middle East, the Iraq War(s), our withdrawal, and lingering aftereffects from the Cold War all are good candidates for “prime causes of destabilization”.
So I don’t buy the premise that Clinton’s proposals demonstrably failed, although I personally suspect them to be less than effective. If you accept that, then Jaskologist’s argument follows.
I think this is actually a very minor argument over the word “helpless”. Substitute incompetence and Jaskologist’s argument works fine for me (I disagree with its premises, but not the logic in that case).
I do think there are some issues where the current president is effectively helpless. Suppose on February 4 of next year, India and Pakistan abruptly decide it’s time for their conflict to be nuclear. 15 days into their first term, I think it’s reasonable to say there wasn’t really anything the current president could have done about that (as president). But if another year in the future the same thing happens because the president (or their chosen advisers) didn’t have eyes on the India/Pakistan situation, then I think it’s fair to blame them for their incompetence.
Politics is poison and I will have no part in it. As an abstract discussion, perhaps, it is worth considering; governments are interesting, and it’s interesting to look at how they work and how one can constrain them. I like rules, and governments are things that generate rule sets for me to analyze.
But you ask me to take part in the selection of a government? No. Human reasoning fails under conditions of extreme probabilities and extreme utilities, and elections combine them. You are being mugged. Under conditions of failure, reason is replaced by tribal screaming. I have no wish to be screamed at, coerced, cajoled into declaring some seventy-five million people untouchable, and I trust nobody who chooses a side in a federal election to leave me in peace after it is over.
Politics is weather. If Trump is elected, I may consider purchasing an umbrella. But I’m not going to go build a factory without pay on the off chance it rains.
Nice. I will also have no part in it. It is an odd world where you suspend your normal behavior.
Reminds me of the psuedo Hermann Goering quotation:
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
Looking at the paper about vote-decisiveness probabilities, I’m kind of confused. Couldn’t one get the polling numbers and model one state as a giant binomial distribution, and look at the probability that the number of votes for one candidate is precisely half of the total number of votes? When I do this, I get drastically different numbers for the expected value of voting, given a $1.3 trillion value to voting for the correct president. If the polls show a perfect 50% split, then the expected value of voting is $1.7 billion; if it’s 50.5% in favour of one candidate, it drops to $97, and if it’s 51%, it drops to $0. Why is the simulation preferred over this estimate? Would I have to account for uncertainty in the polling, and integrate the expected value of the binomial estimation over all possible voting proportions, with the probability density of each given by the polling?
Commenting so I can see this when I control+f my name later. Good question, that’s intuitively what I would have done.
The road to just society definitely runs through LOCK HER UP. You are right that the common complaint of Hillary detractors (which by necessity forced to be Trump supporters) is that the government in the USA has been captured by a set of self-interested corrupt groups that see their mission in preserving and expanding their control over the government and every aspect of life above anything else. And that they are completely detached from any feedback and any responsibility for their actions. I also think these concerns if not 100% true then true to a substantial degree. Hillary Clinton is a primary example of that – she is demonstrably corrupt, is openly defying laws and regulations aimed at accountability, responsibility and making government transparent and manageable, and openly hostile to any efforts to make the government and her as a part of it accountable. In a just society she would have been locked up long ago, for things we now consider “old news” (as if a crime committed in the past and not punished somehow becomes better with time) and won’t even have a chance to do things for which she deserves to be locked up now.
You are right that Trump is the unknown. And you are right that destroying systems is dangerous. Some systems have to be destroyed nonetheless. To go to the ultimate example, if you’ve got a country full of Nazis, you don’t ask “well, we don’t have the good plan for Germany without Nazis yet, so maybe we hold off and see how this Nazi thing works out first and if we can offer anything better, maybe not”. No, some systems are so corrupt that the risk of letting them continue is higher than the risk of removing them.
And I think the system that allows Hillary Clinton to prosper – the system that allows to govern without regard and accountability to the governed, the system that makes it OK for politicians to knowingly lie, commit crimes and violate policies and be sure no consequences will follow, and the system that makes clear to everybody that this is the only way government will be done, forever – is one of them.
Make no mistake, politicians will lie and cheat no matter what – as in general crime happens everywhere – but we can fight it or we can say it’s OK because that’s the way it is. What we have with Clinton is the reverse of “broken window” policy on the scale of federal government. The demoralizing effect of it is incalculable.
I can’t really name and outline how this system is built and how exactly it works – that would require knowledge and resources well beyond my grasp – but I can know it by its fruits. And I don’t know if Trump or anybody else can break, or set back, or delay, or change this system – but I know this system must be fought and if the only thing you can do to fight it is to say “no, you don’t have my consent” to its avatar – Hillary Clinton – then that’s what must be done.
As for Trump – I am not sure whether or not he is an avatar of this system too. It looks dangerously close, but not enough to be sure. There’s a chance he is not, and there’s a chance he can stop Clinton, who definitely is. Even knowing that the system still can be defied would be huge. But maybe it’s not already. Maybe we just have to choose the safe way and wonder why 80% of us feel cheated all the time.
I agree; I’m uncertain why exactly Scott thought that “Trump supporters say Hillary should be locked up” is such a killer argument against Trump being a part of civilized society. Hillary has committed heinous crimes that any normal citizen would be locked up for; she is immune to these consequences as a member of the political elite class. This is not a part of any healthy political system; it serves no justifiable function. This isn’t Chesterton’s Fence, this is Chesterton’s Concentration Camp. Oh no, I guess I’d better not tamper with this concentration camp; it was already there and it might serve some function I don’t see.
Not everyone thinks Clinton has committed heinous crimes. Personally, I don’t think she’s committed any, unless you count war crimes, in which case it’ll also be necessary to indict every major member of the last three administrations.
“Not everyone thinks Clinton has committed heinous crimes. Personally, I don’t think she’s committed any”
Do you consider either funneling bribery money to a state governor or participating in fraudulent investment transactions heinous? Have you looked at the history of Hillary’s cattle speculation when Bill was governor and, if so, do you have any alternative explanation?
I can’t even tell if you’re serious.
But if you are: the Venn Diagram of “crimes that are heinous” and “crimes that involve cattle futures” does not have a lot of overlap.
It was not clear at all from your wording that you were talking specifically about heinous crimes, rather than any crime.
I was talking about both, but David specifically referred to the heinous variety while talking about white collar corruption, which is pretty weird from my perspective. Both colloquially and when used as a legal term of art (as it sometime is), heinous crimes are usually to be serious and violent offenses.
The thing is, we know which function it serves. It serves self-preservation of the corruptocrat class and protecting them from any possibility of accountability. We can hear it loudly and see it clearly. Scott’s argument reminds me of an argument in Russia about collective farms: “if you remove state-owned collective farms, who’d feed the country?!”. We know the country can be fed – and much better than the USSR Communist Party ever managed to – without state-owned collective farms. Can we make a leap of faith and also suppose we can be governed without unaccountable corruptocrat class?
Paradoxically, the likely result of your plan would be living under an even more corrupt and unaccountable ruling class.
What plan? I wasn’t talking about any plan.
Suggestion, then? Implication?
You’re saying that basically any action taken would result in living under more corrupt system – if I support the corrupt system, it becomes more corrupt, if I oppose the corrupt system, it becomes more corrupt.
I highly doubt it is the case that we are doomed to forever descend into the depths of corruption, but if we are, would would you plan of action be? Celebrate it? Revel in it? Try to get a piece of it? Join a Tibetian monastery? Convince yourself it’s OK to be corrupt as long as Right People checking correct identity boxes do it?
There’s literally no reason to believe she should be locked up outside of the Republican reality bubble. Sorry about acknowledging its existence; everyone proceed to have 1000 posts about how that’s not a thing.
Oh come on. I’m definitely on Team No Indictment, but it’s not because you have to be completely isolated in a bubble to believe that it’s a criminal case which could be won by the State.
The FBI’s report was incredibly damning of Hillary’s actions and the State Department’s terrible culture concerning security. That being said, if they were to press charges, it would be closer to a 50/50 than 80/20 (in either direction). I’m 100% on board with the refs swallowing the whistle on a 50/50 call in the third period of a playoff game… but that’s a far cry from imagining that you’d have to be in a partisan bubble to think it’s even plausible.
Well put.
That is an excellent analogy.
I may not like the refs’ call, but I do understand it.
>I think even people who expect Trump to be a better President on average will admit he’s a high-variance choice.
This really hit home for me. I’m still voting for Trump, but I’m a Christian who believes that, though the average Trump scenario is significantly better than the average Clinton scenario, Trump is considerably more likely than Clinton to be the Antichrist and bring about the end times.
What if Hilary has a seizure and falls on that big, candy red button that launches the nukes? Is nuking the world worth preventing Trump from becoming President?
I didn’t want to go snarky, but damn, I hate the nuke argument. It’s pure emotional rhetoric.
There’s no button that the President can press and trigger nuclear war. There’s chain of command of multiple people that must all confirm such things. US government is frequently stupid, but it’s not that stupid.
Which does not diminish the fact that the whole “nuclear war” argument is pure fearmongering and when I read it, I know the person pushing it is out of better ones. It’s like calling your opponent a Hitler – if you could prove he embezzled public funds, had an affair with an assistant or you had a recording where he beats up a puppy – you’d surely go for that. But when you don’t have good ones, bad ones must do. “OMG nuclear war” is one of the worst ones, maybe a tiny step above “He is Hitler!!!”
Part of what drives us to go for the Hitler thing is because there’s plenty of that lesser stuff when it comes to Trump, and he just powers through it.
Maybe you need to find better stuff then 🙂 Otherwise, it looks like saying you’re robbing banks because your job doesn’t pay you enough to support your thirst for luxuries. Not exactly a convincing reason. And, on the top of this, “Hitler” is a loser argument – it’s so overused by now that it looks ridiculous to all but the most gullible, and the most gullible can be convinced with much easier means anyway.
We went through this exhaustively an open thread or two ago. The President has no checks, legally nor institutionally, on ordering a nuclear attack. This is necessary to maintain a credible MAD deterrent.
If the President chooses from an existing war plan, he or she says “go” and a half hour later mushroom clouds start appearing, full stop. If it needs modification or a new war plan, it takes a little longer, but there isn’t anyone who can forbid it.
We really do have to trust the President to not start nuclear war; there are no good solutions to that other than being selective about who we elect.
This is an issue with the presidency’s access to launching a nuclear attack, and not an argument against Trump though. I’ll rephrase a bit. Hillary is old and appears senile and having health issues. How do we know she won’t stroke out and order a nuclear strike?
[Morbo-voice] Strokes do not work that way! Good night!
Nit: We have to trust our president not to start a nuclear war, or we have to trust our military to essentially mutiny to prevent one. The strawmanned scenarios where Trump calls up the joint chiefs and says, “Angela Merkel called Melania fat; we’re nuking Berlin ASAP”, I trust the military would prevent. The more credible scenarios where e.g. North Korea shoots down an American plane and Trump calls for maximal escalation at every step, those we’re pretty much down to trusting the president.
Question for those that think Trump or Hillary (or whoever) is the worst possible candidate, or is clearly the worst candidate.
What was the worst single term of a US president ever and why? (outcomes, not intentions)
The Civil War broke out on James Buchanan’s watch, so that guy.
More than that – my impression is that he pretty much did nothing to either prevent it or prepare for it, through being indecisive.
He was pretty decisive in the Mormon War, though. Delving into some details of that has really changed my impression of him from “indecisive” toward the direction of “honestly convinced that he could not meddle in the affairs of States.”
Yeah, well, as the guy with ancestors on the other side of the Mormon War, I’m pretty firmly on the “Screw Buchanan, that jerk” side of things.
Andrew Johnson made a mess of reconstruction. John Adams made some enormous political errors (keeping Washington’s cabinet, the Alien and Sedition Acts) at a time when the US couldn’t afford it. The Hoover administration either caused or exacerbated the Great Depression (although it’s not clear that any other administration would have acted differently). So one of those three, I’d say.
Woodrow Wilson’s second term coincided with the U.S. breaking the stalemate in WWI, then setting up a horrifying system of war reparations and a disastrous principle of “national self-determination” in the Paris Peace Conference that led directly to WWII and the ongoing mess in the Middle East. It’s a bit subtle, but that one’s my vote.
Ah, for some reason I read “single-term president” instead of “single term of a president”. Bush 43’s first term was pretty awful, as was LBJ’s second term (fully escalating us into the Vietnam War), FDR’s second term, and others I’m surely forgetting (Jackson must get a mention in there for Indian displacement).
In Wilson’s defence, he tried opposing that system but was undercut by congressional opposition.
The Fourteen Points were ridiculous, though. “Quatre plus d’un bon dieu” and all that.
Wilson’s 2nd term has my vote.
FDR built the administrative state, forced hundreds of thousands into camps, ended most personal liberties.
Truman nuked two cities, purposefully starved German civilians, enabled the rise and dominance of communism in Eurasia.
Lincoln killed more American citizens than any other president, overturned the declaration of independence (right to separation right there in line one), refused to free the slaves he had the authority to free while “freeing” slaves he had no power to free.
Washington led tax rebellion against British then as president turned around and used continental army to put down tax rebels (no US government was not a legitimate go by any modern standard at the time) then refused to pay continental army.
Kennedy almost ended the world.
Reagan backed death squads.
It’s not really a respectable office.
No mention of the fact that he started the tradition of giving monetary aid to Israel?
That must be the worst. I mean killing millions, ok, nuking cities, well, stuff happens, engaging in genocide, constructing concentration camps for own citizens, supporting slavery – who of us is perfect anyway? But there are things that are beyond the pale, at the sight of which even the most hardened heart revolts. We must draw the line somewhere. Helping Israel?! Now he really did it.
Parent post said outcomes, not intentions.
Thing with Hoover was that every single thing he proposed to mitigate the depression was blocked by a congress controlled by FDR. FDR then turned around and implemented most of those proposals with a New Deal label.
I’m on team “Trump is the worst.”
I think that there are about 3 worst terms in US history, and I can’t decide between them.
#1: Ulysses Grant’s first term was horrid; he ushered in an era of political corruption, protectionism, and a one-party state. He also screwed up southern reconstruction and destroyed the lives of both former slaves and former slaveowners alike, leaving behind a bitter taste in the south that’s never really gone away. Grant is often considered the worst US president in history for his complete lack of political experience and his pure naivety; he would pardon close friends in government who were clearly corrupt because he was too nice to kick them out.
#2: Herbert Hoover’s first and only term arguably destroyed the country, not because of his policies but because of the lack of them. If he had taken drastic actions–done away with the gold standard, engaged in massive reflation, and pursued policies to avoid future bank runs–we could have avoided the great depression, the mess that is federal deposit insurance, the growth of the military industrial complex following the world wars, most of the national debt* and 50 years of faulty macro theory. It would have been impossible for him to know what to do, of course; these policies only seem logical in retrospect. However, his political beliefs put him squarely in the camp of people who, if visited by a time traveler from the future who told him EXACTLY what to do to save the country, still wouldn’t make the necessary policy changes. Screw him.
#3: Benjamin Harrison. He shredded most of the progress made by Grover Cleveland (his predecessor) and set the stage for the worst parts of the US civil service. To be honest, he doesn’t hold a candle to Grant or Hoover objectively, but he has a special place in my heart because Cleveland is my personal favorite US president.
*Functional finance, a neokeynesian fiscal doctrine, was created in reaction to a nonfunctional monetary policy rule and led to the persistent deficit spending we see today, starting with FDR. The one exception was Ronald Reagan, who was willing to accept deficit spending for completely separate reasons. This doctrine may have been acceptable for its time, but by modern standards it is completely archaic.
I have a bit more sympathy for Grant – in my view the only ways Reconstruction was ever gonna work well out was to either round up and shoot the richest 20,000 Southern whites and complete the decapitation of the ancien regime political and cultural leadership, or deport all the freed slaves to Liberia. He was definitely a political naif, though, and completely oblivious to corruption.
Glad to see someone has sympathy for him; he’s pretty unloved by most historians. =P
I wouldn’t compare the ancient regime to southern slaveowners, though. They occupied very different positions in the pre-civil war America.
America is unique in that it has no proper ancient regime, so its far right wing has very different motivations from those in Europe.
Oh I don’t think he was a *good* President; just one put in a really, really, really untenable situation.
I’m slightly confused about what you’re referring to as the ancient regime. My understanding of Southern history is that the primary agents rallying support for the Black Codes and other instruments of out-and-out white supremacy in the immediate aftermath of the war were the surviving scions of the plantation elite…Jubal Early, John B. Gordon, William Laurence Royall. Meanwhile, the “New South” modernizers tended to be carpetbaggers or poor strivers who struggled to gain political legitimacy because of their lack of old blood. Admittedly we’re not quite talking about a “Versailles of Louis XIV” level of absurdity, but for the U.S., the plantation elite is as close as we’ve ever come to an actual aristocracy.
I guess I hadn’t really thought about it that way. They’re still different from an aristocracy in that their upper class status wasn’t acknowledged by the whole country, merely the south. But that’s nitpicking, the comparison is apt.
Learn something new everyday. =P
I see that you’re getting some brutal comments here so consider this another voice that liked the post and appreciated your unique take on the decision.
One thing I did want to mention:
This is a point I’ve been making to fence-sitters for months: even if you have a very dim view of Hillary, she’s just going to be running into the congressional brick wall anyway, so no big deal. You’re actually kind of voting against a strong executive. Trump on the other hand, will be able to pass some seriously awful nonsense (and we have every reason to believe he would try).
But now there’s this. So I’m not sure we can make that argument anymore. Republican congressional candidates are probably going to take a lot of splash damage from Trump.
That’s just senat though – congress is almost certain to stay republican (and the senate will almost certainly be republican after 2018, too).
Running into the congressional brick wall just incentivizes unilateral executive action. Hillary is likely to get away with such schemes a) because she’s been in government for ages and knows the ins and outs of the system, b) because the individual administrators in the civil service will be most likely sympathetic to her policy aims and so will grease the skids for her, and c) she’s generally competent and not a ridiculous blowhard. Trump will run into a congressional brick wall of Democrats + elite Republicans (eg Ben Sasse), will try to pull an end run with unilateral executive action, but a) has no idea how the system works, b) will be slowed at every turn by hostile liberal civil servants and public interest group lawsuits, and c) is a ridiculous blowhard.
These are all good points, but I would still be more scared of Trump in this regard because I expect the kind of things he might try to do with executive action to be worse/more reckless than Hillary. So even if he has a low success rate it’s not exactly comforting.
This is true, but I expect there to be massive outrage whenever he does anything, combined with very tight press scrutiny. A public hyper-aware of the problem of executive overreach because the overreach is being used to try and accomplish horrible things is better than a public blissfully unaware of the problem of executive overreach because the overreach is being competently hidden and the results are those favored by media elites.
If Obama administration has taught us something, then it is:
There’s no Congressional brick wall that can stop sufficiently determined president, especially with full support of the press on his/her side. Powers of presidency are vast, especially if he/she is willing to ignore laws by “selective non-enforcement” – as famously noted before “you made the decision, now try to enforce it!”. Willing to play chicken usually ends up badly for the party that the press does not support – see the government shutdown story. Republicans currently have no means to block most of the actions of sufficiently determined president. Some they can block, but not all.
There’s also complete immunity from prosecution for anything involving opposition suppression, lack of transparency, evidence destruction or perjury in Congress. Maximum punishment would be voluntary retirement or reassignment with all benefits. So if you can’t win per above legally for some reason, there’s a wide way of doing things illegally.
Also, Supreme Court matters a lot. And Supreme Court is very susceptible to public and political pressure (hello, press!) and Clinton will make it majority Democrat. Which means any legislation Republicans will pass can be destroyed, any past decision Republicans passed in the past can be destroyed, and any decision in the past that favored Republicans can be overturned (Democrats don’t have much respect for stare decisis if it doesn’t benefit them).
Press is important too – when the press works on your side and instead of exposing you and challenging you, supports you, colludes to bury and rewrite news that hurt you and get out the messages that help you – it is a huge asset for the President and a hugely successful weapon in battling the Congress. Not every congressman can afford the power of hostile national press coverage turned on them, and that makes them much easier to handle when this power is at your command, as it were for Obama and is for Clinton.
If Hillary wins, that confirms that the “pen and phone” strategy is successful, and we’ll see massive expansion of it in the future. If you are concerned about executive overreach, voting for Clinton is worst idea you could ever have. If you hate Trump, vote Johnson at least – that’d send a signal that there is other way at least.
“Republican congressional candidates are probably going to take a lot of splash damage from Trump.”
-First off, the LAT panel poll showed Trump mildly gaining support following the debate. This is consistent with the Breitbart/Gravis post-debate instapoll. The results from the other polls are almost certainly just people refusing to answer as a means of mentally punishing Trump for his insufficiently great debate performance. This effect will soon disappear, and does not indicate any actual changes in candidate preferences. Fortunately.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/unpublished/swing_voters.pdf
I find your comparison of Trump with the communists way overwrought. He is not trying to immanentize the eschaton, he just wants to renegotiate existing trade deals and enforce existing immigration laws. He seems to be an awful human being but so are lots of other politicians and past presidents. I think you have fallen for the democratic party’s spin machine which scares the media every four years into putting its collective dress over its head and running around screaming about how the latest republican nominee is literally Hitler. At the beginning of the primary season there were editorials in the liberal press about how Trump was bad but at least he wasn’t Rubio or Cruz. Example1 Example 2
If you are at all concerned about SJWs than you should be much more concerned about Hillary. Currently most of the damage they do is confined to making stupid comments of social media and harassing the occasional heretic. However, once they have the power of the government behind them they become really dangerous. The SJWs on twitter managed to get a judge to stop ruling on cases because they didn’t like one of his sentences in the Stanford swimmer case, however the SJWs in the department of Education have managed to threaten every college in America with a Title IX lawsuit unless they suspend due process for people accused of rape. What happened to Brendan Eich was deplorable but he can leave that benighted state and live a productive life in a more sane place if he so chooses. However the poor bakers who were shut down to refusing to bake a cake for the wrong person will have no place to ply their trade if the SJWs continue their takeover of the Department of Justice.
One thing missing about your high variance scenario is the notion of checks and balances. The federal government is an unwieldy vessel at best and to think an amateur like Trump can turn it to his whim against the wishes of the federal bureaucracy, the media, and congress seems to be highly unlikely to say the least. However the branch of government with the least amount of checks on it is the Supreme Court. They have morphed from what Madison thought would be the least powerful branch to a type of Iranian style guardian council whose only restriction is their own sense of propriety. There is a possibility that Trump will appoint Justice’s who believe in interpreting the constitution and but almost no chance that Clinton would.
Given the above it become a duty to hold my nose and vote Trump.
Is there any reason why the court has nine justices and has not grown with the population?
Aside, the commerce clause (Post-Wickard) is the root of all evil in American governance; whatever replaces it would be better.
Trump is a way safer bet in the legal arena.
Tradition. The constitution does not set a number of justices, and the court has changed sizes throughout the years. The closest it came to serious expansion was the semi-famous “switch in time that saved nine” when FDR threatened to ram through congress an act stipulating that there should be an additional justice added to the court whenever a sitting justice turned 70, unless they retired.
Lincoln expanded the Court by adding Stephen Field to make sure his wartime acts were not reversed–Field being a pro-war Democrat.
Nine justices wasn’t the established norm yet. One justice per circuit was the norm, with much of each justice’s time being devoted to “riding circuit” as a trial court judge, and new justices/circuits had previously been added in 1807 and 1837. It wasn’t out of the ordinary at the time, unless you’re going to accuse Jefferson and Jackson of packing the court too.
Parenthetically, I think we should make the SCOTUS judges ride circuit again. Actually ride. On horses. Mostly because Sam Alito seems like he’d be really really awkward around horses. We might have to get a Clydesdale for Clarence Thomas, though.
Scalia and Ginsburg rode an elephant in India once. All Justices should be required to do that.
@ Sandy
Scalia and Ginsburg rode an elephant in India once. All Justices should be required to do that.
The same elephant?
They rode the same elephant, yes, and preferably that elephant could be brought to Washington and used for all new inaugurations on the bench.
More seriously, maybe we ought to move to one justice from each circuit. Half of them don’t have any representatives on the High Court now, and even as your typical elitist Manhattan liberal I find the Acela Corridor dominance to be a bit much. (Granted, the Acela runs through four circuits, all currently represented, and there really are a lot of people who live here – but there are a lot of people in the rest of the country too.)
And when it dies of old age. we could take its tusks and turn them into the justice’s gavels of office.
His name was Stampy. They loved him.
“However the poor bakers who were shut down to refusing to bake a cake for the wrong person will have no place to ply their trade if the SJWs continue their takeover of the Department of Justice.”
Can you be more specific? The bakers in Indianapolis had a sales spike for a few months after which sales returned to normal. The bakery closed a year later because they wanted more time to spend with their grandchildren.
http://www.indystar.com/story/life/2015/02/26/bakery-refused-cake-gay-couple-closes-doors/24074691/
The bakers in Oregon paid their fines and are still in business.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/07/sweet_cakes_by_melissa_a_timel.html
Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado is still in business.
I was referring specifically to the Colorado bakers, masterpiece cakeshops who are still in the bakery business but are no longer in the wedding cake business.
Still baking, then. Also still showing wedding cakes on their site. Also there’s a Yelp review from 2016 describing a wedding cake they baked, although that could be a hoax, I guess.
Why let facts get in the way of a good Passion Play?
Regarding: “However the poor bakers who were shut down to refusing to bake a cake for the wrong person will have no place to ply their trade if the SJWs continue their takeover of the Department of Justice.”
Sometimes, you really can see echoes of how things change over time, and what it was like in past eras. Dick Gregory, 1961:
“Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant and this white waitress came up to me and said, “We don’t serve colored people here.” I said, “That’s all right. I don’t eat colored people. …””
Once upon a time, that was an edgy joke. And many of the SSC commentariat are pretty clear they would have been siding with the segrationists then. It would have been all about the poor restaurant-owners who were supposedly shut down to refusing to serve “the wrong