United States Politics Thread 46

[Torco]

so like... we're not supposed to talk about how we're ruled by wealthy people,

Oh jesus. No one is silencing you. At least not till your fash friends win all over; then you'll see some silencing.

i know, which is why i didn't write "stop silencing me", but rather, "so we're not supposed to talk about how we're ruled by wealthy people?" I'm not saying it's "the real problem" either, but it is an problem

must we fight propaganda with propaganda?

Yes.
like... what else we supposed to do, though? hopefully our propaganda is true and also rational, but normies are still going to watch screen believe screen, you want all of the screens to be full of *their* propa? I'm just saying here that subverting their propa is a lot more effective, not to mention more honest, than just ignoring the shortcomings of the dems while at the same time letting your own phase space for propa become smaller and smaller with each dollar they spend in making new talking points.

[Travis B.]

Who do these people protesting the DNC think they're helping? Every non-vote for Harris is a vote for Trump.

[Ahzoh]

Who do these people protesting the DNC think they're helping? Every non-vote for Harris is a vote for Trump.

I think it's mostly like a "unpleasant reminder that the US is funding a genocide, see all of us here who don't like that and don't think we're a minority who you can conveniently ignore". I doubt they're actually not going to vote for Harris when it goes down to the wire.

It's kind of like how, currently in Old School Runescape, everyone on the official subreddit is constantly making posts demanding Jagex ban this group known as ROT for blatant cheating during a temporary PVP gamemode tournament that recently ended despite there being an official response by Jagex that they're investigating the matter. But people still continue to make the posts to apply the pressure and keep it in active public consciousness so Jagex doesn't conveniently "forget" the investigation and sweep the matter under the rug like they did with the past four tournaments where the same group won them by cheating.

I think the protests at the DNC have no actual teeth and just exists to make sure it's not swept under the rug and forgotten about.

[MacAnDàil]

and also proposing to go to war with Mexico.

is he still upset that Mexico refused to pay for his wall? one would think that with everything else piling up, thats one thing he'd be willing to let drop. yeah, my bad there.

He's not going to drop it, but it comes second to (imaginary) crowd sizes of course.

By the way, has anyone noticed the following incoherence:
Some Republicans and their allies recently prone a Red Caesar. At the same time, Christian fundamentalists support the same side. Now, Caesar is implicitly mentioned in the Apocalypse, along with Nero, in the Number of the Beast. So early Christians saw Caesar as the enemy. And the pro-Trump side contains both Christians and pro-Caesars.

[Linguoboy]

Who do these people protesting the DNC think they're helping? Every non-vote for Harris is a vote for Trump.

So here's an honest question for you, Travis (and anyone else who cares to answer it): Will you always vote for the lesser evil, no matter how evil it is? Or is there a line you won't simply won't cross?

Like say you have two candidates: one is an outspoken white supremacist, the other is a full-blown Nazi. (Sadly, this is no longer a pure theoretical in the current political environment.) Will you hold your nose and cast your vote for the racist to stop the Nazi? What about a eugenicist? A Dominionist? A convicted rapist? Is there any policy position egregious enough or personal failing disqualifying enough to make you refuse to vote for someone regardless of the immediate consequences? Or is that something you see as a luxury you can't afford in a FPTP system like ours?

[Travis B.]

Who do these people protesting the DNC think they're helping? Every non-vote for Harris is a vote for Trump.

So here's an honest question for you, Travis (and anyone else who cares to answer it): Will you always vote for the lesser evil, no matter how evil it is? Or is there a line you won't simply won't cross?

Like say you have two candidates: one is an outspoken white supremacist, the other is a full-blown Nazi. (Sadly, this is no longer a pure theoretical in the current political environment.) Will you hold your nose and cast your vote for the racist to stop the Nazi? What about a eugenicist? A Dominionist? A convicted rapist? Is there any policy position egregious enough or personal failing disqualifying enough to make you refuse to vote for someone regardless of the immediate consequences? Or is that something you see as a luxury you can't afford in a FPTP system like ours?

In essence, you're arguing that voting ought to be driven by deontic ethics rather than by consequential ethics, that one should be willing to accept terrible consequences of one's vote or non-vote - that could be avoided - just because both major candidates in a FPTP system are sufficiently distasteful.

[Raphael]

In essence, you're arguing that voting ought to be driven by deontic ethics rather than by consequential ethics,

I don't think that's what Linguoboy is saying. His question is more whether there are any lines where voting should stop being consequentialist, not that it generally shouldn't be consequentialist. He's asking whether there are any lines one shouldn't cross when it comes to voting.

Now, given Linguoboy's own voting history, I think it's a bit rich for him to ask that question, but, that said, independently of who's asking the question, it is a valid question.

[Travis B.]

In this specific case, a second Trump administration would be much, much worse than a Harris administration, and any of the protesters who think that Trump would be better for the Palestinians are delusional. (Trump would probably put no pressure on Israel at all in the very least (this is a best case scenario if he wins), and I suspect that his views of the war would be essentially kill'em all.) So to protest against the DNC on this issue is to essentially favor an outcome with worse consequences for the Palestinians.

[zompist]

Who do these people protesting the DNC think they're helping? Every non-vote for Harris is a vote for Trump.

So here's an honest question for you, Travis (and anyone else who cares to answer it): Will you always vote for the lesser evil, no matter how evil it is? Or is there a line you won't simply won't cross?

I think the answer to your question is to ask any Black person. They're closer to this dilemma than you are; do they think you should not vote? Personally I think not voting is equivalent to voting for the greater evil.

But protesting the war in Gaza is a right, too. I think they should be protesting both sides, but as a practical matter it's going to be more effective to pressure the side that is more likely to come around to your views. An ongoing war, prosecuted the way Netanyahu is doing it, is not something you can table for six months because it's inconvenient.

[jcb]

Who do these people protesting the DNC think they're helping? Every non-vote for Harris is a vote for Trump.

I must point out that nearly every case of institutional failure applies this kind of logic to silence their critics. Example: "Priests are molesting children, which makes the Catholic Church look bad, which makes people lose faith in the church, which makes people leave the church (and join another religion or quit religion entirely). In order to rectify the situation, we could admit that it happened, apologize for it, thoroughly purge the priesthood of offenders, and enact institutional change to prevent it from happening again, but that would require publicizing the situation, which would cause more people to leave (thus their soul isn't saved, yada yada), which is unacceptable. So instead, we will deny for decades that it ever happened, move offending priests around to new congregations (without telling the old or new congregations why) where they will offend again, and not enact institutional change, allowing the problem to persist."

Color me unimpressed and disappointed.

1. GOP criticizes a Dem for something that in an ideal world would maybe be bad, but is trivial or at best misleading.
2. New York Times and other centrists write at least a story a day reinforcing this talking point.
3. Meanwhile the GOP says or does all sorts of crazy stuff that the NYT and centrists ignore.
4. Very serious people weigh in just before the election criticizing only the Dem and only for the trivial point.
5. Dems lose.
6. NYT, centrists, very serious people, and GOP all completely forget that criticism, and often do that thing themselves.

This problem is a consequence of liberals' poor grand strategy for the Democratic party. That is, why are they even vying for the votes of NYT readers and centrists (AKA "Republicans that don't want to admit that they're Republicans") in the first place? There's more working class people than non-working class people in America, after all. It's telling that your post assumes that NYT readers deserve to be convinced, but this same assumption of worthiness is never afforded to, say, coal miners in West Virginia. Whenever the coal miners (or poor, uneducated people in general) start to doubt the Democratic party, they're just told to shut up and take it, because the other side is even worse, and decried as bigots when they do actually leave. Thus, there must be some X factor that determines how liberals decide whether someone is worthy of being convinced or not. As far as I can tell, that X factor is education. This fetish for education is the root of Democrats' problems.

But I've also seen the results of, say, not requiring STEM majors to take classes in the arts and humanities and they are not pretty. (Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT, anyone?)

To me, this problem seems not caused by STEM majors not appreciating art, but instead caused by an economic system tilted towards big business and a lax justice system that allows STEM/business majors to own businesses that can exploit other people's art for their own profits.

Martin Shkreli, sometimes known as "Pharma Bro", earned notoriety after obtaining the patent for an anti-parasitic drug and hiking the price from $13.50 a pill to $750.

As a corollary, do you think that Martin Shkreli (aka "Pharma Bro")'s problem is that he simply doesn't understand or appreciate the process of creating a drug? Or is the problem that he's a parasitic sociopathic businessman that would/did gladly use the capitalist free market economic system to pressure and indirectly kill people to enrich himself, because the system doesn't recognize his actions as murder, because "It's just the free market, bro!"?

Agreed. The people who want to reduce all education to "STEM" and nothing more, or who would prefer people not get educated at all in the first place, can go straight to hell in my book.

What I believe:
(1) Getting an education should be an option for everybody, ideally without requiring them to accumulate any debt, and if that's not an option, then with as little debt as possible.
(2) I want everybody to be able to live a good, decent life, regardless of whether they have a college degree or not. After all, about 6/10 of Americans don't have a college degree. ( https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads ... graduates/ )
(3) Telling 6/10 of people that they're not worthy of a good life is a poor basis to build a political party on.
(4) There will always be a portion of society that will never be book smart enough to get a college degree, but I still think that they're worthy of a good life despite that.
(5) Getting a college degree doesn't make somebody a better person morally.
(6) Just because there's more people with college degrees doesn't guarantee that there's jobs to use them in. Thus, people's time is wasted. This loss of time (and money) must be considered when evaluating whether to encourage people to get a college degree.
(7) As more people get degrees, the relative value of each individual degree decreases, because the supply has increased.
(8) Believing these things is not done to keep people dumb, but to save them from wasting their time and money, and to acknowledge that education doesn't have a monopoly on human goodness and morality.

[zompist]

1. GOP criticizes a Dem for something that in an ideal world would maybe be bad, but is trivial or at best misleading.
2. New York Times and other centrists write at least a story a day reinforcing this talking point.
3. Meanwhile the GOP says or does all sorts of crazy stuff that the NYT and centrists ignore.
4. Very serious people weigh in just before the election criticizing only the Dem and only for the trivial point.
5. Dems lose.
6. NYT, centrists, very serious people, and GOP all completely forget that criticism, and often do that thing themselves.

This problem is a consequence of liberals' poor grand strategy for the Democratic party. That is, why are they even vying for the votes of NYT readers and centrists (AKA "Republicans that don't want to admit that they're Republicans") in the first place? There's more working class people than non-working class people in America, after all. It's telling that your post assumes that NYT readers deserve to be convinced, but this same assumption of worthiness is never afforded to, say, coal miners in West Virginia. Whenever the coal miners (or poor, uneducated people in general) start to doubt the Democratic party, they're just told to shut up and take it\

Don't put words in my mouth; you are full of crap. You want to have a feud, go down to the United Center in Chicago and go talk to the DNC.

Coal miners, seriously? There are 44,000 coal miners in the US. FWIW there are 10 million NYT subscribers.

On the other hand, there are 4.3 mlllion auto workers. I'll wager you that not one single solitary "liberal", or whatever your stupid straw man is, believes that the vote of those auto workers is unimportant.

BTW, in the actual world, seven labor leaders were featured speakers last night at the Dem convention.

[Ares Land]

By the way, has anyone noticed the following incoherence:
Some Republicans and their allies recently prone a Red Caesar. At the same time, Christian fundamentalists support the same side. Now, Caesar is implicitly mentioned in the Apocalypse, along with Nero, in the Number of the Beast. So early Christians saw Caesar as the enemy. And the pro-Trump side contains both Christians and pro-Caesars.

That's an interesting inconsistency indeed -- though the Religious Right always seemed surprisingly okay with amoral greedy businessmen.
The parallels between America and Rome always are irresistible; I think this is by design -- it's no accident American politics involves Senators meeting in neo-classical buildings but the Roman obsession among Republican these days is something incredible. It's clear they don't know much about Rome and that, in addition, they don't think things through much. The Late Republic/early Principate was about two century of constant political crisis -- the only relief being Augustus. Also, the obvious parallel to the Republican are the Optimates, who aren't exactly a great role model. Trump isn't Julius Caesar; he might be a modern-day Sylla and even that comparison is way too kind.

All that being said, conservatives are rarely bothered by inconsistency. It even feels like they thrive on it.

Whenever the coal miners (or poor, uneducated people in general) start to doubt the Democratic party, they're just told to shut up and take it, because the other side is even worse, and decried as bigots when they do actually leave.

Is the American working class actually voting Republican though? Republicans certainly claim working-class support; but as I recall, that's not really the case.

To me, this problem seems not caused by STEM majors not appreciating art, but instead caused by an economic system tilted towards big business and a lax justice system that allows STEM/business majors to own businesses that can exploit other people's art for their own profits.

That too! But my point is, in my experience anyway, STEM majors can be incredibly naive when it comes to politics. Most STEM majors are not billionaires, most aren't business owners... but they tend not to see the problems with the economic system, even when it's obvious. And, yeah, I think an overly narrow education leads to that sort of thing. It's not coincidence that conservatives dismiss sociology, or psychology, or more generally the softer sciences.

[Raphael]

Is the American working class actually voting Republican though? Republicans certainly claim working-class support; but as I recall, that's not really the case.

Seems to depend on which parts of the working class you mean. Large parts of the working class are, of course, PoCs. Until recently, PoCs were apparently pretty solidly Dem; I don't know if that is weakening, and if so, how much. The group of "white people without college degrees" is the most solidly Republican voter block; how much that group overlaps with "the working class" is subject of discussion. The traditional coal mining districts are all solidly Republican; but, as zompist notes, there aren't that many coal miners left in the USA.

(Speaking of coal miners: by now a rather long time ago, over on his blog, British blogger Alex Harrowell had a hypothetical scenario about what might have happened if the 1984–1985 United Kingdom coal miners' strike had succeeded, and the British coal mines would still have been working at full capacity when climate change became more and more of a major issue in the 1990s: https://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2009/ ... yorkshire/ He asserted that this would have led to most of the Left turning against the miners, and parts of the Right coming to their support. Now, in the British context, that was a really weird hypothetical; but over in the US, it's exactly what happened.)

[Dune]

I have to chip in on the idea that NYT readers are "Republicans that don't want to admit that they're Republicans." That's a pretty odd take. Not a surprising one—I've certainly seen it before—but it's odd, insofar as it just isn't ... true.

The most widely cited actual data on this is from Pew Research in 2012, which of course is an eternity in political time, but it's better than nothing. Pew found that 22% of the NYT's readership identified as "conservative" and just 13% identified as Republicans. More recently, a 2019 poll found that Democrats were vastly more likely to have a positive view of the NYT than Republicans (a 62-point difference in net favorability—admittedly, the actual poll is behind a paywall, so I can't vouch for the methodology).

In terms of the paper's own identity (as opposed to its readership's), the fight over the NYT's editorial direction is probably the best-documented squabble in journalism of the past decade. It's a fight between 1) the progressive left, and 2) the center left. Those are the two factions in the newsroom (and elsewhere in the paper's bureaucracy—a lot of non-journalists are involved, like tech staffers). Conservatives are not a faction with any power. This war has gone very public several times in the past few years (ex. James Bennet's ouster; the fight over the NYT's coverage of the trans youth healthcare controversy; etc.). Both sides have victories to their names, and the paper's center of gravity swings back and forth between them, but it's still fundamentally a center-left publication, with a center-left readership.

You absolutely can find "centrists" (and sometimes "libertarians") who are really Republican Lites. By and large, you just won't find them reading the New York Times. (You will find them reading Reason. Or Bari Weiss's The Free Press. Or the WSJ.)

That's more words about the NYT than anybody wanted, and I realize it's a big and probably annoying tangent, so sorry for that. If there's a larger point here, it's that the NYT takes regular fire from both the left and right (some of which is deserved, don't get me wrong, they're far from perfect). Both sides frequently try to lump it in with the opposition. But that's a misunderstanding of (a significant part of) the US media landscape.

Large parts of the working class are, of course, PoCs. Until recently, PoCs were apparently pretty solidly Dem; I don't know if that is weakening, and if so, how much.

It is weakening. Democrats are definitely losing support with non-white voters, and there is some evidence (although not an overwhelming amount) that this loss is coming from working class non-white voters, specifically. Nate Silver has a pretty good writeup on this.

That trend also relatively new and it really accelerated between 2020 and 2024, and I wouldn't be shocked if it reversed itself in 2028. It might have more to do with Trump and Biden than Republicans and Democrats. But I'm not a pollster or statistician, so take that with a grain of salt.

[Travis B.]

Who do these people protesting the DNC think they're helping? Every non-vote for Harris is a vote for Trump.

I must point out that nearly every case of institutional failure applies this kind of logic to silence their critics. Example: "Priests are molesting children, which makes the Catholic Church look bad, which makes people lose faith in the church, which makes people leave the church (and join another religion or quit religion entirely). In order to rectify the situation, we could admit that it happened, apologize for it, thoroughly purge the priesthood of offenders, and enact institutional change to prevent it from happening again, but that would require publicizing the situation, which would cause more people to leave (thus their soul isn't saved, yada yada), which is unacceptable. So instead, we will deny for decades that it ever happened, move offending priests around to new congregations (without telling the old or new congregations why) where they will offend again, and not enact institutional change, allowing the problem to persist."

Color me unimpressed and disappointed.

You seem to forget that these are people who are willing to throw the election to Trump, who is an existential threat to America and the world, all over that the current administration is not good enough in their eyes with regard to their pet issue (while conveniently forgetting that the alternative would be far worse with regard to that pet issue). And yes, it is a pet issue - while the war in Gaza is horrifying, they clearly see that sole issue as more important than countless other things such as the preservation of democracy in America and across the globe, women's rights, LGBT rights, worker's rights, the protection of the environment, freedom of speech, freedom from religion, and so on since they obviously are willing to throw all those things into the dumpster for the sake of their single issue.

[Torco]

(5) Getting a college degree doesn't make somebody a better person morally.

It's possible that it does, actually, at least for some definitions of 'better person' morally...and ones that i suscribe to! still, even if it was the case, to force people to get college degrees simply because it will make their values more aligned with one's own values is, you know, p r o b l e m a t i c. cause you're forcing people to spend half a decade in there! not to mention get onerous loans in some countries. after we establish universal right to work and to obtain a minimum of the social product in order to survive, housing food water basic healthcare, when education is genuinely a matter of curiosity and self-improvement as opposed to most people's only chance not to be poor... yeah, then we can talk about morally educating the masses or whatever as a matter of state mandate. and anyway, that kind of moral education is probably not better administered in a classroom.

also

So here's an honest question for you, Travis (and anyone else who cares to answer it): Will you always vote for the lesser evil, no matter how evil it is? Or is there a line you won't simply won't cross?

I think it's quite telling when these sorts of questions go unanswered. and no, the world is more complicated than just trump or biden. or trump and harris. the biden-harris switch shows that lesser evil strategy at least for some people does have a limit: and the more picky not-fascist voters are, the less evil the lesser evil can afford to be: make no mistake, the democrats will be exactly as fash as it's electorally viable for them to be -cause the decisionmakers in the ojne party have broadly the same class interest as the decisionmakers in the other party, because, ehem, we're all ruled by the same class anyway. on the other hand, there's a prisoner's dilemma kind of thing here for sure: if one is too picky, then yeah, sure, zomp, travis et al have a totally valid point, that increases the odds of the greater evil winning. still, infinite elasticity in this regard is bad.

[Linguoboy]

Who do these people protesting the DNC think they're helping? Every non-vote for Harris is a vote for Trump.

So here's an honest question for you, Travis (and anyone else who cares to answer it): Will you always vote for the lesser evil, no matter how evil it is? Or is there a line you won't simply won't cross?

I think the answer to your question is to ask any Black person. They're closer to this dilemma than you are; do they think you should not vote?

I think they should do whatever they want to and it's presumptuous as fuck for me to have an opinion about it.

But if we look at behaviour, we find that 36% of Black voters didn't vote in any national election in 2018, 2020, or 2022--and 2020 in particular had the highest voter turnout in a presidential election in more than a century. That's a pretty healthy percentage of folks choosing "none of the above".

Personally I think not voting is equivalent to voting for the greater evil.

As Raphael points out, so do I. But that doesn't mean that I've always voted for Democrats. We're never going to move the party leftward if we keep rewarding them for doing the absolute bare minimum (if that) to retain our support.

In this specific case, a second Trump administration would be much, much worse than a Harris administration, and any of the protesters who think that Trump would be better for the Palestinians are delusional. (Trump would probably put no pressure on Israel at all in the very least (this is a best case scenario if he wins), and I suspect that his views of the war would be essentially kill'em all.) So to protest against the DNC on this issue is to essentially favor an outcome with worse consequences for the Palestinians.

Where's the evidence that any of the supposed "pressure" which the Biden administration is bringing to bear is having any blunting effect whatsoever? Yeah, they made a big noise about suspending some arms shipments--and then promptly resumed those as soon as the media were distracted by the election. They pay lip service to humanitarian considerations but fail to follow up, no matter how many innocent civilians get massacred in the pursuit of Israeli "objectives". You say Trump will give Israel free rein to prosecute this war as it sees fit. How does that look any different from what is happening right now? Sadly, this isn't a rhetorical question. I would love to see some shred of evidence that the Democrats give a flying fuck about Palestinian children being blown to smithereens; so far I haven't seen it.

[keenir]

Personally I think not voting is equivalent to voting for the greater evil.

As Raphael points out, so do I. But that doesn't mean that I've always voted for Democrats. We're never going to move the party leftward if we keep rewarding them for doing the absolute bare minimum (if that) to retain our support.

Sadly, the options are the minimum or the nonexistent (or the negative motion)

In this specific case, a second Trump administration would be much, much worse than a Harris administration, and any of the protesters who think that Trump would be better for the Palestinians are delusional. (Trump would probably put no pressure on Israel at all in the very least (this is a best case scenario if he wins), and I suspect that his views of the war would be essentially kill'em all.) So to protest against the DNC on this issue is to essentially favor an outcome with worse consequences for the Palestinians.

Where's the evidence that any of the supposed "pressure" which the Biden administration is bringing to bear is having any blunting effect whatsoever? Yeah, they made a big noise about suspending some arms shipments--and then promptly resumed those as soon as the media were distracted by the election. They pay lip service to humanitarian considerations but fail to follow up, no matter how many innocent civilians get massacred in the pursuit of Israeli "objectives". You say Trump will give Israel free rein to prosecute this war as it sees fit. How does that look any different from what is happening right now? Sadly, this isn't a rhetorical question. I would love to see some shred of evidence that the Democrats give a flying fuck about Palestinian children being blown to smithereens; so far I haven't seen it.

I think you may've hit on the difference: when someone calls Trump on something, he still won't correct his behavior; when someone called Biden on something, Biden corrected his behavior at least temporarily. (also it won't be Biden in charge this term if the Democrats win, so thats a moot point)

If anything, Trump would likely double down on things like he did last time, what with the call to move the main US embassy to Jerusalem...and probably also send even more arms to Netanyahu(sp) than any prior president (and i bet he announces it in a press conference wherein he speaks approvingly of him in the same breath as Putin and Kim)

[Torco]

Personally I think not voting is equivalent to voting for the greater evil.

As Raphael points out, so do I. But that doesn't mean that I've always voted for Democrats. We're never going to move the party leftward if we keep rewarding them for doing the absolute bare minimum (if that) to retain our support.

Sadly, the options are the minimum or the nonexistent (or the negative motion)

genuine question: is the recent harris-biden switcharoo is evidence to the contrary... or is kamala not substantially somewhat to the left of joe ? incidentally, isn't it kinda sexist that everyone calls dudes by last name, but chicks so often are just firstnamed?

[zompist]

So here's an honest question for you, Travis (and anyone else who cares to answer it): Will you always vote for the lesser evil, no matter how evil it is? Or is there a line you won't simply won't cross?

I think the answer to your question is to ask any Black person. They're closer to this dilemma than you are; do they think you should not vote?

I think they should do whatever they want to and it's presumptuous as fuck for me to have an opinion about it.

I suggested you ask a Black person-- i.e. learn from them, not them learning from you.

But if we look at behaviour, we find that 36% of Black voters didn't vote in any national election in 2018, 2020, or 2022--and 2020 in particular had the highest voter turnout in a presidential election in more than a century. That's a pretty healthy percentage of folks choosing "none of the above".

And also nearly 2/3 who decided to vote anyway.