United States Politics Thread 46

[Torco]

alas, true

[Raphael]

Socialist economics are not inherently counter-intuitive. People are just not used to hearing the arguments,

"There are great arguments for x" and "x is counter-intuitive" are by no means mutually exclusive. Something can be completely true and still be counter-intuitive. To use one example Torco indirectly mentioned a few posts ago, the idea that the world is (more or less) a sphere is pretty counter-intuitive.

To use a more socialism-related example, the idea that we should be internationalist rather than nationalist is pretty central to many forms of socialism, and I completely agree with it, but for most people, it's probably very counter-intuitive, given how central in-group-versus-out-group thinking is to the human psyche.

There might have been a bit of a misunderstanding here in this discussion when some people here took "counter-intuitive" to mean "bad", or "false", or "wrong".

[Torco]

it's correct that counter-intuitive doesn't mean wrong, but it also doesn't mean difficult to swallow, at least how i'm using it. in the case of socialism, "businesses should all be private" is, while easy to swallow given everyone alive and older than 20 has been subject to decades of pro-capitalist indoctrination, is not intuitive. "there is only one god" is also not intuitive, even though it is extremely easy to swallow given the volume of monotheist indoctrination people are generally exposed to in most countries.

[Lērisama]

Socialist ideas were successfully implemented in Western Europe immediately after WWII - in France or Britain there was probably an element of nationalistic pride in there but I believe in the more positive sense of the whole nation coming together.

Not entirely sure how relevant this is, but GCSE¹ history says the reasons for the NHS² being created (although the reason for the Labour landslide in 45 were mentioned as well) were some mixture of

• A feeling that the coalition government after WWI didn't succeed in creating its 'Land fit for Heroes', and a wish to do better this time
• Evacuees³. It turns out forcing poor children in bad health to live with rich people makes the rich people care a lot more about the lives of the poor (who'd have though)
• More immediately, the Beveridge Report of 1942, which identified the 'five giants' in the way of progress. Wikipedia says they were Want, Disease, Ignorance, Sqalor, and Idleness and provided the intellectual foundation for the welfare state (Beveridge was a Liberal, rather than Labour)
• Labour (the party which actually addressed these things) also benefitted from Churchill not being seen as a good was considered as not a good peacetime leader⁴, and once they were in power with a large majority, they took the unprecedented step of actually going through with their manifesto

In short, residual feeling from WWII. Nationalism was a factor, but national embarassment at the status quo was maybe more important. Not that you should trust government approved history of its own country without interrogation. Or other countries for that matter

---

¹ I don't know how well known this is outside the UK. They are qualications you take at 16 (except in Scotland) in a relatively wide range of subjects (Michael Gove⁵ wants you to take Maths, English Lang, English Lit, at least two sciences⁶, a language, a humanities subject⁷, Religious Studies, and whatever else you have time for, but I'm pretty sure the only actually compulsory ones are Maths and English Language, although schools have to teach some of the others, even if you don't take the exam in it)
² The specifc course is medicine through time. You can more general British history covering this period, but only if I'd chisen the A-level
³ Children sent away from the South East coast and big cities to places considered safer
⁴ He was never actually voted as leader of the government. Neville Chamberlain won the 1935 election, and Churchil was leader of the National Coalition set up for the war, as not too offensive to anybody, and associated with the military
⁵ I'm not sure if this particular policy is actual Michael Gove, since the Tories went through about 3 million Education Secretaries, but he's the one who's face is on the various reforms they did in the 2010s, which I think this was part of
⁶ Either combined science, which is one grade worth 2 GCSEs, or separate Chemisty, Physics & Biology
⁷ Either History or Geography

[MacAnDàil]

(7)
Embrace outrage. Being calm makes you seem clueless, aloof, timid, and weak. People are living shitty lives, and you need to match their energy and emotion to let them know that you understand their plight and are going to do something to fix it.

Also, acting calm associates you with management in the mind of the worker, because that's exactly how managers and HR departments act and talk, and as any savvy worker knows, management and HR are not your friend.

While you may have something of a point, being calm helps improve one's thinking and Trump won in the same worlwide anti-incumbent wave as Keir Starmer, who is not big on outrage.

[Raphael]

(7)
Embrace outrage. Being calm makes you seem clueless, aloof, timid, and weak. People are living shitty lives, and you need to match their energy and emotion to let them know that you understand their plight and are going to do something to fix it.

Also, acting calm associates you with management in the mind of the worker, because that's exactly how managers and HR departments act and talk, and as any savvy worker knows, management and HR are not your friend.

Problem is, the less calm you are, the more likely you are to mess up. Simple as that. Being the opposite of calm might get you elected, but if you're still the opposite of calm once you're in office, that's usually bad news for the people you govern now.

[jcb]

There might have been a bit of a misunderstanding here in this discussion when some people here took "counter-intuitive" to mean "bad", or "false", or "wrong".

My point is that the biggest factor that determines whether somebody considers an idea "counter-intuitive" or not is how many times they have heard it repeated.

Case in point: the trinity.

(7)
Embrace outrage. Being calm makes you seem clueless, aloof, timid, and weak. People are living shitty lives, and you need to match their energy and emotion to let them know that you understand their plight and are going to do something to fix it.

Also, acting calm associates you with management in the mind of the worker, because that's exactly how managers and HR departments act and talk, and as any savvy worker knows, management and HR are not your friend.

While you may have something of a point, being calm helps improve one's thinking and Trump won in the same worlwide anti-incumbent wave as Keir Starmer, who is not big on outrage.

(1) Calm vs outraged is not about thinking vs not thinking, but about what kind of persona/character one displays in public. (I initially hesitated to use the word "calm" here, but I couldn't think of a better word.)
(2) I'm thinking of not just this election, but also future elections.
(3) Did the Labour party really win?, or did the Conservative party lose by getting its vote split? From 2019 to 2024, Labour went from 32.1% to 33.7% of the vote. Conservatives went from 43.6% to 23.7% of the vote. The Brexit Party / Reform UK party went from 2.01% to 14.3% of the vote. 23.7% + 14.3% = 38% > 33.7%

Numbers from wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Unit ... ll_results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Unit ... ll_results

My prediction: Fake populism will get bigger in the UK. Either the Conservative party will move farther right to stop losing votes to the Reform party (this is the more likely possibility), or they'll resist moving and the Reform party will eventually overtake them, and they'll cease being one of the two main parties.

[Raphael]

There might have been a bit of a misunderstanding here in this discussion when some people here took "counter-intuitive" to mean "bad", or "false", or "wrong".

My point is that the biggest factor that determines whether somebody considers an idea "counter-intuitive" or not is how many times they have heard it repeated.

Case in point: the trinity.

Fair enough.

[zompist]

My point is that the biggest factor that determines whether somebody considers an idea "counter-intuitive" or not is how many times they have heard it repeated.

Case in point: the trinity.

This probably belongs somewhere else, but this seems like a strange example, unless by "counter-intuitive" you mean "things I personally don't like."

Claiming that the idea of the trinity is counter-intuitive seems to be a claim that you have valid intuitions about how supernatural minds work. Do you? What extensive experience with supernatural beings are these intuitions based on?

[Torco]

Embrace outrage.

Problem is, the less calm you are, the more likely you are to mess up. Simple as that. Being the opposite of calm might get you elected, but if you're still the opposite of calm once you're in office, that's usually bad news for the people you govern now.[/quote]
maybe act all crazy but inside keep your cool ? it's dishonest, but i mean... it's politics!

Claiming that the idea of the trinity is counter-intuitive seems to be a claim that you have valid intuitions about how supernatural minds work. Do you? What extensive experience with supernatural beings are these intuitions based on?

I mostly have intuitions about how minds work in general, and if "supernatural" ones are so different why call them minds at all?

either way I feel as if intuitive means more of what intuition without prior knowledge of the thing would suggest: then again, yeah, intuitions are always built on one cup worldview per twelve teaspoons experience or something.

[Lērisama]

(3) Did the Labour party really win?, or did the Conservative party lose by getting its vote split? From 2019 to 2024, Labour went from 32.1% to 33.7% of the vote. Conservatives went from 43.6% to 23.7% of the vote. The Brexit Party / Reform UK party went from 2.01% to 14.3% of the vote. 23.7% + 14.3% = 38% > 33.7%

Numbers from wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Unit ... ll_results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Unit ... ll_results

My prediction: Fake populism will get bigger in the UK. Either the Conservative party will move farther right to stop losing votes to the Reform party (this is the more likely possibility), or they'll resist moving and the Reform party will eventually overtake them, and they'll cease being one of the two main parties.

On (3), the answer is yes, the Tories lost (that's kind of the point of anti-incumbancy as an electoral force) but I'm about 90% sure you got the cause and effect the wrong way round. The Tories last election did very well with a combination of fake populism ("Levelling Up") and promising to make Brexit finally go away¹ ("Get Brexit Done"). They then failed the first count (Levelling Up was clearly never thought out until they were actually in Downing Street and had to do something, and was actually a tiny pot of money that local authorities had to compete for for mew leisure centres and the like) and on Brexit this says it better than me. In short, brexit matters less now, but is more important to remain voters than leave ones. Then Partygate happended, followed by Liz Truss. At this point, very few people actually liked the Tories, and given the presence of the Tory right & its papers, bust pushing the narrative that we need more Brexit (the ECHR is the latest direction of their ire, because of course we want to be in the club of ECHR leavers, shared by our great friends Russia and Belarus) and how it wasn't Liz Truss' fault at all, but such leftist institutions like the Bank and England² or the City of London³, and reform went for the group of voters who wouldn't have voted Tory anyway, even if they did last time. If reform didn't exist then I assume that they'd not vote, or do some kind of protest vote. I doubt enough of them would vote Tory to save them, although they might have done a bit better.

¹ the 2017-19 parliament spent almost all its time arguing about Brexit
² Yes, really
³ The City of London is the one borough of London that made up the original city, which has been superseeded as the government of actual London by greater London⁴. It is literally part run by companies (as successors to the guilds), and is a bit like accusing Wall Street of being secretly socialist
⁴ The Mayor of London runs greater London, and the Lord Mayor of London runs the City of London

[Raphael]

and is a bit like accusing Wall Street of being secretly socialist

Oh, I think that does sometimes happen in US politics these days. Not that it makes any sense, of course.

[MacAnDàil]

So one part of is that every country voting in 2024 has rejected their current governments because of inflation due to Putin and megacorps. What if Putin did it deliberately?

Inflation in these past few years has many causes; the chief ones being COVID and energy prices (corporate greed also, but that's kind of a constant.) Putin of course isn't responsible for COVID; the energy crisis Putin has some leverage on.
It's a certainty Russia is doing their best to apply pressure on the West. On the whole, Putin didn't do it but he's certainly trying to make it worse.

Sure there is Covid, too, and the isolation led Putin to his invasion and the energy prices are surely due to corporate greed and Putin's war. Is corporate greed a constant or on the rise given the current level of billionaires?

(1) Calm vs outraged is not about thinking vs not thinking, but about what kind of persona/character one displays in public. (I initially hesitated to use the word "calm" here, but I couldn't think of a better word.)

active instead of passive? vindicative or go-getter instead of something? Certainly, from what I have seen of polls, people preferred Harris' persona to Trump's so that was not what was at fault.

(2) I'm thinking of not just this election, but also future elections.

Sure, we should try and plan for the future, learn lessons and see how things may be improved.

(3) Did the Labour party really win?, or did the Conservative party lose by getting its vote split? From 2019 to 2024, Labour went from 32.1% to 33.7% of the vote. Conservatives went from 43.6% to 23.7% of the vote. The Brexit Party / Reform UK party went from 2.01% to 14.3% of the vote. 23.7% + 14.3% = 38% > 33.7%

Numbers from wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Unit ... ll_results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Unit ... ll_results

Also relevant is that the Greens went from 0.6% to 6.7% and a significant proportion of that outwith Scotland probably came from Labour.

Anyway, we could also ask whether Trump really won or couch-sitting did. The outcome remains the same.

My prediction: Fake populism will get bigger in the UK. Either the Conservative party will move farther right to stop losing votes to the Reform party (this is the more likely possibility), or they'll resist moving and the Reform party will eventually overtake them, and they'll cease being one of the two main parties.

Given that Kemi Badenoch became Tory leader, the former is more likely.

(2)
The average voter is very "low-information", doesn't have a coherent view of the world, nor a coherent political ideology. They have only a mish-mash of selfish interests, a couple of hobby horses that they are slightly educated in (if you're lucky), some wishful thinking, and a bunch of lizard brain tribalisms.

Especially the marsh (see below)

(5)
Focus your message on economics, because it's something that almost everybody can sympathize with. Almost everybody has, had, or will have a job at some point in their life. On the other hand, most people will never personally experience being trans or gay.

That argument could work for the environment, health and democracy too: Everyone breathes and drinks water so surely want to keep environmental protections that Trump wants to remove and prevent the state from putting in place instead. Everybody has healthcare at some time in their life so would rather not get measles, mumps and rubella because of RFK Jr. Everybody who votes.. votes so would want to do so again.

But specific parts of the economy, yes: multinationals and billionaires create high prices as an accurate and simple narrative; higher minimum wage and taxing more mutlinationals and billionaires as policies

(6)
Don't rely on mainstream media to spread your message. Mainstream media people are weak, stupid, timid sycophants that think that objectivity equals neutrality, live in a bubble that leaves them ignorant about how most people live, and are beholden to the whims of their billionaire overlords. Build your own media to spread your message.

Mainstream media as in magazines and newspapers? They more often supported Harris than Trump. What is now mainstream? Musk was rolling for Trump in order to lay off as many workers as he feels like and because he begrudges his child for being trans. And it was Musk that converted Rogan.

(9)
Democrats probably could've won this if they had better turn-out. I guess 5 million people felt not motivated enough to bother voting after 4 years of Biden made them forget how awful Trump was.

Yes, regular reminders should have been appropriate and yet watching Trump is surely enough of a reminder.

--
Some more ideas:

Focus on the important issues: Trump's campaign, while more hateful and stupider, was at least focussed a few key issues around immigration and the economy.

Focus on the policies and character:There were many horrible policies and character traits from Trump and his allies, including and limited to , and yet they were sometimes just described as 'weird'. Had I not already had judgements against Trump's character and against for decades, that might have swayed my teenage self in favour of defending weirdness.

Focus on mobilising your base, the marsh and the swing voters: The marsh (in French marais) refers to those unpredictable unpoliticised voters whereas swing voters are those who regularly take part and pay attention but switch depending on the candidate, issues and/or program. The marsh, along with a weak participation seems to have won it for Trump. Too much effort was made reaching to Republicans who would hold their nose and vote for their guy no matter what and not enough for people who aren't much into politics and don't know and haven't yet decided. Also, integrating policies that people can get enthusiastic about could rally the base.

Stick to your policies:Harris' policies differed between 2020 and 2024 unnecessarily, in an attempt to attract centrist/right-wing voters.

[Nortaneous]

Mainstream media? What's that? There's legacy media and there's new media. Newspapers don't matter anymore. People who engage in the recreational consumption and production of written text often don't realize how many people are not comfortably literate - if you rely on writing to distribute your message, your reach will be limited.

This is one of the mistakes the Democrats made. Who the hell cares about the Washington Post? But another mistake was talking about courtly decorum. Trump did this, Trump did that, his advisors don't like him - who cares? Not only are these things that no normal person cares about, they're things that no normal person is even competent to judge. They don't speak Latin or Classical Chinese, they don't live in Versailles, they don't know what an oyster spoon is, however you want to put it - anything involving the day-to-day or even year-to-year life of a business-casual-on-weekends Georgetown guy is mumbo-jumbo to >90% of the population. The average voter doesn't even know that DC can issue license plates, any more than they know what goes on in a water treatment plant or where the 5G comes from. If a party is so detached from normal people that they talk about Versailles shit in the provinces, why would normal people assume they have any idea what's going on?

[Ares Land]

Sure there is Covid, too, and the isolation led Putin to his invasion and the energy prices are surely due to corporate greed and Putin's war. Is corporate greed a constant or on the rise given the current level of billionaires?

Corporate greed is certainly on the rise. It used to be sort of contained so that the system would not break down entirely, but such caution is now completely gone.

[MacAnDàil]

Mainstream media? What's that? There's legacy media and there's new media. Newspapers don't matter anymore. People who engage in the recreational consumption and production of written text often don't realize how many people are not comfortably literate - if you rely on writing to distribute your message, your reach will be limited.

This is more so the case than a few decades ago and a problem brought on by the current overuse of screens encouraged by megacorps hawking them for others to waste time on but they often would not dare put their own children before them.

[Ares Land]

Mainstream media? What's that? There's legacy media and there's new media. Newspapers don't matter anymore. People who engage in the recreational consumption and production of written text often don't realize how many people are not comfortably literate - if you rely on writing to distribute your message, your reach will be limited.

This is more so the case than a few decades ago and a problem brought on by the current overuse of screens encouraged by megacorps hawking them for others to waste time on but they often would not dare put their own children before them.

There I'm not sure I agree with you.

I'm a bit skeptical of the 'screen' things; more generally of the panic surrounding 'screens' in general. I can see the dangers -- but I wish the warnings were more specific. Video games, social media, TV shows, movies e-books, conlanging are all 'screen' activities but besides that don't have much in common. I'm also very skeptical of that story they told about millionaire kids not getting iPads -- what we hear is just rumor and marketing.

(As a father myself, I know how hard it is to go against education panics.. but kids these days are definitely getting less screen time than we did in the 80s and 90s.)

As for literacy, or well, comfortable literacy (a nice turn of phrase, that)... people not reading and getting brainwashed by TV instead dates at least to the seventies, as a trope.

One difference, though, is that content used to more... I don't know? curated, back in the day. You got a lot of bullshit on TVs, but while, say, there was a lot of blatant sexism on TVs, you didn't get highly detailed conspiracy theories of the likes of MGTOW.

[Raphael]

Mainstream media? What's that? There's legacy media and there's new media. Newspapers don't matter anymore. People who engage in the recreational consumption and production of written text often don't realize how many people are not comfortably literate - if you rely on writing to distribute your message, your reach will be limited.

This is more so the case than a few decades ago and a problem brought on by the current overuse of screens encouraged by megacorps hawking them for others to waste time on but they often would not dare put their own children before them.

There I'm not sure I agree with you.

I'm a bit skeptical of the 'screen' things; more generally of the panic surrounding 'screens' in general. I can see the dangers -- but I wish the warnings were more specific. Video games, social media, TV shows, movies e-books, conlanging are all 'screen' activities but besides that don't have much in common. I'm also very skeptical of that story they told about millionaire kids not getting iPads -- what we hear is just rumor and marketing.

(As a father myself, I know how hard it is to go against education panics.. but kids these days are definitely getting less screen time than we did in the 80s and 90s.)

As for literacy, or well, comfortable literacy (a nice turn of phrase, that)... people not reading and getting brainwashed by TV instead dates at least to the seventies, as a trope.

One difference, though, is that content used to more... I don't know? curated, back in the day. You got a lot of bullshit on TVs, but while, say, there was a lot of blatant sexism on TVs, you didn't get highly detailed conspiracy theories of the likes of MGTOW.

I am very skeptical of any attempt to explain anything that seems to be entirely based on some people's aesthetic objections to things they don't like. Especially when these objections are coming from the Deep Green crowd, which promotes environmentally destructive lifestyles in the name of environmentalism. Call me crazy, but I try to care more about substance than about superficial nonsense. And the substance of a written word is the same on a screen, on paper, on a clay tablet, or drawn into a patch of sand with a stick.

[Travis B.]

To me the whole "screens" thing is a moral panic, first and foremost. And the focus on "screens" in the present seems selective, how was sitting for hours in front of the boob tube decades ago (when they were real live CRT's) really any better? (I remember thinking as a kid back then how gawdawful much of TV was.)