United States Politics Thread 46

[Raphael]

I'm not sure who you're thinking about when talking about Deep Green --

It's a term for a variant of environmentalism that seems to care more about how green something looks, and about objecting to modern technology on what appear to be mainly aesthetic grounds, than about seriously thinking about the environmental impact of actions.

[bradrn]

I'm not sure who you're thinking about when talking about Deep Green --

It's a term for a variant of environmentalism that seems to care more about how green something looks, and about objecting to modern technology on what appear to be mainly aesthetic grounds, than about seriously thinking about the environmental impact of actions.

You mean, like this stuff?

[Raphael]

I'm not sure who you're thinking about when talking about Deep Green --

It's a term for a variant of environmentalism that seems to care more about how green something looks, and about objecting to modern technology on what appear to be mainly aesthetic grounds, than about seriously thinking about the environmental impact of actions.

You mean, like this stuff?

Yes, for instance.

EDIT: I'm a bit surprised that that piece juxtaposes owning washing machines and washing by hand, though. What about commercial self-service laundries?

[Ares Land]

It's a term for a variant of environmentalism that seems to care more about how green something looks, and about objecting to modern technology on what appear to be mainly aesthetic grounds, than about seriously thinking about the environmental impact of actions.

Ah, thanks. *nods*

You mean, like this stuff?

That'd be degrowth. Though the article depicts a caricature. I'm kind of on the fence when it comes to degrowth; I've read books on the subjects and know quite a few people in favor of it. I can confirm getting rid of washing machines isn't really a thing they suggest. Degrowth activists do own these. A more typical degrowth take is wishing that people would/could repair the machines when they break down instead of washing a new one, or maybe having communal machines for several households. (We usually don't have laundry rooms in apartment buildings here)

[bradrn]

EDIT: I'm a bit surprised that that piece juxtaposes owning washing machines and washing by hand, though. What about commercial self-service laundries?

Because it’s a response to a Tweet which itself suggests washing clothes by hand. (Yes, really. It’s quoted right in the article.)

[Ares Land]

EDIT: I'm a bit surprised that that piece juxtaposes owning washing machines and washing by hand, though. What about commercial self-service laundries?

Because it’s a response to a Tweet which itself suggests washing clothes by hand. (Yes, really. It’s quoted right in the article.)

To clarify my earlier answer, yeah, of course, someone did suggest just that. But I'd argue the guy who tweeted was kind of trolling (checking his profile, he doesn't come across as very well balanced).

[Travis B.]

EDIT: I'm a bit surprised that that piece juxtaposes owning washing machines and washing by hand, though. What about commercial self-service laundries?

Because it’s a response to a Tweet which itself suggests washing clothes by hand. (Yes, really. It’s quoted right in the article.)

To clarify my earlier answer, yeah, of course, someone did suggest just that. But I'd argue the guy who tweeted was kind of trolling (checking his profile, he doesn't come across as very well balanced).

Either this guy is a troll or he's really off-kilter. (I notice his tweet about how Israel should be relocated to Germany for instance.)

[bradrn]

Because it’s a response to a Tweet which itself suggests washing clothes by hand. (Yes, really. It’s quoted right in the article.)

To clarify my earlier answer, yeah, of course, someone did suggest just that. But I'd argue the guy who tweeted was kind of trolling (checking his profile, he doesn't come across as very well balanced).

Either this guy is a troll or he's really off-kilter. (I notice his tweet about how Israel should be relocated to Germany for instance.)

I see. So, once again, the original article is someone getting angry about nothing. Why am I not surprised…

[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 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.

I do not think this is true. There's no shortage of people in the 40+ age bracket who can't write a grammatical paragraph or sound out an unfamiliar word.

[Darren]

There's no shortage of people in the 40+ age bracket who can't write a grammatical paragraph or sound out an unfamiliar word.

Anyone who has tried to use facebook marketplace can attest to this fact.

[Torco]

degrowth is honestly good and reasonable pruning of the forest that is the economy. this is because of a simple fact: because capitalism encourages business to *make money*, regardless of whether the way in which they do so is actually good for people, you will expect a number of transactions, and on aggregate a lot of entire industries, which only exists because it is profitable to do so. this is of course not the case for all economic transactions and a simple example is farming: it is good that people grow delicious cucumbers and get it to the cities and towns where people want to eat them and the market generally encourages farmers to grow the cucumbers, and some other dudes can make money from moving the cucumbers around, and then the guys who build and repair the truck-fridges in which the cucumbers are moved and whatever whatever.

but obviously markets also create industries that do no good to anyone other than making rich people richer. a good example of this would be if our imaginary society had like a cultural taboo that trucks that transport cucumbers need to be blessed by a cucumber priest or they will rot: if this society is capitalist, you can damn well believe you're going to have a whole industry around this taboo: a derivatives market on stock in different priest-training companies and whatever the hell: this industry of the cucumber priests moves around a many units of currency every month, that is to say it creates economic activity, and jobs and all the rest of it, even though in reality no good is being created: the cucumbers do not rot if unblessed. maybe there's even police that persecute cucumber smugglers that don't bless their trucks, or even worse, transport them in fridges pulled by donkeys! an unclean animal to be sure, priests agree.

And many units of currency are spent in equipping these police officers, and giving them cameras, and special AI models that check if a donkey is anywhere near a fridge full of cucumbers. and if we stopped doing the whole blessing of the cucumber, you know, at this point we'd be crippling the economy! do you know how many jobs the blessing industry generates every month! surely you must be a dangerous radical, proposing the abolition of the cucumber blessing. even on secular grounds, we'd cause a recession!

but these people should, in fact, just bring the cucumbers to the city and be done with it. the hundreds of thousands employed by the blessing industry... it would be better if they were employed in something else! maybe cultivating pomegranates or building better roads or whatever it is. the fact is, capitalism is absolutely rife with such irrationalities -which the economists call "market failures", but they are in fact the market working precisely as it can be expected a market to function. they just want you to think the default state is market good and the aberration is market bad.

ink in printers is such an industry, or the illegality of repairing some phones, fast fashion, the perpetual increase in the price of housing, rent... from this perspective, degrowth is often desirable! like, if rent was abolished, if suddenly, magically, no rent payments or mortgage payments or whatever are evermore effected, with some alternative system that just allocates housing to people through, oh whatever, some preference-weighted lottery system or whatever, will the mean happyness of people increase or decrease? of course increase! a few people would be sad they don't get rent, but not being homeless is like... the main source of stress for people, and for a lot. anyway, even if you like rent, surely *some* industries would not be there in a more humane and more rational economic system.

[zompist]

degrowth is honestly good and reasonable pruning of the forest that is the economy. this is because of a simple fact: because capitalism encourages business to *make money*, regardless of whether the way in which they do so is actually good for people, you will expect a number of transactions, and on aggregate a lot of entire industries, which only exists because it is profitable to do so. this is of course not the case for all economic transactions and a simple example is farming: it is good that people grow delicious cucumbers and get it to the cities and towns where people want to eat them and the market generally encourages farmers to grow the cucumbers, and some other dudes can make money from moving the cucumbers around, and then the guys who build and repair the truck-fridges in which the cucumbers are moved and whatever whatever.

[...]
ink in printers is such an industry, or the illegality of repairing some phones, fast fashion, the perpetual increase in the price of housing, rent... from this perspective, degrowth is often desirable! like, if rent was abolished, if suddenly, magically, no rent payments or mortgage payments or whatever are evermore effected, with some alternative system that just allocates housing to people through, oh whatever, some preference-weighted lottery system or whatever, will the mean happyness of people increase or decrease? of course increase! a few people would be sad they don't get rent, but not being homeless is like... the main source of stress for people, and for a lot. anyway, even if you like rent, surely *some* industries would not be there in a more humane and more rational economic system.

Man, there's nothing like a socialist for making capitalism look good.

There's no such thing as cucumber blessing. I just checked: a cucumber is $0.79 at the closest store. Doesn't seem like a terrible thing. The communist alternative is no cucumbers, because the farmer's land got stolen by the state and the kolkhoz only grows wheat, and not enough, so more has to be bought from the godless capitalists. Or no cucumbers because the Glorious Chairman mandated endless meetings and marches, and the collectives inflated crop yields, so next year they took the entire crop and the peasants will starve.

For housing, pardon me if I'm not excited over the "wait seven years to get allocated a crummy apartment" system.

Making the economy "more rational" sounds nice until the commisars outlaw something you happen to like. Is there no room for frivolity or fun in your system? What if I don't like the two games available at GUM? What if I'd like to wear clothes with color in them, or books that don't extol the Glorious Chairman?

Selling inkjet printer ink is a scam. But there's an alternative: buy a black&white Brother laser printer, for not much more money. A cartridge will print 1000 pages or so. (An inkjet cartridge might get just 175.)

There's a million things not to like about present-day US capitalism! I think it's harder to make a case that Sweden or Swizerland is a post-acocalyptic hellhole, but I'm sure they have downsides. But "lol capitalism" is not actually an explanation or a solution. For any problem, you have to look at what actually causes it and what solutions are available.

E.g. homelessness was not a huge problem in the 1960s in the US. There were far more cheap single-person apartments; shelters could generally take in everyone who needed them; the mentally ill were in institutions rather than the street. And that was in a capitalist system. Oh, by the way, the Soviets had homelessness too, though perhaps you consider their forced labor camps to be a good solution.

What went wrong? In a word, Reagan. But also well-meaning but ultimately misguided policies— e.g. SRO apartment buildings were seen as a blight; people didn't realize that making people homeless would look even more squalorous.

[rotting bones]

I will never own a house. Ever. After I die, I will be a bridge troll for all eternity.

I don't support the Stalinist system, but people didn't support the neolibs for no reason. They offered the capitalists a way out of stagflation. If the economy is stagnant, you can't incentivize investors to grow it by dangling profit in front of them! Meanwhile, there was inflation.

Your pre-Reagan economy would've killed us all if there hadn't been a transition towards more cruelty or more kindness. We know which option America inevitably defaults to.

[rotting bones]

All interesting ideas but aren't you worried right-wingers are inherently better at populism?

Is there any evidence for this? The people organized themselves to campaign for Obama. Afterwards, they rightly perceived that they had been outwitted by the intellectuals.

For some reason, the "leftist" intellectuals are dead set on demotivating their base these days. All they want is spiritualism, capitalism or that pomo BS. There's nothing you can tell them that will change their minds. Many of them openly prefer fascism to classic leftism.

[rotting bones]

(2)
Indeed, you can't reason somebody out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into. This is why Democrats must very seriously consider the institutions that support them, and more specifically, rebuild unions as a institutional base of power, because they are institutions that people INSTICTIVELY know fights for them (partly because they interact with the union almost every day), and they will remember this when they're in the voting booth!

This might not suck as a first step, but unions are such an old timey institution. They are often corrupt or even racist. How will you encourage everyone to join one?

I feel like you are reducing too many demographics into one with the union prescription:

1. There are people whom Trump will genuinely benefit by cutting taxes.
2. There are people who know what Trump wants this time around. They want to burn everything down. (accelerationists)

The people in 1 and 2 are not that many in number, but even among people who irrationally trust Trump:

3. There are people who distrust Harris because she put parents in jail because their kids skipped school.
4. There are people who trust Trump because they incorrectly believe that a strongman will fight for populist policies.
5. There are people who distrust Harris because she is part of an administration under which prices of essentials rose.
...

The biggest hope for the Democrats right now is that 5 is a large enough group. This may be the case in America, but it's not true everywhere. When Modi crashed India's economy, he became a messianic figure to many Indian voters. There are people in 4 who think a strongman delivering a bad performance is a proof of their sincerity! They would rather go down fighting under an incompetent leader who they believe is fighting for them than some clownish genius who might defraud them.

This is what trust means: the candidate must convince people they are on the people's side. Like you say, having the same dark side as the people you're hoping to represent helps them identify with you. As a political analyst, your job is to estimate how large each demographic is.

I hope that if enough people join progressive institutions of many different types, actual progressives might stand a chance of being elected, not just conservative "leftists" and fascists.

[rotting bones]

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.

Anger gives you energy. IIRC in terms of Indian philosophy, you need both rajas and sattva.

I don't remember how Aristotle worded it. I think he said the northern barbarians have passion, but no intellect. (he was talking about white people) The southern barbarians have intellect, but no passion. (he was referring to today's Arabs) Only the Greeks have both passion and intellect. That is the secret of their success. It's amazing how evil the Greek philosophers were.

PS. He couldn't have said "passion" though. That's a very bad thing in Greek philosophy.

[rotting bones]

Why do you think that the non-economy-focussers would not survive? And that it would be appropriate to focus on that?

Under Trump, 70% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck before Covid. Under Biden, it was 60% IIRC. A bad economy limits their power to purchase essential goods. Fewer essential goods makes survival challenging.

How would placing importance on morality lead to genocide, the opposite of morality? Why do you think that left could not be supported on a myriad of bases?

Many people living unexamined lives are of the opinion that being moral means punishing disobedience with the utmost strictness. I suspect seeing blood makes their dicks hard.

(Edit: See Altemeyer's Authoritarianism book.)

Certainly, from what I have seen of polls, people preferred Harris' persona to Trump's so that was not what was at fault.

People don't always trust politicians whose personalities they like. They are worried their enemies might also enjoy those personalities way too much.

Here's an article on what's attractive about Trump: https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/a-night-at-the-garden

[jcb]

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.

I'm not thinking from the perspective of (neo)liberals, but from socialists who want to reinvigorate labor's position in the Democratic party. The mainstream media (NBC, CNN, NYT, etc) is controlled by liberals, and therefore will not willingly promote this.

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

Well, don't hold your breath, because the Dems are too busy congratulating themselves on losing: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -democrats

The Repubs are laughing at how uncaring and dispassionate the Dems are:

Bill O’Reilly, a former Fox News host, told NewsNation: “It’s kind of like the New York Jets. You guys follow the football, nobody did anything wrong, and they’re 3-8 … I hope people see the absurdity of this.”

...

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.

Work is different in that people actively structure their whole lives around work, because they usually spend 8 hours per day, 5 days per week doing it. They don't actively devote the same amount of time, energy, or mind to their health, water, or environment until Something Happens and it's suddenly not suitable anymore.

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

This is a mistake, because it assumes that the political arena is only one dimensional, which it isn't.

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.

I do not think this is true. There's no shortage of people in the 40+ age bracket who can't write a grammatical paragraph or sound out an unfamiliar word.

I agree. Screen time is irrelevant. Indeed, people who read books for fun don't realize how many people are functionally illiterate, and for whom the last time they read a book was in high school.

This is one of the mistakes the Democrats made. Who the hell cares about the Washington Post?

Liberals do, and they love patting themselves on the back for it.

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.)

Alot of TV did suck 20+ years ago, but I think the issue is that screens are so much more common now that people look at them nearly all day. They can even do so when they're sitting on the toilet!

[Nortaneous]

This is one of the mistakes the Democrats made. Who the hell cares about the Washington Post?

Liberals do, and they love patting themselves on the back for it.

Right, second only to the New York Times... which is an absolute monarchy. Oops! It's pretty funny how illiberal the liberal sense-making institutions are.

But they won't be relevant for much longer. The Washington Post is the #2 paper in a world where Magnus Carlsen is famous and Fabiano Caruana is not, and outside liberal bubbles the New York Times is considered as trustworthy as the Daily Mail. Future generations will be as surprised that the online crossword company has a press bureau as we are that the people who give stars to restaurants have tire factories.

[zompist]

This is one of the mistakes the Democrats made. Who the hell cares about the Washington Post?

Liberals do, and they love patting themselves on the back for it.

Right, second only to the New York Times... which is an absolute monarchy. Oops! It's pretty funny how illiberal the liberal sense-making institutions are.

But they won't be relevant for much longer. The Washington Post is the #2 paper in a world where Magnus Carlsen is famous and Fabiano Caruana is not, and outside liberal bubbles the New York Times is considered as trustworthy as the Daily Mail. Future generations will be as surprised that the online crossword company has a press bureau as we are that the people who give stars to restaurants have tire factories.

I realize this is a lost battle by now, but both of you are demonstrating that "liberal" has no meaning any more. The people who love the NYT are centrists; that is, moderate and conservative Democrats, and whatever little fringe of moderate Republicans still exist.