Trump Thread

[Askthepizzaguy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

Project 2025 envisions widespread changes to the government, particularly economic and social policies and the role of the federal government and its agencies. The plan proposes taking partisan control of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Commerce, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), dismantling the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and sharply reducing environmental and climate change regulations to favor fossil fuel production.^[13][16] The blueprint seeks to institute tax cuts,^[17] though its writers disagree on the wisdom of protectionism.^[18] Project 2025 recommends abolishing the Department of Education, whose programs would be either transferred to other agencies or terminated.^[19][20] Funding for climate research would be cut and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be reformed according to conservative principles.^[21][22] The project seeks to cut funding for Medicare and Medicaid^[23][24] and urges the government to explicitly reject abortion as health care.^[25][26] The project seeks to eliminate coverage of emergency contraception under the Affordable Care Act^[23] and enforce the Comstock Act to prosecute those who send and receive contraceptives and abortion pills nationwide.^[26][27] It proposes criminalizing pornography,^[28][29] removing legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,^[29][30] and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs^[4][30] and affirmative action^[31] by having the DOJ prosecute "anti-white racism."^[32] The Project recommends the arrest, detention, and deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.^[33][34][35] It proposes deploying the military for domestic law enforcement.^[36] It promotes capital punishment and the speedy "finality" of those sentences.^[37][38]

Let's pretend we don't care about the rest of that horrific crap.

Let's only focus on the part in bold.

The military under the command of Donald Trump would in no way be acting as ''law'' enforcement.

This is a declaration of war against the United States by an openly fascist political party.

That violence has occurred quite predictable. Sadly, easily predictable. It's not violence I endorse, I in fact would like it to stop.

Immediately, from everyone, from all 'sides'. I would also like for the USA to not become a military dictatorship with a person immune to prosecution in command of the military on US soil.

If that happens, there is no such thing as the rule of law, and most of the violence will be coming from Trump's dictatorship, but not all. Not everyone will go quietly. We saw what happened to Nazi Germany to those who weren't favored by der Fuhrer.

If it's going to happen to us, I'd rather go out with those guns the right keeps insisting we have to protect against the very dictatorship they wish to install, that I want nothing to do with, and have never owned, but they do march around with, threatening me with.

While waving actual Nazi flags at his rallies and not getting condemned nor thrown out.

[Montmorency]

Yeah, Pizza, I know. You've luckily been living abroad for 5 years, and I've continued to follow politics relatively-closely. SCOTUS for example has been issuing waves of relatively-unknown horrific decisions (statistically, it does more of that than at any time in its history; at least the Taney Court had overwhelming popular consensus and colorable original-constitutional arguments behind it). Robert's two decades on the court have merely been topped off with that decision you reference, the one declaring that all Americans are born slaves and always have been. Sure, it does make the prospect of a fascist dictatorship under Trump a little more urgent (frankly, Trump is a conservative authoritarian with extreme narcissism, but MAGA has always been an intensely-fascist movement, so the distinction isn't important for the purposes of most discussion).

I think we agree political violence is not never acceptable, because that would be, after all, ahistorical. This country was founded on political violence, and unlike other countries, it never really stopped. As an example, it was a big missed opportunity not to decimate the Southern planter class and redistribute their land to freedmen and smallholding Whites...

But speaking of this country being founded on political and other forms of violence, the reason for ever-escalating individual violence by men, especially young White men, especially gun violence, over the past generation, is exactly that White American culture outside the 'civilized' parts has become thoroughly diseased. It's not that other cultures have no flaws - the trap of the Black ghetto still exists, for example, and misogyny is still too present among all men - but the lunatic rage of the White men against everyone else is metaphorically, maybe literally, putting this country through a glorious murder-suicide dynamic of the sort that has become the common grassroots philosophy of the generic Mass Shooter.

There's something to this in many countries around the world, but it's always had its most profound and ecstatic and effective form within America, for whatever reason, again possibly because of the cultural trends of our Founding and early history.

Liberalism, in the sense of the core belief that the individual has some rights they can reserve to themselves against the authority and interference of the family, the community, the state, or any collective, is struggling to sustain itself and solve problems around the world in a variety of manifestations. American liberals are threatened by arguably the most genuinely-insane and irrational deep counterrevolution of any meaningful potency, but they're comparatively still little-aware of the stakes or of the level of unity demanded of them. But who out there can afford to see liberalism beset in what used to call itself its birthplace as a form of government?

[Xantan]

Adding to the point made above by @Askthepizzaguy, what's rather eye-opening (delicately said) is the use of the US Army on US soil. As far as my limited knowledge of US Army on US soil goes, that has almost never happened.

[Shaka_Khan]

[spmetla]

A week and change out and I'm just hoping that the polling and coverage is just the MSM trying to make the race seem tight so everyone keeps clicking on their links and eating up their coverage.

Fingers crossed that Kamala wins in a landslide that's so obvious that the insurrectionists can even get disheartened or at least dissuaded from resorting to violence.

[Montmorency]

I don't want to info dump on polling matters, but there's a lot of reason to believe that the polling is going to be quite accurate this election, unless there's somewhat more third party vote that's somehow being underrepresented (not sure if that's ever happened). If that's not the case, the only ray of hope is that Trump's polling is so high (with a high two-party share) there's basically no Undecided pool for him to be tapping into (Trump overwhelmingly took Undecideds in 2020, accounting for the so-called "polling miss"). Note that polling was very accurate on Democratic vote shares in 2016 and 2020 for national, state, and senatorial races; it just underestimated Trump somewhat.

I hate that the best presidency since the 1960s is being rewarded this way, but Harris is basically going to need a 2012-class polling error in her favor if this is how it stands for the next week. In 2021 I predicted 2024 would end up being an almost-exact replica of 2020.

Now watch me be wrong and some crazy shit happen like 4 states being within 0.5% (recount range), and the Supreme Court openly trying to coronate Trump with Harris leading in a tipping-point state (crazy how so much history hinges on Ginsburg not retiring during Obama's second term, or not putting off dying by 100 days or so).

[Montmorency]

Fun fact:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The House polling and the special elections swing averages (an alternative metric for projecting performance in House elections) have been in near-total agreement this time. Such close alignment between polling and alternative measures corroborates that the incredibly-tight spread of polling findings throughout this cycle for presidential and senatorial races among almost all pollsters and trackers reflects accuracy more than herding or other biases.

Not-fun fact:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As of a few days ago, all of them agreed on the Dem national vote share falling within 0.4-1.0% ahead of Repubs', which would make it very difficult to get a Democratic majority. Currently, RCP has Repubs moving into the lead.

[spmetla]

Well the polls were fairly accurate and now I'm getting to see the horror that a second Trump presidency will bring. His nominations for key positions is certainly depressing to see.

[Montmorency]

I was writing here in 2015-17 about the stresses faced by the modern state against non-state organizations such as crime syndicates and multinational corporations. While I don't think I was wrong, exactly, my emphasis was misguided; the state can protect itself when the time comes. And my musings from 2014 on about the gradual return of fascism in the world (I thought Israel would later emerge as the first openly fascist country of the 21st century) was also misguided in emphasis. Fascism was an integrative modern project that sought to resolve the contradictions of industrial modernity. And now, sure, there are a number of movements that sometimes resemble fascism, from Hungary and Russia to North Korea and Iran, and share similar goals, but they have a different unifying (meta-)ideology, which I would call party-statism or civilizational statism; these are all context-unique projects to resolve the contradictions and disintegrative forces of postmodernity. Each is a form of soft totalitarianism that is conscious of the failures of legacy 20th century totalitarianisms that brought all prior totalitarian systems to violent collapse or the brink of it. (Beyond that, I won't get into details, as they're beside the point for now. The terms are somewhat self-explanatory.)

But what I've grown more conscious of since the first Trump term is that very gap in my emphasis, which overlooked more grassroots psychopolitical trends. The issue wasn't fascism or state decay as such, but the rise of a postmodern, incoherently-reactionary conservatism in the degraded minds of individuals worldwide. Affected people aren't looking for a means to overcome the contradictions of modernity or of liberalism; they have no particular concept of politics in a country at all except the immediate lashing out against instinctual hate objects. They don't want some systematic long-term reorganization of their countries, they just want short-term tribal power by which to subject those who fall outside the tribe to their whims. They are capable of accepting any direction and stomaching any policy, as long as it arises from within the tribe. They know what they dislike, but suffer from a form of stupidity - not necessarily congenital - that makes them incapable of rationally assessing cause and effect. For whatever reason, such people almost uniformly instantiate as postmodern conservatives, overwhelmingly more so than anything on the left spectrum.

The pandemic made it very plain: hundreds of millions of people, even in the heart of the so-called developed world, are literally psychologically incapable of constituting and sustaining a modern civilization, with all its complex maintenance. The film Idiocracy was partially-right as well, but it rendered its subjects in far too convivial a style.

In the country that is most far gone to this phenomenon, the United States, we see an accelerated feedback loop whereby the inability of government to address fundamental needs in the population, including education, leaves an ever-greater share of the population fallen out of the frameworks of modern rationality, which in turn blocks the formation of viable political coalitions with the will and ability to attack those problems... The overall outcome is a worsening cycle of social disintegration in the developed world, and beyond, that makes holding together a unified, technologically-advanced, socially-complex modern (let alone democratic) state untenable. Not, as I suspected, because the state is too weak, but because too many individuals lack the attributes to participate in modernity. Irrationalists of the sort who were temporarily suppressed throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas after WW2 by the more restrictive cultural and informatic environments available at the time.

Much of the world seems likely to enter a state of fragmented, gibbering technobarbarism in the 21st century, and the elitist elements of stories like Brave New World and 1984 will prove the most prescient (except those elites will also be high on their own supply). It will function badly enough that it will find itself replaced by some alternative, new system - after great cost. But it's such an obviously unproductive way of arranging society that I wonder if it's even possible it could come to that without something like nuclear apocalypse ending global civilization outright - if, rather, alternative frameworks won't intervene.

[Olaf The Great]

Fun fact:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The House polling and the special elections swing averages (an alternative metric for projecting performance in House elections) have been in near-total agreement this time. Such close alignment between polling and alternative measures corroborates that the incredibly-tight spread of polling findings throughout this cycle for presidential and senatorial races among almost all pollsters and trackers reflects accuracy more than herding or other biases.

Not-fun fact:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As of a few days ago, all of them agreed on the Dem national vote share falling within 0.4-1.0% ahead of Repubs', which would make it very difficult to get a Democratic majority. Currently, RCP has Repubs moving into the lead.

Yeaaah, this will be some rough 4 years. Let's just hope WW3 doesn't start

[Devastatin Dave]

TRUMP! YES! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[Shaka_Khan]

Maybe the return of Trump will make this forum active again?

[Devastatin Dave]

Maybe the return of Trump will make this forum active again?

MFAA!!!! Make this Forum Active Again! That's the spirit Shaka Khan! ALL HAIL the POWER of TRUMP!!!

[Shaka_Khan]

MFAA!!!! Make this Forum Active Again! That's the spirit Shaka Khan! ALL HAIL the POWER of TRUMP!!!

While I don't think Trump will betray our allies, and he might be able to bring back peace, he does make comments about our allies that are too harsh. For example, he tends to accuse South Korea of unfair trade practices. But when he was in South Korea, he only made kind remarks about that country. I've been to that country and I know a lot of people from there.



And as you can see in the following videos, South Korea imports a lot.

[Shaka_Khan]

The first Asian BMW Driving Center was built in South Korea. Among the Asian countries, South Korea bought the most BMWs at that time. South Korea might still rank the top in that list among the Asian countries now.



There are Teslas in South Korea too.



Here are some of the American businesses in South Korea.





There are multiple towers owned by Trump there. If I remember correctly, these towers were built during the early 2000s.



Meanwhile, I don't see a lot of Hyundais here in the States. Maybe there's more in Georgia where one of Hyundai's factory is located. Trump never imposed any tariffs on any South Korean imports.

And did you know that Trump never banned the South Koreans from entering during the pandemic? The only reason that they couldn't enter at that time was because of the lockdowns here. (South Korea never had any lockdowns).

[edyzmedieval]

So... uhhh, with all that happened in the past 3 weeks, how are we feeling?

[spmetla]

Sick to the stomach.

Trump and Musk are actively destroying the constitutional system with separation of powers into separate but equal branches. The attack on the legislative branch's spending under the guise of eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse is destroying Congress's power of the purse which is really their greatest power. The current attack on judges that are ordering pauses on firings and funding issues is undermining the power of the judiciary to interrupt the laws that Congress passes.

Perhaps some Republican congressmen will wake up and realize that this is not okay but that seems very very unlikely. If this continues then the American experiment of representative democracy is pretty much dead.

We are well on the way to having a 'unitary executive' in which the power of the President is virtually unlimited. It's a nice dressed up word for Führerprinzip.
Wiki:
It placed the Führer's word above all written law, and meant that government policies, decisions, and officials all served to realize his will. In practice, the Führerprinzip gave Adolf Hitler supreme power over the ideology and policies of his political party; this form of personal dictatorship was a basic characteristic of Nazism. The state itself received "political authority" from Hitler, and the Führerprinzip stipulated that only what the Führer "commands, allows, or does not allow is our conscience," with party leaders pledging "eternal allegiance to Adolf Hitler."

[Montmorency]

There was the resignation of party loyalist Sassoon in refusing to implement the cooptation by Trump of NYC mayor Adams, but that incident is more like a concentration camp official resigning at having to designate capos to govern the inmates indirectly. She didn't sign up to FedSoc and clerk for Scalia just to give a Democrat a break!

It's funny to think that Trump's crimes have escalated to the point that almost every day brings developments (complete with Saturday Night Massacres!) that would have been worse in themselves than anything Nixon or any other malfeasant president ever did.

I'm just as worried about Musk at this point though. Last fall he revealed that he is totally committed to the eradication of American and global liberalism, and that his wealth gives him the right to dispose of the US government, its offices, its assets, and its obligations in any way he personally pleases. And he's been acting on those values with gusto. Also, he's probably more psychologically and politically fascist than Trump now.

The national value of some of his ventures, such as SpaceX, can hardly be overstated, but he personally ought to suffer expropriation and permanent exile from this country (not that I'd wish to inflict him upon South Africa).

Many essays like this have been written over the past years, and perhaps many more still will be.

[spmetla]

Yeah, there's a few Republicans that have done a tiny bit of effort to stem the tide. Mitch McConnel's votes against Trump's cabinet picks is good but seeing as his refusal to impeach him for January 6th is why we are in this mess it's too little and way too late.

The Trump gang's overseas disasters these last few weeks are just mind boggling. That the Republicans are not only just not opposing but actively changing their posture to support these decisions is telling in that the US as the guarantor for more or less global stability has ended. The era of regional Hegemon's is coming and Europe best rearm and do it fast if it doesn't want to be under Russia's sphere of influence.

Wanting to 'own Gaza' eliminates the US a credible voice in the Arab world into purely just one that's pro-Israel. Demanding land from Denmark/Greenland and Canada is a threat to NATO allies that only the unopposable strength of the US within NATO keeps those allies from invoking Article 4.

Hearing the Sec Def claim that the US Navy can't beat the Russians shows he's completely out of touch with reality, completely unsuited for his job and gets his information from pro-Russia sources and whatever Trump tells him without any push back. His wanting to cut the DoD in half would make the US have a military smaller than at any point since WW2 and essentially give up it capability to decisively commit force anywhere around the globe. My take is that the Trump admin wants us to just dominate North and South America and let the PRC and Russian Federation do what they like.

Hearing the VP scold Europe for immigration policies and trying to oppose Russian disinformation at a conference that should be focusing on European security and have the danger of Russia as its focus is just mind boggling.

The confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard probably means that our Allies sharing intel with us is going to be extremely limited and that Five eyes is probably unofficially 'four eyes' from now on.

The not surprising betrayal of Ukraine is terrible as well. To have the starting position for negotiations be that the conflict is frozen on current borders, Ukraine gets zero security guarantees, and that it should sign over half its mineral rights to the US in exchange for nothing is just crazy and far beyond the bad that I'd been prepared for from this administration.
The guard rails are off and any professionals in the US Govt. that try to keep the US on track to follow its own laws much less commitments to allies and partners besides Israel are likely to just be sacked the same day.

I see no silver linings on anything and am getting more depressed each day. Wonder how long before I'm asked to have my US Army Officer Oath of Office changed to protect and defend the President over the Constitution which I will never swear to do and end my twenty-three years of service in the National Guard.

[Montmorency]

I think McConnell, like McCain, just acts out of spite sometimes. He's a polio survivor who has been critical of Kennedy for a while, for example...

I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles.

Speaking of polio, it's been a commonplace observation that the passing of the world-war generations is probably a decisive contributor to the degeneration of global publics into an escalating embrace of war, disease, political cultism, irrationalism, etc. The end of modernity and its wholesale replacement with postmodernism. Notably, what the much-maligned postmodernist philosophers of 50 years back were more describing/predicting than advocating. An interesting bit of trivia I recall on this subject is a reference to a study on Congressional votes during the Vietnam War era: legislators who had served in combat in WW2/Korea, regardless of party, usually opposed expansion of the Vietnam War, whereas those who never did were usually in favor. Can't find the cite though.

Hegseth would have been totally unfit for his position if he were an upright man and not a sot and a pervert and a professional liar. But he is those things. Do you have any insight on the sentiment amid the military currently, regarding recent and potential changes in policy and culture? I'm not suggesting or recommending anything from you, mind. A politically-active and scheming military is almost always very bad for a country. Although given the American experiment is kind of ending in its Second Republic format, that might not envision the worst-case scenarios.

Re: Vance:

If America can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg's scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.

Since Supreme Chancellor of Europe Thunberg has not in fact waged a regulatory war against the US (or the EU bureaucracy) for the past decade, it's a great moment to reflect on how so much of reactionary thinking is merely reducible to slavish embrace of hierarchy. 'There's a club, and you're not in it.' The best way to join the club? Nowadays, embrace Fuhrerprinzip. The only surefire way to get kicked out of the club? Defy the Fuhrer. As a young Euroweenie bitch, Thunberg's nagging was literally a collective and personal insult to those members exposed to it. All of their ideology and grievance is just pretextual to 'putting people in their rightful place.' That's why Thunberg triggers them so much, even now.

[spmetla]

An interesting bit of trivia I recall on this subject is a reference to a study on Congressional votes during the Vietnam War era: legislators who had served in combat in WW2/Korea, regardless of party, usually opposed expansion of the Vietnam War, whereas those who never did were usually in favor.

I've never heard that but I can believe it. There was a lot of complaint at the time over the method of the war being fought and especially its defensive nature in that invading and toppling North Vietnam was never on the table as PRC involvement as in Korea would be disastrous and might expand the war to the rest of East Asia.

Do you have any insight on the sentiment amid the military currently, regarding recent and potential changes in policy and culture?

Just speaking for my peers which are the 'GWOT generation' of the military most are very much pro-Trump, disdainful of Europe, and the Federal Govt. They don't understand the separation of powers all that well and don't really care about Trump eliminating spending he doesn't like or judges he doesn't like.
As for culture overall, they, like most conservatives I know don't like how Trump and his crew talk and act but think it's worth any amount of damage to destroy the 'DEI mind virus.' As I've commented in the past, the progressive social policies of the Democrats, especially in regard to gender politics, white guilt, affirmative action/white male replacement, and drug/crime rehabilitation have cause the Dems to essentially lose the culture war. MAGA supporters don't really care about anything else so long as they 'win' the culture war.
This coupled with Russian/PRC disinformation to undermine their support for the UN, NATO, and the US led rule-based world order in general has led to where we are now.

That's why Thunberg triggers them so much, even now.

100% correct on why this triggers them. That's why there are 'coal roller' truck clubs in which diesel owners essentially make their trucks inefficient in order to spue black exhaust smoke just to spite Greta and 'the Libs.'
This is also why I've never actually been a fan of Greta as I don't think she's contributed anything of value, she's not working toward any realistic solutions, just demanding radical unrealistic change. It's like those 'just stop oil' protestors that deface artwork. Yes, we need to stop using oil like we do but it also doesn't happen quickly.

Sadly, all of the above is due to the rise of social media. Instead of getting news from 'the news' it essentially comes from the gossip guy/gal in the village pub and as that person is a 'good bloke' they correct because 'why would they lie?'

Perhaps the Dems are able to use the 'govt shutdown' to get some leverage from across the aisle. I'm more worried that it'll backfire on them and the rest of us as it could be used as justification for more extreme action by Trump. On the extreme and unlikely side Trump could name certain Dems he doesn't like as domestic terrorists for not funding the government and arrest/ kill them and appoint a replacement as elections in those States 'are rigged by the Dems and can't be trusted.' On the more likely side, it'll just give Musk more ammo to cut more of government spending. On the middle point of crazy possibilities, I could see the Republicans just voting on their own continuing resolution, pretend that the Democrat votes don't matter and move forward with it while directing the Treasury department to accept it as law thereby creating a one-party state despite that it's all illegal as the courts could never move fast enough to stop all of it.

[Montmorency]

Just speaking for my peers which are the 'GWOT generation' of the military most are very much pro-Trump, disdainful of Europe, and the Federal Govt. They don't understand the separation of powers all that well and don't really care about Trump eliminating spending he doesn't like or judges he doesn't like.

Is there any ember of a resistance to a declaration of war of annexation against Canada (I know there's no hope for Panama, Greenland, or Gaza if things come to that)?

I don't have in mind something like a cabal of colonels suddenly unveiling that they will be the new arbiters of the Constitution. I mean action in the context of something that goes beyond the scope of protests and resignations. At that point the only ethical option seems to be violent resistance by those Americans best equipped and legitimized to supply it. And if that sounds like a civil war, I would submit that the occasion of an American government cartoonishly conquering Canada for the sake of raw power would be the signal that we are already in a hot civil conflict. I can believe Americans would slouch through almost anything out of inertia, but in this scenario we're approaching what could be the limits, as far-fetched as it all still is to contemplate.

As for culture overall, they, like most conservatives I know don't like how Trump and his crew talk and act but think it's worth any amount of damage to destroy the 'DEI mind virus.' As I've commented in the past, the progressive social policies of the Democrats, especially in regard to gender politics, white guilt, affirmative action/white male replacement, and drug/crime rehabilitation have cause the Dems to essentially lose the culture war. MAGA supporters don't really care about anything else so long as they 'win' the culture war.

I don't believe Democrats have lost the culture war - their positions remain by and large more popular in isolation! What's happened is the information war waged over generations by the right has indeed contributed to a persistent demeaning of the Democratic party brand. So even when Democrats say or do things people like, too many in the middle or of mixed/incoherent politics will revert to dismissing Democrats as a party of 'incompetent manhaters and racebaiters', as they were taught. And the right only needs to make a couple percentage points out of this cohort to be competitive. The US has been fairly split politically for many generations, but before polarization it used to be possible to achieve very large swings in either direction. But the most important change here is that conservative elites have been self-radicalized by their media projects (they drank the Kool-Aid, and now all their leaders are "Fox News grandpas"), and are happy to lead their radicalized base in overthrowing the entire basis of American government. At least when the same pattern unfolded in 1920s Germany, there was an immediate tradition of monarchy to hearken back to.

To be fair, the Dems have too often wound up frozen by special interests and centrism even when they do control government, often producing the kind of lackluster governance people around the world hate as they watch it fail to address the escalating problems they observe brewing, which has the effect of undercutting for the less engaged the Democratic selling point of being = better at governance than Republicans. But this has also been changing as various cities and states get more aggressive in policymaking.

But people like e.g. Ken Long, a veteran who has proposed that he will choose death over getting a heart transplant, because he rejects being vaccinated as a prerequisite to the transplant (and we heard countless similar stories during the pandemic), aren't turned off by progressives "going too far" or whatever, they just veritably hate the entire edifice of modern, advanced civilization, if not its conveniences, to their cores, because it undermines the hierarchy they intuit. They want to enjoy the masochism of victimhood, the mirage of Christian victimhood like Long is lusting after, while still holding the unlimited power to do whatever they want to those who aren't in their club. And that is a fascistic mindset, the belief in being under unlimited threat no matter what, and therefore deserving the power to achieve sadism no matter what. There was never a way to satisfy the atavists, only to contain them, so long as conservative elites still bought into the American experiment.

For a more succinct description, as always "the cruelty is the point." [VIDEO]

This is also why I've never actually been a fan of Greta as I don't think she's contributed anything of value, she's not working toward any realistic solutions, just demanding radical unrealistic change.

But what was Thunberg supposed to propose? It is useful for someone with a modicum of influence to point out the cumulative failures of the system. That is, someone who isn't on the right and isn't using their own contribution to those failures to make things worse. Thunberg is wrong in that the steady application of moderate energy transition policies from the 1990s on would arguably have solved the climate change problem by now, at least in terms of a crisis. But the fact that we were never able to approach such sensible policymaking due to greed, shortsightedness, and the massive resistance of the right and center is what makes her right! So any "realistic" solution she could offer would itself be unrealistic for lacking relevance amid a broken political environment. Maybe you could call it "damned if you do, damned if you don't", but she's got to be the last person to blame for that. This is by the way how Martin Luther King Jr. came around to socialism being necessary in the fight against racism - he perceived that all the pernicious systems making up the whole society, its politics, and economics, were bound together in a mutually-reinforcing way, such that you couldn't cut one branch without getting at the others. Similarly, it's not surprising to me that the civil rights movement reached its peak at a simultaneous peak in the energy of American liberalism and the welfare state, and at the same time at which the American economy showed less inequality than at any other time in its history. But we don't usually put that context side by side, right?

Sadly, all of the above is due to the rise of social media. Instead of getting news from 'the news' it essentially comes from the gossip guy/gal in the village pub and as that person is a 'good bloke' they correct because 'why would they lie?'

Nowadays, it feels like every possible political philosophy has substantially failed to meet the moment, but I lack the intelligence and creativity to imagine a satisfying novel alternative that might emerge in the future. I believe politics must henceforth become reducible to psychology and neurology rather than ideology or economics or culture or class, as the radical and increasingly-divergent diversity of psychological orientations among human beings may make liberal democracy untenable where it isn't contained by other factors. This is something authoritarianism always seeks to achieve in some fashion, but it brings its own inevitable failings in trying to pull things back together coercively. Countries like Russia, Iran, China, Israel, India, Turkey, etc. are led by people who seem to have converged on versions of a certain philosophy I would call "soft totalitarianism" or "moderate fascism", which uses nationalism and semi-overt thought control to try to convert the fractious impulses of the population toward a single national project less aggressively than Marxist-Leninism, Nazism, etc. used to. The goal is to keep the country united and stable, while projecting strength on the international arena, without resorting to methods that are too self-destructive. They are continuing the dream of achieving a perfect enlightened despotism: "Everything for the people, nothing by the people." It remains to be seen whether these versions of totalitarianism will prove any more resilient than the 20th century ones did.

The bottom line is as follows: A world where humans all shared a Joe Biden kind of mentality and sensibility would produce more of a Star Trek utopia than any left-wing ideology ever could. On the other hand, a world where humans shared a Donald Trump kind of mentality and sensibility would be a troglodytic one, and it's questionable how far in advance of chimpanzees we would have been able to rise.

[spmetla]

Is there any ember of a resistance to a declaration of war of annexation against Canada (I know there's no hope for Panama, Greenland, or Gaza if things come to that)?

I don't have in mind something like a cabal of colonels suddenly unveiling that they will be the new arbiters of the Constitution. I mean action in the context of something that goes beyond the scope of protests and resignations. At that point the only ethical option seems to be violent resistance by those Americans best equipped and legitimized to supply it. And if that sounds like a civil war, I would submit that the occasion of an American government cartoonishly conquering Canada for the sake of raw power would be the signal that we are already in a hot civil conflict. I can believe Americans would slouch through almost anything out of inertia, but in this scenario we're approaching what could be the limits, as far-fetched as it all still is to contemplate.

I think my worldview seems an isolated one in the military, though that's really just the Hawaii National Guard outside deployments and training. I certainly hope that there'd be resistance to US aggression within but in a way it wouldn't matter as Hegseth is about to 'clean house' in the DoD. I imagine in the next few months we'll see every 'globalist' flag officer fired and replaced with 'loyal' flag officers.
I figure that part of the 40% reduction in the DoD over the next five years that seems to be proposed by Trump/Hegseth is in part to cave to Russia and China their spheres of influence and in part to make the military small enough to also be 100% politically loyal to MAGA.

Sadly, because the military is such a small segment of the population and partly because it is all volunteer it is very insulated from the rest of America. Certainly, a benefit of the draft was that it drew from a pool of males that represented the US a lot more evenly than now.

I don't believe Democrats have lost the culture war - their positions remain by and large more popular in isolation! What's happened is the information war waged over generations by the right has indeed contributed to a persistent demeaning of the Democratic party brand.

The Democratic brand has absolutely been trashed by the right and that's why so many voters will vote for Republicans while completely ignorant that they are voting against their interests. Heck even the Republican centrists have been trashed into just being RINOs.

Nowadays, it feels like every possible political philosophy has substantially failed to meet the moment, but I lack the intelligence and creativity to imagine a satisfying novel alternative that might emerge in the future.

That's why I don't subscribe to any one political philosophy, I feel like a pendulum there's times for centralizing and decentralizing as change is a constant and the forms of government will always need to change in small parts to meet that.
When the internet was new it needed little regulation, now of course it needs lots as it's such a part of daily life. Same with roads from pre to post automobiles.

To be fair, the Dems have too often wound up frozen by special interests and centrism even when they do control government, often producing the kind of lackluster governance people around the world hate as they watch it fail to address the escalating problems they observe brewing, which has the effect of undercutting for the less engaged the Democratic selling point of being = better at governance than Republicans. But this has also been changing as various cities and states get more aggressive in policymaking.

I still think that the thing that would be prevent this despite its flaws would be ranked choice voting. Let the far left and far right have their dedicated parties to vote for as it is vital that everyone has candidates that represent them. This two-party system in which a third party is a spoiler and each party needs to have a 'big tent' approach has led to the extremists being able to dominate the narrative and use the 'no true Scotsman' argument for all that disagree about their political purity.

The Democrats that sat out this last election be it over Biden/Kamala's stance on Gaza, vaccines, or another special interst/single issue are kind of an example of this. They should have been able to vote for a candidate that represents them be it RFK or someone else but then have the run-down ballot go to the least 'evil' choice which is usually going to be a centrist of some sort.

Same for the Republicans, Trump would have been far less able to hijack the party if the white Christian nationalists had been able to create own 'Tea Party' party instead of taking over the GOP and sidelining the centrists that are willing to reach across the aisle and compromise with centrist Democrats.

Looking at Europe though, I just hope that Germany does not pull off a Trump 'surprise' this Sunday. The CDU looks far ahead overall, and I hope that the other parties get enough of a vote that they are able to form a coalition without the AfD again.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Well, the sea-change at the JCS level has come about as you mooted spmetla. And the admin tapped a retired 3-star whose biggest commands were working with the CIA and military procurement.

I really think this is very much an outflow of the neo-isolationist stance now being adopted by a key segment of the GOP voter base. I understand the pull of isolationism -- it's simplicity and its seemingly low cost in blood and treasure -- but I just don't think it works over the long haul and think it even less likely to achieve its objectives in an electronically integrated planet where planes traverse the globe in hours, not days or weeks like the ships of yore.

[Montmorency]

I know we've differed somewhat on this topic since the first Trump era, Seamus, but observing Trump and MAGA over the past weeks and few years has done little to change my assessment that it's not isolationism at play, but another expression of postmodern conservatism's irrational licentiousness. They want an active say in global affairs, to the extent of the thrill of outright dominating other countries (in this vein it rhymes with Thomas Friedman's infamously-Jeffersonian "Every now and again the United States has to pick up a crappy little country and throw it against a wall just to prove we are serious"). But all that amid a delirious refusal to contemplate actually having to undertake the costs and risks attendant to it, or the sober-minded collaboration, compromise, and calculation it demands. They think the United States, so long as it is led by MAGA, is so mighty that it can - and should - always take without giving.

The American alliance (and trade/investment) network has made the West very rich, but Trump and MAGA gaze upon it the way a late-stage Athens as imagined in Spartan propaganda might have gazed upon its League. If you know what I mean. It's not because they look inward, but because they have a common street thug's mentality toward life and not much else going for them mentally. There's no honor among thieves, so respect your enemies and put the screws in your "friends" - your fellow thieves are the ones you have to worry about cheating you.

What seems to be the counterpoint to the term isolationism in this discussion is always the same thing, and should be recognized as such: the old 20th century liberal consensus (which included Republicans to a significant extent) that the United States, both for idealistic and self-interested reasons, ought to invest in the world's health, knowledge, and security. You know, pussy liberal shit, American tax money going to damn dirty foreigners. The mooted neoisolationism never seems to preclude the proactive application of coercion or extortion for a perceived American benefit. There's a reason for that, and my description captures it as well as any I've encountered.

Looking at the phenomenon through that lens, does it change how you would address it though?

[Montmorency]

To paraphrase Pannonian, the MAGA ideal is for America to have unlimited license, and for other countries to have unlimited responsibilities, to America.

But they won't hear that this is both unfeasible and counterproductive (leave ethics aside).

[spmetla]

Well, the sea-change at the JCS level has come about as you mooted spmetla. And the admin tapped a retired 3-star whose biggest commands were working with the CIA and military procurement.

I fear that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I really think this is very much an outflow of the neo-isolationist stance now being adopted by a key segment of the GOP voter base. I understand the pull of isolationism -- it's simplicity and its seemingly low cost in blood and treasure -- but I just don't think it works over the long haul and think it even less likely to achieve its objectives in an electronically integrated planet where planes traverse the globe in hours, not days or weeks like the ships of yore.

I think it's also to do with our typical 'American exceptionalism' in which so many in the US think we don't need the rest of the world and would rather just not have anything to do with it. So many Americans have no clue how alliances and trade partnerships help us.

The American alliance (and trade/investment) network has made the West very rich, but Trump and MAGA gaze upon it the way a late-stage Athens as imagined in Spartan propaganda might have gazed upon its League. If you know what I mean. It's not because they look inward, but because they have a common street thug's mentality toward life and not much else going for them mentally. There's no honor among thieves, so respect your enemies and put the screws in your "friends" - your fellow thieves are the ones you have to worry about cheating you.

I was using just this example to a friend of mine recently. One of the moral high grounds of NATO was that countries could just leave, or underfund their own defense but we'd still defend them all the same instead of like Athens in which failure to provide the request ships or money gets you invaded which was more like the USSR that what NATO should be.
Like that meme I know you've seen of 'how countries joining nato versus how countries joined the warsaw pact.'

As for the thug mentality, I think that's right now just a reflection of their parroting what Trump says. They don't want to be suckers and losers and Trump says that's how the world is treating us so they want to 'hit back' and get the respect they think we deserve. They have no understanding that were mostly well respected and trusted and Trump's hit back at our friends and allies is not making us the leader of our 'gang' but an adversary.

To paraphrase Pannonian, the MAGA ideal is for America to have unlimited license, and for other countries to have unlimited responsibilities, to America.

But they won't hear that this is both unfeasible and counterproductive (leave ethics aside).

This is where I'd disagree. MAGA has no ideals except complete and total subservience to Trump. They are anti foreign adventures unless Trump says we can take the Canal, Canada, Greenland, and the Gaza Strip for some reason. We need freedom of the press but only for what we like to hear, we like states rights unless it's a liberal state defying Trump.

This is a phenomenon that's far more like 1984 than anything else, they pledge complete loyalty to Big Brother. If country B is now our enemy it was always our enemy, 2+2=5 if Trump says so.
The crazy thing is this is all self-radicalization like with muslim extremism. They get their 'two minutes hate' from social media or whichever Cable News host they like.
I've had to watch my mother go from a Sanders supporting Democrat to full on MAGA because of her anti-vaccine stance and adoration of RFK Jr. Now she sends me daily whatsapp messages of Tucker Carlson clips and other nonsense because she's convinced herself that her bubble is the truth and I've got Stockholm syndrome for arguing for our institutions and norms.

[Montmorency]

Maybe a better word is "instinct" rather than "ideal." I do believe Trump's foreign policy methods also reflect a fundamental orientation toward life among a large part of the electorate, independent of what Trump directs them to entertain at a given time. Before Trump entered politics, a lot of that mentality is what got us in trouble in Vietnam and Iraq in the first place, and what made "losing Panama" a scandal, for some, for Trump to even be in a position to revive.


If we could say roughly a third of the population is core MAGA, it's not that they were a tabula rasa that Trump somehow expertly molded as he pleased. They saw what he was and they liked what they saw. Trump is not a mind-control wizard. In some ways he's the ultimate American. Every better angel has its counterpart.

One thing to keep in mind is that Trump, in his rhetoric or campaigning, often mimes fake moderation. How he'll protect Medicare and Social Security, how he wants abortion rights to be decided "by the states", etc. He does that because he knows even he can't say something like "Social Security is your enemy, let's end it immediately" and get away with it scot-free. Even MAGA has its limits, Trump just senses what they are better than most. It's part of how polls in 2016 could find that people perceived Trump as more moderate than Clinton!

Now, the contradiction of how someone could be both moderate and an "outsider who will shake things up" is the kind of doublethink one could attribute to the cult aspect, but Americans on the whole are also very ignorant of civics and political philosophy.

Sorry about your mother, I hear about the antivaxx-to-fash pipeline a lot. Before 2020 it would have been so hard to believe that the "naturalist" crunchy granola hippy thinking behind most anti-vaccine agitation could convert to a far-right movement against the entire public health and pharmaceutical discipline.

[Montmorency]

Something from Foucault that may be relevant, if Seamus wishes to interpret for the thread:

If this subject who speaks of right (or rather, rights) is speaking the truth, that truth is no longer the universal truth of the philosopher. … It is interested in the totality only to the extent that it can see it in one-sided terms, distort it and see it from its own point of view. The truth is, in other words, a truth that can be deployed only from its combat position, from the perspective of the sought-for victory and ultimately, so to speak, of the survival of the speaking subject himself.

[spmetla]

Trump is not a mind-control wizard. In some ways he's the ultimate American.

That's exactly why I credit this as almost something Orwellian. It's not in the MAGA world force propaganda like 1984's Big Brother but due to his appeal as a 'says it like it is' honest broker following despite being a lying grifter. Its self radicalization like with muslim extremists that isolates people on their own so they trust no one by 'their' people to such an extreme degree that only direct and very personal betrayal by Trump might change that.

One thing to keep in mind is that Trump, in his rhetoric or campaigning, often mimes fake moderation. How he'll protect Medicare and Social Security, how he wants abortion rights to be decided "by the states", etc. He does that because he knows even he can't say something like "Social Security is your enemy, let's end it immediately" and get away with it scot-free. Even MAGA has its limits, Trump just senses what they are better than most. It's part of how polls in 2016 could find that people perceived Trump as more moderate than Clinton!

Well, that's part of his weird power as a lying grifter. He's completely inconsistent in his promises on a day by day basis and can say whatever to please whatever demographic. Those that like it will say 'listen to what he says, wow he's our guy' and those that don't like what he says are met with 'he's just trying to trigger the libs, it's a joke, that's not what he meant.'

Sorry about your mother, I hear about the antivaxx-to-fash pipeline a lot. Before 2020 it would have been so hard to believe that the "naturalist" crunchy granola hippy thinking behind most anti-vaccine agitation could convert to a far-right movement against the entire public health and pharmaceutical discipline.

It is certainly hard to see and live with. Seeing someone you love spout absolute nonsense and be completely convinced by it while having no mental disorders or problems really sucks. It doesn't help that because it's the 'Age of Aquarius' which means all this radical change must be for the better because stars are aligned and such.
She's not the only one I know like that though, a surprising amount of 'hippies' in Hawaii that are more MAGA libertarians now than they were hippies in the past. Certainly, a weird phenomenon that I guess just comes from a lifetime of doubting any and all professionals about facts.

I like your Faucault quote, very interesting.

As for this week, another crazy week of chaos via Trump. It's crazy how much MAGA just doesn't understand how important Trust is to business/international trade as well as diplomacy. The US turning into the village's local scheming, money shifting sheister is somehow seen as winning. Just wish I could be a fly on the wall for these crazy schemes inside decision making and at least make some money on the chaos between stocks, bitcoin, and forex. I'm sure the MAGA inside traders are making piles off this self created chaos, would be nice to at least have a silver lining of solving my money problems too.