United States Politics Thread 47

[Travis B.]

There are definitely left-wingers who idealize rural life and hate cities. There's a lot of denial and wishful thinking in that. But anyone who commits to it and lives in a rural commune or whatever, good for them. It's not of much use to the rest of the world, however.

Well, just to give one example, I often see people claim that Medieval peasants worked half as much modern workers as an example of the evils of capitalism. Even assuming that were true, it completely overlooks the utter lack of amenities we take for granted, no running water or flush toilets, no antibiotics or vaccines. Furthermore it doesn't make much sense for an emancipatory movement to cite feudal society as a positive alternative to capitalism.

it does when it shows just how oppressive and antihuman the current capitalist system is: sure, feudalism was shite, but if capitalism is more shite, then my god that is a lot of shite. plus, neither post-capitalism nor rurality entails not having modern ammenities. rural houses can and do have toilets, running water, and nearby places where you can get vaccines, not to mention air conditioning etcetera. indeed it is cheaper to run AC on a rural house, where you can just install panels and get electricity for that AC (sure, in principle you can get panels in the city, but you generally get fewer square meters there), and the rural house i recently got actually has cheaper running water than my urban apartment.

The thing is that, frankly, things have improved considerably, for both city and rural people. Anyone who believes that pre-modern times were better, whether for city people or for rural people, than the present is probably in the market for a bridge.

[Torco]

I broadly agree, but with a lot less confidence than i once had -and a lot less than many people have, i think- I don't know that we can so easily just say the march of progress has been steady and unambiguous vis a vis quality of life the way we can regarding, say, GDP. sure, we have ACs and gadgets, but we've lost a lot of stuff as well, and how do we weigh what we've gained against what we've lost? like, how do we weigh central heating against having months of free time? or, i don't know, contraceptives against community? movies against not being chronically sleep-deprived?

one candidate is life expectancy. not dying is not the same as living a good life, but they're decently nearby. from this perspective, sure, things have improved. but another metric is like, how many people commit suicide, right? and sure, sure, just like life expectancy is not a perfect measure but it's decently adjacent, i think the same thing happens with suicide: there's probably some relationship between suffering and suicide, and suicide rates time series don't tell as straightforward a story as life expectancy.

and these more "objetive" indicators are relevant, cause like... we can't go by vibes. we can't go on, for example, what we'd personally prefer: sure, i don't think i'd prefer to be a medieval peasant, but then again, would a peasant prefer to be me? how much of my preference is on account of ethnocentrism -or chronocentrism, i guess? the peasants or other premodern people aren't around for us to ask (the ones that are aren't quite the same, since they live in the current world, not the premodern one: we have various impacts on them). and there are other indicators that also suggest the issue is not as simple: fertility, number of close friends. i don't know man. not to mention the environmental debt we're all accruing: sure, things may be better now, but we objectively know we're fucking up the climate, and said fucking up is going to be nontrivial. what happens when the planet hits +3C? +4?

[malloc]

The thing is that, frankly, things have improved considerably, for both city and rural people. Anyone who believes that pre-modern times were better, whether for city people or for rural people, than the present is probably in the market for a bridge.

Quite. It accomplishes nothing to deny obvious progress just to avoid acknowledging anything positive in the age of capitalism. If anything it just encourages pessimism, implying that we cannot improve on the past. You can certainly acknowledge that modern medicine has improved radically on the four humors, that representative democracy benefits the average person more than feudalism, and that science outperforms mythology on describing the universe accurately, while also criticizing modernity where it falls short.

[Travis B.]

The thing is that, frankly, things have improved considerably, for both city and rural people. Anyone who believes that pre-modern times were better, whether for city people or for rural people, than the present is probably in the market for a bridge.

Quite. It accomplishes nothing to deny obvious progress just to avoid acknowledging anything positive in the age of capitalism. If anything it just encourages pessimism, implying that we cannot improve on the past. You can certainly acknowledge that modern medicine has improved radically on the four humors, that representative democracy benefits the average person more than feudalism, and that science outperforms mythology on describing the universe accurately, while also criticizing modernity where it falls short.

Even Marx thought that capitalism was progressive with regard to the feudalism that preceded it.

[zompist]

I broadly agree, but with a lot less confidence than i once had -and a lot less than many people have, i think- I don't know that we can so easily just say the march of progress has been steady and unambiguous vis a vis quality of life the way we can regarding, say, GDP. sure, we have ACs and gadgets, but we've lost a lot of stuff as well, and how do we weigh what we've gained against what we've lost? like, how do we weigh central heating against having months of free time? or, i don't know, contraceptives against community? movies against not being chronically sleep-deprived? [...]

and these more "objetive" indicators are relevant, cause like... we can't go by vibes. we can't go on, for example, what we'd personally prefer: sure, i don't think i'd prefer to be a medieval peasant, but then again, would a peasant prefer to be me?

Yeah, they would. People have always migrated to the cities, since there were cities, and preferred urban to rural poverty. You might still work like a dog, but you lived a little better and your children could rise in society. (The only major rural career change possible for peasants was "bandit.")

Months of leisure? For women? Did the children disappear for those months? The need to fix food and care for animals? The need to make clothes for everyone in the household? Plus yeah, we apparently have no "community", but it was so much better to be always pregnant, and this next pregnancy might kill you. Plus, I dunno, there were these things called slaves, and serfs, and famines, and floods, and plagues, and constant wars. And that "community" might destroy you if you were of the wrong religion or sexuality.

At least the elite had it better. Though if you ended up on the wrong side of a power struggle, you were likely to be murdered, or perhaps tortured, blinded, and/or castrated. (I'm reading a book on the Byzantines, who were notorious for such things; but so were the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and Chinese.)

So maybe avoid the power struggles and just be a landowner and speech-giver, like Cicero. Who, um, was exiled, pardoned for a time, then murdered.

I know, the modern intellectual is supposed to wring their hands and generally be a downer. But this sort of thing is not conducive to understanding our problems, much less solving them. I guess I have to appeal to your Marxist side: do you for one moment really think that a Soviet factory worker of 1950 was worse off than a Russian serf of 1850? That the stagnancy, poverty, and vulnerability of Qing China were preferable to the manufacturing powerhouse we see today?

(There's also a long, long tradition of intellectuals praising earlier times, or rural life. As in fact Cicero did, or the Chinese poets, or the Indian epics. Sometimes they were fortunate enough to own a rural villa. Few of them grew their own food or wove their own clothes.)

not to mention the environmental debt we're all accruing: sure, things may be better now, but we objectively know we're fucking up the climate, and said fucking up is going to be nontrivial. what happens when the planet hits +3C? +4?

Personally I think this is the biggest emergency we have, because it threatens the ecosphere we depend on. At the same time, it's both solvable, and being worked on. The worst-case scenario, RCP8.5, projecting a 5 °C increase, is now considered impossible. The world is converting to solar and wind power. Even the US, despite Trump's wet dreams about coal power.

[jcb]

One possible silver lining to cling to in the whole Musk con is that while it will guarantee him a very long status as an unimaginably extremely rich man, it might eventually lead to a lot of his fans and sycophants and other assorted business idiots losing certain amounts of money.

Please explain the "whole number of things" more.

I'm also curious.

For one thing, he told a podcast host who's apparently from that crowd that he's a big fan of his podcast. That's not the kind of thing people do by accident.

There is a searchable archive of Platner's reddit comments here. (Scroll down to about the middle of the page.)
- https://themainemonitor.org/platner-reddit-comments/

Searching for terms like "nazi" and "Trump", I conclude the following:
- He's never been a fan of Trump.
- He's never been a fan of Nazis. (However, he's defended other Nazi symbols before, like the SS runes, claiming that they stand for "Scout/Snipers".)
- He's never been a fan of war crimes, and unprofessional and incompetent martial conduct in general.

[Raphael]

This is more a question about English language use than a comment on US politics, but I didn't want to politicize the English Questions thread.

On Bluesky, I just responded to a report that cops had started arresting people at the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC, apparently supposedly over the algae thing, by snarking:

So Putin's influence has now gotten to the point where Trump goes full Soviet with the "There can't have been any accidents or other bad outcomes as a result of shoddy work, no, it must all have been sabotage by saboteurs sent by our enemies"-thing.

My question is: should I have put the hyphen near the end of that comment there, or not?

[alice]

This is more a question about English language use than a comment on US politics, but I didn't want to politicize the English Questions thread.

On Bluesky, I just responded to a report that cops had started arresting people at the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC, apparently supposedly over the algae thing, by snarking:

So Putin's influence has now gotten to the point where Trump goes full Soviet with the "There can't have been any accidents or other bad outcomes as a result of shoddy work, no, it must all have been sabotage by saboteurs sent by our enemies"-thing.

My question is: should I have put the hyphen near the end of that comment there, or not?

No. It's reasonable in other Germanic languages, but not in English.

[Raphael]

No. It's reasonable in other Germanic languages, but not in English.

Thank you!

[Raphael]

As I reported over in the British politics thread, I just discovered someone going by the name "Cameron" on Bluesky. He has a take on the debates about the word "socialism" in the USA that I find interesting: https://bsky.app/profile/cameroncorduro ... uybw5tks2f

to understand this you need to understand that for decades the American right has said that socialism is when the government does stuff, and now a significant portion of people who want the government to do stuff call themselves socialist

for many people Obamacare *is* socialism

this creates a dynamic where the vast majority of "socialists" just want more taxes to spend on healthcare but the 1% of actual For Real communists use that to sneak in a bunch of goofy bullshit

that's where DSA candidates' dumb foreign policy or police abolition takes come from

but when you look at who actually gets elected, the typical American socialist is literally just "i want the government to do more stuff"

this leaves liberals to the left of the American public (like me) in an awkward position where i have to defend "socialists" against dumb accusations while simultaneously keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't get any funny ideas

[jcb]

As I reported over in the British politics thread, I just discovered someone going by the name "Cameron" on Bluesky. He has a take on the debates about the word "socialism" in the USA that I find interesting: https://bsky.app/profile/cameroncorduro ... uybw5tks2f

to understand this you need to understand that for decades the American right has said that socialism is when the government does stuff, and now a significant portion of people who want the government to do stuff call themselves socialist

for many people Obamacare *is* socialism

this creates a dynamic where the vast majority of "socialists" just want more taxes to spend on healthcare but the 1% of actual For Real communists use that to sneak in a bunch of goofy bullshit

that's where DSA candidates' dumb foreign policy or police abolition takes come from

but when you look at who actually gets elected, the typical American socialist is literally just "i want the government to do more stuff"

this leaves liberals to the left of the American public (like me) in an awkward position where i have to defend "socialists" against dumb accusations while simultaneously keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't get any funny ideas

My thoughts:
(1) Yes, I also don't like the leftists that never got the memo that Russia isn't the Soviet Union anymore.
(2) But "keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't get any funny ideas" makes me very suspicious, because "funny ideas" probably also includes things like raising the minimum wage and empowering unions.

[Travis B.]

As I reported over in the British politics thread, I just discovered someone going by the name "Cameron" on Bluesky. He has a take on the debates about the word "socialism" in the USA that I find interesting: https://bsky.app/profile/cameroncorduro ... uybw5tks2f

to understand this you need to understand that for decades the American right has said that socialism is when the government does stuff, and now a significant portion of people who want the government to do stuff call themselves socialist

for many people Obamacare *is* socialism

this creates a dynamic where the vast majority of "socialists" just want more taxes to spend on healthcare but the 1% of actual For Real communists use that to sneak in a bunch of goofy bullshit

that's where DSA candidates' dumb foreign policy or police abolition takes come from

but when you look at who actually gets elected, the typical American socialist is literally just "i want the government to do more stuff"

this leaves liberals to the left of the American public (like me) in an awkward position where i have to defend "socialists" against dumb accusations while simultaneously keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't get any funny ideas

My thoughts:
(1) Yes, I also don't like the leftists that never got the memo that Russia isn't the Soviet Union anymore.
(2) But "keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't get any funny ideas" makes me very suspicious, because "funny ideas" probably also includes things like raising the minimum wage and empowering unions.

Agreed. One thing, though, I think that is commonly missed is that real socialism is about economic democracy ─ about being able to have a real say in the operation of your workplace along with all the other workers. Even many people who identify as 'socialists' miss this.

[malloc]

Since many people here have disagreed with my characterization of Trump and his henchmen as cunning manipulators, I am genuinely curious how other people here explain his remarkable success (at least at taking power). If one assumes that liberalism was working quite well until Trump came along and that Trump has no particular talent for propaganda and politics, then his victories are all the more perplexing and demand an explanation.

[Travis B.]

Since many people here have disagreed with my characterization of Trump and his henchmen as cunning manipulators, I am genuinely curious how other people here explain his remarkable success (at least at taking power). If one assumes that liberalism was working quite well until Trump came along and that Trump has no particular talent for propaganda and politics, then his victories are all the more perplexing and demand an explanation.

Have you seen how miserably Trump has failed in his war? Despite the US having a far superior military on paper and having managed to kill much of the Iranian leadership in the first hours of the war, Trump has been defeated by Iran, even though he tries to treat it as not a defeat. Of course, Trump in his initial overconfidence and ignorance of the underlying strategic realities never planned for that Iran would be able to choke off much of the world's supply of oil, fertilizer, and helium with extremely cheap drones. Also, Trump just expected the American public to support him in this war, rather than that Americans would care more about the price of oil and inflation in general than about any allegiance to the Great Leader.

[zompist]

Since many people here have disagreed with my characterization of Trump and his henchmen as cunning manipulators, I am genuinely curious how other people here explain his remarkable success (at least at taking power). If one assumes that liberalism was working quite well until Trump came along and that Trump has no particular talent for propaganda and politics, then his victories are all the more perplexing and demand an explanation.

Just about every statement here is wrong.
* Trump not a "cunning manipulator". He messes up everything he touches.
* It is not "remarkable" when a Republican wins the presidency. It's happened 7 times since 1980.
* "Liberalism" was not running the country.
* Trump has, or had, a talent for campaigning. Just no talent for governing.

You maybe fell asleep in school and missed that the Republican Party has been one of our two major parties for the last 166 years. It's changed dramatically over the years, but its one constant is that it is always the Money Party. Money parties can't always win but they almost never go out of fashion entirely. There are a lot of people who will vote for anyone with an R after their name. You also apparently missed the last 50 years of complaints from Democrats about the quality of their own candidates. Only Obama still gets much respect. (Carter gets some only because he's a much better ex-president than he was a president.)

I've pointed out many times that your Unstoppable God-Emperor was elected with 49.8% of the vote. A little more than 2 million more votes than Harris. Compare 60.7% for Nixon in 1972, or 58.8% for Reagan in 1984. Then please explain a) why a Republican victory surprises and shocks you, and b) why your God-Emperor did so much worse than they did.

Oh, and your cunning, unstoppable, remarkable hero is now at 38.8% approval.

[jcb]

Since many people here have disagreed with my characterization of Trump and his henchmen as cunning manipulators, I am genuinely curious how other people here explain his remarkable success (at least at taking power). If one assumes that liberalism was working quite well until Trump came along and that Trump has no particular talent for propaganda and politics, then his victories are all the more perplexing and demand an explanation.

Trump is not cunning. He picked the low-hanging fruit that was abandoned by Democrats.

I do think Trump has a knack for reading a room (Remember how he pivoted from saying that "affordability" was a made up word, to saying that actually he was the best president on affordability of all time?) and being willing to just say whatever in a way that some people find very attractive, but those're his only skills. If he wasn't born into extreme wealth, he'd probably just be a carnival barker.

[bradrn]

If he wasn't born into extreme wealth, he'd probably just be a carnival barker.

This, 100%. I see Trump as a narcissist with a talent for sales/campaigning and little more.

[Raphael]

I agree with most of the recent replies to malloc, especially this:

* Trump has, or had, a talent for campaigning. Just no talent for governing.

As I said before, these days, the right-wing (and to some extent, some of the dumber parts of the Left) generally tells people what, based on their most deeply rooted biological instincts, feels true to them, while the smarter parts of the Left tell people what actually is true. That makes right-wingers very good at getting power - because they come across as telling the truth - and very bad at using it - because their ideas about how things work simply aren't true.

Or, to look at it from a different angle: If I would be some kind of alien observer here to study the humans of this planet, I might say something like, "One of the things with human beings is that, for many of them, if you tell them what they like to hear, their brains stop working." So being good at telling people what they like to hear doesn't make you a brilliant genius of manipulation.

[jcb]

I agree with most of the recent replies to malloc, especially this:

* Trump has, or had, a talent for campaigning. Just no talent for governing.

As I said before, these days, the right-wing (and to some extent, some of the dumber parts of the Left) generally tells people what, based on their most deeply rooted biological instincts, feels true to them, while the smarter parts of the Left tell people what actually is true. That makes right-wingers very good at getting power - because they come across as telling the truth - and very bad at using it - because their ideas about how things work simply aren't true.

Or, to look at it from a different angle: If I would be some kind of alien observer here to study the humans of this planet, I might say something like, "One of the things with human beings is that, for many of them, if you tell them what they like to hear, their brains stop working." So being good at telling people what they like to hear doesn't make you a brilliant genius of manipulation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aALT9cvlvoI

[Raphael]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aALT9cvlvoI

I haven't watched the video, but based on the title, I think you might have misunderstood me. It's not a matter of reading levels. I was talking about people whose brains sometimes stop working, not about people who are generally brainless. In my experience, even brains that might be pretty powerful when they do work can sometimes stop working. Some of the world's most celebrated intellectuals believed or believe in single-villain ideologies.