This post was about how Dem pols should talk and I firmly believe they should be VERY LOUD AND HARSH IN THEIR CRITICISMS of the R party. Use the F word. Actually, both of them.
However, I don't think they should say anything about MAGAs and should talk to them. The goal must be to defuse the polarization.
As for me, I have MAGA friends and acquaintances and no desire to hurt their feelings. However, I also think that I'm not going to be complicit. At all. So, I post stuff on FB that flat out contradicts a lot of MAGA beliefs. For example, I posted an article about Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only and how people who criticized him have been attacked. At least one of my FB friends loves Kirk.
We still seem to be friends.
My biggest complaint about the assessment culture that has set in across academia (and the overall rise of big quant that coincides with the monetization of big data) is that there are a lot more people with the tools to gather and measure the data than there are people who have the understanding, expertise, and rigor to tease out when the things we measure actually measure the right things.
I'm interested in reading Limits of the Numerical one of these days: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo146791774.html
It seems the sort of book that can take on the technocratic push for quantitative over qualitative data gathering and analysis. I find that the voices that most often get amplified in management meetings dealing in quantitative assessment are the voices that are on the wrong side of Einstein's admonition that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
My natural impulses don't always tend toward kindness, but I made a rational decision at some point that I should try to be kind because it seems to be the best way to live, both for the people around me and myself. (That's not to say I don't regularly fail at it, but it's still a goal I strive for.)
That said, it can be complicated. You aren't being kind to someone when you allow someone else to be unkind that person if you're in a position to do something about it. You also can't be kind to one person when someone else will suffer for it, at least when that suffering outweighs the kindness.
How can I (or anyone) be kind to someone who is MAGA? That's generally complicated because the MAGA movement is largely unkind. What I'm talking about here is something other than, say, helping someone who is broken down on the side of the road if they have a tRump bumper sticker. I do mean how you interact where politics is involved somehow.
I don't know. Maybe it's not possible. To take it to an extreme, how could you be kind to tRump, himself? I write his name "tRump." It doesn't really affect him because he's almost certainly never going to see it, but it still isn't kind, right? Am I failing, or is he not deserving of kindness?
I don’t believe – I’m not willing to believe – that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We’ve all been taken in at some time by liars: it’s our side’s job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars’ victims. [Emphasis added]
I think this is another piece of the puzzle when trying to break thru. Be up front about having been bamboozled ourselves. Just to avoid the suggestion that "we're smart enough to have seen thru it, but you re so dumb you got conned." It helps if you've got an example of where you got taken in initially. And if it's something that they can see thru, all the better. (Perhaps "when I was in school, socialism looked attractive. Took me a while to see that it wasn't workable in the real world." Even if you still do think it is workable, it can be a useful example.)
I'd say that whether something is usefully measurable depends enormously on the topic.
For engineering it's closer to critic -- "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it." For the physical (including biological) sciences it's important when testing out new theories. But useless for coming up with those theories. For the social sciences, it ought to be important, again for testing theories (but again not useful creating them.) But currently, so much of it is poorly done that it isn't. At least not yet.
For the humanities, I'd say it's totally useless. Doesn't keep fools from trying to do it anyway. But it doesn't work because it can't work.
I'm pretty sure my taste doesn't qualify as eclectic. But even YouTube doesn't provide video for something like Buddy Holly records.
I've seen videos for other artists' work from similarly far back, where it's obviously added on recently. But some of the "original cast" classics are audio only.
Yes, on that last paragraph! In academia, but also in business, where we get a "measurement-friendly agenda". To me it feels particularly pernicious when work and rewards are steered to things that can be most easily justified by measurement, without much work to tie those measurements to actual good outcomes.
See also Goodhart's Law, which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure", or McNamara on body count. Although it's pretty common to lament that since publication count became a target it's become a poor measure, I don't know that I've seen any effective action to work around it - although I never experienced the British system that limited academics to something like reporting only your five "best" papers, regardless of how many you'd published?
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
An excellent suggestion, and one I will use.
To wonkie's point about MAGAs being no more forgotten or neglected than anyone else - that seems correct to me, but I'm not sure it matters if their sense of threat or concern makes sense. Or even whether it's sincere, or just a justification for less sympathetic reasons.
It's a place to start that isn't focused on fingerpointing. I'm prone to that, as well as to the "go piss up a rope" response. Those aren't that constructive, so I'm looking for other approaches.
To me MAGA just seems like an expression of stuff that's always been in our national character. Nativism, xenophobia, white (especially Anglo) hegemony. Endless arguments about who gets to be a "real" American. I don't think it will ever go away, really. The name will change but the sensibility has always been part of the mix.
I just want to return to the day when "the Paranoid Style" was not seen as something to aspire to and embrace.
We should call Trump and his collaborators what they are. I learn that he's been hosting an "anti-antifa roundtable". To support that the contention that "antifa" is an actual organization, one speaker announced that "Antifa is real. Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost a hundred years in some instances going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."
So that's clear, they're proudly against the opponents of fascism. "Anti-antifascist" is a clumsy way of expressing what they actually are - pro-fascist.
These people are evil. But - I want to write that in big letters - half the voting population of the USA votes for them. I don't believe - I'm not willing to believe - that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We've all been taken in at some time by liars: it's our side's job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars' victims.
To summarize (so youse don't have to sit thru it), previously, Netanyahu had a number of pressure points on the US government, such as evangelical Christians and politicians who wanted to make a splash by opposing whatever the White House wanted, but those are much less effective with Trump in office, so the rise of Trump has actually reduced Netayahu's ability to mold events. Second, both Israel and Palestine were dealing with non-state actors like Hamas and Hezbollah, but now, the process is with places like UAE and the Saudis mediating, there is also a loss of leverage there.
however, I think that his metaphor of Trump's challenge in the middle east
he's trying to put together a Rubik's cube while people are still shooting at each other and at him in metaphorically speaking and the pieces themselves are sort of crumbling.
makes me realize that he's the moustache, and nothing will change that.
"So, Democrats have three words for this: no fucking way. It's literally life or death. We will not let Republicans blow up our health care system."
THANK YOU CHUCK!!!!!!
About giving up hate and experiencing pain instead. I don't think MAGAs are in pain any more than the usual for middle class Americans. I don't think that's why they like to hate. The concept of MAGAs as these poor sad people who have been left behind, the Forgotten Americans, working class and ignored by Dems, struggling to get by etc is mostly wrong. MAGAs tend to be better off than Dems, more likely to own homes as opposed to renting and are mostly middle class, They are over represented in government. Their lack of any real grievances is what makes them so appalling. Demographics & Group Affinities – Panel Study of the MAGA Movement The only thing they would lose if they gave up hating is their goddawful snobbery about being superior to everyone else and the entertainment they get from the thrill of horror as they armchair hero their lives away in front of the TV>
Not just pain of whatever they have suffered either, GftNC. They also have to give up the narrative justification that gave that suffering purpose, and they have to take on the additional sting of shame for having embraced that hate. That's a lot to swallow.
People will do a lot of shameful things in order to avoid feeling shame.
It's a long time since I read The Fire Next Time, but I just saw somewhere this quotation from it, which resonated:
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain"
I think contemplating that makes certain kinds of people very afraid.
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
For a lot of people, admitting to being afraid is shameful. (And, for some men, an attack on their manhood.). But there's nothing wrong with being concerned. It might be a way to get the conversation to the place you want it to go. Without getting the reflexive rejection of the whole thing.
I'm pretty much happy to talk to anybody about whatever, but I more or less insist on sticking to reality. If folks insist on doubling down on stuff that is simply factually wrong, I excuse myself from the conversation.
What I take away from most of my fairly limited collection of conversations with MAGAs is that they feel threatened. They are afraid. I don't really understand why, and the reasons are probably different for different people. That is what I'd really like to talk to them about, but it's hard to steer the conversation in that direction.
Nobody likes to admit they're basically just afraid.
I was at a local ICE office yesterday for a protest and noticed that they've begun putting badging and insignia on their vehicles. Some of them, anyway, some are still unmarked.
One of the slogans on the vehicles reads "Defending the homeland". And it just kind of made me laugh. Defending the homeland from the guy who mows your lawn? Your waiter? The woman taking care of your grandmother in the nursing home? The people picking lettuce?
What's the threat?
The Stephen Millers Kristi Noems and Kash Patels of the world understand and work on that sense of threat by making absurd claims. 5% of the population of Chicago are violent antifa extremists! Tren de Agua has taken over downtown Portland!
It's risible, but it resonates with people who are already afraid. I want to understand why they're afraid. But it's hard to get the conversation to that point.
There's also the whole nativist / nationalist streak in American history and in our national character. It's been there from the get. The early English folks looked down on and were suspicious of the German immigrants. Then both were suspicious of the Irish. Then all of them were suspicious of the eastern and southern Europeans. Then the Hispanics. Everybody hated the Chinese until pretty recently. And everybody has always had issues with black people, who have been here longer than almost everyone else, and mostly had no choice about being here in the first place.
The endless argument about who is a "real American".
I'm still trying to understand WTF people are on about when they talk about "western civilization", which of course is yet another thing that is always on the verge of being subsumed by the latest wave of People Who Are Not Like Us.
It's all fear. Toxic, destructive fear.
I would like to talk to MAGAs about what the hell it is they are afraid of. What is that they think is going to happen. What precious thing are they going to lose.
I'm not sure how to get to that conversation. I sure as hell am tired to debating with them about crap like whether the Haitians are eating their pets, or whether blacks are roaming the streets looking for white people to assault. Or whether ICE are engaged in nightly hand to hand combat with the armies of antifa.
What's going on is too fraught right now to waste time on bullshit.
I'd say if it makes him happy and gets him to STFU about the whole thing, let him have the win. He may even deserve some credit, fair's fair.
My fear is that this is just gonna send his whole "I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize" thing into overdrive. Obama got one, so he has to have one. Sometimes I think his entire life for the last 15 years has been consumed by trying to out-do Obama.
Anything that black guy can do, I can do better! Just watch!!
And who knows, Kissinger got one, so anything's possible.
I hope this actually turns into some kind of path forward for Israel, and for the Palestinians. I don't trust Netanyahu or the jerks he surrounds himself with further than I can throw him, or them. And it would be good for somebody other than Hamas to be running things.
Actually, it would be good for Hamas to just go the hell away.
If there's a part of the world with a more unsettled history than the eastern Med, I'm not aware of it. Fingers crossed for something like peace for the folks there.
As an observation, for 80 years the pattern has been that from time to time Israel expands its borders somewhat, and from time to time it expels some of the non-Jewish population (for various values of expel). It seems to me unlikely that this is going to suddenly change.
The moment the hostages go free the yahoo from Netanja will de facto renege on the deal. And of course the operations in the West Bank will proceed and likely accelerate aiming for a violent reaction giving the pretense to go full Gaza on the areas where Palestinians live. Or maybe not full Gaza since the settlers would likely prefer to get all of it intact. Otherwise the current cabinet would break up because the two Nazis will resign and leave the yahoo without a majority which in turn is likely to finally make the corruption trial against him proceed and get him into jail. He would not like that.
What's amazing to me is how few commentators, explaining why Trump has so recently started putting real pressure on Netanyahu, are making the connection with a) Trump's fury with Israel attacking Qatar, his favourite gold-drenched plane donors, and b) what must be his growing understanding that the old automatic calculation that American presidents need to keep the US Jewish community sweet is changing, and has changed, as a result of Israel's extraordinarily disproportionate reaction to the admittedly horrific events of 10/7/23.
I don’t think it really matters that much if Trump is around to be the Dear Leader of MAGA or not. When he is gone, there will still be a whole Republican party that enabled him to the max and the hate/fear propaganda bubble will still be poisoning our political discourse.
I think it will matter. Here's why.
My distinct impression is that the vast majority of MAGAs are made, not born. For those that are born, they can get their dopamine hit from lots of places. They did pre-Trump and they will again when he's gone.
As for those who are made, Trump matters because he is, par excellence, a con man; a salesman for the radical right. Nobody else that they've got can hold a candle to him. When he's gone, there isn't anyone with a real chance of picking up the baton. (Lots who are convinced they can. But none who anybody else thinks can pull it off.)
The thing about the enablers is that they are, at heart, followers. No doubt they would like to keep the whole fear/hate coalition going. But I don't think they can pull it off. The folks around Trump are actually four or five groups with very different agendas, united only by their recognition that they can use Trump to move those agendas forward. And their increasing desperation as MAGAland fragments will only make it fragment faster.
The thing to remember about those groups is that their various agendas are seriously unpopular. Even with the other groups. Without Trump as a useful umbrella to (sort of) unite them, they will crumble.
The problem for those who want to roll on after Trump is the same one that has historically faced autocrats: how to guarantee the succession. The traditional approach, from monarchs throughout history to Kim Il Sung, is to go with the founder's children -- genetics as legitimacy. But Trump's children are jokes. And Trump's ego won't tolerate anybody else stealing his limelight to build a post-Trump coalition ahead of time. And there's really nobody else who can effectively unite them.
As for the question of how to jar the "made" ones back to reality, a few may jump ship as reality (economy tanking, etc.) starts to hit home. But for the rest, I think that, unfortunately, the best that can be done is to prepare the ground for the day when he passes from the scene. Then, but probably only then, can they be brought to see their objections to those who would follow after.
All of which is not to csay that the Democrats couldn't use a charismatic leader (or several) of their own. But so far, nobody has risen significantly above the throng.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
This post was about how Dem pols should talk and I firmly believe they should be VERY LOUD AND HARSH IN THEIR CRITICISMS of the R party. Use the F word. Actually, both of them.
However, I don't think they should say anything about MAGAs and should talk to them. The goal must be to defuse the polarization.
As for me, I have MAGA friends and acquaintances and no desire to hurt their feelings. However, I also think that I'm not going to be complicit. At all. So, I post stuff on FB that flat out contradicts a lot of MAGA beliefs. For example, I posted an article about Saint Charlie of Free Speech for Conservatives Only and how people who criticized him have been attacked. At least one of my FB friends loves Kirk.
We still seem to be friends.
On “Weekend music thread #1”
That's so apocalyptic, JP. Does it reflect your state of mind? I think I would tear my ears off if I had to listen to that all day.
Paul and I are the opposite; our home is nearly always silent. No radio, no TV.
On “Chinese corruption”
My biggest complaint about the assessment culture that has set in across academia (and the overall rise of big quant that coincides with the monetization of big data) is that there are a lot more people with the tools to gather and measure the data than there are people who have the understanding, expertise, and rigor to tease out when the things we measure actually measure the right things.
I'm interested in reading Limits of the Numerical one of these days: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo146791774.html
It seems the sort of book that can take on the technocratic push for quantitative over qualitative data gathering and analysis. I find that the voices that most often get amplified in management meetings dealing in quantitative assessment are the voices that are on the wrong side of Einstein's admonition that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
My natural impulses don't always tend toward kindness, but I made a rational decision at some point that I should try to be kind because it seems to be the best way to live, both for the people around me and myself. (That's not to say I don't regularly fail at it, but it's still a goal I strive for.)
That said, it can be complicated. You aren't being kind to someone when you allow someone else to be unkind that person if you're in a position to do something about it. You also can't be kind to one person when someone else will suffer for it, at least when that suffering outweighs the kindness.
How can I (or anyone) be kind to someone who is MAGA? That's generally complicated because the MAGA movement is largely unkind. What I'm talking about here is something other than, say, helping someone who is broken down on the side of the road if they have a tRump bumper sticker. I do mean how you interact where politics is involved somehow.
I don't know. Maybe it's not possible. To take it to an extreme, how could you be kind to tRump, himself? I write his name "tRump." It doesn't really affect him because he's almost certainly never going to see it, but it still isn't kind, right? Am I failing, or is he not deserving of kindness?
"
I don’t believe – I’m not willing to believe – that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We’ve all been taken in at some time by liars: it’s our side’s job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars’ victims. [Emphasis added]
I think this is another piece of the puzzle when trying to break thru. Be up front about having been bamboozled ourselves. Just to avoid the suggestion that "we're smart enough to have seen thru it, but you re so dumb you got conned." It helps if you've got an example of where you got taken in initially. And if it's something that they can see thru, all the better. (Perhaps "when I was in school, socialism looked attractive. Took me a while to see that it wasn't workable in the real world." Even if you still do think it is workable, it can be a useful example.)
On “Chinese corruption”
I'd say that whether something is usefully measurable depends enormously on the topic.
For engineering it's closer to critic -- "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it." For the physical (including biological) sciences it's important when testing out new theories. But useless for coming up with those theories. For the social sciences, it ought to be important, again for testing theories (but again not useful creating them.) But currently, so much of it is poorly done that it isn't. At least not yet.
For the humanities, I'd say it's totally useless. Doesn't keep fools from trying to do it anyway. But it doesn't work because it can't work.
On “Weekend music thread #1”
I'm pretty sure my taste doesn't qualify as eclectic. But even YouTube doesn't provide video for something like Buddy Holly records.
I've seen videos for other artists' work from similarly far back, where it's obviously added on recently. But some of the "original cast" classics are audio only.
"
Wagner: orchestration without melodies.
On “Chinese corruption”
Yes, on that last paragraph! In academia, but also in business, where we get a "measurement-friendly agenda". To me it feels particularly pernicious when work and rewards are steered to things that can be most easily justified by measurement, without much work to tie those measurements to actual good outcomes.
See also Goodhart's Law, which states that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure", or McNamara on body count. Although it's pretty common to lament that since publication count became a target it's become a poor measure, I don't know that I've seen any effective action to work around it - although I never experienced the British system that limited academics to something like reporting only your five "best" papers, regardless of how many you'd published?
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
An excellent suggestion, and one I will use.
To wonkie's point about MAGAs being no more forgotten or neglected than anyone else - that seems correct to me, but I'm not sure it matters if their sense of threat or concern makes sense. Or even whether it's sincere, or just a justification for less sympathetic reasons.
It's a place to start that isn't focused on fingerpointing. I'm prone to that, as well as to the "go piss up a rope" response. Those aren't that constructive, so I'm looking for other approaches.
To me MAGA just seems like an expression of stuff that's always been in our national character. Nativism, xenophobia, white (especially Anglo) hegemony. Endless arguments about who gets to be a "real" American. I don't think it will ever go away, really. The name will change but the sensibility has always been part of the mix.
I just want to return to the day when "the Paranoid Style" was not seen as something to aspire to and embrace.
"
We should call Trump and his collaborators what they are. I learn that he's been hosting an "anti-antifa roundtable". To support that the contention that "antifa" is an actual organization, one speaker announced that "Antifa is real. Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost a hundred years in some instances going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."
So that's clear, they're proudly against the opponents of fascism. "Anti-antifascist" is a clumsy way of expressing what they actually are - pro-fascist.
These people are evil. But - I want to write that in big letters - half the voting population of the USA votes for them. I don't believe - I'm not willing to believe - that half the voters are evil. We need to talk to them respectfully and sympathetically. We've all been taken in at some time by liars: it's our side's job to point out the lies, not to judge the liars' victims.
On “…..”
I've never been a fan of Friedman (aka "The Mustache of Understanding") but he has some good points in this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdPXAi8hMa4
To summarize (so youse don't have to sit thru it), previously, Netanyahu had a number of pressure points on the US government, such as evangelical Christians and politicians who wanted to make a splash by opposing whatever the White House wanted, but those are much less effective with Trump in office, so the rise of Trump has actually reduced Netayahu's ability to mold events. Second, both Israel and Palestine were dealing with non-state actors like Hamas and Hezbollah, but now, the process is with places like UAE and the Saudis mediating, there is also a loss of leverage there.
however, I think that his metaphor of Trump's challenge in the middle east
makes me realize that he's the moustache, and nothing will change that.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
"So, Democrats have three words for this: no fucking way. It's literally life or death. We will not let Republicans blow up our health care system."
THANK YOU CHUCK!!!!!!
About giving up hate and experiencing pain instead. I don't think MAGAs are in pain any more than the usual for middle class Americans. I don't think that's why they like to hate. The concept of MAGAs as these poor sad people who have been left behind, the Forgotten Americans, working class and ignored by Dems, struggling to get by etc is mostly wrong. MAGAs tend to be better off than Dems, more likely to own homes as opposed to renting and are mostly middle class, They are over represented in government. Their lack of any real grievances is what makes them so appalling. Demographics & Group Affinities – Panel Study of the MAGA Movement The only thing they would lose if they gave up hating is their goddawful snobbery about being superior to everyone else and the entertainment they get from the thrill of horror as they armchair hero their lives away in front of the TV>
"
Not just pain of whatever they have suffered either, GftNC. They also have to give up the narrative justification that gave that suffering purpose, and they have to take on the additional sting of shame for having embraced that hate. That's a lot to swallow.
People will do a lot of shameful things in order to avoid feeling shame.
"
It's a long time since I read The Fire Next Time, but I just saw somewhere this quotation from it, which resonated:
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain"
I think contemplating that makes certain kinds of people very afraid.
On “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk”
Trevor Noah's set on the Riyadh Comedy Festival
https://youtu.be/U9bfuM7YR2U?si=FIZNw7x5hjszSay2
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
I wonder if a useful approach might be to ask, not why they are afraid, but why they are concerned.
For a lot of people, admitting to being afraid is shameful. (And, for some men, an attack on their manhood.). But there's nothing wrong with being concerned. It might be a way to get the conversation to the place you want it to go. Without getting the reflexive rejection of the whole thing.
Just a thought.
On “…..”
"Anything that black guy can do, I can do better! Just watch!!"
Anything that black guy WHO LAUGHED AT ME can do, I can do better! Just watch!!
Fixed that for you, including what was really the most infuriating for him.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
I'm pretty much happy to talk to anybody about whatever, but I more or less insist on sticking to reality. If folks insist on doubling down on stuff that is simply factually wrong, I excuse myself from the conversation.
What I take away from most of my fairly limited collection of conversations with MAGAs is that they feel threatened. They are afraid. I don't really understand why, and the reasons are probably different for different people. That is what I'd really like to talk to them about, but it's hard to steer the conversation in that direction.
Nobody likes to admit they're basically just afraid.
I was at a local ICE office yesterday for a protest and noticed that they've begun putting badging and insignia on their vehicles. Some of them, anyway, some are still unmarked.
One of the slogans on the vehicles reads "Defending the homeland". And it just kind of made me laugh. Defending the homeland from the guy who mows your lawn? Your waiter? The woman taking care of your grandmother in the nursing home? The people picking lettuce?
What's the threat?
The Stephen Millers Kristi Noems and Kash Patels of the world understand and work on that sense of threat by making absurd claims. 5% of the population of Chicago are violent antifa extremists! Tren de Agua has taken over downtown Portland!
It's risible, but it resonates with people who are already afraid. I want to understand why they're afraid. But it's hard to get the conversation to that point.
There's also the whole nativist / nationalist streak in American history and in our national character. It's been there from the get. The early English folks looked down on and were suspicious of the German immigrants. Then both were suspicious of the Irish. Then all of them were suspicious of the eastern and southern Europeans. Then the Hispanics. Everybody hated the Chinese until pretty recently. And everybody has always had issues with black people, who have been here longer than almost everyone else, and mostly had no choice about being here in the first place.
The endless argument about who is a "real American".
I'm still trying to understand WTF people are on about when they talk about "western civilization", which of course is yet another thing that is always on the verge of being subsumed by the latest wave of People Who Are Not Like Us.
It's all fear. Toxic, destructive fear.
I would like to talk to MAGAs about what the hell it is they are afraid of. What is that they think is going to happen. What precious thing are they going to lose.
I'm not sure how to get to that conversation. I sure as hell am tired to debating with them about crap like whether the Haitians are eating their pets, or whether blacks are roaming the streets looking for white people to assault. Or whether ICE are engaged in nightly hand to hand combat with the armies of antifa.
What's going on is too fraught right now to waste time on bullshit.
On “…..”
I'd say if it makes him happy and gets him to STFU about the whole thing, let him have the win. He may even deserve some credit, fair's fair.
My fear is that this is just gonna send his whole "I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize" thing into overdrive. Obama got one, so he has to have one. Sometimes I think his entire life for the last 15 years has been consumed by trying to out-do Obama.
Anything that black guy can do, I can do better! Just watch!!
And who knows, Kissinger got one, so anything's possible.
I hope this actually turns into some kind of path forward for Israel, and for the Palestinians. I don't trust Netanyahu or the jerks he surrounds himself with further than I can throw him, or them. And it would be good for somebody other than Hamas to be running things.
Actually, it would be good for Hamas to just go the hell away.
If there's a part of the world with a more unsettled history than the eastern Med, I'm not aware of it. Fingers crossed for something like peace for the folks there.
"
As an observation, for 80 years the pattern has been that from time to time Israel expands its borders somewhat, and from time to time it expels some of the non-Jewish population (for various values of expel). It seems to me unlikely that this is going to suddenly change.
"
The moment the hostages go free the yahoo from Netanja will de facto renege on the deal. And of course the operations in the West Bank will proceed and likely accelerate aiming for a violent reaction giving the pretense to go full Gaza on the areas where Palestinians live. Or maybe not full Gaza since the settlers would likely prefer to get all of it intact. Otherwise the current cabinet would break up because the two Nazis will resign and leave the yahoo without a majority which in turn is likely to finally make the corruption trial against him proceed and get him into jail. He would not like that.
"
What's amazing to me is how few commentators, explaining why Trump has so recently started putting real pressure on Netanyahu, are making the connection with a) Trump's fury with Israel attacking Qatar, his favourite gold-drenched plane donors, and b) what must be his growing understanding that the old automatic calculation that American presidents need to keep the US Jewish community sweet is changing, and has changed, as a result of Israel's extraordinarily disproportionate reaction to the admittedly horrific events of 10/7/23.
On “Let’s start calling a thug a thug”
I don’t think it really matters that much if Trump is around to be the Dear Leader of MAGA or not. When he is gone, there will still be a whole Republican party that enabled him to the max and the hate/fear propaganda bubble will still be poisoning our political discourse.
I think it will matter. Here's why.
My distinct impression is that the vast majority of MAGAs are made, not born. For those that are born, they can get their dopamine hit from lots of places. They did pre-Trump and they will again when he's gone.
As for those who are made, Trump matters because he is, par excellence, a con man; a salesman for the radical right. Nobody else that they've got can hold a candle to him. When he's gone, there isn't anyone with a real chance of picking up the baton. (Lots who are convinced they can. But none who anybody else thinks can pull it off.)
The thing about the enablers is that they are, at heart, followers. No doubt they would like to keep the whole fear/hate coalition going. But I don't think they can pull it off. The folks around Trump are actually four or five groups with very different agendas, united only by their recognition that they can use Trump to move those agendas forward. And their increasing desperation as MAGAland fragments will only make it fragment faster.
The thing to remember about those groups is that their various agendas are seriously unpopular. Even with the other groups. Without Trump as a useful umbrella to (sort of) unite them, they will crumble.
The problem for those who want to roll on after Trump is the same one that has historically faced autocrats: how to guarantee the succession. The traditional approach, from monarchs throughout history to Kim Il Sung, is to go with the founder's children -- genetics as legitimacy. But Trump's children are jokes. And Trump's ego won't tolerate anybody else stealing his limelight to build a post-Trump coalition ahead of time. And there's really nobody else who can effectively unite them.
As for the question of how to jar the "made" ones back to reality, a few may jump ship as reality (economy tanking, etc.) starts to hit home. But for the rest, I think that, unfortunately, the best that can be done is to prepare the ground for the day when he passes from the scene. Then, but probably only then, can they be brought to see their objections to those who would follow after.
All of which is not to csay that the Democrats couldn't use a charismatic leader (or several) of their own. But so far, nobody has risen significantly above the throng.
On “…..”
From what little I've seen, it appears that this is an achievement of the President of Egypt. Certainly far more his than Trump's.
If Trump deserves any credit at all, it is for being so utterly inconsistent, even on a day to day basis, that Bibi got nervous.
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