337 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2023
  2. Mar 2023
  3. Feb 2023
    1. i think that that kind of support is huge uh you can look specifically at charlottesville and see the reason that that march was so big 00:08:29 was because they saw themselves as fulfilling the promise of donald trump the reason why they were so public the reason why i we we can look at the manifestos of many 00:08:41 of the shoot mass shooters both in the united states and abroad over the last few years who named donald trump as part of their motivation and part of that is pr part of that is trying to get press 00:08:53 but part of it is real that if the presidency is held by somebody who holds a lot of the most extreme beliefs that they do it demonstrates to them that there is widespread mainstream support for those 00:09:05 beliefs and in the same way donald trump losing with those campaign platforms i expect will be a real blow to organizing far-right extremists and 00:09:16 anti-immigration groups and they'll still exist they will still keep organizing but it is going to be a lot less energy it is going to be more underground and it is going to wait until there's 00:09:28 another moment of political eruption when they'll come back again this has been the history for decades that this movement as i mentioned in the beginning goes back decades uh at least to the 1960s as a pretty 00:09:40 consistent movement with the same heroes and figures continuously over time and it has had moments where it went underground and has had moments where it was out in public with thousands of people 00:09:52 marching in the streets and whatever happens next it's still going to be there it's still going to be a concern it's still going to be recruiting people talking to people on the internet and in person and that's what we need to be watching 00:10:04 out for
      • organized racism has always been there
      • where there is a public figure that supports it (ie. Donald Trump),
      • it grows larger
      • and by the same token, when that figurehead is gone
      • the movement dies down, but doesn't die
      • it waits for the next public figurehead to relight the flame
  4. Jan 2023
    1. Much of what they do can be done without eliciting the ire of nation-states. Bike shares, pedestrian zones, insulated buildings, renovated port facilities, congestion fees, car emission limits, furnace specifications, fuel upgrades (from oil to gas to alternative energy) and white paint roofs, for example, are only some of the innovations city officials can promote to effect significant reductions in emissions and pollutants.

      !- cities actions : can be done without eliciting ire of nation state - bike shares - pedestrian zones - insulated buildings - renovated ports - congestion fees - car emission limits - furnace specifications - fuel upgrades - white paint roofs - cities are the right level for focusing on effective global climate action

    2. here states have grown dysfunctional and sovereignty has become an obstacle to global democratic action—as when the United States (or China, France, or Canada) refuses to compromise its sovereignty by permitting the international monitoring of carbon emissions on its soil—cities have increasingly proven themselves capable of deliberative democratic action on behalf of sustainability, as they have actually done in intercity associations like the C-40 or ICLEI. If presidents and prime ministers cannot summon the will to work for a sustainable planet, mayors can. If citizens of the province and nation think ideologically and divisively, neighbors and citizens of the towns and cities think publicly and cooperatively.

      !- claim : cities can mitigate corrupted democracy and foster global cooperation - ie. C40 or ICLEI (also Covenant of Mayors) - cities are not plagued by the problems of state actors who cannot reach any meaningful agreement at COP conferences

  5. Dec 2022
    1. Musk appears to be betting that the spectacle is worth it. He’s probably correct in thinking that large swaths of the world will not deem his leadership a failure either because they are ideologically aligned with him or they simply don’t care and aren’t seeing any changes to their corner of the Twitterverse.

      How is this sort of bloodsport similar/different to the news media coverage of Donald J. Trump in 2015/2016?

      The similarities over creating engagement within a capitalistic framing along with the need to only garner at least a minimum amount of audience to support the enterprise seem to be at play.

      Compare/contrast this with the NBAs conundrum with the politics of entering the market in China.

  6. Nov 2022
  7. Oct 2022
    1. laudator temporis acti

      laudator temporis acti translates as "a praiser of times past"

      Calls to mind:

      Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod quaerit et inventis miser abstinet ac timet uti, vel quod res omnis timide gelideque ministrat, dilator, spe longus, iners avidusque futuri, difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti se puero, castigator censorque minorum. —Horace's Ars Poetica (line 173)

      Many ills encompass an old man, whether because he seeks gain, and then miserably holds aloof from his store and fears to use it, or because, in all that he does, he lacks fire and courage, is dilatory and slow to form hopes, is sluggish and greedy of a longer life, peevish, surly, given to praising the days he spent as a boy, and to reproving and condemning the young. (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough)

      In Horace's version he's talking about a old curmudgeon and the phrase often has a pejorative tinge. It generally is used to mean someone who defends earlier periods of history ("the good old days") usually prior to their own lives and which they haven't directly experienced, as better than the present.


      Compare this with the sentiment behind Donald J. Trump's "Make America Great Again". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again

      The end of the passage also has historical precedent and hints of "You kids get off my lawn!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_kids_get_off_my_lawn!

  8. Sep 2022
  9. Aug 2022
    1. Sean Illing I do want to at least point to an apparent paradox here. As you’ve said, because of the internet, there are now more voices and more perspectives than ever before, and yet at the same time there’s a massive “herding effect,” as a result of which we have more people talking about fewer subjects. And that partly explains how you get millions of people converging on something like QAnon. Martin Gurri Yeah, and that’s very mysterious to me. I would not have expected that outcome. I thought we were headed to ever more dispersed information islands and that that would create a fragmentation in individual beliefs. But instead, I’ve noticed a trend toward conformism and a crystallizing of very few topics. Some of this is just an unwillingness to say certain things because you know if you said them, the internet was going to come after you. But I think Trump had a lot to do with it. The amount of attention he got was absolutely unprecedented. Everything was about him. People were either against him or for him, but he was always the subject. Then came the pandemic and he simply lost the capacity to absorb and manipulate attention. The pandemic just moved him completely off-kilter. He never recovered.

      Martin Gurri holds that there's an emergent herding effect in the public conversation, driven by the internet, which leads us to have conversations clustered in relatively few different topics.

    1. We might learn something new, if we understood both sides.

      Allosso is using "both sides" in a broadly journalistic fashion the way it had traditionally meant in the mid to late 21st century until Donald J. Trump's overtly racist comment on Aug. 15, 2017 "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides." following the Charlottesville, VA protests.

      Perhaps it might be useful if people quit using the "both sides" as if there were only two perspectives on an issue (for or against), when in reality there is often a spectrum of thoughts and feelings, not all mutually exclusive, about issues?

  10. Jul 2022
    1. Democrats must prioritize federal legislation that clarifies how Congress should certify the outcome of future elections and minimizes partisan meddling in the process.Democrats must move back into the cultural mainstream. While they should full-throatedly defend the rights of minority groups, the party’s top leaders must strongly distance themselves from the excesses of the identitarian left. Democrats must demonstrate to the American people that they hear their concerns about inflation and the surge in violent crime. And while the tools that the White House has at its disposal to address either crisis are limited, Biden must use them as best he can, putting himself in a position to claim partial credit if there are genuine improvements by 2024.Democrats must pass the imperfect legislation for which they have the votes rather than holding out for the more ambitious deals that have proven elusive. If the White House was willing to compromise with moderates on issues like Build Back Better, the administration would have some genuine accomplishments to tout.Finally, Democrats who have a better chance of beating Donald Trump in 2024 than either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris should seriously explore a primary challenge, and fast. To protect themselves against bad faith attacks, candidates who wish to succeed would probably be well-advised to announce that they are running before Biden makes his own intentions clear.
    1. Gone, for now, are the big rallies, with their open calls for violence and ostentatious displays of military-style kit, and many of those who organized them. Gone, too, are most of the election audits and other inquiries into the results convened by Republican-controlled state legislatures and local governments, investigations that failed to produce evidence of meaningful fraud. What is left in their place is an insistence — a belief, a lie or an act of motivated reasoning, depending on whom you’re talking to — that the election was stolen, which has fed a new wave of post-Trump activism on the right.
    1. So in total, Bannon predicted Trump’s premature victory declaration, which came true. He predicted that all hell would break loose on Jan. 6, which came true. He predicted that uncertainty about election results spurred by a bunch of lawsuits would force Congress to decide the election, which wound up essentially being Trump’s plan. And he suggested that unrest was perhaps desirable and/or could be of some utility in all of this, which evidence suggests Trump might well have agreed with on Jan. 6.

      Did he just predict or was he tactically planning this?

  11. Jun 2022
    1. For Jerome Bruner, the place to begin is clear: “One starts somewhere—where the learner is.”

      One starts education with where the student is. But mustn't we also inventory what tools and attitudes the student brings? What tools beyond basic literacy do they have? (Usually we presume literacy, but rarely go beyond this and the lack of literacy is too often viewed as failure, particularly as students get older.) Do they have motion, orality, song, visualization, memory? How can we focus on also utilizing these tools and modalities for learning.

      Link to the idea that Donald Trump, a person who managed to function as a business owner and president of the United States, was less than literate, yet still managed to function in modern life as an example. In fact, perhaps his focus on oral modes of communication, and the blurrable lines in oral communicative meaning (see [[technobabble]]) was a major strength in his communication style as a means of rising to power?

      Just as the populace has lost non-literacy based learning and teaching techniques so that we now consider the illiterate dumb, stupid, or lesser than, Western culture has done this en masse for entire populations and cultures.

      Even well-meaning educators in the edtech space that are trying to now center care and well-being are completely missing this piece of the picture. There are much older and specifically non-literate teaching methods that we have lost in our educational toolbelts that would seem wholly odd and out of place in a modern college classroom. How can we center these "missing tools" as educational technology in a modern age? How might we frame Indigenous pedagogical methods as part of the emerging third archive?

      Link to: - educational article by Tyson Yunkaporta about medical school songlines - Scott Young article "You should pay for Tutors"


      aside on serendipity

      As I was writing this note I had a toaster pop up notification in my email client with the arrival of an email by Scott Young with the title "You should pay for Tutors" which prompted me to add a link to this note. It reminds me of a related idea that Indigenous cultures likely used information and knowledge transfer as a means of payment (Lynne Kelly, Knowledge and Power). I have commented previously on the serendipity of things like auto correct or sparks of ideas while reading as a means of interlinking knowledge, but I don't recall experiencing this sort of serendipity leading to combinatorial creativity as a means of linking ideas,

    1. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/patrick-henry-virginia-ratifying-convention-va/

      While gerrymandering isn't brought up explicitly here, the underlying principles are railed against heavily.

      Some interesting things applicable to the rise of Donald J. Trump hiding in here.

      Interesting to read this in its historical context versus our present context. So much can be read into his words from our current context, while others can extract dramatically different views--particularly by Constitutional originalists.

  12. May 2022
  13. multidimensional.link multidimensional.link
    1. D*nald Trump

      Donald Trump's second impeachment came as a result of the physical attacks on Congress and Capitol Police on Jan 6, 2021.

  14. Apr 2022
    1. Peter Navarro. (2021, August 23). This is what caving to political pressure looks like. Pfizer vaccine is leady and non-durable and risks are mounting. If we had tried to pulled this kind of sh**T in the Trump White...fill in blank. F.D.A. Grants Full Approval https://t.co/6r10euQPus [Tweet]. @RealPNavarro. https://twitter.com/RealPNavarro/status/1429833643808145408

    1. imitation more generally. Emmanuel Roze hasfound that the experience of imitating patients makes the young doctors he trainsmore empathetic

      Imitation can potentially help one become more empathetic.

      Is there a relationship between this effect and one's mirror neurons?

      Donald J. Trump is well known for is sad impersonation of impaired and disabled people. Obviously he has no empathy for them and it's unlikely that his re-enactments will create empathy for him. Is this a result of a neurological deficit on his part?

  15. Mar 2022
    1. Gesturing also increases as afunction of difficulty: the more challenging the problem, and the more optionsthat exist for solving it, the more we gesture in response.

      When presented with problems people are prone to gesture more with the increasing challenges of those problems. The more ways there are to solve a particular problem, the more gesturing one is likely to do.


      What sort of analysis could one do on politicians who gesture their speech with relation to this? For someone like Donald J. Trump who floats balloons (ideas--cross reference George Lakoff) in his speeches, is he actively gesturing in an increased manner as he's puzzling out what is working for an audience and what isn't? Does the gesturing decrease as he settles on the potential answers?

    1. Each highlighted statement expresses political talking points aligned to induce trump-like support.

      Trump introduced new marketing and strategy, formulated using concepts and metrics mastered by Reality TV and Hollywood and then paired with advertising propaganda and "selling" techniques to create a "Brand". This is after-all Donald Trump, this is what he does, has done and is the only way he has found to make money. Trump built the "brand" (just barely) while teetering on self destruction.

      His charismatic persona became "the glue" that allowed creative narratives to stick to certain types of people in-spite of risk. Trump learned OTJ how to capture a specific type of audience.

      The mistake people make about Trump is assuming his audience to be "Joe Six-Pack", redneck's with limited education! This assumption does not have merit on its own.<br /> * There is a common "follower" theme among his audience that is exploited by those who: * Bought the "licensing rights" to the master-class Trump "how-to" course.

  16. Feb 2022
    1. Glenn Youngkin, the newly elected governor of Virginia, created a tip line that parents can use to report teachers whose classes cover “inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory.”

      Critical thinking can provoke people into "divisive" considerations. Such a tip line makes it pretty easy to disrupt any attempt to 'teach kids to think [critically]'

      Just one or two such efforts aren't too worrisome, but this might portend a broad change in the mission of education, from humanistic flourishing to the production of a compliant populace.

    1. We also know that theaverage length of TV soundbites has steadily declined over the lastseveral decades (Fehrmann, 2011). During the U.S. presidentialelection in 1968, the average soundbite — that is, any footage of acandidate speaking uninterrupted — was still a little more than 40seconds, but that had fallen to less than 10 seconds at the end of the80s (Hallin 1994) and 7.8 seconds in 2000 (Lichter, 2001). The lastelection has certainly not reversed the trend. Whether that meansthat the media adjust to our decreasing attention span or is causingthe trend is not easy to say.[17]

      Ryfe and Kemmelmeier not only show that this development goes much further back into the past and first appeared in newspapers (the quotes of politicians got almost halved between 1892 and 1968), but also posed the question if this can maybe also be seen as a form of increased professionalism of the media as they do not just let politicians talk as they wish (Ryfe and Kemmelmeier 2011). Craig Fehrman also pointed out the irony in the reception of this rather nuanced study – it was itself reduced to a soundbite in the media (Fehrman 2011).


      Soundbites have decreased in length over time.

      What effects are driving this? What are the knock on effects? What effect does this have on the ability for doubletalk to take hold? Is it easier for doubletalk and additional meanings to attach to soundbites when they're shorter? (It would seem so.) At what point to they hit a minimum?

      What is the effect of potential memes which hold additional meaning of driving this soundbite culture?

      Example: "Lock her up" as a soundbite with memetic meaning from the Trump 2016 campaign in reference to Hilary Clinton.

    1. Stephan Lewandowsky. (2022, January 15). This is an extremely important development. The main vector for misinformation are not fringe websites but “mainstream” politicians who inherit and adapt fringe material. So keeping track of their effect is crucial, and this is a very welcome first step by @_mohsen_m @DG_Rand 1/n [Tweet]. @STWorg. https://twitter.com/STWorg/status/1482265289022746628

  17. Jan 2022
    1. “Once Trump normalized discourse that was hateful, xenophobic, conspiratorial and sexist, he made it more mainstream. People who previously self-censored those thoughts felt free to not only think them, but say them – particularly on social media, where anonymity removes accountability. That hasn’t really changed.”
    1. The Secret Life of “Political Correctness” In his campaign speeches, including Trump’s New Hampshire speech following the June 2016 massacre of 49 people at an Orlando, Florida nightclub, Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked “political correctness”. “I refuse to be politically correct”, Trump told his New Hampshire audience. “I’m so tired of this politically correct crap,” he complained to South Carolina business leaders back in September 2015. “This country, political correctness is killing us,” Trump charged in a February 2016 interview on NBC’s Today show. Throughout the primary season Donald Trump has attacked “political correctness” so much, it might have raised the question – was he aware of the dark new conspiracy theory association that the term “political correctness” has taken on, over the past decade and a half, for many on the American right ? If he wasn’t, he probably is now.

      .corrección_política .microfascismos .trump .antecedentes .fascismo

  18. Dec 2021
    1. the really insidious part about it is not the idea of the noble savage actually there is no noble savage in Russo's 00:54:51 discourse because his state of nature involves creatures which are like humans but actually lack any sort of philosophy at all because what they call do is project their own lives into the 00:55:05 future and imagine themselves in other states they're constantly inventing things and chasing their own tails or rushing headlong for their own chains as he puts it they invent agriculture but 00:55:18 they can't see the consequences they invent cities but they can't see the consequences so we're talking about no imagination

      Rousseau was perfectly describing the intelligence and politics of Donald J. Trump when he described creatures which are like humans, but are "rushing headlong for their own chains". Trump was able to govern, but completely lacked the ability to imagine the consequences of any of his actions.


      Not sure what name Rousseau gave these creatures. Which book was this in? Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men?

  19. Nov 2021
    1. Parallels between fascism & trumpism.

      But for me it's hard to fail to identify that fascist ideology was structured to deplete communist & class-war ideology of any credibility.

    1. https://danallosso.substack.com/p/help-me-find-world-history-textbooks

      Dan Allosso is curious to look at the history of how history is taught.

      The history of teaching history is a fascinating topic and is an interesting way for cultural anthropologists to look at how we look at ourselves as well as to reveal subtle ideas about who we want to become.

      This is particularly interesting with respect to teaching cultural identity and its relationship to nationalism.

      One could look at the history of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War to see how the South continued its cultural split from the North (or in more subtle subsections from Colin Woodard's American Nations thesis) to see how this has played out. This could also be compared to the current culture wars taking place with the rise of nationalism within the American political right and the Southern evangelicals which has come to a fervor with the rise of Donald J. Trump.

      Other examples are the major shifts in nationalism after the "long 19th century" which resulted in World War I and World War II and Germany's national identity post WWII.

    1. “(T)he 2020 election revealed that, at least with respect to an administration’s senior most officials, the Hatch Act is only as effective as the White House decides it will be. Where, as happened here, the White House chooses to ignore the Hatch Act’s requirements, then the American public is left with no protection against senior administration officials using their official authority for partisan political gain in violation of the law,” it reads.
  20. Oct 2021
  21. Sep 2021
    1. “From the culture’s point of view, Adler was a dead white male who had the bad luck to still be alive.”

      This is a painful burn by the writer Alex Beam.

      Perhaps worth modifying for Donald J. Trump?

      From the perspective of the American experiment and the evolution of democracy, Donald J. Trump was a dead white male who had the bad luck to still be alive."

  22. Aug 2021
    1. Imitation did not mean exact reproduction; rather, words could be added or substracted, and a passage reworked in order to express the same or a contrary view (52)

      Tangential to my particular study, but consider the idea of Donald Trump as being an imitator within this framing. He would frequently float ideas at rallies (cf. George Lakoff) to see what would get a rise from the crowed and riff off of that. In some sense he's not leading, yet imitating the mobs.

  23. Jul 2021
    1. Among white people, 38 percent of college graduates voted for Trump, compared with 64 percent without college degrees. This margin—the great gap between Smart America and Real America—was the decisive one. It made 2016 different from previous elections, and the trend only intensified in 2020.

      Trumps margin.

      How can this gap be closed in the future?

    2. Because with her candidacy something new came into our national life that was also traditional. She was a western populist who embodied white identity politics—John the Baptist to the coming of Trump.

      Re: Sarah Palin

      I can definitely see his point here about the rise of (white) populism here in America which pre-figured Trump.

    1. Trump had led the country to the brink of its own “Reichstag moment,” viewing him as a potential threat to American democracy.

      -- Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    1. Ha! This is almost exactly what I expected it to be about.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Alan Jacobs</span> in re-setting my mental clock – Snakes and Ladders (<time class='dt-published'>07/01/2021 14:58:05</time>)</cite></small>

  24. Jun 2021
  25. May 2021
    1. Whether Trump can return to Facebook (and Instagram) will be determined on Wednesday morning, when Facebook’s Oversight Board offers its ruling on the company’s indefinite ban. Check TheWrap.com around 6:15 a.m. PT on Wednesday for an update.

      Let's hope that the answer is a resounding "NO!"

    2. You can check out the new platform — which is essentially a short-form blog — by heading to www.DonaldJTrump.com/desk.

      Apparently he's invented the idea of a microblog? And he's got a /desk page?

      What comes next?

      But let's be honest, he was posting these short status updates like this just a few days after he got kicked off of Twitter. He's just got a slightly better UI now.

  26. Apr 2021
    1. Όποιος δεν θέλει έναν στενό ορισμό του gaslighting τον παραπέμπω στην ταινία του Netflix “Death to 2020” και στον εξαιρετικό ρόλο της Λίζα Κούντροου (η Φοίβη από τα Φιλαράκια) όπου ενσαρκώνει εξαιρετικά την Αριστοτελία Πελώνη του Τράμπ.

      Documentary: Death to 2020

  27. Mar 2021
    1. This has taken off hugely.

      hugely used in context

      Apparently Donald Trumpisms are leaking into broader society, though even here it seems to be used ironically, thus also making fun of Trump himself.

    1. Brian Stelter. ‘One Year Ago Tonight, in Front of Millions of Loyal Viewers, Fox’s @SeanHannity Accused the Media of “Scaring the Living Hell out of People” about the Coronavirus and Said “I See It, Again, as like, Let’s Bludgeon Trump with This New Hoax.”’ Tweet. @brianstelter (blog), 10 March 2021. https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1369460806367199232.

    1. The US is trapped in a post-Trump hate and rage, cultivated by FOX news and right-wing militias.

      It seems the Americans have no antibodies to he right-wing propaganda, as Europeans do.

    1. An interesting look at critical thinking applied to the example of Donald Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis and severity.

      Interesting take on metaepistemology and the idea of "authoritarian muscle memory".

    2. When his medical team held a press conference, one detail stood out: he had been given dexamethasone—a steroid that has been shown to greatly reduce mortality, but only when the patient was severely ill. In the early stages of the disease, the result was the opposite: it increased risk and negative outcomes. 

      I don't recall seeing/hearing reporting on this tidbit at the time.

    1. In the United States, with its misinformer in chief, all this occurred last year in the context of political interference with the C.D.C. and the Food and Drug Administration.

      I'm not sure if I've seen the phrase "misinformer in chief" as a reference to Donald J. Trump before, but it's apt.

  28. Feb 2021
    1. I oppose the banning of Donald Trump and his non-violent believers/content from social media platforms such as Facebook Twitter, YouTube and Amazon. I feel (irrationally?) Trump is arrogant and disgusting as a person. I like some of his anti-CCP policies, but not sure I'd vote for him. The "USA First" stance is particularly damaging as it scares USA allies away. I don't think there's enough evidence for the electoral fraud allegations, but I haven't researched the court cases extensively. However, banning him opens a very dangerous precedent, making the US more like a dictatorship... more like China. Also it's not effective. Those who were silenced will only have more motivation, and the risk of terrorism is greatly increased. The people must decide what is true. Not big companies. Individuals must be able to express their beliefs. Bot accounts must be banned, but real individuals must not. If you think a group of people is a bunch of idiots who believe fake news, then, tough, that's democracy for you. Maybe it means that your government is not investing enough in education and welfare to properly educate and give hope to those people. I'm against violence.
    1. Interesting topic. On the surface there is an Investigative Reporter in a common activist role. He had a Heroin problem and hacktivist ties which certainly did not help his situation.

      • Stratfor gets hacked by Jeremy Hammond ,
      • Hammond, a part of LulzSec leaks all to Wikileaks
      • Brown, with ties to LulzSec most likely combs through the leaked data
      • Brown is subjected to what appears to be excessive LE abuse and manipulation
      • Brown is reported to have threatened an FBI Agent via YouTube.....ok.....and this is the reason for additional charges and outrageous sentencing recommendations.
      • WHY...is Brown subjected to this type of treatment and President Donald Trump gets away with far worse?
  29. Jan 2021
    1. While he is well known for his unique speaking style and his once-frequent social media posts, in official settings his language has been quite similar to that of other presidents.

      Keep in mind, however, that in official settings, he's more often reading from a teleprompter and reading words which have been written for him by someone else.

      For exploration: consider Trump's "test balloon" language in front of crowds where he seems to be attempting to see what will get a rise out of his audience and supporters. What effect do these "what-about-isms" have over extended periods of time.

    1. President Trump rescinded an executive order early Wednesday morning that had limited federal administration officials from lobbying the government or working for foreign countries after they leave their posts, undoing one of the few measures he had instituted to fulfill his 2016 campaign promise to “drain the swamp.”

      He failed on so many of his campaign promises that it's incredible. The fact that he actively killed one of the few he could have actually upheld is just keeping in line with his lies, lack of transparency, and lack of honor.

    1. “The members of the House of Representatives, the members of the United States Senate, those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you that don’t have the moral fiber in your body, get some tonight,” he said. “Because tomorrow, we the people are going to be here and we want you to know we will not stand for a lie.”
    1. The insurrection isn’t just being televised. It’s being orchestrated, promoted, and broadcast on the platforms of companies with a collective value in the trillions of dollars.
  30. Dec 2020
    1. While SoulCycle was promoting a culture of community and belonging, it was also serving privileged adults indulging their worst impulses.

      Sounds like rule by a petty tyrant or maybe a current sitting president.... is it something in our culture that lets us do this? Whatever happened to the idea of meritocracy?

    1. For those awash in anxiety and alienation, who feel that everything is spinning out of control, conspiracy theories are extremely effective emotional tools. For those in low status groups, they provide a sense of superiority: I possess important information most people do not have. For those who feel powerless, they provide agency: I have the power to reject “experts” and expose hidden cabals. As Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School points out, they provide liberation: If I imagine my foes are completely malevolent, then I can use any tactic I want.

      Underlying emotional drivers of Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists, and Republican psychology

    2. You can’t argue people out of paranoia. If you try to point out factual errors, you only entrench false belief. The only solution is to reduce the distrust and anxiety that is the seedbed of this thinking. That can only be done first by contact, reducing the social chasm between the members of the epistemic regime and those who feel so alienated from it. And second, it can be done by policy, by making life more secure for those without a college degree.

      Solutions to divided political landscape -- it can't be done head-on just by winning arguments through logic -- but instead will require community work, personal relationships, and educational policies

    1. This is why there are fewer opportunists in sensitive areas like security and infrastructure.

      And a solid reason why we can't have Trumps in power, because eventually a crisis will occur and it could be lethal at scale. See COVID-19 death toll in America.

    2. This is why there are fewer opportunists in sensitive areas like security and infrastructure.

      And a solid reason why we can't have Trumps in power, because eventually a crisis will occur and it could be lethal at scale. See COVID-19 death toll in America.

  31. Nov 2020
    1. The Trump team (and much of the GOP) is working backwards, desperately trying to find something, anything to support the president’s aggrieved feelings, rather than objectively considering the evidence and reacting as warranted.

      What do you expect after they've spent four years doing the same thing day in and day out?

    1. One way of looking at it is that Trump was simply “lucky” in 2016, winning the crucial states of PA/WI/MI by <1%, and unlucky in 2020, losing those same states by higher though still modest margins.

      Anatoly offers this way of looking at the 2020 election:

      Trump was simply “lucky” in 2016, winning the crucial states of PA/WI/MI by <1%, and unlucky in 2020, losing those same states by higher though still modest margins.

    1. If this is populism, it’s an aggressive strain. Left-leaning historian Rick Perlstein calls Trump’s general appeal “herrenvolk democracy.” It’s not conservatism at all. It’s big government, and big government programs, but only for the deserving.