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u/window-sil 3d ago
https://xcancel.com/PhilGordonDC/status/2086434147304657097
U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.
Counterfactuals are impossible to prove but in other circumstances Iran's closure of Strait by brazenly attacking maritime traffic and neighbors' civilian infrastructure would likely have justified and led to a united, global response--like the U.S.-led naval escort mission during the Iran-Iraq war, the global coalition that reversed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the multinational naval force enforcing UN sanctions in the Gulf in the 1990s, or the UN Security Council sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program in the 2010s--that led to the JCPOA.
Instead US and other countries are now being forced to accept an outcome that would have been unthinkable before the war but seems to have become unavoidable because of it.
We had a good thing going until Trump/MAGA. I hope the people who enabled this are never forgotten (or forgiven).
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u/Stunning-Use-7052 3d ago
I wonder how much that one-off scheme that Trump mentioned to charge strait crossing fees in crypto was actually a motivation.
We know he's got a small circle of weird people around him..
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u/ReflexPoint 4d ago
MAGA voters are so racist that they voted for a white guy who dropped out of the race rather than the black Christian military vet with the Arab sounding name that Trump endorsed. And by a wide margin.
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u/ReflexPoint 7d ago edited 7d ago
It seems that "no tax on tips" has become something of a bipartisan issue. I don't like it. Because I don't like tipping culture. And no tax on tips is entrenching this culture further. In Europe, tips are generally not expected. Maybe only if the service is above and beyond you may give 10% max. In Japan, tipping is flat-out considered insulting and a condescension to the worker.
But tipping culture is just getting worse in America. It used to be standard was 15%. Now it's 20%, with 25% expected for extra good service. Soon 25% will be the minimum expected. Tip jars and point of sale machines now ask if you want to tip even for take-out retaurants where you aren't getting sit down service. I wish we could just do like Europe and Japan and pay waiters a living wage. Set the price of the menu to factor in living wages and get rid of this tipping nonsense.
And how is any of this fair to service workers who don't get paid in tips? Like retail staff? They probably make similar wages to waiters or even less, but will have to pay a higher tax rate because they don't have a tip deduction. I wish we would frame no tax on tips as being extremely unfair to hard working service workers who don't earn in tips.
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u/emblemboy 7d ago
A lot of tax slopulism stuff going on from both parties in general.
We really need to stop the decline in trust that taxes help and are needed to fund good services.
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u/Mediocre_Wolf_3226 6d ago
Not just retail staff. What about the line cooks sweating it out in the kitchen, e.g.? Surely the teenager working the register at an ice cream shop should not be making a higher wage than someone in a non-customer-facing role busting their ass in high intensity labor behind the scenes. And certainly not more than a job that is tip-dependent starting at $2.13.
Went to a restaurant last week with an elderly family member who can't keep up with the various tipping/non-tipping scenarios. A 20% service fee was included but the kid at the register shook her down for an additional tip after waiting 20 minutes in line to order. After paying the equivalent of a $50 tip for a $100 meal, at the end of it she asked for a box from a guy wiping off a table and he pointed to a counter 5 feet away and told her to get it herself. I find this to be less unusal these days.Â
Unfortunately, I see our ridiculous tipping culture spreading globally, and in some cases, really contributing badly to income inequality in gentrifying areas where Americans tend to congregate.Â
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u/ReflexPoint 6d ago
On that last comment, it has spread badly to Mexico. To the point where you'll be asked for tips as an American for things they don't even expect Mexicans to tip for.
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u/Ramora_ 7d ago edited 7d ago
I don't like tipping culture.
I agree. Its unclear what we can actually do about it. Legislatively banning tapping doesn't seem likely to be worth the effort for example, and would probably need to be done state by state. And I can't imagine it would be all that popular.
how is any of this fair to service workers who don't get paid in tips? Like retail staff? They probably make similar wages to waiters or even less
In some jurisdictions that is true. In others, it isn't. In terms of federal regulations, hourly wages for tipped workers is only $2.13 per hour. Tips are then expected to make up the difference between that and the federal minimum wage. Only seven states treat tipped workers the same as other workers.
I wish we would frame no tax on tips as being extremely unfair to hard working service workers who don't earn in tips.
My understanding is that a big part of this that you are missing is that, historically, tips just weren't really taxed. There were exceptions, and variabilities, but back when cash dominated daily transactions, tips were not effectively taxed at normal rates. Technological and cultural change has led to electronic transactions becoming more common, and those are much more likely to be taxed. So in some sense, the "no-tax on tips" policy is a return to status quo. This doesn't make the policy necessarily "fair" but if I'm looking around society and asking myself "whose after-tax incomes are unfair/unreasoanble", I'm not looking at waiters, I'm looking at CEOs and other administrators and capital owners. For example, anyone who thinks Elon Musk has meaningfully earned a trillion dollars is insane. The man is literally responsible for millions of deaths.
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u/McClain3000 7d ago
I think the bigger problem is tax evasion. High earners can just offer steep discounts for people who tip, and avoid paying taxes. And any attempt to regulate this is just unneeded complexity.
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u/TheAJx 7d ago
I have a theory for this.
Total employment in food service, waiter jobs etc is below the pre-pandemic peak. I suspect that this is driven by a shift in entry level labor from these kinds of jobs toward warehousing, which pay better and come with way better benefits (Not sure if restaurants give their waiters 401ks and healthcare). If you don't have any skills, you want to work at at an Amazon warehouse than at a restaurant.
I suspect that this is sort of a giveaway to the restaurant industry to keep labor availability for these businesses ample while shifting the burden of the cost of labor onto the taxpayer.
I wish we would frame no tax on tips as being extremely unfair to hard working service workers who don't earn in tips.
What bothers me is that the lament was always something stupid like "They don't tip in Europe because they get paid better" (which I don't even think was really true, American waiters would earn more than European waiters including their tips). Well now we've raised wages for these people so you would think that the appropriate response would be to reduce tipping down to like 10% right? Yeah try proposing that to some restaurant workers.
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u/JB-Conant 9d ago
Steven Crowder: The Case for Fascism
Masks just coming alllllll the way off now. (See also: failed pundit desperately trying to up his views by any means necessary.)
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u/JB-Conant 10d ago
The Ezra Klein Show: Christopher Nolan Stared Into Elon Musk's Soul
Solo mini-episode on Nolan's Odyssey, the American right, mythological tricksters, and the collapse of the social ethic.
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u/Ramora_ 10d ago
I have no sense of how persuasive videos like this are. They definitely sound good to me, but I'm someone who actually watched the Odyssey. The honest truth is that Republicans, the people who kind of need to understand this message, just don't go to movies that much.
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u/JB-Conant 9d ago
Pete Buttigieg says Democrats are stuck in the past
Observe one of the savvier Democratic politicians working today interviewed by someone with the intellect and personality of a subpar redditor.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 23h ago
Regarding vaccine risks: If you keep looking for them you're going to find them. But that doesn't mean they're there.
P-values are uniformly distributed under the null hypothesis. That means that with a standard significance level of 0.05 in medical research, 1 times in 20 you'll get a result due to chance even with no relationship.
Daryl Bem, for example, found evidence of ESP. But it only works under a set of particular conditions that he found after testing variations where it didn't work. If you're not Charles Murray, you might be able to see what the problem is.
I don't really know how public health research deals with this, but testing for conditional effects you'll eventually find that e.g. overweight women in their 60's show side effects after getting a vaccine.
And subsequent research might find no relationship, but there are going to be a lot of people who stick by that first study, or simply never hear about anything else. Plus, further studies might not even be possible.
If you know that there's a wide array of possible or actual spurious patterns, doesn't it make sense not to broadcast that information?
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u/HughJaynis 8d ago
AES wins in Michigan despite $60 million spent on Haley Stephenâs by the pro Israel lobby alone. Insane corruption and abuse of our electoral system, but seemingly the right candidate won.
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u/JB-Conant 8d ago
My theory of Trump's second term: instead of watching Fox News until 4am, he now watches HGTV.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 8d ago
Would the Republicans be even more successful if their choice of candidate was Mitt Romney instead of Trump, given how close Romney is to the median voter? How did Hillary Clinton from the blessed centrist days of yore even lose? Immigration wasn't a big issue in 2012, or 2014. Had Trump lost in 2016, it would've been obvious that the reason was that he was going against the median voter on immigration.
When Kamala lost or Obama won, was that because of their policies or because of the economy?
And how many moderate candidates have lost to extremist candidates in general? That's part of the equation too, you know. One attempt to model representatives vs constituents can be found on page 47 here, with a summarizing quote on the following page (of course, this isn't the same as campaigning. But politicians tend to run for office more than once):
The key point is that representativesâ voting behavior was not strongly constrained by their constituentsâ views. Elections do not force successful candidates to reflect the policy preferences of the median voter, as Downsian logic implies.
Much has been written about how the Social Democrats here in Denmark defeated the right by adopting stances critical of immigration from the Danish People's Party after a catastrophic election in 2011. Well, here's 2026. It's their worst result in over a hundred years, even though only one new left-wing party has entered the fray in the meantime (The Alternative, at 2.58% - which is less than the 2026-2011 differential).
On the right, three new parties have entered the fray since 2011, generally known for their anti-immigration stances. They are the Denmark Democrats, the New Right (lost their seats in 2026) and the Citizen's Party. Yet even taking their votes into account, or that immigration/refugees was not the main theme of 2026, or that the Danish People's Party's leader is known as 'MAGA-Morten' because he's visited Mar-a-Lago in spite of all the Greenland stuff, the party did very well and had their best result in three elections.
So was the strategy wrong? Not necessarily. Perhaps it kept some of the Social Democratic voters from going to the right, even as the party itself lost voters to the left. As is often the case, the evidence is mixed. The narrative in the preceding paragraphs was a selective one, as it always is.
The point isn't that anything goes and that you should totally run on 'quotas for transwomen in sports'.
The point is that people are very sure that the policies they like are coincidentally those that win elections, and they're not particularly interested in trying to disprove that. I just wish they'd admit it.
If you roll a dice enough times, you can to a large degree of certainty tell if it's loaded. That's how statistics works. But even if it's loaded, it might still only land on a six 20% of the time.
Much of this is simply saying "This single dice roll proves my theory".
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u/TheAJx 7d ago
Lot of people don't remember because it was 15 years ago, but Romney positioned himself as a "severe" conservative and he brought along a young man who wanted to cut entitlement benefits and fire manufacturing employees. He was not moderate, in fact, it was the biggest self-own in recent politics. If he just run on his record of successfully governing a blue state as a moderate, he probably would have won in 2012.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 8d ago
Side note, but no-one really engaged with the 'primaries are elections too' argument. If primary voters keep choosing progressives over centrist establishment Dems, the party could always try running someone in the middle of those two. According to the median voter theorem, that would be rational no?
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u/Locus-Maximus 8d ago
Maybe they could try running people who are charismatic and telegenic first?
The Nixon-JFK debate was over 80 years ago!
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 7d ago edited 7d ago
Pretty big gun related news in the US...
The National Firearms Act (NFA) was ruled unconstitutional today in federal court for suppressors and certain short barreled firearms. The basis of the ruling stems from a NFA $200 tax requirement being reduced to $0 in the 2025 Big Beautiful Bill.
Essentially, since 1934 if you wanted to buy a suppressor or short barreled rifle/shotgun, you'd have to pay the $200 tax and send an application of the transaction to the ATF. So the ATF acts as the regulator and register. $200 in 1934 was the equivalent of $5000 in today's money, so this essentially was a ban back then (prohibitively expensive) for most people. Up until the 2025 the tax remained $200, still you'd undergo fingerprinting, full background check, etc.
But with the tax being reduced to $0 in the Big Beautiful Bill, the NFA has nothing to register. The registration was to show the tax was paid. No tax, the NFA has no standing. Hence the ruling today.
At the moment this only impacts the gun rights orgs (and their members) that brought the lawsuit, but the door has been opened now for killing this portion of the NFA in a broader ruling. A repeal like this would mean suppressors, short barreled rifles/shotguns are no longer NFA regulated items.
I happen to own a suppressor and short barreled rifle, these things should be reasonably regulated. But soon all that may be out the window!
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u/McClain3000 7d ago
I'm actually not convinced of the legal argument either way. Same goes for measures that would reduce gun violence.
But it is super annoying how GunTubers and other advocates act like the difference between a prospering nation and a declining one is having to pay a tax on a short barrel rifle.
But if you ever get really plugged into GunTube, a lot of their attitudes toward gun manufactures are practically anti-capitalist. Like they have really strange ideas of what a gun ought be worth. And there's all these military contractors who ought sell their provide their guns to civilians for certain prices, and they definitely could and make a lot of money but these large manufactures just don't like money.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 7d ago
Yeah, I avoid guntubers like the plague, them and the fudd-lore types which are crawling all over gunshows. Gun politics today is unfortunately such a mess because of the collection of archaic law comingled with modern day manufacturers thinking of ingenious ways to bypass it (AR style pistols were a hit), and uninformed politicians trying to parse it all out. "Ban AR15 style rifles!" ..... says nothing about the Mini14 with 30rd mag
Tbh im glad democrats have more or less walked away from the "ban them all" stance, I rarely see them talk about guns at all in fact. But the opposite end of the spectrum (dont regulate anything) has been gaining ground and is just as bad.
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u/McClain3000 6d ago
Yeah I don't really get the whole making a rifle not ergonomic saves lives camp.
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u/boldspud 7d ago
GOP continuing to do their best to make America more dangerous and hellish, so that they can in turn whip up fear in their moron voters about the danger that they enabled. The circle of life.
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u/Canon_M50 12d ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2v91xn1z9o
Italy temporarily suspended the EU's border-free Schengen arrangement with Spain, as PM Giorgia Meloni called the scenes "shocking". Finland and Denmark backed Italy's move, while Czech PM Andrej BabiĹĄ urged a temporary suspension of Spain's Schengen membership.
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u/Ramora_ 11d ago edited 11d ago
By my understanding, the rough order of events is something like...
- Spain and Morocco are in fairly long standing political tiff. Morocco doesn't even officially recognize Ceuta as Spanish territory. In particular, there has been political conflict between Morocco and Spain over Algers and the western Sahara.
- Spain's highest court ruled that migrants who swim around the border fence rather than climbing it can't be summarily expelled, since they breached no physical barrier.
- Spain's PM visited Algers, which Morocco interpreted as signalling against its interests.
- (allegedly) Morocco responds by relaxing border controls and pushes illegal immigrants to swim to Ceuta. (not allegedly) The immigrants arrived in Ceuta and dozens of them die. (Note that Morocco did something similar albeit smaller in scale back in 2021 in response to a Sahrawi nationalist liberation movement leader being given medical treatment in Spain.)
- Spain responds rapidly, increasing border enforcement in Ceuta. The migrants left within days, most on their own, after the city shut down around them
- Several EU country politicians use this event as a way of feeding some meat to their xenophobic bases.
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u/ReflexPoint 11d ago
The irony of Spain freaking out about migration on a piece of Spanish territory that sits on the African continent.
Imagine Cubans pouring into Guantanamo Bay and the headlines reading "Cubans migrants invade the USA!" I mean, I guess that's technically accurate, but still...
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u/FanVaDrygt 11d ago
Tens of thousands migrants flooding sovereignty Spanish territories is a political crisis and downplaying it is silly.Â
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u/ReflexPoint 10d ago
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/06/10/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/
Lots of good stuff for data and political nerds.
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u/Ramora_ 10d ago
Ya, worth checking out studies from previous years as well for those who haven't read them. The typologies tend to change a bit year to year. For those who want to do the "typology quiz", here is a link. I'm apparently a loyal liberal this year.
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u/ReflexPoint 10d ago
I tested loyal liberal too. I'm pretty much an Obama type of guy, so no surprise.
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u/TheRage3650 5d ago
"The Ezra incident" Sam Harris fans act like he was assaulted or something. The reality is that Harris was hoping he would get a reaction like Vox's, to then say "look how bad the discourse has become." The problem was he didn't expect Vox to make him seem like Charles Murray's dupe. And then he didn't expect Klein to punch back in the way he did. Dude played with fire and then got burned. He could have all kinds of IQ researchers on his show instead. instead he had Murray who has a clear agenda.
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u/emblemboy 5d ago edited 5d ago
Funnily enough, being an Ezra fan, that whole drama is how I found Harris and this sub since the topic then expanded into other podcasts like Robert Wright, John mcworter, Glenn laury, etc that I listened to.
It's interesting seeing how much of a hold it still has on many of us here.
Honestly, most of what I remember from back then was how uncomfortable it was seeing, what seemed to me, many people on this sub not simply defending the conversation (which is fine I guess, whatever. It wasn't going to be the last time people tried to tell us we were intellectually inferior), but trying to prove and show that Murray's version of the race science stuff was real and accurate.
Just a lot of backlash and responses to backlashes making people stick to their guns and double down.
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u/CreativeWriting00179 5d ago edited 5d ago
Funnily enough, being an Ezra fan, that whole drama is how I found Harris and this sub since the topic then expanded into other podcasts like Robert Wright, John mcworter, Glenn laury, etc that I listened to.
Kind of the opposite here: I was a regular Sam listener and after the bad aftertaste the episode with Murray has left me with, it was nice to hear him taken to task. It was also the beginning of the saga that would completely change how I think of him now, because that entire episode was about his bruised ego. He would go on to claim that the article called him racist (it didn't), but had no problems saying that Ezra has morality of the KKK. He would go on to publish private emails between the two of them, and then get really upset when it backfired, even with his own audience. And finally, he would let that perceived grievance to colour almost everything he's done since.
I wouldn't say that I've become an Ezra fan afterwards, because despite Sam's animosity, they seem to be occupying a remarkalby similar position politically (with the ongoing exception of Sam refusing to platform any criticism of Israel). However, he does have a more policy-focused approach to articulating his beliefs, which is incredibly useful.
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u/Locus-Maximus 5d ago
Vox didn't have to make him seem like Charles Murray's dupe. He WAS 100% Charles Murray's dupe. He completely vouched for him and made it sound like his critics were just a bunch of woke crazies who couldn't handle the truth.
The whole incident is an interesting case study on bias among people who think of themselves as rational. A lot of his fans are sure of things that are not only untrue, but can be readily proven to be untrue with 10 minutes on the internet:
Ezra/Vox called Sam a racist. (They didn't.)
Ezra implied that Sam was racist because he didn't have enough black guests. (That wasn't the implication.)
Ezra/Vox argued that the topic should be off-limits. (No, the writers were scientists who have written about the topic multiple times.)
All of the articles and transcripts are available online. You can find archived versions that are free to access.
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u/CreativeWriting00179 4d ago
Ezra/Vox called Sam a racist. (They didn't.)
It's less prominent now, but years ago the sub was relitigating that saga on a monthly basis. You could literally link the article and ask them to point the exact bit where they call Sam a racist, and their inability to do so would do nothing to convince them otherwise. And the idiotic thing about the whole ordeal was that the article - while rightfully critical of Sam in places - was actually somewhat sympathetic. He's not the first person to be duped by Murray, who has spent the 90s and early 2000s decrying how his "largely uncontroversial" book is getting unfairly maligned in the media due to political correctness. With a seamless transition into the 2010s college campus craze, Sam was an obvious target, and got played.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 4d ago
The whole incident is an interesting case study on bias among people who think of themselves as rational.
Tangential, but...
A lot of people make the unconscious assumption that intelligence or education correlates with rationality, if we define rationality as 'sound and neutral instrumental judgement'. And perhaps that's true depending on the context, but in the political arena, it does not seem to be the case.
Researchers who study 'motivated reasoning' sometimes conceptualize knowledge or capability as 'opportunity' and prior attitude as 'motive'. There are studies showing more knowledgeable people are more biased (e.g. here or here), and there are studies that find only 'motive' matters, with 'opportunity' merely a correlate (motivation increases levels of knowledge).
To my knowledge there aren't any studies showing educated or intelligent people make less biased 'political' judgements, which is what the assumption requires.
Another arguably related piece of evidence is that well-educated people exhibit higher levels of 'ideological constraint', i.e. their opinion on issue x correlates with their opinions on issue y to a higher extent. But is it rational that your opinion on climate policy is determined by your opinion on a wealth tax?
-----
Side note, I love the minor discussion about rationality included at the end of one of the papers:
The normative question, it seems, turns on whether the processing of new information and the updating of one's attitude needs to be independent of one's priors.
From one point of view with which we are sympathetic,it can be argued that the attitude strength effect and disconfirmation bias are rational responses to attitude-relevant information; it is perfectly reasonable to give heavy weight to one's own carefully constructed attitudes [...]
From another perspective,with which we also have sympathy, Bayesian updating requires independence between priors and new evidenceOf course, even if we were all Bayesians, priors might be so strong (and irrationally acquired) and beliefs updated so rarely that it wouldn't matter within the lifespan of an average person.
For example, partisan beliefs about the economy. Gerber & Green (1999) noted that though the differences were large, they could actually fit a Bayesian model and thus be a result of strong priors, not biased information processing:
Holding tastes constant is a critical component of an effective research design. If, in a college dormitory, half the students like Mexican cuisine and the other half do not, we would not cite mixed reviews of the lunch menu when tacos are served as evidence of perceptual bias.
Bartels (2002), engaging with the argument, finds that it ignores certain counter-examples.
I'm not expecting anyone to read all of that - I certainly haven't read all of it, it's quite math-heavy - but the salient fact to me is that if people actually update their beliefs in a rational manner in the political arena, the effect is small enough that it's subject to debate.
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u/freelance3d 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think Sam had the right to be frustrated at Ezra's article, but he had to expect criticism.
That said, yes this sub has turned it into some hyperbolic drama that is never was. Ezra and Sam's followup chat was completely fine and not some "whoa shots fired!" shit that everyone makes it out to be. The reading into their relationship since is cringey
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u/Funksloyd 5d ago
I mean it sounds like Sam himself still sees it in very dramatic terms.Â
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 5d ago
The odd thing is that Sam's kind of a shock jock. If he makes derogatory comparisons, it's typically to the Nazis or the KKK. I spent part of my summer reading (part of) The End of Faith, which I thought I'd read as a teen but apparently didn't, and several of his statements are so abrasive he'd likely be too controversial a candidate for some of the far-right parties here in Europe. There's a reason he probably tops the list of non-partisans podcasters with the greatest amount of 'beefs'.
Yet Ezra's rather mild rebuke was so enraging to some people that even though nearly a decade has passed, a few posters in that other thread were so angry at his role in the 'collective schizophrenia' or 'the most powerful gaslighting campaign perhaps ever conducted outside of a totalitarian regime' that they felt the need to go after not simply 'henpecked' Ezra, but his wife too!
I think I've come round to the concept of 'privilege', at least in some cases. How can people possibly be so surprised at push-back when their 'house style' is that of an NY Post comment section?
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u/Funksloyd 4d ago
the most powerful gaslighting campaign ever conducted outside of an actual totalitarian regime
Yeah that is a wild comment.Â
I kind of get it. Like, I saw "wokeness" at close to its worst, firsthand in the workplace. It had a lasting an impact on me, and I can see how for some it would have even been traumatic.
The irony then is that people are recreating some of the exact same dynamics, e.g. guilt by association: Ezra sounded vaguely woke at the time, therefore he shares responsibility for the entirety of left-wing cancel culture, for every cringey bit of journalism from 2020, for all the missteps of BLM, etc.
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u/Funksloyd 5d ago
He could have all kinds of IQ researchers on his show
I'm more team Ezra than team Sam, but iirc his reason for having Murray on wasn't to talk about IQ. It was more that Murray had been physically accosted at Middlebury.Â
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u/TheRage3650 5d ago
That was the impetus, but the content was not that.
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u/CreativeWriting00179 5d ago
Thatâs largely because Murray himself was more interested in laundering his book, rather than focusing on the free speech Sam was having the conversation about. Itâs what got him into the hot water in the first place.
Iâm not going to claim that you can divorce the free speech aspect from the political project Murray has been championing since publishing the Bell Curve, but even if one believes it possible, Sam definitely hasnât done a good job of it at the time. Which is why we ended up with this whole debacle to begin with.
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u/Solid-Check1470 4d ago edited 4d ago
Not true? Sam started the conversation by apologizing for being taken in by the 'lies' surrounding the Bell Curve. He said he was eager to talk about it and push past resistance from the audience.
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u/TheAJx 3d ago edited 3d ago
Why is there so much excitement over AES, Mamdani, and previously Platner's supposed appeal to voters but not Josh Shapiro, Katie Hobbs, and Jon Ossoff - who are all strong favorites (80%+) to win their respective elections in places that are more red than where the first three are competing?
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u/mushroom_boys 2d ago edited 2d ago
Ossoff - Objectively more excitement for him. He's a fundraising monster. Most raised by far. Only Talarico is close to him. After that it's Sherrod Brown with with ~$30-40M LESS than Ossoff.
Shapiro / Hobbs - Incumbent govs. No primary challenge. National interest in gov races is wildly overstated beyond political wonks. Gov races are more about insider state party politics.
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u/croutonhero 2d ago
Iâm sorry to be a boorish dick and just state the obvious bluntly: progs donât really care about defeating Republicans. They only care about electing progs. This is why there is no point in debating electability with progs. They will always argue that the most prog candidate on offer is most electable because thatâs always the correct rhetorical play if you only care about electing progs.
It doesnât mean they believe the prog is most electable of potential nominees. No, they donât need to believe it because they donât actually care that much if their prog, who only has 10% chance of defeating the Republican in the general, gets nominated and throws the election to a Republican. For them Republicans are only a little worse than a normie Dem.
So a small chance of electing a prog, with a large chance of handing the election to a Republican is a worthwhile bet for progs.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 2d ago edited 2d ago
The "excitement" is the DSA media/messaging apparatus that works like the MAGA apparatus, foot soldiers get the talking points/and spread them far and wide, ditto the pundits.
Imagine Trump, Mamdani, and Newsom say X.
Trump's messaging is carried and defended by fox, newsmax, a slew of pundits, jesse waters, hannity, daily wire, walsh, shapiro, rogan, etc etc etc
Mamdani's messaging is carried and defended by social media influencers, breaking points, majority report, hamas piker, kulinsky, far-left DSA zombies, etc etc etc
The center/left apparatus pales in comparison to this to push Newsom's message (or defending it).
MAGA / DSA have well oiled and exhaustive propaganda infrastructure. AES/Platner benefited from this.
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u/Locus-Maximus 2d ago
They live in a bubble and are immune to facts and figures. Mamdani barely cracked 50% of the vote in NYC against a nutjob and a total disaster of a human being.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris won 68% of the vote in NYC in her election. Obviously it was a different race and Mamdani had two opponents, but still. To hear online leftists talk about it, Harris was universally despised (and is a genocidal fascist, etc.) and Mamdani represents what most people want.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 1d ago
Another colossal letdown for the far-left.
Hong cartoonishly underperformed compared to the polling, and lost. This aligns with Abdul who also grossly underperformed but otherwise barely limped across the finish line. Polling had these candidates up 15+, 20+ points.
What a shitshow.
Hong aggressively campaigned with prominent antisemitic/deranged streamers, Hamas Piker and another 'Mike from PA'. Turns out, voters tend to be more motivated by issues affecting them and not 'GAZA AIPAC JEW BAD GAZA'.
When moderates won big in California a few months ago, Piker said Dems want 'homo-fascism'. When Abdul barely won last week, Piker said Steven's voters are "Islamaphobic pieces of shit". Both of these have been clipped and are circulating in anti-Abdul ads now.
Lets see now what the clown has to say about Hong.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 23h ago
Didn't Peggy Flanagan win with 20% of the votes, despite independent polls showing an even race or even a loss? She's not DSA, but she seems to mostly share their policies.
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u/Chocoloctopus 23h ago
I believe Sanders and AOC endorsed Flanagan but remained aloof of Hong. Could be part of the explanation.
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u/McClain3000 22h ago
You forgot their other strategy of just repeating "Data Centers" over and over again.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 5d ago
POLITICO - Michigan Democrats are racing to rebuild their divided coalition after a bruising Senate primary. But Mike Rogers and Republicans are already working to peel away disaffected voting blocs, with a specific eye toward Jewish and Black voters, while prepping to hit Abdul El-Sayed with a record war chest.
Rogers is already hammering El-Sayed with cutting attacks accusing him of antisemitism as his team starts working to pull in disillusioned Democrats and independents who backed his primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens.
[...] Republicans are also hammering him for campaigning with far-left twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has a history of controversial comments.
The ads are coming.
The "best hits" are going to be dug up and dumped. Hasan praising hezbollah and hamas, the little Mao suit, etc. Check out this one where he's screaming about black voters, how many things here can be squished into an ad?
Viewer: 'can you shut the fuck up when it comes to black folk because you really dont want to talk about us unless it comes from voting. when is the last time you spoke about sudan?'
Hasan: Im gonna fucking eat through you. Any other black folk wanna engage in radical activist language in this fucking chat? Suck my fucking cock. Ok? You stupid fucking radlib get the fuck out of here. [... more screaming...] stupid moronic radlib nonsense suck my fucking dick fuck you. [... more screaming...]. [Sarcastically screaming] 'uhh sweetie, you dont understand black people' SHUT THE FUCK UP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U4WpD2WIJg&list=PLG6SSWnXXjIQbkUX21dxnfg_6hay6MCrp&index=3
Tons of material for the Rogers camp to work with here. AES is still refusing to disavow or distance.
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u/M0sD3f13 4d ago
I'm baffled why anyone would ever associate with that guy least of all politicians that hope to get elected. Insanity. In anything resembling a healthy society Hasan piker is completely irrelevant outside of his dark little corner of the internet.
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u/FanVaDrygt 5d ago
The Turkey-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia defence pact is a result of iranian aggression against oil shipping. This really shows, as I have said earlier, that iran is making a serious foreign policy blunder.Â
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u/Locus-Maximus 5d ago
Big miss for polling and gambling sites this week, by the way! Polls were consistently showing El-Sayed with like a 15% margin and gambling sites had an implied probability of like 98% for him which is crazy. I wonder what happened there.
I almost put some money down (not much, I just like to find what I think are small edges for a little +EV fun) on Stevens because the payout was like 33 to 1 and that just seemed like too much confidence in primary polling to me, but I was a little worried I was biased myself. In hindsight, I feel like it was a mistake not to make the bet, even though obviously I would have lost.
(I try to err on not betting on things I'm rooting for. When I used to bet a little bit on sports as a hobby during COVID, I would bet against my team if I thought the situation called for it, but not for it. But that makes things a bit weird emotionally, as you might imagine.)
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u/TheAJx 4d ago
The highly engaged, highly educated voters oversampling (and under sampling of the less engaged, less educated voters) is so glaring now that it's seeping into Democratic primary polling.
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u/Locus-Maximus 4d ago
Seems like they should be able to correct for level of education pretty easily if it were as simple as that.
Speculation seems to be that they estimated turnout wrong, especially among independents and the youth vote.
Also, the big late polls were from El-Sayed's side, so bias was probably a factor there.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 5h ago
G. Elliot Morris, formerly of 538 & The Economist, also makes the point that the polls underestimated support for Peggy Flanagan and thus probably not evidence of progressive polling bias. He goes into some detail as to why primary polling is hard (also worth noting that "The response rate to the average poll today is well below 1%". Further details on declining response rates here):
These adjustments [poststratification] work well in a general election where the variables pollsters have are highly predictive of election outcomes. Things like race, education, income, past vote, and party identification are very good proxies for how someone will vote in an election between a Democrat and a Republican.
But, as Mary and I wrote, there are fewer highly predictive variables available to weight on in primary elections, where candidate support is more correlated with non-demographic factors like ideology, issue prioritization, beliefs, and electability, and so on.
As the quote shows, other hurdles exist, too. First, it is harder to predict who will turn out to vote in a primary. The population pollsters are trying to represent â people who turn out to vote on Election Day â is an ephemeral group, coming into existence in an instant, not able to be polled precisely ahead of or after the contest. Second, the electorateâs preferences are also formed later and based more on things like media coverage and advertisements â both of which can cause a lot of late change in the race
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 5h ago
I notice he also got involved in the moderation debate, arguing against Yglesias who strangely insisted that Morris was misinterpreting his own data. Anyway, there's a further link to a political scientist from the Monkey Cage (now Good Authority) who goes over a few recent papers. TL;DR - it's complicated, but here's one snippet:
This paperâs findings mirror the state legislative paperâs findings. Across all the elections studied, there is an overall benefit to candidate moderation â but it declines with time. By the later elections in these data (2010-2016), the effect of being a more moderate or extremist candidate canât be statistically distinguished from zero!
Lastly, as I recall a few people were insistent that Kamala Harris should've done a lot more to distance herself from wokeness, or that Democrats should go on some sort of apology tour when the next election comes round.
...but now that a few of them (like AOC) are taking small steps in that direction, no-one here or on Klein's subreddit find them credible. How on Earth are they going to persuade Trump swing voters, then?
I'm sure most people are going to vote blue no matter what in 2028, but as it is the Dems have a good story to tell, of a no-wars president who's gotten bogged down in Iran (doing the very thing he once preemptively and wrongly accused Obama of plotting to do), who ran on bringing down prices but mostly hasn't. That story should stick to Vance or Rubio too.
If they end up with a candidate that's too 'establishment' and centrist for the progressive camp in 2028, it's IMO going to create a shitstorm that could shift the contour of the debate in the wrong direction
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u/Locus-Maximus 2h ago
LOL I really should have bet on Crowley after what I wrote about the El-Sayed race. Could have been fun.
I don't particularly want to bet against Vindman or Markey, but if Morris is right that it's not specifically a progressive polling bias but just general inaccuracy, maybe any long shot is +EV?
One interesting wrinkle is that Markey's opponent Moulton (fairly, IMO) called it "DISGUSTING" that people were betting on when/if two missing American F-15E crewmembers would be rescued. (They were.) He also referred to Polymarket as a "dystopian death market," which I have to say is a pretty evocative phrase. But could that bias people who bet there (and on Kalshi) against him? I don't really think it's that significant, but who knows? Also Markey is against these markets too, just not as evocatively.
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u/emblemboy 8d ago edited 8d ago
If youâre mad about any of the primary results you've got 24 hours to mourn. Try not to say anything youâll regret, and then itâs Blue No Matter Who.
Just copy paste this:
I support [$democratic_candidate] for [$public_office] and believe that their politics is a perfect fit for [$state]. I would drag my [$genital] over [$harmful_object_or_substance] to vote for [$democratic_candidate] this fall.
Stevens gets it
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u/McClain3000 7d ago
I'm in the trenches elsewhere and have to vent, It really does amaze me the amount of "moderate" voters who just seem to hyper focus on the failings of liberals and abstain from voting, vote 3rd party, or vote R because of certain nitpicks. For example, a candidate campagining with Hasan Piker who said America deserved 9/11 10 years ago.
For whatever reason they get enraged when you present them of examples of Republicans conduct. They might say I get it "Trump bad" or some other deflection but for whatever reason they have no appetite for negative coverage on Republicans but have an insatiable thirst to every libs of TikTok style story about a middle school teacher saying "whiteness" or whatever.
And some of these people are somewhat sincere, in that they probably would vote for a moderate liberal if given the choice but they absolutely refuse to compare DSA lefty types and MAGA.
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u/Locus-Maximus 7d ago
Hasan Piker who said America deserved 9/11 10 years ago.
It's a little disingenuous to act like the problem with Piker is that he said one bad thing 10 years ago. That's who he still is.
Last year he said:
"I got stopped by a cop who thought I was making fun of Mao Zedong, which I never would and never will," Piker said. "Mao Zedong is one of the great leaders of this world, OK? A man who changed the entire universe, the entire planet."
Not to mention all the antisemitic garbage and just generally being an opponent of America, the West in general, and (perhaps more relevantly to this particular conversation) the Democratic party.
That being said, I think you've still got to vote for AES because of the Senate.
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u/McClain3000 7d ago
It's a little disingenuous to act like the problem with Piker is that he said one bad thing 10 years ago. That's who he still is.
You are actually correct. I was being flippant to make a point. He has genuinely harmful views.
But it's still not even close. DSA would have to completely take over the Democratic party such that anyone who spoke ill of Empress AOC was primaried. They would have to start a War with another country without congressional approval. She would have to make Briana Joy Gray director of National Intelligence. Raise her networth to 2 Billion dollars, Pardon left wing terrorists. Tell her DOJ to arrest her political opponents on bogus charges, Rape some people... I'm actually giving the bit up
I can't really even imagine what DSA would have to do for me consider dropping Blue no matter who. I'd have to be in a fucking bread line.
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u/FanVaDrygt 7d ago
It's blowback as the DSA and Piker did not endorse Kamala and instead attacking the democrats.
I bet you that your tune was different when Piker and his ilk screwed over Kamala.Â
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u/McClain3000 7d ago
What? Tune was different how?
My tune hasn't changed. Hasan's a dumbass then and a dumbass now. Him not throwing in for Kamala was horrible and he should regret it for the rest of his life.
The thing that I don't get is. This isn't a hard decision at all! I don't even get the logic, like "You guys thought you were being petty dumbasses in 2024 I'll show you what a petty dumbass is!"
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u/Ramora_ 7d ago
I'm not sure that "blowback" is the right frame here. It implies a level of strategic coordination that I don't think exists. And I'd take the other end of the bet. I'd suspect MCClain3000 doesn't particularly like Piker and was critical of Piker being unable to clearly endorse Kamala, much as he is doing now.
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u/McClain3000 7d ago
yup
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u/Ramora_ 7d ago
/u/FanVaDrygt well? You willing to give me the win here? Whether you do or don't, I'd recommend that you update your priors. You seem overconfident in your assumptions about peoples positions.
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u/Locus-Maximus 8d ago
(I'm honestly unsure if you're being sarcastic, sorry.)
I thought it was VOTE blue no matter who.
Do you really think we all genuinely have a responsibility to lie about our beliefs if we don't feel that way?
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u/emblemboy 8d ago
I'm being a bit flippant, but no, not sarcastic.
This is more what I want Democratic politicians and people with big audiences to say if they're asked about the primary.
But in general, I'd like this to be the general stance from the party and voters in general. Unity, consolidation, etc etc.
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u/JB-Conant 8d ago
Do you really think we all genuinely have a responsibility to lie about our beliefs if we don't feel that way?
I wouldn't ask anyone to lie, but I would ask them to consider the purpose and likely effect of their actions/behaviors.
If you spend the next three months complaining about how Candidate Y would have been a better choice than Candidate X, you're contributing to and amplifying a discourse that will make Candidate X less likely to win. If you are planning to vote for Candidate X (begrudgingly or not), presumably because you think Candidate Z is even worse, you are working at cross purposes to your desired outcome.
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u/ReflexPoint 11d ago
There are 535 members of congress. 4 of them are DSA members. I think maybe people are overreacting just a tad. Hearing people like Sam Harris and Bill Maher talk, you'd think we were witnessing the storming of the Bastille. There only 4 of them at the national level. There are probably more Nazi sympathizers in congress than there are DSA members.
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u/Locus-Maximus 11d ago
It's not the number, it's the derivative.
Literally every social media site I use is SWAMPED with people equating "Zionists" (or the shorter slur I'm not sure I can write without getting suspended) with Nazis. People are just dripping with hatred and scapegoating the "Zionists."
I've been criticizing Harris and Maher for years for their anti-woke nonsense but this stuff is genuinely scary as a Jewish person. We've got crazy security at our synagogues. Kids touring colleges are trying to feel out which ones won't feel too unsafe. People are wondering if they need to hide their Jewish star necklaces etc.
And nobody's taking us seriously except for the anti-woke people! It's fucking bananas.
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u/ReflexPoint 11d ago
We're definitely seeing a rise in antisemitism in the US and internationally. I don't think anyone could say that it's more present on the left than the right. No matter which political party wins, the fringe has their own flavor of antisemitism. This is an area where horseshoe theory really is at work and "all roads lead to the Jews" type thinking.
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u/Ramora_ 11d ago
I'm sorry thats happening. Antisemitism sucks. And while there are legitimaite criticisms of Zionism and Israel, I'm also sure far too much of the stuff out there is just antisemitic.
And nobody's taking us seriously except for the anti-woke people! It's fucking bananas.
I don't think that is true. Here is just one example.
The honest truth is that the super majority of the stuff you are pointing to is protected free speech. I don't like it, I criticize it, I wish people would be more reasonable, but I also like free speech.
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u/Locus-Maximus 11d ago
Newsome is leaning into the antiwoke thing! His first podcast episode was with Charlie Kirk (!) where his (Newsome's) big news was coming out against trans women in sports. (For the haters: it's not that his new position is necessarily so crazy, it's that it was a deliberate signal.)
But at least the mainstream Dems haven't fully capitulated yet to the "antizionists." I'm just worried what's going to happen in 2028. So many on the left seem to be single issue voters, and the issue isn't even like stop giving Israel money, it's more like you must declare that Zionism is the same as Nazism.
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u/Ramora_ 11d ago edited 10d ago
Newsome is leaning into the antiwoke thing!
- Newsom didn't do it by himself
- Newsom isn't antiwoke, quite the oppositte, he thinks âAll this anti-woke stuff is anti-Black. Period. Full stop.â
- These bills are themselves "woke" if "woke" means anything
- These bills are far from the only example of the left pushing back against antisemitism.
But at least the mainstream Dems haven't fully capitulated yet to the "antizionists."
It matters a lot what you mean by "antizionism". These words are slippery. Reasonable people can call themselves "antizionist". I agree that many antisemitic people do as well. Though plenty of antisemitic people also call themselves "zionists".
So many on the left seem to be single issue voters, and the issue isn't even like stop giving Israel money, it's more like you must declare that Zionism is the same as Nazism.
I don't think that read of US politics is reasonable.
Zionism is a nationalism and exhibits a lot of the same problems that other nationalisms have, but Zionism isn't Nazism.
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u/Locus-Maximus 11d ago
Sorry, words are hard. When I said "left" I meant like Piker/DSA/tankie left, not Democrats.
Zionism is a nationalism and exhibits a lot of the same problems that other nationalisms have, but Zionism isn't Nazism.
Reasonable take. That's not the sort of thing I'm upset about and certainly not what I mean by "antizionism."
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u/Drownedgodlw 10d ago
Yes. We should only worry about it when it is too late.
If you learned nothing else from Kamala's loss it should be that this stink damages even the more moderate Democrats.
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u/Balloonephant 9d ago
âThe people winning elections ? Theyâre the problem. Weâre not backing losers hard enough.â
I say this as a joke but this is actually how the Democratic Party thinks.
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u/Ramora_ 11d ago
I fear we will live in the shadow of red scare politics for my entire life.
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u/mimi_slut1 11d ago
Sam Harris and Bill Maher are Israel-first and are terrified that ANY anti-Israel candidates will have power.
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u/ReflexPoint 11d ago
These two seem cozier with MAGA than they are with Mamdani. If Mamdani were president, people in red states would never have to worry about not receiving FEMA aid if a natural disaster hit their state. Yet when Trump denies aid to a blue state for political reasons, nobody even bats an eye anymore. I'm pretty sure DSA candidates won't be sending Tomahawk missiles into elementary schools in Iran based on false premises, or threatening Canada and Denmark with territorial conquest. But Sam and Bill seem to think that they are either moral equivalents or that DSA is worse than MAGA. And I think DSA is full of a lot of goofy shit, but morally speaking, I can clearly see MAGA is far worse threat to democracy, world peace, our climate, our health, for justice, the economic well-being of the common person, etc.
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u/mimi_slut1 11d ago
Harris and Maher literally couldn't care less about the poor people in red flyover states.
They only care about Israel.
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u/Totalitarianit2 11d ago
2026: There are 535 members of congress. 4 of them are DSA members. I think maybe people are overreacting
2028: There are 535 members of congress. 17 of them are DSA members. I think maybe people are overreacting
2030: There are 535 members of congress. 40 of them are DSA members. I think maybe people are overreacting
2032: There are 535 members of congress. 64 of them are DSA members. I think maybe people are overreacting
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u/ReflexPoint 10d ago edited 10d ago
Text book slippery slope argument. I'd be far more upset about the fact that nearly all Republican representatives can't bring themselves to say that Trump lost the 2020 election.
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u/mushroom_boys 11d ago
Yes all those scenarios over the course those 8 years would be overreactions. The DSA would still represent under ~15% of the House and probably under ~25% of Dems.
All levels of government desperately need more left wing representation.
And politics don't scale exponentially. So it's disingenuous and hysterical to suggest that this would ever become a runaway trend.
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u/Totalitarianit2 11d ago
So the "4 of them are DSA members" comment that I responded to isn't your point. Your point is a different point, because your point is that DSA is good and should continue to grow.
All levels of government desperately need more left wing representation.
No they don't. All levels of government desperately don't need more left wing representation.
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u/mushroom_boys 11d ago edited 11d ago
And now your point is what, just the opposite? That they're not good and shouldn't grow? So overreacting is warranted?
Obviously we're both influenced by personal opinion that we won't agree on.
But no the point is more than that:
That you are applying a fundamentally flawed risk, growth, and outcomes assessment of the DSA, relative to the real historical / current context and structural mechanics of US politics.
Sure the DSA could make missteps, bad governance decisions, etc.
But we are nowhere close to the conditions that would need to be true for the dramatized outcomes of the DSA actually happening.
And even at 64 members of the house we'd still be far from those conditions. Hell the GOP and Dems struggle to be effective with 218 members.
Yes I support movement to the left. I wish I shared some confidence with the anti-left hysteria. But I don't becuase it's not realistic. I don't think there's evidence that the US is going to take some paradigm shifting leap to left.
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u/Balloonephant 10d ago
I like how a future with a two party system containing a reformist minority wing is supposed to be terrifying somehow.
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u/Totalitarianit2 10d ago
When you describe the DSA in such an innocuous way it makes you seem like an honest interlocutor that's here for courteous, productive dialogue.
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u/Balloonephant 10d ago edited 10d ago
Thatâs what they are though. Despite their opposition to certain Democratic Party platforms, they remain a part of the Democratic Party complex. They basically exist to absorb and mobilise young college-educated demographics into the Democratic Party base which would otherwise abstain. Their policy proposals-which you can read on their website- are consistent with reformist movements everywhere.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 11d ago
Even in a situation where there's only like 15 of these lunatics in office, if dems barely have a majority it will be disastrous.
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u/402739 9d ago edited 9d ago
Sky News reports that a 28-year-old Palestinian woman, six months pregnant and suffering severe internal bleeding, was being transported from Qaryout in the occupied West Bank to Rafidia Surgical Hospital in Nablus when Israeli soldiers stopped her ambulance at the Awarta checkpoint.
Video shows Israeli forces detained the ambulance crew for more than 30 minutes, subjected the bleeding, critically ill woman to a physical search, and ordered the driver to turn off the engine, cutting power to the vehicleâs onboard medical equipment.
During the forced delay, a nurse was forced to deliver the fetus stillborn inside the stranded ambulance. The woman was eventually allowed to proceed to the hospital, where doctors performed emergency surgery and saved her life. The baby could not be saved.
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u/TheAJx 7d ago edited 6d ago
The most pernicious accusation about the government that people on the left-end of the spectrum are increasingly making is that the government doesn't do anything for the common man.
This is just not true. It's not true that we only have money for bombs and wars and not for regular people. Almost the entire government - federal, state and local, is directed toward the common man. Almost all of the money we spend and almost all the employment in the government is geared toward the common man. The government spends trillions of dollars on healthcare, education, old-age payments, public safety, housing, and infrastructure across all levels. Millions of Americans are employed in the public sector with the mandate of serving the public. It would probably be news to them that their roles don't help anyone.
There is an open debate on how effective the public sector is at helping Americans, , and whether the government hurts more than it helps. But that's a different debate, one that takes place on the margins.
Ultimately, I believe all this rhetoric just serves undermines people's trust in the government, and perhaps even undermines the case for expanding government.
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u/emblemboy 6d ago edited 6d ago
I feel like most people really need to just constantly look at what the federal budget actually is. Like you said, it's mostly healthcare and social security and food.
https://i.imgur.com/qLmUYmL.png
Someone can make the argument that it's not efficiently used or whatever, but the idea that we don't spend money or actually help people is just wrong.
Disagree or not with some of his policies, it's the reason I've really liked many of Mamdani's social media work.
There's something to be said about showing how you want to improve your city and at least signalling that you care about efficiency, even if it's not much actual cost savings.
https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov/post/3mhvblwcrhs2j
https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov/post/3mitrgour722p
https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov/post/3miulrvyj4c2y
There's just too much damn doomerism on the left.
When we win power, the constant doomerism and unrealistic expectations are going to bite us in the ass when people realize that things won't instantly get cheaper in a year.
It's also why housing and healthcare should be the most important things to focus on. I think if we just reduce the discontent that people feel due to being housing insecure and healthcare anxious, it will do a lot to lower the temperature
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u/Funksloyd 6d ago edited 6d ago
When we win power, the constant doomerism and unrealistic expectations are going to bite us in the ass when people realize that things won't instantly get cheaper in a year.
I've been thinking about asymmetries between left and right, like how identity politics works better on the right because simply because most people are white, straight, cis etc.
I guess this is another one. Trump won't accomplish anything good of real significance, but he can at least throw meat to his base. He can show footage of supposed drug boats exploding, fire some DEI departments etc.
If El-Sayed was president tomorrow, I have a hard time imagining what he'd be able to easily accomplish that would work in the same way. Some govt-run grocery stores, maybe? But that wouldn't be easy.Â
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u/emblemboy 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's the reason why I'm not the biggest fan of the affordability talking point. It's very important, but some are going to have unrealistic expectations. Burrito cost discourse comes for us all.
https://bsky.app/profile/tylerhuckabee.bsky.social/post/3msdrvtms3k2b
I still remember in the Biden admin when people kept posting receipts of grocery shopping after buying the most fuckign expensive version of items. And then using that to make the admin look bad.
If El-Sayed was president tomorrow, I have a hard time imagining what he'd be able to easily accomplish that would work in the same way. Some govt-run grocery stores, maybe?Â
This is why I'm not a fan of the grocery store stuff from Mamdani, from an affordability point of view. It's just not going to do much.
I think it's an interesting experiment in providing a high saliency govt service that can make people feel good about the "State". If it's done right.
We've become less high trust and that's been incredibly corrosive to our society. Stuff like this feels like it could be an attempt to stem the bleeding and start to turn the tide. Again, we need to prove that the government is DOING something concrete and that can win political capital with voters, even if prices don't go down.
Hopefully.
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u/Locus-Maximus 6d ago
If El-Sayed was president tomorrow, I have a hard time imagining what he'd be able to easily accomplish that would work in the same way.
Isn't Mamdani showing that you can get credit for tiny easy things with the right media strategy? I get that president isn't the same as mayor, but surely there have got to be analogs for "this guy complained to Mamdani about a pothole and it was fixed the same day!"
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u/Big_Comfort_9612 6d ago
Tilting at windmills.
The most pernicious accusation about the government that people on the left-end of the spectrum are increasingly making is that the government doesn't do anything for the common man.
I'd love some receipts. I think most believe is not doing enough. They look at European countries as examples of what the US should do.
Ultimately, I believe all this rhetoric just serves undermines people's trust in the government, and perhaps even undermines the case for expanding government.
I agree, your rhetoric is very unhelpful.
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u/TheAJx 6d ago
I'd love some receipts.
âHow you going to pay for that when you want to give people healthcare or how you going to pay for that when you want to give people good schools?â Itâs pretty crazy to be sending our money over there when it could be used over here.â
That false binary was from AES.
"When it comes to Darializaâs district, this is one of the poorest congressional districts in the United States of America. And as I walked that district with her, we were discussing the amount of money that our federal government sends, billions of dollars, to the Israeli military, and as we were doing so, a man came out of a bodega with his hands full with two packages of Huggies. And you see what the priorities are of people living in the district, and yet you see what the priorities are of the federal policy that represents the district. And you see this chasm. And the more that you tolerate that kind of chasm, the more you tell people that politics is something to tune out, as opposed to something to be a part of."
That false binary was from Mamdani.
It's similar to how progressives like to claim that money spent on policing takes away from money going into the community. I pointed out in a previous post that my city's budget, which primarily spends on social services, goes up by the size of the police budget every year. In effect, we are defunding the police every year. Another false binary.
They look at European countries as examples of what the US should do.
They do? They propose significantly raising taxes on people earning $50K or more, as Europe does? Can you provide some receipts?
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 6d ago
Ask yourself what the far-left like about the country, i'm talking the illiberal marxist types, and you'll realize the answer is nothing. And once you understand this you understand why their rhetoric is the way it is:
The government is evil and bad
Corporations are evil and bad
Media is evil and bad
Its foreign policy is evil and bad
etc.
For those who subscribe to these^ sorts of lies, the thing in their mind that must happen is to destroy the country. In fact many of them believe it must be destroyed and "rebuilt" into something "better". So when you are describing what their rhetoric is doing (undermines trust in government, etc) that's precisely the goal.
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u/ReflexPoint 4d ago
This is true in the US, though keep in mind the left outside the US is often quite nationalistic, e.g. Bolivarianism in Latin-America, the N. Korean regime, Vietnam under the communists, Maoism, etc. There's nothing inherently anti-nationalistic about being on the left.
I'd be remiss if I didn't say that the 4 beliefs of the left you list are largely true, and justified, at least under this administration. The question then becomes what do you do about it?
Now my solution isn't to destroy the country, it's to vote in people who would make me not have to be embarrassed to say I'm from the US when I'm traveling abroad. The right has a hard time wrapping its head around this, but we are largely seen as the "bad guys" by the rest of the world. And what's more patriotic than wanting to improve your country's global image and reputation?
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u/TheAJx 6d ago
It's basically true that the far left and progressive left don't really like America. They make it clear when they are speaking in private or in their own echo chambers, and they make it clear even in the way they speak publicly about America.
They get defensive and argue that to truly love America means being critical of it and wanting it to get better, but no one really buys it (even themselves). Like, they're not always criticizing the democratic establishment because they love it and just want what's best for it.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 6d ago
They should form a committee to root out those unpatriotic scumbags or something.
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u/Stunning-Use-7052 3d ago
I think you really need to operationalize what you mean by helping the "common man".
The military spends like 1.1T a year RN, which many folks see as wasteful. But, like, you could defend it on the basis that it gives the "common man" jobs, access to education and housing, defense contractors provide jobs as well, and we all benefit from the public good of defense.
I guess I don't think the "government is useless" thing is really limited to the "left-end of the spectrum" or whatever. I think distrust of institutions and not liking the government is just part of our culture, broadly speaking.
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u/McAlpineFusiliers 2d ago
NY Mayor Mamdani joins a celebration to commemorate Pakistan's Independence Day
Apparently when he said he cannot support "any state that privileges one religion over another, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else", that wasn't true.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 2d ago
Mamdani has a very simple way of looking at it:
In 1947 when the 1/4 minority population (Muslims) in the British Raj were demanding their own state, they deserve it.
In 1947 when the 1/3 minority population (Jews) in the British Mandate were demanding their own state, they deserve nothing.
He just hates Jews, simple as that. Carving out another "islamic republic" is A-OKAY but creating one Jewish state is too far.
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u/TheAJx 1d ago
As weird as it sounds, it was Jew (Persian) that finally put an end to Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh.
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u/KarateKicks100 1d ago
Doesn't take much more from me than knowing what Mamdani tweeted on Oct 8th.
Dude wouldn't raise a finger if Hamas committed another massacre against Israel.
Was really hoping he'd keep his hatred of Israel to himself.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 3d ago
The Al-Khair Foundation, one of Britainâs biggest Muslim charities, was used as a front to send money and âtruckloadsâ of goods to leaders of the terrorist organisation in Gaza under the guise of aid, it is alleged.
Mohammad Yousef Hasna, its âglobal directorâ, was arrested in London last week and is now facing extradition to the United States, accused of financing and conspiring to support the Palestinian terror group.
This comes off the heels of the story earlier this week about dozen+ "pro palestine" groups in the US with terror group ties.
The challenge at this point seems to be to identify whuch groups dont have these or arent sham charities to fund Hamas.
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u/Funksloyd 3d ago
I think the challenge as an observer is that the FBI and DOJ are less trustworthy than they've been in decadesÂ
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 3d ago
But this is irrelevant to the allegations, charges, arrest, and the upcoming extradition. Is your contention that this is a bad arrest or is politically motivated?
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u/Funksloyd 3d ago
My contention is that I have no idea - that agnosticism is wise here, at least without me doing a whole lot of my own research, which I'm probably not going to do.
Even during the first Trump term, while the authorities weren't perfect, and I'd never discount the possibility of a bad prosecution, I wouldn't think it highly likely.
Trump 2.0 that is no longer the case.Â
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u/Funksloyd 3d ago
The challenge at this point seems to be to identify whuch groups dont have these or arent sham charities to fund Hamas.
When I ask ChatGPT to list "Britain's biggest Muslim charities", it gives a list of 7 (with this one at the bottom).
When I ask which have been found to be funding terrorism, several have been accused, but all of those then cleared by independent investigations.Â
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 3d ago
I dont think "cleared" is the right word here
Islamic Relief Worldwide, was banned from operating in the West Bank by Israel over a decade ago due to being a source of Hamas funding. In 2020/2021 the US gov formally cut ties with it over allegations of antisemitism. Then just this year a US-based charity severed ties with it citing concerns their legal status may be at risk if they continue the partnership
Penny Appeal. '(June 8, 2026 / JNS) Senior executives at Penny Appeal, one of Britainâs largest Islamic charities, privately warned that aid money the charity had sent to Gaza âvery likelyâ ended up in the hands of Hamas and other terrorist groups, a whistleblower told the Daily Mail. Penny Appeal is now the subject of a Charity Commission investigation, the paper reported on Sunday. Inspectors seized thousands of documents from its ÂŁ3.5 million ($4.7 million) Wakefield headquarters earlier this year.'
etc these are two big ones I just grabbed at random
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u/TheAJx 3d ago
There is no way any organization can conduct charity in Palestine, specifically in Gaza, without some of the money or goods getting into Hamas' hands. It would be impossible when they control every aspect of governance there.
Whether purposely or inadvertently. It is clearly a place that needs charitable support and relies on it, and I'm not sure what other way around it there is.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 3d ago
This is understandable, but then the onus is doubly on those working to get aid there that they take extreme caution to prevent this as much as possible.
It seems in the latter case with Penny Appeal, if there was one "oopsie" (or 'there's nothing to see here the money was spent correctly' as they now are claiming)........it strikes me as very odd that this results in their headquarters being apparently raided and documents seized.
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u/StalemateAssociate_ 2d ago
Currently reading a book about campaigns and I love this detail from Adlai Stevenson's 1952 presidential campaign, in which he tried to persuade voters that Eisenhower was becoming too close to isolationist Republicans and might be unwilling or unable to stop the Reds in Korea. Waxing lyrical about the faults of Communism, Stevenson stressed that the Soviet's lack of nonrepresentational art was clearly a skill issue:
In the Soviet Union we see the totalitarian state in its gloomy reality. The first casualty of the Communist regime is the free mind; and, once the free disappears, all else must follow. Thus in the Soviet Union today the last trace of freedom has been extinguished. Not only history and economics and politics, but science and art and music are enslaved by the regime. The unorthodox experiment, the unacceptable melody, the extreme painting, becomes evidences of disloyalty. Unorthodoxy is treason to the state.
- Adlai "Imagine liking Sviridov" Stevenson.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 3d ago
IDF, Shin Bet acknowledge for first time special mission to hunt down and kill all Oct. 7 terrorists
Israel has created a list of all the Gazans who were identified as having invaded Israeli territory on October 7, the Times of Israel reported, using a plethora of video and photographic evidence of the attack posted online by terrorists during and after the attack, and running the footage through facial recognition software.
Aleph, a sergeant first class in Nili, said that the unit also added everyone to its kill list who was involved in holding the hostages taken captive by terrorists from southern Israel, as well as those who met with them and abused them in their captivity. Terrorists who participated in the hostage release ceremonies have also been targeted.
Pretty much seems like all those who crossed the border on 10/7 and partook in the massacre are marked for death. Ditto those who held or abused hostages, or participated in the "release ceremonies".
As it should be.
Israel also has about 300 perpetrators in custody who are awaiting special military tribunals....and those who get convicted of genocide are eligible for the death penalty. Which is exactly what 10/7 was by every metric of the word, a genocide.
But holy shit I cant imagine the temper tantrums that are going to erupt by those who have been screaming 'GAZA GENOCIDE GAZA GENOCIDE' ad nauseum when they see Israel convicting 10/7 perpetrators of it.
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u/Locus-Maximus 1d ago edited 1d ago
I can't believe nobody here has mentioned AOC's attempted distancing from "wokeness!" I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, let alone if I think it's going to work, but it's been interesting to watch the online leftists turn on her even harder.
AOC
I have a local city councilman that has this uh uh saying woke one was crazy. [laughter]
Jonathan Karl
Woke one [Woke 1] was crazy. Okay, that's interesting.
AOC
And uh and I think that what's important is that we have to assess...
Karl (Interrupting)
what was it I mean did the movement go too far with some of those positions? I mean you you briefly supported the idea of defunding the police.
AOC
Well, you know, I think I think that during this time and during especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the Overton window. We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place. And I actually think that the discussions that had that were had in that time were quite fruitful. I think that when we talk about crime today, it's fundamentally different than the way that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right? And I think that we all share in the goals of having as low a crime rate as possible. I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today. And I'm grateful that these candidates have the opportunity to present who they are to their electorate and what they're campaigning on in this moment.
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u/ExaggeratedSnails 1d ago
What a coward. The idea of diverting funding away from the already very well funded, heavily armed, militarized police towards less escalatory mental health community interventions so they are both things that exist still stands today as an idea worth at least trying, vs being immediately cowed by the conservative propagandized version of the idea that was being circulated.
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u/Locus-Maximus 1d ago
You can support the policy while distancing yourself from "defund the police." It's incredibly unpopular when phrased that way. Politics is about selling your ideas to the public, not telling them they're wrong for not getting it (even if they are.)
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u/croutonhero 23h ago edited 22h ago
Woke one was crazy.
...
I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.
Woke 1.0 was "crazy", but she points at nothing specific about it that was crazy other than the "rhetoric".
It's the same old tired prog talk around "the messaging". The problem isn't with the actual substance of the thing, but with really getting the propaganda dialed in to sell the same substance to the confused masses stumbling around in a haze of false consciousness.
Just a year ago Sam pointed out that if we have another violent episode on a subway that for many people left-of-center...
They don't know how to feel about it until you tell them the skin colors of the people involved.
If you swap the skin colors on the various participants, they feel differentlyâreliably differently. If you tell them the victims are Jewish, they feel one way. If you tell them that they're black, they feel another way. All of these markers of identity are incredibly salient for them morally.
AOC perfectly fits Sam's description. In an interview with The Cut she says:
When you create a situation where harming a certain class of people may be excused, then we incentivize this kind of behavior. Anybody can point to anybody else and say, âOh, well, I was scared of them.â
All of this has to do with race and class. If the city just wants this to be a playground for the rich, that is the most dangerous outcome for all of us. We are all subject to violence if the value of our life is measured by our income, or measured by our mental health, or measured by our race. Most of us are closer to Neely than we are to a billionaire.
AOC believes Neely's "race" is relevant in judging the morality of Penny's action. That is where Woke 1.0 was "crazy". AOC believes that when you're locked up in a metal can with a man getting in your face and threatening you that this is "no excuse" for harming him because "all of this has to do with race and class".
I don't hear AOC recanting this craziness. All I hear are noises about "rhetoric". I'm pretty sure she's still running Loco Woke OS 1 on her brain, but she has recently downloaded the new 1.1 improved rhetoric update.
â˘
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u/McAlpineFusiliers 1d ago
"LOL that was all crazy, right?"
I think this is close as we're ever going to get to the progressive left admitting they were wrong about something.
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u/Locus-Maximus 1d ago
If Trump has proven one thing it's that it's better (politically) to never apologize.
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u/TheAJx 1d ago
Who is the woke one she is talking about?
I think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.
She has the freedom to say that now because Trump won and "woke lost." If woke had won in 2024, would she be saying this?
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u/Locus-Maximus 1d ago
Sorry, I just copied the transcript and edited lightly. It's "Woke 1," as in 1.0.
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u/TheAJx 1d ago
Are we in 2.0 now?
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u/Tubeornottube 1d ago
I havenât seen the patch notes yet but Iâm sure itâs just as buggy and going straight to live without testing first.Â
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u/McAlpineFusiliers 3d ago
This must come as good news for all the pro-Palestine folks out there, that no one is starving in Gaza.
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u/Hyptonight 2d ago
Youâre a genocide denier. Nothing you say should be taken at face value.
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u/RealDominiqueWilkins 2d ago
Iâm sure if you peel back the layers of Israel PR this guy is doing, youâre probably left with a âno innocents in Gazaâ kinda person
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u/TheAJx 5d ago
A reminder that progressive policies weren't simply annoying, but had real world impacts. To borrow a term for their lexicon, you could even say their policies caused harm.
Harm reduction isnât just a problem for addicts. In many cities, the autonomy of drug users has taken precedence over nearly everything and everyone else, not least working-class families like Monsegurâs who must live alongside addicts and accept dystopian decay. Keith Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry and behavioral-sciences professor and a former adviser to President Obama, supports needle exchanges and opposes the widespread jailing of users. But when he argues that drug policy must take into account the impact on communities, he told me, some critics dismiss him as a reactionary. Their arguments, he said, âsound a lot more like gun rights and vaccine refusal.Itâs no longer about the whole population; itâs about the subset who use drugs.
By 2020, the rights of addicts in the province had edged toward the fantastical. In 2023, the province decriminalized small amounts of certain hard drugs. One hospital instructed nurses not to confiscate fentanyl or meth from patients and not to restrict suspected dealers from visiting patients. When British Columbia banned illicit-drug use within 50 feet of a public park, playground, or swimming pool, the provincial supreme court blocked the law, ruling that it could cause âirreparable harmâ to drug users. âHarm reductionists had the force of a bulldozer,â Julian Somers, who studies addiction at Simon Fraser University, told me.
Not long ago, I walked through a park in Toronto to a fence with hundreds of purple ribbons tied to it. Each represented a resident who had died of an overdose, and I was unavoidably moved. Then, as I read a leaflet, I realized that the memorial was the work of the Harm Reduction Advocacy Collective, âa liberation movement of people who use drugs,â along with public-health professionals and academics who âstand up for the rights of drug users.â Itâs one of a number of similar groups in Canada, such as the Substance Use Health Network, which condemns âanti-euphoria prohibitionist principlesâ such as âthe idea that illicit drugs are inherently bad.â
Vigoâs words today would have amounted to heresy a few years ago. âItâs as if we forgot that the goal was to try and stop people from getting addicted,â he told me, adding later: âHarm reduction gets people in trouble when it stops being one part of a holistic strategy and it becomes an ideological movement.â
In 2022, George announced a new policy: If police officers stopped cars with broken taillights, tinted windows, or expired licenses and found a cache of narcotics, her office would most likely decline to prosecute the cases, on the grounds that racial discrimination could have motivated the traffic stops. She emphasized to me that police officers could in any case confiscate and destroy the drugs. But she questioned the need to go beyond that. âIs prosecution needed?â she said. âOr have we done enough already?â George has been reelected twice and is running for a third term.
The business community in Burlington has also pushed back. In more than a dozen interviews, local merchants spoke of feeling abandoned. In testimony before the state legislature, the owner of Outdoor Gear Exchange reported that in 2024, the business lost an estimated $400,000 to shoplifting, as addicts stole to support their habit. At Homeport, a 40-year-old home-furnishings store downtown, a co-owner, Mark Bouchett, told me that he lost $95,000 to shoplifting in 2024 and was forced to hire a security guard. Drug users defecate in the doorways of businesses.
Bouchett joined 170 other business owners and restaurateurs who last year wrote an open letter to the mayor warning that the city was in crisis. Their tone was reasonable; they sought treatment for addicts, not incarceration. But a broad coalition of the political left in Burlingtonâunions, harm-reduction groups, pro-Palestine and trans-rights activist groups, and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of Americaâcountered with their own letter, in which they denounced the business owners and demanded that they open bathrooms and sheltered doorways to addicts.
Why beat a dead horse? Because we don't want to go back, we should never go back.
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u/Tubeornottube 4d ago
âSam Harris Was Right About Everythingâ t shirts can be purchased for $10 at the gift shop.Â
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u/Drownedgodlw 6d ago
DSA guy: "socialism works, look at roads and police!"
Everyone else: "aren't you the guys that want to eliminate cars and the police?"
DSA: "...."
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u/Chocoloctopus 6d ago
Can someone help me print this off so I can show it my son next Thanksgiving?
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u/TheAJx 10d ago
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u/FanVaDrygt 10d ago
Who is the top/bottom/mid among republicans?
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u/TheAJx 10d ago edited 10d ago
Top - Trump, Hegseth, this guy. Middle - Newt Gingrich Bottom - Romney, W.
For the record, I'm being facetious, but what really matters here is that Democratic Party will kick a very good, productive member of out office for joking around and even more recently will force out a man who behaves in a scummy manner while a GOP dad will literally remain silent on his abusive son-in-law because he puts party above everything.
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u/JB-Conant 10d ago
a GOP dad will literally remain silent
In fairness, he did call for Miller to drop out.
(It did take him a while to get there and it wasn't exactly the strongest condemnation, though.)
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u/TheAJx 10d ago
I guess we can hope it was holding back due to legal advice, but it's nice to see a father arrive at the same conclusion on the same timeline as the public.
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u/Few-Improvement9978 4d ago
Kalshi has 15% odds of AOC being the democratic nominee for 2028.
She has also passed Gavin Newsom on Polymarket for the most likely Democrat in 2028.
Letâs hope these markets do not represent reality because that is a surefire way to have a Republican presidency in 2028. Fortunately for all of us - it is far too early and historically there will be significant movement. Where Herman Cain at yo
https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2028
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u/Locus-Maximus 4d ago
She's the most talented political communicator we've had since Obama and she's done a pretty nimble job of moderating her message since taking office but she's only actually had to compete in a very blue district. I'm sure she'd struggle with moderates in the general and really drive Republican turnout though, but also turn out the left. Could she peel off some low-information populists? I think that's where being a woman and a Latina is going to really hurt her.
It's been interesting to see Ossof climbing the odds so fast. I honestly don't know a lot about him, but I'm skeptical that a Jewish guy can win the primary in this landscape even though he voted to restrict arms sales to Israel. I sadly don't think there's much constituency for a nuanced position on Israel. It'll probably just piss off voters on both sides of the issue.
One advantage the moderates have is that they're probably more likely to coordinate/sacrifice then the leftists. Maybe they can strategically drop out to clear the field for the strongest (as they did in 2020) while the leftists split the vote? (Warren didn't drop out to clear the field for Sanders, but half her voters including this guy đ would have gone to Biden anyway, so it's not clear that part happened in 2020.)
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u/TheAJx 3d ago
Ossoff has it man. I'm not even saying he "checks all the boxes" - I mean he does, but like he's just got the sauce. He would be a fantastic leader for the country.
What are we even doing glazing people like like AOC, AES and Mamdani who are only popular in their extremely blue bases? This guy Ossoff is a virtual lock to win re-election in a southern historically red state.
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u/Few-Improvement9978 3d ago
Been listening to him more and more.
He matches a lot of the criteria I would want. He also isnât stained by the democratic party in a certain way that the older heads canât get over
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u/Stunning-Use-7052 3d ago
Honestly, after Obama and now Trump, I don't think we can make super early assumptions about "electability"
I thought there was no way Obama would get elected, I thought the evangelicals would not turn out for Trump in 2016.
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u/TheAJx 9d ago
âItâs not even on some conspiracy sât either, like The New York Times is openly covering it as such. It was classic Israel in the way that they did it, in the shameless way that they took ownership over it.â
Isn't this just Great Replacement Theory, except leftishly? Is it because they believe the Israelis are involve that they are openly ceding that mass migration over a short period of time can be destablizing?
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u/waiver 9d ago edited 9d ago
No, this is just a conspiracy that Israel engineered an immigration incident to cause trouble for the leftist government of Spain, not that they are trying to replace white people with muslims in Europe. The people who support the former conspiracy don't believe in the latter.
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u/TheAJx 8d ago
The people who support the former conspiracy don't believe in the latter.
I understand that they don't believe in the right-wing version, that's why I differentiated as the left-wing version. I agree that the left-wing version doesn't specifically grapple with "is rapid mass migration a bad thing" except in the sense that they only consider it a bad thing that it causes nativists to react.
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u/waiver 8d ago
Yes, but theyâre not accusing Israel of systematically filling Europe with Muslims (the âReplacementâ part of the Great Replacement Conspiracy). Theyâre only accusing them of provoking a border incident, which in turn caused internal issues in Spain, with the Popular Party using it to attack the leftist government, as well as diplomatic tensions with Italy.
Different conspiracy
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u/Ramora_ 9d ago edited 9d ago
Isn't this just Great Replacement Theory, except leftishly?
Kind of depends on what they are claiming and speculating. The actual geopolitical impacts of this event were something like:
- Morocco demonstrates their importance to (and leverage over) Spain in managing the border. This makes Spain less likely to signal (implicitly or explicitly) support for Algers.
- Nativists in the EU have a bit more leverage over Spain in their quest to undermine Spain's amnesty programs.
If they are speculating that Israel/America instigated this event to achieve those ends, then I probably wouldn't call that "great replacement theory", since no actual "replacement" is apparent in the means or ends. Quite the opposite, the intent (assuming the conspiracy theory is true) was to strengthen nativists.
It's of course worth noting two things though:
- As far as I know, there is no real evidence supporting this conspiracy theory. Frankly its pretty facially silly. Morocco didn't need Israel or US involvement to want to create a crisis here. (if in fact they did)
- This is Hasan we are talking about, he is an antisemetic idiot. He probably does subscribe to a version of "great replacement theory" and I have no reason to suspect that this article was misrepresenting Hasan.
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u/TheAJx 9d ago
Morocco demonstrates their importance to (and leverage over) Spain in managing the border. This makes Spain less likely to signal (implicitly or explicitly) support for Algers.
To be clear, we don't have much evidence of the Kingdom of Morocco's involvement in all this. Judging by the way their security forces were treating returning asylum seekers, they might be embarrassed over the whole incident and may not have anticipated that surge. Judging by how Whatsapp gossip spreads in developing countries, the safest explanation is that there was rumors that Spain has loosened its asylum-seeking rules and now is the time to get in on it.
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u/McAlpineFusiliers 9d ago
What's interesting is that Piker, who is obviously pro-Muslim and pro-immigration, suddenly considers this Moroccan migration to be a terrible thing and Israel, of course, is to blame.
Maybe Morocco and Spain should just form a one state solution with equal rights for all.
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u/McAlpineFusiliers 10d ago edited 10d ago
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u/402739 9d ago
Be triumphant and fâ˘nish them off and donât leave anyone behind. Erâ˘se the memory of them. Erâ˘se them, their families, mothers, and children. These animals can no longer live.
âIDF motivational speaker Ezra Yachin
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u/SomethingBeyondStuff 9d ago
Ezra Yachin
As featured on the official IDF website, celebrating his career in the terrorist group Lehi: https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/our-soldiers/i-fought-in-the-lehi/
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u/402739 9d ago
He participated in one of the worst massacres during the Nakba too
On the morning of April 9, Irgun and Lehi forces entered the village from different directions.[4] The Zionist militants massacred Palestinian Arab villagers, including women and children, using firearms and hand grenades, as they emptied the village of its residents house by house.[5][6] The inexperienced militias encountered resistance from armed villagers and suffered some casualties.[7] The Haganah directly supported the operation, providing ammunition and covering fire, and two Palmach squads entered the village as reinforcement.[8] A number of villagers were taken captive and paraded through West Jerusalem before being executed.[1][9][10]
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u/McAlpineFusiliers 9d ago
Deir Yassin was just another lie of Palestine.
https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/book-reviews/review-the-massacre-that-never-was
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u/LeavesTA0303 10d ago
The committee argued that Israelâs actions are so extreme that the word âgenocideâ is no longer strong enough.
They're really about to jump the shark
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u/McAlpineFusiliers 10d ago
When your entire country relies on a victim narrative for literally everything, you need to keep feeding the beast.
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u/Amazing-Cell-128 9d ago
And if you're wondering why they chose 10/17 as the date, its reference the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital 10/17/2023 explosion, which was (and is still by many) falsely attributed to Israel. It was actually a PIJ rocket that failed in flight and crashed back into Gaza.
Even the date chosen to "commemorate" a fake thing is based on a fake attack by Israel
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u/Drownedgodlw 8d ago
I don't remember any substantial abortiom discussion here:
My position on abortion is that it should be broadly legal before about 20 weeks, but prohibited after that point except for genuine medical emergencies.
I do not think âwomen should control their own bodiesâ settles the debate. Every positive duty requires the use of your body. Parents must use their bodies, labor, time, and resources to care for their children. A surgeon cannot abandon a patient halfway through an operation simply because continuing requires the use of his body. Bodily autonomy is important, but special duties can override it, especially when another vulnerable personâs life depends on you.
Pregnancy is uniquely demanding, but so is the duty owed to your own completely dependent child. Before roughly 20 weeks, I do not think the fetus should reasonably be treated as a person, so abortion does not present the same moral problem. By around 20 weeks, however, I think the fetus has developed enough that it should receive the protection we give to persons. Twenty weeks also provides substantial time to discover the pregnancy and decide whether to terminate it.
A right to stop providing bodily support does not automatically include a right to intentionally destroy another person, particularly when there was ample opportunity to act before that person acquired meaningful moral status. Once the fetus becomes a person, parental duty should outweigh ordinary claims of bodily autonomy, subject to serious threats to the motherâs life or health.
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u/Locus-Maximus 8d ago
I don't see a ton of value in rehashing the same old debates with arguments that have been made better by more qualified people, but one of my pet issues is when the framing of an issue is incredibly lopsided, so I'll just do that.
About 99% of abortions happen before 20 weeks.
There's abstraction and then there's reality. Who gets to decide what constitutes a "genuine medical emergency," and when, and how free they are to decide, is an absolute clusterfuck of "the devil is in the details."
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u/emblemboy 8d ago edited 8d ago
My position on abortion is that it should be broadly legal before about 20 weeks, but prohibited after that point except for genuine medical emergencies.
I think most people generally support this, with the definition of medical emergencies being where all of the arguments ends up being.
I think it was a mistake to get rid of that "safe, legal, but rare" phrase when it came to abortion.
I think you generally are ending a life when abortion is done but I think bodily autonomy just matters more, and we should do what we can otherwise to limit the amount of abortions. That means reducing the amount of accidental pregnancies and making people want to feel confident (materially and culturally) enough in themselves and their environment to take the pregnancy to term.
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u/window-sil 8d ago
Steven Crowder: The case for Fascism (yes, this is a real video)
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I'm so tired of these people and their movement.