Election 2024: Last One Out, Hit The Lights

[BurtReynolds]

Once again, over-educated urban whites are the moving against everyone else.

luxury beliefs

[tree_]

this is the part i liked the best

Elon Musk never corrects his errors. Tucker Carlson never corrects his errors. Donald Trump never makes errors, because he never stops lying. He's playing tennis without the net and his fans love it.

Putting your faith in deranged personalities isn't a viable alternative to having truly liberal institutions that you can trust and that can be obliged to earn your trust back when they fail.

I understand how satisfying it is to find a new bully to beat up the other bullies who've been making you miserable. The problem is this new bully is worse. This new bully has no principles. This new bully has no journalistic or academic or scientific conscience to appeal to. Whatever might be wrong with a person like Anthony Fauci or Francis Collins or any of the other doctors who have been demonized right of center for their approach to setting COVID policy, at least they are real doctors and scientists who have some professional scruples and reputations to protect among people who actually know something about medical science. RFK, Jr. has none of that. He is just a cowboy taking shots at the establishment. The Joe Rogan podcast is not a substitute for the Wall Street Journal or the Kennedy School at Harvard. It is simply not progress to have a comedian like Dave Smith, who has apparently done his own research, interviewed about the history of the middle east or the war in Ukraine like he is the next Henry Kissinger. All of this free access to information is making us dumber.

Of course I blame Trump and social media for how divisive our politics have become. Trump is what you get when 51% of us decides to just declare bankruptcy on core moral values and political principles and journalistic ethics and necessary institutions.

There is no real defense of Trump and Trumpism. All of his defenders act like his critics just don't like the man's style. He's just too crass or bombastic. Or they think we're worried about hypothetical things that might never happen. We're worried he might become a fascist in the future and needless to say these concerns are telltale signs of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But none of that is true.

The problem with Trump isn't his style. And it's not merely what might happen in the future. The problem is what has already happened. It's the damage that Trump has already caused to our Democracy. It is the fact that he has turned the Republican party into a personality cult that celebrates all this damage as a sign of progress.

For instance, while many of us really wanted Kamala Harris to win on Tuesday, we are also breathing a sigh of relief that she didn't win by a narrow margin. Why are we relieved about this? Because Trump and Elon and several other high profile freaks spread so many lies and conspiracy theories about election fraud that they effectively rigged our society to explode.

On the day of the vote, Trump and Elon were both spreading lies about a terrible fraud being perpetrated in Pennsylvania. Now that Trump won, where is the concern about fraud? It just evaporated. I guess Elon looked into it and our voting machines are fine now, right?

Pay attention to what happened here. These guys imposed a serious risk of injury on our whole society for purely selfish reasons. And the fact that we're now relieved to have avoided a civil war is itself an injury to our democracy and to our social order.

Is this too ethereal a point to understand?

If someone rigs your house to explode and the bomb just happens to not go off for reasons that they didn't actually control, it seems to me that they don't get to say "no harm, no foul, let's just move on. Let's agree to disagree about what happened here." No. You put our whole democracy at risk with your lies. You knowingly raised the temperature and the pressure on your side of the electorate, again, with lies, and ran the risk of producing serious violence if things had gone the other way.

Honestly, there was a moment on Tuesday night when the tide had fully turned against Harris, when the needle over at the New York Times website was giving Trump an 89% probability of winning, but the Blue Wall states had not been decided. It was still possible at that point for Harris to win. 1 in 10 chance events happen all the time. But I remember thinking that I hope she doesn't win now. Because at that point, given the optics, given Republicans really thought they had it in the bag, and that even Democrats seemed to think that they lost... If Harris' luck had turned at that point and she had won, we could've had a civil war. Given the degree to which conspiracy thinking had been weaponized by Trump and his enablers. Again, even on election day itself, these lies had been spread consciously, deliberately. Elon did this personally to hundreds of millions of people on the social media platform that he owns.

Given all of that, honestly, I think it simply wasn't safe for Harris to win a free and fair election at that point. That is a totally crazy thought to have had on election night in America in the year 2024.

Where do we send the bill for the damage that has been done to our country? Half of our society just elected a man to the presidency who they know would not have accepted the results of the election had he lost. Harris conceded the next day as everyone knew she would. There's probably no one who supported Trump who thinks that he would've done what they fully expected Harris to do, which is to protect the most important norm of our democracy, the very thing that makes it possible: The peaceful transfer of power.

And the astonishing thing is that Trump supporters are totally OK with this asymmetry. They expected Harris to concede and would've demanded that she do it. And yet they know Trump wouldn't have conceded if he lost, understanding all the risk this would've posed to our social fabric. And they are fine with that. That is already the ruination of our politics. That is what the path to fascism looks like. We are already on it. There is nothing hypothetical about this. Bad things have already happened. And this is true, whatever happens over the next four years.

It's like in the film The Exorcist. If your kid has stigmata and is vomiting green goo in all directions and moving furniture with her mind, you should admit that you have a problem. It shouldn't require Satan himself to make an appearance. What is so frustrating about Trump supporters is that they refuse to acknowledge any of this. They simply refuse to acknowledge how pathological our situation is. And how pathological Trump himself has made it.

Whatever story you have in your head about all the good Trump might do in a second term, "he is a disrupter," "he has all the tech bros in there with him," "he's just scary enough to scare our enemies," or "he's just a bullshitter and he won't do half what he claims he will do so don't worry about it,"... Here is what is true now: We are returning a man to the oval office, who as a sitting president would not commit to a peaceful transfer of power and tried to steal the 2020 election, all the while claiming it was being stolen from him. And he has lied about this ever since, knowing that these lies stand as a continuous provocation to violence. And there are court cases pending, seeking to hold him accountable for all of this. Cases, which now that he will be in control of the Justice department, will be dismissed.

We are putting Trump back in power when we know that he can't honestly discharge his oath of office, because he has no respect for the Constitution. And half of our society is not only willing to run this risk, they are positively jubilant about it. At a minimum, you should acknowledge that these events have seriously injured our politics.

Whatever happens over the next four years, I have something I really must say to Joe Rogan and all the other podcasters who interviewed Trump. You can't have it both ways. You don't get to say that this was the podcast election, and these long form conversations are incredibly important for people to hear so that they can make up their mind about who to vote for, and then take no journalistic responsibility whatsoever to get your facts straight, or to expose obvious lies when you're talking to the most prolific liar on earth.

You don't get to spout endless conspiracy theories about how our election system is dangerously broken and vulnerable to fraud, and then when your candidate wins, say "well, Trump's victory was just too big to rig the election." No, how about realizing that there was nothing significantly wrong with our system in the first place. And all these concerns about fraud were lies coming from your candidate and his surrogates. And they were telling these lies in preparation for not accepting the results of the election had he lost. And you let your platform be used for that purpose by people who were willing to shatter our politics and even risk provoking a civil war out of personal self interest.

Every podcaster who interviewed Trump managed to make it seem like all the bad things that have ever been said about him were the result of some left-wing, elite media conspiracy. To interview Trump or his surrogates responsibly would have required that you put them on the spot for any number of odious things he has said and done and for all the things he has said he intends to do in his second term, all of which are well-documented, and many of which should be totally disqualifying in a presidential candidate. It's not enough to just turn on the microphones and just have a conversation. And it doesn't matter that it is three hours long if all you're going to do is launder the man's lies by ignoring them in the interest of maintaining good vibes.

There is a complacency and an amorality to the way you approach this that was actively harmful. And all you people with Twitter Files Derangement Syndrome, just how fair and balanced are things over there at X now? Is it the bastion of free speech you were hoping for? You think having a platform run by a manic billionaire who doesn't trust any of his own moderators to vet information so he fires them, but trusts random conspiracists and lunatics so he personally amplifies their lies to 200 million followers, do you think this is progress? Do you think you would feel the same way if a left-wing billionaire was boosting activist garbage to his 200 million followers every hour on the hour?

And perhaps a note to journalists and scientists and writers and people with actual reputations to protect and lives to live: None of this gets any better until you all decide to leave X. You know it's a cesspool. You know it's harming our society. Most of you know it's harming your lives personally. By merely being there and making it seem like everyone has to be there because everyone is there, you are helping to build the tool that is making fact-based conversation impossible. Our society is being riven by lies and social media and X in particular, is largely responsible for this. Of course, I get that some breaking news happens there first. And some news might only happen there. But if that's a feature of social media that we simply must conserve, then we must substantiate it elsewhere. Not on the platform owned and run and entirely dominated by a meme junky who lost all of his principles years ago.

Once again, everything I've been talking about and complaining about has already happened. But, looking forward, of course there are reasons to be worried about a second Trump term. Is RFK, Jr. really going to be setting medical policy for the country? That should make your head explode. Is Trump going to weaken our international alliances? Will he pull us out of NATO? If we have fewer biological men in women sports, are we also going to have fewer democracies? Is that a fair trade? Is Trump going to call the My Pillow guy and the Pizza Gate dummies for advice on how to run the world? Or will he suddenly pivot and surround himself with competent, ethical advisors? Well, we'll have to wait and see.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Headline I just read: "Elon Musk wants to reshape who controls America’s money supply"

Imagine the reaction in 2017 if Biden said he was putting a foreign business man in charge of our government spending. And that foreign business man loved electric cars. Can you imaging the fucking butthurt from the right and Trumpers? But now the "snowflake libtards" are just being bullied into that being ok.

[tragabigzanda]

FUCK ICE

[Bi_3]

We are starting to get much better analysis of the election results now that data has had some time to stew:

https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-g ... narratives

[96583UP]

Once again, over-educated urban whites are the moving against everyone else.

luxury beliefs

that white guy who wrote for dave chappelle had a funny quote

atheism is the ultimate white privilege

whites have it so good they don't 'need' an afterlife

some truth in that

[spike]

We are starting to get much better analysis of the election results now that data has had some time to stew:

https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-g ... narratives

Re racism, that one simplifies the issue as whites against all minorities. Need analysis of racism amidst the minority ranks (between fellow minority groups) as well.

[BurtReynolds]

?

[E.H. Ruddock]

Apparently polymarket isn’t available to the US, but they are looking for evidence of them accepting trades from US users

[BurtReynolds]

Yeah it's not available in the US, but I'm sure it's easy to get around.

I think that outside of her immediate bubble, no one would have cared. She didn't seem too concerned with that when cozying up to Liz Cheney and talking about a Republican in her cabinet.

[BurtReynolds]

They invented deplatforming. Now they are deplatforming themselves. Great job!

[Bi_3]

They invented deplatforming. Now they are deplatforming themselves. Great job!

No one can make the noodles. No one is pure enough

[Bi_3]

I do love the post-election thoughts of proggles… for like 60 days they really get it. Then something grabs their attention and it’s gone, but for the time being there are a lot valuable lessons being learned

[epilogue]

"This is remarkable, Ezra Klein says something I can kind of agree with if I squint so I'm gonna get dramatic about it even though I've spent my whole like acting like everything Ezra says is stupid and no one should trust him."

The hypocrisy is the only thing that remains stunning or remarkable.

[Jorge]

I have never seen someone try so hard to make a term happen quite like Bi3 with "proggles"

It sounds like you're talking about adorable creatures from some 80s Saturday morning cartoon

[dad]

queue the fraggle proggle rock theme song

[Jorge]

proggle rock theme song

[epilogue]

proggle rock theme song

[Bi_3]

"This is remarkable, Ezra Klein says something I can kind of agree with if I squint so I'm gonna get dramatic about it even though I've spent my whole like acting like everything Ezra says is stupid and no one should trust him."

The hypocrisy is the only thing that remains stunning or remarkable.

The issue isn’t hypocrisy, it’s that youve created a delusion of what people whose politics you don’t like are, and then retreat to this imaginary world when someone dares to have impure or heretical thoughts by responding with some strawman representation of them to take shots at. It’s below you. Instead of attacking the poster, try commenting on the ideas of the content or speech. You’d be surprised how much brighter the world gets when your first reaction isn’t sticking your fingers in your ears.

[epilogue]

"This is remarkable, Ezra Klein says something I can kind of agree with if I squint so I'm gonna get dramatic about it even though I've spent my whole like acting like everything Ezra says is stupid and no one should trust him."

The hypocrisy is the only thing that remains stunning or remarkable.

The issue isn’t hypocrisy, it’s that youve created a delusion of what people whose politics you don’t like are, and then retreat to this imaginary world when someone dares to have impure or heretical thoughts by responding with some strawman representation of them to take shots at. It’s below you. Instead of attacking the poster, try commenting on the ideas of the content or speech. You’d be surprised how much brighter the world gets when your first reaction isn’t sticking your fingers in your ears.

No, that's not it all. But I appreciate the clear projection.

I'm not sticking my fingers in my ear. I've listened to Ezra for a long time. What he said is nothing new, not for him, and not for many on the left. But whomever that tweet is from presents it as some kind of revelation! It's disingenuous. It's the same thing you do all the time when you post. Create a narrative, usually it's snarky and in bad faith, and post without further context or elaboration. It's not uncommon on the right at all. That's what I have a problem with. That's the hypocrisy. But, of course, I don't imagine you'd see it or validate it.