One thing that Trump never communicates, and cannot possibly communicate, is a sense of his moral superiority. The man is totally without sanctimony. Even when his every utterance is purposed toward self-aggrandizement. Even when he appears to be denigrating his supporters. Even when he is calling himself a genius, he is never actually communicating that he is better than you, more enlightened, more decent, because he’s not, and everyone knows it.
The man is just a bundle of sin and gore. And he never pretends to be anything more. Perhaps more importantly, he never even aspires to be anything more. And because of this, because he is never really judging you, he cannot possibly judge you, he offers a truly safe space for human frailty and hypocrisy and self-doubt. He offers what no priest can credibly offer, a total expiation of shame. His personal shamelessness is a kind of spiritual balm. Trump is fat Jesus. He’s grab-’em-by-the-pussy Jesus. He’s I’ll-eat-nothing-but-cheeseburgers-if-I-want-to Jesus. He’s I-want-to-punch-them-in-the-face Jesus. He’s go-back-to-your-shithole-countries Jesus. He’s no-apologies Jesus.
And now consider the other half of this image, what are we getting from the Left? We’re getting exactly the opposite message. Pure sanctimony. Pure judgement. You are not good enough. You’re guilty, not only for your own sins, but the sins of your fathers. The crimes of slavery and colonialism are on your head. And if you’re a cis-white-heterosexual male—which we know is the absolute core of Trump’s support—you’re a racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, sexist barbarian. Tear down those statues, and bend the fucking knee. It’s the juxtaposition between those two messages that is so powerful.
This sounds reasonable to me, and would adequately explain my support in 2016.
But since then, he has done something that surprised me: he stood by Brett Kavanaugh. At the cost of losing the House in the midterms, Trump backed him. I don’t think any other Republican politician (at least at the time) would have done that. Neither side talks about this anymore, but I consider this the single best thing he did in office.
From a policy perspective, I generally like the decisions of his Supreme Court picks. I don’t like his tariffs, but think the Democrats’ policies are worse. I like his isolationism, but I don’t expect it’d be implemented.
Thanks for this! So, you mainly support him because he doesn’t make you feel judged? Also, would you tell me more about what the Kavanaugh thing means to you?
I don’t think that quite captures it. That makes it sound like I’ve done something I think I should to feel bad about. No, it’s more the lack of sanctimony. The lack of … hypocrisy.[1]I despise the holier-than-thou self-righteousness of the other side, and he feels like the antithesis of that.
A related part of this is the inspirational aspect of his own behavior. Fear does not recall him from danger. Shame does not recall him from infamy.[2] He is vulgar. Rude. Uninhibited. Free.
Now, after saying all that, the Kavanaugh thing wrecks that narrative. Contrary to the meme, they weren’t after him. They were trying to hurt Trump, and he just happened to be in the way. I could easily imagine someone I knew and cared about being in Kavanaugh’s position, and the Democrats were casually ruining his life for their political goals. They were blatantly lying about him, and backed by the most powerful institutions in America, they were going to succeed. It felt inevitable that Trump, whom I thought to be supremely self-interested, was going to withdraw the nomination, and, for no fault of his own, a man would spend the rest of his life in ignominy. But then, Trump defied my expectations and stood up to them. Against this force that seemed inexorable, he stood. At first alone, and then the Republican Senators rallied behind him. And they won: Kavanaugh now sits the bench. I guess it doesn’t sound like all that much now, but I was emotionally invested in this story as it unfolded, and the best description of what I felt is awe. The man I saw in the President’s chair then was a leader fighting against impossible odds for a righteous cause. I don’t think Trump is always that man, or even usually, but he can be.
Oh, that’s really interesting. I don’t think that you should feel bad about liking someone who makes you feel less judged. I think most people actually have emotional reasons behind their decisions, and knowing your own just makes you self-aware. And, for as much as the president affects our daily lives, maybe feeling less judged isn’t that tiny compared to the other theoretical benefits of having the right candidate in office. That said, based on your Kavanaugh story, I do feel like I was missing something. As you point out, it doesn’t really make sense to like someone both for their morality and amortality. It sounds like its more like negative reinforcement, or “a breath of fresh air” with respect to the self-righteousness/judgement you’re feeling from the Left. Then, someone who was pushing back against that judgement did something you see as righteous and were emotionally invested in—the feeling of awe makes sense as a response.
Personally, my reasons for not supporting Trump are emotional. Of course I have logical reasons to support those, and I think some of those logical reasons are legitimate, as opposed to simply motivated reasoning/confirmation bias, but the direct reason why my brain is ready to say “the other guy” when it’s “do you want Trump or...” before I’ve even heard the rest of the sentence, is a strong negative mental association I’ve built with Trump over the past 8 years. And my best guess for that negative association is a combination of a) dislike of his divisive rhetoric, and b) fear of the impact of electing someone who rejected the norm of peacefully accepting election results. While mental associations don’t retain a full log of how they formed, they just are features of our mental landscape, I do have some memories to clue me in to how mine may have formed: 1. When Trump announced his candidacy, I didn’t take him seriously. No real negative association, but here was a tv personality trying to do politics. 2. By the end of the primary, despite having gone into it with the intent to vote Republican, I had decided I couldn’t vote for Trump. 3. When he won, I held out hope that he would leave behind his divisive rhetoric as a campaigning strategy and be a decent president. I changed my mind about this upon hearing his inauguration speech, which is possibly the most negative, divisive, us vs them speech I’ve heard from an elected official. 4. In 2019 I was still telling people they were ridiculous for saying Trump was the worst president. Had they heard of the trail of tears for instance? 5. In 2020, my negative associate with Trump J-curved. On the heels of using foreign aid to pressure another country into helping him win the next election, we had covid hit, and while I’ll never know the exact reasons, I can’t help but suspect that the anti-vax, anti-distancing stance of the GOP contributed to the US hitting number 1 in the world for covid deaths (more than all US military deaths combined), despite not being number 1 in population. Finally, in interviews before the election and in the debate, Trump refused repeatedly to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, which was a huge red flag for me. This ended up culminating in the election denial that has undermined tens if not hundreds of millions of people’s faith in our democratic system. Even typing this, I feel strong negative emotions toward a candidate who would refuse to accept losing an election. I don’t expect much from presidents, but being willing to give up power is definitely up there.
So, for me, instead of feeling relief from judgement or self-righteousness, the effect Trump has had on my personal life is increased levels of interpersonal conflict, more distance in some relationships, and more difficulty communicating and finding common ground with many people. This is a larger impact than I’m aware of any other political figure having on my day to day life, and it’s negative, so it makes sense that I would have a negative association with Trump.
As for judgement from the left, if you don’t mind me asking, what are your demographics? I’m a straight white cis-male with judeo-christian upbringing and no official minority statuses, and I would say I feel some judgement from the Left. I am actually concerned about the Left gaining too much power. But the Republican party I intended to vote for in 2016 doesn’t exist anymore, and I feel like rejection of election results, higher education, fact checking, epidemiological science, etc, are much more pressing concerns than the theoretical thought-policing dystopia I fear the Left could eventually evolve into. To be honest, I’m kind of upset with Republicans for removing their decent option and making me feel like I don’t have a choice, but I was never fully on board with Republicans anyway. It’s just weird how despite feeling like McCain and Romney were downgrades from politicians of the past, I wish I had them as options to vote for now.
I wonder why, despite also feeling some judgement from the Left, I ended up on the opposite side of Trump as you. Do you think you don’t mind his rhetoric? Or do you think it’s a first-impression snowball effect, or something else?
It don’t get the impression you’re making an effort to understand my position. It barely feels like you read my response. It could be my fault; I will try to be clearer.
I don’t think that you should feel bad about liking someone who makes you feel less judged.
You misunderstand me completely. I was criticizing your description. Which you’ve just doubled down on.
it doesn’t really make sense to like someone both for their morality and amorality.
Sure it does. You just need to be clear what you mean: antiheroes are a perfectly coherent thing. He’s not a good guy, but he’s on the right side, and he occasionally does great things.
Their “self-righteousness/judgement” is the least of my objections to the Left, especially during the Kavanaugh affair. They fabricated obviously false rape accusations against an innocent man because it might get them what they wanted, and they knew they’d get away with it. I don’t think “evil” is a particularly useful term in general, but if it is to mean anything at all, it would be used to describe everyone who participated in furthering that. And they would have triumphed if Trump had done the easy thing.
My “demographics” are unlikely to be helpful in understanding my views, but fwiw: Male, South Indian heritage (though on any forms that ask, I leave that blank), either Millennial or Gen Z depending on whom you ask, middle class, atheist, advanced college degree.
much more pressing concerns than the theoretical thought-policing dystopia I fear the Left could eventually evolve into
I don’t think there are any concerns more pressing than that. I also don’t think it’s “theoretical” or “eventually.”
And since you mention McCain and Romney, you’ll remember that they lost. And I assess that to be because they didn’t actually care about winning, believing losing politely to be just as good.
you don’t mind his rhetoric?
I like his rhetoric. Funny and blunt.
inauguration speech, which is possibly the most negative, divisive, us vs them speech
What? I take the view that politics is distinguishing between friend and enemy, but that speech wasn’t that. I looked looked it up: he really only condemns the establishment/Washington.
Broadly, my suspicion is that you trust the establishment news media too much, and let their description of events affect your perceptions the way they intend. That would explain the difference adequately. Here’s a good test: do you believe Trump called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in 2017 “fine people”?
As a side note,
undermined tens if not hundreds of millions of people’s faith in our democratic system.
Lots of people say almost identical things about “faith in institutions” or “experts/Science!™” as well. If their faith is misplaced, undermining it is good, actually. Electronic voting and mail-in ballots are more vulnerable to large-scale fraud than traditional in-person voting. And I bet you would recognize this if this was happening elsewhere. For example, Russia now has voting online, and plans to make that universal. I expect you understand why that system is not in fact “safe and secure” even if you can’t any specific fraudulent votes
It don’t get the impression you’re making an effort to understand my position.
Ok, well first let me correct that misconception: I am definitely making an effort to understand. Knowledge is the only thing I get out of this. If you feel I’m being insincere about any specific point, feel free to ask about it. But I think the difficulty in communication really just shows exactly that: real communication is difficult.
You misunderstand me completely. I was criticizing your description.
I interpreted your initial “That makes it sound like I’ve done something I think I should to feel bad about.” to mean “It sounds like you are implying that my reason for supporting Trump is bad” (I took the word ‘judged’ from your original post, btw), so this reply was saying “no, I am not implying that it is bad”. Apparently, you were actually criticizing my description. By that, do you mean that you do think “not feeling judged” is a bad reason to support someone, or do you mean that it’s not an accurate statement about you. If the former, why do you think that it’s a bad reason, and what in general do you consider acceptable reasons? If the latter, how is me saying I don’t view it as bad “doubling down”?
For your next objection to my “it doesn’t make sense to like someone for both their morality and amorality”, perhaps I should have paraphrased less as directly quoted you with “the Kavanaugh thing wrecks that narrative”.
I also don’t think it’s “theoretical” or “eventually.”
This implies you think it is actual and current. Do you think we currently have a thought-policing dystopia?
politics is distinguishing between friend and enemy
That’s reasonable. I would like there to be no enemies. Now, obviously that’s not the case, but it is almost never true that an entire group is an enemy, and it is often true that calling people enemies creates and perpetuates enmity.
Broadly, my suspicion is that you trust the establishment news media too much, and let their description of events affect your perceptions the way they intend. That would explain the difference adequately. Here’s a good test: do you believe Trump called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in 2017 “fine people”?
You’re correct that I trust the establishment, though obviously not to a degree that I think is too much. I also think that you’re correct that this may be a crux. For your test, without Googling, my belief is that Trump said “there are fine people on both sides” in reference to the Charlottesville protests. Even if I’m incorrect about that though, I don’t think that it measures how much trust I have in the establishment news, since you haven’t measured my confidence in that belief or how resistent it would be to counter evidence. If some random person on the street tells me they just ate a bagel, I will believe they just ate a bagel, despite a relatively low level of trust. But that doesn’t mean I would stake much on that belief or resist counter-evidence. I don’t know if my current belief on this is true, but if not, I guess you can test how I react to counter-evidence (though you may have to distinguish between my resistance to changing my belief and my level of trust in the source of whatever counter-evidence you provide).
I was recently thinking about how I would explain my general trust in the established systems (science, education, free press, democracy) to someone who didn’t share it. It’s quite difficult, because I think at core it comes down to beliefs about what other people are like. Perhaps the best way to explain it is that my base assumption is that other people are like me, and when I think about how I would act in these systems, the result of them being filled with people like me is that they would be fallible but reasonably reliable. The other reason it’s hard for me to explain why I don’t distrust them is that trust seems like the default to me. Like I said, I’d believe a complete stranger’s claim about what they ate. When I ask a cashier the price of an item, I’ve never once thought they might lie to me. The vast majority of things I hear people say (and the things I say to others) line up with reality, so against that background prior of P(statement|human said it)~=0.99, it feels like I would need to understand why someone else think P(statement|human said it & establishmentIndicator)<50%, before I could begin to explain why I haven’t reached that conclusion. I’m curious, do you have any beliefs that others label as conspiracy theories? How do you determine which sources to trust? Do you trust any of our established systems in (science, education, free press, or democracy)?
First, I apologize for my comment about you not making an effort. That was more an expression of frustration than accusation.
Let us shelve the discussion on the semantics of judgment vs. self-righteousness. Probably too subtle to be worth bothering with.
Before the Kavanaugh affair, I thought Trump acted entirely in naked self-interest. But how he handled it showed me he was more than I had given him credit for.
a thought-policing dystopia
Yes. What do you think the “cancel culture” we’ve been decrying for years is?
Just to clarify, I didn’t come up with the friend–enemy distinction. That’s straight from Carl Schmitt.
I didn’t ask whether he used the phrase. He did. My question was whether you thought he used it to describe neo-Nazis. If you did, I wouldn’t blame you: that’s the impression the media has been cultivating. Would it surprise you to learn Trump, a few sentences later, said explicitly, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally”?
I don’t think your resistance or lack thereof to counter-evidence about this particular quote is relevant. The question is whether you will continue to trust the people who left you with that impression when they knew better. If they show you another clip of Trump saying something you think is terrible, will you assume until proven otherwise that it isn’t grossly misleading? If they claim “anonymous sources” told them things about Trump, will you believe they aren’t just made up? If they make a claim about how many lies Trump told, would you take that as a reasonable estimate if they don’t present you with a complete list you can inspect?
Your mistake is in assuming the statements you care about and act on are randomly sampled in the space of all statements that people make. No, they’d be adversarial examples, crafted to manipulate you.
Yes. Several. Without looking up a more complete list of conspiracy theories, I’d list the existence of the Deep State, manipulation of the historical record by the Soviet Union, and the biological reality of race and sex.
Nullius in verba. On no one’s word.
No, not really. Except for the “established systems in democracy,” the others have lied too much, and suppressed the truth too often. And the democracy one is secretive by design, and has done nothing earn my trust.
The strategy Trump attempted to win the election using alternative electors to keep Biden from getting a majority so that Congress would decide the Presidency, reprising the similar (successful) strategy employed by Hayes in 1876, was unlikely to succeed from the outset, and poorly executed to boot. So yeah, I think it was “bad” in that sense, but probably not what you mean. Do I think it was an insurrection or a putsch, or a threat to “our democracy,” or anything like that? No, no more than this appeal to electors in 2016 to change their votes was a foiled plot to overthrow the government.
I don’t know why you are bringing up the 1876 election, when that was before the Electoral Count Act, which sets the procedure for electoral votes that was used in 2020.
I’m still a little confused.
Do you think it would be fine if 2016 electors changed their votes so that Trump lost?
Does it depend on if it was legal?
Do you think it would be fine if Trump would have succeeded with his plans in 2020?
Arguing matters of law regarding transfers of power in the highest echelons of government is … misguided. It’s like arguing with Reddit mods about what their rules say when they ban you. Or more classically, paraphrasing Pompey (via Plutarch), “Stop quoting laws at us. We have the swords.” What the laws/rules literally say doesn’t mean anything; how they’re enforced is all that matters [1].
(I suppose if one were religious, one could consider the letter of the the Law sacred in some way, not to be profaned regardless of consequence or enforcement, but I am not.)
If you win, there are many ways it can be made legal. For example, the Supreme Court rules on what the law says, they say the Constitution overrides all federal laws, and the Constitution says the President has the “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons,” so he pardons himself and everyone involved [2].
The strategy Trump tried (or one very similar) worked in 1876. I consider that extremely relevant, though as I said earlier, the plan was unlikely to work in 2020. The Electoral Count Act passed in the interim mattered insofar as its threat was sufficient to dissuade Mike Pence (and probably several state governors) from coöperating, so I guess it did its job.
I don’t know what you mean by “fine.” I would have preferred Trump win. Some reasons for which I listed on my top-level comment.
I’m not sure precisely what you mean by “legal,” (according to whom?) but no, not in the slightest.
Is it even worth listing examples of times politically powerful members of the ruling class flouted laws they would have enforced harshly against commoners? Just look at the many instances during the “covid” lockdowns, for a start.
You could say their actions would still be illegal even if the law can’t be enforced against them, but I consider that a distinction without a difference.
This comment is just confusing me even more. If you found out that Trump threatened Mike Pence with a gun to try to force him to count Trump’s electors, would that be bad? You would prefer if Trump won, so that sounds like a good thing for him to do, right? But maybe you think it’s bad for presidents to threaten people with guns, so you think it’s bad. Can you answer what you think about this hypothetical?
it’s bad for presidents to threaten people with guns
They do this indirectly all the time. This is the basis of all laws of the federal government. Yes, I think it’s bad, but I don’t think it’d be fundamentally any worse for Trump to point a gun at Pence than for, say, an FBI agent (acting under the aegis of the Executive Branch, i.e., the President) to point a gun at a drug dealer.
But I agree it’d have been a stupid thing to do for many reasons: the threat wouldn’t be credible, he’d get removed from office even if it works, people he needs to govern would turn on him, voters will switch to supporting Democrats, … that’s not winning.
Edit: This is also the basis of my criticism of the rabble-rousing on January 6. It’s primarily a matter of aesthetics.
So the problem is just that it wouldn’t help him win? So if threatening Pence with a gun would have made him president, and the supreme court said that he was immune from criminal prosecution, it wouldn’t affect if you’d vote for him again? (Ignoring that it would be his third term.)
I like Sam Harris’s description (from The Key to Trump’s Appeal—Episode #224):
This sounds reasonable to me, and would adequately explain my support in 2016.
But since then, he has done something that surprised me: he stood by Brett Kavanaugh. At the cost of losing the House in the midterms, Trump backed him. I don’t think any other Republican politician (at least at the time) would have done that. Neither side talks about this anymore, but I consider this the single best thing he did in office.
From a policy perspective, I generally like the decisions of his Supreme Court picks. I don’t like his tariffs, but think the Democrats’ policies are worse. I like his isolationism, but I don’t expect it’d be implemented.
Oh, and I’m open. Respond however you want.
Thanks for this! So, you mainly support him because he doesn’t make you feel judged?
Also, would you tell me more about what the Kavanaugh thing means to you?
I don’t think that quite captures it. That makes it sound like I’ve done something I think I should to feel bad about. No, it’s more the lack of sanctimony. The lack of … hypocrisy.[1] I despise the holier-than-thou self-righteousness of the other side, and he feels like the antithesis of that.
A related part of this is the inspirational aspect of his own behavior. Fear does not recall him from danger. Shame does not recall him from infamy.[2] He is vulgar. Rude. Uninhibited. Free.
Now, after saying all that, the Kavanaugh thing wrecks that narrative. Contrary to the meme, they weren’t after him. They were trying to hurt Trump, and he just happened to be in the way. I could easily imagine someone I knew and cared about being in Kavanaugh’s position, and the Democrats were casually ruining his life for their political goals. They were blatantly lying about him, and backed by the most powerful institutions in America, they were going to succeed. It felt inevitable that Trump, whom I thought to be supremely self-interested, was going to withdraw the nomination, and, for no fault of his own, a man would spend the rest of his life in ignominy. But then, Trump defied my expectations and stood up to them. Against this force that seemed inexorable, he stood. At first alone, and then the Republican Senators rallied behind him. And they won: Kavanaugh now sits the bench. I guess it doesn’t sound like all that much now, but I was emotionally invested in this story as it unfolded, and the best description of what I felt is awe. The man I saw in the President’s chair then was a leader fighting against impossible odds for a righteous cause. I don’t think Trump is always that man, or even usually, but he can be.
I recognize that the mismatch between what he says and what he conveys makes this tricky to assess.
Yes, I’m deliberately omitting the third part of Cicero’s line.
Oh, that’s really interesting. I don’t think that you should feel bad about liking someone who makes you feel less judged. I think most people actually have emotional reasons behind their decisions, and knowing your own just makes you self-aware. And, for as much as the president affects our daily lives, maybe feeling less judged isn’t that tiny compared to the other theoretical benefits of having the right candidate in office.
That said, based on your Kavanaugh story, I do feel like I was missing something. As you point out, it doesn’t really make sense to like someone both for their morality and amortality. It sounds like its more like negative reinforcement, or “a breath of fresh air” with respect to the self-righteousness/judgement you’re feeling from the Left. Then, someone who was pushing back against that judgement did something you see as righteous and were emotionally invested in—the feeling of awe makes sense as a response.
Personally, my reasons for not supporting Trump are emotional. Of course I have logical reasons to support those, and I think some of those logical reasons are legitimate, as opposed to simply motivated reasoning/confirmation bias, but the direct reason why my brain is ready to say “the other guy” when it’s “do you want Trump or...” before I’ve even heard the rest of the sentence, is a strong negative mental association I’ve built with Trump over the past 8 years. And my best guess for that negative association is a combination of a) dislike of his divisive rhetoric, and b) fear of the impact of electing someone who rejected the norm of peacefully accepting election results. While mental associations don’t retain a full log of how they formed, they just are features of our mental landscape, I do have some memories to clue me in to how mine may have formed:
1. When Trump announced his candidacy, I didn’t take him seriously. No real negative association, but here was a tv personality trying to do politics.
2. By the end of the primary, despite having gone into it with the intent to vote Republican, I had decided I couldn’t vote for Trump.
3. When he won, I held out hope that he would leave behind his divisive rhetoric as a campaigning strategy and be a decent president. I changed my mind about this upon hearing his inauguration speech, which is possibly the most negative, divisive, us vs them speech I’ve heard from an elected official.
4. In 2019 I was still telling people they were ridiculous for saying Trump was the worst president. Had they heard of the trail of tears for instance?
5. In 2020, my negative associate with Trump J-curved. On the heels of using foreign aid to pressure another country into helping him win the next election, we had covid hit, and while I’ll never know the exact reasons, I can’t help but suspect that the anti-vax, anti-distancing stance of the GOP contributed to the US hitting number 1 in the world for covid deaths (more than all US military deaths combined), despite not being number 1 in population. Finally, in interviews before the election and in the debate, Trump refused repeatedly to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, which was a huge red flag for me. This ended up culminating in the election denial that has undermined tens if not hundreds of millions of people’s faith in our democratic system. Even typing this, I feel strong negative emotions toward a candidate who would refuse to accept losing an election. I don’t expect much from presidents, but being willing to give up power is definitely up there.
So, for me, instead of feeling relief from judgement or self-righteousness, the effect Trump has had on my personal life is increased levels of interpersonal conflict, more distance in some relationships, and more difficulty communicating and finding common ground with many people. This is a larger impact than I’m aware of any other political figure having on my day to day life, and it’s negative, so it makes sense that I would have a negative association with Trump.
As for judgement from the left, if you don’t mind me asking, what are your demographics? I’m a straight white cis-male with judeo-christian upbringing and no official minority statuses, and I would say I feel some judgement from the Left. I am actually concerned about the Left gaining too much power. But the Republican party I intended to vote for in 2016 doesn’t exist anymore, and I feel like rejection of election results, higher education, fact checking, epidemiological science, etc, are much more pressing concerns than the theoretical thought-policing dystopia I fear the Left could eventually evolve into. To be honest, I’m kind of upset with Republicans for removing their decent option and making me feel like I don’t have a choice, but I was never fully on board with Republicans anyway. It’s just weird how despite feeling like McCain and Romney were downgrades from politicians of the past, I wish I had them as options to vote for now.
I wonder why, despite also feeling some judgement from the Left, I ended up on the opposite side of Trump as you. Do you think you don’t mind his rhetoric? Or do you think it’s a first-impression snowball effect, or something else?
It don’t get the impression you’re making an effort to understand my position.
It barely feels like youreadmy response.It could be my fault; I will try to be clearer.You misunderstand me completely. I was criticizing your description. Which you’ve just doubled down on.
Sure it does. You just need to be clear what you mean: antiheroes are a perfectly coherent thing. He’s not a good guy, but he’s on the right side, and he occasionally does great things.
Their “self-righteousness/judgement” is the least of my objections to the Left, especially during the Kavanaugh affair. They fabricated obviously false rape accusations against an innocent man because it might get them what they wanted, and they knew they’d get away with it. I don’t think “evil” is a particularly useful term in general, but if it is to mean anything at all, it would be used to describe everyone who participated in furthering that. And they would have triumphed if Trump had done the easy thing.
My “demographics” are unlikely to be helpful in understanding my views, but fwiw: Male, South Indian heritage (though on any forms that ask, I leave that blank), either Millennial or Gen Z depending on whom you ask, middle class, atheist, advanced college degree.
I don’t think there are any concerns more pressing than that. I also don’t think it’s “theoretical” or “eventually.”
And since you mention McCain and Romney, you’ll remember that they lost. And I assess that to be because they didn’t actually care about winning, believing losing politely to be just as good.
I like his rhetoric. Funny and blunt.
What? I take the view that politics is distinguishing between friend and enemy, but that speech wasn’t that. I looked looked it up: he really only condemns the establishment/Washington.
Broadly, my suspicion is that you trust the establishment news media too much, and let their description of events affect your perceptions the way they intend. That would explain the difference adequately. Here’s a good test: do you believe Trump called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in 2017 “fine people”?
As a side note,
Lots of people say almost identical things about “faith in institutions” or “experts/Science!™” as well. If their faith is misplaced, undermining it is good, actually. Electronic voting and mail-in ballots are more vulnerable to large-scale fraud than traditional in-person voting. And I bet you would recognize this if this was happening elsewhere. For example, Russia now has voting online, and plans to make that universal. I expect you understand why that system is not in fact “safe and secure” even if you can’t any specific fraudulent votes
Ok, well first let me correct that misconception: I am definitely making an effort to understand. Knowledge is the only thing I get out of this. If you feel I’m being insincere about any specific point, feel free to ask about it. But I think the difficulty in communication really just shows exactly that: real communication is difficult.
I interpreted your initial “That makes it sound like I’ve done something I think I should to feel bad about.” to mean “It sounds like you are implying that my reason for supporting Trump is bad” (I took the word ‘judged’ from your original post, btw), so this reply was saying “no, I am not implying that it is bad”.
Apparently, you were actually criticizing my description. By that, do you mean that you do think “not feeling judged” is a bad reason to support someone, or do you mean that it’s not an accurate statement about you. If the former, why do you think that it’s a bad reason, and what in general do you consider acceptable reasons? If the latter, how is me saying I don’t view it as bad “doubling down”?
For your next objection to my “it doesn’t make sense to like someone for both their morality and amorality”, perhaps I should have paraphrased less as directly quoted you with “the Kavanaugh thing wrecks that narrative”.
This implies you think it is actual and current. Do you think we currently have a thought-policing dystopia?
That’s reasonable. I would like there to be no enemies. Now, obviously that’s not the case, but it is almost never true that an entire group is an enemy, and it is often true that calling people enemies creates and perpetuates enmity.
You’re correct that I trust the establishment, though obviously not to a degree that I think is too much. I also think that you’re correct that this may be a crux. For your test, without Googling, my belief is that Trump said “there are fine people on both sides” in reference to the Charlottesville protests. Even if I’m incorrect about that though, I don’t think that it measures how much trust I have in the establishment news, since you haven’t measured my confidence in that belief or how resistent it would be to counter evidence. If some random person on the street tells me they just ate a bagel, I will believe they just ate a bagel, despite a relatively low level of trust. But that doesn’t mean I would stake much on that belief or resist counter-evidence. I don’t know if my current belief on this is true, but if not, I guess you can test how I react to counter-evidence (though you may have to distinguish between my resistance to changing my belief and my level of trust in the source of whatever counter-evidence you provide).
I was recently thinking about how I would explain my general trust in the established systems (science, education, free press, democracy) to someone who didn’t share it. It’s quite difficult, because I think at core it comes down to beliefs about what other people are like. Perhaps the best way to explain it is that my base assumption is that other people are like me, and when I think about how I would act in these systems, the result of them being filled with people like me is that they would be fallible but reasonably reliable. The other reason it’s hard for me to explain why I don’t distrust them is that trust seems like the default to me. Like I said, I’d believe a complete stranger’s claim about what they ate. When I ask a cashier the price of an item, I’ve never once thought they might lie to me. The vast majority of things I hear people say (and the things I say to others) line up with reality, so against that background prior of P(statement|human said it)~=0.99, it feels like I would need to understand why someone else think P(statement|human said it & establishmentIndicator)<50%, before I could begin to explain why I haven’t reached that conclusion.
I’m curious, do you have any beliefs that others label as conspiracy theories? How do you determine which sources to trust? Do you trust any of our established systems in (science, education, free press, or democracy)?
First, I apologize for my comment about you not making an effort. That was more an expression of frustration than accusation.
Let us shelve the discussion on the semantics of judgment vs. self-righteousness. Probably too subtle to be worth bothering with.
Before the Kavanaugh affair, I thought Trump acted entirely in naked self-interest. But how he handled it showed me he was more than I had given him credit for.
Yes. What do you think the “cancel culture” we’ve been decrying for years is?
Just to clarify, I didn’t come up with the friend–enemy distinction. That’s straight from Carl Schmitt.
I didn’t ask whether he used the phrase. He did. My question was whether you thought he used it to describe neo-Nazis. If you did, I wouldn’t blame you: that’s the impression the media has been cultivating. Would it surprise you to learn Trump, a few sentences later, said explicitly, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally”?
I don’t think your resistance or lack thereof to counter-evidence about this particular quote is relevant. The question is whether you will continue to trust the people who left you with that impression when they knew better. If they show you another clip of Trump saying something you think is terrible, will you assume until proven otherwise that it isn’t grossly misleading? If they claim “anonymous sources” told them things about Trump, will you believe they aren’t just made up? If they make a claim about how many lies Trump told, would you take that as a reasonable estimate if they don’t present you with a complete list you can inspect?
Your mistake is in assuming the statements you care about and act on are randomly sampled in the space of all statements that people make. No, they’d be adversarial examples, crafted to manipulate you.
Yes. Several. Without looking up a more complete list of conspiracy theories, I’d list the existence of the Deep State, manipulation of the historical record by the Soviet Union, and the biological reality of race and sex.
Nullius in verba. On no one’s word.
No, not really. Except for the “established systems in democracy,” the others have lied too much, and suppressed the truth too often. And the democracy one is secretive by design, and has done nothing earn my trust.
Just one question, when he tried to steal the election using fake electors in 2020, do you think that was bad?
I reject the premises of this blatantly loaded question.
The strategy Trump attempted to win the election using alternative electors to keep Biden from getting a majority so that Congress would decide the Presidency, reprising the similar (successful) strategy employed by Hayes in 1876, was unlikely to succeed from the outset, and poorly executed to boot. So yeah, I think it was “bad” in that sense, but probably not what you mean. Do I think it was an insurrection or a putsch, or a threat to “our democracy,” or anything like that? No, no more than this appeal to electors in 2016 to change their votes was a foiled plot to overthrow the government.
I don’t know why you are bringing up the 1876 election, when that was before the Electoral Count Act, which sets the procedure for electoral votes that was used in 2020.
I’m still a little confused.
Do you think it would be fine if 2016 electors changed their votes so that Trump lost?
Does it depend on if it was legal?
Do you think it would be fine if Trump would have succeeded with his plans in 2020?
Does it depend on if it was legal?
Arguing matters of law regarding transfers of power in the highest echelons of government is … misguided. It’s like arguing with Reddit mods about what their rules say when they ban you. Or more classically, paraphrasing Pompey (via Plutarch), “Stop quoting laws at us. We have the swords.” What the laws/rules literally say doesn’t mean anything; how they’re enforced is all that matters [1].
(I suppose if one were religious, one could consider the letter of the the Law sacred in some way, not to be profaned regardless of consequence or enforcement, but I am not.)
If you win, there are many ways it can be made legal. For example, the Supreme Court rules on what the law says, they say the Constitution overrides all federal laws, and the Constitution says the President has the “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons,” so he pardons himself and everyone involved [2].
The strategy Trump tried (or one very similar) worked in 1876. I consider that extremely relevant, though as I said earlier, the plan was unlikely to work in 2020. The Electoral Count Act passed in the interim mattered insofar as its threat was sufficient to dissuade Mike Pence (and probably several state governors) from coöperating, so I guess it did its job.
I don’t know what you mean by “fine.” I would have preferred Trump win. Some reasons for which I listed on my top-level comment.
I’m not sure precisely what you mean by “legal,” (according to whom?) but no, not in the slightest.
Is it even worth listing examples of times politically powerful members of the ruling class flouted laws they would have enforced harshly against commoners? Just look at the many instances during the “covid” lockdowns, for a start.
You could say their actions would still be illegal even if the law can’t be enforced against them, but I consider that a distinction without a difference.
This comment is just confusing me even more. If you found out that Trump threatened Mike Pence with a gun to try to force him to count Trump’s electors, would that be bad? You would prefer if Trump won, so that sounds like a good thing for him to do, right? But maybe you think it’s bad for presidents to threaten people with guns, so you think it’s bad. Can you answer what you think about this hypothetical?
They do this indirectly all the time. This is the basis of all laws of the federal government. Yes, I think it’s bad, but I don’t think it’d be fundamentally any worse for Trump to point a gun at Pence than for, say, an FBI agent (acting under the aegis of the Executive Branch, i.e., the President) to point a gun at a drug dealer.
But I agree it’d have been a stupid thing to do for many reasons: the threat wouldn’t be credible, he’d get removed from office even if it works, people he needs to govern would turn on him, voters will switch to supporting Democrats, … that’s not winning.
Edit: This is also the basis of my criticism of the rabble-rousing on January 6. It’s primarily a matter of aesthetics.
So the problem is just that it wouldn’t help him win? So if threatening Pence with a gun would have made him president, and the supreme court said that he was immune from criminal prosecution, it wouldn’t affect if you’d vote for him again? (Ignoring that it would be his third term.)