Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Here's why.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/o...democrats.html

"The politics of selective fidelity to traditional norms. Liberals fear, with reason, the threat Trump poses to the institutional architecture of American government. Yet many of the same Democrats want to pack the Supreme Court, eliminate the Senate filibuster, get rid of the Electoral College, give federal agencies the right to impose eviction moratoriums and forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt without the consent of Congress. They decry Trump’s assaults on the news media while cheering the Biden administration’s attempt to strong-arm media companies into censoring opinions it disliked. And they warn of Trump’s efforts to criminalize his political opponents, even as they celebrate criminalizing him. Hypocrisy of this sort doesn’t go unnoticed by people not fully in the tank for Harris.

It remains perfectly possible that Harris will win the election, in which case we will hear a great deal about the brightness of her appeal and the brilliance of her campaign. Wiser liberals might want to press two questions: How did Trump still get so very, very close? And how can we fashion a liberalism that doesn’t turn so many ordinary people off?"

It amazes me that the NYT publishes drivel like that from Bret Stephens as if it is contributing to the discourse. He just discovered liberal hypocrisy!

A wiser editor would have said to Bret Stephens, cut everything and start with the last two sentences, which are interesting questions on which many people are actually engaging. Do you have any ideas to add to that conversation? Maybe he didn't, so they just went with this to troll the libs.

P.S. It's not the hypocrisy. Bret Stephens has never, ever, ever written a column about how conservative hypocrisy costs them anything. The question is, why do the Bret Stephens of the world -- and I think you can count yourself among them, unless you disagree -- get bothered by liberal hypocrisy, but not by conservative hyprocrisy? What is really going on with that double standard?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Here's why.
Simple. Remember what it is to be a Liberal and kick the Progressives out of the tent.

Who, specifically, are the Progressives in the tent, what, specifically, have they done that moves the needle? And how do Democrats win elections by alienating a non-trivial fraction of their coalition?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

It amazes me that the NYT publishes drivel like that from Bret Stephens as if it is contributing to the discourse. He just discovered liberal hypocrisy!

The critique is far more expansive than that, but you'll frame it as you like, as that's your favorite form of response.

A wiser editor would have said to Bret Stephens, cut everything and start with the last two sentences, which are interesting questions on which many people are actually engaging. Do you have any ideas to add to that conversation? Maybe he didn't, so they just went with this to troll the libs.

I agree those are the most important questions. How did Trump get so close? Well, a lot of it is what Stephens cites. People really, really dislike a lot of the preachiness and know-it-all-ism of Democrats, particularly given it's matched almost always with incompetent policies and is later discovered to have been based on bad data analyses. Democrats never leave anything alone. There's always an urge to tell everyone what their analysis of an issue is, and then insist on a policy prescription to react to it. Later, they admit they tackled a problem that didn't need to be tackled and in doing so caused another worse problem. From Clinton-era silliness about everyone needing to own a house (followed by the feckless W administration) to Covid over-reaction, they think they're the smart set, with the answers... and they fuck it up. Over and over and over. The law of unintended consequences bites Ds in the ass every time and their response? "Let's pass another law!"

On the second question, Liberalism doesn't turn off anyone. And I don't think liberals turn off anyone. Liberals are open minded. Classical liberals don't want to tell anyone what to do. They venerate tolerance and live and let live attitudes.

It's MAGA and Progressives that want to tell everyone what to do. Stephens' question should have been, "How do both parties rid themselves of extreme right wingers and progressives?"

We classical liberals and conservatives can get along just fine, horse trading our way to sane compromises. But these right wingers, these MAGA people? And these wingnut progressives? You can't deal with these groups. They're cancers - founts of dysfunction.

YMMV, but IMO, moderate Ds hate progressives. They think they're nuts. And moderate Rs hate MAGA and right-wingers. They think they're nuts and ruining the party. There's a whole lot of overlap for the sane of us in the middle to cut deals. We just have to eliminate the extremists from the conversations.

P.S. It's not the hypocrisy. Bret Stephens has never, ever, ever written a column about how conservative hypocrisy costs them anything. The question is, why do the Bret Stephens of the world -- and I think you can count yourself among them, unless you disagree -- get bothered by liberal hypocrisy, but not by conservative hyprocrisy? What is really going on with that double standard?

Conservative hypocrisy is so overt, there's nothing revelatory in a column calling it out. They're openly full of shit. It's like Trump. Try keeping a list of all his lies and contradictions. You'll run out of space in the spreadsheet by noon.

Who, specifically, are the Progressives in the tent, what, specifically, have they done that moves the needle? And how do Democrats win elections by alienating a non-trivial fraction of their coalition?

1. The Woke. They're political toxic waste. They're fading, but not fast enough.

2. The corporate classes that support woke narratives. These people aren't really woke. They use the woke as useful idiots, to divert the conversation from one about class, wealth inequality, and (gasp) anti-competitive monopolistic consolidation in numerous industries to one about race, gender, and trans issues.

3. The legacy media. Again, fading fast, but just irritating enough to alienate a ton of people.

How does getting rid of them help the Democrats? Well, because a whole lot of moderate ex-Republicans are now looking for a home. They have more money and power than progressives, they outnumber progressives 50 to 1, and they desperately want Normalcy. It's not naive to suggest the silent majority wants to go back to the days of Reagan and O'Neill cutting deals. Unless one has shit for brains, he realizes (unless he's MAGA or progressive) by age 27 that this country doesn't work without compromise. That no one wins in zero sum games.

The Democratic Party is, I think, on the verge of scooping up roughly 1/4 of the Republican party. Give them a space in the tent. Make MAGA and Progressivism Fringe Again and let the rest of us sail into a future of Sane Compromise.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The critique is far more expansive than that, but you'll frame it as you like, as that's your favorite form of response.

You quoted two paragraphs. The first was about liberal hypocrisy. If you think there was something better in the rest of what he wrote, quote it and I can respond. But the idea that liberal hypocrisy impels people to vote for Trump is stupid. As you said below, conservatives are hypocrites too.

People really, really dislike a lot of the preachiness and know-it-all-ism of Democrats, particularly given it's matched almost always with incompetent policies and is later discovered to have been based on bad data analyses. Democrats never leave anything alone. There's always an urge to tell everyone what their analysis of an issue is, and then insist on a policy prescription to react to it. Later, they admit they tackled a problem that didn't need to be tackled and in doing so caused another worse problem. From Clinton-era silliness about everyone needing to own a house (followed by the feckless W administration) to Covid over-reaction, they think they're the smart set, with the answers... and they fuck it up. Over and over and over. The law of unintended consequences bites Ds in the ass every time and their response? "Let's pass another law!"

If you want preachy and know-it-all combined with incompetent policies and bad analysis, Trump.

There is so little in this paragraph that differentiates Democrats from Republicans in any way. The more interesting question is the one you won't touch, which is why these things bother you (and Stephens) when they come from Democrats but not Republicans.

On the second question, Liberalism doesn't turn off anyone. And I don't think liberals turn off anyone. Liberals are open minded. Classical liberals don't want to tell anyone what to do. They venerate tolerance and live and let live attitudes.

It's MAGA and Progressives that want to tell everyone what to do. Stephens' question should have been, "How do both parties rid themselves of extreme right wingers and progressives?"

We classical liberals and conservatives can get along just fine, horse trading our way to sane compromises. But these right wingers, these MAGA people? And these wingnut progressives? You can't deal with these groups. They're cancers - founts of dysfunction.

YMMV, but IMO, moderate Ds hate progressives. They think they're nuts. And moderate Rs hate MAGA and right-wingers. They think they're nuts and ruining the party. There's a whole lot of overlap for the sane of us in the middle to cut deals. We just have to eliminate the extremists from the conversations.

Uh, hello? It's 2024 and this is your wake-up call. There are no moderate Republicans left. The party is ruined. It's is a fully-owned subsidiary of MAGA.

Conservative hypocrisy is so overt, there's nothing revelatory in a column calling it out. They're openly full of shit. It's like Trump. Try keeping a list of all his lies and contradictions. You'll run out of space in the spreadsheet by noon.

Indeed. But just pointing that kinda undercuts the point of the Stephens piece you quoted. Are you going to notice that at some point? I guess not.

If we want to talk about why people are choosing to vote for Republicans, let's talk about why they choose Republicans. It's a choice, not an allergic reaction to Democrats.

If you ask me, inflation is pretty important.