Election 2020

[sus]

There's a great essay somewhere about how many domestic bombings happened in the 70s, it was something like an average of 2-3 a day in 1972—Weather Underground stuff etc. And in the decades pre-Civil War, I know that mob violence, the burning of printing presses, etc were all pretty commonplace. Which is just to say that, it seems closer to the truth to say that 1970-2000 were weirdly stable, rather than that the 2010s are weirdly unstable, in American historical frames.

 

[sus]

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scholars-stage.blogspot.com

I selected for my office a brick building, and lined the outside doors with sheet-iron, to prevent it being burned. I purchased two brass 4-pounder cannon at Cincinnati, and placed them, loaded with shot and nails, on a table breast high; had folding doors secured with a chain, which which could open upon the mob and give play to my canon. I furnished my office with Mexican lances, and a limited number of guns. There were six or eight persons who stood ready to defend me. If defeated they were to escape by a trap door in the roof; and I had placed a keg of powder, with a match, which I would set off and blow up the office and all my invaders. This I should most certainly have done in case of the last extremity.

Such precautions would have seemed eminently sensible to the editors of the New York Herald, who saw their office mobbed in 1861 not for abolitionist ideas, but for being too friendly to the Slave Power. War time attacks on publishers were by then an old-time story. The outbreak of the War of 1812 led to anti-Federalist agitation across the country, and much of that was violent. One of the most dramatic of these was siege of Baltimore's sole Federalist newspaper, a siege which ended with one Republican shot dead, nine Federalists beat senseless, another beaten dead, and a last set on fire.

 

[sus]

The last real organized campaign of violence in American history, the few thousand bombs set off by a constellation of leftist terrorist groups in the 1970s, was more than 40 years ago. A question to ponder: just how would American society react if extremists (from either side) set off a few thousand bombs today?

 

[sus]

I don't think these things are totally crazy (speculation about violence, disruption of transfer of power) and it's true that vigilance about protecting democracy is important, etc etc.

I just see a constant stream of media publications, including well-respected ones like the Times (back on my hobby horse), pushing fear-mongering on liberal readers: soon abortion will be banned! Trump isn't gonna give up power! His coalition is white supremacists and Russian spies! His new court is gonna change the constitution to give him an extra term!

And then all the women in my life have tears in their eyes like, "nothing has changed since 1950... we're right back where we started."

It's a strategy that makes perfect sense given their business model: you make people anxious wrecks, and then they compulsively read your information source to monitor the situation.

But it's not good for people's mental health, or for the mood and tenor of discourse, or for general social stability either.

 

[IdleRich]

as i see it you have two major interpretatrions of the last term, one sees chaos, terrible chaos, riots in the streets, the other sees a hero trying to change the direction of a rogue state a state whih uses every trick in the book to stymie him. and as a result has been unable to fulfil his vision for america deep state has tripped Him up at every turn.

Which two? Not me surely?
The thing for me is though, when you see Trump embarrassingly caught in some stupid and unnecessary lie he just looks so far from that. However hard I squint, whatever I pretend I can't make Trump into anything like that person, I just don't understand how people can get to that position. I get that once they're in then that's it... but how does anyone ever make that leap?

 

[sus]

Some voice deep inside me wonders whether avoiding starting international conflicts and bombing more civilians—like literally every single one of Trump's predecessors in the modern presidential era—is such a big deal that it outweighs all his gross priggishness and tax policies and moral modeling. Biden meanwhile is a war mongerer.

 

[luka]

never listen to the women in your life theyre all hysterical only men are rational

 

[version]

I'm curious what the media will do for clicks if Biden wins.

 

[sus]

I'm curious what the media will do for clicks if Biden wins.

Their profits will go down some 25-30% I believe are the standard projections.

 

[IdleRich]

@IdleRich you can draw up the odds/line for

(If chaos is >100 deaths and/or US military involvement and/or disruption of power transfer...)

Biden wins and chaos: .5% chance. Biden wins and no chaos: 69.5%. Trump wins and chaos: .1% chance. Trump wins and no chaos: 29.9%

But how have you changed so much, I thought you were offering odds of 25/1 on the Biden win with no chaos a sec ago - and now you're saying that's the most likely result?
To draw up a book you don't just use the percentages though cos - as they wlll sum to one - your book will be too fair. You want to shorten the odds a little to give yourself a nice little edge.

 

[luka]

Which two? Not me surely?
The thing for me is though, when you see Trump embarrassingly caught in some stupid and unnecessary lie he just looks so far from that. However hard I squint, whatever I pretend I can't make Trump into anything like that person, I just don't understand how people can get to that position. I get that once they're in then that's it... but how does anyone ever make that leap?

you dont get a vote youre from Uxbridge

 

[IdleRich]

If my hero Corbin had faced the Same resistance I would also have attributed those problems to the deep state and seen them as proof of how deep rooted that deep state is

Would you though? If you saw Corbyn on telly going "I never said/did that, they keep lying about me, I call it fictitious communiques" as a huge video showed him saying/doing precisely that then you would blame the deep state?

 

[luka]

no, but if he was unable to meet basic manifesto pledges

 

[luka]

i dont suppoirt trump he a dangerous psycho liar

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

ome voice deep inside me wonders whether avoiding starting international conflicts and bombing more civilians—like literally every single one of Trump's predecessors in the modern presidential era

that's not accurate tho

he's basically continued Obama's policies - drawing down the ME while at the same time ramping up drone strikes (which undoubtedly kill civilians whether or not that's their intent), continuing the campaign against ISIL, etc. what you could say in a general sense is that both Obama and Trump have both broken away from the previous decades of interventionism, probably for different but overlapping reasons.

and the problems with Trump are very much not limited to tax policies and grotesquerie

which, same as always, is not saying that Biden is awesome

 

[IdleRich]

you dont get a vote youre from Uxbridge

It just still staggers me that people take this waste of space and fashion into something that bares not the slightest resemblance to the real thing and then start worshipping it. Lots of them do this. I've been studying this phenomenon for four years and haven't begun to penetrate its depths... and maybe it will just vanish in a few short days, never having been understood. Like the planet in Solaris or those ships that appear in the Solar System in Rama or whatever it's called - perhaps like in the Solaris that's the whole point, it simply cannot be understood, it requires an intelligence so different from mine in form and in every way that it would like asking a pig to write a novel.

 

[luka]

im not debating right & rong just saying ho it is

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah, Trump hasn't started any wars, but I don't he's ideologically opposed to them, I mean, at one point it felt pretty touch and go with regard to Iran.
I think he has a very short attention span and as a rule it gets grabbed by things that are nearer.
And his coarseness as you put it, yeah his vulgarity, I do hate that. I hate his lying, his sneering, his smearing of much better people than him, the way he encourages crowds to bully people - anyone be they child or whatever who disagrees with him. His lack of grace, his utter pettiness, the inability to say anything nice about anyone who he feels as slighted him in the past, normally just by doing what is right or doing their job or whatever. A five time draft dodger laughing at POWs. It's disgusting it offends my sensibility and my morality and I make no apologies for that.

 

[IdleRich]

Bullying is horrible and Trump is a fucking bully.

 

[version]

One of the things mentioned in the Death is Just Around the Corner podcast which stuck was that the only US president worth admiring as a human being is John Quincy Adams.