“ Republicans who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 and deny the results of that election. The dividing line is the denial itself: the willingness to hold that an election was stolen in the absence of evidence. That single belief turns out to be a genetic marker. Everything else travels with it.”
He doesn’t seem to be talking about conservatives or republicans broadly; seems like he’s focusing on a much smaller minority of people in society with very specific and fringe views. Perhaps it is “bias” to lump these people with the rest of conservatives.
Do you seriously buy the "explanation" that "liberals vote so much more by mail-in" that both Pennsylvania and Georgia flipped even though Trump was largely ahead in both?
Two states that, btw, were won by the Republicans in 2024. Which should give some food for thoughts too.
I think Trump is both crazy and senile now but I also think he may be the only US president to have ever won the elections three times.
Now I do also believe that, even in the face of cheating (probably by the same who then guided senile-Biden's auto-pen for four years), republicans should have accepted the defeat instead of trying to launch an insurrection.
Conservative vote is literally "cruelty is the point" and "empathy is bad thing" vote. That vote was motivated by explicit wish to harm and by masculinity being defined as "manly man is asshole" ideology.
Liberals are big tent of "not like that" that encompasses also assholes, but, crutially, not only them
I learned that I don't need to agree 100% with an author's premises to find value in what she writes.
She is a bit partisan, but on the other side, it is about time for us on the right to completely re-evaluate MAGA, and go about creating a third way, distinct from the old mainstream republicanism of the McCains and Bushes, but also critical of what MAGA turned out to be.
I also got strong AI vibes, but I enjoyed the content. I thought it was a interesting summary of topics I've read many times before and even if the content was AI-assisted, does it matter? It seems there was a strong guiding hand in presenting a popular topic in a new way.
It matters because I don't like the style. I wouldn't like it if a human wrote it. I don't like the style so much that I won't read things written with it.
So maybe she had something interesting to say, but it was not communicated to me because I bounced.
I made it through because the content was interesting, but I am definitely not going to read more from this author because the AI-wordsmithing is so grating (I read loads of it at work, don't need to read any more of it).
It's remarkable that this article talks about Tammany Hall without mentioning that its century of peak corruption coincided with mass immigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall.
As Wikipedia explains: "In the 1840s, over 130,000 Irish immigrants arrived in New York City to escape the Great Famine, arriving in poverty and joining scores of thousands of their fellow countrymen who had arrived over the prior decades. By 1855, 34 percent of the city's voter population was composed of Irish immigrants. By providing these new arrivals with patronage employment, job referrals, legal aid, food, shelter, employment insurance, and other extralegal services, including citizenship and naturalization services, Tammany secured the lifelong support of the large and growing Irish population, which would form the majority of its electoral base for the next century. In exchange for these services, the Tammany political machine harvested Irish immigrant votes."
The article also quotes Plato without mentioning that he thought foreign influence (both trade and immigration) were dangerous to good government. Plato saw good government as precarious and fragile and something that could be achieved only through careful cultivation of the polity's "constitution" (not just a legal document, but the "way of life" of the populace): https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/983154/1/EXO...
"In most states of course, such confusion is a way of life with which people learned to cope by various compromises, as was the case when immigrants are allowed into a country (PS, 293d). But such compromises were neither necessary nor desirable for Plato, since any policy of unrestricted immigration would destroy his political constitution (PL, 736c; 950a). Aristotle agreed that immigration was a dangerous thing because it pitted newcomers against those already established, thus creating tensions and frictions between them."
Plato and Aristotle (not to mention Alexander Hamilton) literally foresaw the problem that would result when you carefully cultivated a democracy than introduced a large population of foreigners who could be persuaded to vote as a bloc through patronage and material rewards. The article sets up that conclusion beautifully, but then inexplicably whiffs it on the punchline.
Tammany Hall did not happen because they were immigrants it happened because someone thought it was a good idea to have people who could not even write their own name vote. Democracy hinges on a well educated populace who actually gives a shit- which as we all know has not and never will happen.
The worst form of government- except for all the others so far tried.
But they couldn’t read because they were poor immigrants to a country that at the time led the world in literacy. The literacy rate in New England for adult men was 90% in 1776. It’s not a surprise that New England probably remains the best governed part of the country.
And there are instances of democracy working well. Alexis de Tocqueville described a healthy democracy existing in the midwest in 1831. Tammany Hall was particularly bad and corrupt even by the standards of the time.
43 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 45.0 ms ] threadHe doesn’t seem to be talking about conservatives or republicans broadly; seems like he’s focusing on a much smaller minority of people in society with very specific and fringe views. Perhaps it is “bias” to lump these people with the rest of conservatives.
Two states that, btw, were won by the Republicans in 2024. Which should give some food for thoughts too.
I think Trump is both crazy and senile now but I also think he may be the only US president to have ever won the elections three times.
Now I do also believe that, even in the face of cheating (probably by the same who then guided senile-Biden's auto-pen for four years), republicans should have accepted the defeat instead of trying to launch an insurrection.
Complains about biden auto pen and biden are kind of clearly fake given Trump mental state.
They do. See page 4. (https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2020-12/How-...)
Liberals are big tent of "not like that" that encompasses also assholes, but, crutially, not only them
Good writing is almost never neutral. It can be fair, careful, honest, and proportionate. But if it has nothing to say, it isn’t good writing.
She is a bit partisan, but on the other side, it is about time for us on the right to completely re-evaluate MAGA, and go about creating a third way, distinct from the old mainstream republicanism of the McCains and Bushes, but also critical of what MAGA turned out to be.
But no, I don't think it's AI, I think it's just written in a style that happens to be an attractor for LLMs.
So maybe she had something interesting to say, but it was not communicated to me because I bounced.
Does that exist? Genuinely curious.
I found this blog from late 2021: https://medium.com/grimhistorian/coffee-the-sexiest-drink-in...
I can only see the beginning of it, but to me the style is obviously different from the thread's linked article.
As Wikipedia explains: "In the 1840s, over 130,000 Irish immigrants arrived in New York City to escape the Great Famine, arriving in poverty and joining scores of thousands of their fellow countrymen who had arrived over the prior decades. By 1855, 34 percent of the city's voter population was composed of Irish immigrants. By providing these new arrivals with patronage employment, job referrals, legal aid, food, shelter, employment insurance, and other extralegal services, including citizenship and naturalization services, Tammany secured the lifelong support of the large and growing Irish population, which would form the majority of its electoral base for the next century. In exchange for these services, the Tammany political machine harvested Irish immigrant votes."
The article also quotes Plato without mentioning that he thought foreign influence (both trade and immigration) were dangerous to good government. Plato saw good government as precarious and fragile and something that could be achieved only through careful cultivation of the polity's "constitution" (not just a legal document, but the "way of life" of the populace): https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/983154/1/EXO...
"In most states of course, such confusion is a way of life with which people learned to cope by various compromises, as was the case when immigrants are allowed into a country (PS, 293d). But such compromises were neither necessary nor desirable for Plato, since any policy of unrestricted immigration would destroy his political constitution (PL, 736c; 950a). Aristotle agreed that immigration was a dangerous thing because it pitted newcomers against those already established, thus creating tensions and frictions between them."
Plato and Aristotle (not to mention Alexander Hamilton) literally foresaw the problem that would result when you carefully cultivated a democracy than introduced a large population of foreigners who could be persuaded to vote as a bloc through patronage and material rewards. The article sets up that conclusion beautifully, but then inexplicably whiffs it on the punchline.
The worst form of government- except for all the others so far tried.
And there are instances of democracy working well. Alexis de Tocqueville described a healthy democracy existing in the midwest in 1831. Tammany Hall was particularly bad and corrupt even by the standards of the time.