Donald Trump
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I just want to be clear about something: @realDonaldTrump is an *unacceptable* risk to take for merely breaking an evil SJW Overton window.
As Hillary is not listening, it's understandable many of you will vote Trump. I see his risk as existential. Please respect me as I do you.
I cannot seem to convey to fellow @HillaryClinton voters that painting all Trump voters as racist misogynistic idiots is offensive & wrong.
I assume journalism was once a thing that was crowded out by the thing now confusingly called journalism. It's time for us to reinvent it.
I don't think this is a massive shock to people who were thinking for themselves. It's a shock to anyone who outsourced to CNN/FOX/NYT/NPR.
@christinelu I'm feeling some pain & fear too. But many of my friends didn't take this seriously ... b/c they demonized those who disagreed.
@cosmos4u I think a lot of folks lied to themselves. Many got to the polling station thinking they would vote for HRC.... until in private.
Here's the silver lining. The same dumb analysis that told you Hillary was going to win is what told you Trump-nation is neo-nazi skinheads.
2017
36 years of variation on a theme by Ronald W Reagan. Today, at 51, I'll go back to beginners' mind. History is restarting.
No time to lose.
As of today, my stance readjusts. Put simply:
Cooperation everywhere possible. Vigilance wherever necessary.
Thank you BHO Welcome DJT
@wobbles That I had no idea what the DJT payload would be b/c the campaign was a kayfabe work & trolling of PC. Now we're playing for keeps.
1st Tweet of the Trump era: It's time for we the technical classes (e.g. PhDs) to stop lying for our former institutional masters on policy.
2nd Tweet of the Trump era: We the technical classes must not begin lying to the new masters of our institutions to flatter their populism.
At some point, Pres. Trump will have to choose between high ability, totally loyalty & full staffing of our government. He can pick any two.
2018
When I saw this sign in SFâs Castro district, I thought of my friend @SamHarrisOrg and my struggle to explain to him in early 2017 why people trust @realDonaldTrump when he is not truthful.
Trump is like the guy who added the last line on the sign when Clinton & Bush would not.
Trumpâs style of metahonesty is however very dangerous. I wrote about this in a 2011 essay I frequently reference on the theory of Kayfabe which I anticipated would take over as boomers were forced to deal w/ the cognitive aftermath of the Great Recession: https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783
"There shall be open borders." -WSJ
"There shall be open borders." -SJW
Want to know how @realDonaldTrump won? By giving people who intuit that the institutional commentariat has played them every election, the chance to finally order *anything* taken completely off the US menu.
So go vote America. All I ask, is that when given any opportunity to do so, use it to reject Utopianism on Right or Left. What we were given as custodians is so much better than moronic utopian experiments that always end in dystopia. Let's not mess this up. #lovethisgreatcountry
You just love this, donât you? People are dead. Homes torched. The state is on fire. The air here is choked with smoke.
So this. Because, nobody else gets why this works?
I mean, I get it. But whatever you got for this, isnât worth it. Thereâs no prize worth winning this way.
@SquawkieEagle Thx. This president says many things that *do* need to be said, but in ways that are opportunistic, simplistic, cruel, distorted, insensitive, incendiary and hyperbolic. Some are angry that heâs a bad liar, but I often think heâs really at his absolute worst as a truth teller.
@Ramsey_Payne I donât think he loves the tragedy. I think he loves the fact that *if* there is a tragedy, *then* he can exploit it. He does this by telling a mixture of simplistic lies and truths together, and sticking it to his adversaries who donât expect it because itâs such a dick move.
2019
I think I avoided all pressure to find Trump guilty of collusion w Russia. And it was a considerable cost on my life. The typical conversation went: âOh câmon Eric. Heâs clearly guilty. Why make excuses? When the report comes youâll have to look in the mirror.â
I want apologies.
It wasnât (and still isnât) that I knew. I had no idea. But I also had no idea how everyone else just somehow knew what was actually true. Did everyone have a dossier that I did not? How does this pressure to *infer* unknown things become a Left-of-center mind virus?
Letâs stop.
And one last thing: Iâm still of the opinion that Trump is a grave problem & that the people who voted him in deserve a responsible Left of center expression for their real frustrations on Trade, Immigration, Terror and elite betrayal to replace Trump w something more wholesome.
So please remember that many people on the Left did *not* ever sign up for this idee fixe of the Mueller report as answer to the Trump phenomena. Weâve not called his presidency illegitimate. And we donât think his supporters are all nuts. This is a democracy, betrayed by elites.
I will be coming back to this old tweet repeatedly. A plan to reassert narrative control before 2020 was evident immediately after Trumpâs win shocked our institutional elite. âFake newsâ was its placeholder buying time to figure out how to end rivals to âauthoritative sources.â
It would appear we are being psychologically prepared for a change in the algorithms that direct our attention.
Since then we have learned about âThe Good Censorâ and âML Fairnessâ at google, âDeboostingâ at Facebook, âdown rankingâ at Twitter, âauthoritative sourcesâ at YouTube, the âAlternative Influencer Networkâ theory at @datasociety, & the IDW as a gateway to white supremacists. Ha.
Iâd say that old tweet wasnât too far off after all. We just had it dribbled in increment by increment with changes in âTerms of Serviceâ & the slow crushing push to numb our outrage from our institutional class, article by article, until we welcomed our own censorship w/ thanks.
Trump Tweeting algorithm:
It seems [perseverated diminishing epithet] [First name][Last Name] is [anti-trump misportrayal or activity claim] again despite my [claimed Trump accomplishment]. (S)He really should worry about [corruption insinuation]. [Threat]. [Tiny simple zinger!]
The presidentâs tweets are there to be reverse engineered. Theyâre all method. When Democrats call him an âidiotâ w/o building an Eliza program to simulate what is beating them, itâs painful to watch.
Why not claim that the person beating you at chess is an idiot?Think about it.
Invited on a conservative podcast today. We celebrated punk rock as I politilely told them Trump was obviously manifestly unfit for office & I view their parent org as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party. They couldnât have been more decent to me.
This is how they may win.
My eyes are open. This isnât my team. But when normal souls who think normal thoughts have to go over to their competitorâs house to have civil constructive discussion, because their own home often hurls poop at any who wonât tow an incoherent party line, loss has to be budgeted.
Donât get sold the narrative that Trump now owns ALL US Conservatism. He does own a good chunk of it. But thereâs also a new strain of tolerant conservatism thatâs very liberal: relentlessly civil, anti-inequality, pro-logic, pro-gay, pro-weed, pro-free speech & multicultural.
What is causing this? I donât know.
But one partial explanation is that many normal adults made to feel like pariahs are leaving the Democratic Party & simply taking their liberal values across the street. Itâs like visiting a Little Italy, Koreatown or other diaspora community.
@AlexRussek Itâs more confusing than that. I canât fully figure out how they rationalize Trump. They often have the idea that Trumpâs methods are wrong but that they think be does the right thing in the end. I honestly donât get it. I think that itâs rationalizing lesser evil as they see it.
As someone who both has been vocal that Trump is unfit for office but who also gets on well with many Trump supporters, Iâm not afflicted by Trump derangement syndrome.
Today seems to be the day that should begin an exit for fair minded Trump supporters.
#AmbassadorSondland
To my Trump supporting friends, many of you have been correct about myriad problems of the Democratic Party & its affiliated media. Let that not blind you to what is happening. This man was simply not the solution to our corrupt system. Love you. But look again with fresh eyes.đ
If you think Iâm wrong, Iâm open to your arguments. But letâs check in with each other after any counter-narrative emerges.
I was open to the idea that these hearings would be purely political.
I hope you will be open to the idea that this is actually damning.
To be honest, I should have been clearer. Let me say a few words.
By Trump supporters, I was referring to folks for whom Trump is close to a force of pure good. This goes way beyond lesser or necessary evil perspectives. So I should have been clear about absolute v relative. https://x.com/keithbrodie/status/1197282556120453120
Next, I was careful not to opine on legality or impeachment. The way Iâm viewing these hearings is that they are giving us a look into our foreign policy. Legality is about what we can prove, but judgement is about what we must glean. I wish we could avoid inference but we canât.
What I glean about the Trump, Clinton and Biden groups is that they pursue the personal intertwined w/ our national issues at an unacceptable level. I canât prove that about any of them yet. But Carter, Eisenhower, Reagan or Sanders they are not. So I should have clarified.
If you want a perspective that is not so far off of mine but from a conservative perspective, @benshapiro made a lot of my points in detail. Itâs not âquid pro quo or noâ but which one, and the fact that Biden may be the point of investigation or a positive political externality.
But my issue stands. Weâre now being injured as a nation by Trumpâs judgment, tactics and quirks. If we are reduced to âThatâs perfectly legalâ arguments rather than, âwe have China, Climate and Russia emergenciesâ by Trump and Democratic dissembling we are screwed.
Our eye is off the ball & Trump does not become the goddamned messiah b/c he sticks it to corrupt Democratic players. Itâs like watching two street gangs fight. Fair-minded Trump supporters should be leaving the absolutist âTrump does nothing wrongâ camp now. This is awful.
My point in criticizing my party is to find a way out of the Trump v Biden/Warren version of non-stop boomer on boomer action. Trump is an enormous problem. If you think heâs radiation therapy for your Democratic corruption cancer, donât fall in love with your radiation levels.đ
1/ Too Many Different Stories.
Hereâs my best guess as to whatâs happening. There was a post-WWII Intâl order. Both US parties agreed to service it. They became systemically corrupt when growth changed in the early/mid â70s. This accelerated wildly with the end of the Cold War.
2/ The parties & Trump represented systemic & idiosyncratic corruption respectively. Systemic had Rep & Dem flavors. The tattered Intâl order is serviced (barely) by the systemically corrupt but repudiated by the idiosyncratic. The new GOP is moving towards the Idiosyncratic.
3/ We are divided by the following. Some party players benefit from the systemic corruption but are loyal to the two party flavors. Remaining party players want to end the corruption. But they agree on the need to service the Intâl order because of dangers of restarting history.
4/ The Idiosyncratic players want to use Trump to end systemic corruption (drain the swamp). Some want it so badly that theyâll defend nearly all idiosyncratic corruption. Others admit to idiosyncratic failings but point to the fact that only Trump broke through our MSM defenses.
5/ The idiosyncratic players (The âTrump Trainâ) are further divided as to whether the Intâl order is too corrupt & expensive to service or too essential to abandon. The former are divided into isolationists vs those who wish to project new power. The latter subvert withdrawal.
6/ Why the crisis in communal sense making? We are now micro-divided by pro vs anti systemic rent-seekers with 2 flavors. Anti is further split by pro vs anti willingness to admit to the idiosyncratic corruption. We are divided by isolationists vs maintainers of the order. Etc...
7/ Where I am: I see 2 party flavors of systemic corruption. And the new idiosyncratic. I see corrupt expensive foreign entanglements but also no ability to retreat. I also believe great nations are based on communal *fictions* which are being destroyed by our extractive actors.
8/ This is where we are to my understanding. I *only* really look down on *pro*-corruption folks. I do fear the isolationists have no idea what theyâre signing us up for on a thermonuclear planet, but I just see them as confused by BAD foreign adventures & betting the đ on luck.
End/ So I have the group I look down on (Systemic corruption of the party regulars) different from the group to be feared (advocates of abandonment of the corrupt system to restart history).
The folks w whom I get along now have no home: those who get we have to fix ALL this. đ
Thirty four years ago, the liberal paper of the University of Pennsylvania was celebrating âthe largest single gift ever received by an undergraduate schoolâ in a banner headline..which I discovered going through boxes after a move.
Odd he would become the right wing devil, no?
We can barely remember how many different people Donald Trump has been to our press in their portrayals: Winner. Star. Loser. Nazi. Greedy pig. Casanova. Generous benefactor. Predator. Symbol of wealthy. Purveyor of tackiness. Promoter of women. Madman. Genius. Debtor. Builder.
[My point about the different faces of Trump portrayed by the Press was real, but I think the article was a gag if I recall correctly. Iâd read it for yourself...]
My following is mostly millennial. I have a lot of contact w/ them.
As a result I know something I wouldnât know otherwise: many, if not all, of them donât relate to what we call being millennial. They want to be full adults & are not finding paths to becoming full stakeholders.
The oldest of these Millennials are now almost 40. In my original area of academe and science, it is time for GenX & Millennials to stop running out of fuel in infinite holding patterns. We should start ignoring air traffic control & land the planes. Crash landing if necessary.
Hereâs the problem. Itâs time for Millenials to start becoming univ. presidents. Yet only a tiny number of research universities even have any GenX heads! Likewise, notice that Millenial @TulsiGabbard & Xer AndrewYang surge, but are dropped from corporate media promoting Boomers.
Q: Should we start talking about bringing back Mandatory Retirement to stop involuntary inter-generational wealth transfer? Consider that we will have spent 20 Yrs exploring US presidents born in the summer of the 1st year of the baby boom. 24 if Trump (b. 1946) is re-elected.
I think since @AndrewYang got deliberately and repeatedly dropped from media graphics and since @HillaryClinton started targeting @TulsiGabbard Iâve been radicalized.
It is not intergenerational warfare to tell grandma to get her finger off the scales of democracy and economics.
Q: Why are we not talking about bringing back mandatory retirement for academicians who have prevented two generations from taking their seats and talking about legal action against corporate media like @MSNBC who distort the news of our non boomer candidates gaining traction?đ
2020
There is no path to voting Trump out of office that passes through a contempt for working Americans.
And by the way, you educated coastals can get a latte with coal mining families in Appalachia:
Food City 50,
Morton Blvd,
Hazard, KY 41702
They hear your jokes on iPhones.
âFlyover countryâ doesnât exist.
Thatâs heartland conjugated in the minds of an out of touch media.
You can get a Latte anywhere. Farmers know genetics. The entire US has Wifi & indoor plumbing. Not just Brooklyn & DuPont Circle.
Why are Democrats electing Trump via contempt?
This is everywhere. The DNC is like an incompetent retiring substitute civics teacher who long ago mentally checked out, but still condescendingly lectures the smartest kids on wrong facts. Trump, the 3rd grade teacher next door passing out Jell-O shots calling them âstudy aids.â
I didn't vote for Trump in '16, but am seriously considering doing so this year.
My reasoning is mostly about what you might call "teaching the bureaucracy/media a lesson". There's lots to dislike about Trump, but more to dislike about the institutional response to Trump.
Rule Change: Everyone who was saying âWake up! Your supposed elites are almost all in thrall to China. This is not safe.â since the 1980s-90s gets to say whatever the hell they want about the problems posed by the PRC without having to hear about anyone named Trump.
#TrumpWho?
I can assure you I have been ringing this bell at great cost since China started to supply research labor to our US labs in the 1980s. The national concern with Chinese threats has nothing to do with Trump. Stop focusing on that guy.
You cannot get to smart by simply putting a minus sign in front of everything Donald Trump says.
That is not surprising. What is surprising is the number of people who havenât learned this after the last 4 years.
People donât understand my position on Trump. Here it is:
Trump owns his critics other than me. Why? Because he says so much crazy stuff mixed in with real stuff that it is a lifetime commitment to correct him. So I decided to simply state that I view him as an existential risk.
This way:
A) I am not picking up after him intellectually every two minutes.
B) Iâm not forced to pretend that everything he does is wrong just because he did it.
C) I can continue to be friends with his supporters.
D) Iâm clear that he should not be our commander in chief.
But this confuses people: âwhy donât you denounce everything he says and does wrong every day?â
The answer is this: âDemocrats elected him by not listening. And he will not run my life the way he runs yours. You want to Run Biden(?) against him? Good luck! Youâre all crazy now.â
But, yes, he should resign. I thought that would go without saying. And no, he didnât do everything wrong. Neither did Pelosi. Nor the Mayor of NYC. But the whole lot of them need to leave. It is now a different era.
This class of leaders has been measured.
And found wanting.
I have to try not to comment on Trump. This tweet is an example of why.
Itâs just endless bait, both boring and transparent. Like Lucy and the football. And it doesnât stop for life and death. Itâs to the bone.
Canât stand it.
For the first time in history there is a fully signed Presidential Disaster Declaration for all 50 States. We are winning, and will win, the war on the Invisible Enemy!
Iâm for additive civil disobedience. By that, I mean do something disobedient to protest the abject incompetence of our leadership that is beautiful & inspiring. Iâve mentioned Projection Mapping spectacular graffiti onto large buildings and videoing it, leaving no trace of harm. https://x.com/Crypto__naire/status/1255177207984447488
If itâs worth destroying the word economy over, we should have an OFFICIAL Manhattan project for Covid. Everyone I know who should be on that hasnât been called up or pressed into service. Instead we have Scientists like Kudlow and Mnuchin on the task force. Protest that.
You will also notice that constant partisan Trump bashing and that impeachment attempt made it very difficult to protest his mishandling of this crisis. The wrong way to protest Trump is to go along with Democrats. The right way is to protest the incompetence of our leadership.
Protest political people with dazzling agency, beauty, technical rigor and grace. That class canât do these things.
They donât code. They donât weld. They donât compose. They donât crowdsource. They donât understand crypto. They donât believe in standing alone.
Now use that.
Bari Weiss has now resigned from the @nytimes. And that is not even âThe Storyâ. Iâve just spoken to Bari & learned that Iâm finally free to tweet.
Her letter hints at the real News: the *loss* of the News is now *the* News, and the News cannot cover it.
On 6/1/17 Ms Weiss was the only journalist covering âThe Newsâ. Only she was doing it from the opinion section because the NYT refused to find interesting that there was a racist Maoist insurrection at a public college where police would be stood down: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.amp.html
At that moment Bari Weiss became all that was left of the âPaper of Record.â Why? Because the existence of Black Racists with the power to hunt professors with Baseball Bats and even redefine the word âracismâ to make their story impossible to cover ran totally counter-narrative.
At some point after 2011, the NYT gradually stopped covering the News and became the News instead. And Bari has been fighting internally from the opinion section to re-establish Journalism inside tbe the NYT. A total reversal of the Chinese Wall that separates news from opinion.
This is the paper in 2016 that couldnt be interested in the story that millions of Americans were likely lying to pollsters about Donald Trump.
The paper refusing to ask the CIA/FBI if Epstein was Intelligence related.
The paper that canât report that it seeks race rioting:
I have had the honor of trying to support both @bariweiss at the New York Times and @BretWeinstein in their battles simply to stand alone against the internal mob mentality. It is THE story all over the country. Our courageous individuals are being hunted at work for dissenting.
Before Bari resigned, I did a podcast with her. It was chilling. Iâd make an innocuous statement of simple fact and ask her about it. Sheâd reply âThat is obviously true but Iâm sorry we canât say that here. It will get me strung up.â Thatâs when I stopped telling her to hang on.
So what just happened? Let me put it bluntly: What was left of the New York Times just resigned from the New York Times. The Times canceled itself. As a separate Hong Kong exists in name only, the New New York Times and affiliated ânewsâ is now the chief threat to our democracy.
This is the moment when the passengers who have been becoming increasingly alarmed, start to entertain a new idea: what if the people now in the cockpit are not airline pilots? Well the Twitter Activists at the @nytimes and elsewhere are not journalists.
What if those calling for empathy have a specific deadness of empathy?
Those calling for justice *are* the unjust?
Those calling âPrivilegeâ are the privileged?
Those calling for equality seek to oppress us?
Those anti-racists are open racists?
The progressives seek regress?
Bari and I agree on a lot but also disagree fiercely. And so I have learned that she is tougher than tough. But these university and journalistic workplaces are now unworkable. They are the antithesis off what they were built to stand for. It is astounding how long she held out.
Read her letter. I have asked her to do a make-up podcast & she has agreed. Stay tuned If you donât want to be surprised again by whatâs coming understand this: just as there has been no functioning president, thereâs now no journalism. Weâre moving towards a đ of pure activism.
Prepare to lose your ability to call the police & for more autonomous zones where kids die so that Govenors & Mayors can LARP as Kayfabe revolutionaries. Disagree with Ms Weiss all you want as she isnât perfect. But Bari is a true patriot who tried to stand alone. Glad sheâs out.
We are not finished by a long shot. What the Intellectual Dark Web tried to do MUST now be given an institutional home.
Podcast with Bari on The Portal to come as soon as she is ready.
Stay tuned. And thanks for reading this. It is of the utmost importance.
Thank you all. đ
A surprising number of Left-leaning people are confiding to me that they are planning to vote for Trump for two different stated leading reasons:
A) Bidenâs Mental decline.
B) What is happening in the Pacific Northwest w Democratic Mayors/Govenors experimenting w non-policing.
Anyone else seeing this? Itâs two different reactions. Both of them indicating that there is something catastrophicly wrong with this process. All of them previously *bitterly* opposed to Trump, and many even to the Republican Party.
Perhaps this isnât clear to my followers: my belief is that each party is electing the othersâ candidate.
The only real argument for Biden is Trump/Pence and the RNC. By the same token, the only real argument for Trump is Biden/Harris and the DNC.
We Dems are re-electing Trump.
I think all of this "under coverage" is justified when you have a four alarm fire currently burning inside the White House and threatening to engulf our entire Democracy. Let's save the country first, then we can worry about the far less threatening issue of "far left overreach."
*otherâs
Do you remember 10K accounts swarming over this tweet telling me I was lying?
When the polls showed a large Biden lead? That I was in a âhipster coffee shopâ making this up?
You are all so certain. And you never learn.
Looking for 10K Democratic apologies that will never come.
A surprising number of Left-leaning people are confiding to me that they are planning to vote for Trump for two different stated leading reasons:
A) Bidenâs Mental decline.
B) What is happening in the Pacific Northwest w Democratic Mayors/Govenors experimenting w non-policing.
Well, that lead in the polls narrowed. And I believe a lot of it is this forced thinking that is being pushed on folks.
Iâm sure if I told you that I talk to Black friends who HATE BLM for its racism, Marxism and divisiveness, I will be told that they donât exist.
Thatâs crazy.
Let me try again. We the Democrats are correct that Trump is a bullshitter. But here is what we donât get: Bullshitting doesnât automatically lose if you choose Gaslighting as a strategy.
And somehow we the Democrats have become the party of Gaslighting.
What this is shaping up as is a bizarre âChoose your own apocalypse!â Vote.
Republicans: Party of Bullshiters
Democrats: Party of Gaslighters
And people have *private* trauma here which determines which they fear most. Dems with Gaslighting trauma are now going to break away.
Trump is a self serving bullshitter bull in a China shop. His lies arenât even intended to fool you. He doesnât think he owes the press the truth. Life is what you can negotiate to him.
But his bizarre bullshitting is out in the open.
The Democrats on the other hand are hiding.
Can one even ask the questions:
âIs BLM and its leadership Marxist and racist?â
âWhat do we make of the George Floyd Body-cam footage?â
âDoes ANTIFA exist as a violent organization?â
Well this is not keeping a big tent together. This is gaslighting.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/27/rep-jerry-nadler-brushes-off-antifa-violence-as-a-myth/
We the Left are not our Democratic Party leadership. And we never signed up with a blood oath to gaslight our Republican rivals for two reasons:
A) It is evil.
B) It is the one thing that is most likely to get us four more years of Donald Trump.
Gaslighting is a losing game.đ
Master-stroke. Anyone who had to go through training designed to cure them of their pathological racism, sexism, Islamophobia, transphobia, misogyny and ableist bigotry (which is also incurable btw) is going to be tempted. Duh.
âHey Americans: youâre horrible! Join us!â
Insane.
My gosh, the nerve! THRILLED and AMAZED that President Trump BANNED "Critical Race Theory" from federal training sessions. Surely CEO's, Presidents, and Boards of corporations, universities and other institutions can match that courage. https://whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/M-20-34.pdf
You donât have to love him. You just have to realize you got played for promoting the pseudo-scholarship of hatred.
Doesnât matter who or what he is. CRT is hateful.
Whatâs the use? You the Democratic leaders wonât understand the point until you are beaten a second time. Sigh..
Blacklists Matter.
I want you to imagine that your private phone calls start dropping every time your uncle mentions Building 7, Jean Seberg, Hunter Biden or The Wuhan Institute of Virology.
@jack: Huh?
#SlipTheDISC #BlacklistsMatter #LeftCarthyism #TheThinquisition #Publisher
This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war.
I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nationâs largest papers by circulation, canât post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden.
I want my crazy pro-trump friends & family to be able to say their crazy stupid ass Trump-Train Bullshit. In fact, it is essential to me. I want to be able to rebut it. I don't want to be protected against "potentially harmful" articles by a Publisher pretending to be a platform.
This isn't targeted harrassment of an individual. This is a political race for president of the united states.
This is no longer a Platform in any meaningful sense. It is time to apply the standards of a Publisher. This is insane.
You cannot board the Trump Train. No matter how many times he sticks it to your tormentors. I know itâs tempting when you canât stand the DNC.
He remains an existential risk to America and its values. We are very particular about how we take out the trash: this is anti-American.
I donât mean I canât understand voting for him. I could also make an argument for voting either way.
I mean you canât tell me that we just donât get him. We get him. Itâs not âTrump Derangement Syndromeâ to see this as anti-American BS, and we need to get back to due process.
I approve of taking action against CRT. Against H1b. Of moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Of making peace in the Middle East. Of no new wars. Of sticking it to the WOKE bigots on their rampage through our institutions. Etc.
But no. There are lines. This is way over one such line.
Extra-judicial killings are beyond the pale. Obama joked about them with drones. After his killing Anwar al-Awlaki, I spoke against Obamaâs horrid attitude. Well, I condemn this Trump talk inducing law officers toward extrajudicial killing. WTF?
God damn. What is wrong with us?
Folks donât get my model of Trumpâs odd utterances & how people interpret them.
Level 0 (TDS): âOMG. He said a bad thing!â
Lvl 1: âHe didnât actually say what you think he said. Look at the exact words under this alternate theory.â
Lvl 2: Dual interpretations are intentional.
Over and over the coin flip lands on its side. At some point you realize this isnât an accident and the man didnât get where he is by being an idiot.
Notice how often he generates the same TDS panic. This is a strategy that got him to the White House and not a bug.
Remember: legacy media canât discuss the existence of Never-Trump Trump Voters. So thereâs no record that the phenomena even exists. If youâre the rare âInvoluntary Conservativeâ who is OPEN about voting Trump as a previous Never-Trumper, please answer questions on this thread?đ
I was a NeverTrumper in 2016 who plans to hold my nose and vote for Trump in 2020. There are lots of us.
*phenomenon
Let me ask the first such questions:
Q1) What turned you against your Never Trump orientation?
Q2) What would the Democratic Party have to do at a minimum to get you back?
Q3) Have you changed your mind about Trump or only changed your mind about the Democrats?
I respect Daveâs decision. Part of being an American is loving people you disagree with and NOT trying to shame or control them. Also allowing that they change their minds, evolve & may see more/less clearly than we can.
Donât lose your mind, family & friends over an election.đ
Thank you to Dave Rubin, author of âDonât Burn This Bookâ, just announced on @foxandfriends that he is voting for your favorite President, me. âI think Donald Trump has done a lot of good. When I see an American flag, I see Trump support.â
I also think a lot of people are going to vote for @realDonaldTrump over:
A) Portland & @tedwheeler
B) Critical Race Theory
C) H1B
D) CCP & geopolitics
E) Activist Press
F) Activist Tech
G) MSM/DNC treatment of @TulsiGabbard / @AndrewYang
H) Jerusalem Embassy Move
Continuing..
Continued.
I) Peace: Sudan & Israel
J) Naming China & WHO in Covid
K) Peace: Israel & Bahrain
L) No new US wars
M) Seattle CHAZ & @MayorJenny
N) Peace: U.A.E. & Israel
O) Denial of soon to be 78 year old Bidenâs cognitive issues
P) Hunter Biden Story
Q) âDefund the Policeâ
Etc.
In short, the Left used the last 4yrs to shoot itself in the foot. I couldnât vote DJT because of the daily negative effect he has on our national culture. But, unlike 4 years ago, itâs no mystery why folks switch to him.
Itâs not all ProTrump: Theyâre voting to repudiate âusâ.
I will be very surprised if there isnât a *much* stronger than expected surge for Trump. The Left and Right have both jumped the shark in my opinion. So please donât tell me what anyone has to do with his or her vote. We all watched this âelectionâ happen & failed to prevent it.
Trump is far more gifted than any of the others & has done many good things. And many many bad things. Both of which I predicted given his outsider status.
But he has also deliberately divided us and has done so as part of his means of ascension. And that division is cancerous.
With that said, I could vote for neither Biden/Harris nor Trump/Pence in good conscience given the luxury of living in a Blue State. So I voted to communicate my non acceptance of this choice. In a swing state Iâd have voted Biden.
Which is to say I couldnât figure it out.
Moral: However you voted, I have no right to judge you on your vote.
Be generous of spirit. Letâs come back together and not waste another four years getting farther away from our best selves by arguing like fools while the CCP and others rivals watch us undo ourselves fighting.
P.S. If you care to, give your own rank ordering of the four names and a few words as to what it tells you about your reasoning? đ
Less than 100 hours before the end of voting in the US election, and I am watching @KamalaHarris trying desperately to elect Donald J Trump to the presidency of the United States.
Let this speak for itself.
- ResIpsaLoquitor
Thereâs a big difference between equality and equity.
We just donât end up in the same place. Thatâs not how life works. Literally, âdifferential successâ is one of the cornerstones of our scientific understanding of nature itself due to Darwin and Wallace.
In particular this is not how *any* successful society has worked *ever*.
Vice Signaling: nobody sane wants to listen to politicians, professors, movie stars, rappers, tech billionaires & journalists testify to their own moral superiority over the rest of us mortals who appear to be FAR more self-aware of our human failings.
Trump isnât selling guilt.
Almost no good parent wants a level playing field for their own children. Have you ever seen a bear that is just as concerned about another bearâs cubs?
Almost no one always tells the truth or wants to pay their fair taxes.
But there is more here. Itâs not just virtue fatigue.
Letâs be honest: virtue signaling in the Democratic Party is also about figuring out how to cryptically serve our donors. Kamala is not going to race to apply âEquityâ in her new black Vernacular speech to her hedge fund friends in the Hamptons.
This is anti-virtuous posturing.
So every time Democrats testify to their own goodness, I assume they are preparing to throw us overboard to serve 9, 10, 11 and now 12 figure families. Itâs Pavlovian or Skinnerian conditioning. Since Clinton, just before we get economically raped, we hear a lecture about virtue.
âNo Person is Illegal!â means push out the labor supply curve for employers.
âOnly folks making over $400k will be taxed.â may mean focus on salary income of the upper middle class rather than non-wage income of the true rich.
âNo Xenophobia!â means ignore Chinese interference.
âNo islamophobia!â may mean ignore jihadism so long as Saudi Arabia is making me rich.
âNationalism is evil!â Means fâ- Appalachians et al while we the rich get paid to relocate their sources of support.
Etc.
Weâve been conditioned to despise virtue by the Post-Clinton party.
I donât ever...and I mean ever...want to listen to the Davos scolds on any subject.
You fly in on a private jet to talk to me: fine, Iâll listen. You do so to scold me about my carbon footprint? Now youâre dead to me.
We the Left need to stop this madness. This is Clintonism.
Most normal citizens want the US to have borders. We care more about our fellow countrymen than we do equally deserving foreigners. We want the BEST for our own kids. We arenât excited about paying reparations for 1619. And Trump is telling us âSame here.â So: What are we saying?
The Left needs to appeal to folks who want to get rich, not be taxed into oblivion, get laid and who LOVE their flawed country, their guns & those in uniform. We have to stop appealing *only* to self-hating monks, the hyper-manipulative & the dumb. We were about something before.
In Trump you are looking at the only modern POTUS to have figured out how to run this gauntlet from an outsiderâs perspective with neither political nor even military experience.
Donât hate so much you canât admit that he pulled off the nearly impossible. Heâs *quite* skilled.
Lol at "gifted". Care to expound on that?
When Trump flips the coin, it always lands on its side. The odds of that happening by accident...arenât worth worrying about.
Itâs a âskillâ and not a fluke.
Looks like @EricRWeinstein called it
Trump said: âweâll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stopâ
Left hears: we will stop votes being counted, holy shit theyâre stealing it
Right hears: we wonât let anyone fill out new illegal ballots, whatâs your problem?
If you want to understand Trump declaring victory, it's important to understand this was pioneered in 1986 by Diego Maradona.
Maradona realized that if he could get his teammates to celebrate his illegal #HandOfGod world-cup goal, referees wouldn't have the "huevos" to undo it.
Like Trump, Maradona was extremely gifted and with very 'flexible' ethics. He learned this as a kid & saw what he did as cunning, not cheating. In other words: if you can get referees to cover for you, it's part of the 'meta-game' to manipulate the refs.
Moral: Don't fall for this when someone like Trump celebrates victory prematurely. This is a well known technique that preys on people not wanting to go backwards and have to undo things. Like Maradona, Trump may see it as just part of the game working on very agreeable people...
As I hope you appreciate I believe that I am calling it as both Trump and the news media distorting the status of our election results...only in opposite directions.
"The headline is the story." Of course, I think the networks refusing to call Florida for Trump for hours, even with a 400K vote spread, was done for the same reason. Control the narrative to create the narrative.
The media music is now starting up & Trump is being played off.
Iâd be careful to treat this as a dangerous situation. Yes Iâm making a few jokes, but they arenât frivolous ones. Theyâre nervous ones. Not being cavalier here: we need to do this correctly.
As I said 4 years ago, Donald Trump represents an existential risk to the fabric of American Society; I believe we are polarizing and unraveling as a dominant military power.
But the Democratic Party is now co-deranged, and is now a major force of illiberal suppression of ideas.
We all know this. So...Why not say them? In my case, Iâve been interrogating my own mind. Trumpâs presidency turned my personal life into a daily shit show. And now? The grownups are playing him off! I SO want to be rid of him and the risks/costs he inflicts on my life. And yet..
And yet I know what I am really calculating. I am calculating that someone is giving me what I want: an end to this divisive presidency. All I have to do is to join the chorus.
I will instead wait for our statistical/legal processes & will congratulate Biden then. And not until.
Trump didnât build-the-wall & get Mexico to Pay for it as he said he would.
Trump didnât get routed in 2016 as our institutional voices said he would.
Trump didnât âlock-her-upâ.
Our Media misled its believers into believing in a âBlue Waveâ mirage.
Moral: disbelieve *both*.
Sam: Relax. We are programmed to receive. https://x.com/samharrisorg/status/1329204761283837952
Everyone else: have a listen! I have a slightly different take, but I agree w Sam that almost everyone in our space is failing to thread this needle given the dangers. I think we disagree principally on the relative weight of systemic vs idiosyncratic corruption of reality.
I believe for The US and coalition to have entered Iraq claiming WMD as casus belli required systemic corruption of standards: Data. Intelligence. PR. Briefings. Procedures..
Iâm not sure I get the idea that the newspaper honored to start the #1619Riots is better than Breitbart.
So...yes Trump has inured us to bullshit, braggadocio and flouting of our norms. He was after all hired as *poison* to kill the swamp creatures.
But did we prefer W who had the decency to get Colin Powell and other adults to tell us we needed to invade Iraq? And if so: why?
So I agree with Sam that Trump is extremely reckless and dangerous to us all here. But the danger of âThe Grownupsâ coming back to us to *lie* about everything in a methodically focus-grouped & A/B tested manner with coiffed presentation & slick sloganeering strikes me as grave.
I may choose to record something at length to dig into this.
But Iâd give a listen to Sam here. Eventually Thing 1 and Thing 2 have to leave the house with the Cat in the MAGA hat. And this crazy âadventureâ will need to end so that we can find out what happens next.
đ Sam.
There is now zero adult supervision.
To my Trump Supporting Followers: Iâve always treated you with respect despite our disagreement over the idea that Trump represented an existential risk to our democracy and, by extension, the world.
Iâd like you to consider how far he is away from proving he won in a landslide.
Iâm prepared to lose you today. But I need you to hear this from someone who disagreed with you respectfully, but saw where you were coming from.
Your candidate does not appear to be anywhere close to proving the massive conspiracy needed overturn this election. Consider:
Hypothetically, assume that you KNEW an election was stolen by coordinated fraud. That doesnât overturn the election.
You would have to prove that in a court and it would have to be a massive fraud. Thereâd be a code name like âOperation Ajax/Bootâ as there was in 1953 Iran.
Okay. Assume your man won in a landslide now being covered up by a massive fraud operation.
What is the code name? Who headed it up? When was it launched? What was the size of the operation? Who funded it? How is it kept quiet? What is the size of the landslide? How do you know?
I know that many of you feel you arenât taken seriously by media. Iâve always taken you seriously.
But that means expecting you to be serious about your own allegations. Trump is so far failing to meet *any* expected thresholds for responsibly alleging a conspiracy of this size.
Look at MKUltra, Ajax/Boot, Mockingbird, COINTELPRO, Operation Condor, Iran-Contra, etc. Beyond what you believe is true, your team would need to prove a conspiracy. And the delta between what is now alleged v what is proven or even âalleged with specificityâ is growing alarming.
Iâll say it plainly: I wasnât wrong. He always was & continues to be an existential risk as long as he has the football. If you love him & admire his best actions, show him. Let him know that the Delta between the allegation and proof of conspiracy must now close. Love you all.
Lastly, for those who will leave as followers from this thread: Thanks for hanging in there w/ me. Itâs been tough, but I really appreciate the kindness & decency most of you have shown me. I hope I reciprocated that by being your loyal opposition. So thanks for hearing me out.đ
I think there are two conflicting strategies dividing us that separately both make some sense:
A) FORMAL: At least *formally* extend every legal courtesy while even true facts are contested.
B) CUSTOM: Pressure POTUS to accept these results & âcut the crapâ as in all elections.
@MaajidNawaz you know i have a lot of respect for you, and this is meant in the most sincere way: why are you giving any credence to this stuff?
I think what has been dividing us many of us is what to do with a wily POTUS challenging customary norms on concessions.
Given that he is going this legal route do we change our tactic too as @MaajidNawaz may be doing, or do we go the @SamHarrisOrg route and say âThis is nuts.â
Itâs a trade off between legal culture and American democratic custom and tradition. As I have been saying for four years it is as if there is an Oral and a Written Torah of the US. Its customs vs its laws.
Donald Trump breaks all our norms. Thatâs his modus operandi. Such fun.
Honestly, I feel like we were supposed to be smarter and figure out how he divides us. But look at this idiotic infighting! Trump wins when he divides us. How is he doing @MaajidNawaz @benshapiro @SamHarrisOrg @RubinReport @BretWeinstein?
Out of vanity, Iâm not losing to Trump.
Not falling for this shit. Trump is not going to outsmart me and the people I love as the capstone of this four year term like no other. If I can help it anyway. The đ still needs people who continue to talk in public through their differences. More than ever.
Love you all. đ
A) Donald Trump is controlled by Russia, a hostile foreign power capable of hacking voters' minds.
B) The US IC is patriotic and more capable than Russia or than it was when it acted against elections in Iran & Chile.
C) There is no reason to fear rigging in 2020.
#ChooseAny2
I provide this as a service to those Americans headed into Thanksgiving. Yes your Uncle may be #QAnon and your niece Antifa. You may be married to an NPC. But let's all realize that we're also bonkers. All three of the above are asserted by our media & are obviously incompatible.
Simple reminder: your crazy family are souls you know much better than figures like Biden & Trump who you know through a screen. Don't let our distant theater of power and politics rob you of something close and real.
[Just giving myself advice here.]
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Note: for those of you missing the point, there were not enough characters to say #chooseuptotwo. Sorry to cut that corner...but itâs Twitter.
I was told by some of my Trump supporting followers that this day would never come.
Well, it came. They said there would be a Kraken. They âwatch the Texas lawsuitâ. It didnât work.
Look: you were misled. A simple request?
Donât shoot the messengers who leveled with you. đ
President-elect Joe Bidenâs victory now affirmed by Electoral College.
As you know, nothing is ever over in a sense. There are more milestones on the way to inauguration. And revelations can always emerge well after that.
But I will reiterate: there had to be a coherent legal strategy and the courts have yet to detect one thus far. Donât be fooled.
2021
I read part of the transcript of the Trump call.
The following strikes me.
A) Trump is a true political outsider & the only one to reach the Presidency with zero government experience.
B) There is an obvious open institutional conspiracy to prevent any outsider gaining power.
C) The media was good calling out all the really bad things Trump did.
D) The media was bad calling out any positive thing Trump said or did and painted him evil.
E) Journalists in 2020 & 2016 unethically became activists misreporting a big blue wave or Hilaryâs inevitable win.
H) The left says âIf you donât have the goods, then it was completely free, fair and obviously so you sore loser.â
I) The right says âYou guys arenât fair about anything. Your unbiased commentary is a 24/7 open conspiracy to misrepresent the world.
Now comes the weird part.
Heâs now in a state where heâs convinced that his feeling that he won together with the obvious total abdication of journalismâs responsibility to eschew activism is enough to overturn the results.
Which is nuts. Itâs like âfeelingâ that someone is guilty & expecting conviction.
Yes media is guilty of political agitation while enjoying the protection of neutral journalists. Yes they have conspired against him at every turn. But ITâS NOT FUNGIBLE. The anti-Trump media conspiracy is not a vote counting conspiracy. He canât cash in one to win the other.
He doesnât understand. Heâs free to become a private citizen and spend his remaining days looking for evidence of a conspiracy to steal the election. But heâs not free to say âOur rallies were huge!â While trying to stay in office. Results are presumed fair until proven otherwise
So while I agree with him that trust in our institutions is at rock bottom for good reasons, heâs WAY out of line. I donât think Biden won fair & square after the anti Gabbard/Yang BS. But i treat the general as a free and fair election in the absence of credible legal evidence.
Which is to say this: we have a lot of unethical media people dancing and celebrating Trumpâs loss. And it remains *possible* that we will learn something nefarious happened. But pretending now that a media conspiracy is an electoral conspiracy w/o proof is insane & outrageous.
Iâm happier to see him go than I am sad to see Biden arrive. But he isnât wrong that there was a media/institutional conspiracy. Heâs wrong elsewhere: he doesnât have the goods on electoral fraud. But the number of us who see the former conspiracy but not the latter is *tiny*.
For some reason, almost everyone I know either see two conspiracies against Trump or zero. I see only one conspiracy against him to date and itâs not fungible. His behavior is outrageous but those pointing it out as unethical have been compromised themselves by hatred. Thatâs it.
Fair question. Assume you are at the apex of the US intelligence community hierarchy and hold this attitude. Havenât you just explained with your question precisely why so many Trump supporters donât believe the election result?
Now notice: your question is itâs own answer!
QED
This was my attempt to avert what I knew was coming in January 6th.
It committed the ultimate media sin: bringing us together towards mutual understanding. You should reach out to @joerogan or any of us who have tried to stand apart. Don Lemon and Rachel Maddow canât do this.
I read part of the transcript of the Trump call.
The following strikes me.
A) Trump is a true political outsider & the only one to reach the Presidency with zero government experience.
B) There is an obvious open institutional conspiracy to prevent any outsider gaining power.
Consider:
@TheRealBuzz
@joerogan
@BretWeinstein
@samharris and @benshapiro
@coldxman
Etc..
And anyone else who has stood outside of this madness is more valuable than anyone who has called only strike or only balls for four years.
It is time to contact the other voices.
You can say treason all you want, but Trump supporters will never listen to anyone who denies the gaslighting over the last 4 years.
Point me to any group who has been better at keeping both major camps together and I will boost that signal.
Enough. đ
To my followers who put their faith in Donald Trump. In the Kraken. In Lin Wood. In Sidney Powell. In January 6th. In Benfordâs law. Etc.
Thank you for your trust. Iâd like to think you put up w/ me because you knew I loved this country and hated its swamp. Now I need your help.
You cannot board the Trump Train. No matter how many times he sticks it to your tormentors. I know itâs tempting when you canât stand the DNC.
He remains an existential risk to America and its values. We are very particular about how we take out the trash: this is anti-American.
We have to rebuild trust in each other. I have attempted to bridge this chasm for four years and Iâm utterly torn apart from the hatred from my traditional side of the aisle and the abuse from the far right.
Trump has conceded.
Question: will you accept my outstretched hand?
I believe I am the only member of my group of podcasters who has forgone the income from contributions and merchandise to stand apart from all this until the election was over just in case anything went wrong. Likely a meaningless gesture, but it will be worth it if you join me.
True I didnât vote for Biden, but that is only because I live in California. But I have stood with you against Critical Race Theory, the insane immigration policy, the intolerance of Totalizing forms of Islam. Etc
Trump was always a crazy risk. Yet I understood why you took it.
Here is my ask: can you be big enough to close this loop and say âEric you repeatedly tried to warn us brother to brother with our best interests at heart about what just happened when we told you to relax. Perhaps you were right that Trump was an existential risk to the US.â
There is a way back to the country we both love. I believe you were wrong about Trump, and have always said so, but you were right about many things and Iâd like to think the lost friends and abuse were worth it. Iâd like to think I made an investment in us rather than a mistake.
It would be an honor to accept that gesture as closure. Please tell me I bet correctly defending a bunch of patriots with my best interests at heart as well and that I have a seat at your family table. There remains a swamp to be drained. And I believe in you, me & our country.đ
God bless America. From Left to Right and all of us somewhere else or in between.
The Principal of the Trump Train: For all who got on the train as independent thinkers believing they had spotted an arbitrage against the true cancers in our society, there will be a precise moment they get off the train realizing its full danger. Beware of missing this stop:
Trump's 2024 option ended this week. https://x.com/MaheshBhagnari/status/1347556050682015744
Look to those who have âstopped outâ of their trade. It doesnât mean embracing Biden or the Media. They are not reasonable. It means being w/o a current plan. Itâs better to tread water for a while hoping a ship will pass or land will be seen than to head right for the sea floor.
*Principle
I called you on the phone today as a supporter of Trump and told you to get off this train. Now.
Itâs because you have a future. This does not. Youâre in college. You went to a happening. It turned into this.
You were behind me for years when we disagreed. Now itâs my turn.
The woman who got shot could have been you.
You asked me an hour ago, what you could believe in. Itâs not on the political spectrum. Trust me.
These are two organizations that donât care about you. You have my info. Call me if you feel the urge to go back. You know who you are.
Think for yourself. You donât need a political party. You need to be wild young and free. This President is a 74 year old tangled up in so much nonsense and you donât need to replace him with a 78 year old man tangled up in Chinese grift.
I believe in you. Scram. Good luck. đ
To @KyleKashuv,
This is where I actually am. I wrote this to a wonderful young woman I saw cloaked in Trump insignia. She had flown to DC on the 6th. She looks up to me and I have been trying to tell her she can leave Trump if she wants to without embracing Biden.
I called you on the phone today as a supporter of Trump and told you to get off this train. Now.
Itâs because you have a future. This does not. Youâre in college. You went to a happening. It turned into this.
You were behind me for years when we disagreed. Now itâs my turn.
Iâve been worried sick since I saw the San Diego woman who was shot move directly towards a gun pointed at her from a few feet away. The vet who died was oblivious and in a âvideo game modeâ like trance. She LARPEd her way to an early grave. I havenât been able to sleep since.
I love my Millennial friends but they arenât my kidsâ generation. I donât want to see your generation get sucked into this madness. Because you are my kids.
Sooner or later these people born in the 1940s will leave us all and we can pick up the pieces of what is left together.
Thatâs not an excuse. You baited me, and I took the bait because I see this everywhere. I want you young kids to have a future. But youâve been through a school shooting and I never have. Iâm a dad, and dads protect their kids. Iâll buy you an illegal scotch & dinner to explain.
Please read the thread sub-tweeted above. If you hadnât baited me, I might have done better, but the fault is mine. I donât apologize much on Twitter, but you deserved the protector I wanted to be. I may be wrong about what to do, but hopefully my heartâs in the right place. -EW
The president of the United States addressed the rally on January 6th which was not a mob at the time. He did not call for violence. He exhorted them to âStop the Stealâ telling themâ We will never give up. We will never concede.â This is called âDirection by Indirectionâ in law.
This is a situation paralleled by Henry II in his struggle with Thomas Beckett. âWill no one rid me of this troublesome priest?â is not a call for violence in a direct sense.
A short time ago we talked of âputting people to the swordâ or âheads will rollâ meaning to fire people.
In this context, the President yet again used the technique of plausible deniability via the principle of âDirection by Indirectionâ. He as addressing a massive rally near the Capitol. For some reason the partisan BS, colloquial speech and the context are obscuring what happened.
To see what happened:
A) Subtract the abysmal behavior of the Democratic Party in the modern era. They are horrible. So what?
B) Place the President in the context of a real life massive rally Context is everything.
C) See the colloquial as layering indirection over direction.
D) Recognize that the courts had rejected the presidentâs challenges. *Even* if there were a stolen election, we abide by the courtâs decision. Even-If-The-Supreme-Court-Is-Wrong. That is why it is the *Supreme* Court. Tough Shit. Courts blunder all the time. It just ends there.
E) If your claim is that the courts are part of a corrupt cabal that includes the Vice President, sitting senators, and the judges you yourself appointed...then there is no United States to save. You canât âsaveâ the United States by overruling the Supreme Court even if wrong.
F) If you say to a real life massive rally, âweâll never let it happenâ after exhausting all legal appeals, you are living in a fictional USA in your own mind. We may be corrupt. We may be engaged in intrigue and deceptions. We may be petty. But it has to end in law or violence.
G) if you were *absolutely* convinced the election were stolen, It would be far better to have accepted defeat and spent the next four years trying to prove the election were stolen. In short there is no excuse. You canât save the US by overruling the courts via Henry II. No way.
âWill no one rid me of this troubling result?â to a rally within a stroll of the US Capitol, is not a defense. Tough.
Iâm sorry, but I didnât create the principle.
For those not familiar with the story and the principle of Direction through Indirection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F
Note Added: There doesnât need to be a causal link shown that the Presidentâs words caused violence. The words were themselves an exhortation to move to the Capitol and do..something..to âStop the Stealâ. He was still trying to exhort a crowd to interfere with certification.
End
Many people are pointing out that Trump exhorted the Jan 6 rally to be peaceful. Ergo there is no problem...
I have covered this numerous times. He is incredibly consistent sending mixed messages. His supporters see one. Those out to get him see the other.
I see the strategy.
When Trump flips the coin, it always lands on its side. The odds of that happening by accident...arenât worth worrying about.
Itâs a âskillâ and not a fluke.
It is amazing to me weâre still having this conversation after 4 years. He does this every day & the partisans somehow *never* catch on. Itâs as if we learned nothing from him & his singular genius at manipulation.
If you donât see it, how do you think he survived for so long?
Over and over the coin flip lands on its side. At some point you realize this isnât an accident and the man didnât get where he is by being an idiot.
Notice how often he generates the same TDS panic. This is a strategy that got him to the White House and not a bug.
Trump has a limited form of genius.
Here he easily gets @ConceptualJames to teach me that Trump said to be peaceful. And James is a smart guy.
Yes James. I agree. Because the dime always lands on its side. Itâs a strategy: always balance the dime.
Iâve covered this already.
He literally said, "peacefully and patriotically."
Trumpism fills the reality shaped hole in our journalism left by LeftCarthyism.
You cannot rid yourself of the former without eradicating the latter. And we *must* rid ourselves of the former.
Now.
It is time to again start reporting the news.
It is time for a return to a second version of the Church and Pike Committees.
To regulate speech companies or provide a public version of Twitter, FaceBook and Google as well as ISPs so that our speech cannot be throttled according to anything other than the laws of our nation.
Folks donât seem to understand my point in the quoted tweet. Think of the Republican voter-base for Trump as a bus & the Democratic establishment as an angry dog determined to chase it. Iâm saying that the aggressive Democrats chasing this bus havenât thought through catching it.
Itâs not Trumpism. Itâs classic blue collar working progressivism.
WTF is wrong with everyone. Did coal just disappear from American history books?
@JDVance1 comes from the heart of labor. Kentucky. Ohio. West Virginia.
Or is Mother Jones not a woman and just a magazine now?
Donald Trump is a New York finance, media and real estate creature of pop culture. JD is a friend and a real human being tied to US labor and a true American success story.
It ainât Trumpism. If you think it is, open a history book. Look up Blair Mtn. You will be shocked. Sheesh
If you were against both Trumpâs nonsense and the pseudoscience from supposed scientists that opposed him by lying about COVID, this is a breath of fresh air from the FT:
I wrote about the lab leak hypothesis and fact wars. With thanks to @EricRWeinstein and @dandrezner for their thoughts https://ft.com/content/41f6f9ba-db82-4782-8ec0-bc952abb3836 via @financialtimes
AndâŚon a personal noteâŚI can once again be asked for comments in mainstream publications.
I donât change. Itâs the media that goes in cycles.
Letâs remember this preposterous cycle the next time the heterodox who refuse to go along with narratives are driven out of favor.
đ
Five trends are colliding:
A) Public Health issues require coordinated group effort to retard the spread of misinformation including media & Tech Communications platforms.
B) Violence is an issue of Public Health.
C) January 6th proved Trump supporters are violent extremists. https://t.co/65ExAE1asF
D) The Republican Party is now the party of Trump.
E) Mainstream Conservatives in America are Republicans.
Syllogisms sold separately.
The Democratic Party and I have a similar distaste for Trump. On the other hand, I would *never* in a million years go where this is goingâŚ
I donât feel this to be a genuine question. We all get your argument if thatâs what you are asking.
Allow me to reframe. Your and my California votes were dwarfed in their direct importance by what they meant to any people following us. So your vote said âItâs time for Trump.â
All the world knows about my vote is that I couldnât vote for a 78 year old with serious cognitive decline nor a 74 year old shredding the best parts of our civic culture and our very ability to process reality together as a nation. Who I voted for is irrelevant: what did it say?
A) There was no mature way out of the 2020 election. Two unworkable elderly candidates and parties plus the Time Magazine article? It was a disaster.
B) I said clearly: âYou will fail to find a solution in 2020. Have compassion for your loved ones who will also fail as you did.â
So I come back to you Dave. You failed. You straight up failed when you chose Trump.
Do I crow about it? No. Why? Because I failed too. I threw a vote to someone who couldnât win. Not as a noble gesture. Like a moron, I couldnât think of anything better. So I too took the L.
Others of our friends voted Biden. Or voted for Trump secretly. Or wrote in Tulsi. Or opted out.
Your point is âCan you all admit that I was right in voting for Trump?â
There wasnât an answer on the ballot. So it stupidly fell to folks like us to try to hold this all together.
The way I understood our roll is to not do what you are doing now. I perfectly understand why you didnât vote Biden. I didnât either. But deep down you understand why I didnât vote Trump just as I understand why you did.
Why canât we be gracious about it? Isnât that the point?
I failed. But I tried to use my vote wisely. I tried to say: our dwindling hope as a nation lies in realizing we are being pitted against each other. Donât lose your family or kid or marriage over watching someone else fail with their vote just as you failed in yours.
I thought thatâs what we stood for anyway. Maybe I fâed that up too.
But I understand your anti-woke vote. And there would have been benefits had it gone differently. Just as there are benefits to Biden over Trump.
But no Dave. I have nothing to apologize for. My honest take.
*role
âIâve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,â Trump booms from a speakerphone. âHeâs a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it â Jeffrey enjoys his social life.â -@NYMag
What was that about? Jeffrey Epstein was not a âdisgraced financierâ, 14 year olds are not âBeautiful womenâŚon the younger side.â
Was Trump sending us a message, a warning or a confession? Whatever it was, itâs a big deal. Time to revisit this article:
I once again note people reading things in that I didnât write. I canât help you. The difference between making a confession and sending us a warning about Epstein covers a *lot* of possible territory.
Think before assuming.
2022
A year ago. Watching the "Stop the Steal"-train on the same track as the "Certify the Vote"-locomotive running in the opposite direction, with three days left.
It does no good. We can see what is about to happen. But there is nothing we can do with that information w/o leaders.
I clearly do not understand the argument for Donald Trump as the only answer to Democratic Party madness.
Thereâs an entire universe of younger, saner, more reasonable, less tainted individuals. Veterans who served with humility and patriotism that is self-evident for example.đ¤ˇââď¸
I think this isnât right.
We have a world where institutions BLATANTLY lie in the vague direction of the truth to make the truthâŚuhâŚpunchier. More viral.
Some people, upon detecting the lies (e.g. âClimate modeling is settled scienceâ), decide thereâs no truth in it *at all*.
đ´On the Republican Party: âBecause of Trumpâs fanaticism, the worshipful base of the Republican Party barely regards climate change as a serious problem. Thatâs a death warrant to the species.â
Many believe there is no chance COVID was Zoonotic because we are lying about the lab by saying it has to be Zoonotic. But we donât know.
Many people are convinced Ivermectin is a total COVID solution since weâre obviously lying about human medicine as Horse Dewormer. It isnât.
No one knows if Epstein killed himself. We just know our papers arenât aggressively reporting that story. So many assume Epsteinâs death is fake or an obvious hit. Because it could be either, but our lame institutions donât dare ask even the easy questions. So we lurch to oppose.
Many people donât believe that Russia/Ukraine is a threat or even real because they can see the obvious daily spin. But it is a huge threat and an atrocity. Weâre just lying and spinning parts of it.
They donât believe the Fed has ANY function because it does do some bad stuff.
Moral: if you want a better model of Trump Supporters try this one: they prefer idiosyncratic lying/spin/distortion by a gadfly as an antidote to coordinated credentialed institutional polished lying with amazing production values. Further, they donât think *anyone* offers truth.
But they will react to spin and hype as if there is ZERO substance behind it if that spin and hype are coordinated across multiple venues, institutions & talking heads.
They arenât principally embracing Trump or idiocy. They are rejecting obvious coordination of hype.
That.đ
One example, offered freely and without my asking:
That would be me. A lifetime studying science but have never spent one second looking into climate change. Too many experiences with the left's consensus herd. Don't care about Ukraine, either. Anything they're all in on I ignore.
People are asking what I think of @SamHarrisOrgâs recent stated positions surrounding Trump related issues.
That theyâre wrong? At least thatâs my opinion. This is not a secret. I have been warning Sam openly about the danger of his theory of Trump since dinner on Jan 3, 2017. https://t.co/TiLtTwDcOq
Thatâs not a dunk. Itâs not dragging. Heâs been great on all sorts of stuff. But Free Will, Trump, & the scalability of virtuous Atheism have been 3 areas of persistent disagreement.
And Iâll continue to disagree w/ my friend. Iâd be happy to discuss, steel-man or debate too.
But if I were to be egoic about this I would say that what Sam needs most is to have his underlying position steel-manned first by someone ELSE. What got said on that interview *was* troubling in substance. But the bit about corpses of children, etc. is just such a total misfire.
Yet as most of you know, I try to make a policy of NOT running away from any friend facing a mob. And Sam is a true friend in a tough spot after a bad interview advocating for positions directly counter to my own.
Iâm not running away, so you can fire away at me in the comments.
Lastly Iâll say this: Sam is anti-tribal, Iâm not.
I admire guys who donât leave a buddy on the battlefield in war. This is just Twitter so itâs good practice. Samâs a close friend, not an account to me. And no real friend goes under the bus to placate a mob. Thatâs my policy.đ
I just listened to Biden's Philadelphia Speech.
One overarching reaction. The speech was 1/3 of a speech. There are three groups threatening US Democracy. No one can give the needed speech until they all out all three groups:
A) Extractocrats
B) Wokestanis
C) MAGAstanis
All these groups are reacting to each other. MAGASTAN is trying to defend the US from Wokestani insanity and the Extractocrat Swamp and will forgive their leader almost any bad action because he seems to be the only thing out of central control powerful enough to disrupt DC.
Wokestanis by contrast are trying to defend the US from some vision of Charlottesville madness energized by Trump metastatizing into a mainstream nightmare.
Mainstream Extractocrats try to protect the Swamp from the other party's "armed wing" while trying to operate their own.
The ability to unify around American Values requires calling out all three groups. You can't single out MAGA or WOKE or the Swamp from one of the other groups. It just doesn't work. It looks like trying to get positional advantage. Biden would have had to talk about all of them.
You can't say MAGA reaches into the past without calling the BS '1619 project' anti-american. Which it is.
You would have to talk about "No Justice, No Peace" if you wanted to discuss political violence.
You'd have to talk about Extractocrats Mitch McConnell & Nancy Pelosi.
To say it plainly, folks like me talk about our own party's problems so that we MIGHT one day be able to say "We have got to cut this all out."
In general, NO ONE in a position to give such a speech sees all 3 threats and is interested in sacrificing & risking to name them all.
I kept thinking, "How is he going to land the plane?"
And the truth is, he doesn't see the problem. He is simply the patriotic American with a successful loving son named Hunter while there is a war in Ukraine with Nancy P flying off to Taiwan and hubby Paul trading up a storm.
No talk of hearings into COVID origins with Peter Daszak. No talk of Epstein hearings into IC connections.
Just the Extractocrat seeing MAGA for the one thing I actually envy about MAGA: At least it is a genuine (if minor) threat to the DC Swamp.
There is a difference here.
There are two ways to fear MAGA:
I) As a genuine threat to American Values.
II) As a geniune threat to Swamp opportunities and entitlements.
Those of us who fear MAGA for reason I) also fear Extractocrats of both parties as well as the Woke. These are *all* threats to the US.
So my heart sank. This POTUS could not give that speech. As long as kids are being pushed to transition genders by sexuality counselers or establishment political families have 8+ figures of wealth from no apparent source of productive behavior, you can't just single out 1 of 3.
My prediction however is that this is going to be viewed as the hypocritical blue portion of the Swamp trying to win a coming election with zero understanding of just how corrupt and dangerous all three groups are.
So to sum up this is what I think. And it isn't hopeful.
There is a solution. It must either come from less corruop outsiders than TRUMP or it must come from an extraordinary individual insider willing to give up wealth, safety, status and security. A surprise like Eisenhower's Chamberlin's final addresses. And that was not Joe Biden.
This has been off the cuff. So, thanks for bearing with me.
End
ERRATA.
*Triple. If you follow me you know about me symbols and dyslexia. If you don't there is a lot of that in my threads.
These are obviously just my personal views alone and off the cuff as this just happened. Subject to change as I get a chancd to go over what I heard.
2023
2024