2016 U.S. Presidential Elections: The Circus Is In Full Swing

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Holding people accountable needs to be part of the solution. Not just legally, but also ethically. And not just in a puntive fashion. And not just for Trump-like people, but progressives too, but for different reasons.

The first problem is that Trump is constantly floating along the line of 'uh ok I guess' and 'tf impeach and remove this *******' where we cant hold him accountable until he directly incites a riot and causes 5 deaths. There are simply no strong mechanisms to punish presidents.

Parallel to that, the second problem is that we need a strong theory of tangible harm before we can devise legitimate accountability mechanisms against Trump-like figures and rhetoricians. Like Jacob said, a lot of people were turned off by the media narratives about Trump often feeling like nothing burgers, but I don't blame the media for not writing theses on the potential harm of the things Trump says and does when even academics can't pin point things convincingly enough, apparently. All the media can do is a bit of implicit virtue signaling. Plus, in the end, they're at least in part profit driven, which affects how they report, that being, just as sensational as they can without lying to get clicks.

And we probably need a stronger theory to call out progressives where they fail rhetorically or fail to negotiate or understand problems. I'm saying all of this from the comfort of my bed btw, and I know that a lot of things are being tried and that **** is way more difficult.

What I personally really, really like as a suggestion from Yascha Mounck, is politicians spending way more time with their constituents, so as to: 1. expose politicians to the problems of every day people so they can understand and feel them better and 2. inspire confidence in people in that their representative is just a person trying to represent them, and not a lizard corporate globalist person.

Politicians start singing a different tune when they spend all their time around experts, lobbyists and other politicians and you just start noticing a divergence between politicians and their constituents, which is really unattractive to people. Having people understand each others rationale and problems so as to avoid miscommunications and mischaracterizations is important, imo.
 
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The problem with prosecuting Trump is political. Is he going to come out as a martyr over this, playing a victim and mobilizing his crowds against a new "hoax"? I guess this is why most reasonable people don't want to go with it and would prefer he gets caught up in more prosaic lawsuits about fraud and other financial crimes by regular courts.
You need a clear-cut case and greater consensus to do this successfully and the Dems don't have those at the moment. The only real benefit of a successful impeachment would be disqualifying him from running for office - but is he really a danger in 2024? I think there would be more dangerous Republicans gunning for the Presidency then, so why not let him run for office and fail, he has the major disadvantage of poor record in office.
 
I feel you. I hold onto that the problem is systemic and that Trump is just a part of it. Practically, you're completely correct, of course.

The problem the way I see it is that society and how we do politics is changing, with technology being a strong driver, along with globalism where problems seem less important because the harms occur further away despite our interdependence and interconnectivity and your potential contribution to the cause of a given problem. (and weirdly enough people form clouds of local echo-chambers because we can so conveniently seek out like-minded people).

I think Trump is a really good case study for how we can internalize these problems going forward. But if we devise a good enough theory, then, in the end, you cannot keep blaming systems. In the end, people have to take action, or people have to be deterred from taking action because we now have accountability mechanisms. How to have them take action or deter them from taking certain actions is the question, probably.

Something to bear in mind is that a lot of right-leaning folks respond very strongly to authority. A right-leaning person is way more likely to conform to a heavy-handed approach (law & order, anyone?). Coming out hard against Trump could have the complete opposite effect of all of these people shutting down. But again, you need a strong theory of harm and some sort of consensus, as you've said, in order to legitimately do that.
 
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... so why not let him run for office and fail, he has the major disadvantage of poor record in office.
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Trump got more than 10 million more votes this time, and only lost because of a record amount of people voting - with some states changing laws to increase mail/absentee voting.
A lot probably just voted against Trump, and not specifically for Biden. Imagine 4 years of Biden not accomplishing much (I know, it's unfathomable) ...
Let's not pretend to know the future and give Trump more chances.
 
Something to bear in mind is that a lot of right-leaning folks respond very strongly to authority.

Only specific kinds of authority and only against certain kinds of people and certain threats. This is why Trumpism retains a lot of anti-authoritarian and even anti-state elements like an obsession with minarchism, the constitution and guns, while at the same time wanting the police to shoot protestors, and approving punitive wars against people who threaten the state.

I think Trumpism is fairly easy to understand when you interpret it as a contradictory mixture of different desires. It was the same with the tea party, it was a reponse to socioeconomic pressure from a variety of sources and as a result never pushed in a single direction.

I definitely think you're right that lack of representation is one of the main things driving trumpism. Having spent years on Facebook and Twitter watching and sporadically harrassing these people for my own amusement, their weird anxieties about a exclusionary, conspiring pedophile elite are almost nationalist in nature, and sometimes they sound like minorities in 1800s Russia complaining about the monarchy. I think a big part of it is how southern and traditional conservative identities are now practically excluded from the media and high office and they have nobody with much power to back up their Identity. Most trumpists I've seen or talk to hate the republicans as well and for many of the same reasons, they're just desperate for anyone to represent them.
 
Only specific kinds of authority and only against certain kinds of people and certain threats.
I can see your point. But as you said, people don't have rational ideas. American libertarians will call Twitter fash for silencing Trump but say nothing when a more salient threat, like the head of government, Trump, actually threatens free speech by threatening the media. The things people find offensive is so circumstantial. The guys storming the Capitol Hill should've been met with the heavy-handed approach and branding we saw in other places. ''You think you can attack American institutions, mother****er? Think again, you ****ing traitor piece of ****. You can rot in guantanamo, for all I care'' would've unironically do really well with authoritarian types, I think.

Yeah, I unironically think Christianity, republicanism, conservativism need better representation all across the board. In media as well as politically.
 
The problem with that is that nobody is truly authoritarian in that abstract sense. Authoritarians are massively insecure pussies who want powerful institutions to defend them, and disproportionately punish their enemies. The Nazis didn't applaud Jews for fighting back in the Warsaw uprising, or respect the Soviet Union for refusing to die in 1941 and beating them back to Germany. With authoritarianism the only sanctioned violence is violence that benefits you personally, and everything else is interpreted as unjustifiable and immoral.
 
Yeah, good point, but even Nazis weren't in the Nazis interests. Some people, in some circumstances unironically don't mind being stepped on because they're attracted to the whole aesthetic of strength, loyalty to a cause, and something greater than their individuality. Like, it's not rational, but yeah.
 
A person actually intended to execute Nancy Pelosi during the Capitol 'incident' (but arrived too late).
The man - owner of Car Nutz Car Wash - sent a text message saying "... a bullet in her noggin on live TV".
(Paywall)

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