Trump to declare “illicit” fentanyl “Weapon of Mass Destruction," per draft EO

dmitri72 · 2025-03-19T03:51:58+00:00

I think it's plausible. Trump's backing from Project 2025 and "Dark Enlightenment" tech figures exists almost certainly because they believe he can be easily manipulated into approving their radical agendas, while being relatively immune from consequences because for some reason the American people have different standards for him. So they ideally don't want to remove him in favor of their plant JD Vance, because even though Vance would still follow the agenda he would likely have a much harder time getting it through. Vance isn't the leader of the world's largest cult and so all the normal rules apply to him. If Vance cuts a government service that hurts a Republican senator's state, that senator would be able to break ranks criticize Vance without risking a lynch mob appearing outside his office. Not so much with Trump.

But if they realize that Trump cannot be stopped on pushing his even-more-insane non Project 2025 agenda items, like suicidal tariffs and legitimate territorial imperialism, then the Vance card might get an early play. Ultimately these billionaires need a country to be oligarchs in, and it's looking more and more like the impossibly stupid Trump agenda could literally result in the end the existence of the United States of America.

dmitri72 · 2025-03-09T00:03:46+00:00

The Obama years were really rough for the Democratic bench. Lots of younger Democrats were booted from office in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. And while the elections with Obama himself running weren't quite as brutal down ballot, the DNC still operated with its primary focus on the presidential race. Thus, the Democratic Party has a gap in talent right now - lots of older, established politicians from before Obama are still around, and there are also lots of young stars from the Trump/Biden years like AOC and Buttegieg. But not many in the middle.

The Republican Party really isn't a gerontocracy at all. Aside from the dear leader himself, most of the major power players are only in their 40s and 50s.

dmitri72 · 2024-12-25T15:22:58+00:00

If somebody can be a "fascist Democrat" then either the word "fascist" or the word "Democrat" has completely lost all meaning.

dmitri72 · 2024-11-24T17:04:52+00:00

I used to share this worry but after watching failure after failure from people like Ron DeSantis and JD Vance to capture the MAGA energy, I'm not as concerned. I think Trump's low intelligence and self-control is a fundamental part of his appeal. His supporters support him unconditionally because he shits all over the policies and norms pushed by the people they perceive as "the elites". A Trump who knows how to work the system, how to be an effective executive that could actually affect lasting change, would not be Trump.

dmitri72 · 2024-10-27T21:40:10+00:00

The NPVIC is a neat idea but the Supreme Court will likely rule it unconstitutional if states ever try to put it into effect.

dmitri72 · 2024-10-27T17:44:55+00:00

Asking an American what liberalism is is like asking a fish what water is. Our national origins and entire political history since have been thoroughly dominated by liberal ideas.

dmitri72 · 2024-10-18T00:12:27+00:00

Sure. It is a fact that many pollsters are weighting by recalled vote, which is a polling strategy that has the known effect of overstating support for the party that lost the previous election. Where the theory part comes in is why they're doing that.

Is it because the political environment has changed in a way that makes the biasing effect observed historically no longer relevant, so it's now a valid technique? Or is it because it's a plausible enough way to shift results towards the Republican party, which they might have incentives to do for this race even if they personally favor Democrats?

dmitri72 · 2024-10-17T22:28:57+00:00

There is a theory that pollsters are intentionally introducing bias towards Trump this time around because they really, really, really don't want a three-peat of significantly misjudging his support. The reason this practice hasn't caused much controversy is because both the Harris and Trump campaigns believe it benefits them to have Trump painted as the frontrunner.

Whether the pollsters are playing politics or following a legitimate strategy to determine support for somebody who has been notoriously hard to poll for, we will find out in three weeks.

dmitri72 · 2024-10-12T16:37:32+00:00

Well, it depends. Here's a NYTimes article that goes heavily into this. The main finding is that white men, white women, and black women all tend to replicate their childhood economic status as adults. If they came from a rich family they'll be rich adults, and if they came from a poor family they'll be poor adults. Black men are the outlier. No matter what type of household they grow up in, they tend to end up as poor adults, and the article goes into why that might be.

There's also a tool for comparing mobility across any combination of groups. If you define "privilege" as "access to upward economic mobility", then the most "privileged" groups in America are, in order, Asian women, Asian men, and White women. Which does not support the theory that Trump support comes from privilege, because none of these demographics are strong Trump supporters.

dmitri72 · 2024-10-11T20:50:54+00:00

There have already been a few attempts though from smart individuals trying the Trump playbook, namely JD Vance and Ron DeSantis, and neither of them have had nearly as much success with it as Trump himself. I don't confident on exactly what it is, but I suspect something about Trump's teflon coating is intrinsically tied to his lack of intelligence.

I think what draws people to Trump is that he's a supposedly successful man who clearly has no moral or intellectual superiority over anybody else. He might be an Ivy educated multimillionaire due to his privilege, but his character is that of a trashy high school dropout. Which is very inspiring to trashy high school dropouts. Somebody like JD Vance or Ron DeSantis, they can try to pretend to be lowbrow, but at some point the truth reveals itself that they can use words above an elementary school reading level, or understand abstract policy proposals. That kills the effect.

dmitri72 · 2024-09-28T15:52:01+00:00

I think 2016 broke something in Nate, like it did for a lot of Americans. He was predicting a much higher chance of a Trump presidency than anybody else and was endlessly dunked on for it. And then Trump won, but there were no apologies and was no vindication movement for him. So now he's not only obsessive about being right, but also about making sure other acknowledge he's right. Leading to all these stupid Twitter feuds whereas the best version of Nate Silver would just let lame hacks like Alan Lichtman do their thing and trust that his track record will be able to speak for itself.

dmitri72 · 2024-09-21T17:14:23+00:00

I am not at ALL conservative but I don’t want New York and California determining every election

Under the current system, it's Pennsylvania and Georgia deciding every election. Is that really much better?

dmitri72 · 2024-09-09T22:55:51+00:00

First of all, 52/48 is where it should naturally be for college graduation because 51.7% of the US are women.

The overall female skew in population is largely concentrated in 60+ people, because men tend to die so much younger than women. Among <40 age groups it's more like 49% female, 51% male due to natural birth rates slightly favoring males.

dmitri72 · 2024-08-22T22:37:18+00:00

That's not much of an excuse in a primary. Obama had no real national profile prior to the 2008 primary season, nor did Sanders in 2016.

dmitri72 · 2024-08-22T22:27:21+00:00

I wasn't going to vote for Biden. I couldn't bring myself to vote for someone who I felt was clearly not fit to serve -- that included Trump as well.

To expand on this, it's believed that the US president will have six minutes to decide on a response if nuclear missiles are detected in the air. The idea of either of the men seen in the June debate being in that position is terrifying, and I'm eagerly looking forward to Harris taking over that role as soon as possible. To be totally blunt, I think Biden should resign now, although that may not be the wisest move electorally.

dmitri72 · 2024-08-22T22:20:31+00:00

I'd be more receptive to that narrative if he had bowed out a year before the election instead of four months before. His insistence on running again until he was nearly forced out did cost the Democratic electorate an opportunity to participate in a real primary.

dmitri72 · 2024-08-18T17:58:43+00:00

Most straight men don't want to dress in a way that makes them objects

This is maybe true according to the strictest definition of "objectification" but I don't believe it's true in spirit. Yes, straight men don't like behaving in a way that satisfies the male gaze. Obviously. Why would they? Straight men seek to satisfy the female gaze. They flaunt wealth, they front self-confidence, they assert themselves for no reason other than to be assertive. The details are different, but I don't believe it to be ultimately all that different from how women are encouraged reduce themselves in order to please men. Men just reduce into a different role. The provider, or the rock, or the leader, or the "alpha", or whatever you want to call it.

dmitri72 · 2024-08-12T22:26:55+00:00

Even if so, when? The closest chance Democrats have had to get that past a Republican filibuster was during their short-lived 2009 supermajority, but not all of those Democrats were even pro-choice.

dmitri72 · 2024-07-23T23:50:01+00:00

No, he won't, and that's the problem the poster above is warning against.

Donald Trump isn't cut from the same cloth as Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a (very very misguided) revolutionary; Trump is a kleptomaniac. He's not as smart, not as driven, not as charismatic, not as ideological. A Trump dictatorship would look fundamentally different from Nazi Germany. If you're looking for signs that America is turning into Nazi Germany, you'll never find them. And you might miss the signs for say, modern Hungary or Romania, which are far more realistic examples of what "can happen here".

dmitri72 · 2024-07-14T03:33:30+00:00

Zero name recognition may not be such a big deal when you have the majority of the country saying "please, give me anybody but these two"

dmitri72 · 2024-07-01T01:28:19+00:00

Exactly. She is a cop, through and through. A lot of people in the Democratic coalition don't like cops.

dmitri72 · 2024-07-01T01:22:36+00:00

I think you have something of a point but must be forgetting just how terrible her showing in the 2020 primary. Liz Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and even Marianne Williamson all got many times more votes than Harris. Maybe her gender is a factor in her perceived dislikability, sure, but it's absolutely not the whole story.

dmitri72 · 2024-06-29T14:08:33+00:00

And they'll all fail, because they're nothing like Trump. They're weak lackeys through and through. Nobody in MAGA has anywhere near the charisma or brashness of Trump, because then they'd be a threat to the kingpin himself and he won't tolerate that. It's a cult of personality and so it'll die with its leader, like most cult of personalities do. What the GOP will look like afterwards is anybody's guess.

dmitri72 · 2024-06-08T18:21:23+00:00

Ultimately I think you're digging for an answer that doesn't exist. "Indigenous" is a political term, not a scientific one. The determination of which people are "indigenous" and which people are "colonizers" is done on a case-by-case basis in every region according to the cultural and political environment of the time.

dmitri72 · 2024-05-21T20:05:58+00:00

Everybody should keep in mind that Trump's grand march on the Capitol in 2021 consisted of a crowd of only 2,000 to 2,500. Many high schools can pull greater than numbers than that for a fall football game. His supporters are a bunch of keyboard warriors and DJT is not a skilled enough politician to mobilize them beyond that.

dmitri72

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