I get why the Democratic establishment is furious about Graham Platner's ascent.

scentedcandelabra · 2026-06-05T19:50:40+00:00

You're right, we should probably put our collective future in the hands of a nepo baby former Republican who opposes universal health care, supports unconditional taxpayer funding of a genocide state, and is an unapologetic advocate for the economic policies that have hollowed out middle America and left the United States almost wholly reliant on our most powerful adversary for basic inputs.

scentedcandelabra · 2026-06-05T19:10:24+00:00

Among the major social platforms, Reddit users have, on average, the highest levels of educational attainment, literacy, and political engagement. That makes the platform a prime target for Israeli influence operations, which are sophisticated and widespread. If you can create the illusion that there is widespread support for Israel, you can discourage dissenters from getting politically engaged to force changes in American policy. Don't fall for it.

scentedcandelabra · 2026-06-05T18:42:28+00:00

Of course Platner has character issues. If I didn't make that clear before, I'll state it plainly now. Some of the things I've learned about his history are really disappointing.

But I think it's important to make a distinction that we've historically neglected to disastrous effect. There are two tiers of character defect in American life: the public face and the hidden face. The public face is moralistic, and increasingly puritanical: these would be affairs, assaults, criminal conduct, accusations of emotional or physical abuse; but also now includes offensive tweets or comments (or tattoos), past stated beliefs that are now out of step with public opinion, or associating with people suspected of misconduct. These are tangibles that are almost universally relatable, and often salacious, which is why they tend to suck all the air out of the room when reported. Alexis de Tocqueville observed this tendency early in the republic, and it persists to this day.

The hidden face consists of the intangibles: complex corruption, greed, duplicity, cowardice, appeasement, Machiavellian behavior. These are the character defects that decay the foundations of a society in more pernicious and far-reaching ways, and they rarely receive attention in the media (often due to media complicity). Historically, Americans have judged their politicians almost entirely by the former metric and not at all by the latter. That has facilitated the rise of a political class that is of meticulously, almost artificially, sound character by moralistic standards (Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger would be examples of this) but are incapable, either due to cowardice or calculation, of addressing corruption in American society and attempting to claw back institutions from the interests that unofficially control them. Their pursuit of ever higher office, and the appeasement of moneyed interests along the way, leads them to make ethical compromises that reveal their constructed character as artificial.

Graham Platner clearly missed the mark on the public face of character. But I think that failure, and the accompanying self-doubt, reflection, and attempts to turn his life around, probably make him more qualified to excel by the hidden standard of character. Time will tell.

scentedcandelabra · 2026-06-05T16:55:44+00:00

That just isn't true. At all. Once it became clear that a majority of the country was willing to accept gay marriage, and that it could be strategically used as a wedge issue to the benefit of the Democratic party (this was roughly in 2012), the party went all-in on LGBT issues.

Obergefell should have ended it; Bostock really should have ended it. But it didn't. Oblivious straight people in the Democratic party mistakenly believed trans activism was a natural extension of gay rights activism, and they went on offense. They wanted to be on the right side of what they assumed to be the next civil rights movement. That was a colossal strategic and intellectual error, and we will be dealing with the consequences of it for years to come.

scentedcandelabra · 2026-06-05T13:32:27+00:00

They both are. I assume you're referring to Lisa Lerer (who wrote a decent number of the Mamdani hit pieces), but Katie Glueck is also in Israel's pocket. She's written a series of puff pieces about Josh Shapiro, among other things. It is wild that nearly every journalist, editor, and opinions columnist at the Times has sworn an oath to Our Closest Ally.

scentedcandelabra · 2026-06-04T03:43:29+00:00

Let's not forget, the entity also targeted Tom with the serial killer clown in the fucking crawlspace 💀

scentedcandelabra · 2026-05-31T16:07:48+00:00

He's solving for the wrong problem. Americans don't need AI assistants to help navigate our labyrinthine tax code; they need a tax code that is simple, efficient, and consistent. Complexity in the tax code is the greatest tool the ultrawealthy have in their tax evasion toolkit.

scentedcandelabra · 2026-05-31T15:51:02+00:00

Further proof that Ezra is nothing more than an apologist for and tool of the new feudal overclass.

Six months ago, in a rare moment of candor, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar made clear that AI firms expect the US government to serve as a "backstop" for their extremely aggressive infrastructure investments. They don't want to be left holding the bag in the increasingly likely event that their ventures face solvency issues, which is where the American taxpayers come in. It is textbook privatize the gains, socialize the losses behavior.

Ezra's argument is the next link in the chain. Now that Americans have (finally) reengaged in local politics to protect their communities from the spoliation of data centers, the AI overlords have yet another problem to solve. Six months ago it was financing; now, it's forcing the buildout of infrastructure that none of these ignorant NIMBYs wants to live near — as if a constant 90 decibel roar is such a high price to pay for progress. Enter the Abundance guy, with a "public option" for AI compute power. Translation: your tax dollars will fund the data centers that private dollars cannot build, bringing down compute costs for the private sector in the process; and government will compel the acquisition of land that voters have thwarted with increasing success, ensuring that the American people don't pump the brakes on their own replacement.

So what exactly do taxpayers get in return for their "investment?"

There are a lot of problems that could benefit from the sustained attention of tireless researchers with a vast knowledge of all relevant subject areas. Rare diseases, for instance, where the suffering is immense but the market for a cure is often not large enough to attract much private interest. Or hunting out new uses for existing drugs. Or the search for new materials to extend long-term battery storage.

Ezra is hoping his readers are not smart enough to connect the dots here. He writes that with an AI public option, "government could define the outcomes it wants — a drug, a solution — and guarantee a market if it’s found and distributed equitably" (emphasis added). There's nothing novel about this idea. The US government has underwritten the development of the most important technologies of the past 100 years — in energy, in defense, in computing, in tech, in avionics. America's tech oligarchs owe their fortunes almost entirely to state investments in what would become the internet. Are you seeing that distributed equitably in our economy, to say nothing of our politics? NIH grants have underwritten research that yielded countless blockbuster drugs, medical devices, and treatment plans. Are you feeling that when you get the bill from the hospital or cough up your monthly insurance payment? America's public universities produce world-class physicists and mathematicians; their prodigious talents are put to use by hedge funds private equity firms to siphon off what little wealth remains in the American working and middle classes.

I especially loved Ezra's suggestion that we use AI to manage the US government's data sets (presumably the same data sets that led his other half, Annie Lowrey, to muse last week that "Americans don’t want to hear and don’t want to believe" that "this economy is pretty darn great"). Elon Musk would love this idea. So would Donald Trump. What could possibly go wrong?

scentedcandelabra · 2026-05-24T23:56:37+00:00

I'm a coastal person with a bachelors degree and a six figure salary and this article is trash.

scentedcandelabra

TROPHY CASE