Thursday: Hili dialogue

94 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

1. That Ola Dubh looks AMAZING! And so does the tomato soup meme.

2. I think there is an additional reason why the Dems lost: the Amish. No, their votes didn’t decide the election, but the reason they turned out is instructive. In January the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture raided a Dutch farm that produced raw milk. The Amish saw this as government overreach. This is almost a tenet of liberal politics, and the Amish are the poster children for “leave us alone.” From the Covid response to the killing of P’nut the squirrel, Dem policies and promises offered a dramatically intrusive government, including the imposition of DEI, the imposition of gender ideology with the sterilization and mutilation of children under the guise of gender theory, and the various mandates associated with the Green agenda. People generally don’t like to be told how to live; they hate when advice comes at them as a law. That Harris did as well as she did is due to the party faithful and ideologues, but mainly to Donald Trump. He was the campaign issue.

   1. “From the COVID response…”

      What are you talking about? Was something forced on anyone?

      1. Masking, social distancing, quarantining, vaccines.

         1. Tell me where the gov’t forced vaccination on anyone.

            I remember hospitals requiring masks.

            There were social distancing recommendations. Horrors!

            As far as quarantining and other restrictions, my neighbor Theodore across the street is dead because the guy who owns the pub/restaurant not far away flouted PA Gov Wolf’s decree or whatever it was called on closures. Dec ’20, about a month before any of the vaccines was available, Theodore went down to this place and started talking to a guy who was positive and got it. He drove himself to the hospital and never came back. This is just one example of why there were quarantines and such – an attempt to protect the public from people who don’t care. Some things may have been unnecessary, but we didn’t know much about the virus at first, and we’re still learning about it.

            1. “Tell me where the gov’t forced vaccination on anyone.”

               On September 9th, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order directing that all federal employees be vaccinated. That order says, in part, “I have determined that to promote the health and safety of the Federal workforce and the efficiency of the civil service, it is necessary to require COVID-19 vaccination for all Federal employees . . .” I have family members who were among those required, despite being young, healthy, and having already had clinically-confirmed COVID.

               https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/09/09/executive-order-on-requiring-coronavirus-disease-2019-vaccination-for-federal-employees/

               This followed a directive by the Pentagon leadership that all 2.8 million US servicemembers be vaccinated. I have many former colleagues who were among those required.

               https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2746111/secretary-of-defense-mandates-covid-19-vaccinations-for-service-members/

               Moreover, the Biden administration attempted to coerce any private company with more than 100 employees to either have them vaccinated or tested weekly. This would have impacted over 80 million workers had the mandate not been struck down by the US Supreme Court.

               https://law.stanford.edu/2022/01/20/a-look-at-the-supreme-court-ruling-on-vaccination-mandates/

               We could multiply that with mandates at the state and local government levels. Now, perhaps your definition of “forced” means to physically hold down and inject a person against one’s will. However, the average person would likely consider that “forced” also includes firing, threat of firing, loss of retirement benefits, expulsion from university, and any number of other punishments that were imposed on people who did not “volunteer” to get vaccinated. A number of those people are now winning lawsuits for violation of their civil rights.

               https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/column-why-workers-fired-refusing-covid-vaccines-are-starting-win-court-2024-11-01/

               It is fine to argue that people made the wrong choice. It is fine to argue that you support coercion of people and reject allowing them the choice of what to do with their own body—even after the vaccine was found not to prevent transmission. But to deny what happened is a bit rich.

            2. I suppose if by “forced” you mean actually held people down and injected at gunpoint, probably not.
               On the other hand, requiring people to get vaccinated in order to remain employed probably constitutes force.

               NBC news, 9/9/21 “WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday issued two executive orders mandating vaccines for federal workers and contractors and announced new requirements for large employers and health care providers that he said would affect around 100 million workers, more than two-thirds of the U.S. workforce.”

               And much of the quarantine, masking, and distancing requirements were not based on extant knowledge about viral spread.
               Whether you were forced to close your business depended largely on your political clout.

               I was a USMC instructor on bio warfare prevention long before Covid, and I recognized the rules were obviously not based on the real-world science used to formulate military procedures for such things.

               They lost any credibility for me when it was decided that some public gatherings were reckless and criminal, and others safe, the only difference being the political leanings of the attendees.

         2. Further, the first year of COVID happened when Orange Julius was parked in the WH, so nobody has any business blaming any of that on Biden.

            Instead, how about blaming all the excess COVID deaths that happened because of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin on OJ?

            1. Please don’t move the goal posts. You asked incredulously what was forced on anyone, then when the forced measures were itemized for you, you retreated to saying that the force used was necessary and, it seems in the case of your neighbour, inadequately applied.

               Whether HCQ and IVM killed anyone, due to Donald Trump or not, is beside the point.

      2. The entire ethos of public health is coercion. You can’t quarantine people (and ships), placard dwellings, close schools and businesses, restrict movement and gathering, and even compel individual treatment in certain cases of tuberculosis without the legislative authority of the state to use force if necessary against the non-compliant.

         This is not to argue whether the specific measures used in the Covid pandemic (including administratively mandated vaccination of certain employees) were beneficial, necessary, useful, or harmful — there were elements of all four, mostly from the difficulty of making decisions in a novel situation with imperfect information. It’s just to acknowledge that public health compels by its very nature and mandate, as a solution to a collective-action problem.

         (It’s easy to forget this in an era where even contagious diseases are controlled largely by appealing to the angels of the better nature of the infected if they belong to an oppressed group. This is the left-right tension in public health circles. Social justice vs the iron fist of quarantine.)

   2. This tells us why the Dems lost: too many people believed the fear mongering lies of the GOP.

      NB the story of Peanut is instructive in this regard. Peanut was a wild animal being kept as a pet without a licence. Peanut bit somebody and because there was no way to be sure Peanut was not a rabies carrier, they had to test the squirrel for the virus which meant taking a section of its brain.

      There’s often more than one side to any story you need to see both of them.

      1. Agreed. Poor information hygiene is a bipartisan problem, but there’s something special about folks who continue to consume the output from organizations like Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN, and from people like Tucker Carlson, after it is has been made abundantly and undeniably clear that these organizations and people will say anything–including things that they themselves do not believe–for money.

      2. There is not a single case of a squirrel transmitting rabies to humans. And P’nut was not a wild animal but a pet.

         There’s often more than one side to any story; here’s the one you apparently did not see.

         1. That’s gotta be a Far Side cartoon, PCC(E).
            “In a bold move, the boss joins team P’nut….”
            hehehe
            ————————-
            I’m also on team p’nut. The government or cops killing people’s pets is close to my number one hate.

            D.A.
            NYC
            — I think Dr. Brydon is right about the Amish and voting and the raw milk kerfuffle, even if raw milk is a stupid idea. And it is. Don’t drink raw milk.

            1. You don’t mean that absolutely and literally, surely, David? If your pet dog mauls a child it is going to be seized and killed by agents of the state whether it has rabies or not. (I’m sure you’re not like those sociopathic dog owners who grumble that it was the child’s fault that the dog attacked it, and the child should be locked up instead.) So there is a line somewhere. And the state almost never seizes people’s pets without a good reason. It is so afraid of animal harbourers that if fences off public parkland where dog owners can violate leash laws and no one else dares venture.

               That an animal was being claimed as a pet doesn’t answer the case here, when the issue is that it was illegal for that particular animal to be kept as a pet in the first place.

         2. Peanut was a wild animal that was taken in as a pet. I understand such animals need to be licensed in New York State, part of the reason being the risk of transmission of various diseases. There may not be a case of a squirrel transmitting rabies to a human but they can carry the disease and nobody wants to be the first.

            The fact is that, if the animal had been licensed, it’s veterinary history would have been known it it might still be alive.

      3. It’s a lie that the proposed measures for dealing with climate change would be intrusive? Go back to the proposals related to the Green New Deal.

         1. Having your property, or in some cases, your whole country knee deep in sea water is pretty intrusive.

            1. +1

      4. Is there any way to be “sure” that someone’s pet, who bites someone, does not have rabies without killing the pet and sectioning the brain? Beyond that, what reasonable person does not handle wild animals without some reasonable caution and protection, like gloves?

         1. Because you asked, not trying to stoke the fires on this:
            A normal pet, like a cat, dog or ferret (which are supposed to be vaccinated against rabies anyway) can be quarantined and observed for 10 days. (Bites are often to the owner or his children, not so often to members of the public these days.) If it remains well, there was no rabies virus in the saliva at the time of the bite and rabies vaccination of the victim is not necessary.

            For animals not normally permitted to be kept as pets (and not vaccinated?) public health is working with smaller data sets about the safety of a watch-and-wait approach. If your pet bites someone, it is really at the mercy of the human victim no matter how precious it is to you, and the owner of the illegal pet is already on the wrong side of the law. A bitten animal-control worker has a powerful occupational health and safety case to demand that his employer compel immediate examination of the animal’s brain. The employer will want to avoid the cost of unnecessary rabies vaccination. Non-use of personal protective equipment according to the standards of motivated animal-fanciers does not diminish the worker’s rights here. The worker’s union would probably grieve a decision by management to risk the health of the worker to save the life of the squirrel.

            The usual policy not to vaccinate after bites by random wild squirrels that can’t be captured (and instead just advise the victim to stop feeding wildlife) is a practical trade-off. Rabies vaccine costs $5000 for a course in the U.S. just to buy it. Squirrels and other small vermin like rats and mice don’t usually survive bites by carnivores in the wild long enough to incubate rabies or even come into contact with humans. In an edge case like a captive squirrel, choosing examination would be reasonable.

   3. Spot on. I know a bunch of Amish and ex-Amish, and you are correct in noting the “leave us alone” mentality. I would add that like many conservative Christian sects, the Amish world is very male-dominant and very anti-abortion.

   4. Writing off and continually referring to anyone who wasn’t “on the right side of history” as stupid (or racist, etc.) doesn’t get them to vote your way. But, the Left didn’t really want convert anyone, just to have those people to,.. well, leave, apparently.

3. Brett Stephens probably didn’t write the title – that’s usually done by editors trying to get more clicks. He’s pretty correct in his analysis, as is Kisin.
   Regarding support for Trump among Arab Americans, particularly Muslim, keep in mind that woke policies such as boys allowed in girls school bathrooms and showers are particularly offensive to them. The vote probably reflects an attitude of “both parties will support Israel, which is thousands of miles away from me, but only one of them is going to be against allowing a boy in my daughter’s school bathroom or a naked man in the showers at my wife’s Planet Fitness, while the other party is going to strongly support it and insult me or worse if I don’t like it”.

   Also, the Republicans are now seen as the party of Free Speech, which is particularly attractive to voters like me.

   I see you alluded to Helmuth’s comments. I read SciAm for the science, not the politics. I’m so sick of her shtick that I steer clear of it now. I do see an article occasionally that looks interesting, and then I do a web search to find the same story but published by a different source if I want to read it.

   1. The ultimate lesson to draw from this election is that most people do not have well-evidenced, internally consistent justifications for their electoral choices.

      Viewing Republicans as the party of free speech, for instance, demands a pretty selective reading of recent history.

      It’s hard to argue that a man who thinks he should be president regardless of what the voters think–and actively tries to subvert their will when they disagree with him–is a champion of free speech.

      1. He’s free to make the case and state his beliefs, and we are free to judge him as a result of his blathering. Politicians in general don’t like free speech, but the publication of the Twitter files and other similar investigations showed a systemic attempt to shutdown speech that the government didn’t like. And yes, it started before Biden became president. Republican, not Democratic, congresspeople brought in Schellenberger and Taibbi to discuss the findings. Sure, it’s a way to stick it to the Democrats, but at least the R’s took the initiative to bring it to light, especially people like Paul and Massie.
         If Trump uses his new position to do the same, I’ll be first in line to criticize him and anyone who supports that as well. If he uses the government to force news media to shape their reporting, I’ll gladly join you in fighting it. I’m not bound by any party or person, only to the principle. And right now, the Republicans seem to be more on the side of that principle than the Democrats, in my opinion.

         1. Concur.

            Additionally, what is it to the federal government/Biden Administration if Scott Ritter attends an economic conference in St. Petersburg, Russia? First they take him off a flight and confiscate his passport. Then the FBI raids his house and confiscates computers and other items, including hard-copy files from his time, years before, as a UN weapons inspector. How long will they take (several years?) to research this material before possibly charging him with violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act? Is it that the current (or any) administration can’t tolerate someone exercising his first amendment rights by criticizing/opposing U.S. foreign policy?

      2. Sour grapes, you and several other commenters here the past two days. Get a better candidate next time and run a better campaign. Don’t tell the electorate they need to up their game in order to be worthy of the candidate you put before them. Electing aristocrettes and a philosopher-Queen is a whole other ball game, which will need a different electorate.

         1. +1

   2. Good point about the Muslim vote. Another case where the left (not just in the US) has gone too far.

      Boys in girl’s washrooms will please few people.

      I was thinking this over. There’s these aggressive activists that push policies like this. The left listens to activists too much.

      They had their day, I admit. There were formerly real severe injustices. But most of them have now been addressed.

4. “I think the gender and race issue, while they may have played a role, were not the main factors in the Democatic loss; after all, Obama won twice […]”.

   Indeed – and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, too. The Dems need to come to terms with what went wrong and not blame it on the voters – that is no way to win people over!

   Edited to add that The New York Times‘s article about the problems of Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign makes for salutary reading: https://archive.is/JuqRx

   1. But Joy Reid said Ms. Harris ran a “flawless” campaign. She even got an endorsement from Queen Latifa who, we are told, never endorses anybody!

   2. +1

5. I hope the Dems give up on the “pied piper” strategy once and for all.

   Via Perplexity:

   The “pied piper” strategy is a political tactic used by Democrats to influence Republican primary elections by promoting or boosting extreme candidates who are perceived as easier to defeat in the general election. This strategy takes its name from the medieval German legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin[1].

   Key aspects of the “pied piper” strategy include:

   1. Targeting Republican primaries: Democrats identify and support far-right or extreme Republican candidates during primary elections[1][2].

   2. Financial support: Democratic campaigns or committees spend money to boost these extreme candidates, often through advertising or other promotional activities[1].

   3. Media manipulation: The strategy may involve encouraging the press to take these extreme candidates seriously, effectively elevating their status within the Republican field[2].

   4. Goal of easier general election: The ultimate aim is to face a more beatable opponent in the general election, assuming that moderate and independent voters will be less likely to support an extreme candidate[1].

   Examples of the “pied piper” strategy in action include:

   – The 2022 Maryland gubernatorial race, where Democrats supported Dan Cox, a far-right candidate, against a more moderate Republican opponent[1].
   – The 2022 Illinois gubernatorial race, where Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker spent millions attacking a moderate Republican candidate, indirectly boosting a more extreme opponent[1].
   – The 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial race, where Democrats helped promote Doug Mastriano, a vocal proponent of Trump’s election fraud claims[1].

   Historical precedents for this strategy include:

   – The 2016 presidential election, where the Clinton campaign advocated elevating candidates like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson in the Republican primaries[1][2].
   – The 2012 Missouri Senate race, where Democrat Claire McCaskill helped boost Todd Akin, a Republican candidate she viewed as easier to defeat[1].

   While the “pied piper” strategy has sometimes been successful, it carries significant risks. It can backfire spectacularly, as seen in the 2016 presidential election where Donald Trump, initially considered an easy opponent, went on to win the presidency[1][2]. Critics argue that this strategy is dangerous, potentially leading to the election of extreme candidates and contributing to the overall polarization of American politics[2].

   Citations:
   [1] https://theweek.com/speed-reads/1015258/the-pied-piper-strategy
   [2] https://observer.com/2017/10/democrats-revive-failed-pied-piper-strategy-for-2018/

   1. I don’t get the Pied Piper analogy. I presume the Democrats are the piper, but who are the rats and who are the children? (And maybe who are the town leaders who hire the PP in the first place?)

      1. The strategy takes its name from the medieval German legend about a mysterious piper who arrives in the town of Hamelin, which is suffering from a plague spread by rats. In a common telling of the story, the piper offers to solve the problem in exchange for payment; Hamelin’s mayor agrees. The piper plays his magic pipe, luring the rats into the river, where they all drown. When the mayor refuses to pay up, the piper does the same to the town’s children.

         In politics, a “pied piper” candidate plays a tune for his party’s base, and voters dutifully follow him off a cliff.

         https://theweek.com/speed-reads/1015258/the-pied-piper-strategy

   2. A terrible strategy. The Dems actually promoted Trump on purpose?

6. Yes, Obama won twice–he was a MAN, which had something to do with it. You haven’t detected any misogyny from Republicans or Trump supporters??? Then you haven’t been paying attention.

   1. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016!

      1. Yes, she did, but then she wasn’t Black, was she? The combination is something that is very hard to overcome. Just ask Black women in this country.

         1. There is massive discrimination in favour of black women in the US today. A good example is Claudine Gay, who attained one of the most senior positions in academia with a very modest and meagre (and somewhat plagiarized) track record. A black woman need be only a quarter as good as, say, an Asian-American male to get an academic post.

         2. OK, I’ll admit I wouldn’t vote for a party led by a non-white person of either sex, or by a woman of any race, if I sensed (or the party bragged about it) that the party had selected that individual because of race and/or sex and was expecting I should support him or her out of a duty to not be racist or misogynist, or that it was “her turn”. Even if that makes me a bad person, does it make my vote not count? Even if I said I wouldn’t vote for a woman under any circumstances, just because the ones that run for office all sound shrill and angry or because I went through an ugly divorce—I didn’t—, my vote still counts.

            Scold me about my political choices and I will vote against you. Not out of spite but because I know what your policies will be if you get elected. Even if misogyny did do in Kamala Harris, or if homophobia keeps Pete Buttigieg out of the White House, so what? You can pass laws that ban discrimination against non-whites, women, homosexuals, trans people, atheists, and left-handers. But you can’t shame us into voting for them.

            1. Spot on, Leslie.
               Biden’s “I only want a black female” effectively throws out 94% of eligible resumes. Applies to Kamala and Judge Brown-Jackson.

               D.A.
               NYC

            2. +1

         3. Biden would have lost, too.

         4. I agree with you there are racists & misogynists but I don’t agree with this analysis. At least 13 Democratic Senate candidates got more votes than Harris. Some of them won by huge margins like Maizie Hirono in Hawaii and still had more votes than Harris; others lost by huge margins like Katrina Christiansen in North Dakota; one of them is a black woman, Lisa Blunt Rochester in Delaware, who won by 17 points (vs. Harris who won Delaware by 15 points). OTOH, Harris got 200,000 more votes in Maryland than the other black woman elected to the senate, Angela Alsobrooks. Those don’t seem like the voting patterns of an electorate that is racist & misogynist enough to swing the election.

            https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/11/06/us/trump-election-harris-news

   2. +mucho!

   3. Two words: Tulsi Gabbard.

      Last I checked–a woman (and knows what a woman is). And also–a woman of color. She is adored by the MAGA crowd, and many of them want to see her in Trump’s Cabinet.

      But perhaps you haven’t been paying attention.

   4. I spend quite a bit of time on “conservative” sites (including the Wall Street Journal) and I do not find misogyny.

      The only place I’ve seen it was a site that started OK but went bad: started attracting antisemites and racists. Many of them were misogynists, too. I don’t go there anymore.

7. I think it goes to show Brett Stephens character that he voted for Harris because of worrying about Ukraine, etc. You know he is very concerned about Israel and everyone thinks Trump will be more friendly to Israel. But maybe he thinks Israel can take care of itself and Ukraine is in a more vulnerable situation.

8. Andrew Doyle has written a longer piece about the failure to define “gender identity”: https://archive.is/puIhE

   By the way, the government’s Equality minister Jacqui Smith was ill-informed in suggesting that the person who asked the question take a look at the Equality Act – it contains no definition of gender identity, and neither does the Gender Recognition Act, for that matter.

9. The Dems lost because Harris got attacked by everybody. The Republicans attacked her because she was a Dem (obviously). The moderate Dems criticised her because she was too woke. The “progressive” Dems criticised her because she was not woke enough.

   Contrast with Tr*mp. He has many and varied flaws and the Dems were critical of him because of them. The Republicans, however, knew he was their candidate so they sucked it up and got behind him.

   1. I don’t get this analysis at all. The Dems lost because too few people voted for Harris. Nor was she attacked by everybody, for crying out loud–many Democrats loved her and excoriated people like me who weren’t wild about her.

      Perhaps there’s a lesson her about which voters the Democrats should be courting.

      1. Looking at the numbers of the popular vote, Trump won 74 million votes in 2020, and, at last count, 72 million this time; so Trump’s support did not change much. It is not as though millions of additional voters supported him this time.

         The crucial difference was in the Democratic vote: Biden got 81 million, while Harris only got 68 million; 13 million fewer than Biden. Why were so many people who voted for Biden unwilling to support Harris? That is the question that the Democrats need to ask themselves. I find it hard to believe that there are that many racists and sexists among the Democrats (of course, there are some) unwilling to accept a Black woman President. They didn’t want THIS Black woman as President.

   2. The Dems lost because they ran a terrible candidate.

10. Honestly-the social wagon circling to appease the left base with respect things like LGBTQ issues hurt the democrats in the election and is something that, if they are serious about bouncing back, will have to move to more sensible positions on, especially given the view of Hispanic voters and actually young men in general concerning these things. They should anyway because the activism here has gotten out of hand. But I think this set of issues comes in 3rd with respect to why they lost, behind inflation and migration. This was the first year in more than 70 years where NO incumbent party gained vote shares in ANY election. Even Modi lost votes substantially. Indeed, especially in places where results were worst for incumbents, inflation and migration (and often both) were highest.

    Some were perplexed about my views of Elon Musk with respect to science funding yesterday and I didn’t get to explain why I feel this way. Removing from the discussion my feelings about his views espoused on Twitter related to soft Holocaust denial and a variety of bad historical takes and conspiracy theories, all of which have nothing to do with “science” or his talents, I would frame it like this: First he is not a scientist. He has created 3 highly impressive technology companies that have used technology with already understood science behind them. The translation engineering involved is super impressive (although it is unclear how much of these ideas really come from Musk). This is different than academic science-which is in itself also very important. We don’t have gene editing and CRISPR without academics-and there are many such examples. I have the sense that Musk, as someone who didn’t really train for long in this culture and whose successes lie in translational engineering, has no appreciation for this side of things, indeed given his experiences and views, might have contempt for it. Further, he has stated that he views our budget like he viewed Twitter before he took over. He wants to cut trillions of dollars of waste-and an obvious place (among many others) is the science budget, which Trump wanted to slash already in 2016. Given how Twitter has suffered under Musk (it has gone down in value so much he will have to move a lot of money around to keep it afloat) I worry greatly the same chaos will happen more globally in terms of budgetary issues writ large. Thus I am skeptical Musk will just cut the DEI crap from funding agencies-I think it much more likely he just cuts period. I hope I am wrong.

    1. You’ve not actually given any reason to suppose that Musk is not supportive of science, you’ve just speculated that he isn’t. (As for “soft Holocaust denial”, do tell?)

       1. See below for one obvious one. But more my feeling is “why do we think he is a friend of science?” He doesn’t really know much science-he dropped out of an Applied Physics program at Stanford to start a software company. His successful companies use known technology (although the products are, in an engineering sense, impressive). He espouses scientific conspiracy theories like the one I just mentioned below. He is not at all an institutionalist. And he wants to slash 2T from the budget. At best he probably views science as best done in the private sector (this was a view of the first Trump administration anyway). Overall I don’t have a sense he understands or cares about traditional academic research or even the science behind applied research aside from what he does. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. Do I hope I am? Absolutely.

    2. BTW-I should add, Musk just was on Rogan and both were saying Operation Warp Speed was a “huge psi-ops” and trashed COVID vaccines. I mean this flat out insane. The data is clear-the vaccine is safe and many lives were saved from it-you can just compare hospitalization and death statistics with and without in the early-mid pandemic period. How someone with views like that could be considered “a friend of science” is odd to me…

       1. Well, what Musk said in that section was more nuanced than you’re suggesting, including: “And I should say, I’m actually generally pro-vaccine overall. I think we should look at these things. But I believe in the scientific method. So you never blanket accept anything”.

          [Rogan himself, yes, is more prone to anti-science attitudes; he has no education in it.]

11. One of the more interesting takes I read on Why-Trump(!)-Won involved a writer’s Election Day encounters with the demographic that overwhelmingly voted Republican and were arguably primarily responsible for Trump’s victory: young, mostly white, men. She listened — many of them claimed to be liberal democrats crossing parties for the first time — and advances the explanation that it wasn’t so much particular issues as an attempt at a “cultural correction”:

    > If we take a macro perspective, we see that such young men have never known a culture in which males are not routinely described as “problematic,” “toxic,” or “oppressive”… The young men I met that night in Manhattan weren’t just voting for policies. They were voting for a different view of history and human nature. In their world, individual greatness matters. Male ambition serves a purpose. Risk-taking and defiance create progress…

    The election wasn’t just a victory for Trump. It was a victory for a way of seeing the world that many thought dead: one where individual achievement matters, where male ambition serves a purpose, and where great men still shape the course of history.

    The full article is here:

    https://quillette.com/2024/11/06/the-revenge-of-the-silent-male-voter-trump-vance-musk/

    1. This is my personal experience as well. I’m far from young, but otherwise fit the description of the suspects, including a much longer history of voting for liberal politicians than those mere boys in the article. My motivations for voting for conservatives are (1) cost-of-living increases driven mainly by mass immigration and housing shortages that are going to prevent my kids from staying in their own city as adults; and (2) genderism and its coercive demands to deny reality. But IDK if I could bring myself to vote for Trump, and am grateful to be Canadian and not have to find out.

       1. +1

12. I think that when Trump jumped up after a bullet whizzed by his head it caused a lot of men to reclassify Trump from “bullshit artist” to “Legitimate Tough Guy.”

    1. A lot of people might have decided to retire from public life. Good point.

13. The Democrats do a ton of annoying things that cost them votes. I still voted enthusiastically for Harris given her opponent. I think inflation was a very big problem as well. There was definitely some misogyny involved, but I don’t think it was the deciding factor. And it’s annoying when every other person on MSNBC cites it as the reason. I know some people had misogyny their mind though because I’ve talked to some Republicans. Their explanation for how Harris advanced in politics was she got on her knees. I doubt I’ve talked to the only people in the country that feel this way. I’m not gonna cry about it, but some fraction of the population is going to be very crude. My armchair theory for why the Dems lost is that I don’t think a lot of people are really as liberal as a lot of people think. I read a tweet by Steve Stuart Williams a couple months ago about how people are MORE liberal than we give them credit for. I’m not sure I agree. By liberal I don’t mean letting yourself get punched in the face with wokeness. And wokeness did cost the Democrats. I just mean basic liberal decency. I also don’t think they’re as rational. They’re oftentimes impressively lazy thinkers. A large segment of our population now refers to Joe Rogan for peer review on different matters of science. It’s pretty funny. It’s like a real life idiocracy. Kat Rosenfeld mentions that if you want to win you need to convince people to vote for you and not use some cheap cope. I agree, but a lot of people voted for Trump for reasons that are probably not super great if liberal democracy is your thing.

    1. Blaming the defeat on misogyny and racism absolves the writers from having to re-examine themselves and their own positions.

       1. I agree and it’s annoying, but I think finding the right positions for the Democrats to have is actually much harder than people suggest. If I can say nasty things about Mexican immigrants like “they’re sending their rapists” and then I get the majority from hispanic men , that is quite an advantage. Obviously the border is a huge problem. The supreme irony was that they lost a lot of the vote from people that in the near past were allowed to immigrate into the country. Close the border!!!. Also, Sam Harris noted that Kamala Harris is criticized for the smallest thing and Trump gets away with some pretty awful stuff. Wokeness is a big problem, but I think there is an increasingly stronger trend away from liberalism. And again, inflation didn’t help. People can cite Clinton as an example of doing better than Harris, but Trump came back stronger after the things he has done.

14. Many of those who read WEIT contributed to the republican victory by not explaining the science of bell-curve distributions. Trump and his allies had an intuitive understanding. They spoke slowly and simply, always keeping those at the peak of the bell-curve in mind. In contrast, as viewers to CNN and MSNBC perhaps now recognize, debates there were more intellectual and were given by people who are generally, in their day-to-day affairs, communicating with others at the higher end of the bell curve. Always pressed for time (before the next commercial), they spoke quickly with fancy words more suited to a faculty common room than to the voting masses.

    1. As a reader of WEIT whose dread of a Harris presidency outweighed his dread of a Trump one, I am happy to have done my part to contribute to the Republican victory—even though I have no idea what not explaining “the science of bell-curve distributions” had to do with it.

       1. It means Republicans understand that they need to convince people above AND below average intelligence. They adjust their argumentation not to miss the less-intelligent or less-educated individuals. It is part of a much larger issue. For Republicans, campaigning is like marketing. They apply marketing methods and employ professional marketers. Democratic campaign managers are coming from liberal arts academic environment. They use methods that have more to do with logical argumentation about self-interest. I recommend watching a Youtube video by George Lakoff; he was bemoaning the fact that Democrats try to win the elections by methods that are based on long-falsified myths about human thinking and reasoning.

          1. Thank you for explaining what “the science of bell-curve distributions” is. Next, could you help me understand how I, as one of the “many of those who read WEIT contributed to the republican victory by not explaining [it].”

15. This may just be a different way of saying all of this, but Harris also ran a bad campaign. She seemed scared to go in front of people in situations that weren’t heavily controlled, aside from having no message (other than ‘Trump bad’) and the way she became candidate.

16. Kevin Drum has a compelling post that displays data on several indices of the US and world economy, crime, immigration, etc. If the data he shows is accurate, then perhaps Harris should have been talking about these facts instead of avoiding the media:

    https://jabberwocking.com/donald-trump-should-have-the-easiest-presidency-ever/#comments

    1. Very interesting. Thanks for posting that link.

    2. Interesting. Thanks.
       Also interesting: Gingerbaker mentions Kevin Drum…

17. While demonizing others with differing opinions clearly doesn’t contribute to a civil society, I do think there’s an obvious, if uncharitable theory:

    Many Trump voters are well aware that he’s a selfish, irrational, bullying clown who has no business being president, but they just find it fun to do something that mature, educated people disapprove of, and they think it’s cool that they suddenly have the power to do it.

    1. As Hitchens used to say, “I’ll give you all the [uncharitable theories] and you’ll still be left exactly where you are now, holding an empty sack.”

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJAnCg945EE

       What you suggest might be partly true. It’s been suggested for almost 10 years since the golden escalator scene. Even if we accept it’s true, liberals still have to convince people to vote for their candidate. Calling people immature and uneducated (and racist and misogynist) clearly hasn’t worked well enough to win. Some other way is needed.

18. I wonder how many here are secretly conflicted. I have in mind a hypothetical reader who voted for Harris, or perhaps abstained or offered a write-in, but under no circumstances would vote for Trump. And now that Trump looks to have a unified government for the next two years, he will have the power to implement some of his promises. Yes, I know. That is why you voted against him. But, in your heart, are you not secretly relieved in any way? On any issue?

    Yes, yes, Trump can be fickle, and his word cannot always be trusted. But I suspect the executive branch will stop promulgating gender ideology madness. Same for DEI-targeted funding and attacks on meritocracy. Young men? Kiss the federally-instigated kangaroo courts on campus goodbye. Children? Our federal regulators will not be cheerleading for their castration, sterilization, and “affirmation.” Israel and Iran? We shall see. I’m hopeful.

    There are other issues, but are you not secretly pleased that at least some of the ”progressive” madness will cease, at least to the great degree that it has been worked into our federal regulatory apparatus? I am. Will some issues move a less desirable way? Of course. Life is complicated that way. But political pleasure is fluid and resides on a spectrum.

    1. I’m hoping for all those positive items.

       I’m a Canadian and I also hope our own Liberal Party will turn away from some of its woke excesses.

19. Of course the Democrats need to strategize for future elections, but let’s not blow the causes out of proportion.

    I think back to the 2008 election, when Obama won the popular vote 52.9% to 45.7% – an even bigger margin than this one – and Dems won a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate. I recall plenty of articles talking about the death of the Republican Party, and insisting that Republicans needed to do some serious soul searching to reach out to moderate Americans. Instead, they doubled down on their divisive rhetoric, science denial, and conspiracy theories. By 2010, they retook the House, and by 2016, we got Trump.

    This election was closer than that – 50.9% vs. 47.6%. You’re talking about less than 2% of voters having a change of heart to swing the election to Harris. That’s part of the reason why I think the racism/sexism influence actually could have played a non-negligible role. (I have a close acquaintance who called the election for Trump as soon as Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. She certainly didn’t want Trump to win, but she thought there were enough people unwilling to vote for a black woman that it would be enough to swing the election. And yes, I’ve also personally heard people express reluctance to vote for Harris because she was black.)

    And let’s not forget Jim Carville’s famous phrase. I think inflation was probably the biggest influence on the election. Exit polling found the economy to be Trump voters’ biggest concern.

    So as much as this sucks and as worried as I am about the repercussions of another Trump presidency, as long as the worst fears over his authoritarian tendencies don’t come true, I don’t think Democrats particularly need to do a lot of rebranding for the next election. Just not being the incumbents during inflation will help them out a lot.

    1. I agree economics is more important than anything else. But I don’t know about racism & misogyny.

       In Texas a black guy Colin Allred lost his Senate race by 9 points but got 200,000 more votes than Harris. In Maryland a black woman Angela Alsobrooks won her Senate race by 7 points but got 200,000 fewer votes than Harris.

       Harris lost to Trump by 4.7 million votes; she got 13 million fewer votes than Biden in 2020; and Trump got 2 million fewer votes than in 2020.

       I don’t think those patterns suggest that the election was swung by millions of bigots who voted for Trump because Harris is a black woman. She lost because millions of Biden 2020 voters stayed home in 2024. Back in 2020 nobody was calling those 13 million voters racists when they came out for Biden, and it doesn’t make sense to call them that in 2024 when they didn’t turn out for Harris. I think she was just an uninspiring candidate.

       [edit to add: sorry I’m repeating the argument & evidence by Doug R. @ 9]

20. If the Democrats renominate Kamala as the presidential candidate and continue to lecture normal people how racist fascist homophobic misogynistic and deplorable they are it will only confirm to them how right they were to reject her the first time.

    Would anybody in the party be brave enough to stand against her in the presidential primaries? They might get accused of anything bad.

    The whole response from the MSM and the party seems very immature. It’s not my fault it’s yours. We are perfect. Not exactly a boilerplate for improvement to appeal to the masses.

    1. You know that Trumps own previous staffers called him a “fascist”, see the sources below. His vice said this in 2016: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical [a-hole] like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler”.

       It’s disqualifying journalism of Stephens, and shows a blatant disregard for facts to still pretend just unhinged college kids make these statements. On top of that, Trump doubled down on the rhetoric since and compared dissidents and immigrants to “vermin” and “animals” who are “not human” and who must be “rooted out”.

21. And as one of my attorney friends – a Democrat – put it:

    I’m mad as hell at the Demos for throwing another completely dimwitted DEI candidate at us that even Democrats saw as shallow and constantly on her backfoot from even the softest of softball questions.  Embarrassing your side doesn’t lead to victory in any forum. 

    I couldn’t have said it better.

22. From one of the pieces quoted on why Trump won: “Americans love their country and want it to be the best in the world.”

    And everyone knows, one of the most surefire ways to make your country the best in the world is to elect a lawless demagogue who previously tried to overturn an election to the highest office in the land!

    I’m done. Jerry, I’ve enjoyed your website for years, but the amount of Trump apologia in the comments and the routine quoting of the Trump-friendly “The Free Press” makes me not want to read it anymore. Thank you for all the good times. Good luck, America, we’re going to need it. drosophilist out.

23. So tragic that the US electorate has lost the confidence of Laura Helmuth and Joy Reid. Perhaps some future government could call on them and a panel of Diversity Consultants to plan measures for appointing a new US electorate altogether.

24. Several former staffers from Donald Trump’s administration have characterized him as a fascist:

    John Kelly: Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, stated that Trump “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist.” [1]
    Elizabeth Neumann: A former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, Neumann agreed with Kelly’s assessment, noting that Trump has “authoritarian tendencies” and “does not operate by the rule of law.” [2]
    Anthony Scaramucci: Former White House Communications Director, Scaramucci, described Trump’s rhetoric as moving toward “early-stage fascism.” [3]

    Trump himself said these things at his rallies, compiled here [4]

    “we pledge to you that we will root out the communist, marxist, fascist and the radical left thugs that live like Vermin within the confines of our country. […]”

    “they’re poisoning the blood of our country that’s what they’ve done […] no they’re not humans, they’re not humans they’re animals, I’ll use the word animal cuz that’s what they are […]”

    “you got to get these people back where they came from you have no choice you’re going to lose your culture you’re going to lose your country […] does anybody believe in genes you guys believe in genetics — a murderer I believe this it’s in their genes and we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now it’s the enemy from within […]”

    “all the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country […] I am your retribution I am your retribution”

    I recall Jerry’s late mentor Dick Lewontin was a Marxist. Commentators in the USA seems somewhat fine with a president who now has a streamlined party around himself with absolute authority, who is vindictive and easy to bribe, and who has not one, but two actually fascist billionaires behind him (no hyperbole here, Thiel and Musk, just look it up), with unlimited money, plus goons from Proud Boys to “patriots” plus a theofascist Evangelical Right and their 2025 plans. Also, the courts are streamlined around him and recently they decided the President can do whatever he wants. Also his goons tried to lynch politicians at January 6th. Also also…

    And American commentators and journalists are still pretending this isn’t yet fascistic enough yet? At which point do we reach the end of the fable? Or have you forgotten how it goes? Do you need to wait until goons come by the university to pick up “vermin” like Dick Lewontin was?

    If this was the fable, you have heard an unserious boy, half grimacing, that there are wolves, but they were just Bernie Sanders’ mittens. That was years ago. I agree, that was unserious nonsense. But now you’ve heard the wolves howl. I don’t think it is acceptable at this point to excuse the Trump voter with “reasons”. Everyone has reasons, or hunches or instincts, but at some point they become irrelevant. Americans, by and large, have voted for a rapist, felon, serial abuser and fascist into office (and you just know there is ten times more like that is unknown to the public). He’s going to become President, or Peter Thiel and Trump will (via Vance).

    I cannot believe at what I read from journalists and commentators. What is this? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

    ————————————
    [1] _https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-kelly-fascist-1.7361016
    [2] _https://news.yahoo.com/news/former-trump-allies-turned-against-110500148.html
    [3] _https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/former-donald-trump-adviser-says-the-presidential-candidates-rhetoric-is-more-dangerous-now-than-in-2016/news-story/6106b1af73f6a8caa0c862567c62e0d0
    [4] _https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTot3YQ16fI

    1. “… but two actually fascist billionaires behind him (no hyperbole here, Thiel and Musk, just look it up), …”

       That sentence alone destroys your credibility.

       1. Yet to google, or a true fan?

          Testing the water, as my post with a list sources about Musk and Thiel is still in moderation or gone. Anyhow, I found this that presents most of it as a timeline.

          _https://x.com/jerasikehorn/status/1855171803330527566?s=61&t=zeAQRUwk3dRX_GgfYYiQhA

          Here is a recent article on Peter Thiel.
          _https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/11/peter-thiel-2024-election-politics-investing-life-views/675946/

          ——-
          Edit: let’s see if I can bring more over:

          More headlines on Thiel:
          Peter Thiel’s Pre-Nazi Germany Comparison to US Resurfaces — Newsweek
          J. D. Vance Is the Bridge Between Silicon Valley and the Far Right — Atlantic
          The Anti-Democratic Worldview of Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel — Politico
          Wait, Wasn’t Peter Thiel a Libertarian? — Reason
          Musk and Thiel put their fortunes and networks to work for Trump and Vance — Le Monde

          Elon Musk is expected to join Trump’s administration. Here’s how the Tesla CEO’s political views align with the next president’s — Fortune
          GOP Plans to “Turbocharge” Trump’s Denaturalization Project Threaten the Nation’s Core Value
          Elon Musk Is Turning Twitter Into a Haven for Nazis – VICE
          Musk’s X asks judge to penalize nonprofit researchers tracking rise of hate speech — AP News
          How Elon Musk uses X to support the far right and its financial interests — Le Monde
          How Elon Musk uses his X social media platform to amplify right-wing views — PBS
          Elon Musk Finally Files Threatened Suit Over White Supremacist Ads … — Yahoo News
          Elon Musk won’t stop tweeting his way into trouble — VOX
          IBM pulls advertising [due] pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi content — Fortune
          Elon Musk visits site of Auschwitz death camp [PR to combat the fascist impressions] — BBC

          Here is a guy who documents how logging in as a new user on X is like. You can pick pokemon and lgtb interests, and your suggesions and timeline still is filled with questionable far right stuff.
          _https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzwVqKtLBGc

25. Where the heck are the supporters of womens rights in the case of Daryaei? Thank you for communicating the story to us here, but why aren’t the same people who cry about women and children being killed in Gaza not screaming about this case? Especially when such a brave young woman who is known by name is in danger? It seems to me that this is where a well-orchestrated international protest campaign could help by building awareness.

    1. You can’t criticize Iran in the oppressor / oppressed framework.

       Iran is “oppressed” while Israel is an “oppressor.”

       It makes no sense but that’s what’s being taught at universities these days.

       1. Thanks, yes I understand that, but mein gott, this is horrible. At what point does this paradigm break down enough to allow for basic human decency?

          1. I hope that sanity will return at some point.

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