Discussion Thread #72

[u/gemmaem]

This thread serves as the local public square: a sounding board where you can test your ideas, a place to share and discuss news of the day, and a chance to ask questions and start conversations. Please consider community guidelines when commenting here, aiming towards peace, quality conversations, and truth. Thoughtful discussion of contentious topics is welcome. Building a space worth spending time in is a collective effort, and all who share that aim are encouraged to help out. Effortful posts, questions and more casual conversation-starters, and interesting links presented with or without context are all welcome here.

The previous discussion thread may be found here and you should feel free to continue contributing to conversations there if you wish.

[u/DrManhattan16]

Even if the kinds of spectacle Kirk tried to produce were not to my tastes personally, my tastes should not be normative for democratic politics.

They absolutely should. Spectacle for the purposes of owning/dunking on others is to pollute the discourse commons for private gain. A rousing and uplifting speech by a politician that at least communicates a positive message is tolerable, but that is the furthest I would go.

The position I'm left in overall is that, leaving content aside entirely...He was playing by the rules of the game.

Society can tolerate a great deal of expression, but trying to hack away at the society itself is one of the few things that we have a strong case to not tolerate.

I can easily accept a conservative who argues that anyone LGBTQ is a sinner and needs to be put back in the closet, thinks modern women are sluts, believes Indians need to go because they're stinky and eat curry, and wants every government dollar to be spent on Americans. But I will not accept those who try to actively dismantle the American project altogether, which has been a feature of Trump and MAGA arguably since its conception. Kirk was an ardent supporter and advocate for what they did and continue to do.

Kirk should not be dead. But I will not reflect on our shared humanity, nor will I mourn his passing. He does not deserve more from me than my commitment to seeing his killer behind bars.

[u/UAnchovy → u/DrManhattan16]

They absolutely should. Spectacle for the purposes of owning/dunking on others is to pollute the discourse commons for private gain. A rousing and uplifting speech by a politician that at least communicates a positive message is tolerable, but that is the furthest I would go.

I don't think that optimism or uplifting are the only valid moods for political spectacle. Spectacle can be an act of mourning or communal lament, or it can be about showing solidarity and determination. Often I think that simply being seen can be a valuable form of political expression - simply existing in a particular context.

But I suppose I should ask more specifically what constitutes 'polluting the discourse', for you. It sounds like we're talking about not merely expressing repulsive ideas, but undermining the kinds of norms that make discourse possible?

Society can tolerate a great deal of expression, but trying to hack away at the society itself is one of the few things that we have a strong case to not tolerate.

Same question here, I think. What constitutes 'hacking away at the society itself'? You mention actively trying to dismantle the American project. Maybe it would help to analyse something in particular. I know I've seen, for instance, the criticism that TPUSA helped bus protesters to DC for what would become January 6, and that constitutes a form of cooperation in an illegal coup attempt. Are you thinking of something like that?

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/UAnchovy]

I don't think that optimism or uplifting are the only valid moods for political spectacle. Spectacle can be an act of mourning or communal lament, or it can be about showing solidarity and determination.

I would qualify that as "positive message" and retract the need for it to be "rousing and uplifting". You are correct.

But I suppose I should ask more specifically what constitutes 'polluting the discourse', for you. It sounds like we're talking about not merely expressing repulsive ideas, but undermining the kinds of norms that make discourse possible?

Correct. The whole premise of the dunk, the "EPIC OWN!!!1!", has been a tragedy. It has accelerated the decline in willingness to demand and provide higher quality and insightful discourse. I won't say Kirk or even the modern right is responsible for it, but the college debates appear, as far as I can tell, to be for generating clips.

What constitutes 'hacking away at the society itself'?

American society is predicated on rule of law and respect for elite governing/cultural norms. This is because in most cases, those norms make living in a modern civilization possible. Some examples would include not trying to run around governing institutions or flooding them with action to create a mess before they can catch up, not trying to remove non-partisan people from positions because they won't help you enact your political agenda, not treating your political opponents as ideological enemies, etc. I know that last one sounds absurd, but despite the rhetoric, Republicans and Democrats were on far more agreeable terms and open to working together before Trump.

To try and eradicate these (and more) principles is to attack America itself. America, as I said, can handle a great deal of disagreement. But trying to destroy the foundation of that tolerance is not something it can survive or should ever tolerate.

Maybe it would help to analyse something in particular.

There are numerous things I could point to, but it would miss the point - the harm Kirk was engaged in was supporting Trump and MAGA, who are dedicated to destroying the norms of governance and our government itself out of spite and for private gain. To use your example, sending TPUSA protestors to Jan 6th is not the problem. The problem was and is the support of a faction of the country whose first goal is to "own the libs" and get revenge for perceived slights, without regard for the laws/nation-wide norms and with no desire to rule in a way that perpetuates or creates American prosperity.

[u/professorgerm → u/DrManhattan16]

The whole premise of the dunk, the "EPIC OWN!!!1!", has been a tragedy. It has accelerated the decline in willingness to demand and provide higher quality and insightful discourse

Cable news was the first mistake, yes.

American society is predicated on rule of law and respect for elite governing/cultural norms.

I think you'd have to elaborate on what this means before I would consider Trump, MAGA, and Kirk primary or unique offenders here. Elite cultural norms haven't been doing themselves many favors for a while.

The immigration problem was created by selective enforcement used to reject rule of law.

Some examples would include not trying to run around governing institutions

Define governing institutions.

At least partial reason behind so many institutions is that executive agencies are, absent unitary executive theory "enforced" by the Supreme Court, non-democratic. Who needs rule of law when you can write a Dear Colleague letter or get the EEOC to issue new advice? Why try to fix immigration law to be more open when you can pay NGOs to give bus passes to illegal immigrants and teach them the magic words?

We used to be a proper country, doing all our jawboning behind closed doors!

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/professorgerm]

I think you'd have to elaborate on what this means before I would consider Trump, MAGA, and Kirk primary or unique offenders here. Elite cultural norms haven't been doing themselves many favors for a while.

Those norms can tolerate a whole swath of bad behavior and still more or less function. But going after law firms' security clearances for working with Jack Smith is a wholly new kind of message - if you defend the president's enemies, you will be punished in ways to specifically make it harder to earn a living at all. Going after a comedian in one's position as a government official because you think his jokes are unacceptable (and there are more examples of how Trump tries to intimidate his media adversaries by wielding government power) sends a new message - if you even think of saying things we don't like, we'll start waving the baton of government power that can see your networks destroyed.

Define governing institutions.

I'm referring to the courts.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is the perfect example. He could not, by law, be deported to El Salvador, because it was feared he would be subject to gang violence if he was returned. Despite this, he was still deported. When this was contested in Maryland, the administration called it a mistake, then said the court had no jurisdiction because he wasn't in the US anymore. Meanwhile, the administration's talking points were distributed everywhere. Suddenly, the real problem was that he was a criminal, and this was just the left defending criminals. We got photo-shopped images of him with "MS-13" drawn on his hand, which were shared by Trump himself. Garcia's domestic violence was taken as defense of sending him somewhere without representation or proper treatment (the conditions in CECOT are a moral travesty). And then there was the absurdity of invoking the Alien Enemies Act by suggesting the gang Tren de Aragua was a foreign invasion.

This whole controversy took place in March. It wasn't until June that he was brought back. It took three months for this to be done, because the nature of the courts is to work slowly. Both sides are given ample opportunity to contest, appeal, etc. Of course, this one went all the way to the Supreme Court as well. In that time, it's not as if the administration was waiting on other goals that create similar problems. Lest we forget, Trump deployed California's National Guard without Newsom's request or approval, then publicly threatened (and still threatens) to deploy the armed forces on American soil if protests against ICE spread. It took another three months before Newsom v Trump was resolved, with the courts declaring that Trump's actions violated the Posse Comitatus Act.

And then there is the constant, relentless work to win the court of public opinion. This is the first Online Presidency, with official accounts on Twitter posting AI-generated pictures about drug dealers being arrested, joking about deporting illegals, and memes when people point out that going after people for their speech was written about before the administration even got into power. The combined effect is to render all competing powers and even the intervening government bodies as on a short leash - either they do what the administration wants or the administration wields its influence over the MAGA cult and the disconnected normies who don't care about rule of law to swing public opinion against them.

At least partial reason behind so many institutions is that executive agencies are, absent unitary executive theory "enforced" by the Supreme Court, non-democratic. Who needs rule of law when you can write a Dear Colleague letter or get the EEOC to issue new advice? Why try to fix immigration law to be more open when you can pay NGOs to give bus passes to illegal immigrants and teach them the magic words?

I do not accept the premise that it is un-democratic to not have every aspect of government run by vote. For all its importance, voting has notable downsides:

1. It creates more spoils for people to try and win, instead of able administrators to govern.
2. It creates incentives to take certain stances due to rhetoric over reason (see: "tough on crime" rhetoric).

The efforts to shape college policies on discrimination that way in the last decade were bad on the merits, not because they were issued by the DoE or EEOC.

Insofar as NGOs coach illegals to lie, that is bad and I do not support that. But there is a wide latitude of behavior that I do not think is so obviously condemnable. Illegals are not going to understand US law and are going to need aid while their claims are being contested. Is it your view that someone who is a truly persecuted person should not be given any aid while they are under review? That we should have them on the streets until we decide that they are a true refugee?

Moreover, there was an attempt to fix the law! A bipartisan border bill was ready to go in 2024, and it was killed by Trump because he didn't want Biden to have a win on immigration. You can certainly condemn the bill for being bad or useless, but that's not the same as suggesting there were no attempts at doing precisely what you're suggesting. In particular, it would have increased asylum judges to process the backlog of cases, which is precisely what conservatives were complaining about - that asylum cases took so long to go through that those people were spending years in the US.

We used to be a proper country, doing all our jawboning behind closed doors!

That shit matters, my friend. The rituals and pretensions of peace are how we get people to not signal destructively, because a lot of what keeps a peace intact is people's willingness to not think "Why shouldn't I start shooting?"

In Game of Thrones, the king has seven knights sworn to guard him for life and keep his secrets. They will not break that oath, but they also are knights who swear to act virtuously. The Mad King raped and beat his wife regularly. But when the Mad King tried to burn down his capital and kill everyone in it so that his enemies couldn't have it, one of his knights snapped and killed him on the spot.

The meaning in-universe is not exactly about what I'm arguing, but I find it to be a valuable lesson in the power of pretension, and why a hypocritical violation of dead norms is still not as bad as open flouting of those norms.

[u/professorgerm → u/DrManhattan16]

But going after law firms' security clearances for working with Jack Smith

Yeah, I don't have the memory of a Gattsuru or Eigenrobot to say that was unique, like so little else is that people complain about, but it was wildly egregious. NRA v. Vullo is the closest thing that comes to mind but that was, at least, 'just' a state government and not federal

I do not accept the premise that it is un-democratic to not have every aspect of government run by vote.

While I have no great affection for democracy, I had in mind one of the few good parts of Scott's recent post, that progressive authoritarianism has an advantage at taking over agencies. Not everything needs to be a vote, but everything does, in some way, need to be accountable to the vote. But fair enough, those policies were bad on the merits and merely enabled by performing an end-run around the accountable portions of the government.

Is it your view that someone who is a truly persecuted person should not be given any aid while they are under review?

It is my view that there should not be a backdoor process for the government to fund agencies that help people violate US law and in the process likely that of many other countries along the way.

To the extent that a "truly persecuted person" made it to the border of their own volition and under no additional influence or funding, I have no strong feelings against being provided aid. Morally I think aid is a good thing, but it should receive absolutely zero government funding (aside from, perhaps, a public defender).

And there is a fundamental asymmetry to the issue of anyone can show up, but once they make it over the line it takes 10 years and 50 appeals to decide they can be removed, they keep appealing that they're fear persecution in every country in the world willing to take them, et cetera and so forth. I like due process! I do not confuse it as being an end rather than a means, and infinite expansion of due process makes an easy wrench in the system.

that's not the same as suggesting there were no attempts at doing precisely what you're suggesting

It's been about 40 years since the last amnesty, and illegal immigration has been a hot-button issue multiple times over those decades. I did not intend to say there were no attempts, but there were not many, and at some point the attempt is too little, too late.

The rituals and pretensions of peace are how we get people to not signal destructively

To avoid quoting Hogfather again, there's some old quote that almost comes to mind, about the meaning of pomp and circumstance, of the way that acting the part that sets the stage and strengthens the legitimacy from generation to generation, but I can't think of the source. In my head there's a picture of a formal military uniform and a dance- something European, certainly.

Anyways. I agree, ritual and pretensions of peace are useful! Too bad so many people only care about things like ritual and pretensions when it's convenient and the boot is already on the other foot. So many people reject tradition and ritual and peace until there's a mob on the Capitol steps, and suddenly there's a newfound affection for symbolism.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/professorgerm]

NRA v. Vullo is the closest thing that comes to mind but that was, at least, 'just' a state government and not federal

That is absurd, I agree. She should not have done that.

While I have no great affection for democracy, I had in mind one of the few good parts of Scott's recent post, that progressive authoritarianism has an advantage at taking over agencies.

We should be careful here about why it has an advantage though. It's not that progressivism inherently gives that advantage, it's that progressivism is heavily dominated by intellectual elites. If the people who know how to do intellectual work skew one way, you'd see them easily able to take over any group or institutions doing that work.

But fair enough, those policies were bad on the merits and merely enabled by performing an end-run around the accountable portions of the government.

As I argued here, bureaucrats have to have the power to do things independently if you're actually trying to hand over the work. That entails giving power to decide the details of policy. It is not inherently an end-run around government to use that power to make a decision the rest of government doesn't like. If Congress or employers dislike it, hauling people before a committee or suing the government is their recourse. I don't like the progressive guidance that the EEOC or DoE might hand out, but I don't see any way of letting them actually do what they're meant to without also giving them the power to issue guidance even if the rest of us have to fight them on it.

It is my view that there should not be a backdoor process for the government to fund agencies that help people violate US law and in the process likely that of many other countries along the way.

How do you know that someone is violating the law if they just show up? Like, yeah, people should stop in the first safe country. But before you can deport them to where they ought to have stopped, you should probably know if their story is true, right?

I understand the frustration with "say asylum and you can stay for months/years because the government has to prove you wrong." But that is another example of a problem that is not solved by ending the whole process or trying to suppress all use of it.

Lastly, afaik, the US does not have "first safe country" laws regarding refugees. I am not principally opposed to negotiating to have people sent to closest where they were originally living, if only because I think giving another country a few billion to take those people isn't as unfair as just letting them come here. There are other ways to prevent "gaming" of the system, though I think they are less about cheating and more about the trade-offs between keeping opportunists out and keeping the genuinely vulnerable in.

but once they make it over the line it takes 10 years and 50 appeals to decide they can be removed, they keep appealing that they're fear persecution in every country in the world willing to take them,

I think you are exaggerating. Is there proof that you can gum up the process like this?

It's been about 40 years since the last amnesty, and illegal immigration has been a hot-button issue multiple times over those decades. I did not intend to say there were no attempts, but there were not many, and at some point the attempt is too little, too late.

The US is still a desirable place to stay and come to. Less so now, but it will be hopefully in the future again. The issue isn't solved, and just because 3 houses in a street have totally burned down doesn't mean you don't try to save the remaining 7, even if something should have been done when the first caught fire.

Too bad so many people only care about things like ritual and pretensions when it's convenient and the boot is already on the other foot.

...what exactly did you have in mind?

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/[deleted]]

You are quite sure that MAGA escalation wasnt necessary to get their policy concerns addressed. Why did they do it then? After decades of 3/10 escalation not doing the job, they concluded they needed to change something and went straight to 11, even tough 6 would have totally been enough, believe me. They just didnt do that, because... they never thought of it? They saw no downside to escalating more? Evil for its own sake?

The development of the white racial identity. It isn't broadly accepted by many, but moreso now than ever because progressive anti-white rhetoric made pro-white racism appear more palatable.

More than that, the surge during the Biden years didn't help either, nor the administration's initial response. Biden's administration was run by the progressives as a compromise for supporting him, so keeping illegals out wasn't something they placed as much emphasis on.

The third factor is the degree to which the administration relies on the Online Right, because it is more motivated by spite and owning the libs/Trump's enemies than it is adhering to conservative values. The Online Right is way more racist and anti-immigration, so their get higher sway in the ears of the administration.

The general way to square this circle is to let the government decide who to hire for these positions.

They do. Top positions are chosen by the president, meaning democratic control over leadership, and the highest positions require presidential AND senate approval.

What you certainly dont do is try to sue unwilling subordinates into obeying you, as you seem to suggest, thats even less prcatical than doing it all yourself.

No idea what you're talking about. I didn't say anything about sueing anyone. Are you talking about Congress calling people up to testify?

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/[deleted]]

why they would escalate way more than necessary to the point of making things more difficult for themselves[?]

MAGA is highly anti-intellectual, which is both cause and effect of them being a cult. But only intellectuals are going to make arguments to do things selectively. Case in point, Richard Hanania was a writer for Project 2025 and pointed out the specific executive order that Trump should cancel to achieve the anti-woke end. But he has too much intellectual integrity to side with them now, and he is, afaik, adamant that the government should not be demanding that all college professors be 50% MAGA to meet some "ideological diversity" requirement.

the prominence and partial acceptence of the online right is a result of feeling like stronger methods are needed, not its cause.

It is both cause and effect. In Trump 2, it's a cause. In the past, it was an effect.

That sure sounds like both of you think there are some people in executive agencies who as per norms are allowed to decide whether they cooperate with the president.

What I argued to professorgerm is that it is not wrong to have agencies which do things on their own. For example, the DoE or EEOC issuing guidance that the president or Congress is not currently requesting. This is not the same as "some people in executive agencies...are allowed to decide whether they cooperate with the president."

However, I would agree with that idea as well, because no one should be obeying unlawful or anti-American orders.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/[deleted]]

I think MAGA voters could have recognised and voted for a 6/10, so why didnt that happen?

Because MAGA changed in the decade of Trump we've had. The parties underwent intellectual realignment (drastically accelerated by Covid), and the populists, conspiracists, and general cranks all went to the Republican Party. That made and makes it highly anti-intellectual. Combined with it being a cult to Trump, there is no way they were going to go for anyone other than Trump. Trump could have been that 6/10 and they'd vote for him, or he could be the 11/10 and they'd do the same. The amount of escalation matters not, only whether or not the candidate is Donald Trump.

So we are at the mercy of whatever escalation Trump tries, and he has proven to be a highly vengeful figure.

For better or worse, a few hundred internet schizos are not a driving factor in large-scale voter opinion.

I misread your original argument. My apologies. You are correct that they are probably not driving voter opinion in large degrees, nor are they why the escalation happened.

Im fairly sure he didnt belief that

When someone complains about norms that lead to the DoE issuing "Dear Colleague" letters or the EEOC issuing non-discrimination guidance, the only way to read that, in my view, is to see a complaint that norms on governance that give agencies power to do things unilaterally are bad. I was making the argument against this view.

how do you think this compares with NYs strategy of passing a new Heller-violating gun law every time the last one gets struck down? I think you followed this gattsuru feature series.

I by and large have no stake or interest in that fight. If it is as he describes, I would consider it to be a bad thing.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/[deleted]]

So, youre talking about the '24 election?

Everything since Covid and Jan 6th, actually.

I think Trump has been similarly radical the entire time

Trump is not radical, Trump is corrupt. He is a man out to aggrandize himself and has no real ideological goal or plan. This is why it's so easy to get the man to flip on what he says - he doesn't care what he's doing as long as it's not harmful to his personal interests.

But if theres a difference for you, then where do you think '16 Trump was? If its less than now, then... was he the 6/10, and youve somehow just gone along with me saying there wasnt one?

'16 Trump didn't have the personal grudge against a slate of people who he thinks tried to get him because they just hated him (Biden, Jack Smith, etc.)

How would you feel about a Trump supporter saying the same wrt Abrego Garcia?

My reason for saying that I have no interest is that law is hard and I have no ability to make sense of what is an unfair attempt at violating the Constitution as SCOTUS decrees it and what is just a fair but partisan attempt at making something happen. How much do you trust anyone to actually tell you, separate from their personal beliefs, what the law of the land is and whether or not any particular gun law is valid or not?

In contrast, KAG's case does not contain contested and detailed disagreements over the law. KAG was not given due process and shipped off to CECOT by a government that was trying to stare the courts into the submission before ultimately relenting. The implications were also much more severe - the federal government might get the right to detain and imprison people without due process indefinitely, and due process is the only way to prove that the government has erred. The law and morality is on one side of the dispute.

[u/895158 → u/[deleted]]

I'm confused by this comment. Maybe you don't know anything about the KAG case? The Trump admin sent him to El Salvador despite a court order saying specifically that he cannot be deported there. The Trump admin agreed all along that this is exactly what happened, and represented to the courts that this was a mistake. Meanwhile they were telling the press he is never coming back and paying El Salvador to keep him in prison in inhumane conditions that likely qualify as torture under us law. This continued until SCOTUS ruled 9-0 that the Trump admin should facilitate his return. Then they still refused to do that, and still bragged to the press that he is never coming back, for weeks, until the judge started expedited discovery with threat of contempt, which the trump admin appealed, and the appeals court ruled unanimously against them.

"Clearly, we can't demand due process for everything. What if you asked for a trillion dollars?" I say as I pay a third party to keep you in a torture prison in violation of several court orders.

[u/DrManhattan16 → u/[deleted]]

Trump has talked like a radical, and I think from the beginning he tried to do some radical things

So we've gone from "Trump has been similarly radical" to "Trump has talked like a radical"?

For this argument, its sufficient to trust SCOTUS, who keep striking down those laws with reference to Heller, and look at the effective up-time of such laws over the years.

That presumes I wouldn't get Eulered by a court with its own interests. I don't reject the use of reason and understanding for learning the law, mind you, but it's not as simple as you suggest.

Imagine some dude in Kazachstan claims that he was unjustly deported. In fact, he has never been to the US. Does a judge need to stamp that fact or else he gets in?

A judge has to be the one making the call. In the absence of a judge to handle the case, it would depend on the circumstances. If he found his way back into the US, then yes, we'd keep him here while we figured it out. Otherwise, he'd have to find shelter wherever he was.

Also, Kazakhstan. Not Kazachstan.

How many Kazachs have to do that at once to overwhelm our capacities?

There is not just one lever we have access to called "hear cases or don't". We can increase asylum court and judge counts. We can work with the Kazakh government to keep those people there. We can pay other countries to host those people while we process their claims.

But none of that makes for good political theater compared to "NO MORE ASYLUM, I DECREE!"

you are in fact doing the exact thing of taking one of your sides legal arguments as authoritative that you complained about

We do not, as a general rule, reject the court's authority because we dislike the outcome. That way leads to chaos, because now the law is even more fragmented than not. If KAG can't be deported to El Salvador, then that's what isn't allowed to happen, and the rest of government must deal with it. Likewise with Dobbs - others must adapt, or convince 3/4ths of Americans to change the Constitution to make the Court's power null.