I am wondering if he's really running for VP. He seems as if he's got no shot in the primaries, but he'd make beautiful red-state young healthy white-guy centrist balance for, e.g., Massachusetts elderly progressive woman Warren. And dripping with charm, so he'd be a campaign asset.
He'd match up well with pretty much any of the Dems but Buttigeig, who hits most of his same notes. Any of the women, he's reassuringly male and white, and for Biden he's at least young and healthy, and Biden voters are probably committed enough to the centrism thing that they wouldn't want a progressive veep.
Why do the people in a national popularity contest not share my love for early Robyn Hitchcock?
Hey now, ogged, corporate tax cuts are super-unpopular.
I just don't want it to be Biden... It's hard for me to get too worked up about the rest of the options, but I would like it to be someone not insanely old. Anyway I think Beto running hurts Biden, so that's good.
A museum I was at today had a whole case of stuff ostensibly from Luristan! I think, I didn't read every label.
Anyway, I've seen Beto speak, and he is undeniably very, very charismatic and charming even by politician standards. I still don't really get why he's running for president, though.
I can't help feeling that it's primarily a case of a whole bunch of people (possibly but not necessarily including Beto himself) totally misremembering and misinterpreting Obama in 2008.
Does anyone have more political courage than Donald Trump?
Obama was against stupid wars before he was for them.
Also, my brother used to play regular pickup Ultimate with Beto and likes him, so I'm kinda inclined to like him too. Also it'd be fun to get to tell that story if he were president, or even vice president.
I still don't really get why he's running for president, though.
This article hits some of the reasons that I have a hard time getting excited about Beto. That said, I'd also strongly prefer him to Biden . . .
I'll be most irritated if I have to vote for Biden, but I'm also very annoyed by Beto. The idea of being saved from Trump by a young, charming white guy with very little experience is extremely grating.
Amazingly, there are living breathing people (Facebook friends of Facebook friends, but still) talking about Andrew Yang.
I think it's probably good for Yang and Buttigieg to be getting attention since they have essentially zero chance of winning but are promoting out-of-the-mainstream ideas that the other candidates will have to respond to. Beto is sort of the opposite.
Closing Guantanamo was not a popular position, and ending torture was at least controversial, to our shame. Anyway, I'm not sure what positions Warren or Sanders have taken that are so at odds with the public. Lefty policies are popular! There are only two truly bipartisan sentiments in American politics: an antipathy towards Saudi Arabia and a desire to tax the rich. Of course that latter extends to politicians of at most one party, but voters go for it.
Huh - I thought Buttigieg was like Beto on a smaller scale (he's such a great guy, yknow?) but I searched for "Buttigieg linchpin policy ideas" and got ending the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court, which are indeed good ideas to be seeding around.
Wouldn't it be "President Harris," sexist.
Yeah, Buttigeig seems to be talking about a genuine overhaul of the country's broken democratic systems. It's appealing!
18: Buttigieg was on Preet Bharara's podcast and he was generally impressive. His only overlap with Beto is that he's also a young, charismatic, good-looking white dude.
PredictIt is going long in Yang, due to the Yang Gang being the most online. I am enjoying the "secure the bag" (of money that we will get by soaking the rich and distributing as a UBI) memes, though.
I don't need political courage. I need a Democrat who isn't Joe Fucking Biden. Unless primary voters decide that JFB is, in fact, exactly what I need.
Heard Sen. Harris on NPR this morning and was generally impressed.
At the moment, I'm undecided between Gillibrand and Warren, leaning Warren.
(To the OP: Note that Gillibrand got out in front of the Al Franken thing in a way that, both at the time and in retrospect, took political courage.)
I really feel like there's no perfect candidate, and the answer is to have a strong clear progressive platform that will then compel any candidate to adopt it. And considering that its a large-scale disorganized national conversation, that does actually seem to be happening.
I like Gillibrand, but she really doesn't seem to be getting any traction, and the sexual harrassment scandal involving her staff could be a serious blow to the specific brand she's been cultivating.
I agree with 24 on all points. A giant primary field can potentially be a big problem, but so far it actually seems to be going pretty well this time.
It is weird that there are so many senators relative to people with other backgrounds though. It's actually very rare for a sitting senator to be elected president; Harding, Kennedy, and Obama are the only ones so far.
There was no precedent for Trump either, though it does seem kind of odd to lump him into the category of "presidents." I was listening to a Klobuchar-related conversation among colleagues the other day. They were talking about presidents with reputations for being tough to work for. Trump didn't come up, presumably because of an ongoing ability to imagine him as president.
I wonder to what degree the existence of Trump has heightened the sense of political possibility on the left. Or maybe it's Bernie who gets the credit for that one.
I don't want to care about any of them yet, because there are going to be a few bizarrely disqualifying episodes where the candidate has to vanish in a poof of smoke even though I didn't understand why the thing is disqualifying but everyone will agree that it is obvious that the thing is and then, poof, that candidate is out of the Hunger Games. I know it makes me a bandwagon fan, but I don't want to watch until the playoffs.
I like Yggl's description of Seth Moulton as the candidate most likely to get literally zero votes.
I like Gillibrand, but she really doesn't seem to be getting any traction
I like her too but her failure to get any traction is weird and dissapointing to me and I'm at the point where I'm ready to jump ship. Probably to Warren, although I'm also Butti-curious.
I'm not going to vote for a white man in the Democratic primary -- especially an old white man. Is it identity politics* if you vote against your identity? (Though I guess I'm not really old if we're talking about Biden and Sanders.)
*I voted for Bernie last time, but it really pisses me off the way he uses that phrase to mean something other than stupid white men voting for other stupid white men.
I hope the primary is already decided before I have to vote.
Meanwhile, there have been like 8 different candidates who have come through town so far and I haven't been arsed to go see any of them.
I remember by cousin's kid going to college in Iowa in 2016. You'd open up Facebook and there would be his kid with Sanders or O'Malley or Clinton.
So the Hicks are directly responsible for Trump, basically.
Is it identity politics* if you vote against your identity?
That's meta-identity politics, I guess, if you are aware enough of your own identity to vote against it.
Is Biden really going to jump into the fray? And if so, doesn't he have a potential #metoo problem? Uncle Joe has had, at least until recently, a habit of being a bit handsy with the laydeez, if you know what I mean.
I don't think he's a monster, or anything like that (though I do think he's too centrist/neoliberal/shilling for Citibank for the current moment...). But I think he's a man from another era...
Also: both Biden and Bernie are just too old, imho. Yeah, it would be great if "age were just a number," and we could all live forever and so on and etc. But: there are biological limits, and it's a childish fantasy to suppose otherwise. The oldsters need to make way for a younger generation...
Biden has just had a unit of my workplace named after him, and he comes here all of the time to give talks. I'm told he's painfully long-winded. Despite the fact that he's a local hero, I don't know anyone who wants him to run.
JMM has some good signal-reading that Beto seems to be positioning himself as backed by the centrist faction of the Dems, which is definitely not how one wins a primary.
Do you know Buttigieg is openly gay, which would be novel for a president.
I am amused that I have read academic work by his father and Harris' father years ago.
Here's the piece he wrote in the South bend newspaper in June 2015 when he first publicly acknowledged being gay (the piece starts by talking about the Supreme Court case then under consideration). It's a good read in my opinion. 2015 was the year of his reelection. He talks about it a bit in the Preet podcast (also worth a listen) mentioning that he struggled with the need to do it at all since straight people don't have to "come out."
I can't wait for more millennial candidates. AOC-Buttigieg 2028!
Reuters, of all places, has a blockbuster report on, of all things, Beto O'Rourke being a member of Cult of the Dead Cow.
Q: Is he Sifu Tweety?
I wondered if Sifu knew him. That really is something.
46: If you can see Sifu's FB page, there's a picture of the two of them together from just last week.
Is Cult of the Dead Cow going to be on the test? I must have been out the day we covered it.
Hearing that Beto used to be in a hacker collective and had weird left-anarchist politics (http://textfiles.com/groups/CDC/cDc-0031.txt) makes me like him a lot more.
ogged was talking shit about your friend. We tried to stop him, but he won't listen.
Seems reasonable to talk shit about presidential candidates even if I'm friends with them.
Tell him to join the Harris ticket if offered the chance.
Have you all seen this? http://www.trumphotels.org/
AOC-Buttigieg 2028!
I can only get so erect.
There's like medications if you have trouble.
JMM has some good signal-reading that Beto seems to be positioning himself as backed by the centrist faction of the Dems
Mrs y on Beto: "like Obama, only without the sincerity."
The Senate does seem to be a more common source of VPs - Nixon, LBJ, Humphrey, Mondale, Quayle, Gore, Biden - but that's mostly a curiosity.
This is wild: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-politics-beto-orourke/
So Gen-X...
Sorry, forgot to refresh the thread.
All I really want is a romance/serial killing spree with Winona Ryder.
62: That's a bit right? I mean, I'd kind of feel obligated to vote for someone in cDc.
So you were saying about refreshing threads...
Beto seems a pretty milquetoast centrist, safe-space sort of Democrat to me. No comparison to Buttigieg whatsoever, who is outstanding, really smart, articulate, doesn't evade questions, and so on. It's too bad the American electorate would never elect an openly gay man; then again, we were sure they'd never elect a black man either. Still, though.
Otherwise, on this topic I'm with Megan upthread: getting exercised this early on is a waste of energy. Some, many, most of these Democratic primary nominees must eventually drop out of the race as time goes on. I'm sure we haven't forgotten that the gigantic Republican primary field is the reason Trump became their nominee in 2016.
Of course many of these nominees are actually running for VP: Julian Castro looks like a good option there.
I'm just going to assume this person is an epidemiologist. That isn't an ideal presidential CV, but I'd take it.
||
He showed me an 8-millimeter film from the early 1960s that melded scenes of him slaughtering an animal he'd hunted with him removing a cyst from an African patient. "I juxtaposed those on purpose!" he exclaimed gleefully. "What do you think?" I didn't know what to say.|>
71: I assumed you were on to another book, but no....
On the hand Pete Buteggieg is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, the fourth largest city in Indiana.
On the other hand, his father translated Gramsci's Prison Notebooks into English.
Probably would have been more efficient to teach Italian to those who wanted to read them.
I think you all will find that "chrome the moon" is a political position.
I can remember when I used to think the 90s were a really weird time.
67: Part of that dynamic, though, was that the Republican primary process awards state delegate votes 100% by plurality, like the Electoral College, whereas the Democratic primary does it proportionally, so even if the elections don't settle on any one candidate, they will send a reasonably pledged assortment of delegates to the convention to hash it out.
Hm, good point. Thanks Minivet -- I'll take that into account in thinking about this, but I do still think that a bazillion candidates, some of whom are indistinguishable from one another, is a problem.
Run on just popular stuff, then implement policies people will actually like. No need to convince everyone you are the eat-your-veggies and go-to-bed-early party. Changing people's mind about unpopular stuff is activist's job, not politicians.
I'm reserving judgment on who I'd actually like to vote for until much closer to the time. That said, I find Beto really annoying. I don't love the obliviousness of his "finding himself" tour, nor the un-funny "joke" about his wife (as someone pointed out in the replies to Rebecca Traister's Twitter thread, the problem with the joke is the word "help" -- as though parenting is her responsibility that he just helps out with).
But what really irritates me is the amount of bad will generated with the fact that Beto refused to endorse Gina Ortiz Jones, a fellow Democrat running in a toss-up district in Texas. He was so busy being buddy-buddy with Will Hurd,* her Republican opponent, that he didn't want to support her. In a race that she lost by 800 votes, I think that's pretty darn insulting. White man not only thinks he's 'born to run,' but he's not even willing to do the bare minimum to support an Asian American woman? Hard pass.
*Hurd is actually pretty thoughtful and decent on some issues, probably as an artifact of his district.
The question I'd desperately like someone to put Beto on the spot about: You had drunken driving arrests when you were younger. You've managed to build a successful life. Do you agree with current US policy regarding deportation of immigrants with DUI arrests? If so, why?
Correction: She lost by 1100 votes. And his stated reason for not endorsing was:
"I've almost got 11 months left in this job representing the people of the 16th Congressional District. And I've got to get (expletive) done. And so, being able to work with Will Hurd and other Republicans and not have them look at me as the guy who's trying to get them out of office ...
Give me a break.
I think we've all got lots of youthful drunk-driving things to feel bad about whether or not we got caught.
I cannot come up with a 2600 Pennsylvania Ave joke please send help.
Also, 80,2 and the associated affair are pretty much disqualifying. Fuck all that.
Mrs y on Beto: "like Obama, only without the sincerity."
Apparently, there are those who call Beto "Faux-bama" or "Bro-bama."
Banana fama bo bama
Fee fi mo mama
Betobama.
I feel like insincere Obama might have passed some laws when he had the chance.
We have a lot of Senators running this time because the governors of states that you might expect to serve as launching pads to the presidency are held either by Republicans or newly-elected Democrats. The Senate is where our top-level people are right now.
Our roster of potential candidates in 2028 looks to be formidable, as it could include future two-term governors of California, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas (!), Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
There's also places like Maine, New Mexico and Nevada, where I'm more skeptical that they would be good springboards for national office. But then again, Bill was from a small state.
(As for Beto, I think he calculated that Conryn is a much more formidable opponent than Cruz. Plus, if the presidential thing doesn't pan out, he can still try again for something in Texas. If he loses twice for statewide office in consecutive cycles, he probably won't get a third try.)
45-50 Buttigieg clearly needs to go presidential.
(I like him, and now I like him even more).
92 Wait, that was Beto. *Emily Litella voice* Never mind.
For what it's worth Beto is intensely sincere.
Oh. That's always a problem for me.
Sincerity makes me uncomfortable. Also, it's weird how much Guido looks like Obama.
I'm fine with sincerity, if it's subtle
||
Pakistan praised "China's efforts to provide care to its Muslim citizens".|>
98 will be a comfort to Uyghurs everywhere.
Meanwhile in Italy, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47595320
Ours is not an era of increasing justice and this greatly worries me.
I didn't mean your guns or religion.
Is media narrative about fakeness actually correlated to sincerity? That is the horse race beat is full of incredibly cynical and insincere people, and what they like is candidates who share their cynicism and can play along like they're all "in on it"? Whereas anyone who isn't being cynical must just be deeply dishonest to not see that everything is utterly meaningless?
I'm just uncomfortable around feelings being expressed.
(As for Beto, I think he calculated that Conryn is a much more formidable opponent than Cruz
This is surely true and accurate, but he might have done more good taking out that pigfucker Abbott.
I'm just uncomfortable around feelings being expressed.
My brother.
Since all the dislike of Cruz was republicans who thought he was creepy, but who voted for him in the end, I don't think Beto has any worse chance again Cornyn. Better, probably, since presidential year should get more of the low-propensity voters out.
The question I'd desperately like someone to put Beto on the spot about: You had drunken driving arrests when you were younger. You've managed to build a successful life. Do you agree with current US policy regarding deportation of immigrants with DUI arrests? If so, why?
Do you believe that there's any chance whatsoever he supports this policy? A seated Democratic congressman from El Paso, Texas?
He must have stood up from time to time.
Not seated anymore, but of course you are right.
The reason to ask such a question is to get them to feel bad about not doing anything about the problem, right?
It just seems like an odd question to be desperate to hear asked, because his answer will almost certainly be, "No! Next!"
If you don't live in an area with good transit or some residential density, it's expensive not to drunk drive if you don't want to just drink by yourself or with the people who live in your house.
Speaking of circular firing squads, weird confrontation by a student of Chelsea Clinton.
Add commas around "by a student" above.
Maybe Ilhan Omar understood what she was doing and maybe she didn't, but at the very least I hope all decent people can reject the retweeting of Glen Greenwald.
If it helps, I always confuse him with Glenn Beck.
118 I don't even like his tweets.
Do you believe that there's any chance whatsoever he supports this policy? A seated Democratic congressman from El Paso, Texas?
On the contrary, I think it's highly likely he does. It has extremely broad bipartisan support. It got even stronger under Obama, because it's viewed as a threat to public safety. Dreamers with DUIs are not eligible for the DACA program, for example, and if you get a DUI after you have DACA you will almost certainly lose your status.
(The State Department is also more likely to deny you an initial visa to come to the US if you have a DUI record from abroad, and again that started under Obama.)
The reason to ask such a question is to get them to feel bad about not doing anything about the problem, right?
The reason to ask the question is to challenge the perfect immigrant/criminal immigrant dichotomy, and put a 2020 Democrat on record as saying "We can't just blanket exclude people, we should be more thoughtful." As far as I know, Beto's the only 2020 candidate with a DUI in his own past, so he's the most natural one to ask.
Fuck all these random people. Witt 2020.
He's also the only candidate to worship a dead cow, so maybe we can ask him about veganism.
Anyway, completely unprompted by me, my wife just said she thinks Harris will get the nomination and win the White House.
California's decision to move up its primary will probably help Harris.
The primary talk reminded me of Tom Vilsack, because I drove by his old house.
I don't remember what he did, but somebody pointed out his old house to me.
He's also the only candidate to worship a dead cow, so maybe we can ask him about veganism.
Maybe we can get him and Booker to fight.
Maybe they'll each try to convince people to vote for them.
my wife just said she thinks Harris will get the nomination and win the White House.
I actually think this too.
Yeah, I think she's well-poised to represent the union-of-sets of women and people of color, which we know make a big difference both in the Democratic primary and in the general.
I think she's acceptable to both the left and the center, which most candidates are not.
Some of the things I like about Harris are specific to her opponent being Trump.
First, she's a prosecutor, which could be a liability, but Trump is clearly afraid of prosecutors. So being a prosecutor is actually a plus.
Second, she'll be difficult for Trump to insult. His go-to insult for black women is to suggest they're unintelligent ("low IQ" or something like that). But, unlike other types of insults (e.g., "Little Marco") these low-IQ-type insults go badly for Trump, failing to resonate outside of his core followers and making him look small and racist.
133: I wonder about that, on IQ. I know his insults that resonated in the primary weren't of that type, but most of his big targets then were white people. It might theoretically sound not anti-intellectual enough for his base, but maybe the implicit racism when used against PoC counteracts that. He didn't get much pushback IIRC for all the aspersions he made against Obama's intellect back in the pre-campaign (college transcripts).
132: Yeah, she's good at that that two-step, which is essential for California statewide politics - viz Gavin Newsom getting the nurses' union endorsement for endorsing single-payer, not right now but As Soon As Possible Trust Me.
Supposedly there was a backroom agreement before the 2016 elections between Harris and Newsom coordinating which would run for senator and which for governor, to avoid pitting their massed support against each other. I wonder what things would look like now if they'd done it the other way.
Let's all post the presidential candidates' income taxes and SAT scores.
If Biden runs, then he and Beto cancel each other out in Iowa and NH--maybe Beto takes Iowa and Biden takes NH--opening up the way for Harris to clean house in South Carolina and eke out a victory in Nevada.
If Biden does not run, then Beto wins both Iowa and NH and a Harris win in SC isn't enough for Harris to upset.
Sanders and Warren will cancel each other out. Neither can win any black votes.
Vote early and in an irrational order prefixed by the states!
Supposedly there was a backroom agreement before the 2016 elections between Harris and Newsom coordinating which would run for senator and which for governor, to avoid pitting their massed support against each other. I wonder what things would look like now if they'd done it the other way.
It would be different, that's for sure. Gillibrand would be the New I'm With Her candidate instead of Harris. And the whitebread white male candidates would outshined by the Kennedyesque glamour of a wine tycoon who had an affair with his campaign manager's wife, breaking up said marriage, and whose frightening ex-wife is now dating Donald Trump Jr.
Dude. I was anti-Newsom, pro-Chiang all throughout the election and I totally dislike his bro-y smarm. That said, Newsom's made a bunch of great moves in two months and keeps impressing me. He's far better than I expected.
Also, having any other governor helped me realize how much contempt Jerry Brown has for anyone but himself (and his wife). I am not missing him one single bit and I'm very relieved he is too old to run for president.
I mean, a total tool, right? But, a total tool who just suspended the death penalty in California. And is making really good appointments. I may have to respect him by the end of his term. I sure would like to know who he's gonna pick for DWR director.
That's one more person than Trump cares about.
Trump cares about no one but one small child in Omelas.
Yes, I totally agree on Newsom. Except on HSR, but even there I see where he was coming from.
Suing huntingdon beach was sweet sweet sweet.
Elizabeth Warren just came out for reparations. I think I want to marry her.
Reparations are a terrible fucking idea. Morally, okay, maybe, but they're political poison.
As race becomes more salient, white people start voting as a block, don't they?
Full disclosure: my instincts about the identity politics of non-white, non-males have been terrible, and I fear the Trump era might have turned me conservative, to my shame.
Temperamentally conservative, that is. So not as much shame.
Don't talk about reparations at all. Just get elected and disburse them out of the military construction fund.
And don't even get elected by a majority of voters.
So the guy who shot Gambino was a QAnon guy? That's not what I would have expected.
This should have been in the Love Sponge thread?
150: bloc, you jerk, and it's distinctions like that that will keep us divided.
Some other white people took all the 'k's.
||
[Ardern] had earlier received an email from the suspect, warning of the impending attack and containing a confused outpouring of racist ideology, which included support for China's lack of "diversity." "The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People's Republic of China," the document said. [...] in the immediate aftermath of the murders, official Chinese media repeated Islamophobic tropes often used by white supremacists, including the claim that immigration is a problem, and that Muslims "cannot integrate." [...] "Immigrants, especially Muslims, cannot integrate into Western society," the Global Times [wrote...] "The reason [Tarrant] felt closest to Chinese values is because he is a fascist," Tsering said. "If you take a look at the way the Communist Party runs the country, stripped of political rhetoric, there are a great many similarities [with fascism]."|>
159. Has China always been fascist, then? They've never liked "outsiders" even when they were ruled by them (or maybe "especially when..."). Chinese governments are typically hostile to "outside" religions and ideas, inside minority ethnic groups, and anyone who isn't a Han Chinese. It is true though, that by assimilating to Han standards outside groups can become more acceptable, a la "How the Irish became White." A religion/ethnicity that "won't integrate into (Chinese) society" is the worst of the worst for them.
160: well, go down the Eco Diagnostic Checklist and see how many hits you get.
The cult of tradition. "One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements."
The rejection of modernism. "The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism."
The cult of action for action's sake. "Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation."
Disagreement is treason. "The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge."
Fear of difference. "The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition."
Appeal to social frustration. "One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups."
The obsession with a plot. "The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia."
The enemy is both strong and weak. "By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. "For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle."
Contempt for the weak. "Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology."
Everybody is educated to become a hero. "In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death."
Machismo and weaponry. "Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality."
Selective populism. "There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People."
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. "All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning."
It is really striking, historically speaking, that the Chinese Empire's conquest of vast territories inhabited by non-Han Chinese happened almost entirely under a non-Han Chinese government, the Qing Dynasty (who were of course Manchus).
I fear the Trump era might have turned me conservative, to my shame.
It's even worse for me. Trump is making me racist, sexist and ageist. Old white men are the fucking worst.
And I'm becoming leery of heterosexuals, too. I think maybe they should be kept out of the military.
160: I think exploring that is going to produce more heat than light, and stretch the definition of fascism in not very useful ways.
163: And more. Mongolia (Inner and Outer), the formerly non-Han Northeast (although being Manchu they got it for free), for a while Outer Manchuria (now the Russian Maritime), Xinjiang (Tarim Basin and Dzungaria), maybe nearby parts of the northwest like the Gansu Corridor (although maybe that was Han at the time), parts of the southwest, Taiwan. Some parts became largely Sinicized over time but obviously not all. Yet.
Admittedly, some of those areas (Tarim Basin) had been conquered by previous Han dynasties, then lost by subsequent ones.
160: From the early 20th C. Around that time both KMT and CCP were working out their racisms, in exactly the same way as the western racists of the day, and both parties came to similar positions (non-Han were children that had to get annihilated in the long run); the vestiges of that fascism are visible all over Taiwan today.
Historically, China was always xenophobic as you say, but also as you say somewhat assimilationist; and it always had in its cities partially self-governing foreign quarters, and self-governing non-Han populations straddling its frontiers. So basically a normal pre-modern polity.
162: Not just the Qing. The Tang ruling class were heavily intermarried with Central Asian nomads, and their culture heavily syncretistic; and the biggest territorial reach for China, if short-lived, was under the Yuan.
162: They even have a genocide!
Beto is coming to town next week, though probably I won't be bothered go see him.
169 And miss a chance to meet Psychedelic Warlord?
The Dzungars, from whom the name of the region derives. They ain't no more.
For a second there I was assuming Beto was a genocidaire.
In 18th century central Asia. Which would be impressive, I guess.
The one benefit I've received from psychedelics is that they've really expanded the scope of my warlordism.
On the other hand, maybe I should go just in case he stands up on the table.
Xena was awesome but that show really started to drag in the later episodes when she had that weird evil daughter.
148: Elizabeth Warren just came out for reparations. I think I want to marry her.
I'm agnostic about reparations -- just haven't read enough about it -- but I've been watching the CNN town hall events with various Democrats running for the nomination with interest. Never thought I'd say that ...
Anyway, Warren's town hall was last night, and most notable to me was how frickin' spry she is. Seriously, she's 69, and she really doesn't look it -- which is good for her candidacy. Have you all seen the various articles suggesting that Warren's the only one running for President, the rest are jockeying for position? Michael Tomasky as an example. (Tomasky's been writing a lot of interesting stuff lately, btw.)
I do agree with him there that Warren is the most substantive of the candidates thus far, that she nonetheless has an uphill battle on her hands. And I see a headline just now that she floated the elimination of the electoral college at last night's town hall event -- I didn't watch the whole thing, didn't see that segment.
I don't want to give a dime to agnostics. They just need to make up their minds.
179: For thousands of years we've been oppressed by both sides! It's time we got our due for being somewhat less annoying!
I'm assuming the devil's in the details on reparations, so.
Also, I see that actually Bush (v. Gore) in 2000 was one of the five instances in U.S. history in which the popular vote loser won the electoral college. I hadn't realized that somehow. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is slowly, gradually, picking up steam.
If you're polytheistic, it's fine to be agnostic about a subset of gods.
181.2 Wake me up when red states start signing up for it. Until they do, it's just a one-way ratchet. Which sounds like exactly the sort of 'so broadminded she won't take her own side in an argument' kind of liberalism that we definitely do not need more of.
The belief of its proponents that the Supreme Court will follow an old, rather general precedent* to uphold the compact, even if it is not approved by Congress, if challenged by a losing (under the compact) Republican candidate is quaint.
* Justice Field's opinion in Virginia v. Tennessee is worth a read, if only for his analogies. Yes, a century old consistently followed agreement between states about exactly where the boundary is is valid even without congressional approval. Actually, Field covers a whole range of possibilities: maybe it isn't really a compact, maybe Congress gave implied consent, etc etc which makes the proponents reliance on this look kind of weak.
What does 'one way ratchet' mean? It doesn't have any effect at all until states controlling more than half the electoral college votes sign up, whether they're red or blue, and once that many states have signed up, it works whether the holdouts are red or blue.
I don't believe it's ever going to come into effect, but I can't see an argument that it's going to cause harm.
I think it will never be enforced against Republicans.
181: I don't see how it's that, given that it doesn't take effect until states in the compact have an EV majority.
The red states aren't the prize, purple states are*. Blue and purple states make an EV majority, so the hope is to lock the purple states into the compact during an advantageous year and establish enough institutional inertia that they don't withdraw during disadvantageous years. Right now, the only state in it that I'd consider purple is Colorado. The difficulty is that big purple states get a lot out of the current system, notably Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Could it happen? I think it has some hope. It needs 81 more EVs; right now Delaware and New Mexico both have bills to join that have passed both state houses, taking it down to 73. Minnesota and Oregon are both blue states outside the compact; if they join, that's 56. And 56 is doable among purple states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, Florida, and Nevada have 112 EVs, precisely twice the amount needed, among them.
So here's where I admit I'm being naive: Suppose it does go through. Would that give states in the compact standing to challenge voter suppression in red states outside of the compact?
186: You mean you think if it comes into effect, the electors in the member states will be faithless and will vote for Republican candidates even if the popular vote goes to a Democrat, and there will be no remedy? I mean, I don't know of my own knowledge whether it will be enforceable, and if it's not enforceable you're right, it's a terrible idea. But why are you sure it's not enforceable?
I'm more imagining a scenario where it's in effect but one or more states with a Republican government decides to withdraw post-election prior to allocating electors, if doing so will change the outcome, and throw the whole thing into chaos. Do other states then have to revert?
As far as SCOTUS I don't see how they can allow some states to allocate by CD and some by WTA and then say that this is illegal. But of course they'll just decide whatever installs their favored candidate, I think that's obvious after 2000.
181- Yes, often cited fact that Democrats have won 6 of the last 7 popular votes but won the election in only four of seven.
I'm taking this as the politics thread. So apparently David Sirota has been using his Guardian column to attack Bernie Sanders' opponents for months and has now taken a job with the campaign. I haven't followed this at ALL, but it seems like another example of why high-profile media people just keep reaffirming why the public thinks they're sleazes. Am I missing something? Being unfair?
Not why, but HOW high-profile media people keep affirming....
Are Sanders never noticed this or didn't care?
190: seemed very shitty. The best defense I saw of it was "well everyone does this so if anyone's complaining they're hypocrites." That is a very bad defense.
(More reason that Warren should get the leftist vote, at least so far.)
I still have no idea who I'm going to vote for. Maybe Yang, because he's mentioned cutting off the tips of penises more than any of the other candidates so far.
Of course, I don't even see foreskins.
I enjoyed Ronny Chieng's interview with Yang.
I find I enjoy most of Ronny Chieng's pieces. Also, that I have really come to like Trevor Noah and don't miss Jon Stewart at all.
Wait, who is Yang? (Googles hastily.)
Huh, I had never heard of him, I don't think. Interesting that he's met the threshold for being part of the Democratic debates.
You should learn more because he's opposed to taking just a glans.
194: It shows real courage to unnecessarily comment on circumcision when your last name rhymes with a common word for penis.
But please don't vote for him. I'm shorting him on a prediction market.
190: He was a real asshole about it, too. So, for me the question is less, "Why is this asshole acting like an asshole?" than "Why is the Sanders campaign hiring an asshole?"
To be fair to Sanders, "I need to be a huge fucking asshole if I want to be president" is a reasonable reading of the past few years.
OMFG the election is still 18 MONTHS AWAY.
It does take forever. But the voting starts in 10 and a half months.
David Simon on David Sirota. Confirms my biases.
Unrelated: Moby, do you know any nonprofits that are doing good work in response to the Nebraska floods? I have professional contacts there and have just been heartsick seeing the news about the flooding these past few days (and it seems like it is getting WAY too little national press coverage).
Nonprofits to which I could donate for humanitarian relief, I mean.
I don't really know about humanitarian aid beyond the Red Cross. I think most of the damage in Nebraska is to agriculture (dead cows) and public infrastructure. Omaha is pooping straight into the river now.
I think the residential damage is limited, at least in Nebraska. The town of Niobrara lost its entire business district, but not the houses as they were moved up the hill years ago because of prior floods.
Just quit it. You know you're gonna get it all from the insurance money.
Flood insurance is tricky. Anyway, seriously don't go in the water downriver from Omaha for a while.
I was assuming that since Lincoln is having water shortages (they aren't actually flooding, as far as I can tell??) there would be poor people who would be in bad shape. I guess I could give to the RC but they're so variable in how effective they are -- I have no idea if the NE one is any good.
ISTR you guys have a massive federal agency dedicated to literally nothing but disaster relief.
Indeed, and sometimes they even send a paper-towel thrower to visit in person.
I don't really either. I think Lincoln still has enough water. People just have to cut their usage by 50%, which shouldn't be a hardship in the short term. At least I hadn't heard people needed to switch to bottled. I know Boyd County has basically no municipal water left, but I don't know how you'd contribute to fix that. I heard they are getting water trucked in, but I suspect most people are just getting water from slightly more rural neighbors who never had municipal water in the first place.
212: It will probably be diluted by that far away.
By all the shit and dead cows from farther downriver?
I don't think most of the cows will wash that far down.
Anyway, I went to school with two people who live in an area with lots of reports about flooding and he's putting stuff on Facebook about his childhood baseball team.
Catfish gonna be epic this season.
Where I come from, we call a 'catfish' une barbotte. A cow is just a cow, though.
Are you sure they're catfish? barbotte sounds so like English "burbot" , which is a kind of freshwater cod (lake in Swedish) much appreciated for its liver. I have friends in the high north who used to catch them with baulks of wood: they spawn under the ice in shallow water in May and the game is to whack the ice so hard the shockwave stuns the fish, which are then fished out through a convenient hole in the ice. They used to live in these parts, in the Fens, but appear to have been extinct in England since 1969.
Are you accusing me of passing myself off as another species on the internet? There's a word for that and it's not a pretty one.
224: I would imagine that is either a coincidence or, more probably, another case of North Americans using a European word for a European thing to describe a similar but distinct North American thing (like "sparrow" or "panther" or "Republican"). "Barbotte" is a bullhead catfish, such as the brown bullhead Ameiurus nebulosus, aka barbotte brune.
"There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People."
I should go back and take Eco seriously this time.
229. If you do, be sure not to take "Foucault's Pendulum" seriously.
I was thinking more of Travels in Hyperreality, which I pretty much wrote off as smartass whimsy.
226: I doubt it. Barbel like fast -flowing, well-aerated water. This is not a description of the Mississippi (nor of the rivers where Burbot lurk, muttering "I aten't extinct yet")
I suspect that rather in the way my mother can still speak fluent French, though she can't remember how many children I have, I will be able to talk about fish in several languages long after I can remember how many children I have.
Aside from the Missouri, most of the rivers that flooded in Nebraska aren't very deep under ordinary circumstances. Except at a dam or something, I never heard of anyone trying to catch catfish. Most of them are too warm for trout, though some smaller ones that are cooler are stocked.
Omaha has a river, Lincoln has creeks that they turned into storm sewers and then turned back into creeks about five years ago because of environmentalism and wanting to have the bike path look less ugly.
The Platte River is famous because of the video game about the Oregon Trail.
The Elkhorn is remarkably free of elk.
The Dismal River is moderately scenic for much of its course.
The Loup River was named after the loupes used by the many jewellers whose shops line its banks.
The Wood River is apparently not important enough to have a Wikipedia page so I can't confirm that it was named because of the trees that grow near it.
The Republican River has had that name longer than the Republican Party has existed.
Whenever I see this OP title in the sidebar, I fret about LB's netnanny blocking her for another six months!
241: I don't know how LB's netnanny works, but mine has only ever blocked me from particular threads. But not this one, oddly enough.
My netnanny loosened a bunch a month or two ago -- there was a while when I couldn't comment at all from work. And an isolated "fuck" was never much of a problem, I think it had a fair amount of context for distinguishing profanity from pornography.
I wonder if the words "fuck" and "moist" together are sufficient?
The most sensitive I ever noticed was a threat that seemed to have gotten flagged on the basis of one usage of j!zz.
And when I say threat, I mean thread.
247: Wow! I guess it is still considered dangerous. I was thinking that it had achieved mainstream acceptance and even was being called America's classical music.
249: The Utah basketball team?!
They changed the name from Jazz to Baby Batter when they left New Orleans.
Turns out you can get around our netnanny by translating a url from a non-English language into English in Google Translate.
The link in the translated box sometimes takes awhile to come up, and it always looks bad, but it generally preserves the text. I think that's because Google automatically translates the linked page itself into English (even when it's already in English).
I have never been blocked on Unfogged. Besides pornography, our netnanny seems to be primarily aimed at gambling sites. Though somehow other random sites - Yelp, for instance - are banned.
So it looks like I got out of Lincoln 16 years ahead of the great flood. Talk about narrow escapes.
Anyway, I've been using my phone only for unfogged at the office ever since I sold out.
239: Probably for some long-forgotten Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.
He named it after his father, Old Man River.
I work for a hospital. Competitor hospitals are sometimes banned.
What about competitor hospital slash fiction?
It would be good if you could get everybody in your office to google "jobs at competing hospital" all at the same time, ideally after an all-hands meeting.
I mean, not to soft pedal, I think Chinese official ideology from the Qin on has been clearly totalitarian, if not necessarily or consistently fascist. (Ming maybe? Dunno.) The political economy of Qin actually strikes me as eerily Nazi (though I don't know about the ideology). Interestingly though the ability of the state actually to implement its theory declined steadily from Qin until sometime in the 20th century as government growth failed to keep up with population.
This might be the most Nebraska story ever, right down to the shitty beer.
Thus, the state organized for war, as analyzed in the Book of Lord Shang, requires not only that all the energies of the people be devoted to agriculture and war but that there must always be another war to fight, another enemy to defeat. Ultimately, war was fought not for gain but for loss, to expend energies and wealth that would otherwise accumulate in the hands of those who, by virtue of their growing prosperity, would come to serve their own interests rather than those of the state.
Such a state sucks in more and more resources to be consumed in wars that no longer serve any purpose save to keep the machine running. Sooner or later the energy and resources expended in the wars become too great for the state to bear, at which point it implodes. It is a "suicide state," "destined to self-destruct."40 As we shall see, this fate, which is implicit in the Book of Lord Shang, would work itself out explicitly in the fall of the Qin empire.
264: I realize you're not singling it out as a dynasty, but weren't the tyrannous aspects of Qin played up by later Confucians wanting to emphasize the need for their inclusion in the state?
267: I'm not clear what you're getting at. Qin wasn't actually as nasty as the literati said, so maybe it wasn't so totalitarian?
I guess there are two questions. The continuity and totalitarianism of imperial ideology I take to be well established, running from the Warring States through Qin, and crystallizing in Han:
While Han accounts depict the Qin as hostile to scholarship, particularly classical studies based in the Confucian tradition, this was clearly not the case. The First Emperor consulted classicist scholars regarding his performance of the feng and shan sacrifices, and his stone inscriptions are replete with classical citations, composed entirely in verse using the same rhyme groups as the Canon of Odes. The aforementioned Springs and Autumns of Master Lü comprised all of the intellectual traditions, including the classicists. Contrary to the Han's claims, their own intellectual policies in the early Han period followed the Qin precedent, and early Han scholastics were either former Qin scholars or their intellectual heirs. The Han's establishment of the classical Confucian canon as the state orthodoxy represented not a radical reversal of the Qin practice but simply a narrowing of scope.Separately, there's the Qin as proto-Nazi "suicide state" idea. There the memory of Qin has certainly been exaggerated, but AFAIK is nonetheless broadly accurate. Its field and track system for instance remains visible from space today. A state capable of enforcing that much uniformity on that wide an area would be capable also of most other things attributed to it.
[...]
In addition to strengthening the institution of the emperor, the Han government carried forward virtually all the policies by which the Qin had sought to impose unity on its newly conquered realm. The unified Qin script was used for writing, though simplification continued. The Qin imperial academy, designed to make the capital the center of intellectual life, also endured, although its intellectual range and its links to office holding were modified. Similarly, the empire-wide legal code remained a central tool of imperial unification. Although the Han initially attempted to simplify Qin laws and make them less brutal, it soon reverted to largely following the Qin pattern.