all these takes as if Harris lost on "the issues".
her takes on the issues poll much better than his takes, my dear popularists.
she lost because he was perceived by low information, go-with-your-gut, voters as someone willing to let it hang out while she was cautious, scripted, hiding something.
@artcollisions we’ll end up just driving there.
@artcollisions I’ll give it a try!
@artcollisions (now their system just doesn’t pick up, rings and them jumps to busy.)
“If you are calling from a touch-tone phone, please dial the extension number you wish to reach, or dial zero for assistance. If you are calling from a rotary dial phone, please stay on the line for assistance. Please hold a moment. That mailbox is full. Thank you for calling. If you are calling from a touchtone phone…”
Repeats forever, whether I dial zero or some random “extension number” or just wait. Trying to reach the kid’s pediatrician.
we’re living in an 80s movie in which the bad kids occupy the principal’s office and announce over the squealing PA there will be changes. all the kids cheer! you are supposed to cheer.
sometimes you lose touch with it in the confusion of the quotidian. but then all of a sudden clear and pure the stupidity shines through, blinds you and leaves you breathless.
i wonder whether, given the publicness of bluesky’s backend, it wouldn’t be possible to define some kind of break-glass backstop, by which one could move ones history to “lifeboats” in the fediverse, capturing and reconstituting exodus-participating portions of your social graph?
@marick i think it’s more a normative claim than an empirical one. emperors often fail to secure power through a lineage.
but they insist that it is right to do so, and vigorously propound a politics under which privilege based on “nepotism” and inheritance is legitimate, and, conversely, where deprivation based on circumstances of birth is also legitimate.
@marick (it probably is worth a separate post sometime. it just emerges in this one from my observation that people who support plutocratic politics often seem to make justice claims in terms of families or ones “people” — something more than direct lineage but less than race — rather than individuals.)
“you can be ground to dust, and the echoes of your ghost will be used by your grandchildren to justify new atrocities. the death of your babies will be used to explain why someone else’s babies must die.” @phillmv http://okayfail.com/garden/theyre-going-to-build-camps.html
[new draft post] Plutocracy as a positive ideal https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/11/19/plutocracy-as-a-positive-ideal/index.html
“A central pillar of American democracy is that no man is above the law. But Mr. Trump isn’t an ordinary man.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/opinion/trump-criminal-cases.html ht @jbouie
// well then. which truths do we hold self-evident?
@artcollisions i’m sorry about that!
Action Needed: Your balance is now past due
@admitsWrongIfProven in practice “meritocracy” relied on a mix of educational credentials, recommendations, testing, and pay to establish “merit”.
other conceptions of merit might be better. but there was always going to be a problem with the “ocracy” part of that word.
are you a warrior for free speech, patriot?
@admitsWrongIfProven oh, i think there was, and it was catastrophic. it led to a whole class of rapacious winners who felt like they deserved it, and losers deserved their fate beyond what pity compelled winners to offer.
meritocracy failed, so we're trying meretrocracy.
@WhiteCatTamer @otfrom i think they think that’s true. and Justice Jackson, in her dissent, emphasized that aspect.
but the decision is very clear about the inviolability of the pardon power, under any circumstances. i think a President that wanted to intimidate the Supreme Court or worse could direct subordinates to do that and pardon them, rendering the Court itself a plaything of the President.
they are relying on the decency of the people they are screwing.
@otfrom that’s basically its effect. more precisely it says anything the President does that takes the form of an “official act” — where that form cannot be questioned via inquiry into the President’s motives or alleged criminality of the act — is at least presumptively immune and sometimes absolutely immune from criminal prosecution.
so, as long as a President takes a bit of care to embed their criming in “official” processes and procedures, it’s effectively legalized.
