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Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION
Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION

Trumpian Policy as Cultural Policy Analysis: Trump's administrative actions and policy decisions are primarily driven by a strategy to reshape American culture rather than achieve specific policy outcomes, using controversial decisions to dominate public discourse and shift cultural narratives.

  • The article analyzes Trump's policy approach as primarily a cultural strategy rather than traditional policy-making

  • Key aspects of this cultural policy approach:

    • Focuses on highly visible, controversial decisions that generate widespread discussion
    • Prioritizes cultural messaging over policy effectiveness or implementation
    • Aims to control ideological agenda through rapid, multiple policy announcements
    • Doesn't require policies to be legal, practical, or even implemented to achieve cultural impact

  • Specific examples:

    • Executive orders against DEI and affirmative action as first actions
    • Proposed renaming of Dulles Airport
    • Bill to add Trump to Mount Rushmore
    • Tariff threats against Canada and Mexico
    • Changes to federal employment structure
    • Elimination of Black History Month at Department of Defense
    • Targeting of US AID
    • Nomination of RFK Jr.

  • Strategic elements:

    • Uses polarization to guarantee at least one-third public support
    • Deliberately chooses well-known targets (like Canada/Mexico) for maximum cultural impact
    • Creates debates that delegitimize existing institutions
    • "Floods the zone" with multiple controversies to maintain constant cultural dialogue

  • Author's analysis:

    • Strategy doesn't require coordinated planning
    • Works through spontaneous order of competing interests
    • Relies on three factors:
      1. Conflicting interest groups
      2. Competition for Trump's attention
      3. Trump's belief in cultural issues' importance

  • Effectiveness factors:

    • Leverages internet-intensive, attention-based media environment
    • Creates disorganization among opponents
    • Uses negative contagion to reinforce cultural shifts
    • Prioritizes cultural impact over policy success
#people/Trump#culture#partisanship#politics#govt/policy
·marginalrevolution.com·
Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Marginal REVOLUTION
One last look at why Harris lost the 2024 election.
One last look at why Harris lost the 2024 election.
"The fog of war" is an expression that describes uncertainty about your adversary's capabilities and intentions while in the middle of battle. But it's also an appropriate way to describe our knowledge and understanding of history while living through it.
Everyone in the media seems to want this election to be about the issue they care most about, or to find a way to answer “why Trump won” or “what happened to the Democratic party” in a few sentences. I think that kind of quick summation is impossible. Elections are always decided by a confluence of several factors, some more important than others, and today I’m trying to lay out those factors I suspect were most relevant. That’s the goal: not to give a single, definitive answer, but a holistic and overarching one.
A lot of people, including Democratic strategists, have tried to explain to voters why they shouldn’t feel this way. They've pointed to low unemployment, inflation dissipating, and GDP growth — traditional metrics for measuring economic success — as proof that Bidenomics was working. But these macro numbers didn’t soothe the reality of what was happening at the granular level. Very few Democrats, and very few pundits, seem to have grasped this.
it turned out that Trump's 2020 performance (even in a loss) was the beginning of a new trend, not a fluke. While Democrats were focused on winning back white working-class voters, they actually lost support among their traditionally more multiethnic base.
#stats#elections/2024#marketing#politics#partisanship#demographics#trends#people/Trump#people/Harris#narratives
·readtangle.com·
One last look at why Harris lost the 2024 election.
Three Telltale Signs of Online Post-Literacy
Three Telltale Signs of Online Post-Literacy
The swarms of online surveillers typically only know how to detect clearly stated opinions, and the less linguistic jouissance the writer of these opinions displays in writing them, the easier job the surveillers will have of it. Another way of saying this is that those who read in order to find new targets of denunciation are so far along now in their convergent evolution with AI, that the best way to protect yourself from them is to conceal your writing under a shroud of irreducibly human style
Such camouflage was harder to wear within the 280-word limit on Twitter, which of course meant that the most fitting and obvious way to avoid the Maoists was to retreat into insincere shitposting — arguably the first truly new genre of artistic or literary endeavor in the 21st century, which perhaps will turn out to have been as explosive and revolutionary as, say, jazz was in the 20th.
Our master shitposter has perfectly mirrored the breakdown of sense that characterizes our era — dril’s body of work looks like our moment no less than, say, an Otto Dix painting looks like World War I
#culture#memes#genres/shitposting#politics#writing#partisanship#internet
·the-hinternet.com·
Three Telltale Signs of Online Post-Literacy
How a new way to vote is gaining traction in states — and could transform US politics
How a new way to vote is gaining traction in states — and could transform US politics
example of a system influencing incentives in politics
even more important, many advocates argue, is how the two reforms together can change how candidates and elected officials of all stripes approach their jobs, by adjusting the incentive structure they operate under. Increasingly, many states and districts are solidly red or blue, meaning the general election is uncompetitive, and the key race takes place in the primary. That’s a problem, because the primary electorate is by and large smaller, more partisan and more extreme than the general electorate. Right now, with politicians worrying more about the primary than the general, they’re more focused on playing to their base than on reaching beyond it and solving problems, critics argue.
By allowing multiple candidates to advance, Final Four/Five shifts the crucial election from the primary to the general. And RCV means the votes of Democrats in red districts and Republicans in blue ones still matter, even if their top choice remains unlikely to win. Together, it means candidates are rewarded for paying attention to the entire general electorate, not just a small slice of staunch supporters. As a result, it encourages candidates — and elected officials, once in office — toward moderation and problem-solving, and away from extremism.
#metrics v humanities#politics#elections#concepts#news#trends#partisanship
·azmirror.com·
How a new way to vote is gaining traction in states — and could transform US politics
‘Woke’ and other bogus political terms, decoded
‘Woke’ and other bogus political terms, decoded
See also "On Bullshit"
“The media” (or “mainstream media”): a meaningless phrase because there are countless very different media, which don’t act in concert.
“Gets it”: a social media phrase that is used to mean “agrees with me”.
Usually, though, people who claim to have been “cancelled” mean “criticised”, “convicted of sexual assault”, “replaced by somebody who isn’t an overt bigot” or simply “ignored”.
“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind,” wrote George Orwell in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” (the complete guide on how to write in just 13 pages). He lists other “worn-out and useless” words and phrases that were disappearing in his day: jackboot, Achilles heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno. The same fate later befell words overused in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks: “heroes” (a euphemism for victims) and “greatest country on earth” (meaning largest military and GDP).
#language#rhetoric#politics#culture#partisanship#gop#dems#misinfo#foxnews#americanism#bullshit
·ft.com·
‘Woke’ and other bogus political terms, decoded
What makes a bad argument?
What makes a bad argument?
There is the "just asking questions" rhetorical trick, where someone asks something that sounds a lot like an outlandish assertion, and then defends themselves by suggesting they don't actually believe this thing — they're just asking if maybe it's worth considering.
There is also the “firehose” trick, which essentially amounts to saying so many untrue things in such a short period of time that refuting them all is nearly impossible.
Much more difficult, for all of us, is to engage the best ideas you disagree with, think about them honestly, and explain clearly why you don't agree. And even more difficult is to debate honestly, discover that the other person has made stronger arguments, adapt your position and grow.
Omitting key information in arguments, or omitting counter-evidence to central claims, is just one bad argument style that is common in politics.
The curse of whataboutism is that we can often do it forever. If you want to talk about White House nepotism, it'd take weeks (or years) to properly adjudicate all the instances in American history, and it would get us nowhere but to excuse the behavior of our own team. That is, of course, typically how this tactic is employed.
Bothsidesism: Naturally, this is what I get accused of the most. I'd describe bothsidesism as a cousin of whataboutism. Wikipedia defines it as "a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports." An example might be presenting a debate about human-caused climate change and giving equal air time to two sides: Humans are causing climate change vs. humans aren't causing climate change.Given that the scientific consensus on climate change is robust, arranging an argument this way would lend credence to the idea that scientists (or people in general) are evenly divided on the issue, even though they aren't.
A straw man argument is when you build an argument that looks like, but is different than, the one the other person is making — like a straw man of their argument. You then easily defeat that argument, because it’s a weaker version of the actual argument.For instance, in a debate on immigration, I recently made the argument that we should pair more agents at the border with more legal opportunities to immigrate here, a pretty standard moderate position on immigration. I was arguing with someone who was on the very left side of the immigration debate, and they responded by saying something along the lines of, "The last thing we need is more border agents shooting migrants on the border."Of course, my argument isn't for border agents to shoot migrants trying to cross into the U.S., which is a reprehensible idea that I abhor. This is a straw man argument: Distorting an opposing argument to make it weaker and thus easier to defeat.
"The straw man is a terrible argument nobody really holds, which was only invented so your side had something easy to defeat. The weak man is a terrible argument that only a few unrepresentative people hold, which was only brought to prominence so your side had something easy to defeat."
This is classic moving of the goalposts. We went from “there weren't classified documents” to “they were classified but not that serious” to “they may have been classified but the raid was unjust unless there were nuclear secrets” to "okay, but he wasn’t selling the nuclear secrets to Russia."
The "prove a negative" argument is when someone insists that you prove to them something didn't happen or isn't true, which implies that they have evidence something did happen or is true — but they don’t actually present that evidence.For instance, if I asked you to prove that aliens don't exist, you might have a hard time doing it. Sure, you could argue that we don't have an alien body locked up in some government facility (or do we?), but you’d have a hard time listing the contents of every government facility. And if you could somehow do that, you haven’t proved that aliens don't exist at all, or even that they've never been to Earth. But the burden of proof isn't on you to show me that aliens don't exist, it's for me to show you evidence that they do.This was, in my experience, one of the most frustrating things about some of the early claims that the 2020 election was stolen. A lot of people were alleging that Dominion Voting Systems was flipping votes from Trump to Biden, and then insisting that someone must prove this didn't happen. But the burden of proof was not to show that it didn't happen (proving a negative), it was to show that it did happen. Which nobody ever did.
#rhetoric#linguistics#politics#diplomacy#relationships#communication#gop#partisanship#language
·readtangle.com·
What makes a bad argument?
The Trump indictment.
The Trump indictment.
"The United States has prosecuted dozens of former governors, cabinet members and lawmakers. These prosecutions are essential in reaffirming the principle that no one — and especially no political leader — is above the law."
"This is far graver than the previous indictment by a rogue New York prosecutor, and it will roil the 2024 election and U.S. politics for years to come," the board said. It is "striking" and "legally notable" that the indictment never mentions the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which "allows a President access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves office... The indictment assumes that Mr. Trump had no right to take any classified documents," the board said, which doesn't fit the spirit or letter of the PRA. "If the Espionage Act means Presidents can’t retain any classified documents, then the PRA is all but meaningless. This will be part of Mr. Trump’s defense."
In particular, Special Counsel Jack Smith hits a few key points: "First, that Trump handled the classified material exceptionally sloppily and haphazardly, including stashing documents in a shower, a bedroom, and—as depicted in a striking photo—onstage in a ballroom that frequently held events,” Graham said. "Second, that Trump was personally involved in discussions about the documents, and in directing their repeated relocation. Third, that Trump was well aware of both the laws around classified documents and the fact that these particular documents were not declassified. Fourth, that Trump was personally involved in schemes to hide the documents not only from the federal government but even from his own attorneys. The indictment carefully lays out its case with pictures, texts, and surveillance footage."
Nuclear and military secrets among the documents? Check. Knew the documents were classified, and confessed he hadn't declassified them? Check. Instructed lawyers to lie and conceal the documents' existence? Check. Showed off classified information to people without clearance? Check. Kept them in insecure locations? Check.
"However cavalier he was with classified files, Mr. Trump did not accept a bribe or betray secrets to Russia," the board said. Is that the standard? That a president can only be charged if he's found selling state secrets to Russia post-presidency? No thank you. Not in a country where people spend years and years in prison for markedly less than what Trump did.
As lawyer and conservative columnist David French noted (under "What the right is saying"), this is the "Comey test." This was the standard he set. Based on the indictment, the allegations against Trump very obviously meet that standard. The Justice Department is alleging his conduct was willful and that he obstructed justice.This was also the standard Trump himself set. Nobody is really talking about this for some reason, but please remember that Trump spent his entire 2016 campaign demanding Clinton go to jail for her email server. "Lock her up" became a rallying cry at his campaign rallies, and some of Trump's own quotes about the need to protect classified information were helpfully collected in the indictment (again, this was a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign)
Many Trump allies say that prosecuting Trump will make us a "banana republic." But the rest of the democratic world is actually much better at holding its leaders accountable than we are. If anything, there is a better argument that both Clinton and Trump should have been prosecuted than that Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted because Clinton wasn’t.
France, South Korea, Israel, and Italy have all prosecuted former leaders for alleged crimes. Just this weekend, Scotland arrested its former leader Nicola Sturgeon for financial crimes. Why shouldn't we hold our leaders accountable?
As Barr noted, the documents’ degree of sensitivity was shocking, and Trump could have avoided all of this by simply returning them. Instead, he appears to have obstructed, lied to, and misled investigators over and over. Yes, we have to wait to see what the defense says, but as Barr also said: "If even half of it is true, then he's toast."
it is totally reasonable to prosecute him for what appears to be egregious and unbelievably negligent behavior. Trump has nobody to blame for his actions and decisions here but himself, and we should set the standard, for our future leaders, that this conduct is unacceptable.
#politics#gop#partisanship#people/Trump
·readtangle.com·
The Trump indictment.