Big Picture American Politics

[Lisnaholic]

I think you have quite a few cherry-picked inaccuracies in this post, Nimbly:-

I think he's a greedy neoliberal who co-opted the Republican Party and won because Clinton was incompetent.

In a complete break with the historical policy of the FBI to keep quiet about investigations, James Comey undercut Clinton by declaring, just days before the 2020 election, that they were investigating her.

.... because Trump told people to protest peacefully.

Perhaps he did at one point, but he also said, "Be there: will be wild" and "Fight like hell or you won't have a country anymore"

(all he did was make phone calls and complain to officials in Georgia).

Actually, with the way conspiracy law works, he's in trouble not just for what he did, but for what his "criminal enterprise " did too:-

The indictment says the defendants "knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favour of Trump".

The former president is accused of felony counts including:

Racketeering
Solicitation of violation of oath by public officer
Conspiracy to impersonate a public officer
Conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree
False statements and writings and filing false documents
The indictment refers to the defendants as a "criminal organisation", accusing them of other crimes including influencing witnesses, computer trespass, theft and perjury.

The most serious charge, violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (Rico) Act, is punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison.

The act - designed to help take down organised criminal syndicates like the mafia - helps prosecutors connect the dots between underlings who broke laws and those who gave them orders.
source: BBC

I don't think someone trying to steal an election would tell people to go peacefully protest and then scurry away to hide in the Oval Office.

According to Cassidy Hutchinson and others, he went back to the White House under protest, being physically restrained at one point. And from the WH, Trump tweeted "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done". He knew the rioters were already in the Capitol, but was "pouring gasoline on the flames" from the Oval Office.

I'm not sure why you are consistently playing down what Trump was up to.

[Nimbly9]

Nothing I posted was inaccurate. I give fair consideration then make a determination.  You are free to disagree, but-

1. Clinton shot herself in the foot with all that email stuff and then supposedly trying to shred evidence or w/e.  You can't complain about Comey and yet be in the same camp that says "Well, Trump was bad to fire him for doing his job". See the problem?

2. There's been a ton of talk about those indictments and the applicability of RICO with Trump (both in favor of him and not-so-much), so not sure why you would bother posting all that when we were discussing January 6th in a larger context of the Democrats (and Republicans to a lesser extent during the 2nd Obama term) undermining faith in elections for years before he even came down the escalator. 

3. Nobody is playing down anything - but it is incredibly difficult to prove intent.  As jwb said earlier, the chances of him going to jail are pretty slim and there are wrinkles in all of the cases against him.  Same thing with all the talk about the 14th Amendment. As they like to say - "I'll believe it when I see it". 

This is Big Picture American Politics, no?  Nothing happens in a vacuum as far as political developments go, and Donald Trump is perhaps the most fascinating example of this in the last few decades.  He's like the American Id personified, a creature that shed his disingenuous neoliberal skin in favor of a disingenuous moralistic conservative veneer.  He is bizarre in a way that suits the times we live in.

[Jwb]

I follow politics but for the most part I don't see politics as the primary driver of society in this era.  Money, technology and science are the great forces that are driving change, shifting the status quo quietly in various ways.  The sudden leaps with AI in particular, at least in my opinion, have much more immediate consequences than anything a politician will do over the next ten years.  And very soon you'll see stuff like Langchain become the foundation for AI's ability to interact with & manipulate the real world in ways people aren't even thinking about. 

But the thing is,nobody is keeping their eye on the ball.  I see it coming like a freight train, and anyone who isn't on the money-making side with AI is going to get left behind or essentially erased unless you have a job that can't be replaced by it.

As entertaining as politics are, a lot of people are going to wake up over the next few years and not recognize the ground they are standing on.  The government isn't going to be able to regulate it.  It'll be like Snow Crash with less inflation.

really bro? And here I was actually curious to hear what you would say in response to my previous post.  And your answer is just politics doesn't matter anyway cause next year they're going to start rolling out skynet?

Even if it is all one big fake play put on by the Illuminati, you could have tried harder than that, my friend.

[Jwb]

Nothing I posted was inaccurate. I give fair consideration then make a determination.  You are free to disagree, but-

1. Clinton shot herself in the foot with all that email stuff and then supposedly trying to shred evidence or w/e.  You can't complain about Comey and yet be in the same camp that says "Well, Trump was bad to fire him for doing his job". See the problem?

2. There's been a ton of talk about those indictments and the applicability of RICO with Trump (both in favor of him and not-so-much), so not sure why you would bother posting all that when we were discussing January 6th in a larger context of the Democrats (and Republicans to a lesser extent during the 2nd Obama term) undermining faith in elections for years before he even came down the escalator. 

3. Nobody is playing down anything - but it is incredibly difficult to prove intent.  As jwb said earlier, the chances of him going to jail are pretty slim and there are wrinkles in all of the cases against him.  Same thing with all the talk about the 14th Amendment. As they like to say - "I'll believe it when I see it". 

This is Big Picture American Politics, no?  Nothing happens in a vacuum as far as political developments go, and Donald Trump is perhaps the most fascinating example of this in the last few decades.  He's like the American Id personified, a creature that shed his disingenuous neoliberal skin in favor of a disingenuous moralistic conservative veneer.  He is bizarre in a way that suits the times we live in.

I do think it's not particularly unlikely he could get convicted of something,  I just don't see them actually sending him to prison.  Probably a nice house arrest situation at Mar-A-Lago if anything. Or maybe at the white house.

[Lisnaholic]

^ Yeah, house arrest is the one I'm expecting. There's quite a few precedents for that for former leaders in other countries too.

Thanks for responding, Nimbly. I applaud the "giving fair consideration then making a determination", which is how I like to think most of us here form our political opinions.

1. Clinton shot herself in the foot with all that email stuff and then supposedly trying to shred evidence or w/e.  You can't complain about Comey and yet be in the same camp that says "Well, Trump was bad to fire him for doing his job". See the problem?

^ This was a point I didn't really follow, not being familiar with the camp you mention or the debate about Comey's firing.

2. There's been a ton of talk about those indictments and the applicability of RICO with Trump (both in favor of him and not-so-much), so not sure why you would bother posting all that when we were discussing January 6th in a larger context of the Democrats (and Republicans to a lesser extent during the 2nd Obama term) undermining faith in elections for years before he even came down the escalator.

^ I suppose I was pushing back against an equivalence that's being made between talk of unfair elections (Democrats+ Republicans) and active subversion and tampering (Republicans).
In bold: copy+paste. It was really no bother, Nimbly. You're welcome

3. Nobody is playing down anything - but it is incredibly difficult to prove intent.  As jwb said earlier, the chances of him going to jail are pretty slim and there are wrinkles in all of the cases against him.  Same thing with all the talk about the 14th Amendment. As they like to say - "I'll believe it when I see it". 

^ Yep, I've noticed those wrinkles too, so I guess it's a case of waiting for the courts to decide. Although (just as with the election) Trump and his  followers are laying the groundwork to cry "Foul" if any decision goes against him.

TB completely H, I still think you are downplaying Trump's actions, just as I am probably highlighting or over-focusing on them. Surely that's why we are taking different positions or interpretations ?

[Nimbly9]

That's because people who have an intense personal dislike for Trump tend to fixate on him as the cause of our problems instead of being a symptom of other issues.  You are seeing this effect in reverse with a lot conservatives, Biden-Derangement Syndrome, over gas prices and the fact that inflation is really really bad.

One of the reasons why I tend to take centrist positions is because I recognize how both parties have enabled him in various ways - his 2016 win itself was basically a kneejerk reaction to most of the same problems we have right now.  Go watch some of the interviews younger Trump gave on political stuff - similar to today, but with more of a Clintonian spin. Oprah essentially told him to run for President back in the early 90's and he said no, but I sometimes think we would have been better off if he had tried back then and lost.

Jwb and I differ on what Trump really "means" I think in the greater context of politics.  I see him as an inevitable outcome in a country that has grown disillusioned with both Reagan's conservativism and Clinton / Obama styled neoliberalism.  We got here because people way smarter than Trump failed and because both parties have grown less and less tolerant of each other with every passing election cycle.

Going back to Trump himself for a bit - If he had been more careful with his words and reined in his bad habits, he probably could have run as an establishment Democrat, but I think Obama roasting him at that White House correspondents dinner pushed him into a different trajectory and put the idea in his head that he could run as a Republican and capitalize on his personal grievances.  His loss to Biden shows there's a limit to grievance-based politics with independents though.

[Nimbly9]

really bro? And here I was actually curious to hear what you would say in response to my previous post.  And your answer is just politics doesn't matter anyway cause next year they're going to start rolling out skynet?

Even if it is all one big fake play put on by the Illuminati, you could have tried harder than that, my friend.

I didn't have to try.  I'm building an AI startup right now so I'm hyperaware of what is going on in that universe from all the different players with way more money than me.  Some of the near-future capabilities are cool to me as a business tech geek, but I am concerned about a few things because LLMs are outpacing the capability of society to grapple with what they will become. The only reason people don't see it right now is they are convinced "Skynet" is like 10 years away from being able to do anything in the real world, and that's simply not the case.

If anything, I find politics to be a fun distraction from all that.  You two might find this a little doom n' gloom, but a good case in point as far as reading material goes.

Vanity Far - How Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Andreessen—Four Billionaire Techno-Oligarchs—Are Creating an Alternate, Autocratic Reality

[Marie Monday]

sorry to barge into the discussion but you talk like an AI imitation of a corporate tech bro. good lord.

[Nimbly9]

sorry to barge into the discussion but you talk like an AI imitation of a corporate tech bro. good lord.

Or maybe you just suck at reading.

[Marie Monday]

speaking unaesthetically is not nuance, dude

[Nimbly9]

speaking unaesthetically is not nuance, dude

Lol lay it out then oh special one.

[Marie Monday]

special one? what?

[Nimbly9]

special one? what?

I'm inviting you to participate in the discussion. good lord.

[Marie Monday]

nope bye

[Jwb]

I didn't have to try.  I'm building an AI startup right now so I'm hyperaware of what is going on in that universe from all the different players with way more money than me.  Some of the near-future capabilities are cool to me as a business tech geek, but I am concerned about a few things because LLMs are outpacing the capability of society to grapple with what they will become. The only reason people don't see it right now is they are convinced "Skynet" is like 10 years away from being able to do anything in the real world, and that's simply not the case.

If anything, I find politics to be a fun distraction from all that.  You two might find this a little doom n' gloom, but a good case in point as far as reading material goes.

Vanity Far - How Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, and Andreessen—Four Billionaire Techno-Oligarchs—Are Creating an Alternate, Autocratic Reality

it's not that I find it too doom and gloom.  I'm the number one proponent of the robot apocalypse on this site/MB and always have been.  I'm waiting for the day when they actually take over and all the futurists realize they aren't going to be invited to the party after all.  It's going to be robots only my friend. That's my prophecy that I stole from a Jaan Tallin speech in 2012 or so called the intelligence stairway, and I've been repeating it ever since I watched that fateful youtube lecture.   I'm actually probably one of the few people on here who won't completely roll their eyes at the idea of AI apocalypse.

But that's besides the point.  You could have invoked AI apocalypse at any point earlier in the conversation to render the entire conversation meaningless. So it's really a cheap dodge to me.  You waited till I wrote a fuckin essay of the distinction between Trump and Biden and then your response to that is yeah but AI... I don't know if you are trolling or what at this point. That was literally the hardest pivot I've ever seen.