I lose all respect for commenters when they mention TDS. Here's why:
"In a text message sent on Jan. 4, 2021, Carlson wrote to an unidentified recipient, "We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can't wait." . . . "I hate him passionately. ... I can't handle much more of this," he added.
"In 2021, following the January 6 Capitol riots, Ackman called on Trump to "resign and apologize to all Americans"."
"In 2021, David Sacks said that Donald Trump's behavior in relation to the January 6 Capitol riots disqualified him from running for the presidency again. However, following Trump's statements in support of cryptocurrencies earlier this month, the tech investor seems to have changed his stance on Trump."
"While Stephen Schwarzman had previously criticized Trump's "bigotry, hatred and extremism" following his comments on a Charlottesville white nationalist rally and quit his position of advisor at the time, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Blackstone has now announced his "vote for change" in Trump's favor."
"His [Musk's] support is a big departure from two years ago, when the two men publicly traded insults."
These guys never get accused of TDS, because they now publicly support Trump despite privately viewing him as a terrible person. So when someone accuses me of TDS, I know they have the following moral code:
It's OK to publicly praise a person that you know is reprehensible, if you think it's to your personal advantage. But if you publicly criticize a reprehensible person, then you are "deranged".
So when you mention TDS, I make a mental note as to what sort of person you are. It means that you are too cowardly to criticize the people in your own tribe that make the exact same criticisms of Trump that I make.
A second problem is that many commenters conflate TDS with leftism. But you guys know perfectly well that many of the Republicans in Congress, Mike Pence, much of Trump's former staff, etc., also view him as reprehensible, although some won't admit it publicly. The National Review used to be scathing in their criticism, before they realized their subscribers love Trump.
It's simply dishonest to suggest that TDS reflects leftist bias, and you know if. I'm not a leftist. If you continue along these lines I'll know that you are a dishonest person.
I plan to have a much stricter policy on commenters. Shape up or ship out. You've been warned.
I'm trying to treat my reply like something of an AA meeting, where I'm going to admit to being a leftist with TDS who is coming to terms with the fact that a majority of Americans have made a policy choice to a greater degree than they've made a personality choice. The probability that some important aspects of this choice will be a disappointment to some of Trump's supporters seems guaranteed, as you and others have been pointing out. My guess is that the several million voters who actually believe that the Trump administration will lower the price of gas and food won't lose faith in him when that doesn't happen. If Trump actually follows through with tariffs that hurt the economy then I need to believe that he'll face pushback from the billionaires and the GOP congress. I'm genuinely curious to see how long Musk can last as the man behind the curtain--a betting market on that could be useful.
At the moment, Democrats are like the corpse of the grandmother strapped to the roof of the Griswold family station wagon. The ongoing debacle with the blowback against Seth Moulton reveals that the far left is still obsessed with fighting culture wars that will not win future elections except in Massachusetts.
I wouldn’t use the terms “excusable” and “inexcusable” polling error. I would use the terms “random” and “systematic” polling error. The reported margin of error of an individual poll is about randomness, assuming perfect uniform coverage of the target population. When you average together more polls, that should decrease even more. But the 2-3% shift from the polling average to the actual results must be systematic error - the way the sampling and weighting methods happened to not be perfectly representative of the actual voting population. I wouldn’t say it’s “inexcusable” to miss that. Random error can be eliminated by just using a larger sample. But the systematic error can’t. So in that sense, the systematic error might actually be more excusable than the random error, because there’s no known way to eliminate it.
Yes, I suppose "inexcusable" is a poor choice. But I certainly view it as a bigger problem than a random error, especially because I think this one was predictable.
Systematic error seems impossible to eliminate. The whole concept of polling is built on an assumption, that the people who refuse to answer your poll can be modeled based on the people who do answer your poll. There’s no fundamental reason that should be true. My suspicion is that over time the systematic error is increasing, as more and more people refuse to respond to unsolicited communications.
1) I think we are becoming decidedly less Christian. What we see where there are supposedly increases is that its performative Christianity that has much more to do with tribal affiliation rather than true belief. Few people who claim to be Christians go to church regularly or read the Bible. Even fewer actually behave like Christians.
2) I think pollsters want to be correct but I dont think they have a good way to measure turnout ie who will actually vote. Also, IIRC, I think something similar has been seen in Europe which makes me think this a common issue.
3) I read Boudreaux's piece. His siblings sound like my siblings and cousins and i have a huge family (look up quiverful movement) so there are a lot more of them. What i have found is that almost none of my relatives actually know anyone supposedly talking down to them, it's mostly stuff they see in the right wing media that somebody in California said. Second, they all engage in saying bad stuff about people on the left. I am there to hear it so it's not speculation. I am told that people on the left are grooming children to be gay or worse, that I am not a real American, I'm a Marxist, communist and I want to destroy the country. Pretty much what I have heard Trump say about people on the left. Anyway, they found a way to rationalize their votes. Good for them.
But between 15% and 35% (the woke and the woke-adjacent) adhere much less closely to those teachings than did the average American merely 25 years ago.
Oppressor-oppressed ideology may adhere to one portion of Jesus’ teachings, but it grossly violates many others. Most notably but not exclusively the “do unto others…” rule.
No, I don't have to grade on a curve, as I'm merely describing reality, not making a judgment as to whether some people are worse than others.
For example, I don't doubt that the German people of 90 years ago were quite similar to the German people of today, at least in a biological sense. But their behavior was pretty bad. Sure, there are reasons (the Great Depression, etc.), but behavior is behavior.
And Hillary Clinton never referred to deplorables. There has been a huge amount of progressive commentary from 2016 to now that imports only bad reasons for folk to vote for Trump.
If your relatives cannot remember folk doing so personally, that must be because Americans are such polite people. Believe me, here in Oz, I have had decades of progressives being morally arrogant, condescending and dismissive, either to me or in my presence. Often, you do not say anything, because it would sour social interactions and they tend to take disagreement as a personal attack and/or a sign of a lack of moral character.
It is quite noticeable, how as the use of terms of moral abuse in scholarly abstracts has soared, the public standing of higher education has fallen. As the use of such terms in the media has soared, their audiences have shrunk.
One of the most common comments among my (highly educated) immediate friends about progressives? “These people cannot see themselves.”
My opinion of intellectuals who support Trump (most of whom are faking it) is 100 times lower than my opinion of average people that support Trump. We all know that intellectuals like Tucker and Elon and Vance privately admit I'm right about Trump.
A lot of “pro-Trump” folk are anti-the-other-side. Trump is not their preferred vehicle—not even remotely so—but he is the one on offer.
He is certainly not good for the gravitas of the Office of President. (I understand the emotional power of that, but I do not share it, living in a crowned republic rather than an elective monarchy.)
I get tired of people saying the problem with Trump was just style. He was one of the worst presidents in US history. If you don't see that, don't waste your time trying to convince me that I'm wrong. Style isn't the issue.
Style was/is one of his problems, but hardly the only one.
He also looked different outside the US than in it. For whatever reason, his Administration ran a better foreign policy than his predecessor or his successor.
The question is, given his manifold flaws as a person and a President, why does he have so much support? And in the patterns he does? I have always found that much more interesting than the man himself.
Under Trump, the Republican Party has reverted to what it started as: a protectionist Party relying on working class votes. Yes, that is continuing a trend already underway, but he clearly intensified it.
This post gives much to chew on. And the book/study Trump’s Democrats looks even better now.
I sure hope that Trump helps flatten Middle East terrorists and at least tries for peaceful regime change in Iran.
When Hamas are the good guys...I wash my hands of the left (where I was from birth).
The (not so funny) joke is, Biden/Harris wanted Middle East regime change...in Tel Aviv and not Tehran. How did US foreign policy ever become so cockeyed? So Neville Chamberlain-ish?
On trade and illegal immigration, I say read Michael Pettis, and tht every sovereign nation has an obligation to voting citizens to enforce border laws. The situation of 10 million to 20 million people entering the US on Biden's watch...well, not good, no state capacity, no respect.
As for culture wars...oooof. Not interested.
I do prefer proper English. The plural pronoun for an individual is confusing. Huh?
I worked for years in areas that were very red. I was almost fired for making critical comments about Bush and the military. I had 12 years in the military and others had none but they knew more about the military than I did and Bush could do no wrong. If you live in the bluest areas I bet it is hard to be a conservative but the same is true when you are a liberal in the reddest areas. However, if you live outside those areas you are unlikely to directly hear people saying the stuff claimed in Boudreaux" article in real life.
On the religion issue I think it's very mixed. The Catholic Church dominated for so long and many of its teachings are church derived and not Biblical per se. That said culture matters so much and all through history people have used religion to justify cultural preferences. I think I would agree that now that the Catholic church is not so dominant people have the opportunity to practice a more Biblical Christianity.
I am old enough to remember the Dixie Chicks controversy. Not a great moment in US history in many ways. And polarisation is polarisation. But incredibly patronising/intolerant progressive commentary is not an artefact of right wing media. It is not even specific to the US.
That folk in real life do not much engage in it is reassuring. But a lot of politics is about symbolism, as a short hand for deeper issues.
Again, we know for a fact that the famous right wing intellectuals who claim to support Trump actually have exactly the same TDS as I have. I presume you are not going to deny that. So what's your point? I'm a bad person because I tell the truth and they lie?
OK, so you are not aware that all these right wing intellectuals have totally trashed Trump in private. Your ignorance is your problem, please don't blame me for not knowing what's going on.
'Christianity in an institutional sense seems to be declining in the West. It’s as if the public is saying “We thank the Church for preserving the teachings of Jesus for 1800 years, but we don’t need you any longer. We have made these ideas a part of our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture. You’ve done your job, now please go away.”'
My younger self would have believed this, and loved the formulation. I suspect that the majority of left intellectuals believe as Scott does here.
I no longer do.
My counter-argument:
“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” — David Foster Wallace
Older liberals seem to worship at the altar of “climate change” and the ideal of the pristine Mother Gaia narrative (as Alex Epstein describes so well in his most recent book).
Younger (decidedly Il-liberal) leftists worship woke oppressor-oppressed ideology. Which is how and why they feel virtuous in choosing to “Back Hamas” in the wake of Oct 7th.
So “You’ve done your job, now please go away” - which is what the secular left wants and makes clearer with each passing year as it attempts to do just that - has in less than half a century been demonstrably proven to be either wrong, or else a fabulously bad idea.
And I say this as a Jewish agnostic thisclose to atheist myself.
But it becomes more and more evident that anything akin to proper Judeo-Christian values continue to vanish with each passing generation as belief in religion has plummeted in the last two decades in the West.
As evidenced by the aforementioned woke “Back Hamas” crowd.
Robin Hanson, without using my words, nor even necessarily saying we can or should put the anti-religion genie back in the bottle - has made similar points about our culture for months if not years now.
"But it becomes more and more evident that anything akin to proper Judeo-Christian values continue to vanish with each passing generation"
Tell me more about how many generations back we need to go to find proper values. To the days when gays were put in prison? When women could not vote? When white southerners owned black slaves? When men fought duels? When military aggressors were viewed as heroes? When husbands could legally rape their wife? When was the golden age you speak of?
Yes we have always had an imperfect union, and culture.
The Declaration of Independence talks of a “more perfect” Union, not a perfect one.
I spoke of no golden age. I am not a MAGA-type that seeks to return to an impossible - and even less perfect - past. But I am speaking about values, not specific practices and certainly not a specific time period.
But if you want me to nail down a time, I’d say the balance somewhere between 1995 and 2010 was about right.
Sometime after then, IMO, we have jumped the shark, though I could not and would not put a specific time or incident to that claim; there is no Fonzie wearing his leather jacket on water skis.
Like you, I’d say that as a society (and I’ll limit myself to American society here), we continued to progress up to and even through that time.
But in terms of culture and values, no I think we’ve regressed since.
…but then the woke in the last 15 years have (perhaps non-systematically?) removed many of these key ideas from our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture.
The biggest problem is not the woke, it's the Christian nationalists. What would Jesus say we should do with poor refugees that show up at our doorstep?
I won’t try to argue with you which is the “biggest problem”.
But which group is the one that at least tries in their own way to obey the golden rule? You really think it’s the 48% of 18-24 year olds who chose “Back Hamas” (when given 3 choices, not 2) in the aftermath of Oct 7th?
Because that’s what oppressor-oppressed ideology teaches: that whose who are “oppressed” have the right to fight back using *any* means necessary.
You are calling it a failure because you won elections and fixed the things you wanted fixed.
And then your party loses “elections”. True political victory is having the other side adopting your policies. Like Clinton with neoliberalism or GOP with gay marriage.
I don’t care which side is in office. I do care about policy and culture.
If this election was Bill Clinton versus Trump I would easily vote Bill Clinton. But it was Trump versus Kamala.
Partisan non-response bias: some people will never talk to a pollster, and if that class of people changes their political opinions or voting participation rates over time, pollsters just have to guess that.
There's also shy Trump voters, who will lie to pollsters, and if the rate of liars goes up or down between elections, pollsters also just have to guess that (although Nate Silver, before the election, remarked sarcastically about people talking about "shy Trump voters", so maybe I'm wrong about whether this effect is real)
So even if person A would never talk to a pollster or would lie, their neighbor B might, and B could have a good idea of what A thinks. And probably people would be less likely to lie to a question about their neighbor rather than themselves.
I like your theory about Christianity. A related question would be why did it take so long? My best guess is that it was a result of the enlightenment. The enlightenment offered a non-theistic basis for morality (Kant’s consequentialism, Bentham’s utilitarianism, etc)
This secular ethics boosted some minority Christian sects that agreed with it (think of the growth of abolitionist Protestant groups in the 19th century). And where secular ethics came into conflict with Christian morality, such as the enlightenment promotion of democracy vs the Catholic Church’s rejection of it for most of the 19th century, secular ethics won. Or Christianity adopted the secular point of view.
I would argue that the enlightenment forced Christianity to more closing mirror Jesus’ teachings and brought about a shakeup to Christianity as large as what Luther had done a few centuries before.
This would also explain why contemporary, mainline Protestant churches are seeing such declining membership - they other little more than what secular ethics does. The more emotional, spiritual, mystical Christian churches (evangelical, penticostal, etc) are growing - they offer something much different than secular ethics for those that crave something less rational.
Thanks for the link to Professor Boudreaux's post. Couldn't find a way to leave a note there so leaving one here instead :)
This stood out in particular:
> My siblings did not arrive at their political views through schooling, reading, or attending seminars. Like our parents, my siblings all simply go about their jobs and lives honestly, diligently, and with good cheer. They love their children, dote on their grandchildren, and they enjoy life.
I assume the forming of unschooled opinions is meant as praiseworthy. Perhaps it is. Though we would agree that when it comes to Geometry, Algebra, Botany, History, Economics (surely!), schooling and reading and attending seminars are a good way to acquire understanding in those subjects. If your political views are formed upon reading the Federalist Papers you may even show good taste.
Going through life with honesty and diligence and good cheer is an unalloyed virtue, and may they be examples for everyone in that regard.
Great post and as a native Michigander I appreciate the Edmund Fitzgerald reference.
Re western Michigan lakeshore communities, I think you’re right about the WFH uptick. I spent the pandemic there (moving from NYC) and my sister still lives there. A lot of new housing (especially vacation-type places that can be used as short-term rentals) has been built.
I've basically had the same experience. Such a great song! I also recall my elementary school teacher drawing diagrams (in chalk, on the chalkboard) illustrating in very simple ship-plus-waves fashion the different theories about what exactly went wrong.
Thanks for pointing to the Boudreaux essay. I agree with you on this. There are lots of Democrats who do not fall into the category that is described. They are school teachers, healthcare professionals and doing many other jobs that help everyday Americans like the Boudreaux siblings. Empathy is not something to be scorned at (my opinion of the essay).
"My wife worked the election. She helped 100s of people fill out their ballots (non-English speaking, people who didn't know how to vote, etc..). Nearly every single one of them was a bullet ballot for Trump.
This is in a very blue area, on top of it.
If it was happening here, it was most assuredly happening in swing states."
"Every single non-English speaking immigrant she helped, EVERY SINGLE ONE, voted for Trump.
By the time she took her first break of the day just a few hours into it, when she came home she looked me in the eye and said "Trump is going to win". 😭"
Polls have suffered from increasing partisan non-response bias in the cell phone era. Many polls oversample highly educated and therefore overrepresent Dem/Harris support.
Pollsters correct for this by ensuring that certain demographic buckets are properly represented, including education, gender, and party ID. The problem is that normalizing by demography has the appearance of what Nate Silver incorrectly calls herding; the variance is lower if you control demography and conduct sub-samples within each demographic bucket.
The problem with over-controlling for demography is you miss differential changes in turnout. While polls have underestimated Trump three cycles in a row, they also underestimated Gretchen Whitmer in 2022, probably because they overestimated pro-Trump working class turnout.
Imagine a society with 50% economists for Harris and 50% plumbers for Trump. The best way to survey this society is to take an employment survey, especially if Trump supporters hang up when they find out you are with a media organization.
All of this is alchemy though, because turnout is key. Pollsters need to ask about "intention to vote." Interestingly, even among people who claim to have voted Trump previously, there is *still* subtle non-response bias among actual Trump supporters. You see this in crosstabs where 95% of Biden voters plan to vote Harris, but only 90% of Trump voters plan to vote Trump again.
I think elections tend to break in the direction of issues that motivate turnout, because that is the thing pollsters have the hardest time capturing. E.g., 2016 "her emails", 2020 Covid, 2022 abortion, 2024 immigration/inflation.
I said the GOP members of Congress secretly despise Trump. Look what happens when there's a secret ballot:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-13/thune-elected-to-be-senate-republican-leader-fox-news-says?srnd=homepage-americas
Imagine if there'd been a secret ballot in the impeachment trial!
I lose all respect for commenters when they mention TDS. Here's why:
"In a text message sent on Jan. 4, 2021, Carlson wrote to an unidentified recipient, "We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can't wait." . . . "I hate him passionately. ... I can't handle much more of this," he added.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tucker-carlson-endorses-donald-trump-2024/
Note, that was BEFORE January 6th. How's that different from my view?
"Publicly, he [Vance] called the Republican businessman an "idiot" and said he was "reprehensible." Privately, he compared him to Adolf Hitler."
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jd-vance-once-compared-trump-hitler-now-they-are-running-mates-2024-07-15/
"In 2021, following the January 6 Capitol riots, Ackman called on Trump to "resign and apologize to all Americans"."
"In 2021, David Sacks said that Donald Trump's behavior in relation to the January 6 Capitol riots disqualified him from running for the presidency again. However, following Trump's statements in support of cryptocurrencies earlier this month, the tech investor seems to have changed his stance on Trump."
"While Stephen Schwarzman had previously criticized Trump's "bigotry, hatred and extremism" following his comments on a Charlottesville white nationalist rally and quit his position of advisor at the time, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of Blackstone has now announced his "vote for change" in Trump's favor."
"His [Musk's] support is a big departure from two years ago, when the two men publicly traded insults."
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-ackman-musk-schwarzman-election-1906837
These guys never get accused of TDS, because they now publicly support Trump despite privately viewing him as a terrible person. So when someone accuses me of TDS, I know they have the following moral code:
It's OK to publicly praise a person that you know is reprehensible, if you think it's to your personal advantage. But if you publicly criticize a reprehensible person, then you are "deranged".
So when you mention TDS, I make a mental note as to what sort of person you are. It means that you are too cowardly to criticize the people in your own tribe that make the exact same criticisms of Trump that I make.
A second problem is that many commenters conflate TDS with leftism. But you guys know perfectly well that many of the Republicans in Congress, Mike Pence, much of Trump's former staff, etc., also view him as reprehensible, although some won't admit it publicly. The National Review used to be scathing in their criticism, before they realized their subscribers love Trump.
It's simply dishonest to suggest that TDS reflects leftist bias, and you know if. I'm not a leftist. If you continue along these lines I'll know that you are a dishonest person.
I plan to have a much stricter policy on commenters. Shape up or ship out. You've been warned.
I'm trying to treat my reply like something of an AA meeting, where I'm going to admit to being a leftist with TDS who is coming to terms with the fact that a majority of Americans have made a policy choice to a greater degree than they've made a personality choice. The probability that some important aspects of this choice will be a disappointment to some of Trump's supporters seems guaranteed, as you and others have been pointing out. My guess is that the several million voters who actually believe that the Trump administration will lower the price of gas and food won't lose faith in him when that doesn't happen. If Trump actually follows through with tariffs that hurt the economy then I need to believe that he'll face pushback from the billionaires and the GOP congress. I'm genuinely curious to see how long Musk can last as the man behind the curtain--a betting market on that could be useful.
At the moment, Democrats are like the corpse of the grandmother strapped to the roof of the Griswold family station wagon. The ongoing debacle with the blowback against Seth Moulton reveals that the far left is still obsessed with fighting culture wars that will not win future elections except in Massachusetts.
They will win San Francisco too.
Even in San Francisco, the woke are starting to lose power.
I wouldn’t use the terms “excusable” and “inexcusable” polling error. I would use the terms “random” and “systematic” polling error. The reported margin of error of an individual poll is about randomness, assuming perfect uniform coverage of the target population. When you average together more polls, that should decrease even more. But the 2-3% shift from the polling average to the actual results must be systematic error - the way the sampling and weighting methods happened to not be perfectly representative of the actual voting population. I wouldn’t say it’s “inexcusable” to miss that. Random error can be eliminated by just using a larger sample. But the systematic error can’t. So in that sense, the systematic error might actually be more excusable than the random error, because there’s no known way to eliminate it.
Yes, I suppose "inexcusable" is a poor choice. But I certainly view it as a bigger problem than a random error, especially because I think this one was predictable.
Systematic error seems impossible to eliminate. The whole concept of polling is built on an assumption, that the people who refuse to answer your poll can be modeled based on the people who do answer your poll. There’s no fundamental reason that should be true. My suspicion is that over time the systematic error is increasing, as more and more people refuse to respond to unsolicited communications.
1) I think we are becoming decidedly less Christian. What we see where there are supposedly increases is that its performative Christianity that has much more to do with tribal affiliation rather than true belief. Few people who claim to be Christians go to church regularly or read the Bible. Even fewer actually behave like Christians.
2) I think pollsters want to be correct but I dont think they have a good way to measure turnout ie who will actually vote. Also, IIRC, I think something similar has been seen in Europe which makes me think this a common issue.
3) I read Boudreaux's piece. His siblings sound like my siblings and cousins and i have a huge family (look up quiverful movement) so there are a lot more of them. What i have found is that almost none of my relatives actually know anyone supposedly talking down to them, it's mostly stuff they see in the right wing media that somebody in California said. Second, they all engage in saying bad stuff about people on the left. I am there to hear it so it's not speculation. I am told that people on the left are grooming children to be gay or worse, that I am not a real American, I'm a Marxist, communist and I want to destroy the country. Pretty much what I have heard Trump say about people on the left. Anyway, they found a way to rationalize their votes. Good for them.
Steve
"Even fewer actually behave like Christians."
Well, I'd say people today adhere much closer to the teachings of Jesus than during the first 1800 years of Christianity.
I probably agree.
But between 15% and 35% (the woke and the woke-adjacent) adhere much less closely to those teachings than did the average American merely 25 years ago.
Oppressor-oppressed ideology may adhere to one portion of Jesus’ teachings, but it grossly violates many others. Most notably but not exclusively the “do unto others…” rule.
No, I don't have to grade on a curve, as I'm merely describing reality, not making a judgment as to whether some people are worse than others.
For example, I don't doubt that the German people of 90 years ago were quite similar to the German people of today, at least in a biological sense. But their behavior was pretty bad. Sure, there are reasons (the Great Depression, etc.), but behavior is behavior.
And Hillary Clinton never referred to deplorables. There has been a huge amount of progressive commentary from 2016 to now that imports only bad reasons for folk to vote for Trump.
If your relatives cannot remember folk doing so personally, that must be because Americans are such polite people. Believe me, here in Oz, I have had decades of progressives being morally arrogant, condescending and dismissive, either to me or in my presence. Often, you do not say anything, because it would sour social interactions and they tend to take disagreement as a personal attack and/or a sign of a lack of moral character.
It is quite noticeable, how as the use of terms of moral abuse in scholarly abstracts has soared, the public standing of higher education has fallen. As the use of such terms in the media has soared, their audiences have shrunk.
One of the most common comments among my (highly educated) immediate friends about progressives? “These people cannot see themselves.”
https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/35/2/themes-in-academic-literature-prejudice-and-social-justice
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great-racial-awakening
My opinion of intellectuals who support Trump (most of whom are faking it) is 100 times lower than my opinion of average people that support Trump. We all know that intellectuals like Tucker and Elon and Vance privately admit I'm right about Trump.
A lot of “pro-Trump” folk are anti-the-other-side. Trump is not their preferred vehicle—not even remotely so—but he is the one on offer.
He is certainly not good for the gravitas of the Office of President. (I understand the emotional power of that, but I do not share it, living in a crowned republic rather than an elective monarchy.)
I get tired of people saying the problem with Trump was just style. He was one of the worst presidents in US history. If you don't see that, don't waste your time trying to convince me that I'm wrong. Style isn't the issue.
Style was/is one of his problems, but hardly the only one.
He also looked different outside the US than in it. For whatever reason, his Administration ran a better foreign policy than his predecessor or his successor.
The question is, given his manifold flaws as a person and a President, why does he have so much support? And in the patterns he does? I have always found that much more interesting than the man himself.
Under Trump, the Republican Party has reverted to what it started as: a protectionist Party relying on working class votes. Yes, that is continuing a trend already underway, but he clearly intensified it.
This post gives much to chew on. And the book/study Trump’s Democrats looks even better now.
https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/a-graveyard-of-bad-election-narratives
I sure hope that Trump helps flatten Middle East terrorists and at least tries for peaceful regime change in Iran.
When Hamas are the good guys...I wash my hands of the left (where I was from birth).
The (not so funny) joke is, Biden/Harris wanted Middle East regime change...in Tel Aviv and not Tehran. How did US foreign policy ever become so cockeyed? So Neville Chamberlain-ish?
On trade and illegal immigration, I say read Michael Pettis, and tht every sovereign nation has an obligation to voting citizens to enforce border laws. The situation of 10 million to 20 million people entering the US on Biden's watch...well, not good, no state capacity, no respect.
As for culture wars...oooof. Not interested.
I do prefer proper English. The plural pronoun for an individual is confusing. Huh?
I worked for years in areas that were very red. I was almost fired for making critical comments about Bush and the military. I had 12 years in the military and others had none but they knew more about the military than I did and Bush could do no wrong. If you live in the bluest areas I bet it is hard to be a conservative but the same is true when you are a liberal in the reddest areas. However, if you live outside those areas you are unlikely to directly hear people saying the stuff claimed in Boudreaux" article in real life.
On the religion issue I think it's very mixed. The Catholic Church dominated for so long and many of its teachings are church derived and not Biblical per se. That said culture matters so much and all through history people have used religion to justify cultural preferences. I think I would agree that now that the Catholic church is not so dominant people have the opportunity to practice a more Biblical Christianity.
Steve
I am old enough to remember the Dixie Chicks controversy. Not a great moment in US history in many ways. And polarisation is polarisation. But incredibly patronising/intolerant progressive commentary is not an artefact of right wing media. It is not even specific to the US.
That folk in real life do not much engage in it is reassuring. But a lot of politics is about symbolism, as a short hand for deeper issues.
Again, we know for a fact that the famous right wing intellectuals who claim to support Trump actually have exactly the same TDS as I have. I presume you are not going to deny that. So what's your point? I'm a bad person because I tell the truth and they lie?
OK, so you are not aware that all these right wing intellectuals have totally trashed Trump in private. Your ignorance is your problem, please don't blame me for not knowing what's going on.
"Builders are building"
Trump has endorsed the NIMBY movement.
'Christianity in an institutional sense seems to be declining in the West. It’s as if the public is saying “We thank the Church for preserving the teachings of Jesus for 1800 years, but we don’t need you any longer. We have made these ideas a part of our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture. You’ve done your job, now please go away.”'
I thought was the lede, and you buried it!
I have a bad habit of burying the lede.
My younger self would have believed this, and loved the formulation. I suspect that the majority of left intellectuals believe as Scott does here.
I no longer do.
My counter-argument:
“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” — David Foster Wallace
Older liberals seem to worship at the altar of “climate change” and the ideal of the pristine Mother Gaia narrative (as Alex Epstein describes so well in his most recent book).
Younger (decidedly Il-liberal) leftists worship woke oppressor-oppressed ideology. Which is how and why they feel virtuous in choosing to “Back Hamas” in the wake of Oct 7th.
So “You’ve done your job, now please go away” - which is what the secular left wants and makes clearer with each passing year as it attempts to do just that - has in less than half a century been demonstrably proven to be either wrong, or else a fabulously bad idea.
And I say this as a Jewish agnostic thisclose to atheist myself.
But it becomes more and more evident that anything akin to proper Judeo-Christian values continue to vanish with each passing generation as belief in religion has plummeted in the last two decades in the West.
As evidenced by the aforementioned woke “Back Hamas” crowd.
Robin Hanson, without using my words, nor even necessarily saying we can or should put the anti-religion genie back in the bottle - has made similar points about our culture for months if not years now.
"But it becomes more and more evident that anything akin to proper Judeo-Christian values continue to vanish with each passing generation"
Tell me more about how many generations back we need to go to find proper values. To the days when gays were put in prison? When women could not vote? When white southerners owned black slaves? When men fought duels? When military aggressors were viewed as heroes? When husbands could legally rape their wife? When was the golden age you speak of?
Yes we have always had an imperfect union, and culture.
The Declaration of Independence talks of a “more perfect” Union, not a perfect one.
I spoke of no golden age. I am not a MAGA-type that seeks to return to an impossible - and even less perfect - past. But I am speaking about values, not specific practices and certainly not a specific time period.
But if you want me to nail down a time, I’d say the balance somewhere between 1995 and 2010 was about right.
Sometime after then, IMO, we have jumped the shark, though I could not and would not put a specific time or incident to that claim; there is no Fonzie wearing his leather jacket on water skis.
Like you, I’d say that as a society (and I’ll limit myself to American society here), we continued to progress up to and even through that time.
But in terms of culture and values, no I think we’ve regressed since.
Well, yes…
…but then the woke in the last 15 years have (perhaps non-systematically?) removed many of these key ideas from our secular philosophy, our social science, our politics, our culture.
The biggest problem is not the woke, it's the Christian nationalists. What would Jesus say we should do with poor refugees that show up at our doorstep?
I won’t try to argue with you which is the “biggest problem”.
But which group is the one that at least tries in their own way to obey the golden rule? You really think it’s the 48% of 18-24 year olds who chose “Back Hamas” (when given 3 choices, not 2) in the aftermath of Oct 7th?
Because that’s what oppressor-oppressed ideology teaches: that whose who are “oppressed” have the right to fight back using *any* means necessary.
The prediction market whale, Theo, seems to have figured out that pollsters should have all been conducting neighbor polls: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/11/prediction-markets-for-the-win.html.
The plumber example is weird.
You are calling it a failure because you won elections and fixed the things you wanted fixed.
And then your party loses “elections”. True political victory is having the other side adopting your policies. Like Clinton with neoliberalism or GOP with gay marriage.
I don’t care which side is in office. I do care about policy and culture.
If this election was Bill Clinton versus Trump I would easily vote Bill Clinton. But it was Trump versus Kamala.
Don't know if this is addressed at me, but if so I think you misinterpreted the post. I agree with you about what counts as success.
Partisan non-response bias: some people will never talk to a pollster, and if that class of people changes their political opinions or voting participation rates over time, pollsters just have to guess that.
There's also shy Trump voters, who will lie to pollsters, and if the rate of liars goes up or down between elections, pollsters also just have to guess that (although Nate Silver, before the election, remarked sarcastically about people talking about "shy Trump voters", so maybe I'm wrong about whether this effect is real)
A prediction market participant commissioned his own polls with a different methodology: "who would your neighbor vote for" https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/how-a-french-trader-predicted-trump-s-victory-by-asking-about-the-neighbour-124110701151_1.html
So even if person A would never talk to a pollster or would lie, their neighbor B might, and B could have a good idea of what A thinks. And probably people would be less likely to lie to a question about their neighbor rather than themselves.
I like your theory about Christianity. A related question would be why did it take so long? My best guess is that it was a result of the enlightenment. The enlightenment offered a non-theistic basis for morality (Kant’s consequentialism, Bentham’s utilitarianism, etc)
This secular ethics boosted some minority Christian sects that agreed with it (think of the growth of abolitionist Protestant groups in the 19th century). And where secular ethics came into conflict with Christian morality, such as the enlightenment promotion of democracy vs the Catholic Church’s rejection of it for most of the 19th century, secular ethics won. Or Christianity adopted the secular point of view.
I would argue that the enlightenment forced Christianity to more closing mirror Jesus’ teachings and brought about a shakeup to Christianity as large as what Luther had done a few centuries before.
This would also explain why contemporary, mainline Protestant churches are seeing such declining membership - they other little more than what secular ethics does. The more emotional, spiritual, mystical Christian churches (evangelical, penticostal, etc) are growing - they offer something much different than secular ethics for those that crave something less rational.
The printing press, which led to the enlightenment, the industrial revolution, the novel, etc., etc.
Thanks for the link to Professor Boudreaux's post. Couldn't find a way to leave a note there so leaving one here instead :)
This stood out in particular:
> My siblings did not arrive at their political views through schooling, reading, or attending seminars. Like our parents, my siblings all simply go about their jobs and lives honestly, diligently, and with good cheer. They love their children, dote on their grandchildren, and they enjoy life.
I assume the forming of unschooled opinions is meant as praiseworthy. Perhaps it is. Though we would agree that when it comes to Geometry, Algebra, Botany, History, Economics (surely!), schooling and reading and attending seminars are a good way to acquire understanding in those subjects. If your political views are formed upon reading the Federalist Papers you may even show good taste.
Going through life with honesty and diligence and good cheer is an unalloyed virtue, and may they be examples for everyone in that regard.
Great post and as a native Michigander I appreciate the Edmund Fitzgerald reference.
Re western Michigan lakeshore communities, I think you’re right about the WFH uptick. I spent the pandemic there (moving from NYC) and my sister still lives there. A lot of new housing (especially vacation-type places that can be used as short-term rentals) has been built.
Thanks, I was born in Lansing.
I've basically had the same experience. Such a great song! I also recall my elementary school teacher drawing diagrams (in chalk, on the chalkboard) illustrating in very simple ship-plus-waves fashion the different theories about what exactly went wrong.
Thanks for pointing to the Boudreaux essay. I agree with you on this. There are lots of Democrats who do not fall into the category that is described. They are school teachers, healthcare professionals and doing many other jobs that help everyday Americans like the Boudreaux siblings. Empathy is not something to be scorned at (my opinion of the essay).
"With a load of iron ore, 26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty..."
How did Gordon Lightfoot write a line like that, much less a whole song?
Here's an interesting take on the election. The polls wouldn't account for these people.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Qult_Headquarters/comments/1gtdh87/so_the_democrats_decided_not_to_steal_the/lxlcd4i/
"My wife worked the election. She helped 100s of people fill out their ballots (non-English speaking, people who didn't know how to vote, etc..). Nearly every single one of them was a bullet ballot for Trump.
This is in a very blue area, on top of it.
If it was happening here, it was most assuredly happening in swing states."
"Every single non-English speaking immigrant she helped, EVERY SINGLE ONE, voted for Trump.
By the time she took her first break of the day just a few hours into it, when she came home she looked me in the eye and said "Trump is going to win". 😭"
Have people been asking you about Chapter 24 on reform of the Federal Reserve?
https://www.project2025.org/policy/
Polls have suffered from increasing partisan non-response bias in the cell phone era. Many polls oversample highly educated and therefore overrepresent Dem/Harris support.
Pollsters correct for this by ensuring that certain demographic buckets are properly represented, including education, gender, and party ID. The problem is that normalizing by demography has the appearance of what Nate Silver incorrectly calls herding; the variance is lower if you control demography and conduct sub-samples within each demographic bucket.
The problem with over-controlling for demography is you miss differential changes in turnout. While polls have underestimated Trump three cycles in a row, they also underestimated Gretchen Whitmer in 2022, probably because they overestimated pro-Trump working class turnout.
Imagine a society with 50% economists for Harris and 50% plumbers for Trump. The best way to survey this society is to take an employment survey, especially if Trump supporters hang up when they find out you are with a media organization.
All of this is alchemy though, because turnout is key. Pollsters need to ask about "intention to vote." Interestingly, even among people who claim to have voted Trump previously, there is *still* subtle non-response bias among actual Trump supporters. You see this in crosstabs where 95% of Biden voters plan to vote Harris, but only 90% of Trump voters plan to vote Trump again.
I think elections tend to break in the direction of issues that motivate turnout, because that is the thing pollsters have the hardest time capturing. E.g., 2016 "her emails", 2020 Covid, 2022 abortion, 2024 immigration/inflation.
Thanks. Very interesting comment. That makes a lot of sense.