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Posted
3 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

You’ve read one article but haven’t read the book and your conclusion is that the author sucks and that its arguments are flawed?  

Hey man, I've got two young kids under 3 who don't sleep and I'm studying for a board exam. Reading an entire article is a big deal for me right now and this is where I come to share my big-brained conclusions. I'm not reading that entire book right now but I'll try to educate myself further about Klein.

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Posted
5 minutes ago, hookem2010 said:

Hey man, I've got two young kids under 3 who don't sleep and I'm studying for a board exam. Reading an entire article is a big deal for me right now and this is where I come to share my big-brained conclusions. I'm not reading that entire book right now but I'll try to educate myself further about Klein.

This is the gist of the book that Sirota and co. find so offensive:

Quote

Ok but we need more housing and infrastructure.
Democrats should be enthusiastic about more housing and swiftly building things like rail and solar and bridges and ports.
Congratulations I just saved you 6 hours of reading

 

Posted
19 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

Fwiw, Klein had on two guests from the left last week to critique his book from that side, one of whom was AOC’s chief of staff.  

Yes, and the critique in a nutshell is that we do need more housing and infrastructure but evil corporations or whatever and why don’t you also  address all the other things that are bad and blah blah blah

Posted
24 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

Derek Thompson was also a guest last week with Tim Miller on the Bulwark and made a good point that the book’s argument are a little nontopical when ‘26 is going to be a referendum on Trump and ‘28 is likely to be as well.

Perhaps that’s true, but I would argue that the Democrats have been hollowed out and cannot win in 2028 without a core message beyond simple rejection of Trumpism. 
Furthermore, I don’t think it’s possible to understand the election(s) of Donald Trump without understanding the nihilism that has been created by the widespread loss of housing affordability and the widespread frustration with elected leaders to accomplish literally anything.  
in other words, it’s impossible to really reject Trumpism without demonstrating an alternative, and the only alternative that is coherent is an alternative where meaningful progress can be made in on a reasonable timeline and everything isn’t just getting worse.

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Yes, and the critique in a nutshell is that we do need more housing and infrastructure but evil corporations or whatever and why don’t you also  address all the other things that are bad and blah blah blah

It sounds like you’re not donating to Zephyr Teachout’s next run for office…

I’m unlikely to read the book (after years of listening/reading both authors, I have a pretty good idea on their arguments), but the part of the conversation I’m more interested in is the mechanics of how you fix it.  

If, for example, you want to shrink public comment periods, is that leading to poor planning decisions and unmet citizen needs?  Klein has brought up repeatedly the story about Newsom taking over a project under emergency powers, Shapiro doing the same with the I-95 bridge, and that exercise of power a useful example of what can be done without the bureaucracy critiqued in the book.  

That said, it’s also the same kind of power we wish to restrain when used in bad faith to deport legal immigrants without due process.  

 

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Posted
13 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I would argue that the Democrats have been hollowed out and cannot win in 2028 without a core message beyond simple rejection of Trumpism

Tim Miller countered with that-basically, isn’t Abundance a jumping off point for a party admitting failure to solve problems and its animating ideas part of the conversation toward a vision to compete with Trumpian nihilism.  

Posted
14 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

David Roberts from Volts says he wishes the Dems would run on a platform of "We can have nice things".  Energy abundance, manufacturing, clean environment, healthcare, economy, housing etc and all we have to do is tax billionaire hoarders. Then go out and do it.  Quickly. 

They’ve tried that. A bunch of middle class morons took the side of the billionaires and now here we are.

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Posted
9 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

If, for example, you want to shrink public comment periods, is that leading to poor planning decisions and unmet citizen needs?

I understand you are asking this in good faith, but a lot of people are not. 
I spent about two decades deeply in the weeds on zoning, for example- if I showed you the process in a place that moves very quickly and a place that moves very slowly, you (as a normal person) would be very hard pressed to tell them apart. But what I can tell you from watching thousands of things go through the public approval process is that it’s built to facilitate wars of attrition between highly organized interests and making good “planning decisions” is the first sacrifice that gets made. 
And approval is only the first stage. That’s when the engines start to crank inside the real killing machine

Posted (edited)
16 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

Tim Miller countered with that-basically, isn’t Abundance a jumping off point for a party admitting failure to solve problems and its animating ideas part of the conversation toward a vision to compete with Trumpian nihilism.  

I heard that. It’s a very silly counter. People need housing and working drawbridges and the walk-up service at the DMV. This isn’t complicated.
Harvey Milk once said that if you could figure out how to clean up all the dog shit in San Francisco you could be elected mayor. He was right then and he’s right now. 

5 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

They’ve tried that. A bunch of middle class morons took the side of the billionaires and now here we are.

The baddest of bad faith arguments: we can’t have more housing in cities because billionaires.

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
25 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

David Roberts from Volts says he wishes the Dems would run on a platform of "We can have nice things".  Energy abundance, manufacturing, clean environment, healthcare, economy, housing etc and all we have to do is tax billionaire hoarders. Then go out and do it.  Quickly. 

Its impressive how stupid people are about things. 

Even if they took all the billionaires money (impossible) it would barely pay for a single year of the debt service on the national debt. For those who forgot how go count a trillion is 1000 billion. 

image.png

Tax receipts have risen from 3T to 4.7T in a decade with the majority of that coming post covid stimulus with the wage increases that went out during that time. The US Government is running on a pretty hefty deficit and on track to spend 6.75T this year. 

Fed balance sheet during same period. 

Screenshot_20250506_090216_Chrome.jpg

The problem is not one wants to face the reality of covid. The fed chart is actually so fucking absurd it's hard to believe its reality and thats the fantasy world everyone lives in. 

4T poofed into existence out of thin air.

Everything is fucked up and broken right now and the only reason everyone isn't feeling it is because of the insane debt apparatus here in the US. One day those debts need to be repaid, you can't continually go further and further into debt as a person, a business or a country. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Ok but we need more housing and infrastructure.
Democrats should be enthusiastic about more housing and swiftly building things like rail and solar and bridges and ports.
Congratulations I just saved you 6 hours of reading. 

Yeah, I haven't read it but my understanding from some reviews is "ok they've got a pamphlet with two pretty good ideas buoyed by too much focus on California-specific shit that they really padded out to try to make it into a real book."

Derek Thompson also guested on Richard Hanania's podcast and can go gargle balls. 

Posted (edited)
21 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Yeah, I haven't read it but my understanding from some reviews is "ok they've got a pamphlet with two pretty good ideas buoyed by too much focus on California-specific shit that they really padded out to try to make it into a real book."

This is a very fair criticism.
They also get a lot of local details about Texas wrong by not drawing more of a distinction between the successful but unaffordable cities like Austin and their affordable but bleak suburbs in the context housing supply, which is crucial  because of how it impacts school funding at the district level and regional transportation and transit problems. As a result they wind up conflating the aggregate impact of suburban development with the impact of very recent zoning reforms. 
 

I don’t think it’s really necessary to read the book, honestly. The broad strokes are the important thing, and it fits on an index card with plenty room to doodle left over. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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Posted
2 hours ago, hookem2010 said:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/abundance-discourse-ezra-klein-trump-musk-democrats-1235310224/

 

Someone had mentioned recently that they didn't have Rolling Stone as the journalistic entity with the greatest integrity and strongest reporting during Trump 2.0, but damn if it ain't true.

I don't know much about this Klein guy, other than hearing some NPR host embarrassingly gush over his ideas during an interview, but it seems like he might suck. Haven't heard the Pod Save interview, but it's disappointing that NPR and Jon Stewart apparently didn't poke any holes in their book's flawed arguments.

David Sirota is a moron and everything in that article is rehashed NIMBY bullshit. 

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Posted
3 hours ago, WBT said:

With R primary voters set to nominate Paxton and the Trump backlash, I'm having a hard time envisioning how the Ds are going to fuck up this senate election.  But I still know they will.  It's going to be the performance of a lifetime.

If only Pop was healthy and 10 years younger...

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Posted
54 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

This is a very fair criticism.
They also get a lot of local details about Texas wrong by not drawing more of a distinction between the successful but unaffordable cities like Austin and their affordable but bleak suburbs in the context housing supply, which is crucial  because of how it impacts school funding at the district level and regional transportation and transit problems. As a result they wind up conflating the aggregate impact of suburban development with the impact of very recent zoning reforms. 
 

Klein and Thompson’s perspective of Texas is definitely one from their coastal bubbles, but I think it’s fair to say that they (and many other YIMBY-ish writers like Jerusalem Demas and Conor Dougherty) conceptually see that Texas has not been weighed down by the “everything bagel” progressivism that California and New York have. Inclusionary zoning requirements for BMR, union labor requirements, “community impact” fees, CEQA, etc - by giving everyone a right to get their say and take their piece, nothing gets built, which is of course a feature. And, in CA at least, this isn’t a LA/SF issue. The suburbs are just as bad. But yes the book is very CA- and NY-centric (to be fair, that was their original intent) but the way they have riled up the tankie left makes me think it was worth raising these issues for broader discussion. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

But what I can tell you from watching thousands of things go through the public approval process is that it’s built to facilitate wars of attrition between highly organized interests and making good “planning decisions” is the first sacrifice that gets made

That's actually something I've been bringing up in PC one on ones, because it's a problem I can wrap my head around.  I don't like the idea that a process gets so complicated that only the well-capitalized can navigate it.  That said, I don't well understand alternatives besides a Power Broker-esque central authority and don't favor moving backwards to that, either. 

1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

Derek Thompson also guested on Richard Hanania's podcast and can go gargle balls. 

Gargle balls BECAUSE he's on Hanania's podcast?  I want the thought leaders on the left to get out and take their ideas to the right's home turf  I doubt there's much overlap between the listening audience there and Real English. 

Posted
25 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

That's actually something I've been bringing up in PC one on ones, because it's a problem I can wrap my head around.  I don't like the idea that a process gets so complicated that only the well-capitalized can navigate it.

This is a little less of a problem than it was before, but from 2014-2022 especially, Austin had a massive leadership vacuum on the council, and they generally expected their appointees on the sovereign commissions like PC to act as surrogates. That’s not how it’s supposed to work and not how good commissions run. A Sovereign commission should make defacto final decisions on about 80-90% of what they see the first time it comes up with the expectation of council approval on consent. And council should use commissions to soak up political heat on controversial issues. 

Instead what was happening was that staff would present a sound recommendation, and if the issue was politically hot the commissions would delay as long as they could, indulge anyone with connections, blame staff for not taking enough input, and then send it to council much watered down. Then council would repeat the delay/indulge/blame dynamic until they ran out of process to conduct, and if the issue hadn’t died on its own (or if it had died of misinformation like the Zilker plan or sabotage like Code Next), they would blame staff for not taking enough community feedback, and either restart the process over again or do something halfass (Northcross) and blame staff for not taking enough community feedback. 
 

What staff learned from all this was that they could not trust council or PC to take the heat for their own policy decisions and adopted a practice of slow rolling projects until either the applicants or opposition collapsed. 
 

It’s slightly better for the land use plans than it was, but the teens were a lost decade in terms of land use and public safety still  very much appears to be operating in that dynamic 

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Posted
22 hours ago, LCHorn said:

That's actually something I've been bringing up in PC one on ones, because it's a problem I can wrap my head around.  I don't like the idea that a process gets so complicated that only the well-capitalized can navigate it.  That said, I don't well understand alternatives besides a Power Broker-esque central authority and don't favor moving backwards to that, either. 

Gargle balls BECAUSE he's on Hanania's podcast?  I want the thought leaders on the left to get out and take their ideas to the right's home turf  I doubt there's much overlap between the listening audience there and Real English. 

That's not Hanania's podcast.

People left of the far-right have to use their fucking brains about this shit. There's some nuance for who someone should engage with, depending on their platform, the topics at hand, and your ability to speak to them and their audience. If you are Pete Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders, you can go on Joe Rogan. But if you're fucking Dr. Sanjay Gupta trying to promote vaccines, not prepared for a hostile debate and thinking you're going to get an honest interview, stay the fuck home. 

But there's one hard-and-fast-rule and that's this: Don't debate nazis. Don't do public appearances with nazis. In fact, just don't talk to nazis. Richard Hanania is a nazi, no matter that he pretends otherwise now. He's never actually disavowed anything he used to say or believe, he just thinks it's more beneficial for him personally and his cause if the nazi shit seems more intelligent and sophisticated. That is his project. When you speak with him to talk politics and sell your political book, you're legitimating him as an acceptable public intellectual figure. You're legitimating his ideas as acceptable public ideas. You're aiding his project.

 

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Posted
54 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

You're legitimating his ideas as acceptable public ideas. You're aiding his project.

See, that's what I disagree with. 

The dawning lesson of the last four years is that Democrats can't get their message out of orbit, absent a transcendent communicator.  The podcast universe needs to be used as the laboratory, and as long as there is a listening audience for someone like Hanania, I think failing to engage with it is ceding that terrain to bad actors. 

Posted
13 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

See, that's what I disagree with. 

The dawning lesson of the last four years is that Democrats can't get their message out of orbit, absent a transcendent communicator.  The podcast universe needs to be used as the laboratory, and as long as there is a listening audience for someone like Hanania, I think failing to engage with it is ceding that terrain to bad actors. 

Mainstream pundits have been engaging with nazis for fucking years now. What has happened to the public perception and status of nazis in that time? 

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Posted
41 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

See, that's what I disagree with. 

The dawning lesson of the last four years is that Democrats can't get their message out of orbit, absent a transcendent communicator.  The podcast universe needs to be used as the laboratory, and as long as there is a listening audience for someone like Hanania, I think failing to engage with it is ceding that terrain to bad actors. 

Democrats often fail to understand that an issue isnt over and accepted by large groups once Dems achieve some goal like a court decision, policy adoption or new law.

 

Posted
38 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Democrats often fail to understand that an issue isnt over and accepted by large groups once Dems achieve some goal like a court decision, policy adoption or new law.

 

The goal is to put certain ideas into the category of "if you utter these in public everyone will hate you, you will have no friends or job prospects, and people might physically assault you." Nazi shit was in that category between 1941 and 2015. Nobody serious thought it was a good idea to treat their ideas seriously, and anyone who thought it was a good idea to treat their ideas seriously was considered unserious and maybe a nazi. 

That worked pretty fucking well for a long time and it only stopped working because respected public figures and institutions began treating them and their ideas seriously. We need to get back to treating these people as beneath contempt. 

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Posted
1 minute ago, wildcat09 said:

The goal is to put certain ideas into the category of "if you utter these in public everyone will hate you, you will have no friends or job prospects, and people might physically assault you." Nazi shit was in that category between 1941 and 2015. Nobody serious thought it was a good idea to treat their ideas seriously, and anyone who thought it was a good idea to treat their ideas seriously was considered unserious and maybe a nazi. 

That worked pretty fucking well for a long time and it only stopped working because respected public figures and institutions began treating them and their ideas seriously. We need to get back to treating these people as beneath contempt. 

This.  On DT, right now, we have a Trump apologist claiming that our pushback on the Trump admin's idea to sell our national parks is "hysterical."

No.  See, the only sane answer to any admin, ever, proposing to sell off our National Parks, is "that is a horrific idea and among the worst things you could ever think or propose."  Instead, it gets the litany of excuses of "he probably won't do it," which will soon turn into "so what if he does?  Some of them probably need to be sold off!" to "why are you against paying down our debt by selling assets?!?!"

In other words, we've taken horrific ideas that should get the reaction of an immediate punch in the face, and instead we allow this:

Clown-Applying-Makeup.jpg

 

No.  The only proper response to nazi shit is to grant it no voice, no legitimacy, and to punch anyone espousing it in the fucking face.

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Posted
59 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Nazi shit was in that category between 1941 and 2015. Nobody serious thought it was a good idea to treat their ideas seriously, and anyone who thought it was a good idea to treat their ideas seriously was considered unserious and maybe a nazi.

Except that’s flat out untrue.  

If you want to maintain a rigid definition built around nazism and make the case that WW2 forced ignorant white nativists to hide their natural prejudice in mixed company, I get it.  It didn’t go away, though, and instead evolved and fractured into Christian nationalism, white supremacy, anti-democratic movements, etc., it’s all rooted in the same place.  

And I’d far rather the left’s standard bearers confront that ignorance head on than imagine they’ll disappear if we just wish hard enough.  Two Trump victories should be all the proof you need.  

 

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Posted
14 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

Except that’s flat out untrue.  

If you want to maintain a rigid definition built around nazism and make the case that WW2 forced ignorant white nativists to hide their natural prejudice in mixed company, I get it.  It didn’t go away, though, and instead evolved and fractured into Christian nationalism, white supremacy, anti-democratic movements, etc., it’s all rooted in the same place.  

And I’d far rather the left’s standard bearers confront that ignorance head on than imagine they’ll disappear if we just wish hard enough.  Two Trump victories should be all the proof you need.  

 

It will never go away. However, we were much better off when they were too scared to attempt to put their deepest desires into political effect. 

I don't care whether we persuade these people to not be white supremacists or christian nationalists. That kind of persuasion can only be effected on a very small scale, at the personal level. We can't deradicalize a massive cult. But we can scare them back into their mom's basements if we start treating these people like they're all deranged skinhead morons again. 

Nazis want people to see them as an intellectual force. We should want people to see them as Dewey Crowe.

 

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Posted (edited)
23 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

We can't deradicalize a massive cult. But we can scare them back into their mom's basements if we start treating these people like they're all deranged skinhead morons again. 

This.  We can never change their minds - they're too stupid.  We can never change their hearts - they're too cruel.

What we CAN change is their willingness to visit their shittiness on the rest of us.  Beat them back into their hole with the time-honored weapons of fear and shame.  They speak fear fluently.  Speak it back to them.  Giant pieces of shit don't respond to this:

200w.gif?cid=6c09b95272skkgcreqyasj6ojd5

They only respond to this -- both literally and metaphorically:

POINT_BLANK2.jpg

They are using the force of the state (the entity that has a monopoly on legal violence -- you know, that gun barrel posted above) against the rest of us, as we speak.  Speak their language back to them, it's the only thing they understand.  Shame them.  Shun them.  Crush them. Ruin them.  Punish them.  Make it miserable for them to even exist.  Pummel them until they run back to their hidey holes, where we need to isolate them forever.

Edited by Brisketexan
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Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

Richard Hanania is a nazi, no matter that he pretends otherwise now. He's never actually disavowed anything he used to say or believe, he just thinks it's more beneficial for him personally and his cause if the nazi shit seems more intelligent and sophisticated. That is his project. When you speak with him to talk politics and sell your political book, you're legitimating him as an acceptable public intellectual figure. You're legitimating his ideas as acceptable public ideas. You're aiding his project.

 

The last line is nonsense. He’s a goofy weirdo, and compares Donald Trump with Robert Mugabe. The left needs to learn how to cultivate attention and not being so goddamn precious about things. Certainly there’s a wrong way to do it, but it’s pure fantasy to think that Hanania and co are influential because the left legitimized them. He doesn’t need your help, and if you avoid him you’re just conceding the argument.  
 

Did James Baldwin “platform” William Buckley? 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
The last line is nonsense. He’s a goofy weirdo, and compares Donald Trump with Robert Mugabe. The left needs to learn how to cultivate attention and not being so goddamn precious about things. Certainly there’s a wrong way to do it, but it’s pure fantasy to think that Hanania and co are influential because the left legitimized them. He doesn’t need your help, and if you avoid him you’re just conceding the argument.  
 
Did James Baldwin “platform” William Buckley? 

They are legitimized because we haven’t made a concerted effort to destroy them, shame them, and ruin every element of their lives, professional and personal.
Which is what you should do with Nazi pieces of shit.
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Posted
1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

It will never go away. However, we were much better off when they were too scared to attempt to put their deepest desires into political effect. 

I don't care whether we persuade these people to not be white supremacists or christian nationalists. That kind of persuasion can only be effected on a very small scale, at the personal level. We can't deradicalize a massive cult. But we can scare them back into their mom's basements if we start treating these people like they're all deranged skinhead morons again. 

Nazis want people to see them as an intellectual force. We should want people to see them as Dewey Crowe.

 

They need to feel stupid and ashamed again.

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Posted
1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:


They are legitimized because we haven’t made a concerted effort to destroy them, shame them, and ruin every element of their lives, professional and personal.
Which is what you should do with Nazi pieces of shit.

Maybe we are splitting hairs here, but I don’t think it’s possible to shame anything by valiantly running away like Brave Sur Robin. Democrat politicians and the party need to relearn aggressive confrontation and stop relying on outdoor protests and dirty hippies chanting hey-ho.

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Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

They need to feel stupid and ashamed again.

Oh I’m sure refusing to go on their podcasts makes them feel terrible. I’m sure all the monarchist wingnuts  and conspiracy dingbats feel very ashamed that Democrat politicians won’t platform them. 

Edited by Bozo_Casanova
Posted
5 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Maybe we are splitting hairs here, but I don’t think it’s possible to shame anything by valiantly running away like Brave Sur Robin. Democrat politicians and the party need to relearn aggressive confrontation and stop relying on outdoor protests and dirty hippies chanting hey-ho.

Responding "suck my dick" to a Richard Hanania invite isn't running away.

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Posted

Hanania is an interesting one.  I sense he really enjoyed the feeling of tittering at transgressive quips in the salon with all the other “intellectuals” of the alt right but he got turned off when it all broke contain and became Joe Chud grunting racisms. His ethos seems to be more aesthetics than anything.  I tend to agree that these people need to do significantly more before anyone respectable helps them launder their image. 

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Posted
On 5/6/2025 at 11:01 AM, We’reTexas said:

David Sirota is a moron and everything in that article is rehashed NIMBY bullshit. 

I was struck by this passage:

Quote

In many of those areas, there’s no actual scarcity of structures that could be living space. It’s just that corporations and oligarchs hoarding wealth and land aren’t being compelled by zoning and tax laws to open up the space for housing. 

For instance, vacancy rates have hit a 30-year high in commercial buildings, many of which could be converted to housing. In New York City between 2008 and 2014, “30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation.”

Meanwhile, there’s also the recurring problem of monopoly. A 2022 Johns Hopkins study spotlighted how more and more local markets are dominated by fewer and fewer housing construction giants. These home-building behemoths are making higher profits while choosing to build fewer homes than they once did, knowing that there aren’t as many competitors to fill the gap. In all, the study estimated that corporate concentration has resulted in $106 billion less housing volume every year. 

“We have some large, dominant players who do not want to produce as much as they can because they know it will bring down the prices of their other units — so, they intentionally avoid building, or they build over a staggered time period,” said Johns Hopkins economist Luis Quintero. “That’s why you see new neighborhoods with only a couple of houses over the span of months or even years. They deliberately keep the housing they’re producing scarce.”

Which one is it, do we have plenty of potential housing that just needs to be unlocked via zoning or do we have an artificial shortage of housing because monopoly builders aren’t building enough? Maybe it’s locale dependent but these paragraphs aren’t teasing that out and instead presenting two directly conflicting arguments. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Beat them back into their hole with the time-honored weapons of fear and shame.

See, I disagree with this, too.  Those are the old tools and they don't work anymore.  Shame only works on the socially/economically aspirant and, as you've forcefully written many times, the cruelty for the right is an end unto itself. 

You don't go into the right's podcast and media ecosystem looking to convert the hardliners, you go because they are popular with the groups that have abandoned the left and center and you have to meet them where they are.  Most listeners of Rogan and Theo Vonn* aren't there for the wackadoo politics, they are there to laugh or because they like the guest or the sense of community listening conveys.  Otherwise, you're just feeding more into the delusion that lefties are alternatively snobs or pussies. 

 

*I'm not putting Hanania in this category.  I have no idea who listens to him since the most popular media on the right appear proudly anti-intellectual. 

 

Posted
2 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

See, I disagree with this, too.  Those are the old tools and they don't work anymore.  Shame only works on the socially/economically aspirant and, as you've forcefully written many times, the cruelty for the right is an end unto itself. 

You don't go into the right's podcast and media ecosystem looking to convert the hardliners, you go because they are popular with the groups that have abandoned the left and center and you have to meet them where they are.  Most listeners of Rogan and Theo Vonn* aren't there for the wackadoo politics, they are there to laugh or because they like the guest or the sense of community listening conveys.  Otherwise, you're just feeding more into the delusion that lefties are alternatively snobs or pussies. 

 

*I'm not putting Hanania in this category.  I have no idea who listens to him since the most popular media on the right appear proudly anti-intellectual. 

 

Oh, you missed my other tool: fear.  See how the Trump admin is going after all of its enemies?

Yeah....the opposition needs to do that.  It needs to do it tenfold.  It needs to go after these people everywhere, where they live, in their pocketbook, go after their families.  Not a moment's peace, not a moment's rest, basking in any victory.  Only fear of "what's next?  And how will it hurt my livelihood and peace of mind?"  

Trumpism is about relentless assaults on your enemy to cause fear.  It works.  So do it more, and do it better.  Those are the tools of the era.  Use them.

Posted
1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh, you missed my other tool: fear.

Unfortunately, that one requires power first.  That said, I do think bringing justice that errors on the side of retribution needs to be part of the '26 platform.  There's so much corruption going on in this admin that isn't contemplated by current laws and I'd not let that stand in the way enforcing anything popular. 

Posted
41 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Hanania is an interesting one.  I sense he really enjoyed the feeling of tittering at transgressive quips in the salon with all the other “intellectuals” of the alt right but he got turned off when it all broke contain and became Joe Chud grunting racisms. His ethos seems to be more aesthetics than anything.  I tend to agree that these people need to do significantly more before anyone respectable helps them launder their image. 

Fuck, at the very least he could explain what's actually different about what he believes today. The grand sum of all he's done to express contrition is basically to say "I'm not that extreme anymore." 

Posted
1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

Fuck, at the very least he could explain what's actually different about what he believes today. The grand sum of all he's done to express contrition is basically to say "I'm not that extreme anymore." 

He should have someone say "I don't believe you.  The kind of person who holds beliefs that inhuman, that loathsome, is EXACLTY the kind of person who would lie about it today.  Give us one good reason that we should think that yesterday's loathsome nazi is today's contrite good guy....instead of what nazis always have been and always are: fucking liars and deceivers." 

  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I was struck by this passage:

Which one is it, do we have plenty of potential housing that just needs to be unlocked via zoning or do we have an artificial shortage of housing because monopoly builders aren’t building enough? Maybe it’s locale dependent but these paragraphs aren’t teasing that out and instead presenting two directly conflicting arguments. 

It is an incoherent, bad faith attempt to deny the reality of the housing supply crisis. They call it an affordability crisis, and they point to all kinds bogeymen. Everything in those paragraphs is wrong.  It is prohibitively expensive to convert commercial to residential. Vacancy rates are consistent with historical lows (SF and Vancouver have vacancy taxes - they have done fuck all of nothing). Are there conspiracies to slow play construction? Idk, but the economics are complicated and restrictive regulations almost certainly play a bigger role. Do these guys offer a single viable policy approach? Of course not, never. 

Posted
59 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Pete continues to present the correct message IMO. 

 

Pete his going to Iowa next week for a Veteran Town Hall. It's becoming clear he's running in 2028. 

 

Speaking of Pete, what did Trump just say? Did his mask fall off and he loves Pete?



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