I was thinking something similar like i thought i would detract from the convo and i think i was going to bring something meta up which sounded off topic. That on the other boyfriend feminist thread.
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Should they?
Also that reminds me: one of my first assignments involved coming up with decisive arguments. I didnât get any direct feedback on it but I think your reply was pretty much saying I had issues. Hereâs where that assignment starts: Eternity Async Tutoring - #31 by Eternity
Should I work on decisive arguments? Tbh I donât think I even know what makes an argument decisive in my head.
To the responses I gave? Sure.
Do you want me to continue with the optional assignment?
Your responses or the topic.
sure
At least from my perspective, I wouldnât care if you interjected when the active 1v1 discussion was happening. I think it was only 1v1 incidentally because me and Neo were the only ones posting regularly back and forth.
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Yeah.
Same speech, literally seconds later.
Here is a 39 second clip where he talks a bit, makes 2 nazi salutes, then puts his hand over his heart and says âmy heart goes out to youâ.
The proximity is very close, which is why people claim the nazi salutes are also related to him saying the phrase right after.
But nazi salutes arenât normally associated with that phrase. The hand-over-the-heart is. Why would he not just skip the salute and do the other gesture by itself?
This is a bit confusing due to the context of why Trump said âstand back and stand byâ in first place.
He was specifically asked in a debate if he would tell them to stand down. The moderator & Biden both asked about it. They asked about white supremacists, militia groups, and Proud Boys got mentioned by name.
Here is a clip:
I donât think they saw themselves as terrorists in a bad way. They saw themselves as loyal patriots willing to do whatever it took to save the country from the evil left wing and ensure Trump won the election.
I am not sure why that changes anything I said before, though. They did stand by. They did then attempt to help Trump secure power after the election.
Yes, when Trumpâs team tried to slate false electors and steal a win in the electoral college. And Trump used the violence and agitation of the mob he stirred up, particularly groups like the Proud Boys, to try to pressure Mike Pence & others to go along with his scheme and give him the election.
How familiar are you with the coup attempt? Unfortunately it seems like a lot of people on the left and the right donât care much and have no idea what actually happened.
I would say so. I think in most of my lifetime the extreme fringes were more sidelined. If people gave subtle nods to them, they were much more subtle. The right wing tried a lot harder to distance itself from nazis and white supremacists 10+ years ago.
That has changed a lot and seems to be continually changing every day. Thereâs an even more recent example, with the leaks of Republican group chats that many on the right (including the vice president) have defended. Not sure if youâre familiar with those:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146
Is that the gesture usually associated with âmy heart goes out to youâ?
Oh it was very close together. I see. Huh. If the usual thing is to put your hand over your heart, then yeah Iâm confused as to the hand raising gestures. Heâs an elite and someone who, probably, has lots of prep for speeches. I never saw the clip and assumed it was something along the lines of random movement. Or it happened in a speech that was more spontaneous.
Yes, though it often would then include a gesture from the heart out to the crowd. That is optional but common.
I think it is pretty easy to imagine what that step would look like if he had done it after putting his hand over his heart in that clip. It doesnât seem very similar to a nazi salute to me.
Oh. In my head I assumed it was either a tweet or a passing comment on the Proud Boys.
Hmm. Iâm not/was not aware of that. Not saying that in a manner where I think your making something up or whatever. I just havenât followed stuff.
The reason I brought that up was because if the Proud Boys are a terrorist group, they really werenât presented that way to the right leaning media I followed a few years ago. Hell, I donât even think any violence they did was shared about them. Not even violence that could be viewed in a âgoodâ manner. They were just kinda explained to me as like a small right wing group of boys who liked America and peacefully did stuff. So I kinda gave Trump the benefit of the doubt here in my head because he was just telling, in my mind, a bunch of right wing young adults to stand by (in a lighter manner like for peaceful gatherings and stuff).
Not too familiar. Iâm vaguely familiar with the left wing idea that it was a coup. I used to follow a lawyer who gave his opinions on it and shared that it was peaceful event. I believe he was near D.C. that day in legal related matters when all that occurred.
Really? I donât really have a good view on this, but the feeling I get is that on the left extreme fringes have always been kinda accepted. Maybe not? I do think this is true:
My main right wing influence was Ben Shapiro. I remember him hating on all this stuff a while back. I wonder if heâs still consistent and how the right feels about him.
No, but damn. This reminded me of something:
I used to make a lot of offensive jokes and stuff in high school. Long story short I eventually stopped because I realized that some of the friends around me werenât joking. I believe it was a joke made about black people being monkeys stuff. I donât know how to put it but it didnât have the usual humor to it and I realized he was serious and asked him about it. At that point I stopped making offensive jokes irl and am wary of those jokes irl, but I never really expanded that idea to online. I kinda thought that people online are not actually racist, but are just making offensive jokes. I donât think so anymore.
What about the current rights opinions/actions are evil (not asking in defensive manner)? Like which specific things are they doing that you consider evil? Like the ICE stuff going on? I havenât kept up much but I assume thereâs some generally bad stuff going on different from something âevilâ.
Also what do you consider pretty far back? I donât think it was too too long ago that big movements(?) happened with racist policies and stuff.
So you wouldnât abstain from voting?
I think they say that and I think maybe many do. I donât know what political opinions you had before exactly, but I think a common thing shared by the right was how actually how the left doesnât want to help. Like wanting to do stuff that harms western civilization and all that. Did you know about those things? Agree/disagree with them before and now changed your mind?
That makes sense.
I think heâs pretty close to Orren Boyle. I forgot a lot about him but I remember a big thing was his huge loan from the government and howâ heâs a crony capitalist. I think that fits Elon well.
In a similar manner Elon is rich and so was Boyle. Boyle wasnât rich because he was amazing. I donât know if they covered it much, but I assumed he was rich because he still produced somewhat. You donât have to be good to be rich.
Is there a politician that isnât a red flag? Idk.
That makes sense. Its hard to know the ways Kamala wouldâve been bad for us. Also, @anonymous105 mentioned how predictions about Trump were mostly wrong for his first term. So I get why people may have voted for Trump (though red flags were showing through the whole process afaik).
I know this conversation went down a different line, but something came to mind:
how long have you followed Elliot for? He used to talk about politics a fair bit. Do you think things are worse because Elliot stopped dealing with politics as much? Would things have been better if he continued?
Do you think youâve been able to do anything on a local level? With your peers, friends, coworkers, classmates (if in school), family, etc. ? Convince them on anything? Did they listen and care?
Are you aware of political philosophy and are confident in applying it to the real world? Iâm not. Iâve just read a bit of Rand. I donât think thatâs sufficient.
It is a complicated issue that I donât want to go into in full detail here. I would recommend researching it independently to verify what I say and learn more, if youâre curious.
But, broadly, one misconception is that the riots on J6 and the mob breaking into the capital building was the coup attempt. I think the right loves to push this idea because it give them cover. But also a lot of people on the left play into this narrative because they just focus on the flashy optics and donât care about the details.
The key thing is that the coup involved 2 primary components.
The less well known component was the false electors. Do you understand how the Electoral College works? If not, look it up or this wonât make much sense. Basically, Trumpâs team had people in several states (where he claimed fraud, but had failed all of his court cases to try to prove fraud) lie on documents and claim to be the duly appointed electoral college representatives. They then went to Washington DC and tried to go in and have their false votes certified. Basically, if accepted, this would mean the EC votes for those states would go to Trump even though Biden won those states.
The false electors were turned away. But the goal was for the false electors to be slated, and Trumpâs team thought they could do this because of the second component, the riot.
Trump had a big rally and whipped people into a frenzy and told them to march on the capital building. The crowd began rioting outside, chanting to hang Mike Pence if he did not âdo the right thingâ, attacking police, and breaking down the door to the capital building. Part of the reason for this was to delay the certification of the vote, which worked.
Trump then tried to pressure Mike Pence to go along with his scheme. This is because one of the VPâs roles is to oversee the electoral college casting their votes, so Pence was well-positioned to take action. Trump basically used the riot and the mob to put pressure on Pence (and congress in general), so that they would slate his false electors and certify a false electoral vote that would give him the presidency.
Mike Pence refused. The vote was delayed successfully by the riot, but ultimately the riot ended and the votes were certified. The electoral college votes were tallied based on the representatives sent by the states, and Trumpâs co-conspirators were not slated. Trumpâs coup failed.
One thing Iâve noticed is that people who mostly consume right wing media are often totally ignorant of a lot of these facts even though they are very widely available. Nothing about the coup is meaningfully disputed, instead republicans mostly just ignore it and try to pivot to just talking about the riot as if it was an isolated event. Though itâs possible I misremembered some detail or nuance since I have not discussed this issue much since 2022 or so. If someone wants to challenge me on details and present a coherent alternative right wing version of events, I can brush up on the facts to engage with that. The last time I looked into it, none of the right wing defenses stood up to real scrutiny.
If he only discussed the riot and not the false electors, thatâs a huge red flag. I think that basically proves he is a partisan hack trying to sell you his agenda.
â
I think it is remarkable how little most people care about this issue. To me, the coup attempt is a red line dealbreaker. I think basically anyone who supports Trump after the attempted coup is either an uninformed fool (at least in terms of their political opinions), or they have anti-liberal fascist inclinations. Itâs disappointing.
You werenât asking me but I thought this question was interesting.
Iâve read Elliotâs writing off and on for a really long time. I think Elliot has interesting ideas, but I donât think he was ever particularly influential in politics. I donât think he changed the minds of any major political figures, or has ever been well-positioned to do so. I donât think he has ever been in a position to dramatically alter the political landscape.
I also donât think having good ideas is enough to even make a small dent in US politics. In fact, having good ideas might be a hindrance for that. You need to be persuasive and have high status and lots of other stuff. Many of the things necessary to be politically powerful are things that Elliot has actively avoided pursuing for most of his career as far as I can tell.
Do you disagree? Why?
Most of the racist actions of the 20th century (in America!) were either:
A) Based in some sort of misguided belief that was in some way grounded in reality. For example, Japanese internment camps were evil, but the US was actually at war with Japan. There was a coherent logic behind them, even though it wasnât a good idea.
B) Cases of conservatives defending an existing racist status quo. Segregation, denying rights to women, etc. I think that stuff is very bad, but is meaningfully different from trying to roll back progress and reinstate evil racist policies that society had seemingly figured out were bad.
Current evil policies have no basis in reality or fact, and are not defending an existing bad status quo.
ICE behavior is especially egregious. But really, the list is quite long. Infringing on womenâs rights & LGBT rights, gutting institutions, demonizing and canceling cheap foreign aid that saves millions of lives, using the state to punish citizens for speech, demanding loyalty oaths from journalists, destroying US relations with other countries, it just goes on and on.
Trumpâs first term was mostly just regular right wingers. This is why his first term was comparatively tame. His generals and attorney general and other key figures refused to do what he wanted.
I think most of Trumpâs administration this time around is comprised of evil sycophants. JD Vance isnât an ignorant fool, he knows how bad Trump is, he literally wrote about how Trump was âAmericaâs Hitlerâ â he just decided he wants to be on Hitlerâs good side.
No. I think the current administration should be opposed. Voting doesnât take much time or effort.
Ben Shapiro accurately described the January 6th insurrection attempt on January 7th. But he has abandoned that lately. I think he wants to stay relevant and the right wing has moved so far that he has to chase after them now. Even so I think he gets a lot of hate for being semi Trump critical, and for being a Jew.
Yeah a lot of people have this realization at some point. It sucks.
Edgy jokes can be funny sometimes, but they are supposed to be funny because they are a shocking subversion of norms and morality. Lots of right wingers tell edgy jokes and think they are in the observational humor âitâs funny because itâs trueâ category instead.
Hereâs a recent example of a Republican US politician, with a congressional seat, denying an alleged Nazi association. There was allegedly an American flag in his office with a modified design with a swastika in the middle. This is the kind of statement that Musk chose not to make.
Hereâs his statement which I think illustrates what a serious denial looks like:
I am aware of an image that appears to depict a vile and deeply inappropriate symbol near an employee in my office. The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms. Upon learning of this matter, I immediately directed a thorough investigation alongside Capitol Police, which remains ongoing. No further comment will be provided until it has been completed.
The next day he issued another statement:
âNew details have emerged from a coordinated investigation into the vile symbol that appeared in my office. Numerous Republican offices have confirmed that they were targeted by an unidentified group or individual who distributed American flags bearing a similar symbol, which were initially indistinguishable from an ordinary American flag to the naked eye. My office was among those that were subjected to this ruse. After a full-scale internal investigation, I am confident that no employee of this office would knowingly display such a despicable image, and the flag in question was taken down immediately upon the discovery of the obscured symbol it bore. As Iâve said previously, I unequivocally condemn hate in any form and continue to collaborate with Capitol Police and the Committee on House Administration to uncover additional details in this investigation.â
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I havent voted in a while, but looking up the issues for what to vote for sounds like itâll take a lot of effort. I donât wanna just vote to oppose the administration, I wanna know why im doing it. I dont want to just pick a side and go for whoever looks worse. Itâs hard for me to even make smart decisions in real life. Politics sounds harder.
Im not too sure about this but i think people arenât that rational at decision making and makes me think they make lots of mistakes deciding on who to vote for.
Like, you have to think about candidate x and y and think about what issues they have a good take on. They have issues like issue a,b,c,d etc. to think about. That and who knows maybe one issue to decide on is what makes the candidate not worth voting for. Thats a lot of difficulties that could go wrong
I think these are reasonable concern to have. There are a few considerations Iâd like to offer, though.
Political decisions impact approximately everyone in the country and often lots more people globally. They will happen whether you participate or not. Unlike various decisions in your own life, such as whether or not to have kids, you canât really pause the political landscape until you feel equipped to engage with it. It will continue to happen without you. And it can have a big impact on your life.
Also consider what you said here:
It logically follows that many mistakes are currently being made already. For your vote to be a very tiny increment towards positive change, you donât need to be super informed or particularly competent at any of the stuff you listed. You would just need to be marginally better than the median voter. I think the median voter is pretty bad. I donât think theyâre making great choices most of the time.
(Edit: arguably, you donât even need to be better than the median voter, you could just be better than the worst voters and still potentially be helping a tiny bit. But that feels more debatable to me, so Iâll set that aside for this post.)
Even if you make tons of mistakes and vote badly 49% of the time, that could still be better than the alternative where you donât vote.
Another thing to consider is what a lot of people call "deal breakersâ or âcore issuesâ â these have some overlap with CFâs concept of decisive criticisms. If you have one or more dealbreaker issues, maybe all you need to do is review candidates and vote based on them failing one of those dealbreakers, since that is a decisive criticism.
Voting this way would require you to invest a lot less effort and time in studying up on every issue. Maybe your chosen candidate sucks in 10,000 ways, but if they are good enough to pass all your dealbreakers then perhaps they were still better than the alternative candidates.
I think that right now this has been made easier than normal. Most dealbreakers Iâve been aware in my life have been stuff like abortion, gun rights, taxes, civil rights, etc. And I would argue that the current administration fails on all of those dealbreakers. But itâs even easier than that, IMO.
There are other dealbreakers that most reasonable people ought to have implicitly, but have not really been meaningfully tested in my lifetime until recently. Stuff like âis not an authoritarian fascistâ and ârespects the basic rule of lawâ are examples of implicit dealbreakers that havenât been tested very much in the USA.
Unfortunately for the world, but fortunately for you in terms of this discussion, these dealbreakers are currently being challenged. So e.g. you could have the dealbreaker of: âMight this candidate plausibly try to remain in power indefinitely, and use the military and/or his anonymous unaccountable secret police to kill or imprison anyone who tries to stop him?â
If you had that dealbreaker, then you could at least reliably vote in the next presidential election. If you had the dealbreaker of âwill this congressperson support an authoritarian takeover of the country and ignore violations of the law?â then maybe you could vote in congressional elections, too, such as during the midterms in 2026.
At the moment, I think it is especially easy to vote solely on basic principled dealbreakers. You could choose to vote in the short term, and then stop voting once the candidates are less clear in their differences and you have no dealbreakers being violated. (Or, more bleakly, no candidates that pass your dealbreakers.)
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How do you know? We donât yet know who the candidates in the next election will be. Maybe the Republicans and Democrats will both run awesome candidates. Or maybe theyâll run about equally terrible candidates.
As to the broader issue about voting, it reminds me of the wisdom of the crowds concept. Basically if lots of people just make intuitive guesses with no research, sometimes the result comes out pretty good even if none of them individually have fully thought things through and lots of them are wrong. More people is better. You donât have to be an expert to contribute.
If you donât want to vote because it takes up time or youâre not in a swing state or you want to abstain to protest both major parties being bad, thatâs fine, I donât care. But if youâre avoiding voting because you think you need to do more research first, I doubt your attitude is correct.
And I agree that voting based on a single important issue you care about is fine. You donât have to consider all the issues to contribute in a wisdom of the crowds style way.
And yeah lots of other voters are dumb so leaving voting to the more overconfident people isnât better.
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Good point!
I should have clarified that my statement was assuming Trumpâs explicit stated plan to run for a third term will actually happen. It might not happen for various reasons, but at this point I think it would be foolish to assume it definitely wonât. But I donât know what will actually happen. A lot can change in 3 years.
Maybe I should have said âyou could have voted in the 2024 electionâ since that already happened and isnât speculative.
This is also a good point that is kind of similar to a thought I had after posting.
One could use the dealbreakers idea to say that there are decisive criticisms of all candidates, and thus they abstain from voting. I am sympathetic to that idea, but I have some issues with it, too.
You could set high standards and then basically all candidates will always fail. I dunno if thatâs practical or very useful though. Since someone is going to be elected, it might be worthwhile to make at least some effort to narrow down specific dealbreakers and see if both candidates are actually comparably bad.
Like say gun rights is your dealbreaker and both candidates are bad on that. But is that really your only dealbreaker? What if one candidate has the policy of âkill half the population at random like Thanos, and also restrict gunsâ and the other candidate just wants to restrict guns?
It might make sense to have tiers of dealbreakers. Once all candidates pass a tier, move on to the less important tiers in order. So then maybe the Thanos-snap agenda is actually at a more important tier than gun rights.
I actually think people do this intuitively a lot already. But given some of the unprecedented things happening right now, it might be good to examine those intuitions and make them more explicit.