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James_Miller comments on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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It's one of the most important and surprising events of our time and much of the discussion is anti-rational, i.e. bad people support Trump so Trump is bad; many are claiming that electing Trump would be catastrophic and discussing potential catastrophes is supposed to be one of the purposes of LW.
I think a question of how Trump interacts with x-risk is a potentially interesting conversation topic. I think an analysis of class that uses Trump as an example is a potentially interesting conversation topic.
But I worry that even here a direct discussion of Trump will be anti-rational / along cultural lines instead of about rational expectations, and I'm not sure what actions we would take differently as a result of having that conversation.
I think Trump's rise is interesting for a number of issues that people here have particular interest in.
How he wins. How his attackers lose. The power of his signature issues in trade and immigration. The potential for a political realignment with the Republican Party, and how that realigns US politics as a whole.
The media has been outraged, they have attacked, and they have failed to bring him down. His poll numbers just go up and up and up. That's interesting, and merits discussion.
*cough*bullshit*cough*
Then name three more important events that have transpired mostly in the last 6 months?
You said (emphasis mine): "one of the most important and surprising events of our time"
I tend to interpret "our time" as a period that is a bit longer than the last six months.
But even if you want to look at recent news, here are three things which I consider to be much more consequential than Donald Trump: (1) the European refugee crisis; (2) the Chinese economic troubles; (3) the Russian direct military intervention in Syria.
May I politely suggest paying less attention to the idiot box?
I'm not sure that argument goes through--if the European refugee crisis is important, then aren't Merkel, Obama, and Clinton important? And if they're important once they're in office, isn't the process by which they enter office important?
That argument involving the idiot box actually looks like this: Mass media optimizes for outrage. Estimating the importance of the topic by the amount of air time it gets is a mistake.
No. Not in the sense that Merkel, etc. are unimportant, but in the sense that a systemic crisis is not reducible to the importance of whoever happens to be in the office at the moment.
If James_Miller wanted to discuss the crisis of the "establishment" center of the mainstream US parties and the rebellions within them, it might have been an interesting topic. But James_Miller want to discuss Donald Trump, personally.
Of course, that's what Donald Trump wants as well X-)
The reason I picked those particular people is because of Clinton's role in the removal of Qaddafi, Obama's role in the continued destabilization of Syria, and Merkel's public pledge to take in refugees (which exacerbated the degree to which it is a European crisis, instead of a Syrian or Africa crisis). "Whoever happens to be in the office at the moment" is a factor in many of these crises.
I have a feeling we're slowly slipping towards the conflict between the "impersonal forces" and "great people" views of history :-)
But I guess the question here is whether you want to discuss people or whether you want to discuss systems. Of course they are related and interdependent, but still. Going back to the source of this subthread, I find thinking about tensions between "rebels" and "nomenklatura" in US political parties to be moderately interesting (especially in the context of how they deal with the need to overpromise during the campaign). I find Donald Trump to be very uninteresting. YMMV, of course.
A synthesis of the two views clearly outperforms either view on its own. There seems to be a difference between, basically, forest fires and earthquakes--both rely on long build-ups (the impersonal forces contribution) and when they happen may be surprising (I couldn't tell you when the housing bubble would burst until it had but I could tell you that it would eventually), but the while there's little control over when an earthquake happens and how the consequences shake out, there's quite a bit of control over when a fire happens and how the consequences shake out (the great people contribution).
Of course -- they are just endpoints and the discussion is about where in the middle the proper balance is struck.
That's an interesting distinction -- can you say more about it?
Even if she did greatly exacerbate it by doing something really stupid?
Yes, even, because there are reasons she did that and those reasons don't have much to do with her personally. It wasn't like she buckled the entire German consensus.
How about the various welfare states around the world finally starting to run out of other people's money. The biggest manifestations of this so far have been the financial crisis in the EU, and the various pension crises in US local governments.
Heck, in my more conspiratorial moods I'm inclined to suspect that these migrant crises are an excuse to import a bunch of convenient scapegoats who can than be blamed for the collapse of popular entitlement programs.
That's not one of the events "that have transpired mostly in the last 6 months" :-)
But yes, I'm watching Japan with great interest :-D
The refugee crisis is very interesting. Not quite "Camp of the Saints", but it's a huge acceleration of frictions I expected to take much longer to play out, and not really hit the fan so soon.
Chinese economic troubles? Recessions are big things, but they happen. Economies go up, they go down.
Russian intervention in Syria. Russian satellite state getting military support. Shrug. Turkey seems much more interesting to me. I suppose the Russians intervention does make it possible for some serious confrontation with the US, but I don't see Putin or Obama having much interest in that.
There are some complicated wrinkles to this one, including the observation that the (current) legitimacy of the Communist Party rule to a great extent depends on it being able to provide visibly and rapidly rising standards of living. And, of course, the question whether China is done with its growth spurt or it's merely a hiccup has major geopolitical consequences a decade or two away.
The first time post-Soviet Russia puts boots on the ground outside of the former USSR. The overarching theme is the global assertiveness of Mr.Putin and Middle East is always an... interesting place. And there is Iran nearby :-/
I agree that Turkey is interesting, too, but nothing "big" happened there recently and were were talking about events.
Um, shooting down a Russian plane.
And... nothing happened.
No, Russia started providing it's bombers with fighter escorts with orders to shoot in self-defense. This is a situation that can easily escalate the next time one of these planes passes through Turkish airspace.
I'm saying this in hindsight, but I disagree about this being surprising. Anti-immigration parties are on the rise all across Europe. The National Front in France are probably to the right of Trump, and Golden Dawn in Greece are genuine neo-nazis. More generally, non-mainstream parties are on the rise, probably powered by the ability to organise grassroots activism via the net. Even the Pirate Parties are winning seats.
Given this, is it really surprising that non-mainstream candidates would happen in the US too, both with Trump and Bernie Sanders?
I'm actually surprised that Sanders isn't the Democratic frontrunner, especially when his only opponent is being investigated for espionage.
Depending no who you listen to, so's the National Front, Putin, anti-Putin, Trump, mainstream Republicans, insufficiently left-wing Democrats, etc.
Ok, so what's your reason for believing Golden Dawn are actually neo-nazi? (Edit: and what do you mean by "actual neo-nazi" anyway?)
Just look at their flag:
https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Meandros_flag.svg/150px-Meandros_flag.svg.png&imgrefurl=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dawn_(political_party)&h=100&w=150&tbnid=CDly4gAodIMPcM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=120&docid=g-53Bx9BWHOy2M&usg=__gcjSL8sDC3eM9-5mVj4vERTCyW8=&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-oezK-bfLAhVpQpoKHY3fANQQ9QEIITAA)
It looks just like a swastika. Sure, Putin and Trump and anyone who is nationalistic can be compared to Nazis, but this cheapens the term 'Nazi' or 'fascist'.
By "actual neo-nazi" I mean a group which has significant use of Nazi imagery and when significant members explicitly endorse Nazism.
Seriously? You're only argument is that their flag looks like a Swastika if you squint just right?
The flag looks almost exactly like a swastica. Also, see hairyfigment's comment and read the wikipedia page. There is plenty more evidence.
They wouldn't have chosen that flag unless they were neo-nazis. If they really wanted that symbol, it could have been against a different color background.
You think so?
Glad you asked, Eugine:
Of course, society normally finds it easy to recognize and ostracize such blatantly dishonest Nazism. It doesn't create any actual confusion - unless people have gone out of their way to weaken society's immune system, eg by deliberately signalling Nazism when the reality is more obscure.
What do you mean by "normally" and can you find any examples of society that actually operated like you describe? Keep in mind the word "Nazi" was already being applied to anything and everything the speaker disliked as early as 1942.
I think it weakens the immune system more when anyone who isn't in favour of completely unrestricted immigration gets called a Nazi. And there's a failure mode where constantly calling people Nazis (or sexists/racists) makes them more favourable towards Nazis (the theory is that on a subconcious level they think 'if I'm a Nazi, maybe Nazism isn't so bad).
Or the more straightforward, if anyone proposing sensible immigration policy gets called a Nazi, eventually people conclude that "Nazi" means someone in favor of sensible immigration policy.
I agree, and I am trying to use words in a precise manner. Trump is not a Nazi. The Golden Dawn are.
LOL. Seriously, do you have any more evidence beyond "their symbol sotra looks like a swastika". How about you try looking for the factions in Greece using Nazi-style tactics, like say arresting their opponents on vague trumped up charges. Hint: it's not Golden Dawn.
Try the entire wikipedia page on them! Take these bits for instance:
Now, I'm not endorsing the other factions, some of whom may well be Stalinists or terrorists. It is possible for there to be extremists on both the left and the right.
I know that 'Nazi' may be overused, but you surely must see that in this specific instance, that is what the Golden Dawn are.
Unless the entire wikipedia page and the sources are all fraudulent...
Well, everyone to the right of Stalin has been described as neo-Nazi by scholars.
I guess there goes your "explicitly endorse Nazism" claim.
Weren't people saying the same thing about the National Front ~20 years ago?
You did mention "using words precisely" at some point. If you still wish to do that, the word "Nazi" is a very specific word -- it refers to things associated with the National Socialist German Workers' Party. I am pretty sure members of Golden Dawn are not members of NSDAP as well.
A better word for you might be "fascist". It is more general -- there certainly were more fascists than nazis -- and describes a particular type of ideology (which originated in Italy, by the way).
The word "neo-nazi", in contemporary parlance, doesn't mean much beyond "I don't like these people".
Note that it's perfectly possible to be racist, xenophobic, nationalist, and anti-semitic and still not be a Nazi or a fascist.
The ideological gate keepers are losing control. The Cologne cover up looks like a pretty significant event for discrediting the Top Men.
On Sanders, all the Democratic Powers that Be lined up behind Clinton, and even Sanders got in lock step to maintain that Clinton's email catastrophe is much ado about nothing. The Democratic Party has spent a couple of decades dealing with Clinton scandals. It's all just a cast right wing conspiracy, don't you know?
Probably the biggest hit Hillary has taken is from younger women, turned off by HIllary "standing by her man" and attacking his sexual abuse accusers, Gloria Steinem belittling Bernie gals as boy crazy for Bernie Bros, and Albright playing the Vote Vagina or Go to Hell card.