I would have posted this as a post if not violative of Rule 1, but Jon Stewart’s The Weekly Show posted a great episode yesterday with a very thoughtful political theorist guest. It focuses on why the disinformation campaigns are responsible for this election.

In short: We have already reached a point where real policy and positions is no match for propaganda. Political power was decisively proven this election to derive from creating and exploiting a false reality, with multiple groups in Trump’s coalition directly and decisively voting against their interests because they simply believed Trump more than reality. In Russia this is called “political technology” and Trump followed that playbook exactly.

Is it even possible to learn that lesson in time? I don’t think so - I think we missed our last chance. Because Trump’s campaign so effectively recognized this, we can also expect them to recognize that media cannot be allowed to be independent and control of the media is how they maintain that false reality. Like Hitler, like Putin, like Xi, expect that Trump’s team - given free rein by his sycophantic House, Senate and Supreme court - will ruthlessly crack down on free press. I’d be shocked if it doesn’t happen in the first few months.

We’re about to enter a very dark time, and by the midterms, it’s likely that even with a “free and fair” election, it will be so tainted by state-sponsored misinformation there is no hope of the public voting out the right.

This is infuriating.

Nothing has changed re: Trump’s status as a regular citizen, and the DOJ’s memo only applies to sitting presidents. The DOJ and Jack Smith were prosecuting criminal conduct. In winding down these cases now, they are voluntarily refusing to prosecute someone they believe is a criminal when their role was to do so on behalf of the people. Likewise, the judge is voluntarily abandoning his duty to expediently seek justice on behalf of the people.

The proper course here would be to continue to treat him as a regular criminal, not delay anything, and on January 20th, decide then if you want to quit.

This preemptive compliance is doing 90% of Trump’s work in creating an authoritarian state where he is above the law. Don’t just roll over, you hacks, do your jobs.

It’s Russia. It was always going to be Russia.

24 hours ago I hoped Trump would be out of my life forever in less than a day. Right now I’m watching the House races in ever-slimmer hopes that Trump won’t have control of the presidency, the Supreme Court, and Congress in January.

The US Enabling Act seems certain to follow if that happens.

They’re voting for Trump because they’ve vaguely heard he’s a good businessman (From who? Who possibly could be the source of this reputation?). It’s just voting based on the general feeling of hearing the words “good businessman” and “better for the economy” alongside Trump.

The logic is more like, “I like leopards, I like to eat, and I like my face. I know who I’m voting for.”

I’m physically ill by this result, but this isn’t an option. You can’t save democracy by discarding democracy.

Trump could do it because he’s a fascist - he wants to discard democracy. A healthy system would have checked him not just then, but barred him from running again. We haven’t had a healthy system in a long time.

I can feel the anxiety the entire way from the bottom of my stomach up to my throat.

I guess we should be happy that they didn’t make it, “I made America great again!”

The tragedy we’ve been living through needs a biiiiiiiiig catharsis to make it worthwhile.

The “the economy was better under Trump” segment of voters is so depressing.

His policies were basically tariffs and random shiny object populist issues. His policies raised prices regressively while creating entire foreign industries that didn’t exist before that now price-anchor US products through his tariffs and trade restrictions, such as soybean. Blew up NAFTA just to replace it with an almost identical arrangement. He alienated our biggest allies and trade partners. He pushed down interest rates even when it wasn’t needed, ignoring the housing and stock bubble it created, because it made him look good.

It always reminds me how effective repeating a lie is - their “vibe” is that he’s some great businessman, and it’s enough to get their vote. They never check the sources for that “fact” (which are all Trump’s own self-aggrandizing statements).

I think the miscommunication is that you’re looking for a game-theory explanation for the best way to vote given a desired outcome, and TDD (forgive the shorthand) is doing a higher-level analysis on large-scale electoral trends and demographics that explain a shortcoming in the democratic campaign strategy.

This is a very insightful comment and helps me understand why TDD seems to be responding with intensity while not hitting the points I (at least think I) am making.

And there is an important proviso: I don’t consider the “game theory explanation for the best way to vote given a desired outcome” to be “the point” so-to-speak of my comment, but just a premise. I do consider that “game theory” voting (a) results in a definite single rational course of action for this election for anyone who favors democracy or left-leaning policies. But I also, it (b) is not be the endgame and just a mitigation until we prioritize ranked choice voting and other structural reform.

I guess I’m confused by this response. So you do think that one should vote for a third-party candidate in this election? Or not?

No no no…It’s well known that it’s good luck to rub the belly of a person from Poland before voting.

I agree with pretty much all of the substance of what you said. I agree, the democratic party, when feeling pressure in a presidential election, always move right instead of left. And that ends up often being the wrong choice. I think I’m just not sure we are reaching the same conclusions - if your post means you feel a non-Harris vote is rational, which maybe I am misunderstanding.

There are two issues if so.

First - and again, I don’t even know if we disagree on this - is that voting for third party candidates and hoping to shoot the moon with democratic support flipping to, e.g., green (which I feel is a joke/spoiler party in this country, not even legitimate, but just for example) just does not work in a FPTP election. Maybe you can infiltrate the Democratic party, and by force or subterfuge wear its skin over your effectively-new-party candidate - which is exactly what Trump did with the GOP. But a separate left party is at such a disadvantage mathematically that it almost assures victory for the competing right-wing party for one more more elections (which is not an option right now). And then, if by some chance it succeeds, the same people who were “democrats” will fill into the new party, immediately diluting whatever novel left-wing power it had.

Second, is that even if it’s illegitimately birthed, the right-wing propaganda alternate-reality pipeline is a hard anchor that makes left candidates legitimately fear that their blue-collar-friendly policies will be twisted by a Fox News into “communism” or never reach their blue-collar audience, leading to those voters to vote irrationally. For example, I have a different take on Biden, which is that Biden won precisely because he was able to backdoor in messaging about left policies while also appealing to the “moderate” right by being an old white guy who “reached across the aisle.” He certainly never had the image of Bernie, a left populist. And the low-info “vibe” voters that likely made a difference wouldn’t dig into policies to see if he was “left” enough anyway.

My take is it’s the wrong target to look at left policy as an “open lane,” or even the “long term” vision of losing a few elections to establish a third party (even without Trump, who changes the election to a referendum on democracy rather than policy). Looking at it that way is just arguing why it’s valuable enough to bet it all at the roulette table. But the house always has an advantage - the game itself needs changing to an actual functional multi-party democracy.

We get there by pressuring and choosing primary candidates not on left policies, but singularly, laser-focused on ranked choice voting, elimination of the electoral college, and on creating a truth-in-news law that will leash right-wing propaganda. Pretty much no candidates are even talking about those items regularly, much less campaigning on it, which means we are choosing the wrong candidates to change anything.

Its often more reflective of their incomplete thinking on a situation than it is reality, and cynically, its a kind of rhetorical slight of hand often used to keep a narrative structured in such a way that only certain outcomes are possible.

Nobody is saying that another outcome isn’t possible, but no other outcome than Trump or Harris in this election is remotely plausible.

So my good faith question to you is, what do you think should be done in this election that plausibly leads to a better outcome than a Harris vote? Open-ended question, no barriers.

That’s me, with a brief stopover on Fark before my brain was fully developed.

If he gets in, he’ll have the full force of the DOJ to protect him from going to prison. This is a state crime, I understand that, but it flips an agency with enormous resources into his own personal defense firm.

They’ll file appeals and briefs that claim his position prevents him from being taken into custody and at least delay any imprisonment while he’s president. Courts, like his sentencing court, will not want to be involved in a “political” question and will kick the can on imprisonment. That will also provide a convenient motivation for Trump to not let go of the presidency after four years.

I guess if we didn’t fight off the beating hard enough, we deserved it?

There are three practical reasons Trump does this:

1. Deflection: Trump doesn’t have an affirmative platform. As a populist strongman, Trump’s platform is situational and entirely based on what his supporters want to hear in any given moment. If health care is in the news, Trump will say his plan is coming in two weeks (it won’t ever come). If immigration is in the news, Trump will say he will build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it (he won’t). But what’s even easier? Focusing on the shortcomings of the opponent’s platform. Any time this works, Trump saves himself an opportunity to be put under the microscope.
2. Deflection: Manipulating the media works. Trump knows that the more ludicrous things he says about Kamala, even if the media then starts to talk about how he’s wrong or fact-check him, the focus is still on the thing he said rather than Kamala’s platform. It’s subtle, but it really does focus the media effectively on whatever he says, and use his frame of that issue as the media’s frame.
3. Filling the echo chambers and other spaces. We’re in our own echo chambers like never before. Trump says these things so that the people in the right-wing echo chambers have a plausible response to Kamala’s policies, or even just need filler for their broadcast/websites/Facebook groups. Ultimately there is only so much media people can consume every day. If Trump has filled all relevant supporter spaces with his own opinions & framing, there is no time or energy left to explore other opinions and framing.

Unrelated: are you really actually frankenstein?

I mean, I don’t like to advertise it…