All the super-competent Dems had to do was control the border, not succumb to BLM theories of criminal justice, not dump a tsunami of cash on the economy, and just ease back a tiny, tiny bit on the trans insanity ("gender-confirming medicine" for children, boys in girls sports, requiring that people believe men can get pregnant as a condition of maintaining status). But the super competent, super smart Dems are prone to their own stupid moral panics and silly manias, and so we are now again threatened by a Trump presidency.
Dems are the party of the giving people free shit. Dems control most of the media, most of the best parts of the culture, most of the corporations, most of the bureaucracy. Even most of the churches. They should never, ever lose. It should never be close. Dems should be able to win even with strict voting rules like 100%, in-person ID check.
But reality-distorting ideologies to which the Dem coalition requires fealty do not allow common sense, and the average Dem is too afraid to speak up. Since Dem ideology is everywhere, where will you go for a job if you get canceled for wrong-think? You gonna work at that pillow company, or sell freeze-dried food to scared boomers? Didn't think so. You'll be quiet about the insanity, and hope you are lucky enough or rich enough to avoid worst effects of Dem policies on crime, education, the border, and trans stuff. Put a Harris-Walz sign in the yard of your $2 million home and hope for the best.
Anyway, Harris will win, just barely. Then the real fight begins, between sensible Dems and the crazy Dems.
You've uncovered our secrets! Yes, we Dems are all infected with the woke mind-virus, and we will not rest until all of you learn to love kidnapping and exsanguinating babies like we do!
FOX News--and its smaller imitators--are the only force standing between us and the successful infection with the mind-virus of the Faithful Few like yourself. But FOX *will* succeed--or die trying--in its mission to elect the Anointed One, He, who may be an avowed pussy grabber, but whose *inner* purity is beyond reproach.
Maybe the Dems shouldn't pass laws like this one in California, a law that has now been copied in multiple other blue states:
From the SB 107 Bill Summary: "The bill would authorize a court to take temporary jurisdiction because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care."
(a) A court of this state has temporary emergency jurisdiction if the child is present in this state and the child has been abandoned or it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child, or a sibling or parent of the child, is subjected to, or threatened with, mistreatment or abuse, or because the child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care, as defined by Section 16010.2 of the Welfare and Institutions Code [definition quoted below].
(b) If there is no previous child custody determination that is entitled to be enforced under this part and a child custody proceeding has not been commenced in a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive, a child custody determination made under this section remains in effect until an order is obtained from a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive. If a child custody proceeding has not been or is not commenced in a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive, a child custody determination made under this section becomes a final determination, if it so provides and this state becomes the home state of the child.
(b)(3)(A) “Gender affirming health care” means medically necessary health care that respects the gender identity of the patient, as experienced and defined by the patient, and may include, but is not limited to, the following:
(i) Interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics.
(ii) Interventions to align the patient's appearance or physical body with the patient's gender identity.
(iii) Interventions to alleviate symptoms of clinically significant distress resulting from gender dysphoria, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition.
(B) “Gender affirming mental health care” means mental health care or behavioral health care that respects the gender identity of the patient, as experienced and defined by the patient, and may include, but is not limited to, developmentally appropriate exploration and integration of identity, reduction of distress, adaptive coping, and strategies to increase family acceptance.
This law iimpacts every parent in every blue state that passes it (most blue states so far).
I am a lifelong Democrat (age 68), but I WILL NOT VOTE FOR ANY DEMOCRAT EVER AGAIN as long as they continue to support this ongoing crime against humanity, which ALL Democrats in office currently do.
I was curious on this one, what is the "crime against humanity" specifically? And can you point me to this law being used to actually do something in a report by a reputable source?
The crime against humanity is mutilating and sterilizing children on the basis of pure medical quackery.
As for the law, called the "trans state santuary law", it's entire stated purpose is to allow kids to run away from other states and get "gender affirming care" in California (and now many other blue states). But the way it's written, it also applies to kids in state, and also does not require parental approval.
Here a report on the lasw from a California PBS station, which I assume you would consider a reliable source:
Pages 18-30 are worth skimming through at least. Health providers aren't trying to take away and "mutilate" your kids. They recognize that surgery (and even HRT) is a significant thing, and don't recommend it (surgery) unless they've already been in the process of transitioning for several years. No one goes from questioning to HRT---let alone surgery---instantly (many trans people never get surgery). They recommend involving parents where possible, and recommend that adolescents receive ongoing therapy from a psychiatrist throughout treatment when possible.
The extremely low gender conforming surgery numbers for trans kids reflect this. The numbers I could find reasonably quickly were from 2019, but the studies are from 2023 and 2024, so these things may just move slowly. But it's to the point the vast majority (97%) of adolescent breast reduction surgeries are for cis teens with gynecomastia, not for trans teens. Note that that number is 80% for adults, so it doesn't exactly seem like trans teens are being pushed to "mutilate themselves".
No one is taking away kids from parents who have concerns/are worried because their child is questioning or has just announced that they are trans. Refusing to allow a kid to explore their gender/the possibility of transitioning to the point where it's significantly impacting their mental health/could possibly lead to their suicide does seem like abuse that warrants the state taking custody.
WPATH has been totally discredited. They are an activist organization, not a medical organization. They commissioned their own evidence review from Johns Hopkins, and then suppressed it when the results agreed with all previous evidence reviews (see, e.g., the Cass Report from the UK) that there was no evidence that pediatric sex trait modification had any benefit; google "WPATH files" for the details.
And every year, at least 1000 underage girls in the US have their healthy breasts sliced off solely because of "gender dysphoria". This is pure raw homophobia: they are "transing away the gay".
The suicide canard is also a myth, see the Cass report. There are also more recent studies of it from Finland and Germany that have also concluded that pharmaceutical conversion therpy ("gender affirming care") does not lower suicide risk in kids with gender dysphoria.
I'm not making claims about WPATH's credibility, I'm saying that the way you claim trans healthcare providers are acting and their actual recommendations* are totally out of sync.
As far as the credibility/Cass report goes, I honestly don't know enough about it to respond. The gist of the report seemed to be "we don't have enough good evidence about the long term outcomes for blockers and hrt in adolescents, so we should stop prescribing it altogether". This seems like a really bad way to facilitate gathering evidence about the long term outcomes for blockers and hrt. I'm not a doctor though, so maybe what I just said is silly.
Your numbers are just wrong for top surgery: "In 2021, Reuters estimated that 282 teenagers underwent top surgery that was paid for by insurance." [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/health/transgender-minors-surgeries.html] This isn't even desegregating cis vs trans top surgeries. From the 2019 numbers above, it seems very likely that the vast majority of these are cis men getting treatment for gynecomastia...
@ "Transing away the gay". Clinics that provide gender affirming care are generally very accepting of gay people as they are. In fact, many of these clinics are "gay first", in that they started off as health centers for gay people and have expanded to provide trans services over time. Many doctors providing gender affirming healthcare are cis and gay.
@suicide: I think we've spoken past each other here. It's been a bit since I looked, but my understanding is that the primary indicator of suicide attempt/suicide likelihood in trans youth was whether or not they continued to be accepted by their family and friends after questioning or coming out. I wasn't saying that the care itself lowers suicide risk---I honestly don't know, I haven't looked closely. I was saying that it's known that it can be quite harmful to shut down exploration, ignore stated gender preferences, and deny one's choice to transition.
*For transparency's sake, the guidelines I linked above were apparently changed before being released (I didn't know this before linking them, obviously). This is what the NYT article linked in this post is talking about. I'm not sure the rationale given for taking out the age recommendations makes a ton of sense, but maybe there's context I don't know about. I think the recommendations are still that surgeries should be out of the question until multiple years into transitioning in almost all cases, so in that sense they do seem a little redundant.
Every parent should care that the State is equating NOT mutilating your kid with child abuse, and will take your child from you if you do not go along with your kid being mutilated. This is not Fox spin, this is what the actual text of tha actual law actually says, which you can see for yourself by reading it.
I'm a parent in a blue state, and no, I don't care about this, and am not worried about this. I agree with the other poster that this seems like a giant mountain out of a silly little molehill.
My job is to elect people with good decision making to places of leadership so they can figure this complex stuff out. And if need be, I'll elect someone else if they really screw it up.
I remember under Bush he passed something to please his supporter, but had no chance of surviving the courts. It took me a year to realize that loads of political shit is base pleasing, has no chance of staying a law, etc.
I remember getting mad at x bill being passed which seemed terrible. I spent 10 hours understanding it and realized it was actually a good attempt to solve a complex problem AND it in no way triggered what I thought it did. I didn't have the understanding of the situation to graph when it was triggered, by whom, etc. This shit is complex a lot of the time.
The USA would be better if people paid less attention to politics and let the people we pay to figure this out figure it out. Then we review their work and boot them or keep them based on our preferences.
Here is what I want to spend my previous anger points on:
1. Is someone advocating to overthrow democracy.
2. Is someone advocating economic policies so bad it could cause a great depression.
Well, it seems the Democrats' refusal to engage on this ("it's a remote issue" is all Kamala would say about it to Fox's Bret Baier) did not do them any good.
We are all in our bubbles. Some folks like it there, some try to get out, some have no idea they are in a bubble, and some think only other people in are bubbles.
I'm not in Noah's bubble, and probably not in yours either. So the foolishness on the left is glaringly obvious to me in ways that only the foolishness of the right (or whatever bubble you're not in) is obvious to you or Noah.
Of course I am not saying that everything on the left is foolish. I'm old enough to have evolved leftward in a number of areas, which suggests to me that I sometimes get out of my bubble.
You haven't got the news about the decrease in crime since 2020? The following information was supplied by Bing copilot .
Crime in the United States has generally decreased since 2020. According to FBI-compiled statistics, the overall violent crime rate, including murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, has declined from 2020 to 2023³. Specifically, the violent crime rate dropped by 22.5 points, and the murder rate declined by 0.9 points³.
You're missing the point entirely. First of all, violent crime was never the issue. It doesn't even make sense to talk about a nationwide rate because it is so concentrated in a few sections of major cities. For most Americans it's basically not an issue. But that's the statistics people always show to claim crime is dropping.
What people are talking about are things like rampant shoplifting, car break ins, and seeing people shooting heroin on the sidewalk in full view of the public. And even then, it's not really the rate that's the issue. It's the response. One video of a shoplifter stealing with impunity is more infuriating than 10 videos of police arresting one. A news article about one violent criminal striking again after being let off on probation by a progressive DA is more infuriating than an article about 100 being locked up for 20 years. People are going to be a lot more forgiving if they see their public servants are fighting hard to protect them rather than basically legalizing crime.
It's a classic case of Jeff Bezos's observation:
"When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. It’s usually not that the data is being miscollected. It’s usually that you’re not measuring the right thing."
Fox news and others are effective at making you afraid. Some people commit crimes, society works to stop them and prosecute them, take a breath and let it go. Going into the nitty gritty of reasons of why it happens and how to best prevent it is 10 pages long and depends on the microcosm of that area.
Why does this have anything to do with who you vote for? Are you electing store security officers?
> Going into the nitty gritty of reasons of why it happens and how to best prevent it is 10 pages long and depends on the microcosm of that area.
Typical lefty deflection "it's too complicated to explain, but I'm right. Move along, prole, leave this to the over educated kakistocrats to write 10 page dissertations on and ignore your common sense."
> Why does this have anything to do with who you vote for?
A question so dumb it's shocking to hear it asked.
If someone breaks the law our criminal system tries to make a case and prosecute them. I am not a cop, judge, prosecutor, or involved in that. My friends who are seem to be working really hard to do a good job. I assume most people everwhere try to do good work :).
For the deeper reasons why people are shoplifting in a specific city/region it gets detailed in terms of is this an organized gang, what is going on with housing, what is going on with the job market, what is going on with drugs, what is going on with police deployment, etc etc.
Most of the people that get excited about shoplifting saw clips on Fox News or Tik Tok and think its some type of mass shoplifting epidemic.
Independent here. Not really worried about it. Nor do any of my friends seem to even mention it as a worry in Walmart ecosystem.
I think this is a very astute observation, Fallingknife, and it illustrates the problem all of us have with how information shapes political views. The infuriating negative example has far more impact and gut meaning than the actual norm.
The Springfield, Ohio episode was a great illustration. The cat-eating meme was inflated through information sources to a supposed norm, and only when the actual eaten cat was discovered uneaten in the basement did the next stage emerge--the geese. And the goose passion extended until it was demonstrated that the goose was the victim of automobile violence by non-Haitians. Then at last the politician pushing the story shifted to declaring that the information was valid although entirely untrue.
What's important is what's infuriating, and there will always be infuriating stuff that can be presented as the norm, no matter how isolated or, as in the Springfield case, how non-existent. Bezos's observation is on target as long as you understand that "right" means "effective."
It's the Willie Horton effect. There will always be Willie Hortons. Occasionally, a law and order state will free one, but that's not meaningful because it confirms no stereotype. The ones that count are those that occur in liberal states, in which case Willie Horton will be the anecdote that illuminates the outrageousness of liberalism. It worked in 1988 and it works now--and, lo and behold: now it works in a Red state context with a dead goose instead of a dead person!
There is no defense against those who exploit this type of tactic so long as a majority of the audience falls for it. Bezos is right: the anecdote is more effective than the relevant data, and the data you need are the anecdotes.
I know crime is down. But there was a lot of suffering between early 2020 and now that did not have to happen. This suffering was the easily foreseeable result of policies taken by cowardly and/or highly ideologically captured officials, responding to "protests" (really, mobs) and media commentary, to deemphasize law enforcement, not prosecute crimes, etc.
I was curious Mike, what type of success rate should they have? How do you measure that personally and think about?
We've got a problem in this country with persistent racism in the justice system, especially in policing. After those problems again became public it seems like a lot of well meaning people tried some stuff to figure out how to improve it. Some of it was really badly done, some of it is well done, some of it is in the middle.
Did you want them to try to fix this problem?
What would you consider a win from those attempts? What was a miss?
One thing I am super frustrated about is police training. I think there could be MASSIVE improvement there. And I think we should pull some duties from the police so they can focus on reducing crime and solving crimes. It seems like we expect them to handle everything when it would be much better if they were able to focus on what they do best.
Appreciate the thoughtful reply. My really boring answer is that an adversarial system of justice with full transparency and an aggressive media are essential to improving the quality of criminal justice. We need to spend a lot more on police training, better and safer prisons, etc. Our standard of success should be, I'm sorry this is really boring, that all criminals regardless of color or anything else have the same chance and severity of punishment. A quantitative standard would be that our rates of violent crime and victimization should be a lot closer to Europe's.
BLM was right to say there were and are problems. They are wrong in thinking that defunding the police or significantly reducing prison populations, or getting rid of cash bail were solutions.
At the end of the day, civilization is for people who follow the law, and in administering the law we should take care that rights of the accused are protected. Authorities who put the interests of criminals and antisocial people above the interests of the average, law-abiding person are doing a grave injustice to the people they are hired to protect.
Police training is a good area where there is likely bipartisan support. Rethinking some police duties also makes sense, provided we are all willing to pay more in taxes, because it seems to me there are some really unwell people on the streets who are a danger to themselves and others, but for whom prison is not the right answer. They should be forced into treatment, which means lots of beds and doctors and social workers.
Although I think getting rid of cash bail is interesting and might be a better system. Might not be implemented in version 1.0 correctly, but there is a problem when being rich mens very different treatment by the courts. I look forward to seeing what they learn and what version 2.0 looks like as they adjust in the coming years. I don't think the goal was letting violent offenders out but rather non-violent offenders out while awaiting a trial.
I'd love to see public defenders and prosecutors expanded as their caseloads are insane from what I've read.
Agreed on forced treatment, we need more support for that and to help them end addiction or if they are mentally unwell be cared for where they can't hurt local businesses or cause violence. What a crazy complex situation though and def would require higher taxes and possibly a new government agency? I don't even want to think about that, I've got enough on my plate and hope someone competent can figure that out. Or maybe states can get block grants to try different systems and see what is the best approach.
To be fair, I don't think that's the major reason that the Dems aren't miles ahead. Incumbents everywhere have been struggling with the economic fallout from COVID-era stimuli and sanctions on Russia.
Thank you for this piece. It really distills what Trumpism is ultimately about, putting aside all the policy nuances.
I grew up in Pakistan, where the military has ruled (directly or indirectly) for decades, assisted by a corrupt political elite and bureaucracy. The hallmark of this system was incompetence, since all promotions were determined by political connections and loyalty.
One particularly ludicrous example was the acting chairman of the Pakistan cricket team, who was also a serving general in charge of launching a counteroffensive towards Delhi if the Indian army crossed the border!
I am extremely concerned about the deficit and don't see any political will to address it. I also cherish the meritocracy that allowed me to immigrate here, and strongly believe in asylum reform and securing the border. Energy independence (and hence continued fracking for oil/gas) are critical given the current geopolitical realities, and in that same vein some element of protectionism is necessary for the US to maintain viable critical industries.
I am not confident that a political party that is now essentially a cult can deliver this.
For all it's flaws, the Democratic party is not a monolith. Hopefully the next decade will bring two functional political parties back into the equation.
It might take a financial event for the debt to really matter in politics. I am hopeful that is not the case, but it seems like it might requite an emergency before something is done to rethink how that is managed. I agree with you, I wish it would be approached more pro-actively but it is hard to see either political party swallowing a pain pill and enacting policies that are guaranteed to lose them the next round of elections.
Agreed. The political incentives to keep on printing money and kick the can down the road are too great.
It’s ironic - I would assume 100% of Noah’s readers (and probably a solid majority of all Americans) agree that some balance of tax increases and spending cuts are the place to start. The political center needs to be resurrected for this to become reality.
Ya, I would like to see a blended approach. I think the problem is a lot of people say they want that, but when you say "well we are cutting x" they go noooooooo!
Polarization degrades the competence of both sides, not just the right. The right is more immediately affected because of the migration of the educated meritocrat types to the other coalition, but putting all those people in the same party creates a dysfunctional hothouse atmosphere.
It's Cass Sunstein's "law of group polarization": Without anyone else there to push back, the educated extremists -- think downwardly mobile humanities grads and elite overproduction -- get very loud and succeed in stifling dissent. This is how we got "racism is the real pandemic" and all the rest of it.
Given the choice, I know which of the two sides is more functional and which I want in charge. But what I really want is to have two normal parties again.
Or maybe the influx of smart people with center-right views who are driven away by Trumpism will help moderate the Democrats. Hard to say. In any case, I think the fight against polarization mostly doesn't happen in the voting booth (instead, find good institutions to support, and push bad institutions to become better), and to the extent it does, the obvious thing to do is to vote for the less radical party to disincentivize further polarization.
What exactly is supposed to be the problem with weaving indigenous knowledge into scientific knowledge? It’s obviously true that indigenous knowledge hasn’t gone through the sort of checking process that western science goes through, but it’s also clear that locals (and especially those who have gone through generations of transmission) have some knowledge that hasn’t had a chance to go through peer review yet. Alchemy was a real source of knowledge that gradually transformed into chemistry, and people who think we should reject that kind of traditional knowledge rather than try to mine it are just throwing away information.
I think it's a) annoyance at the sort of people who are arguing for it, but more importantly b) distrust of those people. If indigenous knowledge is a rich source of data and hypotheses, that's great; if it's a code word for politically motivated weakening of evidentiary standards, not so great. And if you have very little trust in the people arguing for it, you'll naturally suspect it's the latter.
Thank you--I came here to ask Noah to pick on some other "woke" idea.
I guess, if you haven't read up a bit (I expect better of you Noah!), you might think this refers to "rain dances" or something, not allowing periodic controlled burns (a common indigenous practice, US park officials avoided all burns for decades in some areas and that's contributing to fire issues now) or cycling hunting grounds/seasons (not doing that now is contributing of overfishing among other things)
Also the classic case of an anthropologist thinking “hmmm, I wonder why their folk medicine involves making this complicated preparation from that strange plant?”
Probably not as much as we'd hope. I've read that people have set up companies to "mine" indigenous knowledge for promising drug candidates, but they haven't been successful at finding enough drugs that are good enough to make a profit.
The comparison of alchemy is so strange. You can say "alchemy eventually became chemistry", but - now we have chemistry! Embracing "indigenous knowledge" would be like rejecting chemistry and going back to alchemy.
I think what Kenny means is that we should take an evidence-based approach and test indigenous knowledge to see if there are practices, etc that are effective. I don't think he means that we should embrace it all without skepticism/believe it all works as-advertised without testing.
Leaf is exactly right. Embracing indigenous knowledge is not like rejecting chemistry and going back to alchemy. It’s like embracing chemistry, while also noticing that a bunch of old alchemy texts no one has looked at in 300 years mention a weird mineral from a particular island no one has been looking at for a while and realizing that this mineral actually has some unusual properties, and turns out to be an interesting compound of some sort.
I guess I can agree with that, but I think at this point you're straying into sanewashing territory. It's not what the "indigenous knowledge" people actually believe, they are fully signed up to the notion that scientific rigour is western imperialism or something.
I suspect the average workaday scientist with a positive opinion of indigenous knowledge believes something like what Kenny is saying. They're not very loud about it, though.
The more activist types are more ideological, self-consciously decolonial, honestly unscientific though, yeah. I wish these people would pipe down because they're giving a lot of good ideas a bad name.
We also recently built a superpowered "sort by controversial" machine to elevate the craziest and most provocative people in everything and called it social media. That may not have been such a good idea.
There surely are some people like that, and I don’t want to endorse what they are saying. But you don’t have to endorse that to accept that there is indigenous knowledge and that it is worth studying and bringing in to modern science. I assume that the editors of Nature aren’t saying that scientific rigor is western imperialism.
A better example might be homeopathy, which is still a widely accepted part of western medicine, even though its evidence base (once adjusted for measurement error) is zero and it conflicts with basic scientific principles. Plenty of examples in psychotherapy too.
But these are not woke, so nobody cares. Rather than trying to fix (or even just direct attention to) real problems, right-wing media creates moral panics about fake problems, because that's what helps them obtain power and money.
(This is the same political coalition, mind you, who made the teaching of creationism their main goal twenty years ago. Hypocrisy levels just off the chart.)
Indigenous knowledge isn’t knowledge. At most, it’s a tool for generating a hypothesis or two that can actually be tested scientifically. It becomes knowledge after being tested.
Indigenous people do test things, just as athletes and musicians and filmmakers and dancers and so on test the things they do, even though they’re not scientists and don’t do controlled statistical studies. All these groups have knowledge of the specific things they work with, and if scientists want to know stuff about it, they should probably work with the people who have knowledge already, even if it’s not yet systematic in the way we want to get it.
The way I see it, if this knowledge is valuable, it’s a low hanging fruit for scientists/researchers to steal or adopt it. I suspect that most of it is horseshit and that’s why it’s not part of mainstream.
I think it can depend on if the indigenous knowledge directly contradicts the scientific knowledge. For example, the scientific view is that the first indigenous populations in North America arrived here some 30,000 years ago (yeah, the experts argue about it, but 30K years ago is a common estimate). Then 16K years ago another migration group arrived. But some of the indigenous groups themselves assert that they have always been here. It can make a difference if you're arguing about the morality of settlements, land ownership, conquests, etc.
Because progressives view the value and acceptance of indigenous knowledge as preceding its rigorous evaluation. It’s “too good to check”. It’s the difference between the principle of researching plants for medicinal properties and just touting them as “natural cures’ based upon ancient wisdom
That’s exactly my point. Those who promote indigenous knowledge claim that the wisdom is coming from nature. They are the ones putting words in Nature’s mouth
Oh I see, you are misinterpreting me as talking about the mystical spirit force “nature” when I am referring to the British science journal Nature. This is all about an editorial in Nature, which said indigenous knowledge should be woven into modern science.
Only some people who promote indigenous knowledge believe in this mystical woo spirit. Many others just believe in the fact that traditions that have interacted with a local ecosystem for thousands of years have sometimes picked up some important facts about it, even if they haven’t don’t formal statistical testing or anything to understand *how* they picked up those facts.
Yes, I misinterpreted that. But a Nature editorial to that effect pretends that this would be something new. Ancient knowledge has always had the status of rumor, a source of hypotheses. But the current promotion treats it as privileged. Look at astronomy. Tradition contains all sorts of information about the movement of celestial bodies much of it accurate but also a lot of nonsense. It’s like looking at a piece of unrefined iron ore and calling it indigenous steel
What makes you think that the left cranks aren't going to destroy competence any more than the right cranks? All that lefty nonsense you described sure sounds like the death of competence to me (and don't get me started on dumbing down schools in the name of equality). Why should I be more afraid of right wing cranks? If the left wing cranks can also run the day to day, why can't they as well?
You're ok with the Federalist Society, because they apparently are competent cranks, but on the other side. Are you sure this isn't just status quo bias, that the cranks in charge now can be tolerated, but if the other side's cranks get in, we're in for it? Or maybe classism? The educated upper class cranks of the Federalist Society and lefty academics and "scientists" are tolerable, but not those dirty working class cranks?
The moderates on the left were fired a long time ago. When scientific journals are calling for the recognition of primitive witchcraft as modern science, the moderates have already been fired. When school boards are removing advanced classes from the curriculum in accordance with leftist religious dogma, the moderates have already been fired. When sports leagues are allowing transgender men to compete in the womens division, the moderates have already been fired. Of course Biden's administration isn't rebelling against him. They aren't the moderates like Noah who oppose this stuff.
I don't want an anti-vaxer in there either, but it's just another flavor of the same thing, not a fundamental change.
Seems like you are focusing on weird fringe stories that get amplified by the news looking for eyeballs and not the day to day reality of how things are being governed.
What are your news sources for checking in on this type of stuff?
These things were all over the news. They were in Noah's article. You know they happened and I'm not going to waste my time when you could easily type it into Google.
Why won't you Democrats ever actually argue your point? Do you support these things? If so, argue for them. If not, say it, and don't lie to me that it didn't happen. You are such dishonest evasive people always lying about what you do. At least when Republicans want to so things I don't like they aren't sneaky liars about it. They don't play word games. They just come right out and say "abortion is wrong and we're going to ban it." I can respect that.
SF did some silly stuff with math I remember... hadn't heard of anyone else doing something stupid with math. Last I heard the people who did silly stuff all lost their re-election in SF and now that is no longer a problem. Did you follow that and see how it went down? I could be wrong but last time I checked that was the case I thought...
Just weird fringe stuff that the media uses to capture eyeballs and make a mountain out of a molehill.
Everywhere I go Democrats lower standards and destroy education for our best and brightest students. It's not a molehill. The school boards of our largest cities are not "fringe" stuff.
Lowering school standards in the name of equity is a real problem (though already receding, and in general I think it's structurally hard for the education system to end up doing something that well-off parents hate) but the other two are just silly. Talking about including indigenous science is an affectation with zero actual impact, like land acknowledgements. (Also a bit ironic, because you know who actually tried to include indigenous science? Creationists.) Putting transwomen and biological women in the same sport category is probably unfair to the latter, but then athletes are already a highly privileged class of people, and elite sports in general aren't particularly beneficial to society, so who cares? Comparing that with e.g. people trying to undermine the vaccination regime is just silly.
Rich parents benefit from dumbing down of public schools. They can send their kids to private schools and if public school is terrible, they no longer have to worry about competition from smart middle class and poor people.
The trans sports thing isn't really a huge issue on its own it's just that anybody who is dumb enough to think that's a good idea is so insane that I would never want them in charge of anything.
I generally agree with much or your analysis. But your disrespect of indigenous knowledge as useful to enhancing western science is wrong. I live in Alaska and was Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for eight years. We relied on both western science and indigenous knowledge in making resource management decisions. Our work with local people gave our biologists important insights and conversely gave local people greater trust and acceptance of western science. Frank Rue
Isn't indigenous knowledge just knowledge that hasn't been fully tested with a scientific system? Science isn't western, it is a merely a process to determine truth through repeated experimentation with good data collection and processes.
There is no quibble from me. Trump is an awful human. However, you wrote a column I would expect from a partisan.
I did not vote for Trump for all the reasons above. Throughout this campaign season, I have spent much of my commenting, mainly at The Dispatch, explaining why people vote for Trump.
While you might be loath to list all the illiberal things Democrats have done, you can be sure they are there. I heard Jamie Raskin complaining about gerrymandering, and I almost spit my coffee out. It was as if Democrat Legislatures never gerrymandered districts in their favor.
This question has never been addressed, but it is the most illiberal thing I can think of since it is the dirtiest or political dirty trick of my lifetime. The Steele Dossier and the pain inflicted on the country.
Democrats believe Trump's supporters are garbage. Joe Biden just said the quiet part out loud. MAGA is an awful movement run by terrible people who are sycophants of one of the most despicable politicians in my lifetime. I grant you that.
Yet what did the Democrat Party do? It spent money elevating the worst of the MAGA candidates in complete abrogation of their civic responsibility. The Democrat creed is to win at any cost. Hillary’s planting of the dossier into a duped FBI caused several years of trauma and angst for no other reason other than to corruptly win. When Harry Reid was interviewed about Romney’s taxes, he admitted he lied about Romney paying taxes; his excuse was, “It worked, didn’t it.”
Spare the moralizing. Many Democrats have refused to certify the presidential election through the years. The win-at-any-cost mentality doesn’t leave me with any sense that the Democrat Party holds the high ground in ethical behavior. This latest BS about how undemocratic the Electoral College is is solely due to their advantage in Illinois, CA, and NY. If you want to make stealing an election harder, the EC is the best way to do it. A national vote? Much easier. Want to keep money out of politics? A national election would cause money to be spent.
The caterwauling over DC and Puerto Rico not being states has only one reason for Democrats to push it. More Democrat Senators. The current GOP is a hopeless pile of steaming shit. I am politically homeless. But please, unless you just want to be ridiculed as another partisan hack, let us not pretend that Democrats are angels and bare no responsibility for our current crappy politics.
Here is a rule I like to live by. If someone has a golden toilet, investigate if it is due to them being a egomaniac or if they are a very funny dude. Trump is an egomaniac and generally bad human being. Why would I want him as president when he lacks any smidgen of honor or respect for other people?
hah agreed. I just read a book on Mussolini as he seems like a buffon, but I can't tell if in the moment they also thought he was funny. Anyone know history well enough to know if he was mocked for his buffoonery?
This Presidential election is clearly the worst binary choice between candidates in my lifetime. You should have at least mentioned that Kamala has alienated nearly all her former staff, who won’t speak out because that is obviously career suicide.
Trump is a narcissistic dirtbag man child motivated by glory and vengeance. Harris is a soulless, unimpressive, insecure husk of ambition.
Either will hand power to deranged ideologues who are immune to evidence and desire to punish their out-groups. Unfortunately, both parties have created incentive structures that elevate the spineless conformists and sideline or vilify anyone with independence or principles.
One candidate attempted a self-coup the other hasn't and gives no indication that she would ever attempt such a thing. On that basis alone it's the easiest binary choice in my lifetime between presidential candidates.
Learned a new word today. Every word about Trump and Trumpism is true.
I’ve noticed that when liberals criticize the excesses of the progressive movement in institutions, they try to steer clear of the trans issue. Most of the criticism has come from centrists (like Andrew Sullivan and Bill Maher) and the right. I don’t know if it’s to avoid fracturing of the Democratic coalition before an important election or whether they genuinely believe in the more contentious parts of the trans agenda/movement.
I've seen commentators note that both the centrists and the progressives have been very careful this time around to not mention the disagreements on the matters they disagree on. As one joker said, Democrats in shocking array! But also, despite the strong opinions on trans issues, it doesn't seem to come up as something the voters prioritize. So just burying that internal disagreement is the electoral optimum.
Or they think it's an extremely minor issue that affects less than a percent of a percent of the US population and exaggerating its importance will only lead to electing Republicans who will then go on to strip healthcare from 10% of the US population etc. etc.
(That said, most of the critics who actually say anything worth reading are on the moderate left, I think. E.g. Jesse Singal.)
I agree that Jesse Singal is worth reading but he's hardly the only one.
If it is a minor issue then maybe the Biden administration should have stayed out of it. Also, every year is not an election year so there's definitely a lack of moral courage on the even the center left pundits on this issue, people with whom I agree on many issues.
Overall, I think it’s because they are sensitive to protecting their positions of privilege and power. Some are completely spineless conformists. Most are simply credulous and hypersensitive to the social/professional consequences of questioning the orthodoxies of their in-group.
Great post but I have to push back on one point: cartelization by the Federalist Society has definitely eroded competence in the federal judiciary. You see it not just in outright incompetence at the district level (see, e.g., Aileen Cannon), but also otherwise competent appellate judges who are appointed at an early age, for ideological reasons, before they can accumulate any trial experience whatsoever.
I think the etymology of “kakistocracy” is Greek. But “kak” is also the Afrikaans word (both noun and verb) referring to feces or the act of defecation. So for some of us, it is particularly edifying to see “kakistocracy” applied appropriately.
"There are actually ways for conservatives to rebuild their influence in American institutions without destroying those institutions."
Noah, in this vein, I'm curious what you think of Chris Rufo et al's work with the Univ of S. Florida. Is this an example of conservatives "rebuilding influence", or do you think Rufo is destroying instead?
I ask because a great many conservatives view Rufo's system as the only chance we have: gain political power and use that political power to reconquer the educational institutions that have been seized by radicals over the last 60 years.
When hiring boards of major universities are 60:1 or 100:1 against us ideologically (and view their ideology as a theology), we really don't have a fair shot otherwise.
Christopher Rufo is a case study in how, along the work of Bob Altemeyer, there needs to be a totalitarian personality type like RWA.
Brian, Rufo is basically a mirror image of Mao. And you know, Rufo has to telegraph his every move on social media like expository monologue from a movie villain.
It's extremely weird to be against wokeism and then employ the same authoritarian tactics to fight back against it. I can't predict the future but I think if he pushes back against the excesses of the progressive movement, he'll be very successful. If his goal is to further the conservative agenda from 20+ years ago and roll back gay marriage and abortion rights, he's going to get his ass kicked.
“For example, conservatives have come to distrust almost all mainstream media sources.”
Gens X, Y, and Z don’t trust mainstream media, either. And they’re not what I’d call conservative. Trump probably wishes he’d followed through on going after TikTok given the anti-Trump memes flourishing among young, first-time voters (e.g. pushback against anti-women’s health and reproductive freedom. Not a good look for either political party. In fact, I don’t see much of a conservative trend in the long-term given the direction of demographics in the U.S. Since 2020, deaths of Baby Boomers and the number of addition voting-age-qualifying youth represents a shift of 52 million votes. Pretty consequential for the long term. Society has changed more than usual, I think, such that it can’t be “assumed” Gen Z will become more conservative as they age. For example, many may resist having children. So, there might be a lot more “childless cat ladies” for Banana Republicans to anger.
My problem is with the term “trust”. I have moderate confidence that the New York Times provides me with adequate information about what is going on in the world but less confidence that the sum of what they deliver is an attempt at an objective perspective
All the super-competent Dems had to do was control the border, not succumb to BLM theories of criminal justice, not dump a tsunami of cash on the economy, and just ease back a tiny, tiny bit on the trans insanity ("gender-confirming medicine" for children, boys in girls sports, requiring that people believe men can get pregnant as a condition of maintaining status). But the super competent, super smart Dems are prone to their own stupid moral panics and silly manias, and so we are now again threatened by a Trump presidency.
Dems are the party of the giving people free shit. Dems control most of the media, most of the best parts of the culture, most of the corporations, most of the bureaucracy. Even most of the churches. They should never, ever lose. It should never be close. Dems should be able to win even with strict voting rules like 100%, in-person ID check.
But reality-distorting ideologies to which the Dem coalition requires fealty do not allow common sense, and the average Dem is too afraid to speak up. Since Dem ideology is everywhere, where will you go for a job if you get canceled for wrong-think? You gonna work at that pillow company, or sell freeze-dried food to scared boomers? Didn't think so. You'll be quiet about the insanity, and hope you are lucky enough or rich enough to avoid worst effects of Dem policies on crime, education, the border, and trans stuff. Put a Harris-Walz sign in the yard of your $2 million home and hope for the best.
Anyway, Harris will win, just barely. Then the real fight begins, between sensible Dems and the crazy Dems.
You've uncovered our secrets! Yes, we Dems are all infected with the woke mind-virus, and we will not rest until all of you learn to love kidnapping and exsanguinating babies like we do!
FOX News--and its smaller imitators--are the only force standing between us and the successful infection with the mind-virus of the Faithful Few like yourself. But FOX *will* succeed--or die trying--in its mission to elect the Anointed One, He, who may be an avowed pussy grabber, but whose *inner* purity is beyond reproach.
Maybe the Dems shouldn't pass laws like this one in California, a law that has now been copied in multiple other blue states:
From the SB 107 Bill Summary: "The bill would authorize a court to take temporary jurisdiction because a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care."
https://pluralpolicy.com/app/legislative-tracking/bill/details/state-ca-20212022-sb107/1035849
Family Code, Section 3424, as amended by SB 107:
(a) A court of this state has temporary emergency jurisdiction if the child is present in this state and the child has been abandoned or it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child, or a sibling or parent of the child, is subjected to, or threatened with, mistreatment or abuse, or because the child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming health care or gender-affirming mental health care, as defined by Section 16010.2 of the Welfare and Institutions Code [definition quoted below].
(b) If there is no previous child custody determination that is entitled to be enforced under this part and a child custody proceeding has not been commenced in a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive, a child custody determination made under this section remains in effect until an order is obtained from a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive. If a child custody proceeding has not been or is not commenced in a court of a state having jurisdiction under Sections 3421 to 3423, inclusive, a child custody determination made under this section becomes a final determination, if it so provides and this state becomes the home state of the child.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=FAM§ionNum=3424.
Welfare and Institutions Code, Section 16010.2:
(b)(3)(A) “Gender affirming health care” means medically necessary health care that respects the gender identity of the patient, as experienced and defined by the patient, and may include, but is not limited to, the following:
(i) Interventions to suppress the development of endogenous secondary sex characteristics.
(ii) Interventions to align the patient's appearance or physical body with the patient's gender identity.
(iii) Interventions to alleviate symptoms of clinically significant distress resulting from gender dysphoria, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition.
(B) “Gender affirming mental health care” means mental health care or behavioral health care that respects the gender identity of the patient, as experienced and defined by the patient, and may include, but is not limited to, developmentally appropriate exploration and integration of identity, reduction of distress, adaptive coping, and strategies to increase family acceptance.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=16010.2&lawCode=WIC
Does this decide your vote in a presidential election? Weird culture war stuff that impact a few dozen people at most?
This law iimpacts every parent in every blue state that passes it (most blue states so far).
I am a lifelong Democrat (age 68), but I WILL NOT VOTE FOR ANY DEMOCRAT EVER AGAIN as long as they continue to support this ongoing crime against humanity, which ALL Democrats in office currently do.
I was curious on this one, what is the "crime against humanity" specifically? And can you point me to this law being used to actually do something in a report by a reputable source?
The crime against humanity is mutilating and sterilizing children on the basis of pure medical quackery.
As for the law, called the "trans state santuary law", it's entire stated purpose is to allow kids to run away from other states and get "gender affirming care" in California (and now many other blue states). But the way it's written, it also applies to kids in state, and also does not require parental approval.
Here a report on the lasw from a California PBS station, which I assume you would consider a reliable source:
https://www.kqed.org/news/11929233/california-becomes-first-sanctuary-state-for-transgender-youth-seeking-medical-care
The divergence between the stated treatment guidelines and the fearmongering for trans adolescents is wild. https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/SOC%20v8/SOC8%20Chapters%20for%20Public%20Comment/SOC8%20Chapter%20Draft%20for%20Public%20Comment%20-%20Adolescent.pdf?_t=1638731433
Pages 18-30 are worth skimming through at least. Health providers aren't trying to take away and "mutilate" your kids. They recognize that surgery (and even HRT) is a significant thing, and don't recommend it (surgery) unless they've already been in the process of transitioning for several years. No one goes from questioning to HRT---let alone surgery---instantly (many trans people never get surgery). They recommend involving parents where possible, and recommend that adolescents receive ongoing therapy from a psychiatrist throughout treatment when possible.
The extremely low gender conforming surgery numbers for trans kids reflect this. The numbers I could find reasonably quickly were from 2019, but the studies are from 2023 and 2024, so these things may just move slowly. But it's to the point the vast majority (97%) of adolescent breast reduction surgeries are for cis teens with gynecomastia, not for trans teens. Note that that number is 80% for adults, so it doesn't exactly seem like trans teens are being pushed to "mutilate themselves".
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2820437
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2808707
No one is taking away kids from parents who have concerns/are worried because their child is questioning or has just announced that they are trans. Refusing to allow a kid to explore their gender/the possibility of transitioning to the point where it's significantly impacting their mental health/could possibly lead to their suicide does seem like abuse that warrants the state taking custody.
WPATH has been totally discredited. They are an activist organization, not a medical organization. They commissioned their own evidence review from Johns Hopkins, and then suppressed it when the results agreed with all previous evidence reviews (see, e.g., the Cass Report from the UK) that there was no evidence that pediatric sex trait modification had any benefit; google "WPATH files" for the details.
And every year, at least 1000 underage girls in the US have their healthy breasts sliced off solely because of "gender dysphoria". This is pure raw homophobia: they are "transing away the gay".
The suicide canard is also a myth, see the Cass report. There are also more recent studies of it from Finland and Germany that have also concluded that pharmaceutical conversion therpy ("gender affirming care") does not lower suicide risk in kids with gender dysphoria.
I'm not making claims about WPATH's credibility, I'm saying that the way you claim trans healthcare providers are acting and their actual recommendations* are totally out of sync.
As far as the credibility/Cass report goes, I honestly don't know enough about it to respond. The gist of the report seemed to be "we don't have enough good evidence about the long term outcomes for blockers and hrt in adolescents, so we should stop prescribing it altogether". This seems like a really bad way to facilitate gathering evidence about the long term outcomes for blockers and hrt. I'm not a doctor though, so maybe what I just said is silly.
Your numbers are just wrong for top surgery: "In 2021, Reuters estimated that 282 teenagers underwent top surgery that was paid for by insurance." [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/health/transgender-minors-surgeries.html] This isn't even desegregating cis vs trans top surgeries. From the 2019 numbers above, it seems very likely that the vast majority of these are cis men getting treatment for gynecomastia...
@ "Transing away the gay". Clinics that provide gender affirming care are generally very accepting of gay people as they are. In fact, many of these clinics are "gay first", in that they started off as health centers for gay people and have expanded to provide trans services over time. Many doctors providing gender affirming healthcare are cis and gay.
@suicide: I think we've spoken past each other here. It's been a bit since I looked, but my understanding is that the primary indicator of suicide attempt/suicide likelihood in trans youth was whether or not they continued to be accepted by their family and friends after questioning or coming out. I wasn't saying that the care itself lowers suicide risk---I honestly don't know, I haven't looked closely. I was saying that it's known that it can be quite harmful to shut down exploration, ignore stated gender preferences, and deny one's choice to transition.
*For transparency's sake, the guidelines I linked above were apparently changed before being released (I didn't know this before linking them, obviously). This is what the NYT article linked in this post is talking about. I'm not sure the rationale given for taking out the age recommendations makes a ton of sense, but maybe there's context I don't know about. I think the recommendations are still that surgeries should be out of the question until multiple years into transitioning in almost all cases, so in that sense they do seem a little redundant.
lol, who cares? I am blown away how much the Fox news engine makes a mountain out of a molehill.
Every parent should care that the State is equating NOT mutilating your kid with child abuse, and will take your child from you if you do not go along with your kid being mutilated. This is not Fox spin, this is what the actual text of tha actual law actually says, which you can see for yourself by reading it.
Shrug.I think you are misreading this one and get riled up over nothing. See my below post if you are curious on my thoughts.
But you do you, just make sure you workout and keep your heart healthy my friend. That level of self induced rage/anger/fear can break you over time.
I'm a parent in a blue state, and no, I don't care about this, and am not worried about this. I agree with the other poster that this seems like a giant mountain out of a silly little molehill.
Do you have children, Ben? Do you support the state forcibly taking children away from parents who won’t mutilate them?
Have kid, don't care one bit.
Why?
This is a waste of time to think about.
My job is to elect people with good decision making to places of leadership so they can figure this complex stuff out. And if need be, I'll elect someone else if they really screw it up.
I remember under Bush he passed something to please his supporter, but had no chance of surviving the courts. It took me a year to realize that loads of political shit is base pleasing, has no chance of staying a law, etc.
I remember getting mad at x bill being passed which seemed terrible. I spent 10 hours understanding it and realized it was actually a good attempt to solve a complex problem AND it in no way triggered what I thought it did. I didn't have the understanding of the situation to graph when it was triggered, by whom, etc. This shit is complex a lot of the time.
The USA would be better if people paid less attention to politics and let the people we pay to figure this out figure it out. Then we review their work and boot them or keep them based on our preferences.
Here is what I want to spend my previous anger points on:
1. Is someone advocating to overthrow democracy.
2. Is someone advocating economic policies so bad it could cause a great depression.
That is where I try to leave :)
You do you though.
Well, it seems the Democrats' refusal to engage on this ("it's a remote issue" is all Kamala would say about it to Fox's Bret Baier) did not do them any good.
We are all in our bubbles. Some folks like it there, some try to get out, some have no idea they are in a bubble, and some think only other people in are bubbles.
I'm not in Noah's bubble, and probably not in yours either. So the foolishness on the left is glaringly obvious to me in ways that only the foolishness of the right (or whatever bubble you're not in) is obvious to you or Noah.
Of course I am not saying that everything on the left is foolish. I'm old enough to have evolved leftward in a number of areas, which suggests to me that I sometimes get out of my bubble.
You haven't got the news about the decrease in crime since 2020? The following information was supplied by Bing copilot .
Crime in the United States has generally decreased since 2020. According to FBI-compiled statistics, the overall violent crime rate, including murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, has declined from 2020 to 2023³. Specifically, the violent crime rate dropped by 22.5 points, and the murder rate declined by 0.9 points³.
(1) Crime Stats Still Show a Decline Since 2020 - FactCheck.org. https://www.factcheck.org/2024/10/crime-stats-still-show-a-decline-since-2020/.
(2) U.S. Crime Rates and Trends — Analysis of FBI Crime Statistics. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/us-crime-rates-and-trends-analysis-fbi-crime-statistics.
(3) U.S. Crime Rate & Statistics 1990-2024 - Macrotrends. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/crime-rate-statistics.
(4) Myths and Realities: Understanding Recent Trends in Violent Crime. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myths-and-realities-understanding-recent-trends-violent-crime.
You're missing the point entirely. First of all, violent crime was never the issue. It doesn't even make sense to talk about a nationwide rate because it is so concentrated in a few sections of major cities. For most Americans it's basically not an issue. But that's the statistics people always show to claim crime is dropping.
What people are talking about are things like rampant shoplifting, car break ins, and seeing people shooting heroin on the sidewalk in full view of the public. And even then, it's not really the rate that's the issue. It's the response. One video of a shoplifter stealing with impunity is more infuriating than 10 videos of police arresting one. A news article about one violent criminal striking again after being let off on probation by a progressive DA is more infuriating than an article about 100 being locked up for 20 years. People are going to be a lot more forgiving if they see their public servants are fighting hard to protect them rather than basically legalizing crime.
It's a classic case of Jeff Bezos's observation:
"When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. It’s usually not that the data is being miscollected. It’s usually that you’re not measuring the right thing."
Fox news and others are effective at making you afraid. Some people commit crimes, society works to stop them and prosecute them, take a breath and let it go. Going into the nitty gritty of reasons of why it happens and how to best prevent it is 10 pages long and depends on the microcosm of that area.
Why does this have anything to do with who you vote for? Are you electing store security officers?
> Going into the nitty gritty of reasons of why it happens and how to best prevent it is 10 pages long and depends on the microcosm of that area.
Typical lefty deflection "it's too complicated to explain, but I'm right. Move along, prole, leave this to the over educated kakistocrats to write 10 page dissertations on and ignore your common sense."
> Why does this have anything to do with who you vote for?
A question so dumb it's shocking to hear it asked.
If someone breaks the law our criminal system tries to make a case and prosecute them. I am not a cop, judge, prosecutor, or involved in that. My friends who are seem to be working really hard to do a good job. I assume most people everwhere try to do good work :).
For the deeper reasons why people are shoplifting in a specific city/region it gets detailed in terms of is this an organized gang, what is going on with housing, what is going on with the job market, what is going on with drugs, what is going on with police deployment, etc etc.
Most of the people that get excited about shoplifting saw clips on Fox News or Tik Tok and think its some type of mass shoplifting epidemic.
Independent here. Not really worried about it. Nor do any of my friends seem to even mention it as a worry in Walmart ecosystem.
Seems like a weird thing to be worried about.
I think this is a very astute observation, Fallingknife, and it illustrates the problem all of us have with how information shapes political views. The infuriating negative example has far more impact and gut meaning than the actual norm.
The Springfield, Ohio episode was a great illustration. The cat-eating meme was inflated through information sources to a supposed norm, and only when the actual eaten cat was discovered uneaten in the basement did the next stage emerge--the geese. And the goose passion extended until it was demonstrated that the goose was the victim of automobile violence by non-Haitians. Then at last the politician pushing the story shifted to declaring that the information was valid although entirely untrue.
What's important is what's infuriating, and there will always be infuriating stuff that can be presented as the norm, no matter how isolated or, as in the Springfield case, how non-existent. Bezos's observation is on target as long as you understand that "right" means "effective."
It's the Willie Horton effect. There will always be Willie Hortons. Occasionally, a law and order state will free one, but that's not meaningful because it confirms no stereotype. The ones that count are those that occur in liberal states, in which case Willie Horton will be the anecdote that illuminates the outrageousness of liberalism. It worked in 1988 and it works now--and, lo and behold: now it works in a Red state context with a dead goose instead of a dead person!
There is no defense against those who exploit this type of tactic so long as a majority of the audience falls for it. Bezos is right: the anecdote is more effective than the relevant data, and the data you need are the anecdotes.
I know crime is down. But there was a lot of suffering between early 2020 and now that did not have to happen. This suffering was the easily foreseeable result of policies taken by cowardly and/or highly ideologically captured officials, responding to "protests" (really, mobs) and media commentary, to deemphasize law enforcement, not prosecute crimes, etc.
I was curious Mike, what type of success rate should they have? How do you measure that personally and think about?
We've got a problem in this country with persistent racism in the justice system, especially in policing. After those problems again became public it seems like a lot of well meaning people tried some stuff to figure out how to improve it. Some of it was really badly done, some of it is well done, some of it is in the middle.
Did you want them to try to fix this problem?
What would you consider a win from those attempts? What was a miss?
One thing I am super frustrated about is police training. I think there could be MASSIVE improvement there. And I think we should pull some duties from the police so they can focus on reducing crime and solving crimes. It seems like we expect them to handle everything when it would be much better if they were able to focus on what they do best.
Appreciate the thoughtful reply. My really boring answer is that an adversarial system of justice with full transparency and an aggressive media are essential to improving the quality of criminal justice. We need to spend a lot more on police training, better and safer prisons, etc. Our standard of success should be, I'm sorry this is really boring, that all criminals regardless of color or anything else have the same chance and severity of punishment. A quantitative standard would be that our rates of violent crime and victimization should be a lot closer to Europe's.
BLM was right to say there were and are problems. They are wrong in thinking that defunding the police or significantly reducing prison populations, or getting rid of cash bail were solutions.
At the end of the day, civilization is for people who follow the law, and in administering the law we should take care that rights of the accused are protected. Authorities who put the interests of criminals and antisocial people above the interests of the average, law-abiding person are doing a grave injustice to the people they are hired to protect.
Police training is a good area where there is likely bipartisan support. Rethinking some police duties also makes sense, provided we are all willing to pay more in taxes, because it seems to me there are some really unwell people on the streets who are a danger to themselves and others, but for whom prison is not the right answer. They should be forced into treatment, which means lots of beds and doctors and social workers.
Well said!
Although I think getting rid of cash bail is interesting and might be a better system. Might not be implemented in version 1.0 correctly, but there is a problem when being rich mens very different treatment by the courts. I look forward to seeing what they learn and what version 2.0 looks like as they adjust in the coming years. I don't think the goal was letting violent offenders out but rather non-violent offenders out while awaiting a trial.
I'd love to see public defenders and prosecutors expanded as their caseloads are insane from what I've read.
Agreed on forced treatment, we need more support for that and to help them end addiction or if they are mentally unwell be cared for where they can't hurt local businesses or cause violence. What a crazy complex situation though and def would require higher taxes and possibly a new government agency? I don't even want to think about that, I've got enough on my plate and hope someone competent can figure that out. Or maybe states can get block grants to try different systems and see what is the best approach.
To be fair, I don't think that's the major reason that the Dems aren't miles ahead. Incumbents everywhere have been struggling with the economic fallout from COVID-era stimuli and sanctions on Russia.
Noah,
Thank you for this piece. It really distills what Trumpism is ultimately about, putting aside all the policy nuances.
I grew up in Pakistan, where the military has ruled (directly or indirectly) for decades, assisted by a corrupt political elite and bureaucracy. The hallmark of this system was incompetence, since all promotions were determined by political connections and loyalty.
One particularly ludicrous example was the acting chairman of the Pakistan cricket team, who was also a serving general in charge of launching a counteroffensive towards Delhi if the Indian army crossed the border!
I am extremely concerned about the deficit and don't see any political will to address it. I also cherish the meritocracy that allowed me to immigrate here, and strongly believe in asylum reform and securing the border. Energy independence (and hence continued fracking for oil/gas) are critical given the current geopolitical realities, and in that same vein some element of protectionism is necessary for the US to maintain viable critical industries.
I am not confident that a political party that is now essentially a cult can deliver this.
For all it's flaws, the Democratic party is not a monolith. Hopefully the next decade will bring two functional political parties back into the equation.
It might take a financial event for the debt to really matter in politics. I am hopeful that is not the case, but it seems like it might requite an emergency before something is done to rethink how that is managed. I agree with you, I wish it would be approached more pro-actively but it is hard to see either political party swallowing a pain pill and enacting policies that are guaranteed to lose them the next round of elections.
Agreed. The political incentives to keep on printing money and kick the can down the road are too great.
It’s ironic - I would assume 100% of Noah’s readers (and probably a solid majority of all Americans) agree that some balance of tax increases and spending cuts are the place to start. The political center needs to be resurrected for this to become reality.
Ya, I would like to see a blended approach. I think the problem is a lot of people say they want that, but when you say "well we are cutting x" they go noooooooo!
Polarization degrades the competence of both sides, not just the right. The right is more immediately affected because of the migration of the educated meritocrat types to the other coalition, but putting all those people in the same party creates a dysfunctional hothouse atmosphere.
It's Cass Sunstein's "law of group polarization": Without anyone else there to push back, the educated extremists -- think downwardly mobile humanities grads and elite overproduction -- get very loud and succeed in stifling dissent. This is how we got "racism is the real pandemic" and all the rest of it.
Given the choice, I know which of the two sides is more functional and which I want in charge. But what I really want is to have two normal parties again.
Or maybe the influx of smart people with center-right views who are driven away by Trumpism will help moderate the Democrats. Hard to say. In any case, I think the fight against polarization mostly doesn't happen in the voting booth (instead, find good institutions to support, and push bad institutions to become better), and to the extent it does, the obvious thing to do is to vote for the less radical party to disincentivize further polarization.
What exactly is supposed to be the problem with weaving indigenous knowledge into scientific knowledge? It’s obviously true that indigenous knowledge hasn’t gone through the sort of checking process that western science goes through, but it’s also clear that locals (and especially those who have gone through generations of transmission) have some knowledge that hasn’t had a chance to go through peer review yet. Alchemy was a real source of knowledge that gradually transformed into chemistry, and people who think we should reject that kind of traditional knowledge rather than try to mine it are just throwing away information.
I think it's a) annoyance at the sort of people who are arguing for it, but more importantly b) distrust of those people. If indigenous knowledge is a rich source of data and hypotheses, that's great; if it's a code word for politically motivated weakening of evidentiary standards, not so great. And if you have very little trust in the people arguing for it, you'll naturally suspect it's the latter.
Thank you--I came here to ask Noah to pick on some other "woke" idea.
I guess, if you haven't read up a bit (I expect better of you Noah!), you might think this refers to "rain dances" or something, not allowing periodic controlled burns (a common indigenous practice, US park officials avoided all burns for decades in some areas and that's contributing to fire issues now) or cycling hunting grounds/seasons (not doing that now is contributing of overfishing among other things)
Also the classic case of an anthropologist thinking “hmmm, I wonder why their folk medicine involves making this complicated preparation from that strange plant?”
Lots of useful drugs to be found that way
Probably not as much as we'd hope. I've read that people have set up companies to "mine" indigenous knowledge for promising drug candidates, but they haven't been successful at finding enough drugs that are good enough to make a profit.
I'm sorry? This is wild!
The comparison of alchemy is so strange. You can say "alchemy eventually became chemistry", but - now we have chemistry! Embracing "indigenous knowledge" would be like rejecting chemistry and going back to alchemy.
I think what Kenny means is that we should take an evidence-based approach and test indigenous knowledge to see if there are practices, etc that are effective. I don't think he means that we should embrace it all without skepticism/believe it all works as-advertised without testing.
Leaf is exactly right. Embracing indigenous knowledge is not like rejecting chemistry and going back to alchemy. It’s like embracing chemistry, while also noticing that a bunch of old alchemy texts no one has looked at in 300 years mention a weird mineral from a particular island no one has been looking at for a while and realizing that this mineral actually has some unusual properties, and turns out to be an interesting compound of some sort.
I guess I can agree with that, but I think at this point you're straying into sanewashing territory. It's not what the "indigenous knowledge" people actually believe, they are fully signed up to the notion that scientific rigour is western imperialism or something.
I suspect the average workaday scientist with a positive opinion of indigenous knowledge believes something like what Kenny is saying. They're not very loud about it, though.
The more activist types are more ideological, self-consciously decolonial, honestly unscientific though, yeah. I wish these people would pipe down because they're giving a lot of good ideas a bad name.
We also recently built a superpowered "sort by controversial" machine to elevate the craziest and most provocative people in everything and called it social media. That may not have been such a good idea.
There surely are some people like that, and I don’t want to endorse what they are saying. But you don’t have to endorse that to accept that there is indigenous knowledge and that it is worth studying and bringing in to modern science. I assume that the editors of Nature aren’t saying that scientific rigor is western imperialism.
A better example might be homeopathy, which is still a widely accepted part of western medicine, even though its evidence base (once adjusted for measurement error) is zero and it conflicts with basic scientific principles. Plenty of examples in psychotherapy too.
But these are not woke, so nobody cares. Rather than trying to fix (or even just direct attention to) real problems, right-wing media creates moral panics about fake problems, because that's what helps them obtain power and money.
(This is the same political coalition, mind you, who made the teaching of creationism their main goal twenty years ago. Hypocrisy levels just off the chart.)
Indigenous knowledge isn’t knowledge. At most, it’s a tool for generating a hypothesis or two that can actually be tested scientifically. It becomes knowledge after being tested.
Indigenous people do test things, just as athletes and musicians and filmmakers and dancers and so on test the things they do, even though they’re not scientists and don’t do controlled statistical studies. All these groups have knowledge of the specific things they work with, and if scientists want to know stuff about it, they should probably work with the people who have knowledge already, even if it’s not yet systematic in the way we want to get it.
The way I see it, if this knowledge is valuable, it’s a low hanging fruit for scientists/researchers to steal or adopt it. I suspect that most of it is horseshit and that’s why it’s not part of mainstream.
I think it can depend on if the indigenous knowledge directly contradicts the scientific knowledge. For example, the scientific view is that the first indigenous populations in North America arrived here some 30,000 years ago (yeah, the experts argue about it, but 30K years ago is a common estimate). Then 16K years ago another migration group arrived. But some of the indigenous groups themselves assert that they have always been here. It can make a difference if you're arguing about the morality of settlements, land ownership, conquests, etc.
Yes that seems important and right. Don’t accept stuff uncritically. But do treat it as one more sort of input that can be used.
Because progressives view the value and acceptance of indigenous knowledge as preceding its rigorous evaluation. It’s “too good to check”. It’s the difference between the principle of researching plants for medicinal properties and just touting them as “natural cures’ based upon ancient wisdom
Why are you putting words in Nature’s mouth? Do you think Nature is endorsing *not* testing things?
That’s exactly my point. Those who promote indigenous knowledge claim that the wisdom is coming from nature. They are the ones putting words in Nature’s mouth
Oh I see, you are misinterpreting me as talking about the mystical spirit force “nature” when I am referring to the British science journal Nature. This is all about an editorial in Nature, which said indigenous knowledge should be woven into modern science.
Only some people who promote indigenous knowledge believe in this mystical woo spirit. Many others just believe in the fact that traditions that have interacted with a local ecosystem for thousands of years have sometimes picked up some important facts about it, even if they haven’t don’t formal statistical testing or anything to understand *how* they picked up those facts.
Yes, I misinterpreted that. But a Nature editorial to that effect pretends that this would be something new. Ancient knowledge has always had the status of rumor, a source of hypotheses. But the current promotion treats it as privileged. Look at astronomy. Tradition contains all sorts of information about the movement of celestial bodies much of it accurate but also a lot of nonsense. It’s like looking at a piece of unrefined iron ore and calling it indigenous steel
What makes you think that the left cranks aren't going to destroy competence any more than the right cranks? All that lefty nonsense you described sure sounds like the death of competence to me (and don't get me started on dumbing down schools in the name of equality). Why should I be more afraid of right wing cranks? If the left wing cranks can also run the day to day, why can't they as well?
You're ok with the Federalist Society, because they apparently are competent cranks, but on the other side. Are you sure this isn't just status quo bias, that the cranks in charge now can be tolerated, but if the other side's cranks get in, we're in for it? Or maybe classism? The educated upper class cranks of the Federalist Society and lefty academics and "scientists" are tolerable, but not those dirty working class cranks?
The moderates on the left were fired a long time ago. When scientific journals are calling for the recognition of primitive witchcraft as modern science, the moderates have already been fired. When school boards are removing advanced classes from the curriculum in accordance with leftist religious dogma, the moderates have already been fired. When sports leagues are allowing transgender men to compete in the womens division, the moderates have already been fired. Of course Biden's administration isn't rebelling against him. They aren't the moderates like Noah who oppose this stuff.
I don't want an anti-vaxer in there either, but it's just another flavor of the same thing, not a fundamental change.
Seems like you are focusing on weird fringe stories that get amplified by the news looking for eyeballs and not the day to day reality of how things are being governed.
What are your news sources for checking in on this type of stuff?
These things were all over the news. They were in Noah's article. You know they happened and I'm not going to waste my time when you could easily type it into Google.
Why won't you Democrats ever actually argue your point? Do you support these things? If so, argue for them. If not, say it, and don't lie to me that it didn't happen. You are such dishonest evasive people always lying about what you do. At least when Republicans want to so things I don't like they aren't sneaky liars about it. They don't play word games. They just come right out and say "abortion is wrong and we're going to ban it." I can respect that.
I'm an independent actually :)
SF did some silly stuff with math I remember... hadn't heard of anyone else doing something stupid with math. Last I heard the people who did silly stuff all lost their re-election in SF and now that is no longer a problem. Did you follow that and see how it went down? I could be wrong but last time I checked that was the case I thought...
Just weird fringe stuff that the media uses to capture eyeballs and make a mountain out of a molehill.
In 3 states I have lived in now they have dumbed down schools. There is the CA thing. Then they dumbed down the best HS in the country in VA https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14014883/thomas-jefferson-rankings-slump-DEI.html
Now I live in Seattle. They just dumbed that down too https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/why-seattle-public-schools-is-closing-its-highly-capable-cohort-program/
NYC tried to do it too https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/bill-de-blasio-education-new-york-best-schools-destroyed/
Everywhere I go Democrats lower standards and destroy education for our best and brightest students. It's not a molehill. The school boards of our largest cities are not "fringe" stuff.
Lowering school standards in the name of equity is a real problem (though already receding, and in general I think it's structurally hard for the education system to end up doing something that well-off parents hate) but the other two are just silly. Talking about including indigenous science is an affectation with zero actual impact, like land acknowledgements. (Also a bit ironic, because you know who actually tried to include indigenous science? Creationists.) Putting transwomen and biological women in the same sport category is probably unfair to the latter, but then athletes are already a highly privileged class of people, and elite sports in general aren't particularly beneficial to society, so who cares? Comparing that with e.g. people trying to undermine the vaccination regime is just silly.
Rich parents benefit from dumbing down of public schools. They can send their kids to private schools and if public school is terrible, they no longer have to worry about competition from smart middle class and poor people.
The trans sports thing isn't really a huge issue on its own it's just that anybody who is dumb enough to think that's a good idea is so insane that I would never want them in charge of anything.
I generally agree with much or your analysis. But your disrespect of indigenous knowledge as useful to enhancing western science is wrong. I live in Alaska and was Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for eight years. We relied on both western science and indigenous knowledge in making resource management decisions. Our work with local people gave our biologists important insights and conversely gave local people greater trust and acceptance of western science. Frank Rue
Isn't indigenous knowledge just knowledge that hasn't been fully tested with a scientific system? Science isn't western, it is a merely a process to determine truth through repeated experimentation with good data collection and processes.
I wonder when the pro Trump crowd will show up.
> who is nothing if not hyper-competent
Elon Musk is at least several other things.
There is no quibble from me. Trump is an awful human. However, you wrote a column I would expect from a partisan.
I did not vote for Trump for all the reasons above. Throughout this campaign season, I have spent much of my commenting, mainly at The Dispatch, explaining why people vote for Trump.
While you might be loath to list all the illiberal things Democrats have done, you can be sure they are there. I heard Jamie Raskin complaining about gerrymandering, and I almost spit my coffee out. It was as if Democrat Legislatures never gerrymandered districts in their favor.
This question has never been addressed, but it is the most illiberal thing I can think of since it is the dirtiest or political dirty trick of my lifetime. The Steele Dossier and the pain inflicted on the country.
Democrats believe Trump's supporters are garbage. Joe Biden just said the quiet part out loud. MAGA is an awful movement run by terrible people who are sycophants of one of the most despicable politicians in my lifetime. I grant you that.
Yet what did the Democrat Party do? It spent money elevating the worst of the MAGA candidates in complete abrogation of their civic responsibility. The Democrat creed is to win at any cost. Hillary’s planting of the dossier into a duped FBI caused several years of trauma and angst for no other reason other than to corruptly win. When Harry Reid was interviewed about Romney’s taxes, he admitted he lied about Romney paying taxes; his excuse was, “It worked, didn’t it.”
Spare the moralizing. Many Democrats have refused to certify the presidential election through the years. The win-at-any-cost mentality doesn’t leave me with any sense that the Democrat Party holds the high ground in ethical behavior. This latest BS about how undemocratic the Electoral College is is solely due to their advantage in Illinois, CA, and NY. If you want to make stealing an election harder, the EC is the best way to do it. A national vote? Much easier. Want to keep money out of politics? A national election would cause money to be spent.
The caterwauling over DC and Puerto Rico not being states has only one reason for Democrats to push it. More Democrat Senators. The current GOP is a hopeless pile of steaming shit. I am politically homeless. But please, unless you just want to be ridiculed as another partisan hack, let us not pretend that Democrats are angels and bare no responsibility for our current crappy politics.
Here is a rule I like to live by. If someone has a golden toilet, investigate if it is due to them being a egomaniac or if they are a very funny dude. Trump is an egomaniac and generally bad human being. Why would I want him as president when he lacks any smidgen of honor or respect for other people?
He’s unfortunately also very funny. So many quotable sayings and memes and whatnot. I think it’s an important part of the appeal.
(Agreed that he sucks though,🤞 for Tuesday)
hah agreed. I just read a book on Mussolini as he seems like a buffon, but I can't tell if in the moment they also thought he was funny. Anyone know history well enough to know if he was mocked for his buffoonery?
This Presidential election is clearly the worst binary choice between candidates in my lifetime. You should have at least mentioned that Kamala has alienated nearly all her former staff, who won’t speak out because that is obviously career suicide.
Trump is a narcissistic dirtbag man child motivated by glory and vengeance. Harris is a soulless, unimpressive, insecure husk of ambition.
Either will hand power to deranged ideologues who are immune to evidence and desire to punish their out-groups. Unfortunately, both parties have created incentive structures that elevate the spineless conformists and sideline or vilify anyone with independence or principles.
One candidate attempted a self-coup the other hasn't and gives no indication that she would ever attempt such a thing. On that basis alone it's the easiest binary choice in my lifetime between presidential candidates.
"Kamala has alienated her former staff but you don't know because they keep it secret" is a funny allegation, given that Trump actually alienated his former staff, and they do speak out (even though it might well be career suicide). E.g. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/25/election-trump-staffers-john-kelly
Learned a new word today. Every word about Trump and Trumpism is true.
I’ve noticed that when liberals criticize the excesses of the progressive movement in institutions, they try to steer clear of the trans issue. Most of the criticism has come from centrists (like Andrew Sullivan and Bill Maher) and the right. I don’t know if it’s to avoid fracturing of the Democratic coalition before an important election or whether they genuinely believe in the more contentious parts of the trans agenda/movement.
I've seen commentators note that both the centrists and the progressives have been very careful this time around to not mention the disagreements on the matters they disagree on. As one joker said, Democrats in shocking array! But also, despite the strong opinions on trans issues, it doesn't seem to come up as something the voters prioritize. So just burying that internal disagreement is the electoral optimum.
Yes, you're right. Democrats have shown better messaging discipline this election cycle.
Or they think it's an extremely minor issue that affects less than a percent of a percent of the US population and exaggerating its importance will only lead to electing Republicans who will then go on to strip healthcare from 10% of the US population etc. etc.
(That said, most of the critics who actually say anything worth reading are on the moderate left, I think. E.g. Jesse Singal.)
I agree that Jesse Singal is worth reading but he's hardly the only one.
If it is a minor issue then maybe the Biden administration should have stayed out of it. Also, every year is not an election year so there's definitely a lack of moral courage on the even the center left pundits on this issue, people with whom I agree on many issues.
Overall, I think it’s because they are sensitive to protecting their positions of privilege and power. Some are completely spineless conformists. Most are simply credulous and hypersensitive to the social/professional consequences of questioning the orthodoxies of their in-group.
Great post but I have to push back on one point: cartelization by the Federalist Society has definitely eroded competence in the federal judiciary. You see it not just in outright incompetence at the district level (see, e.g., Aileen Cannon), but also otherwise competent appellate judges who are appointed at an early age, for ideological reasons, before they can accumulate any trial experience whatsoever.
I think the etymology of “kakistocracy” is Greek. But “kak” is also the Afrikaans word (both noun and verb) referring to feces or the act of defecation. So for some of us, it is particularly edifying to see “kakistocracy” applied appropriately.
Probably the same word: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/kakka-
"There are actually ways for conservatives to rebuild their influence in American institutions without destroying those institutions."
Noah, in this vein, I'm curious what you think of Chris Rufo et al's work with the Univ of S. Florida. Is this an example of conservatives "rebuilding influence", or do you think Rufo is destroying instead?
I ask because a great many conservatives view Rufo's system as the only chance we have: gain political power and use that political power to reconquer the educational institutions that have been seized by radicals over the last 60 years.
When hiring boards of major universities are 60:1 or 100:1 against us ideologically (and view their ideology as a theology), we really don't have a fair shot otherwise.
Christopher Rufo is a case study in how, along the work of Bob Altemeyer, there needs to be a totalitarian personality type like RWA.
Brian, Rufo is basically a mirror image of Mao. And you know, Rufo has to telegraph his every move on social media like expository monologue from a movie villain.
It's extremely weird to be against wokeism and then employ the same authoritarian tactics to fight back against it. I can't predict the future but I think if he pushes back against the excesses of the progressive movement, he'll be very successful. If his goal is to further the conservative agenda from 20+ years ago and roll back gay marriage and abortion rights, he's going to get his ass kicked.
“For example, conservatives have come to distrust almost all mainstream media sources.”
Gens X, Y, and Z don’t trust mainstream media, either. And they’re not what I’d call conservative. Trump probably wishes he’d followed through on going after TikTok given the anti-Trump memes flourishing among young, first-time voters (e.g. pushback against anti-women’s health and reproductive freedom. Not a good look for either political party. In fact, I don’t see much of a conservative trend in the long-term given the direction of demographics in the U.S. Since 2020, deaths of Baby Boomers and the number of addition voting-age-qualifying youth represents a shift of 52 million votes. Pretty consequential for the long term. Society has changed more than usual, I think, such that it can’t be “assumed” Gen Z will become more conservative as they age. For example, many may resist having children. So, there might be a lot more “childless cat ladies” for Banana Republicans to anger.
Heck, I worked in the mainstream media for years and I don't trust it either! ;-)
(They do their best, but the internet has really decimated their budgets and talent pipeline.)
My problem is with the term “trust”. I have moderate confidence that the New York Times provides me with adequate information about what is going on in the world but less confidence that the sum of what they deliver is an attempt at an objective perspective
Is the culprit "the internet", or is it monopolistic Big Tech firms like Google and Facebook?