What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?

[Horace]

Today on Bari Weiss' podcast, Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro faced off over Trump. Sam gave his version of the state of the art existential threat argument. A few of his arguments I've long since considered and dismissed (he's been making them for quite some time). He'll always mention that "some republicans around 2020 were in fear of their lives if they didn't get behind Trump in lockstep". He mentions the suspiciously alive and well Liz Cheney, and Mitt Romney. This argument, I find completely absurd. Liz Cheney has objectively increased her political capital with her attacks on Trump. There are no sacrifices there, but for a nearly irrelevant house seat that her ambitions obviously far outstrip. Then Sam mentions all the generals and close aids from the first Trump administration that have come out against Trump. While I agree that's an interesting point, suspiciously absent from that rhetoric are examples of all the things Trump would have done, but was prevented from doing, by the adults in the room. Those adults are now deploying top shelf existential threat rhetoric against him, but for all their first hand experience with the terror that is president Trump, they have no specific example of something that would have happened, but didn't, because of the guardrails they provided.

For Shapiro's part, he leaned into the fact that things were pretty good during Trump's first term, and he expects more of same in a second term.

[taiwan_girl]

@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

n Trump's first term, there were people there controlling him, keeping him from his worst impulses.

I agree with this. As mentally incompetent President Biden is, I am quite sure that there are handlers keeping him in the lane so that while he may SAY stupid things, it would be difficult for him to DO stupid things.

With President Trump, andbody who is not a "yes man" either leaves by themself or is forced out. With nobody to direct him, I dont have complete confidence that President Trump will stay in the lanes.

[Horace]

@taiwan_girl said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

n Trump's first term, there were people there controlling him, keeping him from his worst impulses.

I agree with this. As mentally incompetent President Biden is, I am quite sure that there are handlers keeping him in the lane so that while he may SAY stupid things, it would be difficult for him to DO stupid things.

With President Trump, andbody who is not a "yes man" either leaves by themself or is forced out. With nobody to direct him, I dont have complete confidence that President Trump will stay in the lanes.

We never got specifics about things Trump tried to do, and that he would have done, if not for the adults in the room. There are no such specifics in the anonymously written book from the white house insider at the time, and there are no such specifics from any of the insiders currently calling him a fascist. The closest we come is hearsay about how he "wishes he had Hitler's generals", whatever that is supposed to mean.

[jon-nyc]

several come to mind without even thinking about it...

Get the DoD to seize voting machines?
Have his VP pick and choose which states to certify based on who they voted for?
Bomb Mexico?
Block the ATT/Time Warner merger due to his dislike of CNN coverage?

Oh - and I have one from personal knowledge. A certain FEMA director would get call from him saying things like "don't give any disaster aid to California'. The reply was always "I'll do whatever I can consistent with the law, Mr President."

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

several come to mind without even thinking about it...

Get the DoD to seize voting machines?
Have his VP pick and choose which states to certify based on who they voted for?
Bomb Mexico?
Block the ATT/Time Warner merger due to his dislike of CNN coverage?

Oh - and I have one from personal knowledge. A certain FEMA director would get call from him saying things like "don't give any disaster aid to California'. The reply was always "I'll do whatever I can consistent with the law, Mr President."

I guess we're all free to take those as seriously as we'd like, and to forecast them into a next term as seriously as we'd like. The election denial stuff is off the table, as he'll never be in a position again to be re-elected. Maybe the US would have bombed Mexico if the adults hadn't been in the room. Maybe CA would have received no disaster aid if the adults hadn't been in the room. You can believe it as you please, but you won't be convincing many people that any of that is serious.

[taiwan_girl]

@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

You can believe it as you please, but you won't be convincing many people that any of that is serious.

How can a person then decide when he is serious and what is not? If a president says something, I think that the default is that you believe him. You cant give President Trump a "pass" just because you think he was not serious.

[Horace]

@taiwan_girl said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

You can believe it as you please, but you won't be convincing many people that any of that is serious.

How can a person then decide when he is serious and what is not? If a president says something, I think that the default is that you believe him. You cant give President Trump a "pass" just because you think he was not serious.

I can't? So I have to think that, without the adults in the room in 2018, he would have bombed Mexico? I'd rather be stupid and right, than smart and wrong. Hopefully we'll get another four years to gradually, over the span of 1400 days, prove the smart people wrong. Again.

[Aqua Letifer]

@taiwan_girl said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

You can believe it as you please, but you won't be convincing many people that any of that is serious.

How can a person then decide when he is serious and what is not?

It helps to have a sense of humor.

[Horace]

A heartwarming bromance and discussion between two of the smartest and most interesting thinkers on the planet, Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson. Hanson has been thinking about culture lately, and they bat around a few ideas here, mostly that the dropping fertility is a maladaptive cultural drift allowed for by a lack of selection pressures on culture.

Link to video

[jon-nyc]

I will certainly listen. Just reading your sentence though I am curious why they say there are no selection pressures on culture. Those cultures with below replacement rate fertility rates will eventually die out and those above replacement rate will prosper. That’s how selection pressure works. It just takes time.

[jon-nyc]

For those of us who hate watching videos is there a podcast this appears on?

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

I will certainly listen. Just reading your sentence though I am curious why they say there are no selection pressures on culture. Those cultures with below replacement rate fertility rates will eventually die out and those above replacement rate will prosper. That’s how selection pressure works. It just takes time.

Caplan makes this point, and Hanson acknowledges it. The selection pressures are not immediate enough to convince anybody they are behaving against their own interests, would be the point.

And my own take would be that there is a certain cultural suicidality associated with our current mainstream leftism, and many are convinced that "not this" is better than "this".

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

For those of us who hate watching videos is there a podcast this appears on?

Not that I know of. I use youtube as a podcast ap anyway. If you pay for a subscription, you can lock your phone and it'll keep playing the audio.

[Horace]

Sam Harris finally weighed in. I've been waiting for that one.

Link to video

He starts out very weakly, by saying Trump will now have all three branches of government, including the Supreme Court. That is a terribly politicized perspective on the Supreme Court. I remain confident that the constitution has the Supreme Court, rather than Trump.

Beyond that, Sam accurately lays the defeat of his favored Democrats, at the feet of the cultural craziness of trans, DEI, border, etc, all of which, from the left, are dominated by the religious self-righteousness of fringe activists and academia.

I see no inclination amongst those sorts to do any self-reflection. This makes sense, when one recognizes it as a religion. If it's the meaning of life to be on the religious right side of history, it doesn't really matter what's on the other side of that scale. It will remain the right thing to do, to follow one's virtue, no matter the cost. You might say, the end game is to die a decent person, rather than make any incremental differences towards the good. You might recognize this sort of attitude in the writings of a certain pastor we're familiar with.

[kluurs]

Yeah, I thought Sam did a good job of noting the detriment of the Dem's support the trans activist community. That issue alone may have caused the loss though I still think Harris's answer as to how her policies might differ from Biden's was also pretty devastating.

[Horace]

He ended with a long litany of the damage Trump has done and all of Trump's inadequacies. Somehow he got stuck in the idea that anybody who voted for him was "fine with all of that". Sam became characteristically unable to see nuance, once his TDS kicked in.

[Horace]

On Al Franken's podcast today, the guest described Trump's plan to "pardon January 6 rioters" as a plan to create a personal armed militia. Franken nodded solemnly. Serious stuff.

[George K]

@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

He ended with a long litany of the damage Trump has done

Don't feel like finding it.

Can you summarize the litany?

[Copper]

@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

plan to create a personal armed militia.

Will Jolly join?

[Horace]

@George-K said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

@Horace said in What are you listening to - Podcast Edition?:

He ended with a long litany of the damage Trump has done

Don't feel like finding it.

Can you summarize the litany?

The punch line goes something like this:

1. Sam imagines there would have been a civil war if the election was close and Trump lost after Kamala made a late comeback.
2. Sam blames Trump for that civil war.

My take? There wouldn't have been a civil war.