Blackcap Blog

Published at 12:59 on 24 October 2024

Will He?

Over a month ago I wrote that the odds favoured Harris winning. I still think so, although not quite so much given how the polls have slipped some since then.

Despite that, however, I will point out that the polls are not infallible, particularly in this era of smart phones and generally unpublished numbers, which greatly complicates the job of polling. The past two presidential elections, the polls did underestimate the level of support for Trump. If that pattern holds, the USA is indeed f*cked. But it won’t necessarily hold. It is just as plausible that after two cycles of underestimating support for Trump, the pollsters have this time overcompensated for their past errors, and are now overestimating Trump support.

The long and short of it is that we don’t know for sure and it’s going to be close. But why so close?

The Nichols Theory

Anti-Trump conservative Tom Nichols has a theory. Tom Nichols is also wrong, or more accurately, incomplete. Some people are voting for Trump for exactly the reason Nichols stated, i.e. as an “act of social revenge.” Some, but not all.

Nichols retired from his job as a college professor and now spends a significant amount of time on X (formerly Twitter), where no small amount of fascist trolls exist. Those individuals are indeed explained by Nichols’ theory (and of course they show up commenting on his posts a lot, so he notices them).

However, there are a lot of people — not all of them necessarily even particularly right wing, at least not by domestic U.S. standards — who just think that, for whatever reason, the concerns about Trump that Nichols, myself, and many others have aired are simply overblown. I have run into quite a lot of these individuals. They don’t want to burn it all down. They just don’t believe Trump is that big a deal. Nichols’ theory does not explain these people. These individuals tend not to be enthusiastic about Trump either way, so they do not feel motivated to comment on Nichols’ tweets.

What might explain them? The most likely answer is not so easy for a conservative like Nichols to swallow (and it explains the trolls, too).

The Other, More Systemic Reason

There are, quite simply, a large number of Americans who entered the Trump era already pre-indoctrinated to accept fundamentally fascist political values. So when a fascist descends his golden escalator and appears on the political stage, his ideas just don’t seem that odd or threatening to them.

I first started getting truly concerned about this around 20 years ago, during the run-up to the Iraq War. There were just so many bald-faced lies getting thrown about. There was just so much disregard for the truth. There was just so much official malfeasance in pursuit of the goal of foreign intervention. And the media and the Democrats were so disgustingly milquetoast when it came to calling the Republicans on it.

It was at that moment that I realized the core problem of bourgeois democracy, particularly in a military superpower: because it’s still a procedural democracy, and the politics of the ruling elite do not serve the public interest, you must indoctrinate the voting public, else those voters will revoke your electoral mandate.

And it turns out that there really isn’t a whole lot of difference between the amount of indoctrination to needed get voters to support imperialism and class rule under procedural democracy, and the amount of indoctrination needed to get voters to support fascist politics. I saw the danger looming then, and I really see it now.

Rule by presidential fiat? What’s the big deal, that’s gone on for decades when it comes to presidentially-ordered military interventions. Nobody pays attention to the Constitution when it calls for Congress to approve declarations of war, so why should any of the other parts of it matter so much?

Massive domestic military deployments against illegal aliens? Why not, the military gets deployed against foreigners in foreign lands all the time, why not against foreigners who aren’t legally supposed to be here?

Suppress left protest movements? Hey, we back client states that do so all the time! If “stability” is good there, why not here as well?

Decades of bipartisan propaganda to get voters to support high military spending, oppressive imperialist politics, economic inequality, and class privilege are merely so many chickens that have now come home to roost.

And it gets even easier to happen if, as in the USA, your political culture is imbued with no small amount of exceptionalist rhetoric. Democratic decline becomes something that afflicts only other, lesser nations. It can’t happen here. We’re special.

Trump is no aberration; he is the logical conclusion of a system that was rotting from the inside for a long, long time.

Published at 20:24 on 1 October 2024

Vance was a classic slimy pol who knew what needed to be said at a given moment… and said it, regardless of whether or not he actually believed it. In fact, it is hard to say exactly what Vance actually believes.

Unlike Trump, Vance has self-control, and managed to exercise it. Nobody with half a brain who follows how much Vance has changed his tune depending on a given situation found it remotely plausible. The rub is, many voters are idiots without so much as half a brain, so it probably was an effective strategy.

Walz, when faced with a Trump fascist, chose to mostly play Minnesota Nice. Make no mistake: that is who he was faced with; a Trump fascist by virtue of political calculation (as opposed to true conviction) is still a Trump fascist. He could have gone for the jugular a number of times (on democracy, on Vance’s lies regarding his stances on abortion, on Project 2025, etc.), but he mostly chose not to.

It is precisely this nauseating tendency to meet evil with weakness that just irritates the living fuck out of me when it comes to liberals. But I digress.

Walz also just generally came off as weak and unsure, stumbling over his words a number of times and repeatedly checking his notes.

But, Walz didn’t self-destruct like Biden did in the first debate and Trump did in the second, and it was a Vice-Presidential debate, not a Presidential one, so the net effect on the polling needle will probably be small, possibly immeasurable.

Published at 15:44 on 29 September 2024

I have, to my knowledge, never written about this, despite my having grown up Roman Catholic.

The above means that this in a sense affects me personally; however, it really doesn’t affect me personally, since neither I nor (so far as I know) anyone close to me was ever directly affected by child sexual abuse in the Church. The closest it got to me was one parish I was a member of as a child of age six having one of its priests (this was long enough ago that it was common for multiple priests to be assigned to a single parish) suddenly depart the parish under a cloud. That particular priest, Fr. Mark, was responsible for ministering to children.

The Church has historically had no role whatsoever for openly queer Catholics. Sexual orientations other than heterosexual and cisgendered have been considered evil and sinful, period. This has changed some in recent decades, but there is still very little role for queers in the Church.

Approved life paths in the Church have historically been limited to heterosexual marriage and family life, or if “called,” to pursue a vocation in the Church. Given that, it is pretty obvious where queer Catholics, uninterested in heterosexual marriage, have traditionally tended to end up. The lack of interest in heterosexual family life gets interpreted as the “calling.”

A friend of mine who dropped out of seminary reports that a large majority (I believe he said 70% or more) of his fellow seminarians were gay. Those who don’t drop out (nowadays a distinct minority) end up becoming clergy.

I have written before of why I do not personally consider myself gay, and my incompatibility with gay male subculture. But that’s just me. Most queer men are gay, and have the typical (i.e. irrepressibly strong) male sex drive. Put it all together and you have a real problem: men with strong sex drives and no acceptable official outlet for them.

Parish priests do, of course, have some unofficial outlets available for them. They can visit gay sex clubs or cruisy parks, public washrooms, and/or highway rest areas. They can masturbate. Or they can take advantage of their ready access to underage boys, priests having traditionally being trusted to work unattended with children.

To reiterate, that’s a real problem.

It is made all the worse by there being a shortage of priests. Because of course there is. The sexual revolution gave queer Catholics other more honest options for living, and most of us have availed ourselves of such options. What’s left is the worst of the closet cases… and a persistent and growing shortage of priests.

So when the Church hierarchy learns of yet another pedophile priest in their midst, they have every incentive to cover it up, because reporting the priest’s crimes to the authorities would exacerbate the already severe shortage. So of course there are recurring sex scandals in the Roman Catholic Church. It would be a surprise if, given the general parameters outlined above, it was any other way.

Published at 15:46 on 26 September 2024

This is but one example of why. And it is also a disaster for: accuracy (it can’t even admit when it doesn’t know an answer); intellectual property rights (it is based off unauthorized use of content created by others, which the AI engines then charge for access to; and even from a purely business standpoint (it is merely the latest tech bubble, as most AI ventures are running a loss and burning through VC funding).

Published at 09:00 on 16 September 2024

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

No, it doesn’t help the situation. It is more likely to help Trump than it is to help Harris, but it is more likely yet to help neither and to quickly get buried in the fast-moving news cycle, just like the last assassination attempt (which got a lot closer to achieving its goal) did. Assassination attempts don’t have a good track record of achieving their desired goals, but they are not surprises in the current political context, either.

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

To look at it from an Eastern philosophical perspective, it’s karma. The one who threatens violence on others himself becomes a victim of violence.

Or, to look at it from a more Western perspective, it’s norm erosion, something self-professed conservatives used to be concerned about. But Trump is a fascist, not a conservative.

• Conservatism is not about inciting a putsch to stay in power.
• Conservatism is not about stringing together bald-faced lies demonizing immigrants and minorities.
• Conservatism is not about clinging to those lies even after they are shown to be lies, because at least the lies rally your base, the ends always justifying the means.

Fascism, by contrast, is all about norm erosion. The Nazi Party enthusiastically did all of the above (well, their putsch was to get into power, not to stay in it). Fascism is all about the ends justifying the means.

And, not surprisingly, they tried to kill Hitler, too. Multiple times.

In a further historical parallel, it seems that Ryan Wesley Routh is a disgruntled conservative. At least one of Hitler’s erstwhile assassins, Claus von Stauffenberg, was a disgruntled conservative.

Those who deny the peaceful transfer of power to others should not be surprised when others deny the same to them.

Published at 20:04 on 10 September 2024

She did exactly what she needed to do: goad Trump into ranty old man mode.

The problem is, she also came across looking very much like she was doing just that. Would have been a significantly more effective tactic if she had been more subtle about it, then the ranting would have appeared unprovoked and thus been more jarring.

Overall though, Trump did do damage to himself, albeit not as much as he would have if Harris had been more subtle.

An imperfect win is still a win. Sure beats a self-immolation like what happened in July.

Published at 10:40 on 10 September 2024

It will be one of:

1. No substantive change, or
2. Trump inflicts significant damage on himself.

It is unlikely to be either candidate significantly burnishing their candidacy. It is unlikely to be Harris damaging herself. It is unlikely to be either candidate directly damaging the other to any significant degree. This is because the candidates are mostly known quantities and the voters have mostly made their minds up.

The only wildcard is whether and how effectively Trump can keep a lid on his ranting, rambling old man mode, which has been manifesting itself to an increasing degree in recent months. If he can, he will prevent further damage to his cause.

If he can’t, he will damage his cause. He’s been ranty and incoherent in his own rallies many times recently, but that’s his rallies, attended by his loyal base, the folks he wouldn’t lose support from even if he shot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue. This time, however, more than that base will be watching and paying attention. In the worst case, it could be self-inflected damage that approaches the damage Biden did to himself last July.

I was initially skeptical that Trump could keep a lid on it. And I’m certain that he can’t do so in general. But the debate is a mere 90 minutes. There is a chance he could keep a lid on it that long.

Harris’ job, therefore, is to try and trigger that mode in Trump. She needs to pay as much or more attention to how she says things as what she says. Goad Trump without it being immediately transparent she is goading him. This should be possible, given Trump’s general nature (but if Trump resists being triggered, he resists doing damage to himself).

If Harris successfully does the above, she will by her own actions increase her chance of winning, but she will have done so as a result of getting Trump to tarnish his. It will, in the final analysis, be more what Trump said than what Harris said. Hence my phrasing in the list above.

Published at 07:46 on 6 September 2024

The Keys to the White House

Alan Lichtman has finally called it: Harris will win in November.

But that’s just one metric, and although it has had a remarkable run of being accurate, no metric is infallible. Plus, there are always judgement calls, and many of Lichtman’s calls are in retrospective only, when confirmation bias can enter the picture (e.g. Lichtman wasn’t around when McKinley was running against Bryan).

However, there are other signs in Harris’ favour.

Trump Is No Longer a Purely Theoretical Threat

In 2016, he was. Nobody so extreme and so unqualified had won before. Therefore it was easy for voters to wave it off as a purely theoretical threat and cast protest votes against Hillary Clinton (a historically unpopular and weak candidate).

This factor helped Biden in 2020, and given that Trump is running again, it helps Harris this time as well.

Trump Is More Tarnished than Ever

This is the first election Trump has run in after he tried to instigate a coup to remain in power. That coup attempt cost Trump; some top Republicans like Liz Cheney who had reluctantly gone along with him until that point broke with him.

Moreover, Trump is older than ever and his age is now exacting an increasingly visible toll on him. Mental decline means Trump is more rambling and erratic than ever. (This, after Trump spent months making age a campaign issue when he was running against Biden.) Yet more tarnish.

Because of how polarized and how fascism-friendly many Republicans are, this won’t cost Trump very much support. However, it doesn’t have to cost Trump very much support. Because the electorate is so closely divided, every little bit of lost support measurably hurts Trump. For every Cheney and Kinzinger there are thousands of GOP-leaning voters in swing states who won’t be voting for Trump this time.

Harris Excites Her Base the Way Biden Did Not

There is a real Obama vibe about Harris. Like Obama, Harris is a groundbreaking candidate; she would be the first female president. Left-leaning (and even many centrist) voters are real suckers for such things. Yes, it is petty and not policy-based. So what. We are talking about actual voters in actual US elections, not hypothetical voters in some hypothetical ideal republic.

Atypically, Democrats are Campaigning Competently

One of the most frustrating things about US politics is the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party. Election after election, they make stupid campaign mistakes that leave easily winnable votes on the table. Sometimes they manage to win regardless, which goes to show just how badly Republican administrations sometimes manage to mess things up.

Not this time. For the first time in literally sixty years, Democrats are doing a good job at campaigning (yes, LBJ, whatever his flaws, was the last Democrat both willing and able to play political hardball).

Also Atypically, Republicans are Campaigning Incompetently

A lot of this is due to just how much the GOP has become an inward-looking political subculture. The rest of it is due to the Harris campaign’s competent nature. Republicans just can’t process how well the whole “weird” rhetoric worked against them. The idea that they might be the political weirdos and not, as their mythology insists, the voice of the Real America, the Middle America (Harris’ choice of a Midwesterner as a running mate really paid off), just makes their brains explode.

For once, it is the Democrats that are setting the terms of the debate, while the Republicans are assuming the role of suckers by responding to the term-setting (whenever the Republicans talk about not being weird, the debate is still over whether the Republicans are weird, i.e. the debate the Democrats want).

Conclusion

Odds really do seem to favour Harris. This is not to say it won’t be close (given polarization, it probably will). This is not to say that Trump could not win (odds favoured Hillary Clinton in 2016). But the odds do really seem to be in Harris’ favour; this is not just wishful thinking on my part.

Published at 17:54 on 23 August 2024

I mean, anyone who thinks it was a surprise really wasn’t paying attention to who was paying RFK to run.

He was being paid to run by rich Trumpers for the purpose of siphoning votes away from Biden. After Biden dropped out and it became clear that RFK was taking more votes from Trump than Harris, the whole purpose of the RFK campaign (i.e. helping to elect Trump) was mooted.

So of course his paymasters stopped throwing good money after bad.

And of course RFK then dropped out and endorsed Trump. Why wouldn’t he? He was out of money, and he’s a conspiracy-mongering political grifter, just like the orange fascist that he now openly supports.

No surprise that one total scumbag would support another. None at all.

Published at 08:49 on 17 August 2024

Having interacted with some on the Internet, I feel qualified to offer this. By “Trumpers” here I mean simply those planning on voting for Donald Trump this November. Note that the sets are not disjoint: one can for example easily be a part of both the Weirdos and Sheep category.

The Weirdos

These people are, simply put, mentally not all there. It becomes clear when trying to engage them in online conversation. I am not a trained psychoanalyst, and not analyzing them in person, but it’s just obvious they have issues going on upstairs.

The Sheep

These people live deep within the right-wing media bubble. Their mental facilities are, however, intact and normal. They’ve just been brainwashed and turned into cult members. As such, any information from outside the cult is highly suspect and (given that it threatens to take their cult, which they are psychologically heavily invested in, away from them) threatening. It it this crowd that is the greatest driver of the problem with the GOP being inward-facing that I recently wrote about.

The Reluctant

These people will agree that Trump is a deeply flawed candidate. Sometimes (often) you will have to go back and forth a bit to wear them down with repeated reality checks, but eventually they will agree with you. Facts are facts, after all. It’s just that, for them, one personal fact is that they strongly prefer right of centre politics, and given the US two-party system, they have no other choice to express that preference but the currently-Trumpified GOP. So, like it or not (and most of them do not), Trump it is.

What This All Means

Namely, that you should pay attention to the full content of tweets like this one. Specifically the about a third part. He’s talking about roughly ⅓ of 46% (in other words, about 15%), not the full 46%.

If Harris wins in November (and that’s definitely still an if), politics in the USA could for the most part move beyond Trumpism relatively quickly, in a way that’s not possible if roughly 46% were committed Trumpers. That’s because only about 15% (the Sheep plus the Weirdos that for whatever reasons decide to stick with Trump after the GOP realigns itself) are the true committed fascists. The others are merely somewhere on the fascism-curious to fascism-tolerant axis, and are likely to get a lot less curious and/or tolerant about fascism if it shows itself once again to be a loser at the ballot box.

Then you have the conservatives who are neither fascism-tolerant nor fascism-curious, i.e. the Never Trumpers. They would love to go back to voting for a centre-right party, if only a sane one existed. Add their numbers to the Reluctant, and whatever Weirdos decide to come along for the realignment away from fascism, and you have the makings of a realignment.

Self-interest, in other words, can act to motivate the sort of political realignment that morals failed to.