Also, of course, if Shkreli hadn’t been self-made or had done a better job keeping himself out of the news, the SEC never would have prosecuted him in the first place. The people cheering this forget about all of the much worse financial crimes the true elites commit and get away with. The fact that he was prosecuted at all is exactly the kind of toxic selective enforcement that’s turbo ****ed global finance in the first place.

Yup, I thought about something like this a bit ago. Shkreli was prosecuted half because he makes finance and wealthy people look bad. He fed into people's anger about inequality, the role of finance in American society, and so forth. He was, in a way, sacrificed to preserve the narrative that wealthy people are actually good and beneficial.

Anybody care to explain to me exactly why HSBC laundering drug money for Mexican cartels is a lesser offence than HSBC forex front-running?

It’s a rhetorical question. I already know why, laundering drug money hurts poor people, and forex front-running hurts rich people.

I should be clear here, though: I'm not advocating for blatant, unremitting rudeness. I just think chastisement, humiliation, and publicly mocking people have valid roles in society, and at times they absolutely should be done. Saying that probably sounds really scandalous, but I don't think it could be any other way, humans evolved these social mechanisms for good reasons.

Edit: *barfs into own hands*

In a society where people use chastisement and public humiliation instead of argument to defeat their political opponents, shamelessness will look a lot like political courage and a virtue. Hmm...

I think that was the largest source of Trump's appeal in 2016. It's why he was a political hero.

Nope, that's definitely NOT what I'm saying.

I didn't read all of that long post by Reid, but I'd like to draw attention to his misuse of the phrase "begs the question".

No. He won because of economics.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/donald-trump-voters/index.html

He didn't win because of rhetoric, because people are disgusted by campus liberalism, because he was really stickin' it to $hillary or any similar excuse. He won because of economics. He won because liberals effectively have no economic platform for a huge chunk of Americans and nothing much to even say to them on the subject. Donald Trump's ideas are terrible, but at least he had ideas.



Liberals wish that their problem is tone and rhetoric, because those are easier to change. It's a lot harder to compromise on liberal economics. If you actually care about keeping people like Trump out of office, though, I suggest that you start by not letting people promote these false excuses.

Actually reading it again, he might have used it correctly. Lol

OK, nm, it's wrong.

have a nice day

You're right. It's an unintended consequence of what you did say.

No, the real problem with American politics is liberals make fun of conservatives too much. If only people were more polite and respectable, nothing would be wrong.

I wasn't trying to use the technical fallacy form of begging the question, if that's what you're getting at.

Jon Stewart is not responsible for Trump.

I know, the phrase has entered the lexicon to also mean "raises the question". I'm just trying to win the prestigious Pedant of the Month award by pointing this out.

It's not liberals and their air of superiority who impoverish our nation, nor is it economic forces. No, it is word crimes.

[quote=The Guardian]
I imagine writers originally used "begs the question" to mean "raises the question" for variety, or in an attempt to sound clever. Now everyone does it, and nothing I say is going to change that fact. For me, this begs – I mean raises – the question of to what extent we should continue to fight for English usage that no one seems to actually use.

The counter argument is that, just because journalists can't be bothered to get something right, a term that might be useful – even, in a logical or philosophical context, essential – finds itself on the endangered list. When it dies, perhaps we are all a little impoverished.
[/Quote]

Oops, sorry. Let me find you a new eyeball.

As long as I'm already posting the dude:

It reminds me of the "sentence" Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

It's a "sentence" in some sense, using words nobody uses in ways nobody uses.

Hey! I use the phrase correctly. Part of a dying breed I suppose.

I haven't watched this particular video, but Blythe has some great things to say about the "economic anxiety vs racism" debate, including pointing out how blaming Trump's rise on racism deflects from the failures of their own economic policy. It doesn't seem like a coincidence at all that center-left mainstream news publications which cozy up most to Democrats were most emphatic on that angle in their reporting during the campaign (and since). I don't disagree with Blythe, and his view explains why the rise of Trumpism is part of a global phenomenon better than, say, Russian intervention in elections/revisionism.

At the same time, I don't think what I'm saying is incompatible with Blythe's observations. Actually, I think what I'm saying complements his observations. Going back to 2016, what made Trump such a charismatic figure? Why did people find him appealing? Why did people see him as a voice who channeled their grievances? Many of his supporters said at the time they liked him because he didn't back down to political correctness and he spoke the truth, by which I think they meant several things: he didn't speak in the polished manner of a politician (which they saw as making him more trustworthy), and he wasn't afraid to say something because it was offensive, and he spoke with a directness (and in a language) that blue-collared people identified with.

He also expressed a sense of victimization that many of his most ardent supporters felt, and I think it's important to that Trump's challenging of norms and his offensiveness were seen as a way of sticking it to the elites, and telling them to **** off with their elite cultural mores and sense of decorum. It was defiance, but it was also heroism: it was refusing to back down and apologize for transgressiveness, which many identified with.

So I very much think that if you try to turn shame into a political instrument, you create circumstances where doubling down on shameful behavior is an act of political heroism.

Heh, I probably should do the same, I'm just too lazy to learn words too

Note well what I'm saying: shame already is a social instrument. It's not about turning it into a political instrument, it already is one. We already shame people quite often for violating the social order. What I mean is that: it's not intrinsically bad, it has a place, and should be used within sensible constraints. Not that it should supplant argumentation or whatever else you might come up with.

What I'm opposed to though, is people whining about people mocking each other for political beliefs and trying to pin it as a cause for political woes in America.

Basically, if America is sick, then all of the columnists and op-ed jerkoffs are quack doctors.

According to Wikipedia, lawyers are among the few people who still seem to care about only using the phrase in its original meaning.

Which is interesting, because when you think about it, law is somewhat like programming, but with natural language instead of formal language. Which would explain why legelese has so much obscure and stilted terminology: they are desperately clinging onto fixed, precise meaning, which runs counter to the natural flow of language evolution.

Who gets to decide what's a sensible use of humiliation? We shame the people who overshame?



Too late.

Nobody gets "to decide", and not everything anyone advocates for has to become some sort of writ law that we all obey.



Still just a symptom, not the disease.

What you're saying really is incompatible with what Blyth has said, and it's incompatible with the election postmortems I've seen, and it's even incompatible with historical predictive models for US elections.... The overwhelming majority of people who voted for Trump, to quote CNN, "held their nose" to vote for him. The people who were impressed by Trump's bombast, thumbing his nose at the liberals and at social mores, were an insignificant minority. US elections have always been decided foremost by economic factors, and the 2016 election was no different.

And at the end of the day - mocking and othering your political opponents isn't going to matter because swing voters don't identify themselves with the people who are being mocked. Those are the people who really decide elections, not the people who are committed to a political identity.

In the general election many held their nose. But he won the primaries handily. Primary voters had 17 candidates to choose from and they chose Trump. Obviously a non-significant number of Americans actually found him appealing.

Pretty much. IIRC there are parts of Constitution that are very hard to interpret because of this. Originalists kind of just ignore that, though.

The other 16 candidates were offering liberal economics.

Some of them tried to walk it back once they saw Trump gaining, but clearly without any sincerity.

You're the one who mentioned "sensible constraints" on shaming. You recognize that there is a problem with shaming turning into excess. So who enforces it? Who prevents shame from becoming problematically excessive?

Clearly the Politburo of Investigating Cases of Excess Shaming,

Yeah, I don't know if I buy it. What was the critique of liberal economic policy that Trump offered? What were the core ideas? Whatever they were (build a wall), you really think that the attraction of those ideas was greater than his charisma?

Just to be clear, I don't think the cultural resentment can be separated from economic anxiety, and I think many liberals underestimate the role that economic anxiety played. It was clearly a murky mess of feelings and unformed and contradictory thoughts that drove support for Trump. I think economic anxiety could've been a motivating factor (even the dominant one) without Trump's appeal consisting primarily in his "ideas".

Now you're just refusing to own your own argument.

Jokes aside: nobody. Just don't be an excessive *******. But also don't be afraid to call out bull**** and make people feel bad for being really out of line.

I don't feel that saying shaming is an important and useful part of the political process is really that controversial. Is it?

I'm just having a hard time responding to the questions, because they seem to miss the point.

Who gets to decide what the point is? :p

No, but really, I suppose we are getting into the weeds on this discussion.