I think that by far the most important thing in this space is for a Democrat to win the 2028 presidential election. And I think the most important thing for making that happen is to nominate a Democrat whose positions on the issues are relatively close to the median voter.
We can get a sense of this by seeing how much potential Democratic candidates outperformed fundamentals (i.e. what you would have predicted given the state they were running in and the political environment that year). Some candidates who have done well on this metric include:
- Andy Beshear (governor of Kentucky, a really red state)
- Josh Shapiro (governor of Pennsylvania, a swing state, where he won his election by a large margin)
- Amy Klobuchar (senator from Minnesota)
- Ruben Gallego (senator from Arizona)
- Mark Kelly (senator from Arizona)
- Raphael Warnock (senator from Georgia)
Some candidates who have not done well on this metric include:
- Gavin Newsom
- Kamala Harris
- Tim Walz
- AOC
- [Edited to add] Elizabeth Warren fares particularly badly on this metric, though I don't think she'll run in 2028
1I buy this as a potentially important goal. Things that have me not automatically agreeing with it:
- since one of the concerns is "will there actually be a 2028 election?" it's not obvious that this is happening fast enough to actually matter. I'm worried about a bunch of important institutions getting eroded in ways that are hard to recover from.
- I buy that "democrat wins" is simpler and more likely and I think probably better for a variety of reasons. But, if it were tractable, I'd want to hear arguments about why this is better than steering some sort of republican schism ending with a republican president running on a platform of undoing the damage. (I'm not particularly advocating this and not saying it's remotely viable, but, one of my wariness here is about this veering into "democrat political machine as usual" as opposed to "thinking from first principles about what is healthy for the state of the country", which should be able to return "oppose various standard democrat-things" even if you normally like them)
I think that by far the most important thing in this space is for a Democrat to win the 2028 presidential election
how can we distinguish people who:
- arrive at this statement through strong evidence and reasoning
- sincerely believe it, but followed shitty practices to get to it such that their opinion carries no weight
- are knowingly saying this to advance some other goal
2I'm coming at this as someone who has voted for members of both parties in recent elections and who is extremely confident that there will be a 2028 election and that Trump will not be the republican nominee in that election. And yea, this sounds right to me. If there were an election tomorrow between Vance and any of Newsom, Harris, Waltz, or AOC, I'd easily vote for Vance. If there were a Vance v Shapiro election tomorrow, it would feel much closer and I'd want to do more research, but I think I would be inclined to go for Shapiro.
1I think that the vast majority of people, including you, are catastrophically underestimating the seriousness of the culture war and overestimating the significance of Trump. There is a common historical pattern that could be called Short War Bias, where people mistakenly believe that a conflict can and will be won with a few decisive victories. Winning in 2028 will simply mean that you face an even more energized and radicalized conservative / MAGA base in 2032.
I see a close analogy between the culture war and the wars of religion in old Europe. Those wars lasted for centuries and involved millions of casualties (as many as the 20th century wars when normalizing for population size).
If you really want to improve the world, I would recommend a two-pronged strategy:
- Use the Pareto principle to limit the damage done by Trump in the next couple of years. Focus only on the 20% of battles that cause 80% of the damage, let him win the rest
- Try to create a political framework where the two tribes (Woke left and MAGA right) can live together without murdering each other
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1Recent events have updated me towards thinking that a decent fraction of Americans (10-40%?) will rationalize and go along with ~anything the current admin does. To me this doesn't seem to have all that much do with the "culture war" as I took the phrase to mean, but rather that worryingly many humans are cognitively set up to fall for an authoritarian even in a modern western cultural context. I agree that we need to figure out how to live with them.
I'm also getting worried that the current admin expects to succeed at ending free elections, given how they keep doubling down on stuff that seems like it will play terribly with a majority of voters.
It would be really really helpful if the discussion wasn't so meta. Everyone seems to take for granted that Trump did Something that is really really worrying but no-one says it. What is that something and why does it make you so worried?
- encouraging ICE to train its agents to round people up without proper warrants, and with disregard for their fundamental rights. Masked and out-of-uniform law enforcement is an affront to a free society.
- attacking foreign countries without consulting congress
- threatening Greenland without consulting congress
- threatening private companies so they give "golden shares" to the government, or agree to share profits with it
- Shutting down the immigration system unilaterally. e.g. adding $100k "fees" for visa classes without congressional direction
- Suing newspapers and media outlets for disadvantageous coverage.
This is just a start.
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211The counterargument by Republicans I've talked to - and I agree with No77e that this discussion seems to be taking a lot of partisan views as settled priors - is as follows:
- Weaponization of the justice system is baked in, at this point, to the point where adhering to due process as defined by the opposition party amounts to pre-committing to always cooperating against an opponent that has spent the past hundred turns defecting.
- The murder of Craig Robertson (I'll use The Guardian as a left-leaning source here; if you want a right-leaning source there are plenty) and the subsequent lack of investigation or consequences made it clear to half of the American population - whether you agree or not - that treating the legal system as if it operates in good faith is for suckers.
- Reddit's apparent glee (see the comments; the subreddit is askconservatives but the post histories of the celebrating individuals indicates that they are not right-leaning) over the killing of Ashley Babbit, an unarmed <protestor or rioter, depending on your party affiliation> and the fact that the killer, Michael Byrd, recieved not only a complete lack of consequences but a series of glowing press inter
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1I think the rest of these points are colorable and appreciate you saying them, but
politicians offending foreign countries is not, in any sense of the word, an exceptional situation that demands exceptional action. Reagan famously joked that he was about to nuke the USSR, triggering an escalation in the alert state across East Asia.
Threatening to take territory from an ally by force is far beyond "offending foreign countries", not precedented to my knowledge, and very bad.
And the Reagan thing was a literal joke made in private. As opposed to Trump actually you know, repeatedly threatening to actually invade Greenland in public.
Your points are mostly fair that this kind of behavior has precedents. But I'm a libertarian so saying the other team is doing the same thing doesn't convince me much that it's not bad. From my viewpoint, the current administration has more of a plan of ignoring rules, laws, the constitution, etc. than most previous. Each incident has antecedents, and I can see how people on the red team might think "we're just doing to them what they've been doing to us", but what I see is a more concerted effort to undermine the rule of law.
The behavior of ICE (masks, lack of visible ID, ignoring warrant requirements, ignoring judicial orders) seems beyond the pale, even if the rules (deportation) they're enforcing are on the books. The way they use self-declared emergencies are more extreme than previous administrations, but you're right, "everyone does it".
Your example about RR joking about nuking Russia seems clearly different than Trump's repeated threats. An off-the-cuff remark doesn't carry the same weight as Trump's persistent prodding on this subject.
I'm not sure whether jawboning done behind the scenes is worse than taking partial control and ownership of private ...
Ashley Babbit, an unarmed <protestor or rioter, depending on your party affiliation>
I appreciate your attempt to be charitable, but I don't think the left-wing/liberal concerns with Jan 6 is appropriately summarized as "riot."
I am going to be honest, if you asked me pre-Jan 6 "how many people would be shot if they attacked en masse the Capitol with Congress in session" my guess would have been much higher than one. This isn't a case of protestors just doing their business in a public street and getting into some heated argument with police that degenerates into a fight. It was an attempt to interfere with government, and possibly a direct threat to the life and safety of elected officials. Even if you think it was warranted you would be an idiot to think it would be safe. You don't storm the Bastille and expect no fire in return. A State's whole thing is a monopoly on violence, it's entirely expected that an attempt to violently subvert that State's own internal mechanisms would be met with violence in return.
A couple of other things that stand out to me as particularly egregious:
- My understanding is that Trump is far more corrupt than past presidents (including Trump in his first term). An example of this is allowing export controls of Nvidia's AI chips to China in exchange for gifts from Jensen Huang.
- The Trump administration has launched criminal investigations against political opponents at an unprecedented rate, most recently against Jerome Powell yesterday.
- And of course, the fake electors plot to steal the 2020 presidential election (not to be confused with January 6th -- I think his conduct on January 6th was really bad, but the fake electors plot is a much greater indictment of Trump's character and much stronger evidence of his authoritarianism).
1Since I am not taking on "do something about this" I also wasn't taking responsibility for writing up a clear writeup of what was done that was bad that I made sure was factually accurate. Given that I'm not taking this on, if you're not already sold on "Trump is bad", prolly this post just isn't for you.
ChrisHibbert's list is the same rough starting point I would make. I'd add "not super answering to the Supreme Court when it intervenes on them."
I think a lot of democrats feel bitten by having tried to compromise in the past and feeling like the republicans kept defecting
Note that this is true the other way round as well (e.g. with stuff like attempted impeachment, imprisonment, and assassination). My post on underdog bias might be useful here, re the ways in which each side considers themselves underdogs.
Even if you think that a clear majority of the escalation has been from Trump (which doesn't seem true to me), it's worth thinking about ways to avoid your proposal acting as another step in the escalation spiral. For example, what kind of coalition would be able to actually update that Trump is less bad than it thinks if your current fears don't come to pass?
Or, more concretely: what kind of coalition would be able to deescalate the conflict by actually making compromises (for example, being able to credibly put a crackdown on illegal immigration, or a repudiation of DEI, on the table). What kind of coalition could make credible promises to not jail Trump and his allies after winning the election? Etc.
51Personally, my fears that Trump would erode democratic institutions have clearly already come to pass, as he repeatedly undercuts the independence of nominally apolitical bodies (recently: attempting to prosecute Jerome Powell to get leverage over the Federal Reserve, and that insane moment when he wanted airports to play a video blaming democrats for the government shutdown. But it’s a VERY long list. It’s difficult to make this point compactly, because the problem is not some specific scandal, but that he does this routinely). I guess if he stopped engaging in the same clear pattern of behavior he’s followed for the last ~9 years, I’d update that he’s not as bad as I (currently) think, but I do not find this plausible.
I think the populist and establishment wings of each side are discrete entities; we have an institutional right (e.g. Cheney, Romney), an institutional left (e.g. Obama, Clintons), a populist right (Trump, MTG, DeSantis), and a populist left (almost-only Bernie, but AOC, Zohran, Ilhan Omar, etc are directionally this thing).
Populist left citizens do things like assassination attempts, and both the institutional and populist right blame the institutional left (the more-plausible things they say look like 'your extreme rhetoric emboldened these crazies').
Populist right politicians do things that are directionally authoritarian and both the institutional and populist left blame the institutional right (because they ceded power to Trump, either deliberately or by accident).
Things like Ray's post seem to be advocating for the institutional wings of the two parties to come together electorally and beat out the populists on either side.
I take your post to be somewhat conflating between the institutional and populist left.
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1The leader, platform, and constitutency of the Trump opposition all need to take shape together. It's a complex problem, and we shouldn't expect a simple solution.
One of the hard parts, I think, is what seems to be a decline in single-issue voters. In the past, women, blacks, gays, Jews, trade unionists, environmentalists, and so on seem to have been more focused on their particular issues. That meant that you could promise the benefits that each desired without as many tradeoffs. Now, both MAGA and the progressive left seem to be "multi-issue Blobs," where you either support all their ideas, or you're their opponent. With this, willingness to crash down the established order seems to be something these Blobs endorse, either as a negotiating strategy or as an end in itself.
So it seems to me that the real opponent in the next election isn't Trump. It's the Blob.
And that means finding a compatible set of single-issue swing voter/independent/inconsistent voter constituencies that aren't already diehard Republican MAGA. Off the top of my head, the planks might look like this:
- The rent's too damned high: YIMBY + affordable housing (abundance agenda)
- Healthcare's too damned expensive: Boun
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1Long comment is long. Most of this is either vague, wrong, or stuff you already knew 20 years ago, but I wanted to share my thoughts anyway.
Please note none of this is justification, you will likely think "no, that's entirely wrong" a lot throughout this. I know, I'm sorry, I wish it could be different.
Most of this is inspired by Scott's much better post "The Psychopolitics of Trauma": https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-psychopolitics-of-trauma
You can feel badly hurt by something. You can feel badly hurt by something and have every single fact wrong. Diametrically wrong. That doesn't matter. Emotional wounds run deeper than truth can reach.
We often hear "but Biden" or "but Hillary" or "but the WEF" from the right. Whenever you try to bring one of Trump's many, many faults to the table, they come back with "but Biden broke it" or "but what about her e-mails?". Why? What is it about these people that rile up the right make it seem like such a trump card against your argument?
I think everything is tied to everything else in their minds. I think it's similar to a troubled relationship where any flaw of one person is met with the laundry list of past mistakes. Leave your socks on the ...
One thing that I think might be
- low hanging fruit
- generally useful maybe (though maybe also bad idk)
is to build a pipeline P that makes it easy to interact with large amounts of fairly legible media content. Specifically, things like
- point P at an author / source (e.g. a blog, twitter account, youtube channel, forum user; or a person, organization, political party), and then P indexes all the stuff from that source
- ask P what a given source says about X
- ask P to search for contradictions (e.g. a pundit saying J6 is terrible and then later saying J6 is fine, or what have you)
- ask P to collect all instances of X (e.g. instances of ICE officers behaving poorly)
- ask P to collate videos or other media into fast-paced clip shows
- given a bit of media (tweet, clip, etc.), fetch the full context
- etc.
This has good and bad uses. It would make it easier to clip-chimp. However, it might make it easier to break into really intense filter bubbles that are clip-brained, using concentrated memetic injections.
I think if Trump torpedoes the American economy and America's international reputation, that could be a very good thing from the perspective of AI x-risk.
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Torpedoes our economy: Could "pop the AI bubble" if the US economy crashes or just becomes less attractive as an investment destination.
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Torpedoes our international reputation: If Europeans start believing that American AI companies are on a path to omnicide (arguably a fairly accurate belief), they might put pressure on ASML to cut off the supply of chips to American AI companies.
I also think the people in my mostly-liberal-network are not really grappling with: the opposition needs to be able to peel away Republicans. I think the priority right now really needs to be "stop the erosion of the constitution and our institutions", not "try to fight for what would normally be the political agenda you're trying to bring about."
Yeah. I agree with this.
I feel annoyed that the "no kings" movement often brands itself as "no kings, no billionaires".
I have mixed feelings about billionaires (I'm sort of abstractly in favor of...
I think it's more than just "irresponsible". A big part of the argument is that billionaires have the capacity and incentive to do bad things. Like Facebook trying to get everyone hooked on their feed, or Walmart having tons of employees on food stamps. (Or the East India Company fighting a war to keep selling opium to the Chinese...) Big power motivated by greed doesn't always lead to good things. Sometimes it does, but it's not obvious that it's the best way.
It's in the top 7 things I consider dedicating this year to, maybe in the top 4.
What are the other 6?
Though we have opposition to Trump in common, and are probably closer culturally to the Democrat side than the Republican side, rationalists don't have that much overlap with Democrat priorities. In fact, Dean Ball has said "AI doomers are actually more at home on the political right than they are on the political left in America".
There have been a couple interesting third parties. A couple years ago Balaji Srinivasan was talking about a tech-aligned "Gray Tribe", which doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. Andrew Yang launched the Forward Party, focused on ...
1I would not trust Dean Ball as a trustworthy actor acting on the object-level, and certainly would not take any of his statements at face value! I think it's much better to model him as a combination of a political actor saying whatever words causes his political aims to be achieved, plus someone willing to pursue random vendettas.
Here's an ill-considered hot take: there may be more opportunity to do good by positioning yourself as MAGA (disingenuously, if you have to) and promoting stuff you think is important where MAGA is at least a little flexible (AI?), because my sense is that this kind of thing is pretty neglected vs opposition to Trump.
(not that I'm volunteering).
Peter Wildeford looks to me like he does tread carefully around criticism of the admin, I can't easily estimate his impact. Dean Ball has gone further in supporting the admin and seems to have been very impactful as...
This was written for FB and twitter where my filter bubble is strongly Democrat / Blue Tribe. I'd ideally update some of my phrasing for the somewhat more politically diverse LW, though I'm hoping my actual talking points still land pretty reasonably.
...
I am not currently Trying For Real to do anything about the Trump Administration. If I were, I'd be focused on finding and empowering a strong opposition leadership with bipartisan support.
It's in the top 7 things I consider dedicating this year to, maybe in the top 4. I could be persuaded to make it my #1 priority. Things seem pretty bad. The three reasons I'm not currently prioritizing it are:
1. I don't currently see an inroad to really helping
2. Figuring out what to do and upskilling into it would be a big endeavor.
3. AI is just also very important and much more neglected (i.e. ~half the country is aware that Trump is bad and out of control, a much teenier fraction understand that the world is about to get steamrolled by AI)[1]
My top priority, if I were getting more involved, would be trying to find and empower someone who is, like, the actual executive leader of the Trump Opposition (and ideally finding a coalition of leaders that include republicans, probably ex-Trump-staffers who have already taken the hit of getting kicked out of the administration)
The scariest thing about what's happening is how fast things move, how much Trump-et-al are clearly optimizing for the this blitz of stuff that's constantly fucking up people's Orient/Decide/Act loop. A scattered resistance seems like it basically won't work, there need's to be someone thinking like a Buck-stops-here leader, who has the usual cluster of "good leadership traits."
I currently guess such a person is basically also gathering the support to be the next presidential candidate (I think they need all the traits that would make a good presidential candidate).
(Their campaign slogan could be "Make America Great Again!", since Trump has seemed intent on destroying AFAICT that made America actually exceptional)
Anyone who's around and available is going to be imperfect. There's a fine line between "not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good" and "actually trying to find someone who is sufficiently great at leading the opposition."
(Gavin Newsome is the only guy I've heard of who seemed like he might be trying to play this role. I don't know that he is actually good enough, both in terms of competence and in terms of morals).
I also think the people in my mostly-liberal-network are not really grappling with: the opposition needs to be able to peel away Republicans. I think the priority right now really needs to be "stop the erosion of the constitution and our institutions", not "try to fight for what would normally be the political agenda you're trying to bring about."
I see people getting approximately as worked up over constitutional violations as various normal liberal talking points. We need a strong allyship between democrats and republicans.
I think a lot of democrats feel bitten by having tried to compromise in the past and feeling like the republicans kept defecting, and are now wary of anything that looks like compromise with republican leadership. This is reasonable, and I don't actually know what the solution here is. But, the solution doesn't look like enacting the standard playbook of how folk have been politically active over the past 20 years. That playbook clearly didn't work, whatever the solution is needs to look at least somewhat different than doubling down on the stuff you were doing already.
If I were spending more time on this, my next actions would be doing a more thorough review of who the existing leadership among the resistance are, what the existing networks and power structures are. I have a sinking feeling there's nobody who'll really stand out as a great contender, and I'm not sure what to do if that's the case.
But, the worlds where things go well, my current guess is we get a democrat-ish leader with a republican second-in-command, who are are able to lead a strong coordinated resistance, and who naturally transition to being a presidential/vice-presidential candidate in a couple years.
It's plausible I do end up focusing on "civilizational level 'improve discourse', as opposed to my normal focus on the rationality/x-risk community", which could pull doubleduty for "somehow help with Trump" and "somehow help with AI"