volkris @volkris@qoto.org

For people interested in #USPolitics this episode of #Cato Daily Podcast is pretty short and informative.

Briefly, it looks at the evolving divide among #conservatives / #Republican party members and notably how the more #Trump aligned side has come to focus on politics primarily as a tool for attacking enemies, not building anything up.

This is important for a few reasons, both to understand them so as to figure out how to react to them AND as a way of predicting how things will work out, since that approach has little traction in the broader public.

Trump was elected by a coalition of different groups with vastly different, often contradictory interests. This evolution utterly breaks the coalition, though.

https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/natcons-vs-freecons

#politicalscience

I'm not surprised to hear a report like this...

#Mastodon #coding

There's an old idea of fairness that when cutting a cake between two people one person cuts and the other picks the piece they want.

This method aligns the interests of both parties, no matter how corruptible and *human* they may be.

I think it's underappreciated how often the US government design has a similar method in its checks and balances: one group can reject an official, but they don't get to choose the replacement.

See, for example, impeachment proceedings.

After all: "This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public."

--Hamilton (maybe)

#USPolitics #politicalscience #federalistpapers #hamilton

While The Guardian and ProPublica put out their increasingly dramatic stories about webs of associates surrounding #SCOTUS sometimes I end up wondering if those reporters have undisclosed investments in red yarn and thumbtack suppliers.

It's like, their bulletin boards still have some extra room, so let's grab more yarn and add the cashier who served the driver who drove the... and on and on.

It comes across as a bit nutty.

A Scanner Darkly vibes to this one

To understand the state of #USPolitics, and US society more broadly, a person has to realize that the process against #Trump isn't merely two camps who want the guy found innocent or guilty after a weighing of the evidence.

No, it is as if there was a murder trial where one side believed they were having beers with the purported victim as the trial was going on.

It's not a matter of legal technicality or weighing preponderances of evidence or reasonable doubt; it's a matter of the country being divided over fundamental fact, here whether a person is alive or not.

It's not a political division. Sadly it's a reality division.

Cute, from an older article

>But it’s the International Astronomical Union, not the International Geophysical Union. And the people who voted on the new planet classification were overwhelmingly astronomers, even if some proportion (most?) were planetary astronomers.

[Pluto is a Planet](https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/pluto-is-a-planet}

#science #astronomy #pluto

I always get a kick out of people who ask the exact right question, rhetorically, when the literal answer is squarely the one needed to counter their stance.

Case in point, a clip of #Trump stumping with, "How can [they] put me on trial during an election campaign[..]?"

Well, sure, sir, let's walk you through how the judicial process works in the US, since it sounds like you could use a review, and then cover how your own choices opened you up to that process.

That should be a pretty complete answer to "How?" ... thanks for asking.

But mainly, I think I've heard lawyers say to never ask a witness a question when you're not positive the answer would support your case.
It's good advice in general.

#USPolitics #rhetoric

This strikes me as another well thought out critique of #Mastodon developers' choices.

And no, they're not able to just blame #ActivityPub for these things, at least not all of them.

There's this bizarre thing that happens all too often where a press report lays out some facts and then a conclusion that doesn't merely give context for the facts or a certain interpretation of the facts but instead outright states the opposite of the facts that were just presented.

I generally see this happen from outlets that aren't exactly top tier sources of #journalism and I end up wondering whether the reporter is intentionally misleading their audience, and if so intentionally applying a strategy whereby simple spin would be noticed but outright contradiction would fly under the psychological radar.

It's a phenomenon akin to a reporter saying it is currently daytime, but instead of discussing how much the clouds may or may not be blocking the sun, instead asserting that it is dark because the sun set a while back.

The sort of thing really does contribute to people in society having such different ideas about what is verifiably true. And it's just so strange to see.

You know what's not a great argument to tell somebody who is noticing that they are being gaslit?

"You are not being gaslit."

Yeah, that doesn't really help, to be honest :)