Second ('Third') Trump Presidency Thread

nsacpi said:
I guess the distinction between actual for real emergencies and fake emergencies is as elusive for y'all as actual for real attacks on our rights versus fake ones.
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Deflecting again

Who gets to define what’s a “real” emergency vs a “fake” one? In a “real” emergency, are all of our liberties to be suspended at the discretion of a single person?

I think we all can agree a hot war with an adversary that attacked our homeland is a “real emergency”. I don’t think it was moral (or legal) to mass arrest Japanese Americans to protect the rest of us.

I get you think these are silly arbitrary boundaries. But you forfeit the moral high ground when you lecture the rest of us on what liberties we are allowed to protect.
 
chop2chip said:
We could try having the philosophical discussions about the unchecked growth of the executive. It would actually serve as a solution for the problems the “no kings” protests rightly called out.

Last time we tried that though it didn’t go very far. It was dismissed as a fake appeal to the Constitution (Iran strikes) or as an attack on the welfare state (withholding Harvard funding.

If all other discussions ultimately devolve into “if you didn’t vote for X, then you implicitly support Y”, that’s too bad.
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It’s too bad …and deeply idiotic.
 
chop2chip said:
Deflecting again

Who gets to define what’s a “real” emergency vs a “fake” one? In a “real” emergency, are all of our liberties to be suspended at the discretion of a single person?

I think we all can agree a hot war with an adversary that attacked our homeland is a “real emergency”. I don’t think it was moral (or legal) to mass arrest Japanese Americans to protect the rest of us.

I get you think these are silly arbitrary boundaries. But you forfeit the moral high ground when you lecture the rest of us on what liberties we are allowed to protect.
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Why do you say I'm deflecting. I'm giving my response. Maybe you disagree or don't like it. I would say millions dying around the world and hundreds of thousands dying in this country adds up to an actual for real emergency. As Potter Stewart once observed about pornography "I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it."
 
nsacpi said:
Why do you say I'm deflecting. I'm giving my response. Maybe you disagree or don't like it. I would say millions dying around the world and hundreds of thousands dying in this country adds up to an actual for real emergency. As Potter Stewart once observed about pornography "I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it."
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So your guidelines for emergency is intuition?

Whose intuition?

Based on that intuition, what are they allowed to do to protect their flock?
 
chop2chip said:
So your guidelines for emergency is intuition?

Whose intuition?

Based on that intuition, what are they allowed to do to protect their flock?
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You asked for a definition. There are such a wide variety of things that could be emergencies that I confined myself to one involving public health. Is there any controversy that something that kills hundreds of thousands in a short time is an emergency? I don't think so.
 
chop2chip said:
When President Mamdani declares poverty a public emergency, can he use that to justify seizing the means of production?
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Arguing that the word emergency to describe a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands should not be used cuz Mandami or Trump might someday misuse emergency powers is crazy. Carried to its logical extent it is a recipe for paralysis. We dare not do anything for this paralyzing (and not entirely logical) fear that it might via some weird convoluted logic lead to something bad.
 
nsacpi said:
You asked for a definition. There are such a wide variety of things that could be emergencies that I confined myself to one involving public health. Is there any controversy that something that kills hundreds of thousands in a short time is an emergency? I don't think so.
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I agree Covid was a public health emergency.

Pearl Harbor was a national emergency.

Now answer my last two questions (which is the entire crux of the debate)
 
nsacpi said:
It's an interesting parallel you are attempting there. It's just bizarre to me that a response to a public health emergency that killed millions and that has not led to any lasting diminution to liberty is being cited as the thing is causing what Trump is doing. Your attempt to blame his persecution of Harvard on the welfare state was slightly better. Slightly doing a lot of work there.
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Eh, I happen to agree with the argument that it can be hard to strike the right balance between public safety needs and personal liberties during a pandemic, but I do think this is a stretch. Even if I don’t go for the nonsense about the vaccine being some sort of Trojan horse that is killing healthy people, many people were all but required to take it regardless of their desire to do so, and the long-term closing of schools may have done irreparable harm to a generation of children. Even if you argue these were necessary measures, it’s not nothing.
 
mqt said:
Eh, I happen to agree with the argument that it can be hard to strike the right balance between public safety needs and personal liberties during a pandemic, but I do think this is a stretch. Even if I don’t go for the nonsense about the vaccine being some sort of Trojan horse that is killing healthy people, many people were all but required to take it regardless of their desire to do so, and the long-term closing of schools may have done irreparable harm to a generation of children. Even if you argue these were necessary measures, it’s not nothing.
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My point is that life today is not any less free than it was prior to the pandemic. There was no slippery slope, contrary to the febrile protestations of some of our distinguished posters. What freedoms have we lost. We can still go to church. We can still post on social media the president is a clown. Etc, etc.

It seems to me the slippery slope argument has not turned out to be valid. It was a prediction about how pandemic restrictions would affect our liberties. And it turned out to be wrong. Not a single liberty is diminished compared to the situation before covid.
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1940513876640243788

This isn’t even a criticism of cutting Medicaid, but what the fuck can you do with this? Trump might be quicker on his feet than Biden, but he seems deeply disinterested in even the smallest details of the things he demands of others. You simply cannot cut taxes, increase spending in a number of categories and then leave other major spending untouched.
 
nsacpi said:
My point is that life today is not any less free than it was prior to the pandemic. There was no slippery slope, contrary to the febrile protestations of some of our distinguished posters. What freedoms have we lost. We can still go to church. We can still post on social media the president is a clown. Etc, etc.

It seems to me the slippery slope argument has not turned out to be valid. It was a prediction about how pandemic restrictions would affect our liberties. And it turned out to be wrong. Not a single liberty is diminished compared to the situation before covid.
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But you can use that sort of rationale for basically any abuse so long as an opposition party exists. If Republicans continue to fuck around and be awful at this and Dems win in ‘26 and ‘28, none of Trump’s actions right now will likely result in any permanent reduction of liberty. A slippery slope argument isn’t quelled by the electorate punishing the people potentially building the slope.
 
mqt said:
But you can use that sort of rationale for basically any abuse so long as an opposition party exists. If Republicans continue to fuck around and be awful at this and Dems win in ‘26 and ‘28, none of Trump’s actions right now will likely result in any permanent reduction of liberty. A slippery slope argument isn’t quelled by the electorate punishing the people potentially building the slope.
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Yes

Just as the fact that we no longer send Japanese Americans to camps doesn’t mean it wasn’t an immoral act and a direct violation of the bill or rights for those we sent to camps.
 
chop2chip said:
Whose intuition?

Based on that intuition, what are they allowed to do to protect their flock?
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It depends on the society's institutions. Could be a council of elders. Elected representatives. The people themselves. That's the mechanism for taking action

But in a different sense it is for each of us to decide and discuss. There will be varying degrees of consensus. As we have seen. Some countries were much more cohesive in their response to covid. For others it was much more contentious.

I suspect all of the above will continue to apply to future "emergencies." Societies evolve ways of dealing with them. But sometimes they are so different that a new response has to be invented. Or culture and technology can evolve to make the old playbook no longer relevant.

It is a little known fact but the modern welfare state (Scandinavian version) grew out of the Spanish flu pandemic. So sometimes there can be large and unexpected consequences. The Roman Empire seems to have declined and eventually collapsed in large part because of its inability to respond effectively to a series of pandemics.
 
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mqt said:
Eh, I happen to agree with the argument that it can be hard to strike the right balance between public safety needs and personal liberties during a pandemic, but I do think this is a stretch. Even if I don’t go for the nonsense about the vaccine being some sort of Trojan horse that is killing healthy people, many people were all but required to take it regardless of their desire to do so, and the long-term closing of schools may have done irreparable harm to a generation of children. Even if you argue these were necessary measures, it’s not nothing.
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Indeed. Let's not also forget the deaths of despair. The spousal and child abuse. The massive increase in obesity and alcoholism. Deaths of despair rose. Family relationships were severed (including my own).

Let's not also forget that damage to pur institutional legitimacy. Now more people than ever are hesitant about vaccines. And why should they believe the FDA today?

Oh, and let's not forget about the destruction of the dollar, our purchasing power, and our country's finances that we still have not and apparently will not revert to prior to the emergency.


All of that would have been less insulting if they got it right. But all of their recommendations lockdowns, 6 ft, masks, vaccines preventing spread) all turned out to be bullshit
 
Just so im following... the liberties destroyed during covid are no big deal bc now they have mostly been restored (thanks RDS!)

But what Trump is doing today is a constitutional crisis because they will be forever permanent

... skip college kiddos
 
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