sometimes it becomes obvious (eg the # of people confident that if they pulled the right string and dumped the right millions they could stop Mamdani) but since so much intra elite lobbying is private, it's easy to lie, easy to misread, and easy to claim credit for something you just heard about.

there is also the messy lurking bit here that many of them think they have more control than they do, and/or front to others to seem more powerful

and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

Fondly do we hope - fervently do we pray - that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk...'

"The retired SEAL told CNN that he had voted for President Donald Trump, but that Hegseth—who has been on a crusade to root out what he calls unqualified diversity hires—was failing to retain top talent [...].

“She was the best man for the job,” he said. “There is absolutely no DEI.”"

Ellis begins by quoting from Carl Sandburg's "Chicago": www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

*gesticulating wildly at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries*

Mass politics is gone in countries with different campaign finance laws, though, and much stronger parties than the US. I think it's all mobility - personal, financial, media. People are not stuck inside their social structures as hard as they used to be. They can just skeleton meme walk out.

the nineties lasted much longer in action movies than it did in real life and it's fascinating! my pet take is that this tracks very closely on a movie's emphasis on pistols v. long guns (this eventually breaks down in the post-wick era)

No. This is the last time I'm going to try and engage here before I assume we are too far apart here to have a useful conversation, because I am tired of the really aggro restatements.

which like if you're honest that's what you're doing, sure, but a lot of people pretend they have a consistent broad principle involved here

anyway my broader actual take on the issue is that Jain, Grumbach, and Bonica are all basically good faith actors disagreeing on an extremely complex epistemological problem from slighlty differing perspectives (isolating causality vs. prediction) and the Nate Silver is an asshole.

this really fucked me up on a first skim, horse, you're scaring me