Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake | Hacker News Reader

Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

wsj.com

> Mr. Koch threw his weight behind the new movement and its candidates. “We did not create the tea party. We shared their concern about unsustainable government spending, and we supported some tea-party groups on that issue,” Mr. Koch wrote in an email. “But it seems to me the tea party was largely unsuccessful long-term, given that we’re coming off a Republican administration with the largest government spending in history.”

He's not apologizing for the partisanship, he regrets losing - or at least backing the volatile horse that turned out that he couldn't control.

Bear with me here.

The US created the Taliban to fight the Russians, they used some theocratic motifs to do it, most leverage, very efficient. Call this, The Playbook.

Well The Playbook was used by members of the Taliban to create ISIS, because the Taliban was too soft.

The Republicans are good at creating some memes that have high total power, are efficient and are also hard to control. I don't see this genie going back in the bottle.

> The US created the Taliban to fight the Russians,

This is false. The US created (or funded, armed, and strengthened, whatever) the Mujahedeen to fight the Russians. I think most of the warring groups that were fighting for control after the Russians left trace back the Mujahedeen in some way, there's nothing special about the Taliban in that regard.

> Well The Playbook was used by members of the Taliban to create ISIS

ISIS wasn't created by members of the Taliban, it grew out of an unrelated Iraqi islamist opposition group (the connection it had with the Taliban was distant; the Taliban and al-Qaeda had a deep relationship for a while, and later the group that became ISIS spent a while branded as an al-Qaeda affiliate.)

Thanks for filling in the specifics. My point still stands in how we create movements based on a tactic and it spreads wider than we can control.

Koch is explaining how _his_ movement got away from him in a similar manner. If you are running self maintaining processes that spread effortlessly, at some point you will be under water.

Alternative headline:

Geriatric Mega-Donor Rethinks Legacy of Political Influence in Wake of Billionaire Presidency, Brother's Passing

He spent four decades architecting the pay-for-play political loopholes whose exploitation has become endemic to American politics.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/07/charle...

It's only too late to repent when you're dead.

There is no longer the web link to read this if you don't have a subscription to WSJ.

It feels like the manipulative media is free. And, thoughtful discussion is behind a pay wall. I do pay for subscriptions but not to all of them.

I'm really interested in understanding whether the surviving Koch is putting his money where his intentions are and funding the bridge. I'm assuming this is what the article talks about.

Maybe he and a bunch of other billionaires could provide free media access. Funding NYT and WSJ? It will never happen. What about paying salaries of journalists directly in addition to their salaries at the media companies? What about a blind trust where they had no say over what the journalists said?

Meanwhile, his group is right this minute stoking fears of voter fraud.

https://www.scribd.com/document/481968428/True-North-Researc...

You reap what you sow

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