Is America exceptionally good or exceptionally bad? | Hacker News Reader

Is America exceptionally good or exceptionally bad?

economist.com

6 pointsbrimnes7 comments

I agree that the gloomy attitude on the Left is going to hurt them in 2022 and 2024. While certainly the Right is unreasonably self-assured, the majority of the population doesn’t seem to think that the country is as bad as some on the Left make it out to be. And as such, they are selling solutions to problems that a majority of voters don’t see. Compare this to the traditional “jobs and public safety” message that the GOP tends to run on.

The other trend I’ve noticed is that when events occur that should help support the narrative of the left (such as the awful murder of George Floyd), instead of focusing on making incremental improvements (improve training, ban chokeholds, end war on drugs), they go all in (defund the police * ).

* I know that “defund the police” doesn’t actually mean “defund the police” but maybe we should go with slogans that, and this is a tad crazy I know, don’t mean something other than what the actual goal is?

God the amount of my more progressive peers smugly saying that “defund the police” doesn’t really mean totally disband the police but it’s catchy enough to get the message across baffles me. Merits of the idea aside, quit giving a foothold for your opponents, and then acting holier than thou for seeing them take advantage of it to convince people that the progressives are losing their minds.

I find that the left-wing in the US in general seems too enamored with big ticket wins (see infrastructure bill, social spending bill, and voting rights bill). They completely ignore small-ball politics — appointing bureaucrats, stacking courts, procedural minutiae, local governments — unlike their conservative counterparts, who despite losing the majorities and the white house itself, have put allies so deeply into political mechanisms that they can control the tempo and timing of how things are run across the country.

Meanwhile, the State department languishes without ambassadors because the current government is too distracted trying to pass a bill doomed to fail.

I hear you. Even “black lives matter” practically invites the response “all lives matter”. It seems like some on the Left (and I consider myself slightly left of center) deliberately push these terms as a sort left wing dog whistle. I have encountered many well-meaning people who truly believe “all lives, including but not limited to black lives, matter” and when they don’t understand/aren’t aware of the nuance of “‘Black Lives Matter’ actually means ‘Black Lives Matter, too’” they are called racists. Way to alienate many natural allies US Leftists.

This is by design. The game theoretic winning strategy is to highly target 50% of the voting population (adjusted for electoral representation) and by doing that you are guaranteed to piss off or confuse a lot of the remainder. Imagine you craft a set of policies that appeals to 70% of the voting population. I then craft a set of policies that appeals to 65% but because it is smaller it is also more highly targeted so it steals voters from you. You then craft a set of policies that appeals to 60% but because it is smaller it is more highly targeted and you steal voters for me. Continue until we both have policies that appeal to 50%. The rest is pretty much up to chance and incumbent effects.

Because we have somewhat arbitrarily divided a highly multi dimensional space representing voter preference in two it isn't really a straight cut so there are a lot of idealogical inconsistencies and contradictions and whatnot and since there are a lot of angles at which you can cut something into equal parts the angle of the cut can rotate quite freely in this space so the two sides rotate around in this highly multi dimensional space confusing us poor 3d creatures.

At least, that is why I think Tucker Carlson was mad about M&M's being made less sexy than they once were.

> This is by design. The game theoretic winning strategy is to highly target 50% of the voting population (adjusted for electoral representation) and by doing that you are guaranteed to piss off or confuse a lot of the remainder. Imagine you craft a set of policies that appeals to 70% of the voting population. I then craft a set of policies that appeals to 65% but because it is smaller it is also more highly targeted so it steals voters from you. You then craft a set of policies that appeals to 60% but because it is smaller it is more highly targeted and you steal voters for me. Continue until we both have policies that appeal to 50%. The rest is pretty much up to chance and incumbent effects.

I still think though that with American politics at least, the average voter isn't ideologically dogmatic enough to be resistance to counter-points by the other side that appeal to base emotions of security and economic prosperity. Jobs and Crimes platforms are potent. The two sides aren't equally weighted. One side as an advantage that the above strategy needs to overcome in a better way than "Defund (disband) police."

>At least, that is why I think Tucker Carlson was mad about M&M's being made less sexy than they once were.

That's a very generous take on the matter . . . but I think it's more comedic to think there is something else going on lol.

The Answer Prancer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfXP1KbXPXQ

Yes.

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