I explain why Trump emerged on the right, why only liberals debate filibuster reform, anti-vax as a partisan issue, how David Shor is half right, "Dems are the real racists" and much else. A theory of left and right with a focus on communication technology richardhanania.substack.com/p/liberals-rea…
Liberals rely on a combination of TV/radio and the written word. Conservatives are almost completely dependent on TV/radio. Liberals even trust conservative papers like The NY Post and WSJ more. This reflect two broad psychological profiles and has many important implications.
Over the last decades, we've gotten a lot more mass mobilization on both sides. People are getting more into politics, as technology allows each side to recruit different types. Republicans have been getting pro wrestling fans, Dems status seekers and those suffering psychic pain
GOP politics since 2001 has zigzagged several times in what it emphasizes, going from democratizing the Middle East, to Tea Party, to immigration, and now to opposing vaccine mandates. TV watchers are inconsistent, while a culture based on written word has ideological evolution.
The two sides lie in different ways. "Directional" versus "non-directional." Liberals lie in ways that are consistent with their ideology ("police killing innocent black men"). Republicans lie in random directions, say they're the party of civil rights or protecting entitlements
The cycle of how the country moves left on social issues. It requires activists that are willing to do things that are against the short-term political interests of their own side, which is difficult to do for a tribal movement that only cares about beating their enemies.
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US-India relationship is being harmed because Pakistan is more willing to kiss up to Trump, and Modi has too much pride to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize when he didn’t do anything.
Mr. Trump contends that he used trade as leverage to get the two sides to stop fighting. After these enticements and warnings, he said, “all of a sudden they said, ‘I think we will stop’” the fighting.
Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts released! See here for thread on the most interesting parts. 1/n
Ghislaine is asked whether Epstein ever received money from any intelligence agency, including Mossad. She replies that not as far as she knows and she would be surprised if he did.
Epstein started taking testosterone in the late 1990s. But he was not on any other substances.
Man comes to the US from Lebanon. Starts out delivering pizzas, becomes a Nobel winning neuroscientist. Trump freezes his funding, he gets an email from China offering to move his lab “any city, any university I want" with guaranteed funding for 20 years.
How to think about immigration. You should be paranoid about the possibility that the US rejects geniuses. One brilliant entrepreneur can or inventor can carry a lot of dead weight. Almost all immigration is good, but this would be true even if it wasn't. richardhanania.com/p/exchange-wit…
Earlier I discussed Casey Means, Trump's nominee for Surgeon General, and her mystical and quack beliefs.
I've looked into her story about how she left her residency. It's very strange, and indicates that there's something that we don't yet know.
Means says she was in an otolaryngology residency and almost finished, but she instead decided to quit because her surgical residency didn't focus on nutrition enough. Isn't that something she would have known well before 4 years of residency, on top of medical school?
I think the real reason was she was unfit. Look at her cohort. The other two doctors went straight through their residency normally. Means, in contrast, had a one month gap between June-July 2018. I don't know what can explain this, but it indicates something abnormal happened.
Trump just nominated Casey Means for Surgeon General.
This is a lunatic who will do serious damage to public health. Thread here, which will only be able to scratch the surface.
She'll be the first occupant of the office to believe in using spiritual mediums, praying to ancestor shrines, doing full moon ceremonies to amplify her dreams, asking the trees in the forest to deliver her a hunky man, being a shroomhead, and praising indigenous wisdom.
She has no academic achievements to speak of. All she did was med school and she dropped out before completing her residency. This is weird, as anyone in medicine will tell you.
I've written the Trump reckoning you've been waiting for.
I used to think Dems would turn us into Western Europe. That looks good now when the other side is offering third world levels of incompetence, corruption, and authoritarianism.
I convinced myself that the choice was between leftism and conservatism, but it's actually first world leftism versus third world authoritarianism.
I didn't want to believe it! It means I have to be much more pessimistic about the future of America.
Partly it's because I was getting bad information. People close to the admin told me that RFK wouldn't be at HHS and economic policy wouldn't be so insane. But it turns out I was only talking to people who agreed with me, and they were engaging in their own wishful thinking.