Thread by @politicalmath

This account looks like it's run by an unstable schizophrenic but that's just because I'm constantly trying to talk both about what *should* happen and also what *is* happening

Both those things are important but they are very different

There are tons of things that should happen but that won't happen because we've spent years dissolving the preconditions that make the "should" possible

How do we get the "should" back? I don't know.

But I've watched a lot of people over the last 15 years try to get the "should" back and their main strategy is "give something to my opponent to show I'm operating in good faith and then we can barter"

In their minds, they *should* show good faith and get something in return. In reality, they offer a concession, that concession it taken, and then they are pantsed in front of the class and the school bully kicks them in the balls and steals their lunch money.

A bunch of the other kids watched that happen and thought "holy shit, there is no value in good faith" and so they no longer offer good faith

Should they? Maybe in an ideal world. But they can see that this is not the world we live in.

So now we're outside of the realm of "should". I can make some observations about what is happening and you can take that as what it is (the online ravings of a half-coherent insane person) and judge it against what you see in the world.

Why am I saying this? Honestly it is to bury this little nugget of truth:

Should: The gov't should NOT threaten things like FCC license revocation. That's gross and I hate it.

Is: Small threats work. They might be gross, they might by ugly, but they fucking work.

What are we to do with this information?

I could haughtily say "I would never do such a thing" but what does that matter? I don't have that kind of power and I never will., in part because I'm the sort of person who says "I would never so such a thing"

The truth is that these gross threats are used all the time by politicians to get what they want. Threats are incredibly effective b/c they are extremely low cost. They involve zero actions. But they imply the possibility of very high costs in the future.

Trump 2.0 has no problem with threats. They use them liberally and eagerly because they are low cost.

This isn't new, Biden did this all the time. Threat after threat after threat. Obama did it some, but with more subtlety.

Trump is not famous for his subtlety.

Can we stop this? I don't know. SCOTUS was given the chance to limit the ability of the executive branch to pressure private companies under Biden and they said "Nah, vague threats don't count"

scotusblog.com/2024/06/justic…

So now we have a SCOTUS precedent, ruled when Biden was president, that vague threats from the executive branch don't count as gov't coercion. And now Trump is president.

Lol

Lmao