On Enjoying Election Year Halloween
Trump on Rogan, Kamala on Daddy, and Links for October, 2024
I recently had the thought that Halloween gets lost in the shuffle during election years. When this realization hit me, I started to actually feel very bad for the holiday, like it was a person. Is this what nationalists feel about their “nation”, which I think is completely fake and a stupid thing to care about? Maybe. But I am suddenly overcome with compassion, and really want everyone to engage in Halloween themed activities today.
Maybe it’s because in the run up to elections, people are actually scared, and for much of the public there’s something unsettling about having a holiday that revolves around the idea of scaring each other for fun a few days before we’re going to pick a president. And perhaps that’s why I feel so bad for Halloween itself, since I think people take politics way too seriously and should relax. I’m not a braindead populist type who thinks elections don’t have real consequences, but no single one is going to determine the future of the country. The battle of ideas is worth engaging in, but elections are just a single front in that battle, and one where there are more shades of grey than there are elsewhere.
So today, make sure to strike a blow against neuroticism and tribalism, and enjoy Election Year Halloween to the fullest extent possible.
On to the links and commentary, which includes reviews of Trump on Rogan and Kamala on Daddy, and topics like whether MAGAs will be able to overturn the election, the relationship between progress studies and libertarianism, the emergence of a moderate wing of the Taliban, and unions moving towards Trump.
1. The story of the Jane Collective, which performed underground abortions for women in the years before Roe. Had no idea about this history. I always thought that if you ban abortion women, mostly just give up, or at least that was true in previous decades, but no, they created a real underground market/charity system.
2. Jill Stein profile in the NYT makes clear that she actually wants to be a spoiler for Kamala, with a campaign seemingly targeted towards that purpose. That’s one way to get into the history books. Her Jewish socialist self-righteousness reminds me of Bernie Sanders, and makes me wonder if she could’ve ended up a party man like him if she was from Vermont or things went a bit differently.
3. Douthat on the logical inconsistencies of mainstream pro-life and pro-choice positions. He’s right but I think trying to find consistency in what political movements say is a fool’s errand. Logical consistency is worth appealing to if your goal is to convince others at an intellectual level, but when you focus on the level of mass persuasion and winning votes every movement will say things that contradict one another. On the substance of this question, I prefer my “life is a continuum” argument and I think this is a view a lot of people hold implicitly.
4. According to New York Magazine, flying cars are here. They're just sort of illegal and the hope is you skate enough around the regulations so that the FAA doesn't shut you down. Specific regulations lead to arbitrary design choices that help you get around the rules. But, "[t]he rules explicitly warn that if the agency comes to feel that its liberality is being taken advantage of, it may have to crack down." There appears to be no public interest the government might need to protect here. The FAA isn't worried about people causing dangers to third parties. It's simply a matter of individual safety and paternalism. Good luck to those working on this.
5. I listened to Kamala on Call Her Daddy. This is the first time I ever heard the show. Really nothing of note in what Kamala said, she's a normal politician and sticks to her talking points. I was more interested in what the Daddy phenomenon represents.
For most podcasts, I skip over the commercials, but in this one I was more interested in them than the content. The commercials were for athleisure wear that looks good, lip balm, over-the-counter birth control, and a dating website that promises safety. This podcast has a massive audience, and it’s composed of normal women, comfortable with their femininity, wanting to look good and date men. They may spout every politically correct talking point about race and sex, but if so it's only skin deep. They're neither on the same side of conservatives nor their mortal enemies. A huge swing demographic that represents Taylor Swift normalcy, and will largely determine the future of our politics.
6. I also listened to Trump on Rogan. First, he was a lot more there than I expected. Yes he makes stuff up, says whatever he thinks sounds cool in the moment, and keeps forcing the conversation back to how great he is and how everyone loves him. But he did three hours and was engaged, never lost the whole time. This wasn’t Biden. Voters can tell the difference.
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