Good. Welcome to the Democrats. We have a lot of work to do on our own party, but the difference is that I can see a potential path to sanity on this side and not at all on the Republican side.
Yes, the people who can’t define a woman and have been screeching that the world was ending for 50 years are the sane ones. The people still wearing masks that don’t do anything are the sane ones. The people that believe open racial discrimination is the ethical policy are the sane ones. Come on.
The question isn’t whether or not you agree with the stupidest version of the left. The question is which of the two parties has the most foundation left to rebuild on. (or, if both are irredeemable, how you’re going to build a party and national governing coalition from scratch without becoming a joke like the Green Party or something)
In other words, which one is closer to a coherent and salvageable position? Take DEI for example. Yeah, I agree legally, constitutionally, and ethically that the answer to discrimination is to stop discriminating, not to “discriminate for good.” But my choices are “DEI did nothing wrong” or “let’s DEI even harder to own the libs.” Personally, I feel the former has at least a moral foundation - rooted in a desire for justice and equal opportunity, albeit gone way off the rails - that could potentially be salvaged, while the latter appears to be a naked pursuit of power. I think I have a better chance of getting my liberal friends to inject a healthy dose of libertarianism and 14A EP respect into their liberalism, than to convince someone who thinks (to steal the example) the Harvard physics department needs to make GOP Affirmative Action hires that they need to have principles.
Conversely, I think Originalism is an actual, internally-consistent theory of jurisprudence and the left’s is incoherent and incomprehensible, so on that topic I think it’s the other way around.
Reasonable people obviously may disagree with me. But I think this is the argument that needs to happen.
The difference is that those people don't run the Democratic Party. What Dems need to do is take Ezra Klein/ Matt Yglesias/ Ruy Tuxeira seriously on an abundance agenda and pivot to the center on social issues. The modern GOP otoh... oh boy
The world is fucking ending though, whether you like it or not. Theres not much time left. Climate change is going to fuck is all within a few decades.
Climate change used to be my #1 issue, but Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias have convinced me otherwise. We need to get a handle on it, but the world isn't going to end. Or, it won't end because of climate change. We've already dodged the worst case scenarios, and China, being very vulnerable to flooding, has a huge incentive to go green.
There's very little of your Nos. 1 & 2 in his little fantasy list. It's almost entirely #3, though his brain is so melted he'll never be able to realize it.
Yes. Worth remembering that, at the end of the day, it is what we make of it. The establishment of both sides is falling apart; we need to turn one of these parties into a viable, sane party. Ignore the haters. Do what is right. What other option do you have, anyway?
I would say that I took your views to their logical conclusion outlined in a post about supporting Kamala over Trump. The main two points that pushed me over the edge into fully accepting the LHC thesis was Jan 6 and the Republican presidential primary.
Trump flagrantly getting away with Jan 6th without punishment polarized the right and left into sorting on the basis of worshipping Trump. His coasting to victory in the primary solidified this fact, which served as proof to me that the Trump 2 project was doomed.
The MAGAs being an insane cult of personality has been obvious for ages. You folks didn't want to believe it because it would mean us liberals were right about fucking everything. I knew how evil and stupid Trump was in 2015. I am not happy to be proven right over and over, because the death of the nation is upon us now and you guys didn't listen when you had the chance to stop it . I predicted all of this would happen last year and warned everyone and was told I was fear mongering. But I knew this is what conservatism actually is in America, the belief that rich white people can do anything and are above the law and the rest of us are simply serfs to be abused and told what to do.
The solution is for Democrats to go tribal just like Republicans. The problem for pundits is that once everyone goes tribal there should be less need for pundits…the fact that tribalism has created more Republican pundits means their voters see politics as a hobby and that consuming #fakenews to hate Democrats more is fundamentally what their hobby is about.
Trump didn’t do anything on January 6th? In fact, basically no one did anything on January 6th.
Compared to the looting and rioting happening unchecked all over the country for months, January 6th was nothing. People walked around a government building, many of them were welcomed in by police officers. The entire thing was media narrative and the actual footage directly contradicts everything we were told.
On January 6, Donald Trump enacted a plot to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States. He attempted to pressure Mike Pence into throwing out the electoral votes of seven states - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - because this would result in him winning when he would have lost. Obviously, it was not the intent of the people who wrote the Constitution that the VP should have such a power. When Mike Pence refused to go along with this nonsense, Donald Trump organized a "Stop the Steal" rally, and then sent the riled-up rallygoers directly to the Capitol Building. As they physically broke in to the building (the first person to enter was a Proud Boy, who broke a window using a riot shield - he was pardoned, of course, along with various cop beaters, by Donald Trump), Trump watched and did nothing, for hours, because he wanted to use them as a cudgel to make Mike Pence do what he wanted.
This is just obviously, factually true. If you do not believe it then you live in an epistemic bubble.
"John is one of the most brilliant lawyers in the country, and he looked at this and he said, " What an absolute disgrace, that this could be happening to our constitution." He looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do. This is from the number one or certainly one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our constitution, and protect our constitution. States want to revote. The States got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people." - Donald Trump, January 6, 2021.
This is why they were chanting "Hang Mike Pence". The John he refers to is John Eastman, of the Eastman memos, outlining the details of this plan.
Then he sent the mob to the Capitol Building, and we all know the rest. It took him 183 minutes to tell them to stop. Why do you think that is?
You can't just say "that's an anecdote" when the other party gives you evidence bro. You can't just say "the legal record does not support at any level" when he was in the process of being prosecuted for this - and the Feds almost never lose a prosecution - before he won reelection. Actually point out what part of these statements was false.
Look, engaging with these people is useless. If, at this point, you don’t understand that January 6 was a violent coup attempt, a Substack comment isn’t gonna do anything. If a majority of the country even had a basic factual understanding of what happened this man would never have been allowed to run for an election again in the United States. The fact that it didn’t happen shows we have some extremely serious problems with the continuation of liberal democracy in this country.
Thanks for this article. It’s very good. I’m a utilitarian and I’d imagine that you’re at least consequentialist adjacent in thinking. But I think Trump shows how in practice having some deontological thought processes can give better utilitarian outcomes. The future is very hard to predict but deontological norms are often there for a reason. We can out predict them less often than we think we can.
My take on your psychology is that you were seduced by the involvement of tech bros, many of whom have been swallowed up by Trump’s Catturdism. That you lost sight of the experience of his first admin and the observable realities tied to Jan 6.
Regardless, much respect for your honesty and self-reflection.
> At the state level, conservatism remains largely healthy, as we can see in the way that red states, particularly Florida and Texas, have been performing over the last few decades.
As a Texan, don't forget: Ken Paxton is trying to primary Cornyn right now, and we already somehow decided his blatant corruption is fine. That may not stay true for very much longer.
I wish you had read Sam Harris’ pre-election endorsement of Kamala Harris. Everything you wrote here was predicted.
I agree with most of that you wrote but your criticisms of social democrats are mostly unfounded. The richest states are in fact the most blue. Also, the relative fortunes of the US and Europe diverged mostly after 2008, not before (looking at productivity per hour), and the reason has mostly to do with fiscal responses to the global financial crisis.
"The richest states are in fact the most blue" - this is true, and I'm always baffled at why Richard and other right-leaners try to argue, "look at (insert red state)'s growth!!!" when its easy for any flyover state to "improve" from rock bottom. Meanwhile, for example, more decisions affecting America and what it buys are still made on Madison Avenue, New York, not Madison county, Kentucky.
Blue states could catch up to red states in growth with an Abundance agenda (zoning reform alone would do wonders) without ceasing to be social democrat.
I agree with you more than you think. That said, let’s not pretend that “20% faster growth” is impressive when you’re starting at below zero. This is the economic/political equivalent of applauding your 21 year old son for finally learning how to tie his shoe laces.
You don’t like conflict you say, and accuse me of promulgating it. Yet here you are denigrating and insulting states simply because they’re red. You don’t even see how arrogant and bigoted you sound, do you.
I'm not insulting anyone; just calling balls and strikes. Blue states are often wealthier than red states. In fact, California alone is the 4th biggest economy in the world. Yes, red states are growing more, and faster...and yet, blue states are still wealthier and where the real money is made. If you can't deal with this reality, that's a you issue. Like I said, I agree with you more than you might think; I agree that blue states have to clean their side of the street in terms of how they function.
But let's not pretend Florida, for example, will every truly compete with California.
I think it's just because urbanization leads to both economic productivity and being more left. But the left policies are now constricting growth, so even with the urbanization advantage, red states are having their economies grow faster.
I think the argument is that blue states have the most economically productive people, but those people (wealthy liberals) tend to have post-materialist egalitarian views that treat economic growth as secondary, leading to stagnation (e.g. California).
I like Sam’s argument cuz, iirc, he wasn’t worried about Trump l*nching black people, rather, he was more worried about fascist tendencies and unpredictability
I really do appreciate the intellectual honesty on display here, it’s a rare figure who can admit when they are wrong.
I will also say though, it’s a little ridiculous to read “Well I thought Trump would have helped the economy, and prioritized that over the fact that he’s clearly stupid and evil and attempted a coup, and has transformed his entire party into a legion of idiot fascistic sycophants, and also made a central pillar of his campaign a tariff that would devastate the economy, and made another pillar of his campaign being anti-immigration, which would also be bad for the economy” like, come on? Like I understand having libertarian economic views, even if I don’t personally agree with them. But Trump could not be more clearly NOT the guy to make that happen.
I respect more that Hanania said he couldn't make the psychological jump to supporting Democrats. That's really it. All the objective reasons to fear Trump were right there. Hanania literally said he couldn't ever get mad at Trump, because Trump had the emotional capacity of a toddler. Who the fuck puts a toddler in charge of anything? It was ridiculous on its face.
Ha, quite the prescient article. I remember reading Zingales' book when I was in undergrad majoring in econ 20ish years ago. Some sensible pro-market, pro-competition, anti-cronyism recommendations from another time.
The missing - and seemingly most devastating - piece in so many reflections on "where conservatives got sandbagged" is the admission inevitably gotten to that the world of principled conservatism was miniscule to begin with. All the expedients and grifters whose sole aim is to ape the prevailing zeitgeist while lining their pockets have shown themselves, and Hanania, like other true believers is bereft they "hid it" during election season and let fly once the coast was clear. More damning, anyone who views obviously horrible people who promise to do really horrible things in really outsized horrible ways (and after seeing the practice runs in the still somehow admired solely for their economic statistics states of Florida and Texas) and then just hopes the horrible stuff will mostly be out of sight might want to explore some less intellectual aspects of their own world view.
In line with this thinking, would you be open to reconsider:
1) Your view on excluding AfD - maybe the European mainstreamers are right about this party being especially harmful to institutions.
2) Your view on Israel - I think NonZionism has done a great job describing the insanity of the Israeli right. I think the Israel project is bound to derail even further into paranoid right-wing insanity, and the sooner the West takes it hands off it, the better.
How has the Israel project derailed? Do you believe it’s actually unhinged or is it just the perception because of relentless propaganda and historical revisionism?
The problem with just comparing GDP per capita is that if somebody who makes $35,000/y moves from California to Mississippi because there's more opportunities there, it makes California's GDP per capita go up and Mississippi's GDP per capita go down, even if they make $40,000/y at their new job in Mississippi (since Mississippi's GDP per capita is ~$53,000).
It makes it hard to directly compare, since if a policy makes it hard for somebody to live in a state (e.g. restrictive zoning constraining housing supply), it creates this effect.
The "voting with their feet" element of interstate movement (i.e. people actually choosing to live in X state instead of Y state) seems like a more reliable metric, and favors red states right now. In 2023, total interstate migration to states that voted Trump in 2020 and 2024 (data from: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geographic-mobility/state-to-state-migration.html ) was estimated at 3,584,107, while to states that voted Democrat in the 2020 and 2024 Presidential election was estimated at 2,725,182. This suggests a very substantial difference in revealed preference, at least at the moment. (Since some people move from Texas to California, and other people move from California to Texas, both numbers are positive.)
There's also the phenom where the most competent people in the world move to Silicon Valley to make $500k. I fail to see how net 800k people is much in a universe of 340M inhabitants. Specially as this only counts state to state migration and most of SV migration is from abroad.
> I fail to see how net 800k people is much in a universe of 340M inhabitants.
Because it's one single year of migration. If it was ten I'd shrug my shoulders at it too, but per year is pretty big.
> Specially as this only counts state to state migration and most of SV migration is from abroad.
Work visa people don't have any choice where they move. Interstate migrants do - they can go to any state in the union, and thus can give us ~their honest opinions on where is best to live by driving there.
That's a crazy statement that visa people have no choice. I was one myself many years ago, as a skilled worker I could've chosen anywhere in the world, and I chose California because that's where the best mix of innovation and culture is.
If I make $1M a year and spend 80% of it and you make $40k a year and spend 80%, we both are spending the same amount adjusted for cost of living, but I'm still doing better than you.
If I make $1M a year and spend 80% of it and you make $40k a year and spend 80%, we both are spending the same amount adjusted for cost of living..... Nope, that's not how that works.
As disappointed as I am I would still have to say, based on what I knew, he was the better candidate. Was I afraid? Yep. Did I shed a few tears after I voted? Yes! But considering what I knew about Harris, which was very little….. honestly all I knew was that she loved abortion and wanted to cram ideologies dangerous to children down our throats……I had to go with what I considered the one who was more likely to lessen evil. Someone I know described the election as a choice between a crap sandwich and a crap sandwich with mustard. I’m not sure which was which, but if I had to do it again, I would still have to go with Trump. Harris is just pure evil.
If the safety of children is your main concern as a voter, Trump has already been far worse than Harris could ever be. His cuts to social programs, medical research, and USAID will kill, sicken, and endanger largest amounts of children over the coming years. His PEPFAR cuts alone will probably increase the amount of children born HIV positive by 100,000 a year.
Harris' power to undo Dobbs was limited. Trump's power to impose destructive tariffs and destroy useful government agencies is not. Harris might have tried something, but the courts would.have smacked her down fast, and unlike Trump, she would obey them.
A Harris administration would have just been more of what we got under Biden. That wasn't great, but it was far from terrible. He was a mediocre POTUS. Harris likely would have been similar.
Many of them are, but Trump's cuts to medical research and social programs will definitely also harm American children. Research cuts will probably delay the invention of treatments for childhood diseases. I just got an email yesterday from a local nonprofit that works with children in poverty informing me that DOGE fired all of their AmeriCorps staff.
Calling Joe Biden a « mediocre POTUS » is unfair. He presided over one of the most prosperous economic booms (unemployment remained below 5% for two years) and managed to sign into law landmark legislation while systematically avoiding government shutdown with razor thin majorities in Congress.
*****I wanted to believe that something of the old conservative ideology was still standing and vibrant, and hadn’t been completely swallowed by the MAGA cult, edge lord racism, and conspiracy theories. Basically, if things were as bad as I had reason to think they were, I would have had to in effect become a Democrat, which would have been a large psychological step to take. And I would also have needed to readjust my expectations about the long-term future of the country.*****
.
I do not understand the assertion, "I would have had to in effect become a Democrat."
Why? Cannot one simply advocate and cast one's vote as a free-thinking individual? To do so always was and is a choice. The more people recognize and act upon this truth, the better off we may yet be.
People have strong natural tendencies towards tribalism. All Richard is doing there is pointing out that he got caught in one of those traps laid for us by our evolution as social apes. I think that running the sort of mindfulness exercise Richard did is good as it allows one to "cast one's vote as a free-thinking individual".
Yes, Autumn fox, tribalism has been a potent force for many years and has been especially so in recent years.
Seems to me that it *NOT exactly* what is at play here.
I perceive that he voted/advocated not primarily (perhaps somewhat) out of a sense of membership in the right-of-center tribe but out of psychological aversion to the left-of-center tribe.
Richard gives evidence of this in the paragraph that followed, which below I have put in the context of all nine of the sentences that preceded it:
*****The fact that the right had become a low human capital cult wasn’t simply a passing interest of mine. I was obsessed with the idea! I was constantly talking about how awestruck I was by the moral and intellectual flaws of Trump, his base, and conservative media.
So I probably should have put a lot more weight on the possibility that things would be this bad. For this reason, we need a psychological explanation for how I could be so wrong. I was particularly disturbed when Trump picked Vance as his running mate, as I thought that if this was the heir to Trumpism, that meant we were getting two statist parties into the foreseeable future. I wanted to believe that something of the old conservative ideology was still standing and vibrant, and hadn’t been completely swallowed by the MAGA cult, edge lord racism, and conspiracy theories. Basically, if things were as bad as I had reason to think they were, I would have had to in effect become a Democrat, which would have been a large psychological step to take. And I would also have needed to readjust my expectations about the long-term future of the country.
I wanted to believe that we had a social democrat party and a Reaganite party. Instead, we have a social democrat party, and a movement that in many ways has more in common with the politics of Hugo Chavez or Robert Mugabe than traditional conservative ideals. I think social democracy is bad relative to the freedom we have had in America, and that’s why the US has done so much better than Europe, while red states are beating blue states in terms of GDP and population growth. But now I believe that a party that wants to turn America into something like Western Europe is the lesser of two evils, given that the alternative is taking us towards third world levels of incompetence and corruption.*****
.
Likely I have yammered on too long. Indulge please a summation.
It boils down to negative partisanship.
Longstanding antipathy toward "the left" caused Richard to disregard his misgivings with regard to the "low human capital cult" that the right had become. He had been "obssessed" by this understanding of the right and "was constantly talking about how awestruck [he] was by the moral and intellectual flaws of Trump, his base, and conservative media."
Tribalists – members of the cult prominently, but not only them – vigorously extol the president and/or engage in apologetics and whataboutism in response to criticism.
Richard did not do that. He was not behaving tribally in that sense. Rather, he engaged in strictly negative partisanship/tribalism. I am glad that he has (perhaps will) come to a reckoning with himself about this.
Exactly. That should have been dispositive. Pearl clutching about DEI ...which Richard may yet come to regret as an instance of moral panic -- was not.
> Smart people who care about ideas have trouble understanding the degree to which regular people sometimes simply want a leader to worship.
Sorry, what? That's not the sort of smart person I know. Rather, my experience is that smart people -- nerds -- are *very aware* of this tendency and *utterly afraid* of it. (Think Scott Aaronson! Scott Aaronson could've told you!)
We've learned about Nazi Germany, we've learned about the Third Wave, we've seen how much many people just hate weirdos and demand conformity. This is a classic opposition -- the smart, weird, individualist nerds vs the dumb, conforming, groupish, strongman-loving suits.
I mean, the idea that Democrats actually criticize their leaders, but Republicans fall in line, goes back at least to the days of Bush Jr. This isn't a new tendency! (Speaking of Trump predecessors, have we forgotten Sarah Palin?) The Republicans often claim to be the party of individualism but in reality they display so much damn groupishness (and notice how their idea of individualism is often actually *familyism*).
Of course, wokeism/SJism put a big hole in that contrast because now the Democrats *also* became enforcers of conformity, and, uh, yeah, that was really bad! I'm glad that's finally abating, though frankly it hasn't yet abated enough for comfort.
But like, to my mind Trump is just the endpoint (or perhaps I should say, endpoint *thus far*) of a trend going back decades -- "Republicans fall in line" taken to the extreme. I don't think anyone could have reasonably foreseen from that far back that this particular outcome would actually *happen*, but I think the man who were worried that things were going in this direction should be considered at least somewhat vindicated.
It has always baffled me how educated, worldly people could fall for Trump, or think that reasonable people could constrain him. Everything one needed to know about how Trump would govern was available since well before Trump was nominated. Jeb Bush, a perfectly respectable and sane conservative (who was a perfectly good right-wing choice if that is what the country wanted), warned that Trump would be the "chaos president," and so it has come to pass.
Good. Welcome to the Democrats. We have a lot of work to do on our own party, but the difference is that I can see a potential path to sanity on this side and not at all on the Republican side.
Yes, the people who can’t define a woman and have been screeching that the world was ending for 50 years are the sane ones. The people still wearing masks that don’t do anything are the sane ones. The people that believe open racial discrimination is the ethical policy are the sane ones. Come on.
You are more than welcome to try to fix the Republican party. I will focus on what I can see.
Classy response tbh
Then you’re Mr Magoo.
Yeah, most of that is true and unfortunately they actually are still the saner ones. They are stepping over a very low bar.
You people are ill.
Again, we're talking about relative sanity, so even if that's true...
Yes, they are the sane ones now, because MAGA makes people like that seem sane by comparison. That's how far the Republicans have fallen.
No, you are ill.
The question isn’t whether or not you agree with the stupidest version of the left. The question is which of the two parties has the most foundation left to rebuild on. (or, if both are irredeemable, how you’re going to build a party and national governing coalition from scratch without becoming a joke like the Green Party or something)
In other words, which one is closer to a coherent and salvageable position? Take DEI for example. Yeah, I agree legally, constitutionally, and ethically that the answer to discrimination is to stop discriminating, not to “discriminate for good.” But my choices are “DEI did nothing wrong” or “let’s DEI even harder to own the libs.” Personally, I feel the former has at least a moral foundation - rooted in a desire for justice and equal opportunity, albeit gone way off the rails - that could potentially be salvaged, while the latter appears to be a naked pursuit of power. I think I have a better chance of getting my liberal friends to inject a healthy dose of libertarianism and 14A EP respect into their liberalism, than to convince someone who thinks (to steal the example) the Harvard physics department needs to make GOP Affirmative Action hires that they need to have principles.
Conversely, I think Originalism is an actual, internally-consistent theory of jurisprudence and the left’s is incoherent and incomprehensible, so on that topic I think it’s the other way around.
Reasonable people obviously may disagree with me. But I think this is the argument that needs to happen.
The difference is that those people don't run the Democratic Party. What Dems need to do is take Ezra Klein/ Matt Yglesias/ Ruy Tuxeira seriously on an abundance agenda and pivot to the center on social issues. The modern GOP otoh... oh boy
The world is fucking ending though, whether you like it or not. Theres not much time left. Climate change is going to fuck is all within a few decades.
Climate change used to be my #1 issue, but Nate Silver and Matt Yglesias have convinced me otherwise. We need to get a handle on it, but the world isn't going to end. Or, it won't end because of climate change. We've already dodged the worst case scenarios, and China, being very vulnerable to flooding, has a huge incentive to go green.
Here’s your “sane” record:
Open borders, bringing drugs, murderers, gang rapes, people trafficking especially children
$1000 waiver on shop lifting causing lawlessness
Murder rates up
Assaults on Asians, particularly elderly Asians and Jews, way up
Soros backed DAs who release dangerous criminals from custody, no bail laws
Shutdown gas pipelines
Institutions corrupted by DEI, including the military
Afghanistan, Kabul airport 200+ dead and injured,
billions of equipment left for the Taliban
Innocent family blown up with "Over the horizon warfare" "
A small incursion would be “okay” green light to Putin
Inflation, causing families to think twice about food purchases
Rents and home purchases out of reach for the young
Men are women in sports and women’s spaces
Children being transitioned without their parents’ knowledge
Mysterious stashes of cocaine, trans men, and lone sex acts in boardrooms at their “Decent” White House
Bogus charges against political opponents, leading to Lawfare
Weaponizing of the DOJ with two-tier justice system
Lied to for years about a president who is senile until he’s unceremoniously thrown out of office
A nominee who’s anointed, no democratic vetting, no questions asked
The country is run behind closed doors by a cabal of unelected bureaucrats who clearly couldn’t run a bath
The list goes on and on of Leftist lunacy
Most of this is either:
1.) Stuff the republicans would now support
2.) Stuff only far-left radicals support
3.) Made up.
The republican party has no intellectual foundation any more.
There's very little of your Nos. 1 & 2 in his little fantasy list. It's almost entirely #3, though his brain is so melted he'll never be able to realize it.
"stuff only radicals support" but somehow they all happened. You people are lying scum.
Yes. Worth remembering that, at the end of the day, it is what we make of it. The establishment of both sides is falling apart; we need to turn one of these parties into a viable, sane party. Ignore the haters. Do what is right. What other option do you have, anyway?
Your weekly mass Renaissance Fairs bely your claims of sanity.
I would say that I took your views to their logical conclusion outlined in a post about supporting Kamala over Trump. The main two points that pushed me over the edge into fully accepting the LHC thesis was Jan 6 and the Republican presidential primary.
Trump flagrantly getting away with Jan 6th without punishment polarized the right and left into sorting on the basis of worshipping Trump. His coasting to victory in the primary solidified this fact, which served as proof to me that the Trump 2 project was doomed.
The MAGAs being an insane cult of personality has been obvious for ages. You folks didn't want to believe it because it would mean us liberals were right about fucking everything. I knew how evil and stupid Trump was in 2015. I am not happy to be proven right over and over, because the death of the nation is upon us now and you guys didn't listen when you had the chance to stop it . I predicted all of this would happen last year and warned everyone and was told I was fear mongering. But I knew this is what conservatism actually is in America, the belief that rich white people can do anything and are above the law and the rest of us are simply serfs to be abused and told what to do.
"the belief that rich white people can do anything and are above the law and the rest of us are simply serfs to be abused and told what to do.l
I wish it were that benign.
The solution is for Democrats to go tribal just like Republicans. The problem for pundits is that once everyone goes tribal there should be less need for pundits…the fact that tribalism has created more Republican pundits means their voters see politics as a hobby and that consuming #fakenews to hate Democrats more is fundamentally what their hobby is about.
What's left of the GOP must be removed from our polity root & branch - and the ground salted thereafter.
Trump didn’t do anything on January 6th? In fact, basically no one did anything on January 6th.
Compared to the looting and rioting happening unchecked all over the country for months, January 6th was nothing. People walked around a government building, many of them were welcomed in by police officers. The entire thing was media narrative and the actual footage directly contradicts everything we were told.
Yea I mean this is an example of what I’m talking about
Wdym. It’s basic facts
On January 6, Donald Trump enacted a plot to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States. He attempted to pressure Mike Pence into throwing out the electoral votes of seven states - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - because this would result in him winning when he would have lost. Obviously, it was not the intent of the people who wrote the Constitution that the VP should have such a power. When Mike Pence refused to go along with this nonsense, Donald Trump organized a "Stop the Steal" rally, and then sent the riled-up rallygoers directly to the Capitol Building. As they physically broke in to the building (the first person to enter was a Proud Boy, who broke a window using a riot shield - he was pardoned, of course, along with various cop beaters, by Donald Trump), Trump watched and did nothing, for hours, because he wanted to use them as a cudgel to make Mike Pence do what he wanted.
This is just obviously, factually true. If you do not believe it then you live in an epistemic bubble.
The record would disagree with you on each count
Nope. All of that happened.
"John is one of the most brilliant lawyers in the country, and he looked at this and he said, " What an absolute disgrace, that this could be happening to our constitution." He looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do. This is from the number one or certainly one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our constitution, and protect our constitution. States want to revote. The States got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice-President Pence has to do is send it back to the States to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people." - Donald Trump, January 6, 2021.
This is why they were chanting "Hang Mike Pence". The John he refers to is John Eastman, of the Eastman memos, outlining the details of this plan.
Then he sent the mob to the Capitol Building, and we all know the rest. It took him 183 minutes to tell them to stop. Why do you think that is?
Yes, an anecdote that the legal record does not support at any level.
You can't just say "that's an anecdote" when the other party gives you evidence bro. You can't just say "the legal record does not support at any level" when he was in the process of being prosecuted for this - and the Feds almost never lose a prosecution - before he won reelection. Actually point out what part of these statements was false.
Look, engaging with these people is useless. If, at this point, you don’t understand that January 6 was a violent coup attempt, a Substack comment isn’t gonna do anything. If a majority of the country even had a basic factual understanding of what happened this man would never have been allowed to run for an election again in the United States. The fact that it didn’t happen shows we have some extremely serious problems with the continuation of liberal democracy in this country.
“Just an anecdote.” 🤣🤣🤣
Nice troll
OMG are you serious?
Wow. Delusional. Rainbow is Reading nothing but chyrons on Fox.
I'm shocked, yet not shocked people are this cray-cray.
Thanks for this article. It’s very good. I’m a utilitarian and I’d imagine that you’re at least consequentialist adjacent in thinking. But I think Trump shows how in practice having some deontological thought processes can give better utilitarian outcomes. The future is very hard to predict but deontological norms are often there for a reason. We can out predict them less often than we think we can.
So, paraphrasing, in hindsight one might have predicted that the leopard might eat one's own face? Great.
I’m a partisan democrat who’s despised Trump for a decade. But this is a type of error I’ve noticed myself making in other circumstances.
My take on your psychology is that you were seduced by the involvement of tech bros, many of whom have been swallowed up by Trump’s Catturdism. That you lost sight of the experience of his first admin and the observable realities tied to Jan 6.
Regardless, much respect for your honesty and self-reflection.
"Trump's Catturdism"
Thank you for that.
> At the state level, conservatism remains largely healthy, as we can see in the way that red states, particularly Florida and Texas, have been performing over the last few decades.
As a Texan, don't forget: Ken Paxton is trying to primary Cornyn right now, and we already somehow decided his blatant corruption is fine. That may not stay true for very much longer.
I wish you had read Sam Harris’ pre-election endorsement of Kamala Harris. Everything you wrote here was predicted.
I agree with most of that you wrote but your criticisms of social democrats are mostly unfounded. The richest states are in fact the most blue. Also, the relative fortunes of the US and Europe diverged mostly after 2008, not before (looking at productivity per hour), and the reason has mostly to do with fiscal responses to the global financial crisis.
"The richest states are in fact the most blue" - this is true, and I'm always baffled at why Richard and other right-leaners try to argue, "look at (insert red state)'s growth!!!" when its easy for any flyover state to "improve" from rock bottom. Meanwhile, for example, more decisions affecting America and what it buys are still made on Madison Avenue, New York, not Madison county, Kentucky.
Blue states could catch up to red states in growth with an Abundance agenda (zoning reform alone would do wonders) without ceasing to be social democrat.
Being the “Richest” doesn’t mean the most functional. And don’t you leftists hate wealth and “Oligarchs”?
I agree with you more than you think. That said, let’s not pretend that “20% faster growth” is impressive when you’re starting at below zero. This is the economic/political equivalent of applauding your 21 year old son for finally learning how to tie his shoe laces.
You don’t like conflict you say, and accuse me of promulgating it. Yet here you are denigrating and insulting states simply because they’re red. You don’t even see how arrogant and bigoted you sound, do you.
I'm not insulting anyone; just calling balls and strikes. Blue states are often wealthier than red states. In fact, California alone is the 4th biggest economy in the world. Yes, red states are growing more, and faster...and yet, blue states are still wealthier and where the real money is made. If you can't deal with this reality, that's a you issue. Like I said, I agree with you more than you might think; I agree that blue states have to clean their side of the street in terms of how they function.
But let's not pretend Florida, for example, will every truly compete with California.
I think it's just because urbanization leads to both economic productivity and being more left. But the left policies are now constricting growth, so even with the urbanization advantage, red states are having their economies grow faster.
I think the argument is that blue states have the most economically productive people, but those people (wealthy liberals) tend to have post-materialist egalitarian views that treat economic growth as secondary, leading to stagnation (e.g. California).
I like Sam’s argument cuz, iirc, he wasn’t worried about Trump l*nching black people, rather, he was more worried about fascist tendencies and unpredictability
Again, being the “Richest” doesn’t mean the most functional. And don’t you leftists hate wealth and “Oligarchs”?
And again, you’re trying to egg on a conflict where none exists.
I really do appreciate the intellectual honesty on display here, it’s a rare figure who can admit when they are wrong.
I will also say though, it’s a little ridiculous to read “Well I thought Trump would have helped the economy, and prioritized that over the fact that he’s clearly stupid and evil and attempted a coup, and has transformed his entire party into a legion of idiot fascistic sycophants, and also made a central pillar of his campaign a tariff that would devastate the economy, and made another pillar of his campaign being anti-immigration, which would also be bad for the economy” like, come on? Like I understand having libertarian economic views, even if I don’t personally agree with them. But Trump could not be more clearly NOT the guy to make that happen.
I respect more that Hanania said he couldn't make the psychological jump to supporting Democrats. That's really it. All the objective reasons to fear Trump were right there. Hanania literally said he couldn't ever get mad at Trump, because Trump had the emotional capacity of a toddler. Who the fuck puts a toddler in charge of anything? It was ridiculous on its face.
Comparisons to Hugo Chavez are not good. There are so many dissimilarities.
There's an obvious comparison staring right in your face: Berlusconi.
See this 2011 article from Luigi Zingales: https://www.city-journal.org/article/dodging-the-trump-bullet
His sequel to that piece is also worth reading:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/the-right-way-to-resist-trump.html
Ha, quite the prescient article. I remember reading Zingales' book when I was in undergrad majoring in econ 20ish years ago. Some sensible pro-market, pro-competition, anti-cronyism recommendations from another time.
I like the book "Saving capitalism from the capitalists", which Zingales authored together with Raghuram Rajan.
Yes, that’s the one, couldn’t think of the title.
The missing - and seemingly most devastating - piece in so many reflections on "where conservatives got sandbagged" is the admission inevitably gotten to that the world of principled conservatism was miniscule to begin with. All the expedients and grifters whose sole aim is to ape the prevailing zeitgeist while lining their pockets have shown themselves, and Hanania, like other true believers is bereft they "hid it" during election season and let fly once the coast was clear. More damning, anyone who views obviously horrible people who promise to do really horrible things in really outsized horrible ways (and after seeing the practice runs in the still somehow admired solely for their economic statistics states of Florida and Texas) and then just hopes the horrible stuff will mostly be out of sight might want to explore some less intellectual aspects of their own world view.
It’s mystifying to me why anyone thinks Republicans are better than Democrats on the economy. That hasn’t been true since 1991.
Thanks for this, Richard.
In line with this thinking, would you be open to reconsider:
1) Your view on excluding AfD - maybe the European mainstreamers are right about this party being especially harmful to institutions.
2) Your view on Israel - I think NonZionism has done a great job describing the insanity of the Israeli right. I think the Israel project is bound to derail even further into paranoid right-wing insanity, and the sooner the West takes it hands off it, the better.
I’m more open on the AfD argument. Israel is different because the opponent is Hamas rather than western liberals and mainstream conservatives.
Anyone who thinks the opponent is "KkkkkkkHamas", should read what Israel is doing in the West Bank.
See this, for example: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/05/after-nonviolence-end-of-peaceful-resistance-west-bank-ben-ehrenreich/
You’re in the wrong comment section. We’re all employed and literate🇮🇱
I mean, there are center left and left-wing parties in Israel, since it is a functional democracy.
How has the Israel project derailed? Do you believe it’s actually unhinged or is it just the perception because of relentless propaganda and historical revisionism?
Rank | State | GDP per Capita (2024) | Governor | Party
1 | New York | $117,332 | Kathy Hochul | Democrat
2 | Massachusetts | $110,561 | Maura Healey | Democrat
3 | Washington | $108,468 | Bob Ferguson | Democrat
4 | California | $104,916 | Gavin Newsom | Democrat
5 | North Dakota | $97,003 | Kelly Armstrong | Republican
6 | Connecticut | $95,630 | Ned Lamont | Democrat
7 | Delaware | $95,038 | Matt Meyer | Democrat
8 | Alaska | $92,794 | Mike Dunleavy | Republican
9 | Nebraska | $91,633 | Jim Pillen | Republican
10 | Colorado | $90,109 | Jared Polis | Democrat
There are a couple of oil states, but management-wise it's not a competition.
The problem with just comparing GDP per capita is that if somebody who makes $35,000/y moves from California to Mississippi because there's more opportunities there, it makes California's GDP per capita go up and Mississippi's GDP per capita go down, even if they make $40,000/y at their new job in Mississippi (since Mississippi's GDP per capita is ~$53,000).
It makes it hard to directly compare, since if a policy makes it hard for somebody to live in a state (e.g. restrictive zoning constraining housing supply), it creates this effect.
The "voting with their feet" element of interstate movement (i.e. people actually choosing to live in X state instead of Y state) seems like a more reliable metric, and favors red states right now. In 2023, total interstate migration to states that voted Trump in 2020 and 2024 (data from: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geographic-mobility/state-to-state-migration.html ) was estimated at 3,584,107, while to states that voted Democrat in the 2020 and 2024 Presidential election was estimated at 2,725,182. This suggests a very substantial difference in revealed preference, at least at the moment. (Since some people move from Texas to California, and other people move from California to Texas, both numbers are positive.)
There's also the phenom where the most competent people in the world move to Silicon Valley to make $500k. I fail to see how net 800k people is much in a universe of 340M inhabitants. Specially as this only counts state to state migration and most of SV migration is from abroad.
> I fail to see how net 800k people is much in a universe of 340M inhabitants.
Because it's one single year of migration. If it was ten I'd shrug my shoulders at it too, but per year is pretty big.
> Specially as this only counts state to state migration and most of SV migration is from abroad.
Work visa people don't have any choice where they move. Interstate migrants do - they can go to any state in the union, and thus can give us ~their honest opinions on where is best to live by driving there.
That's a crazy statement that visa people have no choice. I was one myself many years ago, as a skilled worker I could've chosen anywhere in the world, and I chose California because that's where the best mix of innovation and culture is.
Who gives a damn what GDP per Capita is when you don't peg it to the cost of living?
If I make $1M a year and spend 80% of it and you make $40k a year and spend 80%, we both are spending the same amount adjusted for cost of living, but I'm still doing better than you.
If I make $1M a year and spend 80% of it and you make $40k a year and spend 80%, we both are spending the same amount adjusted for cost of living..... Nope, that's not how that works.
As disappointed as I am I would still have to say, based on what I knew, he was the better candidate. Was I afraid? Yep. Did I shed a few tears after I voted? Yes! But considering what I knew about Harris, which was very little….. honestly all I knew was that she loved abortion and wanted to cram ideologies dangerous to children down our throats……I had to go with what I considered the one who was more likely to lessen evil. Someone I know described the election as a choice between a crap sandwich and a crap sandwich with mustard. I’m not sure which was which, but if I had to do it again, I would still have to go with Trump. Harris is just pure evil.
"Honestly all I knew was that she loved abortion and wanted to cram ideologies dangerous to children down our throats…" "Harris is just pure evil."
Thank you for exemplifying the mental twaddle RIchard is talking about .
If the safety of children is your main concern as a voter, Trump has already been far worse than Harris could ever be. His cuts to social programs, medical research, and USAID will kill, sicken, and endanger largest amounts of children over the coming years. His PEPFAR cuts alone will probably increase the amount of children born HIV positive by 100,000 a year.
Harris' power to undo Dobbs was limited. Trump's power to impose destructive tariffs and destroy useful government agencies is not. Harris might have tried something, but the courts would.have smacked her down fast, and unlike Trump, she would obey them.
A Harris administration would have just been more of what we got under Biden. That wasn't great, but it was far from terrible. He was a mediocre POTUS. Harris likely would have been similar.
You misunderstand, those are FOREIGN children, MAGA doesn’t care if they live or die
Many of them are, but Trump's cuts to medical research and social programs will definitely also harm American children. Research cuts will probably delay the invention of treatments for childhood diseases. I just got an email yesterday from a local nonprofit that works with children in poverty informing me that DOGE fired all of their AmeriCorps staff.
Yes I certainly agree these cuts will hurt children here in the US as well
Calling Joe Biden a « mediocre POTUS » is unfair. He presided over one of the most prosperous economic booms (unemployment remained below 5% for two years) and managed to sign into law landmark legislation while systematically avoiding government shutdown with razor thin majorities in Congress.
Richard Hanania wrote:
*****I wanted to believe that something of the old conservative ideology was still standing and vibrant, and hadn’t been completely swallowed by the MAGA cult, edge lord racism, and conspiracy theories. Basically, if things were as bad as I had reason to think they were, I would have had to in effect become a Democrat, which would have been a large psychological step to take. And I would also have needed to readjust my expectations about the long-term future of the country.*****
.
I do not understand the assertion, "I would have had to in effect become a Democrat."
Why? Cannot one simply advocate and cast one's vote as a free-thinking individual? To do so always was and is a choice. The more people recognize and act upon this truth, the better off we may yet be.
People have strong natural tendencies towards tribalism. All Richard is doing there is pointing out that he got caught in one of those traps laid for us by our evolution as social apes. I think that running the sort of mindfulness exercise Richard did is good as it allows one to "cast one's vote as a free-thinking individual".
Yes, Autumn fox, tribalism has been a potent force for many years and has been especially so in recent years.
Seems to me that it *NOT exactly* what is at play here.
I perceive that he voted/advocated not primarily (perhaps somewhat) out of a sense of membership in the right-of-center tribe but out of psychological aversion to the left-of-center tribe.
Richard gives evidence of this in the paragraph that followed, which below I have put in the context of all nine of the sentences that preceded it:
*****The fact that the right had become a low human capital cult wasn’t simply a passing interest of mine. I was obsessed with the idea! I was constantly talking about how awestruck I was by the moral and intellectual flaws of Trump, his base, and conservative media.
So I probably should have put a lot more weight on the possibility that things would be this bad. For this reason, we need a psychological explanation for how I could be so wrong. I was particularly disturbed when Trump picked Vance as his running mate, as I thought that if this was the heir to Trumpism, that meant we were getting two statist parties into the foreseeable future. I wanted to believe that something of the old conservative ideology was still standing and vibrant, and hadn’t been completely swallowed by the MAGA cult, edge lord racism, and conspiracy theories. Basically, if things were as bad as I had reason to think they were, I would have had to in effect become a Democrat, which would have been a large psychological step to take. And I would also have needed to readjust my expectations about the long-term future of the country.
I wanted to believe that we had a social democrat party and a Reaganite party. Instead, we have a social democrat party, and a movement that in many ways has more in common with the politics of Hugo Chavez or Robert Mugabe than traditional conservative ideals. I think social democracy is bad relative to the freedom we have had in America, and that’s why the US has done so much better than Europe, while red states are beating blue states in terms of GDP and population growth. But now I believe that a party that wants to turn America into something like Western Europe is the lesser of two evils, given that the alternative is taking us towards third world levels of incompetence and corruption.*****
.
Likely I have yammered on too long. Indulge please a summation.
It boils down to negative partisanship.
Longstanding antipathy toward "the left" caused Richard to disregard his misgivings with regard to the "low human capital cult" that the right had become. He had been "obssessed" by this understanding of the right and "was constantly talking about how awestruck [he] was by the moral and intellectual flaws of Trump, his base, and conservative media."
Tribalists – members of the cult prominently, but not only them – vigorously extol the president and/or engage in apologetics and whataboutism in response to criticism.
Richard did not do that. He was not behaving tribally in that sense. Rather, he engaged in strictly negative partisanship/tribalism. I am glad that he has (perhaps will) come to a reckoning with himself about this.
"the fact that he attempted a coup in front of the whole world in 2020"
And yet you rationalized voting for him again. You, and almost 80 million Americans.
Exactly. That should have been dispositive. Pearl clutching about DEI ...which Richard may yet come to regret as an instance of moral panic -- was not.
> Smart people who care about ideas have trouble understanding the degree to which regular people sometimes simply want a leader to worship.
Sorry, what? That's not the sort of smart person I know. Rather, my experience is that smart people -- nerds -- are *very aware* of this tendency and *utterly afraid* of it. (Think Scott Aaronson! Scott Aaronson could've told you!)
We've learned about Nazi Germany, we've learned about the Third Wave, we've seen how much many people just hate weirdos and demand conformity. This is a classic opposition -- the smart, weird, individualist nerds vs the dumb, conforming, groupish, strongman-loving suits.
I mean, the idea that Democrats actually criticize their leaders, but Republicans fall in line, goes back at least to the days of Bush Jr. This isn't a new tendency! (Speaking of Trump predecessors, have we forgotten Sarah Palin?) The Republicans often claim to be the party of individualism but in reality they display so much damn groupishness (and notice how their idea of individualism is often actually *familyism*).
Of course, wokeism/SJism put a big hole in that contrast because now the Democrats *also* became enforcers of conformity, and, uh, yeah, that was really bad! I'm glad that's finally abating, though frankly it hasn't yet abated enough for comfort.
But like, to my mind Trump is just the endpoint (or perhaps I should say, endpoint *thus far*) of a trend going back decades -- "Republicans fall in line" taken to the extreme. I don't think anyone could have reasonably foreseen from that far back that this particular outcome would actually *happen*, but I think the man who were worried that things were going in this direction should be considered at least somewhat vindicated.
It has always baffled me how educated, worldly people could fall for Trump, or think that reasonable people could constrain him. Everything one needed to know about how Trump would govern was available since well before Trump was nominated. Jeb Bush, a perfectly respectable and sane conservative (who was a perfectly good right-wing choice if that is what the country wanted), warned that Trump would be the "chaos president," and so it has come to pass.