Here we go again.
A much less election heavy year though there are some big ones coming up - for example Germany, Canada, and Australia, all three of which look like good prospects for right wing challengers to centre left governments struggling with cost of living issues.
We'll also likely start seeing the impacts of various 2024 elections more, especially re the course of the new US administration and how that affects the wider world.
This essay by Emmet Macfarlane goes over how the Prime Minister (elected by party members) and his apponinted Office have come to marginalize both parliament and the cabinet ministers in Canada https://emmettmacfarlane.substack.com/p/how-canadian-political-parties-select
Parliament has been prorogued until March 24 and an election is likely to be called shortly thereafter. This will result in a Conservative majority and the Liberals holding just a few seats in big cities and parts of the Maritimes, but how many seats and with whom as leader can still be decided. To change that outcome Justin Trudeau would have had to resign in summer 2023 and given the widespread anti-incumbent turn (and lukewarm enthusiasm for the Liberals) the Tories would almost certainly have formed the next government anyways.
Also re Canada, I've seen that former Bank of England governor Mark Carney is running to lead the Liberal Party: it feels like leading a party into a more or less certain electoral defeat seems a pretty thankless task to be running for.
Quote from: Jubal on January 19, 2025, 09:28:36 PMAlso re Canada, I've seen that former Bank of England governor Mark Carney is running to lead the Liberal Party: it feels like leading a party into a more or less certain electoral defeat seems a pretty thankless task to be running for.
I sure don't understand why anyone would want to be Liberal leader under the circumstances. I think that tossing Trudeau was good for MPs as citizens (he works for them, not vice versa) but the new PM will promptly lose an election then be blamed by the rest of the party.
When a former Conservative staffer was asked to write on how the election could be later than May, he had to start (https://thehub.ca/2025/01/15/sean-speer-everyone-is-assuming-an-election-is-imminent-what-if-thats-wrong/) "well, what if the new PM offers the NDP something to vote confidence, and then what if they pass a bill to overrule the Fixed-Term Election Act ..." Not very plausible.
If you don't live in the USA, it can be hard to understand some of the cartoonish corruption there which the Democratic establishment and the civil service often support. It gets tied up with partisan nonsense and yelling at the TV so its hard to know what is real.
Here is the story of how from 2013 to 2016 some jobs as air-traffic controller in the USA were secretly earmarked for people of a specific race https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring If you want to understand the anti-establishment turn in the North Atlantic, its worth understanding the many aspects of life in 2024 which suck and which establishments show little interest in improving (Congress actually got rid of the mechanism which allowed race-based hiring in 2016 but did not uncover the whole story).
A lot of righties in the USA feel that Old Media cover up stories like this or Biden's health decline. He always seemed kind of frail to me and back in 2020 he said he would not run a second time due to his age. And his administration seemed better than average and I care about outputs not whether there is a single Decider at the top or who that Decider is.
Quote from: dubsartur on February 05, 2025, 03:46:35 PMHere is the story of how from 2013 to 2016 some jobs as air-traffic controller in the USA were secretly earmarked for people of a specific race https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring (https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring) If you want to understand the anti-establishment turn in the North Atlantic, its worth understanding the many aspects of life in 2024 which suck and which establishments show little interest in improving (Congress actually got rid of the mechanism which allowed race-based hiring in 2016 but did not uncover the whole story).
Huh, yes, I sort of expected some initiatives in the US would end up being that kind of scandalously blunt but it's an interesting case study.
I was less convinced by the end sections, in that questions like "are there other pressures alongside the above contributing to staff shortages" don't seem to have been dealt with (and if the answer is "no", then that's interesting, but it's something you need to prove to make the case that the scandal's knock-through effect is key, especially given that AIUI this was a 2013-16 scandal and we're now a decade on from it). The problems of e.g. early retirements and COVID stripping out experienced parts of key workforces have also affected lots of sectors in recent years and there's no balance-of-factors done. I think I'd also say that the closing "appeal to both sides" felt a bit... analytically lacking, though I can see why it was done that way in current circumstances.
And of course the comments and boosts around this sort of thing are all doing "this is why diversity is bad, destroy the Democrats", and then they wonder why people in my position go "well if I'm being asked to sign up for armadilloty, badly done corporate diversity initiatives, but you're only giving me the alternative of (at best) nepotistic oligarchy, yes I'll fight for the former and no I'm not prepared to equate those things". And sure, that's where the partisan nonsense comes in, but if there's one thing I've learned politically, it's that anti-corruption is vital but anti-corruption campaigners need to be handled with a lot of care because "let's sweep all the corruption away and put someone Strong And Decisive And Incorruptible in charge" is a very, very common move to pull which usually at best solves nothing. And I find the idea of "I am against the binary by being perfectly in the middle of it" rather tiring, not least because it creates the sort of idea-space that reinforces the binary just so someone can maintain their own self-description as a centrist.
Re the original piece, I'm not familiar with the author's work more generally, but nosing through some of it, it seems to be its own sort of Very Online (the sort that imagines itself to be Sensible And Moderate And In Touch whilst believing that what disaffected voters want is less economic interventionism and that the left are institutionally in control) whilst also spending a lot of time criticising the Very Online for being Too Online. But that brings us back into the Weird Internet Communities thread...
Anyway MEANWHILE some things happening around the world:
- It's not obvious that Frederich Merz's immigration shenanigans and resulting protests in Germany have changed much in German polling. The AfD are still on about 22% to the CDU/CSU's 30. A big part of the parliamentary balance will be which of Die Linke, the BSW, and the FDP get over the line and into the chamber: all three are hovering pretty close to it, which means ca 15% of people's votes are riding on whether their party gets over the line or not. Which is one of the problems with non-preferential voting systems!
- Twitter is being sued by German activists who say it's not providing them with information to track disinformation content which they're obliged to give under the Digital Services Act.
- In a signal that this really is a strange year, Bulgaria has a government now! Led by GERB (Conservatives) plus the Socialist Party (clue largely in the name), There Is Such A People (weird anti-corruption right wingers), and Democracy, Rights and Freedoms (the less corrupt part of the Turkish party which has now split in two). That leaves the other half of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the centre-left-liberal PP-DB group, the fascists (Revival), and the other fascists (Morality, Unity, Honour) as opposition.
- It is becoming obvious that Trudeau leaving and/or the trade war has helped his party - a bit. The Liberals are still polling 19 points behind in the 338 average, but that's down from a 25 point lead not long ago.
- The Turks & Caicos Islands have an election on Feb 7: their last election brought in a new centre-left government, with their other party, a right-wing group, reduced to one seat.
- Vanuatu has a new government with a five-party coalition. I've not seen any suggestion that this will significantly alter very much even in Vanuatu, where people mostly seem to be frustrated that the parliaments keep being weird factional messes where nobody can tell what's going on.
Quote from: Jubal on February 05, 2025, 05:52:51 PMQuote from: dubsartur on February 05, 2025, 03:46:35 PMHere is the story of how from 2013 to 2016 some jobs as air-traffic controller in the USA were secretly earmarked for people of a specific race https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring (https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring) If you want to understand the anti-establishment turn in the North Atlantic, its worth understanding the many aspects of life in 2024 which suck and which establishments show little interest in improving (Congress actually got rid of the mechanism which allowed race-based hiring in 2016 but did not uncover the whole story).
Huh, yes, I sort of expected some initiatives in the US would end up being that kind of scandalously blunt but it's an interesting case study.
I was less convinced by the end sections, in that questions like "are there other pressures alongside the above contributing to staff shortages" don't seem to have been dealt with (and if the answer is "no", then that's interesting, but it's something you need to prove to make the case that the scandal's knock-through effect is key, especially given that AIUI this was a 2013-16 scandal and we're now a decade on from it). The problems of e.g. early retirements and COVID stripping out experienced parts of key workforces have also affected lots of sectors in recent years and there's no balance-of-factors done. I think I'd also say that the closing "appeal to both sides" felt a bit... analytically lacking, though I can see why it was done that way in current circumstances.
Yes, if you are American I think a lot depends on whether you think "this is a typical program hidden under the DEI label but the lamestream media don't want us to know the truth" or "some blatant pork like this got included under the DEI label and was quietly stopped to avoid a scandal." But I think a lot of anti-establishment politics in the USA is driven by experiences like "our Democratic-majority state government is paying huge sums for a high-speed rail project that will never carry a car" or "I have to pay kickbacks to get permission to build a garage in my backyard and my Democratic mayor responds with form letters" whereas we foreigners see other aspects. I do not know ANY way to learn the details without living there given that you can't trust American journalists (of the centrist or reactionary kinds) and you sure can't trust the kind of people who used to post hourly on Twitter
And yes, another doctrine of smart righties in the USA is that The Left controls almost all institutions (the Cathedral from Menicus Moldbug one of those weird Internet people, the Blob from UK Tory discourse after Brexit). Of course four year degree/no degree is becoming a dividing line in the USA, and its hard to get a senior administrative office without such a degree, so sometimes "The Left" means "people with a four-year degree" rather than people who support specific policies.
I like that description of the blogger's space (I think Will Stancil who he mentions is a Twitter personality, Steve Sailer is an Internet racist who lurks in comment threads). I hope that with the decline of Twitter journalists are spending more time out in the world talking to people, and less scrolling their feeds. The people who feel ideologically oppressed or unable to speak freely are often people who posted a lot on Twitter where they got dogpiled for not following the changing party line (no idea what its like after the Muskening).
BC United, the onetime party of capital supplanted by a more populist and reactionary party, can't decide whether to dissolve itself or try to recover. It owed $930,000 in December 2024, not sure if that is net or if some of that is balanced with assets. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/kevin-falcon-resignation-calls-1.7452616
In a tale as old as time, the people who said "we need to unite to defeat that other party" are finding that many voters and activists respond "hold on, if its a choice between the other party and your movement I will vote for a third party or stay home."
Quote from: Jubal on February 05, 2025, 05:52:51 PMRe the original piece, I'm not familiar with the author's work more generally, but nosing through some of it, it seems to be its own sort of Very Online (the sort that imagines itself to be Sensible And Moderate And In Touch whilst believing that what disaffected voters want is less economic interventionism and that the left are institutionally in control) whilst also spending a lot of time criticising the Very Online for being Too Online. But that brings us back into the Weird Internet Communities thread...
Tracing Woodgrains is also an anti-anti LessWronger (wrote a long criticism of David Gerard's activism) and law student who just launched the Centre for Educational Progress (https://www.educationprogress.org/p/schools-should-pursue-excellence) "to orient education towards a culture of excellence" (sounds good if you know anything about public education in the USA) with Lillian Tara, Harvard graduate student, self-proclaimed eugenicist (https://investigations.hopenothate.org.uk/inside-pronatalism/) and former CEO of Prontalist.org, founded by Simone and Malcolm Collins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_and_Malcolm_Collins) (oh crap). But a lot of people in the USA won't post specifics about corruption and bad government because they are scared of empowering the far right, so I have trouble finding details from savory sources.
Edit: TW was also an admin on r/theMotte, an offshoot of the Slate Star Codex for culture war threads which was created that part of the original subreddit got too spicy for Scott Alexander. https://reflectivealtruism.com/2025/02/20/human-biodiversity-part-6-the-motte/
Yeah, part of America's malaise is that it seems to be asking people at times to vote on "do you want a government that does things", and then whether what the government is doing is corruption and drone strikes on middle-eastern weddings or what the government is doing is restraining oligarchy and funding healthcare research and food stamps gets weirdly sidelined. So the Democrats become the party of the state (in all its aspects) and the Republicans become the party of the oligarchs carving up the state (and so a potential repository for votes against the state).
I don't think that's a fully accurate picture of what's actually happening, because the Democrat and Republican coalitions don't fit those buckets coherently, but I think it's a framing that sometimes helps explain bits of Americans' electoral reactions.
Notes on the rest of the world (since we're in the not-America thread, nominally):
- 338 Canada has lowered the odds of the CPC getting an absolute majority to 74% from more or less 100% at the start of the year. Looking at the numbers, the Liberals are still numerically well behind, but they seem to have a really good mathematical vote distribution in Ontario specifically that's enabling them to (in the prediction) somewhat outperform there in votes to seats ratio.
- The news are very much talking up Peter Dutton's chances of leading the right to a victory in Australia. They're not massively outpolling the left in two party preference vote, and Albanese is still just about leading Dutton in preferred PM, though he also has a lower approval rating. I'm not sure the Australian election is going to be as simple as the punditry expects, given the polling numbers.
- German polls aren't really moving, so next week's federal vote there will still probably be Union 30ish, AfD 21-22, Green and SPD about 15 each, Linke, BSW, FDP all hovering on the 5% line. Linke seem to have come from being the least likely of the small parties to make it in to now being the most likely, they've had a big membership & enthusiasm surge since the start of the year, reportedly mostly driven by younger women joining.
Quote from: Jubal on February 17, 2025, 11:13:22 PMYeah, part of America's malaise is that it seems to be asking people at times to vote on "do you want a government that does things", and then whether what the government is doing is corruption and drone strikes on middle-eastern weddings or what the government is doing is restraining oligarchy and funding healthcare research and food stamps gets weirdly sidelined. So the Democrats become the party of the state (in all its aspects) and the Republicans become the party of the oligarchs carving up the state (and so a potential repository for votes against the state).
I don't think that's a fully accurate picture of what's actually happening, because the Democrat and Republican coalitions don't fit those buckets coherently, but I think it's a framing that sometimes helps explain bits of Americans' electoral reactions.
Another part of the Zeitgeist is that many tech billionaires feel kind of meh about having built payment processors and social networks and spreadsheets. Jaan Tallinn didn't write a Bachelor's thesis on how to develop a distributed digital video-phone, he wrote it on interstellar travel. When did John W.I. Campbell Jr. publish a story about heroic software engineers?
So many of them want to build rocket ships or laser guns or seasteads or giant pipelines to direct water to an atomic desalination plant in Colorado (seriously! (https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/we-need-more-water-than-rain-can-provide-refilling-rivers-with-desalination/)), something HARD with MECHANICAL ENGINEERING that sucks down MORE POWER. For some reason, subways or artificial reefs or water treatment plants do not count, and they can't just take up wood turning or bicycle repair like a normal ageing techie.
German election this weekend.
A chart someone made of donations of 35,000 Euros or more (the public reporting threshold) to German political parties since the fall of the Traffic Light coalition:
(https://i.imgur.com/piL0UbB.png)
Source (I haven't double-checked the numbers but a quick glance looks right)
https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/praesidium/parteienfinanzierung/fundstellen50000/2025/2025-inhalt-1032412
- That's a lot of money to spend on failing to keep the FDP in parliament.
- About 2 million of the AfD's four and a bit was a single big donation by an Austrian businessman, which is being investigated for potential fraud (https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000257954/afd-spender-aus-vorarlberg-droht-verfahren-wegen-beweismittelfaelschung-und-geldwaescherei) and may actually have been given to him by a Swiss billionaire in order to pass on to the AfD.
- This puts how much Americans spend into perspective: The Montana senate race alone had about ten times the total in the above graph spent on it in 2024.
Anyway, as to how the actual election will go, the polls are mostly in agreement that we'll get a parliament comprised of the CDU/CSU in clear first on 29-31, the AfD in second on 20-21, the SPD in the 15-18 range, the Greens more like 12-15, Die Linke maybe on 7 or 8, and the BSW and FDP probably on fourish, maybe five and a place in parliament if they have an especially good night. That almost certainly results in a Union-SPD coalition, that's the only 2-party coalition that has the numbers and doesn't involve the AfD: the question is really what the SPD want out of that. Merz will not be able to get them in for free, and his very right-wing instincts might well clash with the SPD feeling they need to distinguish themselves.
Likely points of agreement: the new coalition will need to amend the constitution and remove Germany's debt brake, everyone agrees on this now. The SPD won't want to go as far as Merz on unravelling climate protections, but there's likely to be some step back there. Merz needs some sort of anti-immigration move, which is another reason he can't really go with the Greens, but the SPD possibly won't want to go
too far on that either. We'll see.
There is finally some grumbling in the legislature against Javier Milei the president of Argentina after he rugpulled a crypto scam https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp9x9j89evxo Someone involved did a SBF and held a long interview in which he confessed to crimes so fast that the interviewer had trouble keeping up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqizJTbxAEM
Quite hard to know what Milei's actual approval is: Argentine opinion polling is somewhat limited. We'll find out for sure in October at the legislative elections.
Meanwhile Germany is starting to negotiate a Grand Coalition, though the SPD in third place are probably feeling less grand than they might do. There really isn't a viable alternative available, so for both parties it's something of a must that they find something that works.
After one of BC's 87 MLAs was expelled from the Conservative caucus for insulting residential-school survivors in a podcast interview (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/dallas-brodie-removed-from-b-c-conservative-caucus-1.7478162), two others resigned in solidarity (!)
People out in the boonies seem to be getting excited about whether or not the unmarked graves at one specific school have been found (AFAIK nobody says "yes"), not that for 90 years Canada operated a system that ripped children from their homes, tried to destroy their cultures and languages, exposed them to cold, hunger, disease, and abuse, and did not even provide meaningful education. Nobody disputes that, nor that thousands of First Nations children died early deaths because of this system. So I think its a double alternate-reality: people who have convinced themselves that debating about that one specific school is a cutting point, and people who have convinced themselves that mocking survivors is much more acceptable than it actually is. Maybe they found some social-media troll who claimed that the graves had definitely been found and convinced themselves that anyone off their social media service care what the troll says.
A report that a ground-penetrating radar survey had found possible unmarked graves at a residential school brought the schools to the attention of many settler-Canadians. Its well documented that many children died at these schools and many were disappeared, the only questions are about the details (say, the difference between an unregistered cemetery with wooden crosses which rotted and an unmarked grave).
Meanwhile I see even Canadians who don't acknowledge that our choices were dealing with orange Julius while prorogued and holding a Liberal leadership race, or dealing with him in the middle of a Federal election which a Trumpist was almost certain to win. No good options since the PM did not resign in summer 2024 or summer 2023 and since the US election went the way it di.
Liberal leader and PM-without-a-seat Mark Carney has called an election with the Liberals and Tories approximately tied in voter intent. He already implemented one major Tory policy by ending the individual carbon tax after the April rebate payment. Trump's threat to annex Canada caused about 10% of voters to shift their intent from NDP to Liberal, and 10% of voters to shift their intent from Conservative to Liberal. The election is the earliest possible, Monday 28 April (roughly five weeks away).
On the weird Internet communities front, Carney is really into spicy autocomplete despite being a banker where precision and factuality matter.
Something called the Toronto Star was one of the papers which had an excitable headline about the Kelowna residential school in 2021. Its only read by people in TO and other journalists (although back when I read newspapers I wonder how many journalists read even one paper a day given some of the things they forgot and some of the patterns they failed to recognize) https://www.thestar.com/
Doug Saunders once published the book Maximum Canada (meaning population 100 million https://www.dougsaunders.net/about/maximum-canada/ ). After an American pundit talked about 1 billion Americans, Pierre Polievre is complaining about the Century Initiative, a lobby group with Saunders' original goal https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/ Usually its Canadians who adopt bad old idea that the Americans are abandoning.