[FRIAM] What if Trump Wins?
steve smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Thu Oct 31 17:19:51 EDT 2024
Marcus -
I totally defer to your brand of "morbid fascination". I have my own
deep streak but I think it is interrupted by a cross-cutting vein of
hopium-rich optimism. Your pithy "worst case/best case" ideations are
exquisite.
I will argue (against my own technophobic/neoLuddite nature) that you
might be too optimistic when you refer to it as a "last chapter of my
life"...
The technoutopian movement we have all had our part in very likely may
sweep you into a psuedo-uncountable string of birthdays out into the
future.
Following your arc, however I agree that whether it is climate
catastrophe or societal collapse may take most if not all of us out
before our self-trimming telomeres and rundown of endocrine/metabolic
systems bring us to heel as God (nod to DaveW) intended somewhere during
the begetting, begatting and begotting of the long-lived Old Testament
Patriarchs if not as he booted (does God wear Boots?) us out of his
Walled Garden.
- Steve
On 10/31/24 9:20 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>
> An upside I could see of another Trump presidency is that economic
> productivity in the United States would further consolidate. States
> and municipalities would evolve more defensive mechanisms to preserve
> productivity and health of its businesses and residents. Areas that
> did not, would continue their downhill slide. As it became clear the
> national democracy didn’t work, the federal budget would become
> increasingly restricted. Medicare and Social Security would fall
> being replaced by state-level programs. At some point the U.S.
> starts defaulting on its debt. What’s not clear to me is how to break
> up the military and the nuclear arsenal. (About now I bet Ukraine
> regrets their decision..) I could see that functions like the FAA or
> the FDA could be coordinated.
>
> My sense is that, well, about 50% of the population in the United
> States just isn’t worth the trouble. AI is going to make a lot of
> jobs unnecessary. Maybe Trump catalyzes a dramatic change in
> society? It could all be a fascinating, if terrifying, final chapter
> in my life?
>
> *From:*Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 31, 2024 7:38 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] What if Trump Wins?
>
> The Case for Trump
>
> I'm not suggesting that Trump is a model leader; he has many moral
> shortcomings. And yes, if we view the U.S. President as the de facto
> leader of the West, it's fair to ask: Can’t we do better? I also won’t
> debate whether someone like Harris might make a better president. My
> point is this: If Trump is elected, might there be areas where his
> unique style could actually make him an effective leader?
>
> One thing Trump can do is negotiate. As a potential leader of the
> West, there are benefits he could bring in negotiating with
> adversaries, including BRICS countries. Let me explain using an
> analogy: the character James Dean played in Rebel Without a Cause. In
> a game of chicken, Dean's character pretended to be drunk, making his
> opponent believe he was reckless—eventually causing them to back down.
>
> Trump has a history of employing similar tactics. For instance, when
> building in New York, he once proposed a design that violated height
> limits. When this was denied, he proposed a much uglier building that
> followed the code. Ultimately, he got approval to build his original
> design, with the height exemption he wanted. Whether or not he would
> have gone through with his threat is unclear, but he got what he
> wanted by throwing a calculated tantrum.
>
> In the same way, Trump's current claims about what he would do
> internationally could simply be part of his proven negotiation
> tactics. World leaders see him as “reckless” in the same way James
> Dean’s opponents did, making them reconsider their own moves.
>
> Ultimately, Trump may be an unconventional choice, but he is a skilled
> negotiator—one who could, in his own way, secure some advantageous
> outcomes for the West.
>
> On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 at 13:07, Santafe <desmith at santafe.edu> wrote:
>
> The newspapers, and any number of writers, do a good job spelling
> all this out.
>
> I have this frustrated feeling that doing this misses the point
> that is driving the dynamic.
>
> One of the good things that Paxton emphasizes about what drives
> fascist movements from the ground up is the determined rejection
> of thought in favor of feeling. Hannah Arendt goes on at length to
> get the same thing across.
>
> I envision it (with some discomfort about misfits of the metaphor)
> as being like a social counterpart to berserking, or (even less
> apt) elephants going into musth. It’s not even “rage” per se, but
> something about as destructive, only chosen.
>
> I see the various repubs that make communities with the dems, and
> speak as if they hope this will “accomplish” some “change”. For
> the Bannon-followers, I feel like I know exactly what this looks
> like. It is the various subcategories of hated ones
> self-identifying, and sewing on their sleeves a marker of
> “establishment characters”. Bannon preaches to the mob: “You see;
> they’re scared! We have them on the run. If you’ll just push a
> little harder we can corner them, and we’ll give them the beating
> of their lives. Imagine how powerful you will feel. They’ll want
> you to stop, and they won’t be faking it, but they won’t be able
> to make you stop. Won’t that be the best feeling you ever had?
> You’ll be able to feel, finally, that you actually exist.”
> (Bannon doesn’t put in the final line; I put that in.)
>
>
> I guess I don’t want to argue against the things people are trying
> to do (Michael Luttig, various Cheneys, and whoever). The voting
> block that can cause the calamity is certainly a coalition of
> non-identical groups. If we think there are categories of
> Spontaneous Racists and Stimulated Racists (to borrow a term from
> spectroscopy), the part of the voting bloc that is made up of the
> spontaneous ones may not be all that large; maybe 20%? Not as
> large as the evangelicals (35–40%?, with some overlap). There
> presumably are some genuinely out-to-lunch types, and maybe one
> can imagine that talking has some place with them, which could be
> enough to move the margin of this winner-take-all event we are
> stuck with. And then the ones that can think enough to be
> strategically greedy or hoarding, but not circumspect enough to
> have every cared or understood how the society they suck from
> actually functions. _Maybe_ talking could have some effect with
> them.
>
>
> I have thought, too, since some NYT article by a guy from Bucks
> county PA going home, and thinking that the trump voters actively
> wanted “the trump vibe; the meanness, bullying and name-calling,
> etc.” that this is an expression of a certain component of nihilism.
>
> Whoever wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now was very good.
> Kurtz’s line in one of the soliloquays:
>
> “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be completely
> free? Free from the judgments of others; even of yourself?”
>
> There is a core of nihilism in that freedom. What would it feel
> like to go punch somebody for no particular reason, except that I
> felt like it? Burn whatever some people mean by “the bonds of
> human affection” that “include us in humanity”. Yes, I sort of
> understand (and this probably is important) that whoever I hit
> will now know he has to fear me, and he may even dislike or hate
> me, and it may be irreversible. But if he can’t do anything to
> me, why do I care? In fact, if he wants to and still can’t, even
> better: that will give me that experience of power that I imagine
> must be so nice to feel, but that if it is, I certainly don’t feel
> now.
>
> It’s not as simple a category as all that, because they are
> willing to do this only if they believe they are members in the
> mob. Whether that’s community or just a release from the
> requirements of either responsibility or courage I can’t say.
>
>
> But I do think that, in the U.S., a crucial conversion that Arendt
> articulates, from a mere mass into a mob, has now been achieved,
> and the mob is awake and self-aware as a mob. It took a sociopath
> to go charging out across the minefield that normal people are too
> chicken to venture into, to show how far out the actual
> shooting-boundary is, beyond where they had drawn back before.
> But now that the boundary has been identified, that’s public
> information, and the others don’t need to be sociopaths to use
> it. It changes the problem, because there are a lot more of them
> than of the true sociopaths.
>
>
> I agree, we would like to first get through the next week without
> an acute disaster. But the system organization has passed through
> a re-arrangement by now. I would like to know what a program
> looks like to reverse that, without having to go through the whole
> Hodgkin-Huxley circuit of the society’s destroying itself before
> there is enough exhaustion to try for a reset. Since, under the
> conditions that are likely by that time, it’s not clear what kind
> of “reset” might even be available.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 31, 2024, at 4:59 AM, Russ Abbott <russ.abbott at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > To help prevent such a disaster, let's do our best to help
> people imagine what the world would look like if Trump wins.
> >
> > For example, Trump has said that one of his priorities would be
> to throw off the occupying army of invading immigrants and
> criminals. Ask people to think about how this occupying force is
> currently ruining people's lives. I suspect that very few people
> have any experience of such a noxious invading force. Most people
> find their lives relatively peaceful. But if Trump begins to
> implement his plan to throw off this occupying force, the streets
> would be full of armed deportation agents chasing down the evil
> occupying forces. Gunfights would erupt between the deportation
> agents and immigrants running for their lives. Many of us would be
> caught in the crossfire--or holed up at home trying to avoid the
> bullets. Ask people to imagine such a world and to compare it to
> the relatively peaceful world we now occupy. Ask them if that is
> really what we want and if that is what we will be voting for next
> Tuesday.
> >
> > -- Russ Abbott
> > Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
> > California State University, Los Angeles
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 11:48 PM Jochen Fromm
> <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
> > Here in Europe most people are indeed worried that the candidate
> who is a convicted felon and wears orange makeup will become
> president again. Have his fans all forgotten he mainly played
> golf, praised dictators and created tax cuts for the superrich?
> But there is also a bit of hope that a woman will stop him this time.
> >
> > A hundred years ago there was already a group in America that
> hated Blacks and immigrants. As Timothy Egan writes in his book "A
> Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over
> America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them" one of the Ku Klux Klan
> leaders was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson. He was
> eventually brought down by a woman, Madge Oberholtzer, who would
> reveal his cruelties, and whose testimony stopped the Klan. When
> Europe fell into darkness, America was able to stop the con man. I
> hope it can do it again.
> >
> https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558306/a-fever-in-the-heartland-by-timothy-egan/
> >
> > -J.
> >
> >
> > -------- Original message --------
> > From: Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
> > Date: 10/30/24 10:54 PM (GMT+01:00)
> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Evolutionary transitions between
> egalitarian and despotic societies
> >
> > Hi, Jochen,
> >
> > Not sarcastic. It was to show the exploratory nature of such
> models. I do believe that the most mysterious feature of
> charisma is the behavior of the charasmees. However this election
> turns out, almost half the country is about to willingly offer up
> it's political autonomy to a potential dictator. Whatever my
> faults, I try, try, TRY not to do sarcasm. I do wonder if we
> could build models that explore under what circumstances it is
> better for everybody to do SOMETHING then to take the time to
> pool information and do the right thing.
> >
> > In general evolutionary history has no actual power to constrain
> our present behavior. Our behavior is constrainted by present
> events and present behavioral repertoire.
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 30, 2024 at 2:37 PM Jochen Fromm
> <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
> > In her book "The Social Instinct" Nichola Raihani mentions in
> chapter 17 the article "An evolutionary model explaining the
> Neolithic transition from egalitarianism to leadership and
> despotism" from Simon T. Powers as a model how despotic regimes
> and dominance hierarchies have evolved in early human societies.
> > https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2014.1349
> >
> > It reminds me of our recent discussion triggered by Nick's
> (sarcastic?) proposal to explain parts of the MAGA movement in
> terms of evolutionary psychology. Simon T. Powers is an
> interdisciplinary researcher working at the University of Sterling
> > https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/2013555
> >
> > A more recent article from him about "Modelling transitions
> between egalitarian, dynamic leader and absolutist power
> structures" can be found here
> > https://www.stir.ac.uk/research/hub/publication/2041639
> >
> > -J.
> >
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> > --
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> > Clark University
> > nthompson at clarku.edu
> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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