If you replace the word "war" with the word "Trump" throughout that passage, it works very well.
 

Sandy: So I cannot help wonder what the Christian Evangelical base that Trump is counting on for any prospect of victory thinks of this passage of Lincoln's.

That the United States paid a blood price during the Civil War for its original sin of allowing slavery to continue? This is a very common thought among Christians, I suppose including many who have and will shortly vote for Donald Trump. I believe I have personally expressed this thought here more than once.

So if one takes Lincoln's theology of 1861-65 seriously, then is it thinkable that the coming civil war should also be conceptualized as "God's will" that "all the wealth piled up" by the exploitation of the only formally freed "bondsmen (and women)" "shall be sunk"?

Huh? The current crop of Democrat secessionists want to sunder the Union to create "Pacifica" or the like because they cannot gain control over the federal government to impose progressive policies on the rest of us. This Christian would not think to blame the good Lord for a resulting Second Civil War to preserve the Union. The Democrats' sole culpability would be plain enough.

I'm not really interested in hearing from people describing this as a partisan rant ...

Unfortnately, this is assumed.
 

"(or, as I do, settles for an agnosticism that simply states that our epistemological resources give us no reason to believe that it is true, but who really knows, as with the possibility of visitors from outer space)"

There is nothing wrong with defining "agnosticism" is that way, but I prefer a different approach. I reserve "agnostic" for a person for whom the existence of God is a genuine, living, question. Someone who believes, because of an absence of evidence, that God doesn't exist, I call an atheist, even if he or she acknowledges that one cannot prove the non-existence of anything, whether God, flying pigs, Santa Claus, or unicorns. (Visitors from outer space I do not think as unlikely as the four types of beings I just named.) An atheist who asserts affirmatively that God does not exist, and who does not acknowledge that one cannot prove His or Her or Its non-existence, is as irrational as a believer in God.

By the way, I can respect someone who believes in God while acknowledging the irrationality of the belief -- that is, someone who chooses to believe because the belief helps him or her cope with life. I consider myself fortunate, not superior, for being able to cope (and in fact being happier) while believing that no God exists.
 

Well, I'm glad you have enough self awareness to recognize it was a partisan rant, at least.

I think Jim Crow piled up no wealth, it cost wealth through lost productivity. So there's nothing to sink. Their was no small amount of blood wrung out, but I'm not a great believer in Lincoln's theology anyway, and no believer in collective guilt at all. The villains of Jim Crow are pretty clearly identifiable, actually, and their intellectual descendants are still in the business of peddling racial spoils in return for political loyalty. Albeit to a different client race...

A point that's curious to me: I first encountered you with that famous paper, "The Embarrassing 2nd Amendment", which I thought a refreshing admission that opposing views can be rational and well grounded, and maybe even "winning", if you approach them with an open mind.

Do you still believe that? You don't recently seem like the same guy who wrote that essay, in a lot of ways.
 

Great post. But, there is no need to generalize it, or put Lincoln at the same basket, with other religious persons. For, Lincoln, is a very extraordinary or unusual case. He did subscribe at the time to the "Doctrine of Necessity", arguing, that nothing depends on man, and everything is made by god, until the last bit of it. I quote him:

"there was no freedom of the will"

And:

"Things were to be, and they came, irresistibly came, doomed to come; men were made as they are made by superior conditions over which they had no control; the fates settled things as by the doom of the powers, and laws, universal, absolute, and eternal, ruled the universe of matter and mind.... [Man] is simply a simple tool, a mere cog in the wheel, a part, a small part, of this vast iron machine, that strikes and cuts, grinds and mashes, all things, including man, that resist it."

Finally describing himself, as:

"but an accidental instrument, temporary, and to serve but for a limited time."

Here for example:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0018.105/--abraham-lincoln-and-the-doctrine-of-necessity?rgn=main;view=fulltext

He is not an ordinary religious person like others. For, religious persons, wouldn't go that far of course. denying in such extreme manner, the free will, or as outcome, the doctrine of reward and punishment by god, for the sins or right things, made by man. Such theology or perception, has no basis in other religions. Like in the Bible for example( book of Genesis, chapter 4) I quote:

"If you are doing right, surely you ought to hold your head high! But if you are not doing right, Sin is crouching at the door hungry to get you. You can still master him."

P.S: You wouldn't like it probably, but Trump, believes in god, yet, claims, that responsibility is on us, not on the almighty.

Thanks
 

I think Jim Crow piled up no wealth, it cost wealth through lost productivity. So there's nothing to sink.

It certainly cost Blacks wealth. It may or may not have cost whites wealth.

The other thing it certainly did was transfer wealth from Blacks to whites. That theft is inefficient does absolve the thief.
 

No, that it did that is specifically what I'm denying. Slavery certainly did that, while being overall economically inefficient. (Which is why the North had the economy to beat the South.) Jim Crow didn't even do that much, IMO. It made both blacks and whites poorer, for all that it was worse for the blacks.

Kind of irrelevant, though, because I'm not a fan of Lincoln's theology, and I'm not a believer in collective guilt.
 

Just correction to my comment above:

The first quote there, should not be attributed to Lincoln himself, but rather, the way His Springfield law partner William Henry Herndon, described him, in his own words so.
 

Brett,

I know you pick that up from an idiot on Volokh, but it doesn't hold.

Presumably the argument is that without Jim Crow society overall would have been wealthier than it was. OK. So there was a big opportunity cost. (Though that's open debate on the grounds that many whites attached great value to discriminatory practices, even though that value is not reflected in GDP statistics.)

But so what? Suppose productivity was 100, when it could have been 110. And suppose further that the 110 would have been distributed 22 to Blacks, 88 to whites, based on a guess as to there proportion of the population. Instead, the 100 was distributed 90 to whites, 10 to Blacks.

Wouldn't that tell us that, whatever the aggregates, Blacks suffered and whites benefited?

And suppose it was 85 to whites and 15 to Blacks. So Blacks lost 7, and whites only 3, entirely as a consequence of white bigotry and stupidity. What does that suggest?

Are you really claiming that because white suffered from their oppression of Blacks, that they have no culpability?

 

No, just saying that there's no wealth "piled up" from it to "sink", using Lincoln's terminology.

Again, I don't accept the idea of collective guilt. "Whites" are a huge, heterogeneous group, "whites" can not, as a group, have culpability, any more than blacks can. Culpability simply doesn't work like that. Specific people have culpability. Not groups.
 

I don't think the Lincoln quote is unmitigated nonsense & it wouldn't be even if one was an atheist. There is mixed in there something regarding what "God" basically stands for even if a deity in the normal sense did not exist.

As to "group guilt," when society as a whole supports a position, in a range of ways, including when choosing who to represent them and in their daily lives as a general matter, there is some general guilt involved.

Someone who tosses around "the left" now is concerned with individual guilt. When it suits, the person makes broad classifications of people and blames them. Whites in general, yes, as a whole, have something to answer for.

I read SL's 2A article as well. His tone is different now because he is voicing opposition to a people more greatly wrong than the 2A, which a range of people think supports an individual rights view. Including many liberals. Again, concern about partisan rants from someone who targets "the left" (which repeatedly includes a range of people, including someone on this blog who was a Pat Buchanan supporter) is funny.

I think Jim Crow piled up no wealth, it cost wealth through lost productivity.

That is a complicated thing that is far from clear net though I'm open to it.

The villains of Jim Crow are pretty clearly identifiable, actually, and their intellectual descendants are still in the business of peddling racial spoils in return for political loyalty. Albeit to a different client race.

Pretty clearly identifiable? Eh. The average white person aided and abetted it by accepting it. The shades of gray is a bit complex. But, wrongful clarity doesn't like gray. "Racial spoils" as seen in a recent thread is confused.

The "villains" often are the same. The biggest segregationists and race mongers going from the segregationist wing of the Dems to the Republicans. Including the writer's (BB) guy, who has the right enemies, allegedly.


 

Joe: As to "group guilt," when society as a whole supports a position, in a range of ways, including when choosing who to represent them and in their daily lives as a general matter, there is some general guilt involved.

Democrats should be careful what they wish for here.

Society or races as a whole never supported or suffered from government racial discrimination.

If you want to prosecute a class action, name the plaintiffs who suffered from government racial discrimination and the defendants who imposed it. Do these include organizations like the Democratic Party and its supporting constellation of NGOs and donors who supported and/or support government racial discrimination?

In your class action, what are the remedies? Enjoin current government racial discrimination without a doubt. Economic damages paid by the surviving defendants to the surviving plaintiffs? Outlaw organizations who support government racial discrimination?
 

"As to "group guilt," when society as a whole supports a position, in a range of ways, including when choosing who to represent them and in their daily lives as a general matter, there is some general guilt involved."

Oh, come on, there's no "society as a whole" that supports a position. You're talking about a mix of people who supported, opposed, it never came up for them. You're just taking all those individuals and trying to mash them up into a mass noun again. Again, guilt doesn't work that way, you can't say to the people who opposed a policy, "Well, so what? You're the same color as the people who supported it, so you're guilty.". Some guy moves here from Norway next week, it isn't, "Sucks to be you, you're now guilty of Jim Crow."

This just so fundamentally misconceives the nature of morality and guilt, that I'd be tearing my hair out if I weren't already bald.


"I read SL's 2A article as well. His tone is different now because he is voicing opposition to a people more greatly wrong than the 2A,"

I don't get the impression that that's what is going on. My impression is that he's losing his capacity to accept that people can disagree with him without their motives being evil. Evil enough that he, expressly, doesn't need to engage with their arguments. I'm seeing a lot of that going on now: The other side is evil, and you don't have any obligation to engage with evil's arguments, debate evil, consider whether evil might be objectively right about something. Error has no right, even to be listened to when it claims not to be error. Because, after all, if you listen to error, you might fall into error yourself.

"I'm not really interested in hearing from people describing this as a partisan rant or willing to present Herschel Walker as the definitive analyst of Donald Trump's lack of a racist bone."

He's not interested in arguing, or hearing from the other side. That's a change from the Sandy Levinson who wrote The Embarrassing Second Amendment. It's not the stance of an intellectual. It's the stance of somebody engaged in holy war.


 

Here's what he doesn't want to listen to. Because, after all, what would a black man who has known Trump for decades know about whether he was a racist? Why would his opinion be worth listening to, when his mind is already made up?

Glad his mind wasn't already made up about the 2nd amendment, back then. What else is it made up about today, so he doesn't feel any need to engage and risk having it changed? A lot of things, I suspect.
 

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During the age of Jim Crow, there was a basic position among whites (the "society" at issue here), except for some very small group, that went along. By their actions, including who they voted for. There are basic things that society (or specific subset) as a whole does, noting that there is no absolute rule there. But, when people talk, it is a bit silly and ungenerous to take them as speaking in absolutes anyway.

Second, this is a blog post. The 2A article was that. An article. Sandy Levinson in these blog posts is sorta venting. Again, the avenue of criticism here is a bit off. The person from time to time goes all "looking at this unemotionally," but that is repeatedly not the tone. It's "the Left" this or whatever. Anyway, in other locations, Sandy Levinson writes and gives lectures etc. in a different tone. Though, again, unlike the contours of a particular view of the 2A, Trump is a lot more clearly wrong.

Citing that speech doesn't erase everything else we know about Trump. I gather, e.g., that maybe members of his own family -- one in particular -- know a bit more about him. There is a book out there that can refute a speech. Racists, sexists etc. often have supporters that say they aren't that.

Sandy Levinson still engages with people. Here, on his blog, especially about Trump, he doesn't want to do so. OTOH, unlike some others here, he still leaves open comments. So, even there, just how much (cf. Jack Balkin etc.), is he totally serious? Even GM, who leaves open comments, doesn't really engage much. Many people who write on blogs tend to talk to themselves. SL maybe is just honest here that on this format he doesn't really want to hear certain things. But, still, comments open.
 

It really doesn't matter if individual white people opposed Jim Crow or not. They -- every last one of them -- still were unjustly enriched by the consequences, as byomtov has pointed out.

Also, it's a bit rich to hear lectures about collective guilt from somebody who regularly bases "Democrats" and "liberals" collectively, and who blames both groups for what single individuals say or do.
 

"Pointed out", "asserted", whatever. The position that all white people can be treated interchangeably for purposes of assigning guilt is no different from asserting ('pointing out') the same of blacks: It's fundamentally racist.

"White" or "black", these are immutable characteristics. "Democrat" or "Republican", these are groups one chooses to join. You do understand the difference, right?

I'm a Republican now, formerly a Libertarian. I can properly be criticized for that choice, (The criticism may or may not be valid, but at least it is a sensible basis for it.) because it was and is a choice. Just as it is a choice to be a Democrat.

I'm white. I didn't have any say in that, it tells you nothing about me except my proclivity to get sunburns. It makes no more sense to attribute to it any moral significance, than it does to attribute it to my eye color or height.

See, this is the problem with permitting racial discrimination today as a supposed remediation for past racial discrimination: It only makes sense if you reason in a racist manner. To sustain support for it you need to encourage people to reason in the manner of racists.

And once you, horribly, have some success at that, congratulations: You've succeeded in prolonging and promoting racism. And not just the sort you wanted to promote, (As bad as that would be.) racism in general. Because, once you succeed in getting people to reason the way racists do, why would you expect them to be self-loathing enough to decide the only correct thing to do is be racist against their own racial group?

You may be well meaning, (I'm not convinced, but I'm open to the possibility.) but you're doing something horribly destructive here. And the resulting destruction doesn't care about your motives, only what you're doing.
 

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Mark: It really doesn't matter if individual white people opposed Jim Crow or not. They -- every last one of them -- still were unjustly enriched by the consequences, as byomtov has pointed out.

byomtov: Suppose productivity was 100, when it could have been 110. And suppose further that the 110 would have been distributed 22 to Blacks, 88 to whites, based on a guess as to there proportion of the population. Instead, the 100 was distributed 90 to whites, 10 to Blacks. Wouldn't that tell us that, whatever the aggregates, Blacks suffered and whites benefited? And suppose it was 85 to whites and 15 to Blacks. So Blacks lost 7, and whites only 3, entirely as a consequence of white bigotry and stupidity. What does that suggest?

Economics does not work this way. Goods and services are not "distributed" to anyone.

This is your class action.

How precisely did Democrat Jim Crow economically harm blacks and in what amount?

How precisely did Democrat Jim Crow economically benefit whites and in what amount?

How are Democrats and the economic benficiaries going to compensate the former?
 

Are we supposed to believe, Brett, that Trump's entire campaign thrust isn't aimed at stoking racial fears? Really?

And as for harm from Jim Crow -- you might ask someone from Greenwood, Oklahoma, about that.
 

Are you going to believe it? No, of course not. Trump stoking racial fears is a starting point of your reasoning, you interpret everything from that perspective. If he opened his mouth and white noise came out, you'd hear a racist rant. There is literally nothing he could say, that you wouldn't interpret as racist, once somebody isn't a Democrat, their 'racism' is unfalsifiable.

People who actually pay attention to the words don't hear racism. That's why Democrats had to invent "dog whistles"; The actual words weren't racist, so you had to claim they meant something different if conservatives were using them.

"And as for harm from Jim Crow -- you might ask someone from Greenwood, Oklahoma, about that."

Not quite sure what you mean by that: Did I deny that Jim Crow was harmful? No, I did not. Indeed, I said there was no small amount of blood wrung out during it. Not figurative blood, either.

Rather, the question is whether you can rightfully use racial discrimination as a response to past racial discrimination. Whether it's moral, whether it's prudent.
 

I too am disgusted by the Trumpists trying to claim the mantle of Lincoln. But I'm not sure it's true that a civil war is almost inevitable at this point, and I also must say I'm not sure it's a helpful thing to assert, whether it's true or not. If Biden wins in a landslide, as looks increasingly possible if not probable at this point, I think the overwhelming majority of the country will be more than happy to accept this result and move on. Trump and his (hopefully dwindling by that point) band of miscreants might kick and scream a bit, and at worst there could be some relatively small incidents, but I don't believe there's a significant likelihood that a civil war will ensue. Now I understand things might go completely sideways, and there are worst case scenarios that unfortunately aren't outside the realm of possibility; however, with all truly due respect to Professor Levinson, I still don't think we're at the brink of an "almost inevitable" civil war (I'm glad at least for the "almost"), and again I'm not sure it's helpful or even really responsible to be saying that kind of thing right now. In any event, I certainly hope this will in retrospect turn out to have been an exaggeration.
 

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Eli Poupko: I'm not sure it's true that a civil war is almost inevitable at this point, and I also must say I'm not sure it's a helpful thing to assert, whether it's true or not.

Look at the organized terrorism on the streets of burning blue cities and last night's attack on Rand Paul leaving the RNC, the victim of a previous aggravated assault by a Democrat at his home. The cold civil war of the past generation is definitely warming.

If Biden wins in a landslide, as looks increasingly possible if not probable at this point, I think the overwhelming majority of the country will be more than happy to accept this result and move on. Trump and his (hopefully dwindling by that point) band of miscreants might kick and scream a bit, and at worst there could be some relatively small incidents, but I don't believe there's a significant likelihood that a civil war will ensue.

Republicans are not the ones terrorizing the streets and attacking their political opponents.

If Trump wins a second term, in no small part on the strength of ballots cast by suburban families watching in horror the nightly reports of what CNN spins as "Fiery but mostly peaceful demonstrations," I guarantee the Democrat street violence will intensify and Sandy will again propose secession.
 

"If Biden wins in a landslide, as looks increasingly possible if not probable at this point,"

538's election model has Biden only "slightly favored" to win, a 70% chance. Roughly the odds Hillary had going into the election 4 years ago. The odds are nobody is going to get a popular vote majority this year, either.

 

Brett, if you can't see that Trump is stoking racial divide then you have truly dispensed with reality. A triumph of willful ignorance.

Since the citizens of Greenwood were massacred, there's no need to worry about "reparations", I guess. Of course, it did serve as a warning to other people of color that they'd better be careful about getting "uppity." Which continues down to this very day.
 

Again, does somebody else committing a wrong many years ago justify holding responsible people today who merely look something like the wrongdoers? Only racists think that way.

And, what did he have to say about race? Be specific. I listened to his acceptance speech last night, and heard no stoking. But it was rather late, and I was driving home from work, so maybe I missed something.
 

Brett, odd that you'd use 538, since they gave Clinton a high probability of winning in 2016. Have they done something to increase their accuracy since then?

Consider the fact that, given the number of EC votes that Biden basically has "in the bag" at this point (remember, things may change!) due to polling that puts him well ahead (outside the confidence interval), he's 8 EC votes short of victory if the election were held today. In order for Trump to win, and ignoring the states where he's safely ahead, Trump would have to win every one of the 11 states in the middle, including Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina.

Tell you what, take a penny and throw it 10 times and tell us how many times it turns up heads.

Or you can use the Economist's panel of experts, who give Biden a .9 probability.

538 is just playing "hedge your bets" at this point after being burned in 2016.

I keep asking people this, and getting no response: what big event is going to change in the next 66 days that will swing the election by about 6-7 points? Show your prediction ability and tell us.

 

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It might not "matter" in some sense, per Mark, but it does matter in my view in another. Anyway, it was just dealing with a particular comment.

"Pointed out", "asserted", whatever. The position that all white people can be treated interchangeably for purposes of assigning guilt is no different from asserting ('pointing out') the same of blacks: It's fundamentally racist.

That is a "position" but it isn't mine. I specifically noted the nuances of the situation, how it's complicated (the average white was different than some political leader, e.g.). People can't simply be treated "interchangeably." OTOH, there is some basic truth to the statement, that on a basic level, there is some shared guilt.

But, pointing out that segregationist society, which didn't just happen, it happened because the average person went along with it,* was a joint effort is now somehow "racist." Such an abuse of terminology doesn't make it surprising that Trump is labeled not one. A racist is some fictional demon, basically, not someone supports if said person sees themselves as a good person. That seems to be the idea too often.

---

* And, the system was that whites were favored and blacks were disfavored, including denying blacks the right to vote. Blacks "went along" -- with some protest and dissent -- because the alternative was lynching and so on. Whites "went along" for other reasons. Yes. Racism was a thing. Society-wide racism. So, the position is not now, the fictional idea that racism is really basically in the past, but even in the past, it wasn't really a society-wide systematic thing. Just some bad individuals, really.
 

I think your memory of 2016 might be a bit faded: By election day they were giving Trump about 1 chance in 3 of winning the election, which was quite a bit higher odds than most were giving him. As Silver noted, things with a probability of 1 in 3 happen all the time. One time out of three, even! All you needed was some correlated error in the polling in swing states, and hail to the chief, Trump.

"I keep asking people this, and getting no response: what big event is going to change in the next 66 days that will swing the election by about 6-7 points? Show your prediction ability and tell us."

Oh, I don't know, a Marxist insurgency rioting in our cities, and Democratic local governments letting them? The economy recovering at a rapid pace going into the election? The pandemic that hurt Trump finally receding? The Democratic candidate having links to a totalitarian state that's committing genocide? Seems like there are plenty of candidates for that "big event".

 

C2H5OH claims or wonders, and reasonably so, the following, I quote:

I keep asking people this, and getting no response: what big event is going to change in the next 66 days that will swing the election by about 6-7 points? Show your prediction ability and tell us.

End of quotation:

Well many. But, I shall deal right now, only with the Corona. For, the Corona has failed him, and maybe, shall raise him again(Trump):

And first, vaccines. Trump, planed carefully the day of the vaccine. Bought all options in advances, from several producers all together, and plans, to provide it to the American people, free of charge (basically). That can change the momentum finally (probably the vaccine shall be ready before election).

Second, there is that narrative, that may be developed further, that in fact, the Chinese are to be blamed for the spread of the pandemic. Yet, not only because of the commonly known delay (in informing the world) but:

There is that theory, among many generally speaking, but above all, secret services in the world, that, the Chinese as claimed, caused ( recklessly or maliciously even) that virus to leak or spread from certain laboratory near the "Wet Market" in Huan (where all started) and for strategic reasons, wanted to affect the world, and take down so the US.

If such narrative shall persist, develop, or proven actually before election, then:

Biden, would be portrayed as complete useless clown against such evil, global evil.

It can happen. There is certain probability. There are more others, but, we won't stay young here no more.

I shall leave some links later......

Thanks

 

Anyway, since SL favors focusing, one more comment on his own words:

. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" etc.

There was a thread of thought since the American Revolution of some "providence" etc. that was guiding our path. This was generally seen as some independent living entity of some sort. A God, sometimes seen in a deistic fashion. Even people like Thomas Paine thought there was a God, though they were not sure about an afterlife.

Lincoln's words did match the beliefs of each side -- the parts about praying to God and so forth. Thus, the agnostic etc. might challenge the part about some active force that was "judging" the nation. That war was in some sense a judgment, a punishment, with the winner somehow a result of good over evil in a cosmic sense. Maybe an even "gnostic" battle between good and evil in some sense.

There is some problems there (is/ought etc.) but putting aside told of "God's will," there was, is, a moral side to the battle. This is one truth in the discussion. Shades, perhaps, of John Lewis. It was/is not just a war over territory and slavery, but over morality and justice. Things might be impersonal here, but events here can in a symbolic way have a certain "will" or tendency. Anyway, he was a political leader, speaking to the beliefs of the public. His language took that into consideration.
 

C2H5OH, you can learn here, about several plans or contracts for vaccination made by Trump:

https://www.firstpost.com/health/trump-announces-sixth-vaccine-contract-for-us-for-100-mn-doses-of-modernas-covid-19-vaccine-8698231.html

And here, about theories of the origin of the virus as mentioned:

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/covid19-origin/
 

"The position that all white people can be treated interchangeably for purposes of assigning guilt..."

You're so eager to accuse liberals of "racism" that you completely missed the point I'm making (which I think is really byomtov's). Namely, that this isn't a matter of guilt. Suppose you go to the bank to cash a check and the teller mistakenly gives you an extra $100. You did nothing wrong, probably didn't even realize it. But you don't get to keep that money. It's not yours and you have to return it.

That's the case with slavery and Jim Crow. An individual white person may have done nothing wrong (I doubt it, but I'll assume for the sake of argument), but s/he still ended up with more money than s/he would have had in a fair society. That's unjust enrichment.
 

I addressed that. Slavery certainly made some people better off than they would have been. Jim Crow? I don't think so. People just varied by how much worse off it made them.

But you're still assuming that you can identify who got the supposed windfall by looking at their skin, not their actual life history.

You're pretty relentless about that end game: Treating people according to their skin color, instead of as individuals.
 

C2H5OH: I keep asking people this, and getting no response: what big event is going to change in the next 66 days that will swing the election by about 6-7 points? Show your prediction ability and tell us.

Biden is not leading Trump by anything close to 6-7 points.

Here is the deal with polling:

Because of mass non-compliance (people not answering strange phone numbers or hanging up on pollsters), telephonic polls cannot obtain random samples. In an attempt to correct for non-compliance, pollsters reweigh the demographics of their respondent to match the census polling of the general population, studies concerning the state by state demographics of registered voters (RV), or the likely voter (LV) demographics they guess or wish for this cycle. The problems with these reweighing schemes is the general population (7% of whom are non-citizens and about half of whom do not vote) has more minorities and young people than the actual electorate, RVs have about half the overcount of the general population, and the LV demographics are what the Democrat media paying the polling bills want the electorate to look like.

In 2016, the Democrat media polls looked at the very ahistoric demographics of the 2012 election when Obama got out his minority and Millennial base vote and successfully micro targeted the white working class vote with negative messaging portraying Romney as an evil plutocrat, reducing that vote by about 6 million, then assumed this was the beginning of a trend toward the Democrat holy grail of a majority minority electorate. The problems with this assumption was the Obama coalition never came out for white establishment Democrats like Clinton (see 2010 and 2014) and the white working class vote stayed home in 2012, it did not die off. Consequently, the 2016 Democrat media polling oversampled the young and minorities and undersampled the white working class vote.

To make things worse, Trump voters targeted by Democrats as "deplorables" or worse were the archetypical "Shy Tory" voters, declining to participate in polls or lying to pollsters claiming they disapproved of Trump and/or were "undecided." Voters who claimed to disapprove of Trump ended up being one of his largest voting blocks. The only pollster who successfully sniffed out these millions of "Shy Trump" voters was Trafalgar, who asked swing state undecided for whom their family and friends were voting and assigned these voters to that candidate. Where the Democrat media polls overstated swing state Democrat support by an average of 5% in 2016, Trafalgar was showing dead heats in the swing states.

Of the 2016 Democrat media poll aggregators, 538.com was the only one who sensed something was wrong with the data and lowered the Clinton victory probabilities from insane 90%-plus levels offered by places like HuffPost to 71%. Even that was dramatically overstated. The polls were wrong and the race was always very close.

2020 looks like more of the same. The Democrat media polling has Biden leading by about the same amount as Clinton in national vote totals and somewhat less in swing states. Trafalgar has the swing states (the only ones which matter in a POTUS election) as a dead heat again.

The new polling variable is Trump 2020 has a markedly higher enthusiasm advantage when compared with Trump 2016. Only a fraction of Democrats are enthusiastic about voting for Biden. Democrats are depending on Trump hatred to win this election. However, people turn out for candidates, not against their opponents. See 2012, when the white working class which powered the 2010 GOP blow out stayed home in 2012 rather than voting for either Obama or Romney because they were not enthusiastic about Romney.

This is the variable I am watching. Unless, Biden closes the massive enthusiasm gap with Trump, I am having a hard time seeing him win this fall.
 

This is the variable I am watching. Unless, Biden closes the massive enthusiasm gap with Trump, I am having a hard time seeing him win this fall.
# posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 11:39 AM

These poll numbers are GREAT news for John McCain!!
 

One more thing, and then I'll go: No, Brett, things with a probability of 1 in 3 don't happen "all the time." They happen 33 percent of the time.

538's statement is nothing but CYA BS.

I notice that, absent wishful thinking, the anti-Democrat faction has no idea what might cause the populace to slide massively in Trump's direction.

The announcement of a vaccine the week before the election might convince some tiny percentage -- but it's doubtful it will make much of a difference by then. I suspect that fully 30-40 percent of the electorate (outside the Trump base) will have voted by mail by then. I know I certainly intend to vote as soon as possible.

 

"I addressed that. Slavery certainly made some people better off than they would have been. Jim Crow? I don't think so. People just varied by how much worse off it made them.

But you're still assuming that you can identify who got the supposed windfall by looking at their skin, not their actual life history."

You don't think so? That's convenient. Suppose that Jim Crow made the nation as a whole poorer than it would have been without it. That's a *relative* reduction, not an absolute one. We know this because we can measure GDP and that rose during Jim Crow.

No, the real issue is how that smaller-than-it-should-have-been increase was distributed. The whole point of Jim Crow was to assure that it went to white people, not black people. Your denial of this point is laughable. If you were white and lived during that time, you got the advantage of that even if you vigorously opposed Jim Crow. You're the guy who tried to keep the $100 from the bank.

And it's not as if the end of formal Jim Crow marked the end of discrimination in the US. That has continued up to and including today. You still get that advantage that you wouldn't have in a truly free system. And you're gonna cling to that $100 no matter what.
 

"No, Brett, things with a probability of 1 in 3 don't happen "all the time." They happen 33 percent of the time."

Is English your first language? I get the impression it isn't.
 

Mark, I think we're talking past each other.

Do you understand what I mean by "white people isn't a mass noun"? There "is" no white people. There "are" white people.

"People" is just the plural of "person", it is individuals who are the reality. But you keep treating us as some undifferentiated mass, like a bucket of milk, that's either all fresh or all spoiled.

You treat the country that way, too. As though Jim Crow was nation-wide and uniform. Why did all those blacks move North after the war? Because they'd be equally oppressed, but the risk of frostbite would make it more tolerable?

You're relentless about mashing everyone together, so that you don't have to justify why you harm any given victim of you racial discrimination. Black? Victim. White? Oppressor. It's convenient, I'll grant you that. But just or moral? Not remotely.
 

What you're failing to acknowledge is that the whole point of Jim Crow* was to discriminate against people on the basis of skin color and to give advantages to other people on the basis of skin color. It was predicated on treating skin color as an undifferentiated mass. It can't be discussed in any other terms. That would be like trying to talk about Nazi Germany without using the terms "Jews" and "non-Jews".

You're still dodging the point about the $100 of unjust enrichment. Personal guilt is irrelevant to that issue.

*I'm using Jim Crow as a shorthand for all forms of racial discrimination suffered by blacks, whether de jure or de facto, whether North or South.
 

My impression is that he's losing his capacity to accept that people can disagree with him without their motives being evil. Evil enough that he, expressly, doesn't need to engage with their arguments. I'm seeing a lot of that going on now:

Have you been looking in the mirror? What percentage of your comments critical of others' views or action accept that the other side is operating in good faith?

Virtually none. They are an endless stream of conspiracy theories, paranoia, mind-reading as to ulterior motives, etc.

Just look at the Volokh threads the ACLU and the NRA. Even when the ACLU does something you approve of, the motives stink.


 

Economics does not work this way. Goods and services are not "distributed" to anyone.

Actually, they are. In fact, there are even businesses called "distributors."

But I'm not at all surprised you fail to grasp my point, since your grasp of economics is negative.
 

"You're still dodging the point about the $100 of unjust enrichment"

You're dodging multiple points. First, very few people were actually enriched by Jim Crow, (The way slavery certainly did enrich the slave owners!) mostly people were hurt to greater or lesser extents. But if you went around poisoning people, you wouldn't say that the people who got lesser doses had their health boosted at the expense of the people who got larger doses. Everybody got poisoned, not made healthier, where Jim Crow was in effect. Which was NOT everywhere!

Second, though, you're still mashing people together. It's not as though there was a national "Unjustly Enrich All Whites" fund, that all blacks were forced to contribute to, and all whites drew checks from. It was all very heterogeneous. Which brings us to your big mistake, the virtual hair pulling one.


"Personal guilt is irrelevant to that issue."

But that's just exactly your mistake. Personal guilt, personal deserts, are the only thing that matters, the only thing that is relevant. There isn't any other sort of guilt or deserts TO matter!

You can't envision a picture of what a just society would look like, and create a mosaic of individual injustices that look like a just society from a distance. You can't wrong your way to right. The only thing you can wrong your way to, is wrong. The only thing you can injustice your way to, is injustice.

There's no making the world better by making the individual pieces worse.

Nothing BUT personal guilt can be relevant.
 

Mark: You're still dodging the point about the $100 of unjust enrichment.

What point? What enrichment? You and byomtov are making baseless assumptions.

What Jim Crow laws took goods, services or money away from blacks and gave it to whites? And how?
 

Cheap Flights from USA to Africa
 

To take your last point first, you're going to be very disappointed when the legal system orders you to repay that $100 despite the fact that you did nothing wrong when you took it. The wrong is in *keeping* the gain which you unjustly received.

Your first point is not even wrong, it's incoherent. White people got opportunities and income which weren't available to black people (e.g., houses outside of redlined areas or jobs that blacks weren't hired for) and benefited from those.

"You can't wrong your way to right."

Sure you can. We firebombed our way to winning WWII. Sherman marched through Georgia. Etc.
 

"To take your last point first, you're going to be very disappointed when the legal system orders you to repay that $100 despite the fact that you did nothing wrong when you took it."

There's no "taking" to repay, don't you get that? And you're not even bothering to establish that *I* did the supposed taking, (Not likely, I was born in Michigan, not the South.) you're treating my skin color alone as proof.

Again, this is how racists think about these things: You don't need the details, you know what you need to know once you've determined somebody's skin color.

"White people got opportunities and income which weren't available to black people (e.g., houses outside of redlined areas or jobs that blacks weren't hired for) and benefited from those. "

Look, even conceding that was true in some places, that doesn't mean whites benefited at the expense of blacks. It means that blacks were harmed. Where's the benefit to whites from redlining?

"Sure you can. We firebombed our way to winning WWII. Sherman marched through Georgia. Etc."

Hitler rolling across Europe, too! I never said you couldn't injustice your way to victory, just that you couldn't injustice your way to justice.
 

Every single white person benefited from discrimination against blacks. You, me, every single one of us. You didn't have to do anything wrong, though we all probably did. In any case, accepting the benefits of injustice is itself a wrong -- that's the point of the $100 you insist that you get to keep.

"Where's the benefit to whites from redlining?"

There's lots of literature on this. You should read it.

"I never said you couldn't injustice your way to victory, just that you couldn't injustice your way to justice."

I'll take this as your tacit admission that American society is now and always has been unjust to blacks (and Native Americans, et al.). Now you can start trying to come up with ways to make them whole.
 

Where's the benefit to whites from redlining?

Just to take one example from housing. FHA loan programs were discriminatory. Since presumably the funds available were not infinite some whites received loans that would have gone to Blacks otherwise.
 

"Every single white person benefited from discrimination against blacks. You, me, every single one of us."

What, even Jorn who moved here from Norway last week? Even white people living in states that never had significant black populations, so there weren't any blacks to discriminate against?

To be clear, this isn't a real, historical, actually benefited sort of benefited. This is a more nominal, "Every single white person is white." benefited, which doesn't require any proof of benefit, just of whiteness.
 

I've got a good friend in Jax Beach who figures that he's had cops pull their guns on him about 30 times during his life. That has never happened to me. Guess which one of us is Black.

Yes, every single white person benefits from white privilege.
 

Mark: White people got opportunities and income which weren't available to black people (e.g., houses outside of redlined areas or jobs that blacks weren't hired for) and benefited from those.

What barred blacks from buying houses outside of redlined neighborhoods? Redlining was a banking practice of not offering home mortgage loans within poor communities, which they used as shorthand for a poor credit rating.

The Democrats already experimented with "reparations" in this area. In the 1990s, the government and attorneys like Barack Obama sued banks for racial discrimination in housing. The plaintiffs were not folks with prime credit ratings wrongfully denied home mortgages. No, they were nearly all deadbeats with subprime credit. Rather, the legal theory was home mortgage denials disproportionately impacted minorities. The lawyers and deadbeats made millions.

The Clinton bureaucracy was unsatisfied with legal action, directing banks to make subprime home mortgage loans and then put the tax payers on the hook for them by having Fannie and Freddie buy up this trash. Of course, the subprime borrowers defaulted a decade later because that's what deadbeats do. Minority communities were devastated.

Was this racial discrimination?

byomtov: FHA loan programs were discriminatory. Since presumably the funds available were not infinite some whites received loans that would have gone to Blacks otherwise.

Government loan guarantees are entitlements and are not capped by a budget. Just because one person does not obtain a loan guarantee does not mean the guarantee goes to someone else.

Mark: Every single white person benefited from discrimination against blacks. You, me, every single one of us. You didn't have to do anything wrong, though we all probably did. In any case, accepting the benefits of injustice is itself a wrong

Utter horse sh_t, as the nonsense you an byomtov offered above demonstrated.
 

Sniffles, how many times have cops held your racist ass at gunpoint?
 

bb:

Never gave the police a reason to draw their sidearms.

How about you?
 

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Government loan guarantees are entitlements and are not capped by a budget.

Moronic.

They are not entitlements, and are not infinite.

Boy, are you bad at economics.
 

Never gave the police a reason to draw their sidearms.

How about you?
# posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 7:35 PM

Neither did he. Except for being Black. So how many times did the police pull a gun on you for being white? You didn’t answer the question.
 

byomtov:

My ignorant friend, your FHA loan insurance is an entitlement. Here are the requirements from the FHA site:

FICO® score at least 580 = 3.5% down payment.
FICO® score between 500 and 579 = 10% down payment.
MIP (Mortgage Insurance Premium ) is required.
Debt-to-Income Ratio < 43%.
The home must be the borrower's primary residence.
Borrower must have steady income and proof of employment.

You meet the requirements, you get the loan insurance.

The program is notionally designed to be self funding on fees paid by the borrower. There is no budgetary cap.
 

BD: Never gave the police a reason to draw their sidearms.

bb: Neither did he. Except for being Black

Are you referring to Jacob Blake?

This hero was a rape suspect with an active warrant who brawled with the police with a knife in his hand. He also apparently had a active social media life where he posed with his gang banger buddies brandishing a pistol. If Blake advanced on a police officer with a knife, the officer was well within his rights to draw his side arm and shoot him. Can't tell from the video in the public domain.

What I do not understand is why the officers did not put him down during the brawl with either non-deadly or deadly force. Instead, they allowed him to walk all the way around the vehicle and lean into the driver's compartment to either escape or obtain another weapon. Shooting a suspect in the back is never a good way to justify use of deadly force. Stupid.

However, if you are looking at Blake as an innocent black man shot down by the police for no reason, keep looking.
 

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Are you referring to Jacob Blake?

# posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 10:54 PM

No asshole, I'm talking about my friend. During his life the police have drawn their guns on him at least 30 times for no reason. How often has that happened to your racist white ass?

 

bb: I'm talking about my friend. During his life the police have drawn their guns on him at least 30 times for no reason.

Sorry, I don't believe you.

I have practiced criminal law in multiple jurisdictions over more than twenty years now. I have multiple police officers in the family. What you just claimed simply does not happen.
 

Sorry, I don't believe you.

I have practiced criminal law in multiple jurisdictions over more than twenty years now. I have multiple police officers in the family. What you just claimed simply does not happen.
# posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 11:12 PM

Sorry, I don't believe you. I'm quite certain that the police you know have told you all about this sort of behavior. Because it happens all the time.
 

Just look at the white kid who murdered those people in Kenosha. The police didn't shoot him in the back even though he's carrying an AR-15 around in the middle of a protest. They don't even stop him after people are telling them that he shot multiple people. But a Black guy that might have a knife in his car? bang bang bang bang bang bang bang

My guess is that your cop friends are probably just as racist as you.
 

Seriously, did it not dawn on the Kenosha PD that it might not be a good idea for a 17 yr old dumbass to be walking around with an AR-15 in the middle of a protest? Not only did it not dawn on them, but they threw him some water and thanked him for his support. Every one of those cops should be fired.

But I think everyone here (except Sniffles) knows how that goes down if it's a Black kid with an AR-15.

bang... bang...bang...bang...bang...bang...bang...
 

Leni Riefenstahl not Reifenstahl, please. Ms Tirecord would be a good name for a fascist, though.
 

" The police didn't shoot him in the back even though he's carrying an AR-15 around in the middle of a protest."

Probably because they didn't have an arrest warrant for him for rape, and he hadn't just slugged them.

I realize you don't like it that carrying a gun in public is legal, but slugging cops and resisting arrest isn't, but that's the way things are, until you get your way.

As I read it, things went wrong when the cops didn't let him go back to his job guarding the cars, and he ended up surrounded by the rioters. Even then things would have been fine if the rioters hadn't attacked him. But, rioters, of course they were going to attack him.
 

Do Blue Lives Matter? Yes. But they matter less than those of civilians black, white and brown. That includes suspects, unless they present an immediate and deadly threat.

The argument is this. Law enforcement is a profession of volunteers, just like the armed forces in most countries (Wikipedia says only 12 still have military conscription). Policemen and soldiers have access to deadly weapons, and are allowed and required to use them is defined circumstances to protect the citizenry from dangerous threats. Their privileges in the use of force are matched by greater risks, and in a given year some policemen and some members of the armed forces will be killed in the course of duty. These deaths are sad and those who die are rightly honoured and mourned by their comrades and the community. But it's part of the life. There is no equivalent for the civilians that policemen and soldiers are sworn to protect. In an edge case, the civilian's life matters more than the cop's. We expect cops to take risks accordingly. Those who don't accept this deal should find another job.

This does not mean that policemen and soldiers lose the universal right to self-defence. If they are being shot at, they can shoot back (though the soldiers must wait for orders). But that does not extend to shooting Blake in the back because ihe was maybe reaching for an unseen knife, or Menezes for jumping a London Underground turnstile in the hours after a terrorist bombing.
 

Jacob Blake represented an immediate and deadly threat. He had just assaulted cops who had attempted to arrest him on a felony warrant, and was going for his car with several cops pointing guns and yelling at him to stop. What rational conclusion would there be save that he was going for a weapon? He'd even had a similar encounter a couple years earlier, and actually HAD been going for a gun that time! I'd have been shot under those circumstances, anybody would have been.

It was perfectly appropriate to shoot him. Arguably they should have shot him sooner.
 

bb: Just look at the white kid who murdered those people in Kenosha. The police didn't shoot him in the back even though he's carrying an AR-15 around in the middle of a protest.

The police were standing down (almost certainly at the order of the Democrat mayor) and were doing nothing to stop the riots, which is why armed civilians were guarding the local businesses. Rittenhouse had a clean record and shot Antifa terrorists in self-defense (all of whom had violent criminal records). Blake was a rape suspect who brawled with the police.

But I think everyone here (except Sniffles) knows how that goes down if it's a Black kid with an AR-15.

If more black citizen groups armed and protected their businesses from the largely white Antifa terrorists, this shit would end in short order.
 

James: Do Blue Lives Matter? Yes. But they matter less than those of civilians black, white and brown. That includes suspects, unless they present an immediate and deadly threat.

Tell that to my step dad, nephew and their families.

Police should have the ability to use all necessary and reasonable force to subdue a resisting or violent suspect. They should not have to suffer injury or death to make a fight fair for some criminal.

If they use excessive force, by all means prosecute them. I have done so in may career with a Latino officer body slamming two non-resisting white suspects at different times. Yes, police excessive force is interracial in all combinations.
 

If more black citizen groups armed and protected their businesses from the largely white Antifa terrorists, this shit would end in short order.
# posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 9:20 AM

Lol. If armed Black groups start shooting white protesters the only shit that will end will be the lives of the Blacks doing the shooting. The cops will absolutely kill them. Then they’ll start handing out water to white vigilantes.
 

The guy was shot at seven times, by one account I see being hit four times in the back.

No, I don't think that would have happened to me. People struggle with the police. Somehow, they tend to manage not to be shot seven times at the back, especially if all they have is a knife. That is, if it was in the person's hand. He was allegedly reaching for it. I'd add that being tasered didn't appear to improve the situation. Those who want to significantly change the criminal justice system have a point that heavy handed use of force and punishment has various counterproductive results.

Oh. It was cited he once was "going for a gun" -- two years or so before. The Fourth Amendment is concerned with a specific incident. Not "well a couple years back ..."

This thread has become a back/forth against a specific person, which tends to bother Sandy Levinson, but here the person is a sort of case study.
 

Probably because they didn't have an arrest warrant for him for rape, and he hadn't just slugged them.

# posted by Blogger Brett : 8:18 AM

It was a child illegally carrying a weapon. That’s enough to shoot him in the back if he’s Black.

 

"Somehow, they tend to manage not to be shot seven times at the back, especially if all they have is a knife. That is, if it was in the person's hand. He was allegedly reaching for it."

The reports I've seen say that the knife was in the car. It's unlikely the cops even knew it was there.

As I understand's Brett's Theory of Justice, we were unjust to Hitler and probably owe him an apology or maybe a statue. But shooting Jacob Burke 7 times for going to get in his car with his children is a death penalty offense and it should have been imposed earlier.
 

Blake, dammit.
 

Yes, the facts are unclear, and often only clearly come into focus later one & often not in media reports. Specific facts as a whole should be carefully cited, especially in general discussions like we do here. But, for the purpose of argument, some chance that he was reaching for something didn't warrant the force used. From what I know so far.


 

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Mark: The reports I've seen say that the knife was in the car. It's unlikely the cops even knew it was there.

These reports are ignoring (likely intentionally) the freeze frame shots of the video of Blake walking around the vehicle. He is carrying a knife in front of his midsection.

The knife recovered in the vehicle was very likely the one he was carrying.
 

Joe: People struggle with the police. Somehow, they tend to manage not to be shot seven times at the back, especially if all they have is a knife.

The best proportional response to a non-firearm weapon like a knife is a baton. However, previous police "reforms" took away the baton because they could break bones in favor of a far less effective taser. The taser did not work against Blake, leaving only firearms.
 

leaving only firearms.
# posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 11:33 AM

Unless the suspect is white. The the “quietly arrest him the next day” option is still allowed.

 

Kyle is a seventeen year old who probably was legally carrying that gun, but the trial will determine that.

But if you're trying to make the case that blacks get shot when whites wouldn't have, you really shouldn't use as your example a black guy violently resisting arrest on a felony rape warrant.
 

bb: Lol. If armed Black groups start shooting white protesters the only shit that will end will be the lives of the Blacks doing the shooting.

When faced with groups of armed citizens in the past (including, yes, blacks and asians), Antifa, BLM and the like generally back off.

Generally, Antifa and BLM gangs attack outnumbered individuals and small groups. Even this tactic is exceedingly dangerous against a well-armed person who knows how to use his weapon, like Rittenhouse. Once these BS charges get thrown out by a judge or jury, Rittenhouse should enlist in the Army or Marines.

The police in burning blue cities are not permitted to do much of anything.
 

But if you're trying to make the case that blacks get shot when whites wouldn't have, you really shouldn't use as your example a black guy violently resisting arrest on a felony rape warrant.
# posted by Blogger Brett : 11:43 AM

I’m comparing the cases of a white kid accused of murdering people with a black guy accused of rape. The black guy is shot in the back. The white kid is quietly arrested at home the next day. And you’re fine with all of that. In fact, you think that the black guy should have been killed earlier.
 

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bb: I’m comparing the cases of a white kid accused of murdering people with a black guy accused of rape. The black guy is shot in the back. The white kid is quietly arrested at home the next day. And you’re fine with all of that.

Hardly.

If Blake was brandishing a knife while brawling with the police, the police should have shot him in the front during that assault.

The WI DA should have fully investigated the Rittenhouse shootings and then declined to prosecute based on self defense. Filing first degree murder charges based on videos which provide no evidence for such charges, without even interviewing the kid, is an obvious politicization of the criminal justice system meant to scare off other vigilantes who would use deadly force against Antifa terrorists.
 

Rittenhouse should enlist in the Army or Marines.

# posted by Blogger Bart DePalma : 11:47 AM

He already tried to join the Marines. They rejected him. That seems like it might be a red flag.
 

Blogger Bart DePalma said...
If Blake was brandishing a knife while brawling with the police, the police should have shot him in the front during that assault.

Lol

Hardly. He was slowly getting in his car when he was shot 7 times in the back. The white kid was accused of murder. He wasn’t shot in the back and was quietly arrested the next day.
 

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bb: He already tried to join the Marines. They rejected him. That seems like it might be a red flag.

If that story is true, the kid is seventeen. Did he try to join at sixteen? If he was seventeen, did his mother sign off on his enlistment?

The Marines, who are the least picky of the services, likely told the kid to come back when he was 18.
 

He was rejected after an interview. You don’t need an interview to find out how old he is.
 

bb:

All recruiting sergeants "interview" prospective recruits at the recruiting center.

A 16 year old cannot enlist period.

A 17 year old needs parental permission.

Likely, the Marine recruiter told him to come back when he was 18.
 

Yeah, it definitely requires an “interview” to ask him how old he is. If he was Black they would have just shot him in the back. And you’d be here defending it.