I disagree, the lukewarm emotion driven campaign ("we're not the other guy!") and lack of any rational strategy or arguments from the oppositon is how these people won in the first place.
Appeal to emotions stands on the trustworthiness/track record of the pleader. The opposition, full of public/private office musical chair players, has been in the pocket of lobbyists/corporate interests - they don't have any standing to plead to emotions (not saying the incumbents do but they have been successful in harnessing their already enraged supporters).
Pleading to emotion works only if the target audience is not ideologically possessed, and by ideologically, I mean that they hate the mere thought of voting democrat even if they support the democrat’s agenda.
The Democrat agenda has far far higher approval ratings than Democrats, and that says a lot about the current state of affairs.
To add, conservatives voters often claim they vote they way they do because "the other side" makes no attempt to understand them. I think GP is asking an honest question. If nothing else, I had the same question because I want to understand what the conservative voters want in this case, if not the surface level racism.
To anyone who voted for Trump because he said he'd be hard on drug dealers: how do you feel about him pardoning a top level drug dealer?
The answer is that what they want isn't ideologically consistent.
They want him to be hard on criminals who do things they don't like. The biggest drug dealers alive are the Sacklers or maybe McKinsey, and they're not in scope either.
Progressives aren't consistent either. No one is. For example, Dems keep screaming about being a country of laws when referring to GOP antics, but want to ignore certain immigration, anti-abortion, and drug laws (in some cases by just refusing to enforce them).
Unfortunately what's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say.
Yes, yes but children detention center which separated kids from their parents and then lost the paper work connecting them back to their family, even some kids died of neglect in the detention center...cruelty.
Trump clearly values favoritism to a high degree. He is doing exactly as he has promised, running the country like a businessman. If you scratch his back, he will scratch yours. Principles take a back seat to "getting the job done". For other examples, see his changed stances on TikTok, various foreign interests, cryptocurrencies, EVs post Elon support, etc. And in the opposite vein, he abandons support for anyone who challenges his authority on principles.
Principled politicians are very rare. Do you think the outgoing administration was particularly principled?
People need to stop thinking of politicians as their friends and having parasocial relationships with them. They're public servants and should be treated as such.
Pardoning Ulbricht was a campaign promise he made at the Libertarian National Convention in response to it being a popular demand among the libertarians.
And more importantly, among the crypto crowd that dumped millions into his campaign. Libertarians have essentially no clout or money on their own. This was a pardon bought by Coinbase and Gemini and A16z.
Why would Coinbase and Gemini and A16z care about an obviously shady person who reportedly tried to hire a person to kill someone? surely they could find a more legitimate hero to advance the legal crypto case? i mean, it's kind of like them - companies trying to do legit crypto - rallying today around SBF when they already have image problems from other exchanges?
Because much like the billionnaires already flanking Trump, the heads of Coinbase and A16Z are out-of-touch charisma black holes that have no clue how to talk to the average Trump voter to get them on their side. Ross Ulbricht is the avatar for their ultimate goal of legitimizing crypto in the US financial system.
Not sure, but when they have various political candidates getting millions from the crypto PACs and all of them in unison talking about how Ross Ulbricht needs a pardon, I'm not sure what else to tell you. Maybe someone just knew Ulbricht personally and is using their money to spring him.
But unless you can point to any other group with actual power and money who was pushing for it, the most obvious answer is that the main funders of the crypto PACs were at least ok with it. There's no way they couldn't have subtly squashed this pardon with Trump if it was just the Libertarians asking for it given that they seem to have gotten him to commit to do literally everything else they want.
There is no "legit crypto" - it's a myth. Every single exchange that swaps spit with the Bitcoin ledger is laundering money made by criminal (often violent or fraudulent) means. Many if not most altcoins are equally as fraudulent, or used to launder ("tumble") other suspicious coins.
Let's be honest anyways, the cryptocurrency "industry" as we know it is less than 4 years old, and in 4 years it may be gone. Exchanges like coinbase and so-called defi innovators like A16Z need this legally-dubious signalling or they'll risk never having another leader corrupt enough to sanction their behavior.
I got cash out of an airport currency exchange ATM the other week, and when I tried to use it to by groceries yesterday, the cashier tested it for cocaine and it came back positive. There is no "legit cash".
I think that might be a myth? If I tried buying a $0.50 candy bar with a hundred-dollar bill, I think that the cashier might refuse it and I don't think they'd get in trouble for doing so.
I thought the "legal tender" argument only worked in regards to debts to the government, though IANAL.
no it literally happened at publix the other day, its like a mall cop mentality I guess. I suppose it is not that strange because most bills have traces of cocaine on them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency
It's confusing because there's no logical point to it nor does it follow along as a regular conversation.
"Some cash has cocaine on it" has no logical relationship to "all cryptocurreny use is illegitimate".
If they wanted to refute the original claim and say that cryptocurrency has legitimate uses or if they wanted to make a separate point to say that cash is similarly only useful to criminals, they failed.
> the cashier tested it for cocaine and it came back positive
There is no commercial product capable of testing cash for drugs. Anyone claiming to sell such a product is lying.
There is a wipe, like a baby wipe, that is sold as a "cocaine detection wipe". It is a lie.
It uses a dumbed down version of a spot test that is very good at detecting cocaine, but it also reacts with many other substances that are not cocaine.
The test was dumbed down because the substances needed to make it more accurate are much more dangerous than the cobalt thiocyanate (which is STILL not good for you) used in the "safe" tests.
There are thousands and thousands and thousands of substances that will cause a cocaine detection test to return a positive reaction. One of them is Benadryl. Benadryl causes such a strong and vibrant reaction that you would think the entire object being tested was made of pure cocaine.
If you keep a single packet containing one Benadryl pill in your bag and you use it and while taking it a handful of diphenhydramine (Benadryl) molecules get transferred from your fingers to the outside of the packet, and then you toss the packet into your bag and they get transferred from the packet to the interior of your bag, to a wallet in your bag, to the cash itself, testing the cash in that wallet with a cocaine field test will produce a stronger positive result than if you had rolled up a bill and snorted a line immediately prior to the test and there was still powdered cocaine on the bill.
This is not a joke or exaggeration. If you touch a single Benadryl pill with the tip of your index finger, then poke the tip of your finger to a sheet of paper, then you put that sheet of paper in a printer and a rubber roller in the paper-handling mechanism rolls over the spot you touched, every single sheet of paper printed by that printer for MONTHS will test positively for cocaine. (using the tests that don't require training, PPE, and expensive lab equipment).
Did your totally real and not bullshit cash have drugs on them, or Benadryl, or ANY substance with the ring of carbon atoms that the test detects?
"But this study found 80% of bills had dru..."
Buddy 100% of all bills that have been used just once have actual literal shit, feces, dookie, poop, (and staph!) on them.
They rubbed some sort of pen thing on it, and they took the bills to some machine in a back room. At the time, I figured it was because they thought the bills were fraudulent (I was paying with 100s because my card didn't work).
Maybe the pen thing was only to test if the bills were fraudulent, and then the machine in the back of the store could also do drug tests? Or maybe it was all a lie and they were just bullshitting me.
No love for Trump or libertarians but I am a cypherpunk[0] at heart. I'm on board with the idea of ensuring that things can happen online outside of the jurisdiction of any nation[1], so for his part in building towards that I'm happy Ross is free.
On the other hand, it's clear to me that the correct amount of jail time wasn't zero either, given everything else he allegedly did.
[1] I think about this in the same way that we accept the possibility of bad things happening because people can have private conversations in their own home, or are able to have complete control over potentially dangerous tools and vehicles. IMO the risks are worth the trade-offs and these are important rights to protect in the relationship between people, technology, and government (or whoever wields power).
I’d like to know who wrote that speech. A lot of talk about how libertarians are domineered and persecuted. Something like “after criminal prosecutions, if I wasn’t a libertarian then, I sure am now” in front of a very idealistic audience whose skepticism of government is unrelated to how many billionaires it fingerprints. So, they booed and heckled him, and in hindsight I wonder if he was grasping for concessions.
> I don't think you increase demand by ease of access.
Well that's the entire principle of price elasticity. The less costly (not only in terms of money, but also in terms of risk and time) something gets the higher the demand, at least up to a point.
> Don't online drug marketplaces lead to reduced gang activity?
Online isn't the important factor here.
> One does not need a gang and violence to sell drugs online.
Gangs and violence aren't there to support a marketplace. They don't help you find customers or customers to find you. They don't improve the efficiency of exchange. They're there to enforce outcomes. Selling drugs leads to outcomes that don't care whether the buyer and seller found themselves online.
I don't think he knows who RA is, I'm betting the cryptobros who ran his rug pulls and NFTs for the last year have his ear after making him millions of dollars.
I mean, I don't know why it's a full pardon, IMO Ulbricht's sentence was far too long and harsh, I'm sure it was to make a point that others should not replicate it, but wouldn't a stay on the remainder of his sentence been a better option here ?
You’re assuming the reason for the pardon is “the sentence was unfair” rather than “some people that cheered at my rally said they would like me to do this”.
My understanding is that it’s more Trump generally attempts to keep campaign promises, he doesn’t always succeed, but when all it takes is an executive order, he generally does it pretty quickly.
In instances where it takes more than his signature (e.g. the wall) he has failed to make good on many promises but he definitely put in effort to trying to make them happen.
No no no, my friend. Ulbricht was not a lowly drug trafficker (also, incidentally, not black or latino). He was an _entrepreneur_ who built a _marketplace_ that would bring together buyers and sellers, cutting out the middleman, and driving _efficiency_! Basically trustedhousesitters.com, just for illegal drugs instead of pets ;)
He said he would do this during his campaign as a promise, a lot of libertarians voted for him based on this. He delivered on the promise after he won a convincing majority. I'm not sure why democracy offends you this much.
what's it like to be poor in a rich country? the libertarian party supported his reelection bid and by support Ross he garnered more of their votes. this couldn't be more obvious. he did the same for crypto.
according to Trump: "A promise made is a promise kept", he is keeping his promise to his constituents.
So that's the interesting thing about it; he gets the votes from it, so apparently many people agree with him? Only in public nobody seems to agree with him? How is that possible?
Most of his voters have no idea what his campaign or promises are, and that's intentional, see mexican voters apparently surprised by his anti-mexican stance now.
> see mexican voters apparently surprised by his anti-mexican stance now.
Source?
And it seems people don't particularly like Trump, but vote on him because he seems to be the only one that wants to do something about illegal immigrants:
And I understand that it's even frustrating for legal immigrants, who waited for years to get citizenship, that illegal immigrants don't have to do anything and get it right away.
So yeah, we can argue about the details, but it is clear that during Biden's administration it was way too easy for illegal immigrants to get into the US, which is unfair for the legal immigrants that went through much more trouble to get there.
Aside from that, the constant flow of illegal immigrants also caused a lot of issues in the states near the borders, and obviously for the country as a whole.
> Sorry I really don't like YouTube for political content. Any text summaries of how they get citizenship quickly after crossing illegally?
Sorry, I looked for it but it seems it's not easy to find mainstream newspaper articles about this. It seems this topic is heavily being censored. Which is interesting in it's own right. But it does also mean that I can't deliver all this information on a golden plate for you, and you'll have to do a little bit of research and analyzing and personal thinking, instead of just reading the headlines that the media is feeding you.
Watch the video, it really gives you might insight into the complexity of the situation, or at least how it was.
And how else would you explain that first the borders were constantly flooded with illegal immigrants, and now not anymore? Something must have changed that has made the illegal path less interesting than the legal one.
> And how else would you explain that first the borders were constantly flooded with illegal immigrants, and now not anymore?
It could just be the news coverage. Maybe they wanted people scared before the election. Do you have sources with actual numbers? What is the percentage decrease?
> It seems this topic is heavily being censored
Then how are the illegal migrants "easily" getting citizenship finding out about it?
> Then how are the illegal migrants "easily" getting citizenship finding out about it?
They hear it from each other. They know, it's a whole business, with coach busses taking immigrants to the border where they continue a common path take daily by many people. It's all in that video.
This is representative of the dichotomy we face within society, in that we rarely associate with people who have different opinions than us, even when we think that we do regularly. It is the paradox of our social circles that overlap but never interact.
The trick is inside or brains. We’re having trouble dealing with detailed percentage breakdowns and differentiating between groups of people.
Instead we think of “the average person” and project that on everyone.
You looked at the small libertarian interest group, and based on that projected how everyone is. Now you look at hacker news and you’re projecting how everyone is. This projection is where our reasoning fails.
Yeah but to be honest, most mainstream media channels that I see criticize Trump a lot. And the media that praises him is often seen als radical / extreme / whatever right.
So, either the old government is in power of the mainstream media, or people are secretly on the right and don't speak out about it. Or maybe a combination of the two.
It’s the selection of media that you see. Try watching Fox. Try listening to Joe Rogan. Try going on a clean YouTube account and watching random videos for a week. It’s there.
You made a false dichotomy, but I’m sure you can figure that one on your own.
There’s also the other aspect where you align your views to the views of your group.
There are places in the US, where being a Republican is absolutely the core of what you are, and you will adopt and genuinely love any candidate from that party.
Trump yesterday: “I like both sides of the argument, but I also like very competent people coming into our country, even if that involves them training and helping other people that may not have the qualifications they do. I don't want to stop…”
"We want competent people coming into our country. And H-1B, I know the programme very well. I use the programme. Maître d', wine experts, even waiters, high-quality waiters, you've got to get the best people. People like Larry, he needs engineers, NASA also needs... engineers like nobody's ever needed them"
I make and sell soap. The soap contains an ingredient that anyone can use to make bombs. Some people buy my soap only for that purpose. I know because they literally tell me how they use my soap. I can remove that ingredient but I would loose a lot of sales.
The police finds my soap in the lab of someone who blew up a building. Some people died. Was it my fault, knowing how it was being used? Did I do anything illegal? Unethical? Immoral?
Interesting thought experiment, but no, I don't think it's llegal/unethical/immoral to sell that soap. But in practice this sort of business will change their formula to avoid bad press and regulation.
Having done some internet things (email stuff) that have been abused by others I always felt obligated to make the abuse as hard as possible once I found out about it.
I am not sure about the legal standpoint, but from a moral one I would have felt bad running the business knowing it's regularly abused to harm others and I am not doing anything against it.
If you set up what is clearly a perfect marketplace for drugs, and you know it's going to fill up with drug dealers, and it does fill up with drug dealers, and there's one goofball that decided to sell a hamburger.... you're not an innocent guy who is running a hamburger marketplace.
It just allowed unrestricted trade outside of regular economy. In a world where the governments themselves are corrupt and criminal, you could argue over the ethicality of the concept. But comparing it to drug cartels is unfair I would say.
Why is he pardoning a drug trafficker?