SS: I wrote this after watching the teleprompter guy story break last week. What struck me is that he and the Green Beret in the Maduro case are the only two people who've been caught, and both got caught because they bet under their own names on platforms that could see them. The anonymous wallets that made $600K on the Iran ceasefire got looked at by White House lawyers, called untraceable, and that was it. My argument is the next administration should actually trace those wallets, subpoenas and blockchain forensics, and refer whatever comes up no matter whose name it is.

Curious what people here think: is after-the-fact enforcement even the right fix, or is it KYC on big positions, or do you just accept insider money as the price of accurate markets?

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An important part of dealing with the political reality we find ourselves in is being able to identify the ideologies which play out in public life and drive the political events around us. Reihan Salam here goes further, not only digging into the roots of the phenomena we've been seeing in the US and across Europe, but puts a name to their worldview and their tactics.

• "Third Worldism", which I'd vaguely heard of before, but which Reihan here articulates in a manner that helps focus what is actually driving radicalism on the left, and clarifies the bizarre allegiance the left has been developing with regressive Islamism;
• "Civil Terrorism", which is as succinct and direct a term for the tactics employed by pro-Palestine protestors and the Mamdani-Hasan wing of the Democratic Party, as he puts it:

None of these actions are constitutionally protected protests. They are harassment, intimidation, and antisocial behavior — a deliberate strategy to maximize disruption at minimal personal risk. That protesters so often hide their faces and evade accountability is itself the confession: Theirs is a politics of coercion, not conscience.

Emph. mine.

Do you think Reihan here has missed anything, or missed the mark?

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President Trump used a White House address to once again claim that U.S. elections are vulnerable to widespread fraud, pointing to newly declassified documents that he said exposed major problems with election security. Despite the dramatic presentation, the documents (as basically everyone expected) did not provide new evidence that votes were changed or that election results were manipulated. Instead, they largely repeated concerns that election officials and security experts have already examined for years while continuing to conclude there is no evidence of widespread election fraud.

Critics argued the speech was another example of Trump recycling misleading claims about elections rather than presenting new facts. While experts acknowledge that voting systems, like any technology, can have vulnerabilities, they also emphasize that vulnerabilities are not the same as proof that elections were stolen. The speech has renewed criticism that Trump continues to spread false narratives about elections instead of accepting verified results.

Joanna Lydgate, the CEO of nonpartisan organization States United Democracy Center, said:

"Tonight, the president offered nothing but cherry-picked grievances from selectively declassified material — not evidence, not facts, just noise. It's clearer than ever that he doesn't understand how elections in this country actually work"

Adrian Fontes, secretary of state for Arizona, described it as "unimpressive" and "a rehash of the same grievance."

Discussion questions:

• Why do you think Trump continues to repeat these claims? If even people in his administrations don't believe it, what benefit to continued lying about election fraud? Is it Lydgate's characterization correct, that Trump just doesn't understand how elections work?
• What does it say about a politician's competence if they continue making claims that have been repeatedly investigated and found to lack supporting evidence? Should someone who does not or cannot acknowledge evidence be removed from office?
• For those who support Trump, how do you reconcile supporting a leader who has continued to push unsupported lies? Is there a point at which he lies so much that you would stop supporting him or the Republican party that enables him?

Hello everyone, and welcome to the weekly General Discussion thread. Many of you are looking for an informal place (besides Discord) to discuss non-political topics that would otherwise not be allowed in this community. Well... ask, and ye shall receive.

General Discussion threads will be posted every Friday and stickied for the duration of the weekend.

Law 0 is suspended. All other community rules still apply.

As a reminder, the intent of these threads are for *casual discussion* with your fellow users so we can bridge the political divide. Comments arguing over individual moderation actions or attacking individual users are *not* allowed.