Were the 9/11 attacks successful?

[Berkut]

1. I believe smoking is bad and greatly increases the chances of lung cancer
2. I smoked a lot.
3. I got long cancer.
4. I think I would have been better off had I not smoked at all, and very likely may not have gotten lung cancer.

Am I sure there is a casual link? Of course not.

Is it rational to throw up my hands and say "GOSH WE CAN NEVER KNOW MAYBE SMOKING HELPED!"?

No, it is not.

#1 is not some abstract belief though.  The science between tobacco smoke and lung cancer has been established by decades of science.

So when you say

1. Someone smoked for 20 years
2. Someone got lung cancer

The idea that 3. smoking caused lung cancer, while true not 100% proven, is very heavily implied because of the extensive medical research.


Berkut, I get it.  The idea of personal liberty is very, very important to your conception of politics.    But the idea that each time we step away from your personal perception of personal liberty is one step closer to "The Abyss" says more about you then any useful political prognostication.

Personal liberty is one small part of what we are talking about. Global war, jihadism, and the rise in authoritarianism among traditional "conservatives" goes well beyond personal liberty.

But if this is just going the route of the ad hom, it is suddenly a lot less interesting to talk about.

[Berkut]

1. I believe smoking is bad and greatly increases the chances of lung cancer
2. I smoked a lot.
3. I got long cancer.
4. I think I would have been better off had I not smoked at all, and very likely may not have gotten lung cancer.

Am I sure there is a casual link? Of course not.

Is it rational to throw up my hands and say "GOSH WE CAN NEVER KNOW MAYBE SMOKING HELPED!"?

No, it is not.

#1 is not some abstract belief though.  The science between tobacco smoke and lung cancer has been established by decades of science.

So when you say

1. Someone smoked for 20 years
2. Someone got lung cancer

The idea that 3. smoking caused lung cancer, while true not 100% proven, is very heavily implied because of the extensive medical research.

This is the interesting part.

I think the difference between us is that I think the link between western liberal social values and actual outcomes in politics, economics, and human well being is just as "heavily implied" as the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Indeed, I am rather amazed that people who claim to be "conservative" would dismiss the idea that liberal western values have actual meaning and consequence, and hence it is entirely rational to presume casual relationships between not adhering to those values and actual outcomes.

I continue to find myself surprised at how little faith? (not sure if that is the right word) people in the modern west have in their own social and cultural values. We preach the importance of free elections, free speech, education, etc., etc., etc., but never seem to accept that those values actually result in anything, or that the lack of them matter.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Something I think that is worth mentioning that often isn't--I don't think that much has changed in America in terms of percentages of people holding certain types of views, in regard to it leading to Trumpism. I actually think if anything those sorts of views were probably a little more common 30 and 40 years ago.

What I think really happened is these toxic forces were not hyper-concentrated into just one of the two parties, and that party was not entirely dependent on those toxic forces for its political existence, and further that toxic coalition did not control more than 70% of most rural areas and more than 60% of many suburbs (giving them a geographic dispersion that massively enhances their electoral power.)

Of the three broad parts of Trumpism that I see, each was fairly split for a long time:

- Christian fundamentalists until the 1980s, were not strongly identified with either party. There were tons of pro-life and pro-choice politicians in both parties, and neither party really built its apparatus around appealing massively to this group, so Christian fundies tended to be spread between both parties and were probably also voting on a more diverse set of issues because of it. The work of Reagan's time was corralling this group into the GOP, something that was more or less entirely complete by the end of Clinton's Presidency.

- White Nationalists, or more crudely "all the white bigots", were if anything still more likely to be in the Democratic party than the Republican until about 1972, and the shift to where almost 100% of them were in the GOP didn't happen overnight, it was a long, long process that was only fully complete in the 2000s.

- Immigration skeptics, who probably are in venn diagram where they significantly overlap White Nationalists, but not 100%, didn't have an obvious home until after 2010, remember that Bush tried to pass immigration reform with McCain's backing, and Reagan actually did an amnesty on illegal immigrants. Due to the Chamber of Commerce Republicans being fairly pro-immigration, especially from countries south of us, this significantly muddied the GOP's positioning on this topic. After 2010 most of the immigration reformers who decided to stay in the GOP entirely abandoned that position, and shortly after anti-immigration candidates became not only the norm but almost universal.

Either through luck or divine providence, these historical groups of shitty asshat Americans were split apart across both parties for a solid 100 years or so until the 1970s, and now they are entirely concentrated in one party, and it has given them more power than they've really held since probably the Civil War.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I continue to find myself surprised at how little faith? (not sure if that is the right word) people in the modern west have in their own social and cultural values. We preach the importance of free elections, free speech, education, etc., etc., etc., but never seem to accept that those values actually result in anything, or that the lack of them matter.

Those things are paeans, I see little evidence from American history they have ever been cultural touchstones most people identify with. America is largely a liberal country but in the wing of liberalism that is primarily concerned with limiting government power so that private locuses of power can freely operate. It have never, ever, ever been a majority position to hold humanist, egalitarian etc values in the United States. I also don't really think it has ever been a majority position to genuinely care that much about free elections. We let the South run unfree elections for over 100 years with little concern. We also allowed political machines and other entities to corruptly control elections for the same span of time. Before that we used to conduct even less free forms of elections prior to the Civil War (when there was not an anonymous ballot, and you would literally get assaulted if you publicly voted for the wrong party in a certain district.) America has never been pluralistic, we have just had people who say pretty things along those lines, but it's like the pledge of allegiance: "with liberty and justice for all", millions of school kids grew up saying it, almost none really meant it.

[Admiral Yi]

I similarly see next to no relationship between 9/11 and Trumpism.  It also has the problem of falling back into the pattern of "if we surrender X then the terrorists have won."  Bin Laden didn't give a shit about free elections in the US and neither did the dudes who hijacked the planes.

I similarly agree that Gingrich was not the start of Trumpism.  Gingrich started a fight about which branch has the controlling power in the budgetary process.  That has nothing to do with Trumpism.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Gingrich was definitely an accelerationist because he setup the idea of being on a "war footing" with Democrats in Congress. He was notable for actually calling freshman Republican Congressmen into his office and lecturing them against having dinners, lunches etc with Democrats, and was against a lot of the "low impact bipartisanship" that often occurred outside of core contentious issues because he didn't want his people associating with or helping Democrats ever as that undermined the "war" effort. But Gingrich was a product of the way things were moving, if he had been ran over by a bus in 1992 another Republican very likely would have taken the same set of decisions.

[Berkut]

I similarly see next to no relationship between 9/11 and Trumpism.  It also has the problem of falling back into the pattern of "if we surrender X then the terrorists have won."  Bin Laden didn't give a shit about free elections in the US and neither did the dudes who hijacked the planes.

The wind doesn't care who wins a sailboat race, but it certainly does have an impact on it.

[Admiral Yi]

I similarly see next to no relationship between 9/11 and Trumpism.  It also has the problem of falling back into the pattern of "if we surrender X then the terrorists have won."  Bin Laden didn't give a shit about free elections in the US and neither did the dudes who hijacked the planes.

The wind doesn't care who wins a sailboat race, but it certainly does have an impact on it.

No one says if we lose this race the wind has won.

[The Minsky Moment]

There has long been a nativist, isolationist, protectionist core in the Republican party; that element was often dominant before WW2.  The Cold War marginalized that wing because the need for internationalist engagement was so obvious and because elements of that wing were discredited by linkages to Nazism.  But it survived on the margins, indulging in conspiracy theories. It was kept down by Reagan and his legacy (who although conversative enough to attract the Goldwaterites was an open internationalist) and temporarily by 9-11 which again forced the US to engage with allies overseas.  Thus, its more modern standard bearers like Pat Buchanan remained marginal figures.

As the Cold War and Reaganism slip deeper into memory and the international environment is more favorable to nationalist expression, it created a space for that old nativist strain to re-emerge.  And Trump's campaign was in the right place at the right time to give it a boost.

[Valmy]

There has long been a nativist, isolationist, protectionist core in the Republican party; that element was often dominant before WW2.

It was there from birth. The Republicans were born from a union of Free Soilers and the American Party (aka the Know Nothings). Practically the second the Democrats walked out during secession they were falling over themselves to pass tariffs.

[Berkut]

I similarly see next to no relationship between 9/11 and Trumpism.  It also has the problem of falling back into the pattern of "if we surrender X then the terrorists have won."  Bin Laden didn't give a shit about free elections in the US and neither did the dudes who hijacked the planes.

The wind doesn't care who wins a sailboat race, but it certainly does have an impact on it.

No one says if we lose this race the wind has won.

That isn't the argument you made. You said there was no relationship between the two. The discussion is on whether or not 9/11 contributed to the radicalization of the GOP.

[Admiral Yi]

That isn't the argument you made. You said there was no relationship between the two. The discussion is on whether or not 9/11 contributed to the radicalization of the GOP.

I made two arguments, the first of no relationship between 9/11 and Trumpism, the second about the fallacy of "if we do X the terrorists have won" arguments.

[Jacob]

I made two arguments, the first of no relationship between 9/11 and Trumpism, the second about the fallacy of "if we do X the terrorists have won" arguments.

I believe you're the only one in this thread who is framing any "if we do X the terrorists have won" arguments.

[Berkut]

If we are going to go with "Did they achieve what they set out to achieve" as the measure of success, then it was clearly a success.

They set out to hijack 4 planes, and fly them into 4 targets, killing large numbers of people.

They succeed in taking and destroying all 4 planes, and hitting 3 targets they set out to hit.

It was the most successful terrorist attack of all time.

[Admiral Yi]

I believe you're the only one in this thread who is framing any "if we do X the terrorists have won" arguments.

I'm framing what you're saying in that way.