I like this passage from a Washington Post article yesterday about the insane chaos now surrounding the Trump campaign:
By early last week, Trump and his No. 2, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), found themselves trying to reverse-engineer evidence of Haitians eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, arguing they were simply trying to draw attention to the real problem of immigration. They also used inflammatory rhetoric to blame Biden and Harris — whom Trump called “the enemy from within” — for what the Republican ticket claimed was inflammatory rhetoric that lead to the apparent attempts on Trump’s life.
For those of you who don't know, "reverse engineering" is when you examine how something works and then write your own software to duplicate it in meticulous detail. In other words, you know exactly what you want, and you set out to create it no matter how weird parts of it may be.
Conservatives have made an industry out of this. They don't care very much what's real anymore. Once Trump says something they just work backwards to figure out how they can prove he's right, no matter how weird it is.
Not that it matters all that much. As Trump pointed out many years ago, he can say anything he wants: "People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you." Quite so. And all the expert fact checking in the world won't sway that belief.
I really want to see the photographic "evidence" they will come up with for the "giant faucet" Canada has for diverting all that water to the ocean that would otherwise flow downhill (you know, top of the map to the bottom) to California. "Big as the wall of that building right there" "Takes a whole day to turn"
minute 1:20
Bingo. Republicans don't reverse-engineer to prove Trump was right on everything, only on things Dems use to embarrass him.
I've seen a similar tactic on the left, e.g. to smear Al Gore when Ralph Nader helped George Bush win, but only the fringe. The remarkable thing about the right (especially in the US) is that it's been taken over by the fringe, starting with Gingrich and the Tea Party. Trump gave it a face. Plus perhaps the only thing that can hold such a big group together: ethnic hatred.
The stupid, it's just comes spilling out of his mouth like a waterfall. Too bad he can't turn a faucet to stop it from flowing.
Wowza.
I wanna see the pipes that carry that water. And I wonder which river Trump is confused about. We always fight over the San Francisco delta, and there are pipes, and perhaps wheels there. We like to fantasize about pulling water from farther north, with the Columbia river on the Washington Oregon border being the target of many of our fantasies. But reversing the flow of the MacKenzie? Gotta admire the reach being shown there.
I have a memory of a wild scheme to divert the Klondike river to the US. Google failed.
All of which makes the country ungovernable.
And can we stop calling them conservatives? Fascists, MAGAts, radicals. They aren’t conservatives.
"And can we stop calling them conservatives?"
+1
No. Believe it or not, one can be both. Whether or not you agree with how they identify, who are you to say they aren't conservative? Because your definition of conservative is the only one? And please save yourself the effort of providing a link to the dictionary definition. You and I both know it's not relevant. In politics, nothing is that well defined.
The term previously usually referred to those who want to conserve, rather than destroy, - but it definitely should not include those spouting the very phrases associated with Hitler's Third Reich, white supremacists & Klan history. - there is a chasm between those in the post-1964-65 party who have been opponents of the Democratic party that is no longer the former southern wing of the Democrats & the negative attitude toward our federal government in general, & basically to all minority rights found in the Civil Rights & Voting Rights Acts since Gingrich, Rove, & Reagan. I will never refer to the MAGA-Q-Anon crowd as "conservative. "
I think you could categorize Germans as conservative. Very conservative even. There had to be something about Hitler and something about Trump that appeals to conservatives, or at the least something they are willing to tolerate. The GOP has embraced Trump and the MAGA movement for the most part. There are very few conservatives that are speaking out against them. If you're conservative you might not like them identifying as conservative. I don't particularly agree with every liberal either, that doesn't mean I get to tell them they can't call themselves liberal. If it bothers enough true conservatives they can form their own splinter group/party. Though you'd have to define true conservative. Until then I'm afraid you're stuck with Trump and MAGA either referred to as conservative or self identifying as such.
Maybe it's time for Wilhoit's Law again? "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
I'd say it's mostly tailored to what calls itself American conservatism these days, but it seems to cover both cited cases in principle. And maybe in what they'd like to do to some out-groups, if you scratch them deep enough.
However, I think there *is* a difference between using the term analytically, as in scholarly approaches, and colloquially or descriptively, which is what mostly happens in these kinds of discussion. The first case is one where fine distinctions and precise definition can be the whole point of the terms used, and in that case it doesn't matter what the people involved want to call themselves.
I always liked Bobby Jindal’s suggestion: the Stupid Party.
It's when you're letting the aesthetic do the work for you, it's just that in current events you don't have time to think about it so you jump out the first window you come to. Sometimes it's high enough, or low enough, and sometimes it isn't.
I don’t think this is a proper use of ‘reverse engineering’. The correct term is ‘apologetics’ which is basically argumentation towards a predetermined conclusion. It also explains why these kinds of statements are believed by the religious right.
I prefer your term, also. Engineering, including reverse engineering, is a rational undertaking; Republican attempts to manufacture evidence for false assertions, are no such thing.
Mastered during the making of "The Apprentice."
"“Trump would often make arbitrary decisions which had nothing to do with people’s merit,” confirmed another Season One editor who requested anonymity. “He’d make decisions based on whom he liked or disliked personally, whether it be for looks or lifestyle, or he’d keep someone that ‘would make good TV’ [according to Trump].”
Setting up story beats to justify the contestant that Trump ultimately fired required editorial gymnastics, according to the show’s editors. Manipulating footage to invent a story point that did not exist organically is common in reality TV editing, although with The Apprentice, it proved a tremendous feat.
“We’d often be shocked at whomever Trump chose to fire,” Braun explained. “Our first priority on every episode like that was to reverse-engineer the show to make it look like his judgment had some basis in reality. Sometimes it would be very hard to do, because the person he chose did nothing. We had to figure out how to edit the show to make it work, to show the people he chose to fire as looking bad — even if they had done a great job.”
https://cinemontage.org/editing-trump-reality-tv-star-who-would-be-president/
(Look at the date: October 2016. Couple of ace NYT newshawks just discovered something in plain sight for eight goddam years.)
Thank you, this was what popped into my mind as well. Retrospective justification, or retroactive continuity, aka retconning, the MO of trump's public life. See also "sanewashing," related.
The thing that has always struck me about “Reality TV” is how unreal most of it is. It is telling that Trump was a natural for professional wrestling.
Not available in stores,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN72ztnwrtI
You can't reverse engineer genius.
That is a conclusion about what reverse engineering is that does not match my decades in industry. There may be a term for the idiocy being done, but it isn’t reverse engineering.
Reverse engineering applies not only to software, but also mechanical and electronic hardware.
Reverse engineering is basically what you do when you want to figure out how a piece of software or hardware works but the vendor/creator doesn't want you to know and hides that information from you.
er, what now?
The rise of solar power and China's staggering EV growth may have pushed global emissions into decline,
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-21/major-climate-agencies-call-global-emissions-peak/104016030
"Conservatives ... don't care very much what's real anymore."
The real question is when did they ever. The game plan for Springfield is the same game plan they used with Iraq, when Bush & the neocons decided we were going to war again Saddam and then invented trumped-up evidence to sell their decision. Oh, look, WMDs!
It worked then. It's not working now. Maybe that's progress.
The only real thing is their ideology. Truth and facts can't refute it. I don't think it's progress. I just think Trump pushed it too far with the whole pet eating immigrant story. It will fool the really stupid people in the MAGA movement. Another good portion will go along with it just out of spite. But I don't think it appeals to many outside of that. To anyone with half a brain or more, this story should set off your bullshit alarm. The fact that Vance is still pushing it is disturbing. Why he thinks this is a winning strategy is beyond me. He might end up alienating more people from supporting his ticket.
"It will fool the really stupid people in the MAGA movement. Another good portion will go along with it just out of spite."
That's 52%, according to a YouGov poll.
"To anyone with half a brain or more, this story should set off your bullshit alarm."
With half the people having half a brain, that's a dangerous group.
We also frequently use "reverse engineer" when we see a piece of code whose purpose is not immediately obvious and we work to figure out what the purpose was. The original engineer has a purpose and derived a piece of code. We have a piece of code and need to derive the purpose.
This is often used in the context of "Please add a comment explaining why this piece of code exists so that readers don't need to reverse engineer your thought process."
Presumably something more helpful than "You are not expected to understand this"
Trump, for the record, is a virtuoso at excuses.
A lot of engineers in these comments. IANAnE ... but here's my two cents.
Sometimes a word or term does not apply in one context while it's perfectly acceptable in another. For example, a physicist might object to a speed limit on a curved road when what is actually limited is a car's velocity. She could no doubt explain the details to the judge, but if her Lamborghini was doing 150 in a 65, she'll still have hefty fine to pay.
Reverse engineering has a particular meaning in the world of software engineering and product development, but the term has use outside that context also, per examples from online dictionaries:
By reverse engineering Ganymede’s position, Hirata calculated that the moon’s impactor was 186 miles wide, or about 20 times the size of the Chicxulub asteroid.
But chefs say their motives are mainly educational: They use them to reverse-engineer their own versions.
This requires that they effectively reverse-engineer the well-documented al-Qaeda plot to bring down the Twin Towers.
The essence of reverse engineering is that instead of starting with a specification and developing a detailed design for a finished product, you start with a finished product and work backwards.
Lots of terms used by computer folks have different meanings from everyday life. When you sort your laundry, do you lay it out in ascending order of color or dirtiness? No, you organize it in piles. That's called "collation" but that's not what a "sort" program does.
if you have to resort to lying in order to highlight a problem, what's the problem in the first place? i don't have to make up a lie, like republicans eat dogs, cats and human babies, to highlight the problem of a political party that's enthrall to a convicted felon who attempted a coup against a duly elected rival. the truth does the trick.
The only thing I would edit here is the notion that this is done for Trump. This has been the modus operandi for some time now, IMO.
Remember the "reality-based community" comment? That whole mindset is basically the same as this. Don't start with observations and draw conclusions from it, instead decide what you want your conclusions to be and then figure out how to make observations that support it. It's been the playbook from Bush II on, and tbh the only reason I don't put it earlier is because 2000 is when I first started paying attention to politics.