What really got me was the repeated assertion that while you or I might not like his behavior, working class people like a guy who is a little rough around the edges. Where does this belief that working class people have lower moral standards come from? Why should we assume this is the case?
Because they voted for Trump all 3 times, as well as all the other Republicans with similar issues, and many of them were the very working class types who voted for Bill Clinton 30 years ago. Remember that these scandals hardly affected Bill’s popularity?
We’ve been told repeatedly that the reason why Trump wins and we lose is because we’re the party of Lisa Simpson and they’re the party of Bart and Homer, and there’s more of them than us. That Dems lose because they’re widely perceived as less authentic than the GOP. And authenticity means saying what’s on your mind even if it’s ugly and oftentimes having a checkered past. Patterns in voting actually do back this up - the candidate that can speak plainly and more working-class coded regardless of party (B. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump all had this in common relative to their opponents) tends to win if the race is competitive, and that often outweighs a squeaky-clean past if they look like they came from a well-off white collar background and talks like that. Remember the “beer test”? You don't win the beer test by being an uptight prig who cares too much about pesky things like decorum, propriety, and living life in a moral way.
Not supporting Platner here (he is finished). Just pointing out that FDR, JFK, LBJ, Clinton, Gore (and Eisenhower) cheated on their wives. How do you square that circle? Did they all have such bad judgement that they couldn't be President?
Most of those guys had done things in their lives to prove they were competent and capable in important ways *before* seeking top positions in the US government. It's not the case that anyone who cheats is incapable of performing well; it's that (prior to yesterday anyway) Platner had barely anything else to point to. Honorable military service counts for a fair amount with me, but I served myself so I'm well-aware of how many dumbasses serve well but have atrocious judgment.
I think that except for Clinton these are all post-election revelations (and I don't think Gore should be listed). Focusing on Clinton clarifies the question, but I don't think rumors about his pre-1992 conduct were widely known in '92, and by 1996 he'd demonstrated that he could handle the job.
Focusing on Clinton alone is helpful in framing the issue. He not only cheated on his wife, he did so while in office and lied about it (that was the basis of his impeachment and disbarment), bringing his ethical failure even further forward in time. But he was an effective president.
The salience of this sort of quandary has to be seen against two questions: what's at stake in letting the opposing candidate (or party) win, and, is there an alternative path to victory? Try the thought experiment of making the opposing candidate Hitler -- the morally flawed candidate gets a pass on just about anything personal if there's no way to run anyone else. If there's an alternative -- as there still is in Platner's case and as there was from the outset as the lies and uncertainties multiplied -- then cutting your losses and switching candidates seems like an obviously prudent decision. (It parallels the 2024 Democratic choice, though the issue was different.) Although I think Clinton's second term was generally successful, I think in the long term it would have been better for Democrats if he'd been forced to resign and Gore had replaced him. It would, I think, have inoculated more voters against someone like Trump. (But if Gore had been incapacitated and Gingrich were next in line I'm not sure that calculus holds.)
Yeah I don't live in Maine and so never needed to hold a strong position, but it's very difficult for me to hold that a cheater has such bad moral judgement that we should always assume they have worse skeletons in their closet
A month or so ago, I thought I would hold my nose and vote for Platner if I lived in Maine. That was a mistake. Using immoral means to achieve a moral end (a check on MAGA).
I feel the same way about a candidate who refuses to acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. That is an antisemitic and immoral position. A sinister position different than criticism of the Israeli govt. and wanting to use US aid and arm sales as a way of influencing behavior.
Mr. Singh, "'I feel the same way' meaning that it is for me a moral mistake to back such a candidate," is not to say "I feel the same way about these two things"; it means, "I feel the same way about the decision to back such candidates."
Completely understand that. The point I am making is that one should not feel the same way about backing a candidate who refuses to say Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state and backing a candidate who is a rapist. The latter is a despicable crime. The former is an opinion, albeit a controversial one.
I think this piece ignoring ideology is giving short shrift to the pro Platner position. To the extent I supported Platner, it was because he had good policy positions - far better than any of the other Republican or Democratic candidates he might have gone up against. Does that judgement not matter? I don't like reading tea leaves of bad judgement as "this person probably did much worse than I know about" when we're talking about national candidates with, yes, power. No, I wouldn't vote for someone who is clearly a rapist for M4A. But I absolutely will vote for someone with an old Nazi tattoo or who cheated on his wife for M4A, because we're talking about real human lives, and it seems like "morality" never seems to make it to the actual politics.
I think it's a mistake to assume everyone who supported Platner merely rationalized away every objection because he was "on their team". We saw people cynically using these instances of bad judgement (before we knew about the rape) against him not because they're so morally consistent, but because he wasn't on their team. Matt Stoller can be right about the role of Israel policy while Platner is still a rapist. Both can, and seem to be, true.
I do not understand why the Left embraced Platner so strongly. In the interviews I’ve seen, Platner comes off as someone who has not thought deeply about most issues of public policy. He has basically no track record of political activism or engagement. I understand he’s supported many Left positions during his Senate campaign, but I think it’s hard to guess what he would do over the course of a senate term. Maybe he would be like Bernie Sanders, but maybe he would go off the rails like John Fetterman. To me, his personal live and political approach together form a picture of someone who’s generally a dumbass. A dumbass I would’ve voted for before the rape allegations, but a dumbass nonetheless.
I can agree with most of that, with the caveat that I think the left is too afraid of "another Fetterman" as though Fetterman's personality didn't deeply change as the result of a stroke, something we can't plan for. I'm happy to vote for dumbasses who have good policy positions because there are vanishingly few good candidates in either party and the Left is in a "beggars can't be choosers" situation. We can still have standards but given how many other dumbasses serve in Congress right now, it's just not disqualifying.
Even pre-rape allegation, he wasn't someone with a Nazi tattoo OR a history of infidelity OR a history of troubling comments on women OR at least one ex willing to go on the record and say he was physically abusive; he was someone with all of those things. That's why it's a pattern. OK, fine, one might say, he has bad morals, but what about the rest of his judgment? He has no particularly shiny record to point to. Where is the success in his life which shows that he has his shit together? Where is the business he's built, or the education, or the work he has done faithfully for years, or anything like that? He just seems like kind of a fuckup douchebag who's a bit of a failure-to-launch.
The fact that he mouths some platitudes about M4A seems like pretty weak evidence that he'll be even basically effective.
> But I absolutely will vote for someone with an old Nazi tattoo or who cheated on his wife for M4A, because we're talking about real human lives, and it seems like "morality" never seems to make it to the actual politics.
Isn't the entire point of the article pointing out the problem in this reasoning? Platner supporters liked his policies and decided to ignore the Nazi tattoo, history of bad comments, and infidelity that summed to strong evidence that he was a generally bad person. All of this evidence was ignored because he's in favor of M4A and anti-Israel so it's a worthwhile trade. The mistake was in failing to understand that 1) bad character suggests there may be worse things in his past, especially because his political history so far has mostly been a string of scandals about said past, 2) bad character leads to bad policy.
> I think it's a mistake to assume everyone who supported Platner merely rationalized away every objection because he was "on their team". We saw people cynically using these instances of bad judgement (before we knew about the rape) against him not because they're so morally consistent, but because he wasn't on their team.
But you did rationalize it away! The second sentence here is you describing how you rationalized it away. Instead of considering whether someone with a Nazi tattoo was a suitable flagship candidate for a left-wing movement, you interpreted it as a manufactured attack by your political enemies that should be deflected.
At the end of the day it's the same mistake conservatives made in supporting Trump. They saw his long history of corrupt behavior and decided that it didn't matter as long as he was on their side. They brushed it off as unfair attacks because everyone in politics is corrupt and therefore why should you have to care if your guy is also corrupt? Then he became president and oh look, the corrupt person is doing corrupt things. Most politicians may have some non-zero level of suspicious behavior, but this one has vastly exceeded the background level of shadiness and has caused proportionately more damage.
The point of the article is that these consequences are predictable. That's why we keep people like this out of politics. When we fail to enforce this norm, we suffer for it.
And I just disagree with most of what you say. "The Nazi tattoo, history of bad comments, and infidelity that summed to strong evidence that he was a generally bad person" is what I fundamentally disagree with. Not only are none of those disqualifying to me, they don't sum to anything more than their parts, and he denounced most of it to boot. This isn't like Trump being stridently corrupt and not thinking he's done anything wrong. I'm not going to just assume that someone has worse skeletons in their closet if what I have, in facts, is not disqualifying. A person can have made all those mistakes, and regretted them (as he seemed/seems to) and not turn out to have been a rapist, I just don't see some huge benefit to assuming they are.
Your position seems similar to the position that Jerusalem Demsas was espousing herself five weeks ago: "I hope Graham Platner wins his election against Susan Collins because I think Democratic control of the Senate is the best path forward for shoring up our democracy."
Excellent debrief. May I never have to read about this guy again.
On the subject of judgement, however, I'd like to know more about the individuals/organizations who decided THIS was the guy who should represent Maine in the first place. More broadly: how do we (Democrats) stop running knuckleheads?
To my recollection, Cuomo lost his last election. That strikes me as evidence in favor of the "don't nominate obviously bad people with an obvious history of doing bad things" argument. Perhaps you would like to demonstrate your understanding of this point?
Platner was always a very bad nominee, and that should have been clear before any of his scandalous acts were brought to light. To see why he was a bad nominee, you don't even need to consider his weaknesses. Just consider his strengths:
1) He has a certain set of political positions. Maybe you like them. Fine. But Maine has 1.4 million people, and you can find many who share those positions.
2) He is a veteran.
3) He is handsome—and handsome in a gruff sort of way that conveys “authenticity” to some.
As far as I can tell, that’s it. He has absolutely no political experience. There’s no evidence that he has ever even thought deeply about a political matter, let alone worked on one.
He was nominated in no small part because of point 3. In this sense, he is a very Trumpian nominee: chosen not for his intellect or his experience, but because he looks good on TV.
Without the tattoo, the Reddit posts, the sexual history, he might have been an electable nominee—but still a very bad nominee. When did it become acceptable for Democrats to nominate this sort of candidate for the U.S. Senate?
When the lesson that many on our side took from 2024 (and frankly 2016) was that we lost because we're the party of HR ladies, Lisa Simpson, priggish schoolmarms, etc. That lesson is still correct, btw. But then it becomes a delicate balancing act between nominating candidates who aren't moral scolds, can speak in an "authentic" working-class manner, that voters "can have a beer with", and don't look like they're the type who will interfere with the working-class way of life while also not behaving in objectively awful ways. Candidates that can thread the needle are gold, but they're rare because often there is a tradeoff. The same personality traits that predict for "authenticity" also predict for bad behavior - chiefly poor emotional regulation and impulsivity. The personality traits that predict being an "HR lady/Lisa Simpson/priggish schoolmarm" - very high conscientiousness and strong emotional regulation, as well as expecting others to be held to these standards - are widely seen as "inauthentic" and are thus disliked because overly proper behavior and expecting others to abide by that is looked upon by suspicion by most people who are not so squeaky-clean.
There may be many people in Maine that believe similar things, but unfortunately, they haven't decided to run. We are resigned to select from those that do. Hopefully Platner's self-destruction inspires more to run! But leftists are not exactly spoiled for options (and Democrats broadly are not much better off)
One thing that deserved more attention than it got is when Fifield quoted Platner as saying that if someone broke into the house, he'd rape them to establish dominance.
“Judgment comes from marrying intuition, experience, and logic. Judgment is what helps you determine whether a piece of fruit will be ripe before you bite into it, what to say to a friend when their dog dies, and whether a man with a Nazi tattoo who cheats on his wife and makes offensive comments on anonymous accounts is likely to have other skeletons in his closet.”
What really got me was the repeated assertion that while you or I might not like his behavior, working class people like a guy who is a little rough around the edges. Where does this belief that working class people have lower moral standards come from? Why should we assume this is the case?
This would be a great thing for The Arg to poll on tbh
Because they voted for Trump all 3 times, as well as all the other Republicans with similar issues, and many of them were the very working class types who voted for Bill Clinton 30 years ago. Remember that these scandals hardly affected Bill’s popularity?
We’ve been told repeatedly that the reason why Trump wins and we lose is because we’re the party of Lisa Simpson and they’re the party of Bart and Homer, and there’s more of them than us. That Dems lose because they’re widely perceived as less authentic than the GOP. And authenticity means saying what’s on your mind even if it’s ugly and oftentimes having a checkered past. Patterns in voting actually do back this up - the candidate that can speak plainly and more working-class coded regardless of party (B. Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump all had this in common relative to their opponents) tends to win if the race is competitive, and that often outweighs a squeaky-clean past if they look like they came from a well-off white collar background and talks like that. Remember the “beer test”? You don't win the beer test by being an uptight prig who cares too much about pesky things like decorum, propriety, and living life in a moral way.
Market observation rather suggests that non-college population has 'Different Moral Standards than Lefty oriented College Grads"
This may be 'lower' or it may be simply different...
not myself taking a view on Platner and this but it's fairly blindfolding oneself to frame this as "lower moral standards"
Not supporting Platner here (he is finished). Just pointing out that FDR, JFK, LBJ, Clinton, Gore (and Eisenhower) cheated on their wives. How do you square that circle? Did they all have such bad judgement that they couldn't be President?
One of the key points of Robert Caro’s books is that LBJ was despicable in many aspects of his personal life.
Most of those guys had done things in their lives to prove they were competent and capable in important ways *before* seeking top positions in the US government. It's not the case that anyone who cheats is incapable of performing well; it's that (prior to yesterday anyway) Platner had barely anything else to point to. Honorable military service counts for a fair amount with me, but I served myself so I'm well-aware of how many dumbasses serve well but have atrocious judgment.
I think that except for Clinton these are all post-election revelations (and I don't think Gore should be listed). Focusing on Clinton clarifies the question, but I don't think rumors about his pre-1992 conduct were widely known in '92, and by 1996 he'd demonstrated that he could handle the job.
Focusing on Clinton alone is helpful in framing the issue. He not only cheated on his wife, he did so while in office and lied about it (that was the basis of his impeachment and disbarment), bringing his ethical failure even further forward in time. But he was an effective president.
The salience of this sort of quandary has to be seen against two questions: what's at stake in letting the opposing candidate (or party) win, and, is there an alternative path to victory? Try the thought experiment of making the opposing candidate Hitler -- the morally flawed candidate gets a pass on just about anything personal if there's no way to run anyone else. If there's an alternative -- as there still is in Platner's case and as there was from the outset as the lies and uncertainties multiplied -- then cutting your losses and switching candidates seems like an obviously prudent decision. (It parallels the 2024 Democratic choice, though the issue was different.) Although I think Clinton's second term was generally successful, I think in the long term it would have been better for Democrats if he'd been forced to resign and Gore had replaced him. It would, I think, have inoculated more voters against someone like Trump. (But if Gore had been incapacitated and Gingrich were next in line I'm not sure that calculus holds.)
Yeah I don't live in Maine and so never needed to hold a strong position, but it's very difficult for me to hold that a cheater has such bad moral judgement that we should always assume they have worse skeletons in their closet
A month or so ago, I thought I would hold my nose and vote for Platner if I lived in Maine. That was a mistake. Using immoral means to achieve a moral end (a check on MAGA).
I feel the same way about a candidate who refuses to acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. That is an antisemitic and immoral position. A sinister position different than criticism of the Israeli govt. and wanting to use US aid and arm sales as a way of influencing behavior.
I don’t think a candidate refusing to say Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state is equivalent to being a rapist.
I did not write it was equivalent. I wrote that "I feel the same way" meaning that it is for me a moral mistake to back such a candidate.
Right, I think it's strange for you to feel the same way about these two things. One is much worse!
Mr. Singh, "'I feel the same way' meaning that it is for me a moral mistake to back such a candidate," is not to say "I feel the same way about these two things"; it means, "I feel the same way about the decision to back such candidates."
Completely understand that. The point I am making is that one should not feel the same way about backing a candidate who refuses to say Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state and backing a candidate who is a rapist. The latter is a despicable crime. The former is an opinion, albeit a controversial one.
Then you would’ve been the same as a Republican who votes for Trump knowing who he is to achieve a “moral” end (conservative policy).
You can’t say “character matters” as a reason to not vote for Trump and then hold your nose for Platner.
I think this piece ignoring ideology is giving short shrift to the pro Platner position. To the extent I supported Platner, it was because he had good policy positions - far better than any of the other Republican or Democratic candidates he might have gone up against. Does that judgement not matter? I don't like reading tea leaves of bad judgement as "this person probably did much worse than I know about" when we're talking about national candidates with, yes, power. No, I wouldn't vote for someone who is clearly a rapist for M4A. But I absolutely will vote for someone with an old Nazi tattoo or who cheated on his wife for M4A, because we're talking about real human lives, and it seems like "morality" never seems to make it to the actual politics.
I think it's a mistake to assume everyone who supported Platner merely rationalized away every objection because he was "on their team". We saw people cynically using these instances of bad judgement (before we knew about the rape) against him not because they're so morally consistent, but because he wasn't on their team. Matt Stoller can be right about the role of Israel policy while Platner is still a rapist. Both can, and seem to be, true.
I do not understand why the Left embraced Platner so strongly. In the interviews I’ve seen, Platner comes off as someone who has not thought deeply about most issues of public policy. He has basically no track record of political activism or engagement. I understand he’s supported many Left positions during his Senate campaign, but I think it’s hard to guess what he would do over the course of a senate term. Maybe he would be like Bernie Sanders, but maybe he would go off the rails like John Fetterman. To me, his personal live and political approach together form a picture of someone who’s generally a dumbass. A dumbass I would’ve voted for before the rape allegations, but a dumbass nonetheless.
I can agree with most of that, with the caveat that I think the left is too afraid of "another Fetterman" as though Fetterman's personality didn't deeply change as the result of a stroke, something we can't plan for. I'm happy to vote for dumbasses who have good policy positions because there are vanishingly few good candidates in either party and the Left is in a "beggars can't be choosers" situation. We can still have standards but given how many other dumbasses serve in Congress right now, it's just not disqualifying.
Even pre-rape allegation, he wasn't someone with a Nazi tattoo OR a history of infidelity OR a history of troubling comments on women OR at least one ex willing to go on the record and say he was physically abusive; he was someone with all of those things. That's why it's a pattern. OK, fine, one might say, he has bad morals, but what about the rest of his judgment? He has no particularly shiny record to point to. Where is the success in his life which shows that he has his shit together? Where is the business he's built, or the education, or the work he has done faithfully for years, or anything like that? He just seems like kind of a fuckup douchebag who's a bit of a failure-to-launch.
The fact that he mouths some platitudes about M4A seems like pretty weak evidence that he'll be even basically effective.
> But I absolutely will vote for someone with an old Nazi tattoo or who cheated on his wife for M4A, because we're talking about real human lives, and it seems like "morality" never seems to make it to the actual politics.
Isn't the entire point of the article pointing out the problem in this reasoning? Platner supporters liked his policies and decided to ignore the Nazi tattoo, history of bad comments, and infidelity that summed to strong evidence that he was a generally bad person. All of this evidence was ignored because he's in favor of M4A and anti-Israel so it's a worthwhile trade. The mistake was in failing to understand that 1) bad character suggests there may be worse things in his past, especially because his political history so far has mostly been a string of scandals about said past, 2) bad character leads to bad policy.
> I think it's a mistake to assume everyone who supported Platner merely rationalized away every objection because he was "on their team". We saw people cynically using these instances of bad judgement (before we knew about the rape) against him not because they're so morally consistent, but because he wasn't on their team.
But you did rationalize it away! The second sentence here is you describing how you rationalized it away. Instead of considering whether someone with a Nazi tattoo was a suitable flagship candidate for a left-wing movement, you interpreted it as a manufactured attack by your political enemies that should be deflected.
At the end of the day it's the same mistake conservatives made in supporting Trump. They saw his long history of corrupt behavior and decided that it didn't matter as long as he was on their side. They brushed it off as unfair attacks because everyone in politics is corrupt and therefore why should you have to care if your guy is also corrupt? Then he became president and oh look, the corrupt person is doing corrupt things. Most politicians may have some non-zero level of suspicious behavior, but this one has vastly exceeded the background level of shadiness and has caused proportionately more damage.
The point of the article is that these consequences are predictable. That's why we keep people like this out of politics. When we fail to enforce this norm, we suffer for it.
And I just disagree with most of what you say. "The Nazi tattoo, history of bad comments, and infidelity that summed to strong evidence that he was a generally bad person" is what I fundamentally disagree with. Not only are none of those disqualifying to me, they don't sum to anything more than their parts, and he denounced most of it to boot. This isn't like Trump being stridently corrupt and not thinking he's done anything wrong. I'm not going to just assume that someone has worse skeletons in their closet if what I have, in facts, is not disqualifying. A person can have made all those mistakes, and regretted them (as he seemed/seems to) and not turn out to have been a rapist, I just don't see some huge benefit to assuming they are.
Your position seems similar to the position that Jerusalem Demsas was espousing herself five weeks ago: "I hope Graham Platner wins his election against Susan Collins because I think Democratic control of the Senate is the best path forward for shoring up our democracy."
Excellent debrief. May I never have to read about this guy again.
On the subject of judgement, however, I'd like to know more about the individuals/organizations who decided THIS was the guy who should represent Maine in the first place. More broadly: how do we (Democrats) stop running knuckleheads?
Ctl-F "Andrew Cuomo"
No hits
I didn’t support Cuomo what are you on about?
I think the correct way to refer to Andrew Cuomo is "Andrew fucking Cuomo" - at least in NY it is.
Ctl-F "Joseph Stalin"
No hits
Checkmate
This whole schtick makes you look like a desperate and pathetic loser who has been exposed as a fraud.
To my recollection, Cuomo lost his last election. That strikes me as evidence in favor of the "don't nominate obviously bad people with an obvious history of doing bad things" argument. Perhaps you would like to demonstrate your understanding of this point?
Platner was always a very bad nominee, and that should have been clear before any of his scandalous acts were brought to light. To see why he was a bad nominee, you don't even need to consider his weaknesses. Just consider his strengths:
1) He has a certain set of political positions. Maybe you like them. Fine. But Maine has 1.4 million people, and you can find many who share those positions.
2) He is a veteran.
3) He is handsome—and handsome in a gruff sort of way that conveys “authenticity” to some.
As far as I can tell, that’s it. He has absolutely no political experience. There’s no evidence that he has ever even thought deeply about a political matter, let alone worked on one.
He was nominated in no small part because of point 3. In this sense, he is a very Trumpian nominee: chosen not for his intellect or his experience, but because he looks good on TV.
Without the tattoo, the Reddit posts, the sexual history, he might have been an electable nominee—but still a very bad nominee. When did it become acceptable for Democrats to nominate this sort of candidate for the U.S. Senate?
When the lesson that many on our side took from 2024 (and frankly 2016) was that we lost because we're the party of HR ladies, Lisa Simpson, priggish schoolmarms, etc. That lesson is still correct, btw. But then it becomes a delicate balancing act between nominating candidates who aren't moral scolds, can speak in an "authentic" working-class manner, that voters "can have a beer with", and don't look like they're the type who will interfere with the working-class way of life while also not behaving in objectively awful ways. Candidates that can thread the needle are gold, but they're rare because often there is a tradeoff. The same personality traits that predict for "authenticity" also predict for bad behavior - chiefly poor emotional regulation and impulsivity. The personality traits that predict being an "HR lady/Lisa Simpson/priggish schoolmarm" - very high conscientiousness and strong emotional regulation, as well as expecting others to be held to these standards - are widely seen as "inauthentic" and are thus disliked because overly proper behavior and expecting others to abide by that is looked upon by suspicion by most people who are not so squeaky-clean.
There may be many people in Maine that believe similar things, but unfortunately, they haven't decided to run. We are resigned to select from those that do. Hopefully Platner's self-destruction inspires more to run! But leftists are not exactly spoiled for options (and Democrats broadly are not much better off)
🎶 there are no pan-Asian supermarkets down in hell, so you can’t buy Golden Boy peanuts
One thing that deserved more attention than it got is when Fifield quoted Platner as saying that if someone broke into the house, he'd rape them to establish dominance.
Great lede - well said!!
“Judgment comes from marrying intuition, experience, and logic. Judgment is what helps you determine whether a piece of fruit will be ripe before you bite into it, what to say to a friend when their dog dies, and whether a man with a Nazi tattoo who cheats on his wife and makes offensive comments on anonymous accounts is likely to have other skeletons in his closet.”
Important perspective and analysis.
I think the dynamics laid out in this 2018 Scientific American blog by Dan Kahan are relevant, too:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/why-smart-people-are-vulnerable-to-putting-tribe-before-truth/