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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
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MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 896


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The British aristocracy were over-represented among the dead in WW1 and WW2 (and, as far as I am aware, in most of the 19th century wars). That is, of course, to be expected for a group that justifies its privileges by claiming to be a warrior elite. As far as I am aware, the same was true for the Germans. (The Prussian aristocracy was uncomplicatedly a real warrior elite in WW1. In WW2 the Waffen SS did more dangerous stuff than the Reichswehr, and Nazi elites' sons were more likely to be in it).


That the planter class in the Confederacy widely dodged the draft would be surprising to me, if true. They tended (as do their descendants in the red tribe elite) to see themselves as a warrior elite.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think "even though the bad guy is known to be bad, I am going to try to distinguish the bad things he did do from the bad things he didn't do" is a fundamentally autistic way of thinking. Once normies know someone is a bad guy, they just put him in the "bad" bucket and believe everything bad about him and disbelieve everything good.


The term "Clinton Derangement Syndrome" wasn't used at the time, but there was a similar phenomenon where conservatives, even otherwise sensible ones, who had (correctly) worked out that he was a bad man started believing every negative rumour about him (and his wife) including the obviously silly ones, and a similar pro-Clinton litany of obnoxious efforts to psychoanalyse them. Something similar happened among small groups of anti-Obama and anti-GW Bush political obsessives, but on a much smaller scale because normies didn't see Obama or GW Bush as bad people.


People as venal, chronically dishonest, sexually incontinent, and reckless as Clinton and Trump normally get jailed or at least driven out of public life in disgrace.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Medicare fraud is different.


I'm not joking here - Republicans see Medicare as a program which helps good people, so a little bit of fraud is inevitable and acceptable. Whereas Medicaid is a program which helps the undeserving poor, so any fraud at all is grounds for throwing the baby out with the bathwater.


This also explains why the government is so bad at anti-fraud efforts. The voters who are outraged by fraud believe (wrongly) and the politicians who pander to them pretend to believe that fraud is mostly a problem caused by politically unsympathetic groups of program beneficiaries claiming more than they are entitled to. People with experience of private sector anti-fraud work start with the assumption that most fraud involves organised, professional fraud operations such as the one Rick Scott ran.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do not think the Matthew Yglesias wing of the Democrats see Hasan Piker as the future of the party.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Les Republicains, i.e. the remnant of the traditional French centre-right, did not consider everyone to the left of Le Pen interchangeable. They refused to withdraw from three-cornered left-LR-RN second rounds where they were in third place, did not endorse either side in two-way left-RN runoffs, and allowed individual LR politicians to endorse FN candidates in such cases.  That is how you behave if you think the left (not just the communist left, but a broad left alliance including communists) is as obnoxious as Le Pen.


Even Macron's liberal Ensemble did not withdraw from three-cornered left-ENS-RN contests where the left candidate was a communist.


I don't think that the communist left, the non-communist left, and the liberals forming a popular front against "fascists" means that they consider themselves interchangeable - it just means that they think Le Pen counts as a fascist. If Le Pen really was a fascist, then forming a popular front against her would be the right thing to do according to all three groups' stated values.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You are entitled to accuse me of motivated reasoning here, but the point I am making is symmetric. I have not claimed that MAGA are bad people because they have right-populist political views, I claimed they were bad people because they repealed the character floor for political leadership, arguably in 2016 and uncomplicatedly in 2024. My continued presence on the Motte should be a signal of good faith - if I believed that right-populists were per se bad people, why would I still be here?


You can't do politics without meeting good people sincerely pursuing political goals you do not share, or good people with different political views to you because they don't understand the issues, or (very occasionally if you are smart enough to be a Motteposter) good people with different political views to you because you don't understand the issues. My social circle contains Brexit supporters in both the first two groups, for example. I have less experience meeting MAGA normies, but I have spent enough time in red states to know that most Republicans, and even most Trump voters, are not evil.


But "Men as dishonest as Donald Trump should not hold high political office" used to be one of the things 90% of citizens agreed on. (So was "Men as uncouth as Donald Trump should not hold high political office" but I care about that a lot less). It isn't obvious why the standard bearer for "Deport the illegals and reshore manufacturing" needs to be a reckless sociopath. Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot weren't. Nigel Farage isn't. (Admittedly Boris Johnson is one.) I know Richard Hanania has a theory for why populism always leads to kakistocracy, but I think it proves too much.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In particular, the highest-fertility subpopulations in the west right now are the Amish and Haredim, neither of whom are able to sustain technological civilisation. The post-2010 social media driven fertility drop has pushed Mormons below replacement level, leaving Modern Orthodox Jews the only ethnic group with both above-replacement fertility and calculus.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's worth noting that the UK did draft women for war work in WW2 - including heavy manual work that was close to the limit of what women were physically capable of. My grandmother was drafted into the Women's Land Army at 17, and did a farm job that would have been done by a man in peacetime, and that essentially no woman would have done voluntarily.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If the crypto and SPACs were just about ripping off Trump's own supporters, I would agree with your point re. 1. But with all of 1, 3 and 4 the problem is not that Trump is getting paid, it is that some of the people paying Trump are smart enough to know what they are doing, and we can assume that they are getting something in return. But we don't know what is being sold, and in some cases (especially the crypto) we don't even know who it is being sold to.


One example where we do know is that Trump changed his views on the Tiktok ban around the time Tiktok investor Jeff Yass invested in the Truth Social SPAC. That moves the SPAC from scamming his own supporters to accepting bribes from a proxy for a Communist dictatorship.


Nobody thinks the Saudis deal with Jared Kushner is purely commercial. The question is whether this is a tip for his work on something which benefits both Saudi and US interests (presumably the Abraham accords), or whether it is a bribe for some piece of as-yet secret work which benefits Saudi interests and hurts US interests. Even if it is a tip, the dollar amount is so much larger than the customary and reasonable gift given in that kind of situation that it would be improper under conventional business or political ethics. When Eric Trump announces the groundbreaking on Trump Hotel Durkadurkastan, we don't know if it is a purely commercial transaction, a tip, or a bribe. (But we do know that the Durkadurkastanis see this as a distinction without a difference).


In addition, all five of your points involve dollar amounts which were 1-2 orders of magnitude higher under Trump than under previous corrupt presidents. For me, this is absolutely critical, although I agree that the average swing voter is innumerate and doesn't care. I don't think the Saudis paid Jared Kushner a few hundred million dollars* for a small favour, whereas people were willing to pay Hunter Biden a few hundred thousand dollars just to set up some meetings.


* My estimate of the NPV of the management fees on the $2 billion investment over the life of the fund, assuming the standard 2-and-20 fee.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
He is already in visible decline. Even if he is alive at age 90 in 2036, he won't be functioning at the level needed to keep the show going, let alone actually wield power.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


and he would have likely won because the case is pretty solid.




I do not think he would have won to the tune of $1.776 billion. He hasn't alleged specific financial losses due to his tax returns being leaked, and you can't get that much money out of a jury based on pure embarrassment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I had convinced myself that Trump 1 hadn't been that bad




Trump 1 really wasn't that bad. A core message of Trump's 2024 primary campaign was that Trump 1 not being that bad was a mistake that only Trump 2 could fix.


FWIW, I read Trump as a wolf after his response to the 2020 election results.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


millions




Single digit millions. The highest serious estimate I have seen is that the whole "Biden crime family" operation netted $10-20 million. Two orders of magnitude less than the Trump family's buckraking. Also an order of magnitude less than Clinton family buckraking or the various financial scandals of the Hastert-DeLay paedoCongress, so I don't think you can claim that the Bidens were unusually corrupt by the standards of pre-Trump American politics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeschad.jpg. Trump is, at the level of personal character, one of the worst people to hold high public office - anywhere in the democratic world - in my lifetime. (I'm not considering his political views here - would you rather buy a used car from Donald Trump or Nigel Farage, or let your daughter work in their office?). The MAGA GOP who nominated him are bad people who should feel bad. The Democrats who failed to beat him are culpably incompetent and should also feel bad.  Within the Democratic Party, I would say that the fixers who fixed the 2016 primary for Clinton and the people who concealed Biden's cognitive decline during the 2024 primary rise to the level of bad people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It is common to see arguments that "woke is over"; rarely do people making such arguments explain their understanding of exactly how "woke" "ended". The only remotely plausible answer I can see is that Trump was re-elected.




1990's PC ended because leftist activism shifted from social issues (and Palestine) to economic and environmental issues (and Palestine). After the Battle of Seattle in 1999, all the cool kids were trying to stop the WTO, and actually devoting your life to campaigning against domestic racism, sexism etc. was cringe. The same happens in reverse after the failure of Occupy around 2011. I am less aware of trends in lefty youth activism than I was when I was an active student Lib Dem, but with hindsight it seems plausible that there was another flippening driven by the failure of summer-of-Floyd BLM activism and the 2020 Democratic primary - the cool kids attacking the Biden administration from the left were doing so over economics or climate, not over insufficient wokeness.


So "woke is over", if it is, in the sense that the activist energy on the left has shifted elsewhere, which also means that people like Matthew Yglesias who were never entirely comfortable with wokeness are more able to express less-woke views while remaining lefties in good standing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not in the UK, because it doesn't cover the additional cost of fuelling a minivan (at £1.30 or more a litre) compared to a small family car.


Not in the US, because the problem with minivans is stigma and not cost, in a country where what you drive is the main way you express your identity and social status in public.


You just need to lower the upper age limit for mandatory child seats.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is what you say when you’ve failed to model someone’s views correctly.




I think it is more what you say when you are trying to oversimplify the views of a group of people.


    

  • There are clearly large numbers of Republicans who think "I trust Trump. Trump has a plan. He explains in Art of the Deal why he doesn't discuss his plans. So I don't need to know what the plan is, but I assume it will work out."  If you think that, it is rational to vote for Trump-endorsed candidates in Republican primaries even when he endorses crooks and paedos. There are a few of them on the Motte, but I see more of this group in my X feed because Musk has chosen to signal-boost them.
    • 

  • There are Republican voters with coherent right-populist political views who voted for Trump in both the primary and the general because he said, credibly, that he would deport unwanted immigrants, bring back well-paid male-coded jobs, end wars-for-Israel etc. They need to do some thinking about whether Trump is delivering on their agenda or not, but at the same time have a good reason for rating "loyal to party leadership and commited to caucus unity" above "agrees with my political views" in a Congressional primary given the ways the Congressional GOP has tended to let its supporters down. Modulo electability, the way to maximise deportations over the next two years is to vote for Congressional candidates who will be reliably pro-Trump. And the Motteposters in this group all say that immigration is the most important issue for them.
    • 

  • There are establishment Republicans who always hated Trump, some of whom held their nose and voted for him in the general. To the extent that these people are still registered Republicans, they will vote against Trump-endorsed candidates in Republican primaries. There were not enough of them to swing a primary in 2016, and there are fewer of them now than there were then.
    • 

  • There are non-partisan populists (think Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Jr and people who think like them) who think that America's ruling elite is a conspiracy against the American people and were drawn to Trump because it looked like he hated and was hated back by said elite. Trump is losing these people (mostly due to Epstein and the war) but most of them were never reliable Republican primary voters in the first place. If they are Republican primary voters, they will vote for someone like Massie or MTG over a Trump-endorsed candidate.
    • 



I agree with @magicalkittycat that if you try to merge these psychographics into a single "typical GOP primary voter", you get a Trump loyalist. But doing so is not necessarily a good idea.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The gradual long-term decline in fertility from the Baby Boom until things stabilised around 2000, which was manageable in the west and only civilisation-threatening in first-world Asia, was mostly couples who would previously have 3-4 stopping at 2. It appears to be multi-causal, with child seat laws being a surprisingly large contributor (because they mean that if you want 3 kids in the burbs you need 3 child seats, and therefore a minivan). The post-2010 collapse in fertility is mostly due to less coupling, with increasingly conventional wisdom that smartphones and social media are at fault.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
He wasn't responsible for pulling the trigger, but yes - as Commander in Chief Obama was ultimately responsible for both security at the Navy Yard and the security clearance system that allowed Alexis to keep a clearance despite his criminal and psychiatric records. This is the whole point of having a unitary executive - The Buck Stops Here, as the sign on Truman's Oval Office desk says.


That the US generally allows autolitigation is well-established law - if as owner-manager of your own company you injure yourself on the job due to your own negligence, you can sue the company for having a negligent boss. (And you might want to if the company has third-party liability insurance that will pay the damages). But there is a reason places like Lowering the Bar and Above the Law will post the casefile and publicly mock you for it.


It is also part of a consistent pattern of behaviour on the part of Trump. His 2024 campaign was almost as much against his own first administration as against the Biden administration. Both Trump and his supporters in the country think he wasn't really in charge in the 2016-20 period and shouldn't be blamed for what happened.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That Trump incorporated a meme into the settlement is not newsworthy. I am, however, offended by the innumerate journalists who round down to $1.7 billion.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


It is the way how parties are financed in current day-and-age everywhere including in Europe.




This type of collusive litigation is not a thing in Europe - in general the UK has less government-by-litigation than the US, and civil law countries have a lot less. In most of Continental Europe, there is direct on-budget government funding of political parties tied to the numbers of votes they receive or the number of seats they win. Everywhere, there is direct on-budget government funding of left-wing GONGOs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It used to be conventional wisdom that a child growing up on a farm and doing a usual share of the work had repaid their parents by the time they turned 15.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There was a famous noughties fake website offering exactly that service. Large parts of the MSM were taken in and wrote outraged articles about how awful it was.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I guess, at least one reads that no one's having sex anymore.




My understanding is that this is driven by fewer people being coupled up, not by couples having less sex.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Both settlements mentioned in that article were between adverse parties. The innovation in this case is that Trump is funding a slush fund settlement by suing himself.


I agree with @JTarrou that the fundamental tactic is a very old left-wing one. Trump's version is more brazen in its corruption in two ways:


    

  • The policy change requested is a direct cash payment to Trump's allies with no pretence of a service provided in exchange, as opposed to the expansion of a government programme which hires his allies at above-market salaries.
    • 

  • When lefty NGOs sue Democratic state and local governments, they go to a lot of effort to create the impression that the settlement is negotiated between adverse parties. Trump just admits that he is suing himself.
    •