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MadMonzer

Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

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joined 2022 September 06 23:45:01 UTC 

				
User ID: 896


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
MadMonzer


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite

				
				
				

				

					4 followers  

					follows 0 users  

					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 October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The bank he was fined a half a billion dollars for defrauding said they were happy with the business they did and would do it again.




Trump only has to give personal guarantees on commercial mortgages (the lies he was fined for mostly relate to his personal real estate holdings) in the first place because the banks don't trust Trump not to screw them over in bankruptcy court. The vast majority of commercial mortgages are non-recourse, and accordingly the banks don't usually care about the personal net worth of the developer.


Writing a normal non-recourse commercial mortgage on a Trump building is sufficiently widely known to be a bad idea that there was a joke about it in Sex and the City.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The problem with using "Art of the Deal" to understand Trump's approach to dealmaking is that it doesn't cover the most interesting and important aspect of it, which is how he rats out of the deals after he makes them.


The surprising thing about Trump is that most of the people who have done substantial amounts of business with him, in a wide range of capacities and over multiple decades and four very different careers*, say that he is dishonest, that his dishonesty hurt them personally, and that other people should shun him. And yet somehow he keeps finding new marks willing to do business with him. "Art of the Deal" is a book about how he takes the sucker, and the interesting and difficult bit of running cons at scale is how you manage the flow of new suckers into the game and the flow of angry suckers out of it.


* GC in his father's org, real estate developer in his own right, reality TV star and politician. I acknowledge that he was spectacularly successful in three of his careers - my problem with the man is his base character, not his lack of ability.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Knowing nothing else besides his degree, best guess would be that he's smarter than average,




Having a bachelor's degree at all shows that - it remains the case even in younger cohorts post HE expansion that most people don't complete one. Having a bachelor's degree from a 50th percentile university suggests ~80th percentile in whatever combination of g and conscientiousness that academia is measuring. Slightly higher if you are a white/Asian American or privately educated Brit who is on the wrong end of affirmative action.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I live south of the river. Down here them's fighting words. Get your ponce arse back to Hatfield and the North or I'll set the Bushwhackers on you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Surely the point is that the joke remains funny, not that it remains relevant?


The only feminist comedy that is funny involves non-gender-conforming women mocking their own inability to gender-conform.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I absolutely agree with you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have met a lot of amateur politicians who genuinely believed in what they were doing. In my youth, I was one. We tended not to get elected. But your basic point is correct.


Among the people doing ward-level politics in the UK in the noughties, I would guess:


    

  • 15% professionals and aspirant professionals to whom your comment applies
    • 

  • 40% true believers
    • 

  • 15% people mainly interested in getting laid (I have been to six weddings, including my own, of couples who met through youth and student politics)
    • 

  • 30% people still doing it because their whole social life revolves around politics and they are too autistic to go out and meet some normies
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To answer the question, most elected Democrats are hacks who are willing to do anything for personal advancement. Elected Democrats believe, rightly or wrongly (I genuinely don't know which) that being called racist will do more damage to their personal career prospects than hurting the party.


To respond to your empirical argument about what gets people called racist, the Great Awokening was all about Democrats and other left elites calling each other racist over intra-coalition political disagreements and personal beefs. And what we saw was that elected Democrats were willing to beclown themselves and the Democratic Party rather than risk being called racist. In addition, enough people have (for reasons which may have been good back in the noughties when they started doing it) pre-committed to calling voter suppression racist that there is no DPUSA Grand Ayatollah who could turn the racism accusations off for partisan advantage. Finally, there are large parts of the Democratic base who are sufficiently rabidly partisan that they will punish elected Democrats (including by calling them racist if the opportunity arises) for voting for any GOP-proposed bill even if they would normally support it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


33% is basically as high as you can get now in American politics.




Are you saying America was a different country the day before Trump launched the latest installment of ZOG vs Iran Nth: the oil-fired Boogaloo? Because his approval rating was higher back then.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Trump took a bullet for this country. If he only cared about himself he would have enjoyed retirement at the top of his field with billions of dollars in his bank account.




He has made more billions as a maximally corrupt second-term President than he did as a failed real estate developer or a successful reality TV star.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Trump II feels more like "Joffrey has banished Tywin and made Littlefinger the leader of the privy council".




This seems grossly unfair to Susie Wiles, whom I read as the straight man in this particular clown troupe.


Though if this is the game we are playing, the far more interesting question is "Which of the younger Trumps is Tyrion?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not willing to risk being called racist by their own supporters in order to secure a partisan advantage. This is sufficient to explain their opposition to the SAVE Act or other dumb Republican voter-suppression proposals.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Unless you understood the JCPOA as I did, as tacit approval by all the signatories for Iran to obtain nukes and continue terrorist operations while obtaining nukes for the purpose of deploying them against Israel and ultimately the USA.




JCPOA was explicit approval by all the signatories for Iran to maintain, subject to monitoring that ensured they didn't actually enrich to weapons grade while the deal was in force, a nuclear programme that would get them to a place where a c. 2 year breakout was possible (i.e. working centrifuges and a large stockpile of reactor-grade uranium). Iran was complying with their obligations, and the monitoring ended and the breakout process began because Trump tore up the deal in his first term. You don't need to think that anyone was giving Iran tacit approval to nuke Israel for the argument you are making here to stand up, and none of the JCPOA signatories could have given Iran meaningful tacit approval to nuke Israel given Israel's own nuclear deterrent.


Why did a bunch of powerful countries give Iran approval to maintain a dual-use nuclear programme? Because a global coalition was required to contain Iran via sanctions, and it wasn't in the interests of Russia or China to do so (and most Westerners who are not aligned with the US Deep State were sceptical as well, including European elites and Obama's foreign policy team, because Iran was on our side against Al-Quaeda and ISIS at the time).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
TACO isn't a claim that Trump is acting out of character - the "A" is explicitly a claim that he is acting in character.


Though if you are going to argue about Trump's character based on Art of the Deal it should be pointed out that Trump didn't write the book, and the man who did has repudiated it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I was on the committee of the Cambridge University Poker Society during the Poker Boom, and a few online poker execs came to speak to us - partly to identify potential future employees (though none of us wanted to work for them), and partly to pitch sponsorship deals to the club. At the time the sites definitely wanted to sign up smart players and things like rakeback were set up in a way which would preferentially keep non-degens on the site. I think the realisation that the flow of money into the ecosystem is fish-limited and that the rake is competing with the pros to get the fishy money came when the overall market got worse post-boom.


Also, in the era of a small number of networks and many skins, a skin that preferentially attracted smart players would be able to free-ride off other skins on the same network signing up the fish, although that wasn't obvious to me at the time. The best sponsorship offers we got were from obscure sites feeding the Party Poker network.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I believe in the old school logic of ius in bello - that there are certain destructive practices that armies are likely resort to out of sadism/schadenfreude/righteous anger despite the lack of practical military benefit, and that banning them is a useful precommitmemt that will help us resist our own desire to act out our vices when the opportunity arises.


On that model, punitive bombing of civilian targets is the sort of practice you would want to ban. Bomber Harris said out of one side of his mouth that bombing civilian housing in German cities was part of an "industrial web" attack designed to make the newly-homeless workers less productive. Out of the other side of his mouth, he said a lot of great lines about winds and whirlwinds that implied his real motivation was simply to inflict pain on a deserving target. If we hadn't bombed German civilian housing, the war would have turned out the same way, except for fewer dead British aircrew and fewer dead German civilians.


Bomber Harris can plausibly claim ignorance - it wasn't obvious in 1942 that you couldn't win a war using air attacks on civilian morale. His successors can't. But people keep doing it - see Brett Devereux on the long and undistinguished history of strategic air power.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't get why Zelensky doesn't just go easy on the refineries for a few weeks to get some Trump brownie points.




The model that most people who are anti-Trump and pro-Ukraine have of Trump's policy is that he wants Ukraine to lose, and ideally to lose quickly*, but US domestic politics means he can't just sell Ukraine out the way Chamberlain and Daladier sold out Czechoslovakia or Nixon sold out South Vietnam.


If Zelensky shares this model, then Ukraine doesn't need Trump brownie points - he needs to retain the support of the marginal Russophobe Republican senator whose potential vote in an impeachment trial is his main leverage against Trump selling him out. And he can do that more easily by fighting hard and well and showing that Ukraine can still win with appropriate support than by making a militarily expensive show of support for a harebrained Trump admin scheme that is unlikely to actually move the pump price of diesel or the midterm vote.  "Trump brownie points" only help Ukraine if there is a possibility that they move Trump to a stance of actually helping Ukraine win.


* There are multiple plausible motivations for this on Trump's part, with TDS sufferers focusing on the corrupt and/or treasonous ones, but given that MAGA Twitter is even more pro-Russian than Trump himself, they probably aren't necessary. Trump behaves in the same way regardless of whether Russia has paid him off, he honestly believes that a Russian victory is in the US national interest as understood from a MAGA perspective, or because he thinks a quick Russian victory is the best hope to avoid megadeaths due to a prolonged war.




many of their attacks on bridges and powerplants and other economic targets would be screeched of as WAR CRIMES if Trump did it




Attacks on dual-use economic infrastructure like bridges and powerplants are war crimes if the damage to civilians is grossly disproportionate to any potential military advantage gained. This implies that punitive bombing of bridges and powerplants absent a ground war (where to a first approximation there is no direct military advantage and the damage to civilian morale is the whole point) is much more likely to be a war crime than bombing of bridges and powerplants alongside a ground war. If Trump bombed Iranian bridges and powerplants in order to soften them up for an invasion, then it would be (arguably) a criminal war of aggression but not a war crime. Leftists would still be screeching WAR CRIMES because they are stupid like that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Aggressive war is a crime under international law (indeed, according to the Nuremburg prosecutors it is the "supreme international crime"), but it isn't a war crime in the technical legal sense. The technical meaning of "war crime" only extends to waging a war in a criminal fashion (for example by attacking hospitals). And @gradation is correct that ius in bello is the same for aggressors and defenders, at least under the OG Hague and Geneva conventions. (There are some modern protocols to the Geneva conventions which the US has not signed which would give irregular resistance movements more leeway than invaders get).


Criminal wars not being war crimes is admittedly a particularly silly quibble.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Defensive yes, existential - they made it one. Russian demands while onerous - mostly veto over Ukraine security were not unbearable.




Russian veto over Ukrainian security policy = Ukraine is a sitting duck when (not if - Putin has consistently said that Russia's long-term policy goal is the forcible incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian sphere of influence and the forcible Russification of the Ukrainian people) Russia restarts the conflict, hence existential. Even if you think I am wrong about Russian long-term goals and that Putin was grandstanding for a domestic audience, the Ukrainians don't, and have good reasons not to.


Assuming that the Ukrainians are correct in not wanting to be genocided and that the Russians want to genocide them, they are better off fighting against the odds now than making concessions that will force them to fight against even worse odds later.




They are the same people.




The Russian idea that Ukrainian nationhood is fake and gay and that the Ukrainians are really Little Russians was submitted for adjudication to the God of Battles, who has already ruled against it. I agree that there is no genetic or cultural difference that would explain Ukrainian overperformance - it is some combination of better institutions and outside help.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Back when I was more heavily involved in politics I made a few hundred quid betting on politics on Betfair. Great product, great idea, but hasn't worked beyond politics.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Obviously - there are smart reasons to hate the establishment, but empirically most people who hate the establishment do so for dumb reasons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think most would rather say that he's the victim of isolated demands for rigor,




I think this is an important point. The anti-establishment right is the most paranoid of the four quadrants (on pro/anti establishment and left/right axes, which I think is more accurate nowadays than the traditional political compass/Nolan chart 2D model), and they think that all politicians are crooks and liars, but Trump is at least entertaining about it.


Matthew Yglesias has a good post about how the anti-establishment right are in tune with the median voter on this point. The tl;dr is that the median voter thinks that politicians have a "fix all the problems without raising taxes or hurting anyone sympathetic" button right in front of them which they are not pressing, and that the only reason not to press the button is some kind of payoff.  He goes on to say that the anti-establishment left also feel this way, and is explicit that various leftists are taking advantage of the dynamic by making straightforwardly false allegations of corruption against the pro-establishment left.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


has already failed on multiple occasions




Given that Robin Hanson worked at Oxford for a long time, I find the complete absence of discussion of the UK experience bizzare. The UK has always had much more legal access to less-harmful forms of gambling (primarily sports betting and low-stakes slots) than the US, and legal UK sportsbooks have always been allowed to take bets on almost anything. With the introduction of betting exchanges like Betfair, the UK has had fully legal prediction markets since 2000. And the only non-sports markets with enough liquidity to work were politics and "celebrity specials" like royal baby names.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My inner cynic thinks that Team Talarico saw Team Paxton beclowning themselves by spreading trivially-debunkable rumours and decided not to interrupt an opponent who was making a mistake.


I don't know if they were (or would be) making the right call - it depends on which filter bubbles potential swing voters are exposed to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My claim is not that France would be more assiduous in trying to punish a Nork attacking France than a Frenchman attacking France - as you point out, the French can't punish an individual Nork in North Korea without North Korean co-operation or an unacceptable risk of nuclear war. The point I am making is that the French would be more assiduous if a Frenchman (or a foreigner operating on French territory) attacked a friendly country (and got caught, which is admittedly unlikely) than if said delinquent frog was only attacking French targets.


As a matter of international law, sovereign states are expected to prevent their territory being used to attack countries they are not at war with. At least as regards countries which are actually friendly, countries take this obligation seriously.


If you take the cynical view that states protect their own interests and not the interests of their populations, embarrassing the King on the international stage is a worse crime than violating the King's peace domestically.