OliveTapenade
No bio...
User ID: 1729
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
Well, maybe I should try a test case.
Let's take, say, the Conservapedia page on Joe Biden and the RationalWiki page on Donald Trump.
(On a side note, I put 'conservapedia joe biden' and 'rationalwiki donald trump' into DuckDuckGo, and neither search returned me the page I needed. The latter did at least return RationalWiki pages, though for some reason it started with 'Policies of Donald Trump', 'Trumpism', 'Foreign Policy of Donald Trump', 'Donald Trump Jr.', and 'Trump-Ukraine Scandal', and never actually had the bare page on Trump. The former, however, was more suspicious - DDG refused to find Conservapedia at all. Instead, the first five results were Politico, NPR, the New York Times, Time, and Bloomberg, with further stories from NPR, CNN, Vox, and eventually joebiden.com, his campaign website. If I DDG for 'conservapedia' by itself it does correctly return Conservapedia as the first result. This makes me wary that there's some kind of disinformation filter here.)
Anyway, RationalWiki on Trump:
Donald John "Huge Hands Hans" Trump, Sr. (1946–), is an American businessman, rapist, reality TV host, four times indicted criminal, convicted felon,[6] and conspiracy theorist who was the forty-fifth President of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He is an adjudicated liar[7] and an adjudicated rapist:[8] yes, he's a sadistic "sick fuck".[9] Due to his involvement in an attempted self-coup after losing reelection, he has the infamous dishonor of being the first president in American history impeached and acquitted twice by the House of Representatives,[10] with the most bipartisan impeachment standing in US history.[11][note 1] As of 2024, he was courting the cannibalistic serial killer vote by praising the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter.[12] More proof of his self-described "very stable genius"[13] comes from being the first one-term president since George H. W. Bush in 1992.
His public life and career read like a Greatest Hits album of everything wrong with American society. Once tweeting a quote by radio host Wayne Allyn Root, who called Trump the "Chosen One and the King of Israel",[14] he is infamous for being a bizarrely unsuccessful businessman,[15][16] brash television personality,[17] fascist and neo-Nazi sympathizer,[18][19][20] con artist,[21] honorary Russian Cossack,[22] heelWikipedia wrestling personality,[note 2] sexual-assault enthusiast,[8][23][note 3] demagogue,Wikipedia[24] personality-cult leader,[25][26][27] and an aspiring strongman,Wikipedia[28] Nobel Peace Prize nominee,[note 4][30] and subject of extensive false equivalency.[31][32] Thanks to the confluence of his legendary narcissism and propensity for self-promotion, minimal attempts by his Republican supporters to moderate his malignant impulsivity, and four years at the tiller of perhaps the world's most influential public platform with an itchy Twitter finger, he holds the distinction of having likely told more public (and demonstrable) lies than any other person in human history.[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]
Elected against all odds,[note 5] Trump's presidency was an unmitigated disaster. Responsible for numerous human rights violations and outright crimes against humanity, he was condemned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,[43] for taking migrant children from their parents at the Mexican border and putting them in literal cages.[44][45] His inflammatory rhetoric, defense of his antagonistic or outright homicidal supporters,[46] endorsement of police killings on leftists,[47] bragging that his government assassinated leftists and antifascists (and heavily implying under his direct orders),[48][49][50][51][52][53][54] and vicious scapegoating of minorities directly inspired multiple acts of violence,[55][56] including against political rivals[57] and their relatives,[58] and even actual politically-motivated murders by his supporters,[59][60] even against people unconnected to Trump.[61]
Joseph Robinette “Joe” Biden, Jr., aka Pops, Pedo Pete,[14] The Big Guy, Robert L. Peters, Robin Ware,[15] J. R. B. Ware[16][17][18] and My Chairman[19][20] (born November 20, 1942) is the authoritarian kleptocrat and dictator of the United States.[21][22] Biden has been described by a close confidant as an "egomaniacal autocrat"[23] and by his own Justice Department as incompetent and unfit.[24]
79% of Americans believe that the 2020 presidential election was unjustly manipulated by dishonest whitewashing of the Biden family's criminal activities.[25] The official position of the Biden regime as articulated by its chief press spokesperson is that political opposition is "a threat to democracy."[26] A poll conducted by the Daily Mail of Iowa Republicans in August 2023 after Biden's 3rd indictment of 2024 presidential frontrunner President Donald J. Trump found 57% believed America was becoming like Nazi Germany under Biden.[27] Biden's ongoing bid to retain the presidency in 2024 is backed by Russia.[28][29] According to the "left-leaning"[30] newspaper The Economist, the USA's Democracy Index ranking decreased from 7.96 in 2019 under Trump to 7.85 in 2023 under Biden. Biden is known for his use of the term "bloodbath".[31]
A prominent Holocaust trivializer, Biden has compared migrants who illegally crossed the U.S.–Mexican border to Jews who perished in the Shoah.[32] In the space of 25 months after seizing power, Biden single-handedly rehabilitated the reputations of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, turning Nazis into freedom fighters for Western liberal democracy.
You can keep reading both articles if you'd like, but you no doubt get the idea.
I think reading them both, my judgement is that Conservapedia is worse, but they are both basically unhinged rants, far more interested in just insulting their subject in the most over-the-top and childish ways possible than they are in understanding anything. Both are basically political entertainment, written only to amuse or entertain an audience of dedicated partisans.
They are both worthless.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I doubt that normal people know that RationalWiki exists or consider it at all.
My experience with non-Motte-related somewhat-left-y people on the internet is that RationalWiki is seen as basically left-wing Conservapedia, and completely untrustworthy, but I admit that's probably selection bias.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I thought the usual argument there was that Trump has always wanted to be recognised and respected by New York high society, and he never has been. He's tried to use money and fame to buy his way in, but he's too fundamentally lacking in class or tact. I could imagine that, internally, what it feels like to be Trump is to be always excluded from the inner ring. He wants to get inside that ring, but no matter of power, not even being president, is enough to generate acceptance or respect.
Trump was not only rich, but he lived a cartoon version of a rich man's life because of his deep entanglements with media and entertainment.
The cartoon bit is important, I think. Trump is very rich and powerful, but Trump is also a clown in a way that real high society elites aren't. Trump's status has always depended on his ability to perform, the ability to get a crowd to hoist him on to their shoulders in a rush of popular enthusiasm. That's not how it is for the real upper class. The real upper class may be popular, but they don't need popularity, and in fact ought to mildly disdain it.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
What were the actual sharings-in-bad-faith or misrepresentations that he was worried about?
Was it only that right-wing people shared them as well, or did right-wingers understand the meanings of those posts in a different way to deBoer?
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
How about India, then?
As I understand it, the Indian general election cycle takes around six months, and India is over four times the size of the US. Its elections are much quicker.
A lot of Palestinians are christians.
According to wiki, only 0.2% of Gaza are Christian, and somewhere between 1% and 2.5% of the West Bank, in contrast to 1.9% of Israelis. It doesn't seem like Palestine is significantly more Christian than Israel, and in the case of Gaza specifically, it is much less - Al Jazeera claims that as of November 2023, there are barely a thousand Christians left in Gaza. The number of Christians in Palestine has significantly declined over time, which Christianity Today claims is primarily due to economic migration, rather than persecution.
As far as I'm aware neither Palestine nor Israel are particularly good places to be Christian. In both states Christians are a small minority, and are, I believe, second class citizens. It's interesting to note that most of them favour a one-state solution, I'd speculate perceiving that either an explicitly Jewish state or an explicitly Islamic state would be bad for them?
At any rate, I'm not sure that siding with Christians is a heuristic that would naturally get you to siding with Palestine against Israel. Palestine doesn't seem noticeably more Christian than Israel.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
Interesting difference, then! In Australian media journalists have been describing Payman as 'crossing the floor' for a vote - I'm surprised to learn the phrase has a different meaning in the UK.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
In the Australian context, BLM was fascinating because we had copycat BLM marches... about a completely different issue.
BLM in the original context means 'African-American lives matter'. BLM marches in Australia were reinterpreted as 'Aboriginal lives matter', even though Australian Aboriginals have nothing whatsoever to do with African-Americans, and even by analogy, are much closer to Native Americans than they are to African-Americans. The relevant similarities are that some Aboriginals have dark skin, and that there's a perception of disproportionate police violence against them. That's it. It was strange to see the branding appropriated in real-time like that.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
That's a fair point - Albanese ran a relatively centrist, small-target campaign for election, and then in government he hasn't been particularly radical either.
Still, I am prepared to accept your correction here as completely reasonable, and would offer only that, as you say, the perception of division may be different. Labor minimise the appearance of disunity more effectively than the Coalition, so, fair enough.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
You think? Where I'm coming from is the sense that it's very easy to tell at a glance the difference between a moderate Liberal and a conservative Liberal - most famously, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott were practically from different parties. By contrast, I find it hard to name the specific wedge issues that might separate the Labor Left and Labor Right? For instance, Bill Shorten was from the Right faction, and Albanese is from the Left, but I would struggle to clearly define the policy differences between them.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
The statistics in the linked poll seem to me to indicate that a plurality of Australians don't know about and probably don't care that much about this specific issue, with smaller camps that are either pro-Palestine or pro-Israel, though the intensity of each camp remains unclear.
Anecdotally - as an Australian who unfortunately comes into contact with activist groups, and who has links to both local Jewish and Islamic communities - my sense is that only small, loud minorities have strong opinions on Israel/Palestine either way, and that those minorities are disproportionately dominated by the relevant religious groups and by immigrants. Jews are smaller in number but generally have been in Australia longer, are richer, and have more access to existing institutions of power; Muslims are greater in number (about six times as many), but are more recently come to Australia and are less embedded in civic and political institutions. The anti-colonial left, significantly influenced by American cultural and political exports, also tends to be very pro-Palestine, but more seasoned politicians tend to be more sympathetic to Israel. So the result is what we see here - an insurgent youth politician and Muslim defecting from her party and likely self-destructing, but representing a change or potential risk that the Labor party will have to deal with.
At any rate, I notice you're being quite vague - 'the donors', 'Israeli lobbying money', and so on. I'm not sure that's helpful. I think you're trying to paint a picture where the Australian public as a whole is pro-Palestine and it's shadowy Jewish influence that subverts this. That doesn't seem to track with other figures. Sky in 2023 have a figure suggesting 31% support for Israel versus 7% for Palestine, which seems to fit with the majority of Australians not caring very much, but there being division between the combatants. (I grant that Sky, a conservative channel, likely have a pro-Israel bias.) Roy Morgan, also in 2023, shows similar divisions - 49% say we shouldn't take sides, 17% say we should help Israel more, and 19% say we should help Palestine more. Oxfam via the Canberra Times says that most support a ceasefire, but that's woolly enough that I'm not sure how to interpret it. For what it's worth, data from before October 7 generally seems similar - this report from 2021 suggests that most Australians are ignorant of the conflict, and most (62%) say that their sympathies are equally with both parties, with only 19% favouring Palestine and 11% favouring Israel.
My sense from on the ground is that this is probably correct. Most Australians don't care, and those who do vaguely want everybody in the region to live in peace and security and wish the violence would stop without taking a partisan perspective. When Palestinians do something awful (e.g. October 7), there's a bump in support for Israel and decline in support for Palestine, and when Israelis do something awful (e.g. much of the subsequent bombing), there's a bump in support for Israel and decline for Palestine. I would guess that these are likely to return to the average over time, as people forget or as different atrocities fall out of the forefront of people's minds. The most reliable partisans one way or the other are Jews and Muslims, for obvious reasons, but I think the bulk of Australians aren't strongly exercised about it.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I'm not making a moral claim. I'm being descriptive, not normative - speaking to why I think Labor are acting the way they are.
In addition to the optics element I noted, I wouldn't be surprised if there's also an element of geopolitics. America likes Israel, and Australia needs to keep America on side as much as possible, for our regional security as regards China. From that perspective, visibly siding with Palestine annoys the Americans for zero material benefit to Australia. The move doesn't make sense.
To reiterate, I'm not myself arguing that Israel is good or Palestine is bad. Neither am I arguing that Israel is bad. That's not an argument that I think is likely to be interesting or constructive. I'm interested in why Australian poltiical parties behave the way they do.
I understand that crossing the aisle is fairly common in American politics, because American political parties have very little way to punish it. A lot of factional politics in America therefore occurs within parties, rather than between them, as in Commonwealth countries.
It's pretty dangerous, but not necessarily suicidal - it depends on the particular party and your position in it. In Labor's case, it is usually suicidal, because Labor is unusually strict about party discipline. (They occasionally try to make hay of this by accusing the Coalition of being a disorganised rabble; the Coalition reply is usually that they have more respect for the consciences of individual members. This plays well with the perception of Labor as being more collectivist and focused on solidarity, with the Coalition as more individualist and focused on liberty.) There are a few statistics here - notice that every Coalition leader has faced MPs crossing the floor, while it is much more rare for Labor. Anthony Albanese is now only the second Labor PM since 1950 to have had a defection. As noted, your position in the party also matters - Barnaby Joyce did it a lot, but Joyce was popular in his own state, and he was a National. The Liberals have limited ability to punish a National member they don't like, due to the terms of the coalition agreement, which gave him more protection.
The Coalition also tends to be more vulnerable to it because the Coalition is more ideologically diverse than Labor - the Coalition has a moderate and a conservative wing, and both wings need the other in order to hold on to power. Sometimes MPs from one wing will defy the other, usually over a social issue, and remain within the party. (For example.) Labor in theory has factions as well - there's a Labor Left and Labor Right - but Labor's factions are less well-defined and tend to fight each other less as well. Same-sex marriage is a good example of the dynamic. As I mentioned in the top-level, Labor exercised very strong discipline on it, to the extent that even gay Labor MPs opposed it as long as the party opposed it, and then when the party supported it, everybody got on board. On the Coalition side, the moderates supported it and the conservatives opposed it, and there was much more outrage about whether or not the Coalition would allow a 'conscience vote' (i.e. every MP votes for what they think is right, party line be damned) on the issue. (There was a Labor discussion of a conscience vote - the pro-SSM side criticised the idea of a conscience vote there, because apaprently moral consistency is for suckers.) But I think that hit more strongly because the Coalition is known to be more divided than Labor on a range of issues.
At any rate, the answer is probably just "it depends". I think it is significantly more dangerous than in America, though, because in Australia the parties themselves have more direct control over their membership.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
Well, realistically I'd guess that the reason no one wants to do that now is that recognising Palestinian statehood comes off as "I am taking the Palestinian side against Israel".
That infuriates everybody who likes Israel, and it's also distressingly close to "I support Hamas", and no one in Labor wants to give the Coalition the opportunity to accuse them of being Hamas-loving anti-semitic terrorist-sympathisers. Nor, in fact, the Australian Jewish community, which retains significant public sympathy.
It would be much safer to say at a time when Israel and Palestine aren't at war after a brutal and horrifying Palestinian terror attack - at a time when any indication of support for Palestine wouldn't come off as hostile to Israel. But that is the time at present.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I think that statistic is very misleading.
The YouGov headline there - "More Australians are in favour than in opposition of recognising Palestine as an independent state" - is practically designed to mislead. What the poll results say is that 35% say Australia should recognise an independent Palestine, 21% say it shouldn't, and 44% don't know. "I don't know" is far and away the plurality winner. Moreover, I'd suggest that no specific proposal is given, and "recognise Palestine as an independent state" covers quite a lot of ground, so it's unlikely that all of that 35% want the same thing. Recognising Palestine as an independent state could mean a number of different types of two-state solution, it could mean totally destroying Israel, or something else. If a real proposal for an independent Palestinian state were on the table and being considered, approval for it would be likely to fall (cf. the Voice; it polled tremendously well when it was a vague proposal, but as specifics began to be mooted, support fell further and further).
Moreover, this is the current Labor platform on Palestine (p. 132):
- The National Conference:
a. Supports the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders;
b. Calls on the Australian Government to recognise Palestine as a state; and
c. Expects that this issue will be an important priority for the Australian Government.
The explicitly stated Labor position is to recognise Palestine as a state.
Why, then, did Labor vote against the Greens proposal to recognise Palestine as a state?
Well, it's what I said just above about details - the question is the way in which that recognition can or should happen. In the SBS piece I linked about the Greens bill in May, the Assistant Foreign Minister says:
"A Palestinian state cannot be in a position to threaten Israel's security, we want to see a reformed Palestinian governing authority that is committed to peace, that disavows violence," he said.
"On the question of recognition, we have made clear that we will be guided by whether recognition will advance the cause for peace."
It seems coherent that one could support recognising Palestinian statehood in the abstract while opposing a particular bill to do it at a particular time, if one judges that the time is not right.
On Israel in general, my sense is that a lot of this is unfortunately imported culture war from abroad. Historically, Australia really has very little connection to Israel or Palestine and no reason to care. Anti-semitism, fortunately, has never been a potent force in Australian history or culture (no doubt helped also by prominent Jewish-Australian heroes like John Monash), so it's largely just not been an issue. In the last year I've actually been particularly concerned by what seems like the importing of American-style activism over Israel/Palestine, with disturbing effects.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
Meanwhile in Australia: Islam, Gaza, and Party Loyalty
Let's take a break from our regularly scheduled Trump-related programming to consider some drama in another country...
This is Fatima Payman. She's a Labor senator for Western Australia who's recently found herself in a spot of bother, which I found interesting enough to be worth comment. Let me set the stage with a bit of background first.
Australia has a Westminster system of government with a bicameral legislature. The lower house of parliament has MPs who are elected representing particular districts, but the upper house, or senate, has a different and convoluted method of electing its members. Each Australian state (there are six) gets twelve senators and each territory (there are two) gets two, for a total of seventy-six. Most of the time the way senators are elected is by political party. A senate ballot paper looks like this, and rather than number specific individual preferences, most voters merely vote for a single party, and then their votes are allocated according to that party's pre-selected preferences.
This is relevant because Fatima Payman, who's only 28, was third on the Labor list of preferences for the senate in Western Australia. She was not particularly expected to win - only six seats were up and Labor didn't expect to win three. So it's worth noting that neither the party nor Payman herself thought she'd get into the senate in 2022, and perhaps more importantly, almost nobody at the ballot box even knew who she was, much less expected her to win. How this affects her democracy legitimacy is for you to determine.
Labor, or in full the Australian Labor Party (ALP; note that the party is Labor even though the word 'labour' has a U in it in Australian English, it's because there was significant American influence on its foundation in the 19th century), is the centre-left party in Australia and is currently in government. Its traditional rival is the centre-right Liberal Party (in coalition with the National Party, hence Liberal/National Coalition, LNP, or just 'the Coalition'). Labor is traditionally a working-class, blue-collar party with a heavy base in the Australian union movement. In the 90s, like many labour parties in the West, it rebranded a bit to try to appeal more to the middle class and progressives, but the union heritage is still very much present.
Meanwhile, coming up on Labor's left flank is the Australian Greens. Australia has preferential, ranked-choice voting, so there's no spoiler effect, and this has allowed the Greens to rise without ruining the left's chances overall. The Greens were originally a one-issue environmentalist party in the 80s, but have since become a general progressive or far-left party. The Greens tend to take more idealistic, some might say extreme positions than Labor, and have been nibbling away at Labor's left flank for decades. The Greens tend to do best with middle-class or wealthy progressives and especially the young and students - stereotypically, they're the hipster, yuppie party.
One last thing is worth noting. Internally, Labor have traditionally had a strong emphasis on party discipline and solidarity. The norm for Labor has generally been that MPs and senators may voice disagreements in private, but once the party has come to a collective decision, everybody is expected to maintain discipline and stand by that decision, even if they disagree. Despite a few exceptions, Labor have generally stood by this in the past - one famous example was when the Labor party room agreed to oppose gay marriage, Penny Wong, a Labor MP and lesbian in a committed relationship (and obvious private supporter of same-sex marriage) voted against it and even argued against it in public, not changing her public view until the party as a whole came around.
So, time for the drama.
The Greens recently put forth a bill to recognise Palestinian statehood. This is a long-standing part of the Green platform. (The Labor platform includes something waffley about supporting a two-state solution in principle, but without committing to anything. They have been fending off criticism for this over the last few months.) Naturally it failed, with both Labor and the Coalition voting against. At the time, in May, Fatima Payman made some defiant pro-Palestinian speeches and was quietly censured.
Then last week, in the end of June, a motion in the senate to recognise Palestinian statehood came along. Again, Labor and the Coalition voted against it, but Payman crossed the floor to support the Greens.
Crossing the floor - voting against your own party - is a big deal in Australian politics.
Since then, Payman has been temporarily suspended from the Labor caucus, but not removed from the party; she may yet return to the caucus in good standing if she promises to follow the Labor party's rules. She has been criticised by some of her fellows, but supported by some authors, and the Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, seems to be struggling to find a middle path. The Greens are naturally praising Payman for her display of conscience, while the Coalition are mostly just pointing and laughing.
What's even more interesting is that local Islamic groups in Australia, which in the past have mostly been Labor voters (they don't like the Coalition for usual right-wing-party-related reasons, and they're not nearly socially progressive enough for the Greens) are strongly siding with Payman, and are flagging the possibility of an electoral revolt against Labor.
(The teals were a group of traditionally Coalition seats who cared a lot about environmental issues and climate change and revolted, electing independent MPs - so blue (the Coalition colour, conservatism) plus green (environment) equals teal. The possibility of a similar revolt against Labor would be terrifying for them.)
This rebellion may not come to anything and may not be very influential in the long run - there just aren't enough Australian Muslims, and most of them are in heavy Labor seats anyway - but with the next election rapidly approaching, Labor would really want to avoid any appearance of strife or disunity, especially with inflation, rising cost-of-living, energy policy, and the failed Voice referendum all making this government look a bit more ramshackle than they'd like - the Coalition are rapidly closing in on them in the polls.
As for Payman herself, it's not clear what she will do. She claims to have been bullied or intimidated, but at least from what's been seen in public so far, she appears to have been treated relatively gently. She could commit to abide by the Labor party's rules again and return to the caucus, or she could quit Labor entirely and become an independent senator, though this would make it extremely unlikely that she would ever get re-elected. Still, she's not up for re-election until 2028 anyway, so that might be worth it.
I don't have a conclusion to draw from this mess yet - but I think it's an interesting example of how Palestine and the Muslim vote are influencing centre-left politics in Western countries. Muslims aren't even a particularly large proportion of Australians (per the last census, 3.2% of Australians; compare 2.7% Hindus and 2.4% Buddhists), and yet they've got some influence here.
Of course, it's also possible that this is just a one-off - Labor screwed up the ticket in 2022 and by bad luck, a millennial who never should have been a senator in the first place got in there, and now she's grandstanding in a way that hurts her own party. Perhaps the only moral to draw from this is just "don't be stupid when selecting senate candidates". (A lesson the Greens might need to learn as well; this invites comparison to the saga of ex-Green independent senator Lidia Thorpe. But more on that some other time.)
Anyway, I offer the situation up for your reactions.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
Yes, there are a number of reasons why Americans have primaries - it's just become an expectation at this point, it lets you judge popularity with the base because America is a system where turnout matters, and so on. It's more that in the aggregate I think it creates a weaker system than the alternative.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I'll admit that, coming from the outside, the American primary system has always seemed absurd to me. Maybe this is a result of being Australian instead, but I am much more accustomed to the approach where the party selects its own leader, and the public don't get a say. We get to vote later on. But of course the party get to choose their own leaders. Why wouldn't they?
It's become tradition in America that the way the parties do that is with primaries, but there's no in-principle reason why they couldn't do it any other way, and frankly I suspect it would be better for America if they did. If the party establishments or members of congress had gotten to pick their presidential candidates (approximating the way it works in Australia), Bernie Sanders would never have been a concern, Donald Trump would never have become a political figure at all, and America would have been spared long, divisive primary seasons. As it is, they have a system that rewards extremist candidates playing towards the base, rather than one that rewards trying to appeal to a genuine majority, and that seems like a poorly-functioning electoral system to me.
On the positive, at least, it means the American elections provide some very high quality popcorn.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I think Dreher would say that what you describe is his idea, and everybody who thinks it's something more extreme is misinterpreting him.
There has always, unfortunately, been something of a gulf between what Dreher actually wrote and what Dreher insists that he wrote.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
Could be an argument via Vigano?
Without getting too deep into the allegations of a disgruntled former nuncio, it is at least semi-plausibly alleged that Francis was/is allied to and relied on the support of abusers. Some circumstantial evidence bears this out - if you look at the sordid history of Theodore McCarrick, it looks suspicious.
Very short version: American cardinal slept with seminarians, this came out around 2006-7, Benedict XVI put restrictions on McCarrick's movements and activities, after Francis became pope in 2013 he removed those restrictions, this is suspicious because McCarrick was an advocate for progressive changes in the church and a potential ally of Francis.
Former papal nuncio Vigano made public accusations along these lines, Francis refused to respond but told journalists "I will not say one word on this. Judge for yourselves." Naturally the media ended up exonerating Francis and declaring Vigano a crackpot. Now, to be fair, Vigano has gone to in fact basically be a crackpot - he's a hardcore Trumpist and he alleges some kind of gay Freemason conspiracy within the Catholic Church - so it makes sense to take his accusations with a grain of salt, but at the very least, the idea that Francis ignores or lightly skips over sexual abuse committed by political allies is plausible.
There isn't a single smoking gun, but we know that the rate of homosexuality among Catholic clergy is extremely high and there is ample cause for suspicion. I don't take any of Vigano's specific accusations at face value, but I am distrustful of Francis and anything going on inside the Vatican.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I would be extraordinarily surprised if the Motte were anything other than majority-atheist.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I don't have survey results for the Motte, of course, but I suspect they would be similar to the general ACX results, where the results were 49.5% atheist-not-spiritual, 11.1% atheist-and-spiritual, and 19.6% agnostic, which gives a total of 80.2% in the rough atheist basket. I would guess that the Motte's ratio is probably similar. I firmly believe that atheists are the majority here. If you don't notice them, I suspect it's just because most atheists don't talk about being atheists most of the time.
It's true that Christians remain a majority in the US for now. I said that it's "been declining for decades", which is true, not that it's a minority.
At any rate, I would not stress about being made to conform to a religion. That's definitely not going to happen to you in the Motte. There are places where I think the Motte is aggressively groupthinky (mainly related to the political left), but Christianity isn't one of them.
Re: rationalism, I'd suggest that it's better to think of rationalism as a methodology, rather than a set of approved positions that one must hold.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
I don't think I've asserted anywhere that it should be the baseline view, or that you or anybody else must adopt it. I'm quite conscious that it's a minority view. On the Motte and in rationalist or rationalist-adjacent spaces in general, it's a small minority. In the West more generally, Christianity has been declining for decades and I expect it to continue doing so.
However, none of that suggests to me either that Christianity is wrong, that I should not adopt a Christian worldview, or that I shouldn't be treated with the same respect due to anyone who makes a good-faith if fallible attempt to understand the world.
OliveTapenade
4mo ago
Put it this way - do you think there's any chance you're going to convince me, or alter my views here? Am I going to read your posts and go, "Oh my gosh! You're right! Everything I believe is ridiculous and false!"
Sometimes I think it's best to ask ourselves questions like, "What's the point of this conversation?", or "What am I going to achieve in this conversation?" In this case, my hope is that I might be able to show you that religious people aren't necessarily stupid, dogmatic, or malevolent. I doubt I can convince you that God exists, but maybe I can show you that it's possible to be religious and at the same time thoughtful, humane, rational, kind, and so on. If you come away from this conversation thinking, "Olive may believe some absurd things, but he's a smart guy and I enjoyed talking to him", I will rate that Mission Accomplished.
Maybe that's optimistic. I don't know. But I think it's a more achievable goal than the scales falling from your eyes.
Likewise in reverse. Okay, you're an atheist and you think that all religions are false, including my own. I have registered this fact. What now? I don't think you're really making arguments in favour of that claim, which might convince me or a bystander? It feels to me like you're engaging in social shaming, or perhaps meta-debate - that is, trying to argue that religious people should be shamed and put outside the circle of people who get to engage in rational dialogue here. Is that a fair characterisation?
From Trump's perspective, that's a feature, not a bug.
What Trump requires, more than anything else, is loyalty. He was furious at Pence because Pence didn't deliver that in a crisis, because Pence had commitments that preceded and overrode loyalty to Trump. That's not an issue with an amoral opportunist. The opportunist will follow Trump for as long as it's in his interests to do so, and you can trust him to follow those interests.
Trump is not a principled or ideological politician, much less a man. He focuses more on deals, favour-trades, and personal allegiance. I think Vance makes sense for him.
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