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WandererintheWilderness


				

				

				

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WandererintheWilderness


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes? That seems like another example of what I was talking about. I don't understand what point you're trying to make.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sure, they don't tend to believe that Gaza is currently a bastion of progressivism; but @4bpp was talking about a wishful belief that "with sufficient reparations and contrition", Muslims will eventually "flip to running a pluralistic rainbow-coloured paradise", not the untenable proposition that they're already doing so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That is, people who delude themselves into believing variations of the idea that an independent Palestine would be an oppressive, misogynistic, Islamo-fascist regime is just Israeli slander; that left to its own devices, Palestinians might very well become an enlightened liberal democracy, and it's racist to believe otherwise when they haven't been given the chance. In my experience, it's what a lot of Queers For Palestine types claim to believe when pushed, and I don't really doubt their relative sincerity. It'd be psychologically challenging to cheer for people who you actually believed would behead you if they got the chance.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll take your word that they don't exist in Ireland, but haven't you seen "rainbow Hamas" types on social media?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think Clayton and Swinson might have correctly anticipated that if they give the inflammatory, partisan answer, follow-up questions will be asked. The safest way to avoid backing yourself into a "What makes you so sure?"-shaped corner is to simply not answer the first time. Come to that, I think ignorance can also be in play even with insincere people. I don't know about Clayton in particular, but it's easy to imagine someone who, regardless of their own beliefs, would more confidently answer "Trump" if they've memorized a suitable Gish gallop of alleged voter-fraud evidence that they can rattle off upon request, than if the only answer they could give to "why do you believe that?" was just "because Trump told me to". Thus, the embarrassment can result from an awareness of one's personal inability to defend the claim, not necessarily self-consciousness about the innate ludicrousness of the claim.


(Also, re: the specific "woman" scenario, a crucial detail IMO is that the slogan everybody learned by heart was "trans women are women", not "the word woman means XYZ". "What does the word 'woman' mean in you head, anyway?" is itself the awkward follow-up question: "when you chant trans women are women, what do you mean by that word?".)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there's a missing possibility in your bullet-point categorization of what a floundering response to a gotcha question might signal: sheer ignorance, rather than cowardice, i.e. the respondent might simply have been parroting a slogan with no actual understanding of why it's held to be true by their ingroup. It's not that they don't believe in the slogan, necessarily, but they've simply memorized it as an article of faith without even stopping to ask why. "Trans women are women" is true because gender studies experts say so and they wouldn't say so without good reason; "the election was stolen" is true because Trump says so and he ought to know. Crucially, good arguments are assumed to exist, it's just that the respondent never bothered to learn them.


Of course, there's nothing necessarily wrong with this. Most people accept both scientific and moral truths ("nothing can travel faster than light", "rape is morally wrong") as claims from authority, without personally seeking to rederive the conclusions. But it's a bad look when a person in a position of authority is shown to have no actual idea what they're talking about. Mouthing along to the Nicene Creed is all that Christiniaty has ever asked of random laypeople, but being unable to articulate a biblical argument for the Trinity would not reflect well on the Pope.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In addition to FtttG's reply, "Trump" as an answer to the election question does raise a lot of follow-up questions in its own way, e.g. "Does the respondent think that government actions enacted under Biden were invalid?". (The funniest is of course "then wouldn't Trump have been ineligible in the last election?").


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In reality I don't see any evidence that Democratic politicians are more moral than Republican politicians. Why would it be the case?




One obvious reason it might be the case that one party's politicians are more moral than the other's is if one party's platform is itself genuinely morally superior to the other. If any decent person feels in their heart that e.g. abortion is a human right, then by definition only evil or, at best, amoral people will become conservative candidates. (A conservative could, of course, make the symmetrical argument: only a morally-degenerate person would support cancellation campaigns or gay rights, therefore no righteous person is ever going to touch the DNC with a ten-foot pole.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Does saying "I will do X but first I will check if it's legal, and if it's illegal I won't do it" actually count as "threatening to do X", legally?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If you literally believe someone is Hitler then you should want him assassinated




Not necessarily, for the reasons I discuss here. And anyway, even if we disagree on the literally-Hitler case, there are surely levels of badness that a public figure can be where I don't think it justifies extrajudicial murder, but I do think it justifies public outcry, and some idiot could potentially think it justified murder. Wherever you draw the line of how bad someone has to be before you should want them assassinated, it is almost certainly case that there will be people who draw it closer to home.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not sure that would work. "Here is how bad this guy is; honestly, he's so bad I'd kill him if I did not hold murder to be absolutely taboo in literally all cases… and surely none of you would ever countenance committing murder either, no matter how evil the target… would you?" is still very easy for my enemies to spin as stochastic terrorism.


Also, I don't think you need to be a "hardcore pacifist" to believe that it would have been wrong to murder Hitler in 1930. Whether it can be ethical to assassinate a totalitarian dictator is a different question from whether it is ever appropriate to assassinate someone who doesn't hold absolute power because they could commit horrible crimes if they ever acquired absolute power. I interpret the "John Smith is literally Hitler" meme as more like "John Smith is literally 1930!Hitler" than it is like "John Smith is literally 1943!Hitler" - the implied claim is that if John Smith had free rein he would be as bad as Hitler, not "John Smith, at this very moment, represents as immediate a threat to the free world as Hitler did at the height of his power".


I think that is a potentially legitimate opinion to have about a modern politician, and one which it would be urgent to convey without understatement if it's true; but that it still wouldn't justify an assassination. Absent supernatural foreknowledge, this would have applied to Hitler prior to his rise to power - we can say with the benefit of hindsight that it would have been a good thing for some nut to put a bullet in his brain in 1930 but there was no way for our 1930 gunman to know that for certain, before or after the crime.


(Important disclaimer: I don't think Charlie Kirk was literally Hitler even in the 1930-Hitler sense. I don't even think Trump is; I suspect he would make himself dictator-for-life if he were ten years younger and had the means to do so, but I don't think he would use that position to declare bloody wars of conquest or organize genocides. I'm very much speaking about general principles here.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why can't it be both? If I oppose the death penalty, I'm sure as hell gonna oppose vigilante killings. Murder can be tragic no matter how evil the person is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How do you suggest that I express my opinion if I do believe that so-and-so is literally Hitler but I also genuinely don't want that person assassinated? If I keep adding a "…but we still shouldn't murder the guy, because murder is morally wrong and socially corrosive even when we're talking about the literal scum of the Earth" disclaimer at the end, I'll look like I'm just doing the Julius Caesar speech. If I don't then I'm open to ordinary stochastic-terrorism accusations. It seems like a bit of a catch-22. Yet if you seriously believe that a public figure is literally Hitler, clearly you have a duty to communicate that in some way.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"It's morally wrong to sell people" doesn't sound so difficult.




Surrogacy needn't be a paid service. I actually know a gay guy (with a steady partner) who had a child with a platonic female friend of his, with the understanding that the child would primarily be raised by the two men, purely out of friendship. Not a typical case, of course - both due to the lack of a financial arrangement, and the fact that the mother is still very present in the child's life in practice - but clearly recognizable as surrogacy without actually involving anything that could be described as selling people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The "good" reasons for space colonization for the foreseeable future are:


    

  1. Science
    2. 

  2. Because We Can
    3. 





Commonly added as a third is "as an insurance policy in case life on Earth is destroyed"; do you dismiss this?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Seriously? "All charismatic white men can be assumed to be rapists by default" is a caricature of radfem slander, not actually a defensible statement about the world.


Also, (it is alleged that) Platner turned up drunk at his girlfriend's home and forced himself on her in a haze. We are not talking about assertive chad behavior at a bar that the chick was maybe into at the time but progressives don't like. This is low-status, slovenly behavior that ~everyone in western culture would have found reprehensible for the past thousand years, albeit for different reasons and with varying levels of perceived seriousness of the offense.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


will be ordaining gay and women priests




Ordaining gay priests would be business as usual for Catholics. I assume you mean marrying gay couples.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Motivation might not be enough if it's a big, resourceful country framing a much weaker one - picture China framing some tiny Middle Eastern shithole. Does the latter reliably have the means to expose the plot? Even if they did offer what most people would find credible evidence, wouldn't the US be motivated to buy China's bullshit rather than precipitate a clash of superpowers? I think you'd run a significant risk of scapegoat countries being glassed for no good reason.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I also dont understand your preoccupation with deniability, we're not talking about citizens with consitutional rights, we're talking about sovereign nations. "Drop the act, we know it was you" is a perfectly valid realpolitik response to such behavior.




A hostile nation could make a genuine effort to frame another nation, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Well that's not really my problem -- you are the one saying that -- generally speaking -- people should be treated as they desire




But "people" includes me; it includes how I treat myself, and how you ought to treat me viz. what requests you make of me. Anyway, would you mind answering a couple of from me in turn?




To be sure it can be defended on the principle of "treat people as they want to be treated," but only if this principle is applied selectively. Which means that it's no principle at all.




I'm fairly bemused by this. Of course a principle on how you should treat people by default can be nullified by specific circumstances, but should still be followed in the absence of these circumstances; e.g. the general principle "it's not nice to kill people" vs the specific circumstance "you can kill in self-defense if they attacked you first". I don't see how this is any different. Hence, first question/set of questions: on what basis do you think people should in general be treated? Do you have a principle that applies in all circumstances and correctly models the ethical way to behave with any human being in any context? How and why does this principle demand that you always refer to a Homo sapiens with a penis by the word "he"?




gender ideology (or whatever you want to call it) is a bunch of ridiculous nonsense on the level of astrology




I don't see how any of my answers could lead to that conclusion. Even if you disagree with some of the judgement calls involved, I staked a case based purely on materialist concerns, with none of the references to a magic transcendental True Gender written on the soul that less sophisticated trans advocates sometimes refer to, and which would validate a comparison to astrology. Put another way, I did not expect to convince you to support trans rights through this comment chain, but I did hope to make you see that I do not have any factually-erroneous object-level beliefs about the world on the subject of what gender is and how it works, in the way that a believer in astrology does; I merely have a value system that's fairly exotic compared to yours. So, my second question: would you in fact agree with that statement? If not, why not?


Finally: I made references to the possibility of a Singularity forcing the issue. Where would you stand if, in 30 years, we've all been converted into shapeshifting telepathic nanite clouds, only taking anthropomorphic form if we wish to? (For the sake of argument. Let's not get into whether you think a Singularity will happen within 30 years, or whether you believe it's possible for a brain-upload to have qualia.) Would you insist on only referring to people by the pronouns of their original, long-since-discarded flesh body's physical sex? Or would you say that the Earth was now exclusively populated by "it"s, and refuse to refer to anybody as "sir" or "madam" ever again?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The very introduction of "suffering" seems to me to evidence a degree of confusion between consequentialism and utilitarianism; consequentialism needn't have anything to do with pleasure, suffering, or whatever else. A paperclip maximizer is a consequentialist, so long as it believes that it should take whatever actions maximize paperclip amount in the long term (up to and including destroying paperclips while its human handlers are watching, so as to demonstrate its supposed human-friendliness), rather than only engage in actions with directly create paperclips. There is no contradiction between being a consequentialist, and believing that the ethical course of action requires us to destroy civilization and cause untold suffering in the process; it all depends what consequences you're looking at.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


By your definition, ethics are practically nonexistent in the real world, and belong only to rare outliers.




Well, I wouldn't say that. In the first place, I think there are a number of ethical lines that most ordinary people would rather die than cross or see crossed, they just mostly don't come up. For example, I believe that the vast majority of people I encounter in my day-to-day life, including on this forum, would rather lay down their own lives rather than allow a toddler to be brutally raped. Also and as a separate matter, I think there are even more ethical lines which people believe in their conscience they should defend unto death, even if, in practice, they might falter; ethical lines where if they fell short of defending them with everything they've got, they'd feel guilty afterwards.




They are not the the mass phenomenon that drives immigration policy in the West.




Agreed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


even if it causes maximal suffering for everyone in every situation all the time, with no positive side-effects, as long as the ethics were followed properly, that is better than if the ethics weren't followed properly and resulted in prosperity and less suffering, with no negative side-effects




I think you are confusing consequentialism with utilitarianism. Consequentialism judges ends rather than means, but it does not require 'gross hedonic product' to be the only criterion by which to compare outcomes. We might say, for example, that as one of many discrete terminal values, we want the number of starving children in the world to be 0. A policy designed to achieve this end by any means necessary, up to and including the end of Western civilization as we know it, would still be a policy driven by consequentualism (i.e. a policy that is judged on outcomes, rather than the virtuousness of the means used to achieve them).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In theory. Terms and condition apply, of course - starting with the fact that it might cause me discomfort to refer to Jenner as male, and if that discomfort is equal to or greater than your discomfort at hearing them referred to as male. For example, I might have trans people in my life who would be saddened if they could not trust that I always respect trans people's chosen names, and not want to be keeping secrets from them. At the end of the day, if hearing the words "Caitlin Jenner" irritates you more than the ability to have a mutually-honest conversation about Jenner would please you, we round back to the fact that we are probably not two people who stand to derive much happiness from discussing Jenner with one another, and should probably talk about something else if we talk at all.


(In the event, of course, I think Mottizens, by virtue of participating in the Motte, declare themselves to be people who would prefer to confront political and ideological disagreements head-on, at least within the context of the Motte. And generally I think true friendships require that sort of mutual-preference-for-the-other-guy to be honest, which is why the topic-avoidance strategy is most relevant to contexts where people are forced to interact regardless of personal inclinations, such as coworkers.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I despair at this fixation on ethics as an overriding necessity. Is Western Civilization really so despicable that we must destroy it rather than adjust our ethics? Are our ethics really so supremely perfect, so outright sacred, that they brook no improvement?




You seem to be jumping here from one argument to the other. "Before we burn everything down in pursuit of them, are we really sure that our understanding of ethics is correct?" is a different, and in my view, more valid point than "What good are ethics in general if they don't produce good material outcomes?", as you have it elsewhere in the post. Ethics, in my view, are meaningless if they are not, in fact, a statement of ideals worth dying for, of lines so dark that it is better to die than to cross them. Ethics are not a guide to material success, they are a distinct, orthogonal reward axis for human behavior relative to material success - otherwise The Prince would be a great work of moral philosophy. Saying that you are against morality if its precepts sometimes lead to self-sacrificial behavior and reap only scorn of your children's children is as much as to say that you don't believe in morality. Morality is what you get eaten by lions in Caesar's circus about.


Now again, I'm sympathetic to the other point. I don't actually think that ethics require us to burn down Western Civilization, as a matter of fact. But if they did this would not be an indictment of ethics as a concept.