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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28520 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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I was curious to read what people were saying as Jan 6th happened, but many comments and threads appear (poorly) removed, with only some contextless responses done as main comments instead of to whatever removed chain they belonged to: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/kq3o1s/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_january_04/

I do like to go back and check my old writing on occasion. Usually I nod along and think "dang I really agree with this guy". Jan 6th is no exception. I didn't write much on the themotte, but I did have a very upvoted comment on theschism (a sister subreddit):

https://old.reddit.com/r/theschism/comments/kocsoj/discussion_thread_12_week_of_1_january_2021/gih02cw/

[Jan 6th happened]

The strong reactions have confused me yet again. I have to wonder if my mind is broken, or if I am just so solidly gray tribe that I can't be bothered to care about these things.

To republicans and democrats I wish I could effectively communicate one thing: This is what protests look like from the other side.

It is scary to see lots of your political opponents gathered in one place and very angry about something you think isn't true. You can feel threatened just by the very existence of such mobs. They aren't accountable in the moment, anything could go wrong and they could hurt some innocent person.

And while they are at it protesting something that isn't real, they are also going to violate some things you hold sacred. Interrupt the national anthem, burn some flags, disrupt a legislative session, harass someone at their home, etc.

If I was stupidly optimistic I would have hoped that this event brought about a lot of mutual understanding. A big collective "ooohhh, that is what you were upset about this summer". Instead it has just deepened the divide.

2021 is off to a great start. Guess its gonna be more of the same.

Looking back three and a half years ago I feel that Jan 6th has not gone away. But the dispersed summer riots that resulted in lots of property damage and a few dozen lost lives have been mostly memory holed.

Perhaps the singular date helped, perhaps it was the national politicians being threatened, perhaps it was the ongoing court cases, perhaps it was the involvement of Trump. Those things all probably helped it stay in the public zeitgeist. But mostly its driven me towards a more conspiratorial mindset about the media landscape. They have kept it in the public mind. They could have chosen to cover all the riots for years on end, they chose not to.

I have a few comments there:

January 7, 2021

So what are some material outcomes of yesterday's event? I'm guessing:

*Patriot Act v2, this time we trade even more of our few civil liberties and become even more China-like in our surveillance state to secure ourselves from, "domestic terrorism"

*A possible crackdown on the 2nd amendment?, It doesn't really matter if guns weren't being used by yesterday's mob, but I feel with this emphasis on keeping weapons away from domestic terrorists will be used to justify all sorts of new restriction on guns

Any other effects you all think are plausible?

It will primary be used as a trump card to dismiss the months of violent leftwing violence across the country.

https://archive.is/owXYG

"I never want to hear how horrible and violent antifa or BLM are ever again"

Also to bolster the narrative that white men are the most dangerous element of society.

I think the comment I was replying to was overly hyperbolic. I have a minor quibble with my first claim, as I think democrats largely don't think much nefarious happened during the BLM riots, so January 6 stands alone as an insurrection and an attack on Our Democracy. No need to use January 6 as a counterweight when there's nothing to counter. I didn't anticipate Trump running for president again so that changed the dynamics around the narrative a bit.

January 8, 2021

I know this has been said over and over again but I'll go on the record.

Libertarian thoughts on "public property" and politicians being HVTs quibbles aside; I am not virulently against the norm of shooting people in these types of situation. I am against what I perceive to be a massive double standard. It's super clear that Kyle Rittenhouse is a mass murder, all these police shootings are racist, lives over property. But shooting a rightwing protester crawling through a window is a good shoot.

Norms need to be consistent or... They aren't norms. Ashli Babbitt saw the left violently rioting, looting, committing arson, and occupying government buildings for months without getting shot.

If we're gonna play the game this way, fine. Just as long as everyone knows that the rules are that it's legitimate to shoot you - even if you're protesting - when you start breaking stuff that's not yours or try to go places you're not supposed to go.

I still stand by this but I also acknowledge (and would have at the time) that normies aren't me and will consider attacks on the "Seat of Our Democracy" to be greater than attack's on private civilian property.

I think that if the roles were reversed and the right was destroying and killing what and who BLM killed and the left did a J6 equivalent... it's fair to say that the roles would also be at least partially reversed in how seriously these things were taken by the respective sides.

I'm honestly not sure how the right would react to a left-wing J6 equivalent, but I think it's pretty obvious how the left would react to a right-wing protest that had a similar level of buildings destroyed, areas occupied, etcetera.

I asked my mom and it wasn't a question she had thought to ask herself. People don't understand that... it doesn't make sense to treat bad things your own side does as justified just because your side is the good guys. Because what if everyone thought that way?

Society depends on a consistent set of rules that both sides of a conflict follow. Otherwise it really will be a world humans can't live in.

Democrats do something very similar to January 6, and I think Republican rhetoric is virtually the same (insurrection, overthrow the government, terrorism, etc.) as what the Democrats have been using. Democrats would probably riot over the death of their version of Ashli Babbitt.

BLM protests are difficult because I have a lot of trouble imagining what similar conservative kinetic actions would look like. Maybe it's a massive blind spot, but I just can't picture a realistic scenario. The closest I can think of are small groups or individuals attacking abortion clinics, which are very much affiliated. Or the Murrah building, but again, that was very specifically targeted.

Now, the next take would be that the protesters did very little rioting, but opportunists were attacking random private businesses. So what does a right-wing protest with violent opportunists look like? Probably the right-wingers would try to actively help the police stop the looting.

The point is not to imagine a realistic similar scenario that could happen. The point is to imagine what a similar scenario would be, realistic or not. If there is no realistic equivalent, that reflects well on the people who would not realistically do the bad thing.

I am very confident that Ashli Babitt (D) is a national martyr if roles are reversed. The endless op-eds about gunning down an unarmed woman for disobeying an instruction would be legion.

I thoroughly enjoyed 1/6 and still to this day felt like it had to happen. The right was boiling after years of covid lies etc. They needed to get a good riot in.

I enjoyed watching all the Dems complain about rioting after they had largely backed the summer of Floyd Riots.

As time goes on I have largely moved into the camp that Trump was directionally correct on it being a stolen election.

I’m still a bit pissed that the CIA (former guys) would straight up lie to the American people about Hunters laptop. Sure those guys were not current CIA but they did use their credentials. I think they all knew the laptop was real. I have a friend who had access to the hard drive so I knew it was real and the CIA guys could have investigated. Lying happens in politics but this always felt to me like crossing a line.

Re the laptop they knew. Everyone who looked into at the time knew. Greenwald discussed how you authenticate and he said it checked out at the time.

But worse we now know as early as 2019 the FBI knew it was real and we know the IC attempted to prebunk Hunter’s laptop with SM. So they knew it was real yet did what they could do pre condition SM to prevent it from being spread when it came out. This is evidence it wasn’t a free and fair election. Add in zuckbucks in Wisconsion were illegal. So the weak form of Trump’s claim is true.

But is it really a stretch that people who would do that, or the people who would engage in the current lawfare wouldn’t maybe fake some votes? We’ve learned things like dominion CEO lying about internet connectivity. We’ve learned the Georgia counts weren’t what they appeared. Is there evidence for the strong claim? No. But is it beyond the imagination it occurred? I don’t think so.

I remember within days of the story coming out there was a guy who published a Github verifying that the DKIM signatures on the emails matched. Which means either they were legit, or were forged by someone who was able to steal Google's signing keys from five years prior, or who had the nigh impossible computing power to crack those keys.

What really sold the “six swing states were stolen” narrative for me was that, except for Michigan which was half a million more for Biden, they all had some dozen thousand more Biden votes. Miniscule.

With a margin that razor thin, finding three or four different illicit ways to tip it in those states, each one more feasible in a different set of swing states, is easily within the grasp of a coordinated effort between intelligence agencies, a handful of nonprofits, and the top ranks of real power.

I think that’s a tougher narrative than you think. You don’t know in advance those states will be that tight. So you run into a where and how many votes question for those states. It’s not worth doing 40k fraud votes if you actually lost by 60k. Hence you actually need to cheat a lot to clear the margin in enough states because you don’t know exactly how many you are going to need.

Well the whole “shut down for a few hours” thing could explain that.

I keep coming to a conclusion that Trump has amazing instincts. There are a bunch of areas where he ended up being correct even if he seemed like a no-nothing type. Chinese tariffs, Iran, monetary policy, immigration, German-Russian relations. I’ve gone from somewhat of a hater to now begging for him to be back. Things just work well with Trump in the White House. I’ll vote for him in 2024 and I’ll vote for him again in 2028. (He will just tell his son to run. He’s never leaving).

zoink 37 points 3 years ago*

I'm highly skeptical that this will lead to an equitable crack down on rioting

Give this man a prognostication medal. I enjoy looking at old threads because it becomes obvious who was trying to get at the truth vs shamelessly manipulate people.

I didnt know there were motte mods telling users "I'd put you in a concentration camp if I could"

Give this man a prognostication medal.

I'm not fishing for compliments what is the evidence you see for this being true? The aggressiveness of the prosecution of January 6th rioters, lack of action against Palestine protestors, or... ?

At the time people excusing 2020 were saying things like "let the justice system work, all those people will face charges!"
And a few years later they were all dropped except for that one guy who got time off his sentence for burning a man alive because "his heart was in the right place." Andy Ngo has been showing all the same individuals are part of the intifadah riots too, so none of them have been incapacitated or even discouraged.

Meanwhile old ladies who were wandering outside the capitol building are in their 4th year of pretrial detention.

You were spot on when everyone was insisting the response would be principled.

He said he wasn't going to ban him because he didn't want be like him and did in fact believe in the free exchange of ideas even when he held "the power". The most charitable interpretation of HlynkaCG's post was that we should tolerate everything except intolerance, and those that would call liberalism and free speech bullshit should perhaps experience what it is like to live in a society without those values, such as China, where they would not be allowed to share such views.

What a grotesque thing to say to someone! I wish I could tell lynka that since I care about Classical Liberalism (or whatever it's called, I'm not attached to that label), it's important to me that I try to persuade people of its utility and morality. And the best way to do that is by being considerate of others, both in terms of not saying cruel things to them and in terms of actually considering what they have to say.

Unless that person says that literally if the roles were reversed they would silence you, or worse. Then it is very charitable to only say they won't ban you and maybe you should think about what it would be like to live in a place that didn't have these classical liberal values.

I'm talking about how lynka said the concentration camp thing.

My reading is "you don't believe in free speech, the Chinese dissident does; if we could swap your places, you each would live under a government that matches your stated preferences."

Yes, so am I. He said Chinese re-education camp in exchange for a chinese dissident. I believe his point is that is maybe /u/2cimarafa wouldn't then end results following /u/2cimarafa's policy of silencing free speech and liberal values.

I think the other person is correct. Free speech is only protected when you feel extremely comfortable you have won. If you have an actual threat of a communists takeover or pick your bad ideology I am 100% game for not allowing free speech.

There are reasons why someone would allow free speech in that scenario. Just like there are reasons why someone might follow the Geneva Convention in a war they might lose, and indeed many people and societies have.

For one thing, it would be foolish to try to persuade people and then prohibit them from trying to persuade you. And persuasion does work. People don't like persuasion because it doesn't fit with their worldview of the other side being Chaotic Evil Orcs, and for other reasons. But really, it does work on enough people that it's always worth it. A lot of people who hate persuasion are just really bad at it because they're too mired in their own ideology and all the nuance in their brain has fled.

Persuasion is too harsh a word. People get in the mindset of trying to trick people with weird arguments, and that never works in the long run. Usually not in the short run either.

I got no problem with persuasion. But if it’s going to lose I would rather pick a different strategy that can win.

If I were a Cuban pre-Castro I would move to a strategy that can win and not a debating society. With perfect foresight I would have chopped off the heads of all the communists before they started winning.

I miss HlynkaCG as a mod actually

I do not miss Hlynka as a mod, but I kind of miss him as a poster. I'm a wannabee tough guy and he's start start to wax Soldier of Fortune and I couldn't wait for a take from that perspective and then it was just meandering and the point was really bad.

By sheer effort of will and an abundance of charity, I can go hours (sometimes even days!) without telling people I'm going to put them into camps. It's encouraging when site moderators are held to the same standards as the users.

You indicate through later context that you're specifically interested in reactions on the Motte, but to take the earlier part of your statement literally, you can't get closer than this:

https://projects.propublica.org/parler-capitol-videos/

Seriously, anyone interested in the topic needs to watch all of this (although it takes hours).

(Parler, a right-wing social media site, got hacked shortly after Jan 6. One of the things done with the data was to filter videos by time and location, and the result is a collection of videos from the event itself. ProPublica has a known but relatively mild left-wing bias, so if - like me - you come out of it thinking "oh, that wasn't so bad, then", it's probably not the result of propaganda.)

(Also I should probably note that yes, I'm aware that anyone present who actually had bad intentions would probably not have been posting videos to a social media site. At least, not if they had half a brain.)

I still stand by the the comments of mine I managed to track down:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/kq3o1s/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_january_04/gic468m/

https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/kq3o1s/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_january_04/gicml9z/

Pretty fascinating reading some of those responses. Didn’t age well for some.

  1. You have the now debunked Sicnick lie reported with zero credulity.

  2. You had people saying J6 were treated with kid gloves compared to BLM. List could go on.

Better link here.

I feel like mild facepalm and 'This is going to blow up way out of proportion' were generally the responses, lots of equivocating to the Floyd riots as well.

I'll have to find it later, but SlightlyLessHairyApe complaining that the police were treating the J6 protesters with "far lighter touch", me posting that they were about to get shot in the face, and then one of the protestors getting shot in the throat, all in less than thirty minutes, rather sticks in the mind.

He argued to me that J6 was obviously worse, because the protesters were much, much more violent, killing five people including a police officer. Within a week or two, we knew that the statistic was completely fake, but by the time it was provable, the social consensus was already set. A fantastic example of how the Press manipulates social consensus, and another example of "no matter how much you hate the media, you don't hate them nearly enough."

Man, it’s great that all these posts from back then are still around. It’s not quite as good as your example, but I’m personally partial to the one that says “Nobody’s getting arrested”. Ages like fine wine, if that wine came out from the udder of a cow.

Also a certain amount of “(I warned you that) / (I never thought that) Reds would eventually manage to do organised meatspace resistance.”

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