site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   38032 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Shots fired at a trump rally, he was apparently bleeding from his ear but alive enough to fist pump to the crowd while getting pulled off the stage by security.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/13/us/biden-trump-election

Did Biden call in seal team six?

USA today reports "Trump removed from stage by secret service after loud noises startles former president, crowd"

I hope that no worse comes to him or bystanders than I have already heard.

I think I'm on record as saying that I don't like the political development of our civilization being commanded by random maniacs. I don't like (assassinations themselves, of course, but also through wild reactions blaming everybody on the maniac's Side. I don't like it when it's done to My Side, for fairness's sake, (if this is a random maniac) I do not want to see it done to anybody's side. Right now, I have no idea of any supposed affiliation, so I'm just laying down this marker for myself.

One bystander dead, one wounded, attempted assassin dead. Stochastic terrorism comes at a real cost.

I'm in shock. It certainly occurred to me that someone might try to do this, the logic of @Quantumfreakonomics seems like something someone could easily come to follow. The people who have repeatedly described Trump as a "threat to democracy" aren't responsible for this and I don't hold them responsible for this. But you need to be really damn careful throwing around words like that.

Seeing a major political candidate shot at on live TV in front of a crowd of people is so raw and real that it's hard to comprehend. I wasn't alive for any of the other attempted political assasinations.

Three weeks ago, there didn't even seem to be an election. Now, the President is incompetent and his opponent is being shot at. I fear for my country if Trump wins. Will people keep trying to shoot at him? Will they start trying to shoot at anyone else?

And the Trump political ads write themselves. "They hate you and our movement so much they tried to silence me. First they attacked me with phony prosecutions. Now they've pulled out the guns. Our enemies are lawless and violent. Vote Trump for democracy and order."

The people who have repeatedly described Trump as a "threat to democracy" aren't responsible for this

Oh they definitely are. The muh trump-russia crowd screaming bloody murder for years and the people claiming trump is just chomping at the bit to gas-camp everyone the moment he regains power are teh very definition of stochastic terrorism. It's all THEIR fault. All of those shitlibs prophesizing the end of the world if the orange daddy gets back on the throne deserve their blame.

And the Trump political ads write themselves.

Even better than that, they've already been written. Trump has already branded "They're not after me, they're after you and I'm just in the way" as a slogan quite some time ago. If this shooter left a MAGA body at this rally then Trump is effectively president-elect. Bringing real political violence to a demographic that, habitually, has little experience with it will be catastrophic for Dems at the ballot (tautological but should be said).

Nobody in the US except people who moved from places that do that has real experience with political violence. US elections are remarkably peaceful affairs.

...I assume you weren't including the more than a million American military service members who deployed in Iraq, right?

Invading a foreign country which then proceeds to have a civil war is a bit different from electoral violence.

War is politics by other means, politics is war by other means.

The Iraq civil war was nothing if not political violence, including electoral violence.

That was basically what I meant, with an exclusion for those demos whose victimization is framed as political. What I should have said is, there are any number of potential venues to pull off something like this. Doing it at a rally will guarantee that the collateral will be assumed as part of the motive whether it really was that thought-out or not.

Or rather, they used to be.

The people who have repeatedly described Trump as a "threat to democracy" aren't responsible for this and I don't hold them responsible for this.

The same people talk very loudly about 'stochastic terrorism' .. .

This is extremely valid criticism so please make it---it's very important to police the extremists even when they're on your side after all. To speculate, I think a lot of the US left was a little arrogant that most of the crazies who would shoot a politician were on the other team (despite the congressional baseball game shooting earlier...). I think people popularizing hyperbolic rhetoric like equating Trump to Hitler should take some minor amount of blame for this, especially in light of the meme that the first thing you should do if you build a time machine is go assassinate Hitler.

Sure. But January 6 also happened and I don't hold Trump responsible for January 6, for precisely the same reason.

But January 6th is the nothingness of all nothing burgers.

I know very serious people say it was very serious, but I don’t believe they believe it.

I agree with you, but by corollary it’s hard to claim that an unsuccessful assassination attempt is a somethingburger.

They do, though.

Who precisely is “they” referring to here?

The people who talk very loudly about 'stochastic terrorism' and describe Trump as a "threat to democracy".

But January 6 also happened

And this latest stunt may have just cost the Blues that trump card, with interest.

One thing that stands out to me is that hitting his ear means that it was definitely not intended that he didn't die. That's too close to a kill shot to be a deliberate graze or not-fatal wound, too much risk even for an expert shot. So this was definitely a failed assassination, whoever did it.

So this was definitely a failed assassination, whoever did it.

I mean of course, this isn't the kind of thing you survive after doing. Listening to the audio I suspect the culprit is already dead.

Butler County DA's office saying the shooter and one bystander are dead.

So like, if you believe Trump really is this massive threat to democracy, why wouldn't a patriotic American try to shoot him? A few possible reasons:

  • Someone else just as bad or worse would step up.

Unlikely tbh. Nobody else commands the same personal loyalty from the Republican base. The party would likely devolve into squabbling like the Alexandrian empire.

  • Assassinations are always bad for deontological reasons.

Also highly questionable. Would it have been a bad idea to shoot Hitler in 1933? Stalin in 1924?

This seems to be a highly counterintuitive conclusion, but is it? If someone is a threat, you eliminate them. Is the solution more explicit probabilistic thinking? If Trump has a 90% chance of ending American democracy, then maybe the right move is to shoot him. If he only has a 10% chance, maybe deontological considerations dominate?

Also highly questionable. Would it have been a bad idea to shoot Hitler in 1933? Stalin in 1924?

This is an interesting line of questioning. Could the situation have been made worse by these actions? If someone shot Hitler dead, would a different Nazi have taken power? Would Nazi sympathy have increased, and the Jews been blamed for the event, resulting in even more pro Nazi sentiment? No one could possibly know what alternate histories would be like.

I suppose this was probably ideal timing to try. If Trump had announced his vice president already before being killed, Republicans would have an easier time coalescing.

if you believe Trump really is this massive threat to democracy, why wouldn't a patriotic American try to shoot him?

Or cheat in an election?

If you think the entire Republican party is just as bad as Trump, and that "generic Republican" is likely to have a better shot (pun not intended), then it makes sense to not off him.

Yes, this is the obvious conclusion of the ubiquitous extreme fearmongering about trump.

So far it appears he was only grazed, and nobody else around was hit, which is a really bizarre outcome. A clean miss or a solid hit is far more likely. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I guess more information will come out in the next few hours, but it feels pretty scissor-y already.

It looks like a woman in the audience died, caught one to the head.

One rallygoer was killed, one wounded.

There’s spectacular video from NTD.com which pans over to a forklift holding up speakers. The lift’s hydraulics are hissing and spraying fluid as the lift collapses, lowering the speakers to the ground. You can hear, moments after panning back to the lectern, another shot.

There’s later video footage on Twitter of a camo-wearing person on a shed roof, unmoving. The BBC has an eyewitness interview that several people told Secret Service of a man on the roof but were ignored.

EDIT: both videos are linked in my comment here: https://www.themotte.org/post/1070/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/229040 <—

I imagine it was three aimed shots and four panicked shots from the would-be assassin, a single shot from a Secret Service sniper which disabled him, and a second shot to keep him from going for the gun again. That’s how I’d write the screenplay or episode of 24, given the footage I saw.

The main thing to make of it is that this was not the intended outcome of the shooter, too close to a kill.

How is nobody behind him dead?

Someone may be. News outlets saying a woman behind him died. She appears to fall during the video and is not seen getting up.

Total speculation but I think the shot was from an oblique angle off from the left (Trump’s forward right) and so probably hit the stands behind and off to the side. Probably a shot from medium far to have missed several follow ups (also the farther away the easier to avoid Secret Service instant response, or maybe from beyond a perimeter)

Someone who doesn't know a lot about guns did this, I think. The congressman sitting with Trump said it sounded like a small caliber weapon, which could've missed because of wind conditions at range. Someone with firearms knowledge would've gotten a deer rifle and I have a feeling it'll come out that this was with an AR-15; if the person responsible gets caught and interrogated they'll turn out to believe blatant falsehoods about the stopping power of .223.

Someone on a nearby roof got off seven shots with a rifle:

Footage of the shooting with fantastic audio: https://www.ntd.com/video-the-moment-shots-are-fired-at-trump-rally-in-butler-pennsylvania_1004827.html

Footage of the dead gunman: https://x.com/SharpFootball/status/1812273434510143554

That is great audio. Sounds like three aimed shots, a pause, four or five in rapid succession from the same gun (or maybe one is from a different gun), then at :20 a crack with no report (a different gun, maybe the Secret Service?)

Looks like NYT photographer David Mills actually captured the bullet in a photograph!

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/13/us/biden-trump-election

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/07/13/world/13trump-shooting-combo/13trump-shooting-combo-superJumbo.jpg

That's great footage!

Do you think one of the shots hit that forklift at around 0:15? And it sounds like there's another shot, from a different sort of gun, at 0:19. Were some of the second group of (4) shots from the Secret Service, or was that last shot from them?

I mean, thes snipers seem to have .300 bolt-action rifles, odds are the four rapid shots was the shooter trying to finish the job, the very last shot was him getting shot through the head.

https://www.ntd.com/video-the-moment-shots-are-fired-at-trump-rally-in-butler-pennsylvania_1004827.html

Smuggling a long gun into a stadium seems less than likely.

It was apparently from a rooftop.

I guess it must have been a handgun, getting a long gun is way too difficult. Trump is lucky in that all those guy capable of consistently hitting an A4 sized target with a .357 at a 100 yards are either apolitical or voting for him.

Sounds like it was a rifle, from a roof.

I assumed it must have been a handgun, I couldn't believe they'd leave rooftops with view of the speaker unoccupied by security.

That's just completely nuts. There's now 'smart' guns out there that allow even an untrained shooter to hit a dinner plate at a kilometer.

The video still of Trump doing a fist bump to the crowd, surrounded by Secret Service agents, with a blood spray across his face is going to be one for the history books, very surreal timeline.

Makes the Bush years seem quaint by comparison. When Trump rode down that escalator the country was forever changed

I don't think the types that get to write the history books will be interested in that one.

I want to bet we'll even see a fight over what picture gets used for the Wikipedia article.

Already happening. The debate is whether any image of the fist bump can be included under fair use.

Listed for deletion by "Di (they-them)" at that.
The script writers are really phoning in all the tropes on this one.

A few months ago I remember people here discussing a Mike Cernovich tweet predicting high odds of a Trump assassination. The overwhelming consensus here was that this was unreasonable and beneath even considering.

Yeah he was right

I get we're in a frenzy right now, but this is one of my least favorite styles of post. If you want to dunk on people for making poor predictions please do the leg work and link the predictions.

This kind of nitpicking is one of my least favorite styles of posts.

you beat me to the punch! Gack.

Well, this is big news. Very big news. I don't know what to say. Looks like we're back into the political assassination times of American politics.

Did Biden call in seal team six?

Wouldn't that just be the limit, if the Deep State can't even assassinate a fat 76 year old?

Entirely possible that spec ops ordered to assassinate Trump would botch the job on purpose.

That being said, it's not plausible. I think US military personnel ordered to carry out an extrajudicial execution would refuse, and that anybody who thinks they could authorize that knows this and is more scared of the possibility than they are of Trump.

My money is on Antifa or a random schizo(and a right winger shooting at Trump would have to be pretty schizo indeed- although it's a legit possibility that can't be ruled out).

it is not without precedent. A left winger killed JRK...

a right winger shooting at Trump

Right wing friends think it was antijewish right. Many others have been antitrump for a while, calling him prochoice now.

Apparently he's dead, supposedly named 'Mark Violets'.

https://x.com/ZachJones1994/status/1812264834999967766

Also there's a rumor the shooter was.. outside ? and the dead guy in the crowd is an attendee, plus one other person in critical condition.

It looks like someone missed with an AR because they hadn't practiced at that range and then mag dumped in a panic. That points to TDS left winger, to me- right wingers usually know more about guns, particularly actual far right, unless they're schizos.

it came within a inch of a killing , missed cause he turned his head. snipers aim at targets when not moving, trump was moving. the killer only had a small window to make the shot before he was killed, so presumably he could not wait for trump to be perfectly still

Eh, gun ownership is only a little less than 3x as common among Democrats than Republicans, that's not nearly enough to draw conclusions. The only thing it says to me is probably not ex-military.

a right winger shooting at Trump would have to be pretty schizo indeed

I have a hunch that most media will take any scrap of info they can to try to paint the shooter as a right-winger, regardless of the truth or reasonableness of that assertion.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats