site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Before now I thought it would take so many people to be in the loop that someone would turn, but as I wrote downthread it now seems entirely plausible that it would only take 1 person on-site to open the door, or prop up the ladder.

My major questions are these:

  1. Short activity, some of the information in the tweets is wrong but the short interest was shooting up, there are plenty of reasonable explanations for that but not this one, last Friday was there in fact a major put acquisition with a fast expiry? If so, that's investigation-level suspicious

  2. Sniper ROE, my assumption would be they have very broad rules for engagement, so if the rules changed, how long ago was it changed, and is there documentation? If that's wrong and they do have broad ROE, 2a, why didn't they shoot? 2b, why didn't they talk to the detail? Or radio to command? Or hell, if nothing else, why not just shout? Did they radio it in and it was ignored? If so, I would immediately assume conspiracy, and that someone's going to turn

  3. I see people elsewhere saying there was an atypical amount of media presence at the rally, is this true, and if so, why?

  4. Most significantly, allowing Trump to go on the stage. I've seen clips before of USSS being highly proactive about pulling the President. If this guy had been initially identified an hour before, then someone with the USSS confirmed "suspicious guy on roof" at 5:52, what is the minute-by-minute explanation for that information failing to reach his detail?

#1 meaning what? Just a general question if anyone notable made stock bets? #2 is a good question, though I'm not totally sure if they would disclose ROE to the public, for fear of malicious manipulation.

#3: Right in the middle of the veepstakes, battleground state, and near the convention. Also a bigger rally than expected. Specifically, he teased the VP pick in his rally only 2 days before, so I think some media thought it would happen at that rally so people would know going in to the convention. Though Vance wasn't there, so maybe not. Still doesn't seem too odd.

#4 is still being revealed. Per this timeline at least they have two sources including the sheriff who are claiming they didn't know he had a gun yet and the roof attention wasn't until 6:09, with less than 3 minutes to go. That one claims that video of "he has a gun!" and people running was only 4 or 5 seconds before the first shot.

Austin Private Wealth is the group in question, they're a fee-only fiduciary with just over $1B in assets managed. Their filing on Friday 7/12 listed 12,000 puts on $DJT. They put out a statement saying a third-party vendor caused all of their options positions to be multiplied by 10,000, and so the actual position was 12 puts. I don't know enough about the workings of actual investing groups to speak here with any definitiveness, but it seems unusual to me that they would buy 12 puts--assuming a $1 premium, that's $1200. That's nothing compared to their total holdings. Maybe there's a diversified spread and they had like $50,000 or $100,000 of puts, and I'm sure that'll come out if they did. Or maybe it was a hedging move if they have 1200 shares of $DJT, but I think they'd have probably included in their statement if they had such stock. "We didn't have this large short, in fact we hold $DJT." Simple.

But that also ignores a worse question, from my cursory research their holdings would be reported under SEC Form 13F. Maybe this is wrong, if it is the following can be crossed out, but if that's true: multiple people from APW should have, and possibly would have needed to sign off on it prior to its approval, so did they all fail obscenely in their fiduciary duty? Or did they fail it by only one person being charged with verifying and then approving. If the financial guy doesn't notice a position worth $1200 has been marked as $1.2 million, should he keep managing your money? Now multiply that by as many options positions as they had. It's insane. They should absolutely be investigated if for no other reason than the claimed lapse in duty, unless it's a regular thing for investment groups to give astronomically wrong filings to the SEC. But there is presumably a lengthy paper trail here, so if they're lying and they did have a 1.2 million share short, I assume it's a matter of time before someone with the proper finance bona fides uncovers what happened.

All this meaning: if APW did in fact have a 12,000 put position, then that combined with their statement now denying it and their attempted obfuscation, is clear evidence of conspiracy.

As for #3, sure, all plausible. #4 yeah remains to be seen. I don't think I emphasized enough, but that is the question above all other questions. When did they know? If people go to prison over this, it will be on that question. The CBS report says at 5:51 they had a suspicious person with a rangefinder, that's enough for me to say someone had a failure in duty worthy of prison. But that's criminal negligence, for failure to protect the President and the people around him, the death of Compertore. Whether it was malicious aforethought is the deeper question, and one that, again, remains to be seen.