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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29665 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I am finding the open way this is being handled really interesting.

  1. Assert a provocative claim you heard on TV.
  2. Later admit you were just creating a story to help get the word out about something else. (The story may prove to be a lie, but maybe lying to lead people to other truths can be a noble pursuit.)
  3. Try to find evidence for the claim anyway.
  4. If it was true on some level in some instance, act vindicated. Quietly thank the lord that your story turned out to have some basis. (To do this, you should really need to find multiple dogs and cats eaten in Springfield, but a single example across the whole nation also counts as vindication because you don't need the original claim to be true, you just need it to seem slightly less ridiculous.)
  5. If no adequate evidence can be found, keep investigating. (You still have the hope a news story will surface that backs the original claim, or that a crazy person will fake evidence good enough to move you to 4.)
  6. If no adequate evidence comes along, maybe try accusing others of using distraction techniques. How dare they go on about eating cats and dogs when the future of the country is at stake?

This level of information hygiene is so unhealthy for everyone exposed to it.

I still think that overall, mentioning the cat eating thing was a mistake by Trump, because it allowed the Democrats to reframe the debate in a way which is very advantageous for them.

The best argument I can find for it being a good move on Trumps part is not that he expects that some evidence will be found, but that he knows that 'Trump lies' is already common knowledge. The median Trump voter will not say "What? He lied on national TV? Now I can't vote for him". They know that he lies about everything from the size of his inauguration crowd to his affairs to random stuff he picked up on twitter or Fox News to (possibly) his golf scores. They vote for him regardless. Him being a liar is already priced in. Fighting Trump with fact checks is like trying to attack Lenin for not being very Christian.

So an easily disproved falsehood is him throwing a stick for the media to play fetch with, distracting them in a way unlikely to damage him.

Of course, the other side is also mostly post fact. Who cares if he is factually correct about the US having paid for gender transition surgery for some aliens, images of the Alien (1979) monsters in high heels are trending all over imgur not because Trump is wrong but because his point if found ridiculous.

I think the media on both sides is mostly preaching to the choir. While mobilizing the people firmly on your side is sound strategy, I think both sides fail to put themselves into the mind of a voter who is still uncertain which of the options is the lesser evil. That voter is likely not so strongly anti-trans that he would get enraged by the US paying for some transition surgery more than he would be by the US generally paying for health care. He also would not care that Trump is lying on TV.

I still think that overall, mentioning the cat eating thing was a mistake by Trump, because it allowed the Democrats to reframe the debate in a way which is very advantageous for them.

Can you point to a statement offered or an issue raised by a Republican that has not allowed Democrats to reframe the debate in a way that is very advantageous to them?

... This seems to be smuggling a few assumptions in here.

There's a 0., where several politicians were repeating claims made by locals in Springfield. [The original writer has since retracted, albeit under media scrutiny that's... close to wrestling gif levels of coercion.]

And then there's a -1., where Vance specifically, the guy who first brought it to national attention, had also spent over a month highlighting other problems with Springfield's ability to handle the migrant influx of this scale, while being a Senator for the state. Ie, being very likely to get direct calls from people who complained to him.

[I don't think this is epistemically healthy, even if most conservatives aren't echoing Trump's mention of dogs. But on the other hand...]

I've been thinking all evening of what to say to this, and I just can't. How do you even see the responses to this and come to this conclusion? How do you watch lib journalists deny the Haitians even exist, falling back to more and more desperate lies as the truth comes out, and still turn this into "lying Republicans pounce"

Yglesias literally posted a rant about how it doesn't matter if it's true because Republicans "want to destroy Medicare", so people should lie or ignore it for Harris's sake.

Yglesias literally posted a rant about how it doesn't matter if it's true because Republicans "want to destroy Medicare", so people should lie or ignore it for Harris's sake.

Which rant was this?

I'm compiling a list of screenshots and links on my laptop to do an effort post on this. Will need to get a password reset or something so I can log in on there (don't know my motte password, just permanently logged in on phone)

But if you want to find it first it should be the most recent post where he mentions both cats and Medicare. Think twitter search still works for that, unless they've changed it again.

Technically Medicaid, but here:

The dishonesty of this shell game is so self-evident that it’s not worth dwelling on. The point is that they want to ban abortion, bankrupt social security, and toss people off Medicaid and dissembling is how they want to do it.

But it's not exactly subtle why he wants that framing, and it's the same game as always.

It doesn't seem to me that he is acknowledging that Haitians are eating cats. It's more like he's claiming that Haitians are not eating cats. Also, Medicaid.

I completely agree, but I also have a hard time caring when the other side isn't much better, but simply has better PR.

See the "trans surgery on illegal aliens" bit from the same debate, which was roundly mocked on twitter and in the media; Not only did most people not bother looking it up but basically just assumed it has to be made up bc it sounds so ridiculous, when others then showed articles on Kamala talking about precisely this they turned to flat-out lying that "this is just the headline, but her real words were about medically necessary treatment". Except that it's trivial to look up that it was explicitly stated that medically necessary as judged by mental health experts was sufficient. Which in practice includes, among many other things, trans surgery based on suicide risk. They even explicitly mention "gender transition surgery"!

Or now that I think about it, as naraburns pointed out this is pretty much 100% what they are doing for "abortion denial deaths", except with the added irony that any alleged example they have found so far is more accurately described as just "abortion death".

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