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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34277 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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JD Vance was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and references Scott's Gay Rites are Civil Rites. It happens at 23:45. As TracingWoodgrains says, the Eye of Sauron approaches.

I apologize if I can't add much more insight. Are there going to be left wing smear articles explaining the evil Rationalists that have the ear of JD Vance? Or is there so much chaos right now around the election that this will get passed over, widely unremarked upon?

Threats to our community aside, it's pretty awesome that a VP candidate referenced one of Scott's articles.

Edit: Andy Ngo is boosting this part of the interview, focusing on the trans children discussion, without commenting on the article.

The point was made on the /r/slatestarcodex subreddit, but I'll repeat it here, that JD Vance got the content of the actual SSC article confused with the millions of "trans is a religion" takes, but remembered Scott's clever title wordplay.

JD Vance comes off as a normal guy. More normal than Kamala, Trump, Joe, Pence IMO. Obama had charisma, but his artifice was obvious in longer conversations — too effortful. Vance is so normal that if you removed the political parts and told someone Joe picked a random guy off the street, it would be believable. And his audience isn’t some biased conservative audience, it’s about as average Joe as you can get, and the conclusion in the comments is that Vance is just a normal dude. This isn’t always the case — comments often criticize guests for being blowhards or criticize Joe for not letting guests finish.

This cements my thought that the “Vance is weird” campaign is a fully enclosed propaganda ecosystem, as in, it isn’t exaggerating some aspect of Vance (eg “Trump lies”), it is just totally made up. And that’s really spooky, because there’s a section of the public that will believe whatever the DNC wants them to believe. If they can make you believe Vance is weird they can make you believe anything.

This cements my thought that the “Vance is weird” campaign is a fully enclosed propaganda ecosystem, as in, it isn’t exaggerating some aspect of Vance (eg “Trump lies”), it is just totally made up.

Sometimes he has moments where it seems like he is thinking something complex (as you'd expect from a VC who went to Yale) but deliberately dumbing himself down to make himself look relatable. Mostly he pulls it off, but sometimes it's too forced and awkward, whicih can come across "weird."

Vance definitely is not normal. I'm voting for kamala (she reminds me of my mom) but I genuinely like the guy. He's exactly the same sort of weird, intellectual, rationalist-adjacent catholic I am. He's exactly the sort of peerson I'd love to talk shit with at one of our local ACX meetups. His very existence makes me less afraid of a trump victory because I know he's a signal that patriots (of the vatican city) are in control.

But by the very fact that I like him, I know him to be weird. Anyone like us is definitionally bizarre-- conservative motte posters and liberal /r/slatestarcodex posters are more like each other than we are like the rest of the population. I don't care about walz, and actively hate trump. That's how I know they're normal. But Vance-- and to a lesser extent Kamala-- aren't.

This cements my thought that the “Vance is weird” campaign is a fully enclosed propaganda ecosystem, as in, it isn’t exaggerating some aspect of Vance (eg “Trump lies”), it is just totally made up. And that’s really spooky, because there’s a section of the public that will believe whatever the DNC wants them to believe. If they can make you believe Vance is weird they can make you believe anything.

I dunno, to me it kind of makes sense that a normal guy would seem weirder as a politician than an average politician would. It's up to what people expect of a politician. Normal people don't methodically control their actions and words to make everything fit into a neatly packaged personal narrative, so it's easier to cherry-pick examples to craft a different narrative.

This description reminds me of Sarah Palin, who was a remarkably charismatic figure, except that that charisma was a very normie boomer type of charisma that's very vulnerable to attack in our modern political environment. Trump has something similar, but with an extra more unique quality that makes him the defining figure of our times.

Palin has a very polarizing personality. She certainly has charisma, but she’s also abrasive and loud.

she’s also abrasive and loud.

And Harris isn't?

No? Her flaws are completely different.

Abrasive I’ll grant you, but loud?

Harris just sounds xanax-ed out the whole time, she’s rarely loud at all, just weird and empty.

Threats to our community aside

Are we going to move to an onion site now that the VP candidate made a 5 second vague reference to a writer whose comment section inspired this forum?

The guy saying we should go private is, if I understand correctly, worried not primarily for theMotte, but worried that the entire Rat movement will be cancelled due to guilt by association with theMotte.

Who/where is the guy saying this?

@ares' first Twitter link; Geheimnis said:

Seriously worried that rationalism writ large is about to become highly republican coded & subject to primetime-level scrutiny that it is probably not ready for.

The best time for The Motte to go private is [sic]

Eternal September is a real thing that happens to communities when too many newcomers arrive and don't adapt to the existing culture. We literally have a rule asking to not link to here from high participation platforms. This community is small, and the mods already have to work very hard to keep the current quantity of us cretins obeying the rules.

We just saw a sliver of attention to our little Rationalist corner of the internet by a US Vice Presidential candidate on the most popular podcast in the world. Even if he's not pointing people directly to this site, I think it's completely valid to believe that there are ways where fractions of fractions of Joe Rogan listeners find their way here. "What was that article Vance mentioned?" "I liked that article, where could I discuss it?" "No talking politics on Reddit? Where else could I go?" And we get a few thousand new users. Sure, that's unlikely, but that's not a criterion for making a claim here.

If you disagree then please engage with the substance instead of doing so with mockery.

please engage with the substance instead of doing so with mockery.

Fair. As I've said here a few times, I loath safteyism. I find the hypothetical threat scenario so implausible that mentioning it screams of a persecution complex. I should have engaged more substantively.

I was against the move from reddit. I actually never saw a full explanation of why that was necessary. I recall a discussion of "((( )))" use trigging and auto-admin response). Iirc zorba said a full explanation would be forthcoming, but I missed it. I could be misremembering and no explanation was offered, but I remain open to one. That said, I thought having a backup motte was a good idea.

Here's an old discussion, from right after we moved.

I recall a discussion of "((( )))" use trigging and auto-admin response).

We had a Russian regular here by the name of Ilforte. Really interesting guy, quite prolific. The russian language apparently uses these weird double-parens-looking symbols rather than quotation marks, and some newbie mistook them for the triple-parens "echo marks" of infamy. Someone else responded explaining the difference, saying, "these:[wierd unicode double parens things] are russian quote marks, these: "((())) are triple parens, it's a different thing."

The reply explaining the difference got flagged for anti-semitic content by the reddit admins.

I found his use of the Russian angled bracket quotes absolutely hilarious and he did know what he was doing. Nobody uses those outside of old printed books. The modern Russian speaking internet? Not a chance. Still pretty funny though.

Thanks! That fleshes out my memory, but I'm still lost as to what the mods knew regarding the need to move. Was it "safteyism"? Did they say 'we wont elaborate further at this time' or am I hallucinating that?

I'm interested in that because at the time I thought the move could be plausible, but was leaning paranoic. However, there is a lot I didn't know as a casual reader. I'm trying to put context around OPs claim that JD Vance allusion to a Scott Alexander article threatens the motte. Is this a pattern of persecutorial complexion, or am I off my rocker.

The Reddit admins were in contact with the mods, consistently threatening them.

Nobody wanted to move here man lol. We lost a solid chunk of the community and now Zorba has to maintain the site.

I was wondering about that. I bailed on Reddit years ago and just chalked up 'The Motte' (the only sub I really participated in) as a sad victim to my need to keep the ol' media filters clean. I was glad to re-join when I found the site, but I couldn't tell if there was still some component that touched Reddit. Very interesting!

Specifically, did we ever see these threats? I hit bedrock here

On reddit Zorba:

Alright, so the admins are paying attention to us now. Not going into details, they aren't relevant and I don't want to draw their attention more; ask me again once this is done and I'll vent.

Poster:

Ok, it's a year later. Spill. I'm really curious about the fucked-up internal politics of Reddit.

Zorba

I am confused why this is coming up so often, you're the second in the last two days and I'd totally forgotten about it for months before that.

But anyway, out of a possible overabundance of caution, I'll PM it to you.

AFAICT, the threats were never discussed openly. I could be wrong. I only ask because this new threat rang some bells. Lots of arguably paranoid cloak and dagger stuff in the Meta: the motte is dead thread. I'm still grateful for all the hard work that goes into this place. Its the kind of place I can ask: does this place exist here because of a persecutorial complex; or was the move, like, justified...

I'm personally giga device banned from reddit. Even with updating an IP and spoofing several finger printing things and going in with a VPN any account I create has every post auto hidden and the password to the account doesn't work to log in. Almost certainly for /r/drama related posting though. Things like that were becoming more common.

I think I caught a 1 day site-wide ban for saying "tranny" or something on there. (actually something less offensive but along those lines I guess, because whatever it was didn't attract any attention from the local mods)

The problem was probably not so much "attracting admin attention" as "attracting the attention of people who hate you and want you and your family dead -- but failing that will report you to the reddit admins"; same difference in the end.

From memory... for a long time concerns about the CW thread being targeted by admins were elated through security through obscurity wisdom. Once the admin notices came -- and enough examples of subs of similar/smaller size being whacked or castrated -- that was a confidence shot. I do recall one point was that admins wouldn't clarify certain things for the mod team.

Reddit shuts down subs they don't like. Reddit admins gut and replace subreddit moderation teams they don't like. Subreddits change rules, like "don't mention trans issues at all", and similar requests at the behest of admin interactions. As I recall in one of those meta threads there was a mod from /r/PoliticalCompassMemes that chimed in with his dealings with admins and the moderation changes he had to make because of admin requests. Or maybe it was the /r/drama mods, because I remember they offered to host The Motte.

I don't recall Zorba or mods claiming TheMotte was being especially targeted or persecuted. Being targeted wasn't necessary to get dunked on or ordered to change. Somewhere back there it is explicitly said that the decision to move included the fact that Zorba would rather the project end than have to do something like censor all discussions on Topic X. Plenty of people said don't bother or not a big deal to censor whatever as I imagine you've seen from looking through the old threads.

The CW thread hosts holocaust deniers, HBD autists, and that one time that guy candidly admitted he was a (non-offending) pedophile. It's not a reddit friendly space-- which polices content and not just tone. It's not that strange to consider its time on reddit is limited by how long its controversy remains unknown. Even without the details of the admin correspondence or principles, when a place like the gendercritical sub gets booted off the site there's not a lot of confidence that a place like The Motte is secure. Maybe they're less heavy handed now, but there was lots of overt admin actions in that time period on reddit.

Maybe Zorba moved as a big ruse so he could put in a bunch of volunteer work and pay for webhosting. Seems unlikely though?

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weird double-parens-looking symbols

«Guillemets»

It wasn't "((( )))". It was "<< >>", taken by the admins (or maybe "anti-evil operations") to be "((( )))".

There are some admin posts from around the time of the move that discuss it. For the record, it was far from clear that the sub would be banned. There are still places on Reddit that are “edgier” than this place, like the red scare podcast subreddit and /r/4chan, plus a few others.

I'm not sure if /r/blockedandreported was as large at the time of the move as it is now, but that place has functionally taken over from the pure culture-warry side of the Motte (and CWR, by extension, which sees zero activity) and is as a result edgier than we used to be.

But the people there are, on average, quite a bit dimmer; anything more than a one-liner is a waste of your time.

Of course, that's also a double-edged sword; we might not be as edgy, but intelligent dissent is far more threatening than unintelligent dissent to any political actor who's paying attention because it actually has half a chance of persuading their opponents, and causing lasting damage for the regime if they succeed.

Because we were in the eye of Sauron. Why? Well, because the admins put us there. Why did they put us there? I suggest you ask them.

Why did they put us there? I suggest you ask them.

This is a genuine curiosity of mine. Iirc, the reddit mods were explicitly not going to explain their actions beyond vague gestures to the Eye of Sauron somewhere around the time Scott (happily) landed in the financial security provided by substack.

What do you mean? He all but name-dropped each and every one of us individually and hand-wrote the themotte.org URL on every surface in the world!

Tangentially related but this reminds me of a tweet playfully mocking Vance which I found pretty funny, primarily just for how it was phrased:

[vice presidential debate]

moderator: what makes you smile

tim walz: my kids

jd vance: pass

moderator: what’s your favorite donut

jd vance: what if i killed you

Please explain for someone out of the loop.

There was a campaign video (which I haven't seen) where Vance tried to present himself as a "regular dude" by going into a donut shop and buying a box of donuts. Apparently the person behind the counter wasn't interested in taking part, Vance stumbled over his words and the whole thing was awkward and uncomfortable for everyone.

It's interesting that Vance can see the parallels between pride parades and civil religion, but I wonder if he can see how christianity and wokeness fit in. Pride parades are positive rites - they celebrate the existence of LGBTs without demonizing straight people. Then wokeness came along, and its core thesis was original sin: you are born racist, sexist, and homophobic, and only through listening to marginalized voices, unpacking your racism, and de-toxifying your masculinity can you ever hope to be saved.

The comparison to the Christian concept of original sin falls apart immediately.

In Christian theology, everyone is born with original sin and everyone has the opportunity to atone for it through faith and receiving Grace. It's universal and - wait for it - egalitarian.

Wokeness has explicit power hierarchy from birth wherein some groups are sinless throughout life and others are without redemption. Furthermore, Christian original sin is about the origin point of man - we are all fallen. Wokeness is about different historical scorecards for inherited wrongness. Some groups (white males) have inherited such substantial debts that we can actually condemn them as a class (isn't that like, bad?). The Canadians are now finding ways to help people of all types find ways to not be the wrong types.

It's conceptually eugenic - if you're born "wrong" maybe we won't kill you (although if your self-sterilize that would be nice), but you will be confined to a life of non-personhood full of self-flagellation. But if I can "choose" to be something that is biologically impossible, it begs the question - why can't we all just choose to be one of the non-bad character classes?

Sometimes I do believe the double-weirdos when they say that middle aged divorced men transition just so they have some relevance to society today.

Wokeness has explicit power hierarchy from birth wherein some groups are sinless throughout life

I don't know about that. Unless you're a gay black trans disabled palestinian poor nonbinary woman, there's still something for you to feel guilty about. Within every group there are people being made to feel guilty about the more oppressed members of that group. Pride parades themselves have been relentlessly attacked for not including POCs, being too corporate, being sexist, etc. For every article about black men being sexist, there's an article about white women calling the cops and demanding to speak to the manager.

I agree that the woke version of original sin isn't as egalitarian, though I think it still takes advantage of the same psychological mechanisms that Christianity does. Christianity and wokeness are both puritanical religions, in which the goal of being free of sin/privilege is always slightly out of reach. This is good for perpetuating the religion, because it turns people into either evangelists who relentlessly attempt to convert others, or villains who lash out at the religion and provide an example of what not do do. A simple civil religion that says "Thor is great, be like Thor" or "love is love" isn't going to divide people as effectively.

Christianity and wokeness are both puritanical religions

I'd say some sects of Christianity are puritanical ... like the Puritans.

Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity generally teach that being free of sin while on Earth is impossible, but you do your best nonetheless and confess your sins when they do occur. There's humility in this - while I strive to avoid sin, it's an impossible task, so I can't cast the first stone at others.

I think Wokeness is better compared to fundamentalists across Abrahamic religions, wherein the outward performance of piety goes a long way, as opposed to a more restrained daily personal adhere. Like all other fundamentalist organizations, this is a death spiral. People simply try to continually out do one another in demonstrating how "down for the cause" they are until it turns into a circular firing squad.

A common critique of most online Radical Tradtionalist Catholics is that they're trying to be more Catholic than the Pope. This is a way of saying, "you're being too performative and dramatic in how pious you are and, in so doing, are being vainglorious and conceited." It would do the Wokes well if they could have a similar intragroup discussion.

Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity generally teach that being free of sin while on Earth is impossible

Both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox doctrine holds the Virgin Mary to be personally sinless(the EOC dispute over the immaculate conception doesn’t contest this- original sin isn’t personal sin) and it’s not a tiny minority of theologians who think John the Baptist never committed a personal sin either.

Fair and true. And an oversight on my part.

A better phrasing for my original:

"Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity generally teach that being free of sin while on Earth is impossible ... for currently alive and practicing humans"

Does prepending "virtually" before "impossible" change anything significant about his point?

Considering the Virgin Mary is explicitly the role model(among others) for becoming a saint, to which all are called, yes. Spiritual masters(and I know Catholic spiritual masters) explicitly and literally believe that it is possible to attain a level of holiness in which one just stops sinning, albeit after many years’ progress in the spiritual life.

Did sainthood become something a typical person has a decent chance to attain, when I wasn't looking? If not, I don't see how that changes his point.

More comments

Ah, so they've speedrun Calvinism.

I knew I could count on a banger from @hydroacetylene.

In a word, yes. Wokeness has all of the hallmarks of fundamentalist revival movement. There's no coherent worldview or deeper investigated theology, it all ends at the level of "what we're fighting for is right because we're fighting so hard for it."

I would argue that the shift from the Pride flag to the Progress Pride flag more explicitly aligns it with the hard left and makes it a more exclusionary movement. It is now a flag that excludes only one group (straight white people). And that's the flag that you see flown from government buildings and put up in school classrooms.

The Pride flag says "we're gay!". The Progress Pride flag says "We represent everybody but straight whites!". So it is kind of a short hand for the left coalition.

Specifically, it excludes white fertility. Wokeness is more like catharism than Christianity, but the whole ‘the world is evil’ thing is aimed mostly at white people.

‘Queer’ white people have lots of heterosexual sex, but they don’t have babies very often. Cathars were also really into weird sex stuff for the same reasons- the world is evil and so bringing more of it forwards is bad. Likewise if whiteness is evil continuing it is bad.

I mean. Its not really about the article itself, although the article is good. The point is true. Gay and transgender ideology have become akin to the pagan/satanic religions of old. Many people have noticed. Scott just figured out the best headline.

satanic religions of old

There is no old satanic religion. Satanism was invented in the 60s by a topless bar manager.

TIL that religions abhorred by biblical religions and engaged in child sacrifice are not satanic because edgy atheists in the 1960s tried to coin the phrase.

I mean, they aren't? The Bible does not to my knowedge list any old religion that worships Satan. The only Satan-worshippers show up in Revelation.

Particularly for instance Moloch is not said to be identical with Satan.

Also, here's Claude Sonnet (AI):

The Israelites would more likely have seen Molech as:

  • A false god (but still a distinct entity)
  • A "demon" or "shedim" (as mentioned in Deuteronomy 32:17)
  • Simply "an abomination"

The strong identification of pagan deities with Satan seems to have developed more in later theological traditions, particularly in Christian interpretation.

Which matches my knowledge.

I believe the point is more similar to the Jewish take than people are making it out to be. The key element of Christian theology on Satan is that he’s considered the leader of all demons, who are believed to be fallen angels like Satan. Further, Christians hold Satan to be the “father of lies” (John 8:44) and tie back to him the whole concept of a demon pretending to be a helpful being in order to deceive.

When Christians say, “X pagan religion is Satanic,” they generally don’t mean “Y pagan god is literally Satan.” They mean either that the false deity is a demon, a fallen angel who followed Satan out of heaven, playing pretend; or the whole religion is a deceit, entirely false, a fake god, an “abomination,” as Claude put it. As St. Paul put it in 1 Corinthians, “what pagans sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God.”

For instance, Beelzebub (a Hebrew name for Baal, insultingly meaning “lord of flies” or “lord of dung”) seems to get conflated with Satan in the gospels. The religious teachers claim Jesus was performing miracles “by Beelzebub” and Jesus responds with the “a house divided against himself cannot stand, how can I cast out Satan by the power of Satan?” thing. But in contravention to the normal interpretation, I hold this was more of a reference in the vein I’m discussing, that Jesus was suggesting all the demons (including Baal) are in league with Satan and copying his playbook, which is why he describes “Satan” as “a kingdom” and “a house.”

So by saying “Satanic,” Christians often mean something closer to “characteristic of Satan” rather than making a direct insinuation that the followers of some cult are literally worshipping Satan directly, which I agree is incredibly rare but not unprecedented. I’m sure there are a great many Christians who say stuff like “Krishna is literally the devil!!!!!” and I agree that’s silly, but there’s a more nuanced point in the tradition.

Good point!

But then the point of "satanic religions of old", for a Christian, would be equivalent to saying "religions of old", surely? Because there is only one God, so every non-judaic religion is either fraudulent or satanic. Or is it "the set of religions considered demon-worshipping by the OT Israelites"?

Or is the argument more something like "LGBT has become like Molechism"?

TIL that religions removed by centuries and thousands of kilometers from christianity worshipped satan because some internet christian believes their mythology is actually real.

You don't think Jews colloquially referred to child sacrificing religions in their region as satanic? The Talmud discusses such a figure in several places as one who tempts to sin.

No I don't think so.

It sounds like you're not saying "we know they did" but "well they would have, wouldn't they." IMO we actually cannot safely assume that at all.

I was under the impression that, in Judaism, "Satan" doesn't refer to the Prince of Darkness as we understand him today, but refers more to a genericized enemy/big other, as the name Satan comes from "hasatan," which means "the adversary."

Sure. Doesn't mean there were not religions they looked upon similarly. No reason to be pedantic when child sacrifice is involved.

If you believe the stories, Satanism has been around since Cain and Abel.

Since the fall of Satan, surely?

Sure, I guess you could say he worshipped himself. But I don't really think of that as a religion on Earth

IIRC early protestants- especially in Scandinavia- sometimes claimed that Catholic authorities tacitly ignored the existence of satan-worship as a religion of outlaws.

This is not a reliable source, but it does point to edgy white people practicing satanism as an older phenomenon than Anton LaVey. The idea that people on the fringes of Christian societies worshiped satan is itself quite believable, and it seems like a thing that predates LaVey in the modern west.

I'd be interested in reading further if you have any references on this topic.

Satanism's been around longer than that, it's just that it's a bit hard to maintain a continuous tradition when that tradition gets you set on fire if discovered in the only regions where people actually believe in the object of that tradition.

Pagan religions are not Satanic, though. At least, not unless you're a Christian or Muslim and are looking for a supernatural but non-heretical explanation of their existence (they're too different to be corruptions of the true faith, angels would mention that they're only servants, and rival gods aren't supposed to exist, so by process of elimination...).

The Christian scriptures literally refer to pagan religions as basically being satanism.

Well, yes, this pattern goes back over a millennium, though I wasn't aware it had gone back quite far enough to wind up in the Bible (I've read some of the Bible, but not all of it).

The psalms(psalm 95/96 depending on whether you use protestant or Catholic numbering) refer to the gods of gentiles as being demons and St Paul repeats this condemnation in his epistles. This pattern at least as far as Christianity goes is based off of the bible's descriptions of other religions.

The psalms(psalm 95/96 depending on whether you use protestant or Catholic numbering)

Are you talking about this one? Because with the exception of the Wycliffe Bible that doesn't sound very demonic, just impotent.

St Paul repeats this condemnation in his epistles.

I found this, which kinda fits (though note the translation differences); are there others?

1 Corinthians 10:14-22, which Paul is writing to Christians in Corinth:

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

General JD/Rogan comment:

When he heard Trump was shot he took his kids home from mini-golf, loaded his guns and stood sentry at his house. Fuck yeah.

Reminds me of the summer of 2020 when the mall a few miles from my home, closed for months due to the pandemic, was overrun with looters in broad daylight, and police were ordered to stand by and do nothing. We were less than week into the George Floyd riots. As night fell there were postings on social media that there were guys with guns breaking into shops just a few blocks from me.

I stayed up all night with my guns ready and my eyes on my security cameras.

People are denying this happened or saying that if it did happen it's disqualifying. In the absence of influence, I thought it sounded like a reasonable step to take. But does it sound like he's too quick to jump to conclusions and is too paranoid?

When Trump was shot, I found out from The Motte. I read the first sentence and ran and told my husband, "Trump was shot!" He said, "Is it serious?" I replied, "At his age, any shooting is serious."

Turns out, that guess was not correct. A graze in the ear did not set Trump back very far. But I can understand seeing that initial footage, not knowing if he was rushed to a hospital or anything else, and assuming Trump could have been seriously wounded. But I'm not running for VP.

I liked the story. I think it demonstrates a proper, masculine bias towards action and protection. But is that how it will come across to everyone?

It's a little strange to think that he wouldn't have been in contact with people close to Trump who would know that he's not dead. Of course, it would still make sense for him to be cautious about a second strike, so to speak.

What I think was likely was that he was escorted off premises with Secret Service agents and sheltered in place in his home. Machismo aside, perhaps he thought it was like Lincoln in that there was a coordinated conspiracy with shooters assigned to him and Trump. Of course there was no such thing but you can't fault a man for having family on his mind.

Vance was not the announced VP pick yet and did not yet have a SS detail.

Does that make his story too paranoid? Only a vanishing few people would know he was going to be the ultimate pick. But his name was being thrown around.

On the podcast Vance says that Trump got excited about how cool it would be to suddenly announce Vance as the VP pick in Butler, and then was talked down from it.

So Vance probably had a feeling of already narrowly missing death that day.

Really? Huh. Hm. Shows what I know.

Mildly interesting: Tweet from a guy who saw JD Vance rush out of the mini golf course at the time

He says it's actually the Russians funding the German Green party, not even hedging or speculating.

Greens were pushing for no fossil fuels, of which Russia is the default European supplier. Greens were pushing for continued war in Ukraine. These are policies that benefit the US.

Surely he knows this. I can't think of it as anything other than a blatantly dishonest narrative in the usual vein of 'Europeans are incompetent, not pulling their own weight, Russians doing with them as they please, they need a savior, that's us (again!)'. Genuinely infuriating. Sobering, too.

He says it's actually the Russians funding the German Green party, not even hedging or speculating.

It was going around in the news a while back:

Has the Russian Federation been funding environmental activists around the world? A few more voices point in this direction.

WWF Germany, BUND (Friends of the Earth), and NABU (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union), three environmental organisations who were avowed opponents of Germany's NordStream pipelines with Russia, dropped their opposition after Gazprom promised funding for environmental protection, according to a 2011 report from the European Parliament. A foundation set up by a German federal state, environmental organizations, and NordStream (controlled by Gazprom) had filled its coffers with €10 million with representatives of the environmental organizations sitting on the board. Did these groups drop their opposition to the pipelines because of Russian funding? Whether they did or not is anyone's guess.

Another striking example is Belgium, where the federal energy minister Tinne Van der Straeten (from the green party "GROEN") has sought to dismantle Belgium's nuclear energy capacity. Van der Straeten’s former job? Lawyer and associate at a law firm whose largest client is Gazprom.

It shouldn't really be surprising, as this is the straight-forward result of everyone's incentive's on the issue.

Greens were pushing for no fossil fuels,

The Greens were pushing first and foremost for shutting down nuclear power, at which they have succeeded last year. They would have done so sooner, but the Ukraine war erupted just as they were first scheduled to shutdown their last reactors, and the uncertainty over energy security made it impossible to shout down people raising questions like "uh... is this really the best moment for that?". Which doesn't mean they didn't try. They first said the shutdown process is in motion, and impossible to reverse for technical reasons, to which the staff of the last functioning power plant said "uh... we can run this as long as you want, it's just a question of getting more fuel", to which they tried to say "well, we can't get nuclear fuel on such short notice", to which the US said "we'll gladly sell it to you, with Amazon Prime next day delivery included", to which they finally had to say "fine... we'll keep it running for one more year, but don't think this will avoid the shutdown!".

They have done so with full knowledge it will increase carbon emissions, and only offering the excuse that a switch to renewable sources will drive it back down later on, in the long term.

He wasn’t saying they were the sole source of funding.

Moreover, he made the point that the Greens attacked nuclear while trying to replace with wind and solar. But as a result they had a base power problem so turned to natural gas thereby benefiting Russia.

It isn’t quite the Baptist and Bootleggers combo but similar.

Can you explain how the green policy helped the US?

The European gas crisis more than quadrupled the US LNG export business, which started as a subsidized foreign policy tool and suddenly became very profitable (the ports were super expensive and were not competitive with pipeline gas before). 60% of US LNG now goes to Europe, totaling more than we send to Mexico and Canada via pipeline.

Biden just ended all new LNG export construction for "environmental" reasons, hugely enriching the existing owners (the government's partners) by granting them a monopoly.

So in one move they made Europe more economically and politically dependent on the US, paid off the party's cronies, gave their green wing a fake win with some payouts, and put an entire security-critical industry under the thumb of the party. It was a stroke of absolute genius.

And the most impressive part is how long range the plan was. Iirc the government started those then-unprofitable LNG export terminal partnerships over a decade ago, all for this moment when the strategy to split the EU and Russia came to fruition.

Can you explain how the green policy helped the US?

Fair question. Germany adding a ton of solar/wind (before it is economically reasonable) shifts their willingness to conflict themselves with Russia and accept some pipes being blown as a nothingburger after all. To the extent the reduced dependence is real, good for Germans. To the extent it is only an impression that will resolve into a crisis, 'unexpected' costs, too bad.

I also think reduced German/European competitiveness is something the US is pursuing. Drains the talent, conflicts European nations with each other, generally makes us easier to manage.

Yes, they added baseload natgas over nuclear, as others pointed out. Not as much as I thought, something between 50-100% increase since 2000, looking at some charts? And fossil fuels suppliers are fungible (at significant cost), some more natgas does not anchor them to Russia permanently, as we've seen. But fair enough, I should have done more hedging myself, was thinking of last few years too much.

But the point was the greens pushed (oddly) for replacing nuclear (a very clean energy that is cheap after built) with unreliable solar and wind. The natural result is more Natgas which means Russia benefits.

The greens should’ve pushed for nuclear and solar and that would’ve been aligned.

They don't work together, especially in Germany. On summer days solar is producing over 100% of demand and spot prices go negative, then spike at 5pm depending on literally which way the wind is blowing. In winter solar produces zilch and wind stays variable, plummeting to nothing during those climatically stable dead-still cold spells where energy demand is highest.

There's no place for high-fixed-zero-variable cost nuclear in that environment, but it's ideal for cheap gas plants that can be turned off half the time but print money when electricity prices spike. And for gas heating.

There's honestly no explanation for Germany's energy plan but suicidal national insanity. It's as bad as their war plans.

Am I completely wrong in my guess that the Greens don't want nuclear weapons stationed on German soil?

Degrowth Greens are getting absolutely crazy, easily 10x as radical as any far-right European party. More radical than Putin too.

A (biased) source on what one German Greens thought leader wants to see, noting that it isn't all Greens but a formidable brand of Green thought: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/in-which-a-leading-green-intellectual

New construction banned, train travel rationed, 50 sqm living space per person, meat rationed, end of banking (because money is basically worthless since everything is rationed)... This from an apparently respectable political voice, editor of a newspaper, who basically wants to destroy the Western way of life. These people have influence in the real world, their fellow compatriots get into power and start shutting down nuclear plants for no good reason.

It's in the UK too. Some imbeciles passed a law mandating net zero emissions by 2050. A think tank gave serious thought as to what that would actually look like if we take the laws and climate scientists seriously:

https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/75916920-51f6-4f9c-ade5-52cbf55d5e73/content

TLDR, they conclude that technology is too unreliable, the only path to success is crushing austerity. No air travel for 30 years. No shipping for 30 years. 40% less heating. No meat.

What I find most revealing is the mindset of 'well we don't really have any known methods to get CO2 out of the atmosphere besides planting trees and there's not much space for more trees so let's take a low-risk path to absolute zero, using only known technologies'. And then the low-risk path they propose is shooting yourself in the foot with a 50 cal. No shipping and no air travel ON AN ISLAND? Famine is locked in - they add that 'fertilizer use is greatly reduced'. This mindset is absolutely toxic.

The correct solution to climate change is directly controlling the temperature by releasing sulfate aerosols in the upper atmosphere. At a cost of $5-20 billion per year we can hold temperatures in place or reduce them, even as CO2 levels rise. These people want to destroy industrial civilization over a glorified nothingburger.

And I think Russia might be trying to assist them. These Degrowth Greens can be viewed as purely destructive agents, Stalin's mythic wreckers that were deliberately harming the economy by submitting false instructions or damaging machinery. If you want to induce chaos and dysfunction in Europe, help them out! They might shut down a nuclear plant or commit some other blunder and cause right-thinking people to panic-buy more natural gas or oil (which in a global market will increase Russian income). Russia probably doesn't have much ability to help them and doesn't spend much time doing so but I think it's part of their agenda.

Suffice to say that with no air travel and no shipping, the VDV could probably take over Britain by themselves. Inducing stupidity and self-sabotage in your rivals is usually a good move, even if it hurts you occasionally. Just because Russia exports fossil fuels, it doesn't mean they don't want division and incompetence in their targets. Nuclear power is still the primary threat to their energy exports IMO. Nuclear France produces fewer emissions than 'Green' Germany' per $ of GDP.

The correct solution to climate change is directly controlling the temperature by releasing sulfate aerosols in the upper atmosphere. At a cost of $5-20 billion per year we can hold temperatures in place or reduce them, even as CO2 levels rise. These people want to destroy industrial civilization over a glorified nothingburger.

That won't work forever. Those aerosols don't stay in the air nearly as long as CO2 does. So if we depend on them, we'll likely continue to raise the CO2 to dangerous levels while temporarily covering it up with the aerosols. It'll work for a while, but on historical timescales sooner or later something will happen that will disrupt the flights that deliver the aerosols. It could be a war, natural disaster, oil depletion, or anything that disrupts modern civilization and trade. Then the temperature will shoot up to where it would have been without the aerosols, but it will be worse because it will happen much quicker with no chance for people to adapt, and it will compound with whatever crisis caused the disruption.

But the alternative doesn't work at all. If we commit to green energy, that does nothing about all the CO2 already in the atmosphere, it only mildly decreases the rate at which the CO2 concentration rises. It's like taking your foot off a little bit off the accelerator and saying 'well we did our best'. We need to use the brakes.

Sulphates aren't a perfect solution. They do distort weather patterns. They do cause acid rain. But they are a solution to the temperature problem.

That won't work forever.

It doesn't have to work forever, just until we can get nuclear plants built and direct CO2 extraction running.

My understanding was that the German Green party's core policy objective was to see Germany divest itself of locally produced coal and nuclear power in favor of what was sold as "renewables" on paper but was natural gas supplied by Russia in actual practice.

I also recall reading something back in 2019 (when there was all that talk about Germany wasnt pulling its weight in NATO was in news) about how the German left in general and the Greens in particular was rife with ex-Soviet/DDR apparatchiks and thier kids.

The invasion of Ukraine may have been an inflection point that flipped a bunch of incentives, but it seems to me that the Green Party being a bunch of watermelons (outwardly Green but Reds/Communists under the skin) and the Russians quietly looking to sow political dissent amongs thier nieghbors isn't a crazy conspiracy theory as much as it is a solid prior.

and the Russians quietly looking to sow political dissent amongs thier nieghbors

And then the Americans, who realize that a Germany (and by extension, a Europe) weakened by environmentalism (and migrationism) is good for America [currently going its own economic contraction], and are more than happy to encourage that/refusing to interrupt an enemy making a mistake.

Now Europe is strategically dependent on costly American gas rather than cheap Russian gas. (If you were wondering how Europe actually contributes to NATO, that's the way it happens.)

It’s entirely compatible with active measures or just general FUD tactics for a state to fund groups that have multiple ideological goals at odds with their own. And that’s without considering the possibility of miscalculations; the US funded bin Laden for decades, after all.

Isn’t Russian funding for the German Green Party actually literally true, just as it is for most everyone else on a political fringe somewhere?

If the Russians were funding the Greens it would be because they wanted to push for shutting down coal and nuclear power plants which would increase Germany's reliance on natural gas as a way to fill the gap when the baseload becomes more unreliable.

The weird thing is I thought there was a thing about the German secret service infiltrating the Green party due to Russian ties. The problem is I don't know when this happened. In my head this must have happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union because of my age but also in my head my thoughts were 'I hate the Greens. I hate the Communists. But you really shouldn't be doing this in a democracy'. [weirdly enough the USA did the same thing to the Republican party 16 year later]. Also, if I search for the terms 'scandal over germany secret service green party' in Google I can't find it so maybe I'm hallucintating. I asked chat gpt and apparently it happened in 2000 which make sense to me but maybe this is chat gpt hallucinating as well. Chat GPT wouldn't supply me with links and I can't find anything on google in the front page.

this is the closest i could find to what i remember: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/german-spies-target-left-wing-party but that doesn't mention Russia or the Green party. i could have misremembered and thought it was the green party when it was a leftist party.

The greens were hardly pushing against fossil fuels except being violently against fracking (partly because they overlap with pro-coal labor unions). They were campaigning against nuclear and for vast investments in solar, both of which cripple the German grid and help Russia sell more gas at higher prices in the winter.

I'm not excusing German greens by saying they were just rational foreign agents (because I think they're legitimately insane), but Russian sponsorship of their activism goes back to the anti-nuclear campaigns by communist front orgs in the 60s. Today's senior greens literally had KGB handlers when they were young radicals. And that's not counting the ones who were actual East German officials

Like the least sketchy German green politician I can think of at this point was the one who wrote about having sex with kindergarteners. At least he probably wasn't being paid to do it unless he was part of that one social agency in Berlin.

Think you've missed a trick here. The russians did fund the German green movement, and mostly because of the dynamics re imports and exports of energy. If you look at the Petra Kelly/Gert Bastian situation for example, the whole thing glows as bright as the sun. And it doesn't take rocket science to work out why. If you're pro green energy, at least at the time with 90s/00s level tech, then you're going to need (even if you don't acknowledge it) some stable energy source to make up the down periods. And at the time gas was by far the best option other than nuclear. You essentially had a domestic production of nuclear/coal which could be demonised as dirty and possibly even evil. The anti domestic side didn't say "and we'd like russian gas to smooth out the gaps" but this was an inevitability.

Basically yes, Vance is trivially correct that the German greens were funded by the Russians, and for relatively sensible reasons.

Alright, out with it: Which one of you motherfuckers is J.D. Vance? It’s pretty strange to know that the future Vice President of the United States of America may have personally read my shitposts.

Live footage of TheMotte rn.

Is JD Vance here? Maybe, maybe not.

But if he was here, I don’t imagine he would be a prolific poster. Very busy guy, you see.

He’d most likely be a lurker that posts in inspired bursts and then slinks back into lurker mode for days, or weeks, or even months. He might have even got an AAQC or two.

He’d have been lurking around since SSC and the split with the subreddit, so he’d have some intermittent poasting history over at /r/themotte but probably not before.

I imagine he checks TheMotte regularly between his busy work life that doesn’t allow him much screen time.

He’d also be mega-based, undoubtedly.

Anyways, I’d look out for a guy like that.

Live footage of TheMotte rn.

I don't have too much else to add, but this is my favorite edit and it's too good of an opportunity not to post it

Even if he ultimately shilled for China (or something; I never paid too close attention), I still find the original prank calls hilarious

I am Spartacus J.D. Vance.

As weird as this demented chimera of a forum is, I'm reasonably certain that we really don't have any major movers and shakers in the national political realm.

Reasonably certain.

...then again, on the off chance that I'm wrong, can we, make a wish list, or something? I've got a particular bone to grind with the EPA in regards to emission standards, and as it stands, purchasing a reasonably priced Toyota Hilux is about as likely as winning the lottery by this point...

I dont know what bar you're setting for "major movers and shakers" but David Friedman Peter Thiel and Glenn Reynolds, were all regular commentors on SSC prior to the community moving to reddit.

Either Thiel or Reynolds already establishes a maximum of 2 degrees of Kevin Bacon from Scott Alexander to JD Vance (and amusingly enough) Trump.

Thiel commented on SSC? I read the comments section pretty religiously and completely missed that one.

Not under his real name, but yes. He was the infamous "outlier" who kept skewing the income/net worth results of yearly SSC User Survey.

I'm reasonably certain that we really don't have any major movers and shakers in the national political realm.

Eh, I'm pretty sure we don't have national level politicians here. But it would surprise me if we didn't have at least a few uber-influential high level staffers or the writer for a top pundit or something.

and as it stands, purchasing a reasonably priced Toyota Hilux is about as likely as winning the lottery by this point...

Play your cards right and the CIA will provide you and your friends an entire fleet of Hiluxes for free, with bed-mounted full-auto 50 BMGs included.

"Jesus, I see what you’ve done for the Taliban, and I want that for me."

I don't think anyone here wouldn't be able to remember Scott's name.

The head canon is that, being a Mottizen, he didn't want to directly attract the eye of Sauron. The article in question is also from July 2019, so unless Thiel-aligned people are dredging Scott's backlog, it's possible he read it at the time of publishing, prior to the injection of Trump and Thiel's connections, which suggests rat-adjacency.

The fact that he’s into Moldbug also suggests Rat adjacent. I mean I’m not surprised at all that someone reading Moldbug also reads Slatestar.

I think there is a very real chance that he knew very well who wrote the article but he didn't mention the name on purpose so as to not bring unwanted focus on Scott who he knew wouldn't want it.

Yeah, that was my thought. Either that, or he didn't want to get too associated with Scott for his own reasons. But the way he made a point of saying he didn't know who wrote it then deliberately fumbling over the title struck me as slightly affected.

Or he just doesn’t want the point to turn on a referendum on Scott.

Vance follows moldbug, and I believe also BAP on twitter, just for reference.

I remember moldbug saying he will not come on Twitter, did he change his mind?

Everyone probably knows this but he's got a substack: Gray Mirror

There is a long-running fake Curtis Yarvin account, which may be what Stellula is referring to. I believe it only posts links to Yarvin's writings as they're published.

Yarvin joined twitter about a month ago, using his Urbit handle, after he rejoined the Urbit foundation - it's basically a work account where he posts near-exclusively on matters of Urbit design.

Maybe it was like he had said he read moldbug then or something?

It was a long time ago when he was announced that this was being talked about. It was surprising how much overlap he had with the sort of people poasters here like.

It's flattering to think that he's involved in the community, but I expect most of these guys read articles that go viral among the VC set. Think this is how most of Scott's famous articles came to be widely known, rather than through dedicated fans.

I don't care if it's not real though because it would be fucking hilarious if it was.

Gay Rites Are Civil Rites is not anywhere near one of his most viral or famous articles, though, is it? That's what makes me think the most like he might not just have found the article in passing.

Not many of his post-2014 articles went really viral, and I think (hard to judge as a regular reader) that Gay Rites ranks pretty high on the Best After 2014 list. I remember seeing "New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed" linked more often though.

I've seen it reference on here more than once, have not seen it anywhere else.

The funniest answer would be someone like Deisach or Hlynka from the old site.

Or maybe @FiveHourMarathon here, come to think of it, has anyone heard from @JTarrou recently?

Hlynka

Not a chance. He was so salty about the whole cuckservative putdown it was hilarious.

Deiseach is still active in the ACX comment section. Reading between the lines I get the impression he lives they live in Ireland.

…you know she was active on this board, right?

Nope, complete news to me.

To be fair, I didn’t see it at first.

So Deiseach is posting here under another name?

he? I thought that Deiseach is a woman.

Shows how little I know.

Deiseach is definitely an older, Irish woman.

It actually makes TequilaMockingbird's comment all the funnier as it would in fact be the funniest answer.

Deiseach is definitely an older, Irish woman.

...and Hlynka definitely didn't go to Yale.

I was just trying to think of long-standing users who would both annoy the most mottizens, and plausibly write Hillbilly Elegy ;-)

Hlynka

Oh shit wasn't Hlynka a southerner and former military member?

My headcannon is now officially that Vance is Hlynka. Too bad he's banned so won't be able to tell me otherwise.

Hlynka banned? Wasn't he one of the main mods? I missed a lot of lore apparently.

Yes. He was unmodded on reddit. (I was never on reddit myself) He was banned here a couple months ago for deficits in etiquette, despite being warned. (And I think I remember something about him not accepting that people can recognize racial differences in the aggregate without being white nationalists.) It was something of a shame, in my book, since having additional perspectives is nice.

Hlynka had some Slavic (Ukrainian?) blood in him, so much as I'd like it to be otherwise, I'm afraid it's unlikely.

Slovak.

J.D. Vance isn’t a Southerner, though…

Also, as far as I’m aware neither is Hlynka. I believe Hlynka’s originally from Pennsylvania.

Fuck, and he ended up outside fucking Baton Rouge? We should have given him more slack.

All the best people are. Go birds.

Jason and Kylie Kelce are the superior Kelce couple, change my view ;-)

Which one of you motherfuckers

Found JD Vance's grandma.

The motte is the more extreme version of slatestarcodex/astralcodexten. Vance is not based enough to hang out here. He probably hangs out with the normies in the slatestarcodex comments or that other weird vbulletin forum. What you would really hope is Vance is that guy that keeps posting on the reddit split off asking where everyone else is.

By "weird vbulletin forum" do you mean DSL, or...?

I mean, it doesn't actually use vBulletin (it uses Simple Machines Forum), and I wouldn't say it's "less extreme" than theMotte (it's higher-brow and does retain a couple of SJer regulars, but there're still plenty of witches there), but it's the only BBS I'm aware of in the SSC diaspora, so I'm a bit confused.

The reddit split off?

I mean, we do have our token progressives. Darwin/guesswho was active as recently as April, and I had a spirited and productive debate with @TokenTransGirl more recently than that.

Vance is pretty based, and you don’t have to be that based to post here, anyways. I’m convinced that the progressive freak out about him is an instinctive reaction to him hiding his power level.

If you had to be based to post here, I would never have managed to register!

If Vance really does read Curtis Yarvin and Bronze Age Pervert, as has been reported he does, then nothing here on The Motte would bother him much.

I can't help but ask: why the real name for Moldbug but pseudonym for BAP? I'm not trying to claim that either choice is evil or anything, it just looks weird to see both styles juxtaposed.

Moldbug only used a blogging pseudonymn when he worked in tech and could get cancelled. Now he's part of the respectable gentlemen with unusual names club.
BAP still wants the pseudonymn because his real name makes a portion of his audience do an Early Life check.

I'm not sure, it just kind of came out that way. I think maybe it's because as far as I know, Curtis Yarvin is perfectly happy using his birth name in public, whereas as far as I know BAP until recently has tried to maintain anonymity and his birth name of Costin Alamariu only became known because he was doxxed. Also, Curtis Yarvin seems to have long preferred using his own birth name and does not seem to have any attachment to his pseudonym, whereas BAP seems to prefer using his pseudonym over his birth name. But I'm not sure really.

Yarvin writes under his own name now, and has for years. BAP’s identity was leaked fairly recently, but he still does not use that name in the context of being a public figure.

BAP has published a book under his real name, and has a twitter account for it, but they're very different personas. The book is a revised version of his PhD thesis, which is an excellent read in itself but not really of wider interest beyond BAP fans or people interested in Straussian Classical philosophy scholarship, the account is mostly cryptic posting about the great food he's eating.

I think plenty of people know who Moldbug/Yarvin is under both identities. Until now, I didn’t realize anyone knew BAP’s real identity. I definitely wouldn’t have recognized the name if Goodguy had used it.

It's still a pretty big jump from "has read some posts by Scott" to "reads the Motte", right?

Think we just found Mr Vance

I have to say JD Vance would be my favourite pick for a president, ideal situation is Trump gets elected. Dies soon after (of old age), and JD gets a few years to right the ship. It might be the only way we get someone who is rationalist-adjacent into such a influential position.

It feels wrong to wish death on somebody who has done (almost) nothing (truly) wrong.

Except tried to overturn the results of an election and coup the most powerful country on Earth.

It's funny, usually expressing that you hope someone dies at the age of 79 in bed surrounded by loving grandkids is generally a blessing... unless the person is 78.

I’m not wishing it to happen, but saying that would be the best future possible from a political perspective

Agreed. If I could be guaranteed that Trump would be dead within 6 months and Vance would take over, I'd actually consider giving them money.

I might have said this before, but there's no way old age is the death Trump would choose. He'd want a death so dramatic Vance would have to commission a 400' gold statue of him on top of Mt Rushmore, standing above all the other presidents in a heroic pose. He'd want a new Trump House built over the smouldering crater where the White House used to be.
More than anything he'd want good television

I think it's Major Kong riding the nuclear missile in Dr Strangelove or nothing.

How about riding a shark, with 250 pounds of dynamite strapped to his chest, into the mouth of an active volcano?

A big, beautiful volcano.

I'm trying to come up with a joke about Trump choosing to go out in a "hyperbolic" chamber/suicide pod, but I can't quite get there. "We really have the best pods, don't we, folks? This isn't just ending, it's ending with a flair, with class."

Hyperbaric is like hyperbolic but with more bathos.

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